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(image) Bertolt Brecht with son Stefan
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel first brings to our attention this poem by Bertolt Brecht which was written (while in exile) in Stockholm two months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in early September 1939.
Dr Hänsel then proceeds to reflect on the ongoing Worldwide corona crisis which is affecting humanity in its entirety, the lives of Planet Earth’s 7.8 billion people with its diverse cultures, histories and social identities;
All of whom share common values with families, children and friends, living in diverse communities in the planet’s towns, villages and cities,
All of whom cherish humanity and the “value of life” including civil rights, social justice, the right to employment, education, health, culture, music, artistic creation,
Standing in solidarity in one another.
The global lockdown started on March 11, 2020. And simultaneously the lives of millions of people in all major regions of the World were in jeopardy.
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provided a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.
And in turn, analysis of what is happening (to our fellow citizens and our children) is the object of massive censorship.
“What are these times when a conversation about trees is almost a crime” says Bertolt Brecht
What is required is the development of a Worldwide grassroots network which confronts both the architects of this crisis as well as the governments involved in implementing the lockdown, the closure of economic activity and the derogation of fundamental human rights.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 2021
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In his poem “An die Nachgeborenen” (To those born later), published in June 1939, Bertolt Brecht gave an honest, harrowing and admonishing account of his life in dark times:
“Really, I live in dark times!
The guileless word is foolish. A smooth forehead
Indicates insensitivity. The laughing man
Has not yet received
Only not yet received.
What are these times when
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
Because it includes a silence about so many misdeeds!
He who walks quietly across the street
Is probably no longer accessible to his friends
Who are in need?”
Bertolt Brecht, June 1939
***
Three generations later, we are again living in dark times. Those born after us are to become transhuman beings, disembodied human machines, servants and energy carriers for the small number of “chosen ones”.
We could have known, should have known!
This future, which is to be only theirs, they’ve been announcing it openly for a long time.
But we could not interpret the flaming writing on the wall, this portent, like Belshazzar.
Could not believe that the despots and Satan’s followers, consumed with power, would actually carry out their diabolical plans.
Our minds are not free, we have not thrown off fearfulness.
From childhood we believe in authorities, are in bondage to them, handing over power and not having the courage to use our common sense – we are only capable of obeying.
These unscrupulous despots fuel the fears of citizens of hunger and enslavement, of death and hell.
They also employ the services of corrupt philosophers, psychologists and natural scientists who sell their souls.
Their aim is to subjugate the people, to take away all their rights, to transform them into transhuman beings so that they will obey… and serve.
In this, the throne and the altar would be henchmen… who would understand each other, like two cutthroats.
***
This was the opinion of Jean Meslier, the 17th century French philosopher, an atheist in a priest’s skirt (1)
In the preface to his famous “Memoir of Thoughts and Sentiments”, he wrote that he had recently encountered a man who “was not a student, but who evidently possessed sufficient common enough common sense to recognise and condemn the abominable abuses and condemn the abominable abuses,” for he had said that:
“all the great men of the earth should be killed should be strangled with the intestines of priests and hanged by the neck…”
Meslier adds:
“This way of speaking certainly seems harsh, rude and offensive, but it must be admitted that it is frank and open. frank, succinct and impressive.” (2)
Among the greats of the earth today are the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, the Brzezinskis, the Kissingers and their ilk, the Coudenhove-Kalergis and the other wise men.
When they created the New World Order – a One World Government, a One World Religion, and for us ordinary citizens, Dante’s hell. they were sure they were going to win.
And that is how it looks!
Many great women and men – also in modern times – tried, to draw our attention, to warn us:
Baron d’Holbach, for example. or Prince Peter Kropotkin, Michael Bakunin or Karl Marx, Count Tolstoy or Johannes Messner, Emma Goldmann or Bertha von Suttner, Siegmund Freud or Alfred Adler, Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, Rosalie Bertell or Maria Mies, Albert Schweitzer or Carl Friedrich, von Weizäcker, Hannah Arendt or Michel Chossudovsky.
***
But we did not listen to them because we knew better.
Nor did we want to know because it disturbed our circles.
That is why today the urgent question is: What to do?
“What to do?”, said Zeus,
“the gods are drunk and making a mockery of Olympus.”
A friend meant well and gave me the advice:
Dare to be wise and surrender power to no one!
Live your life, but also be the guardian of your brothers and sisters!
Make public spirit the guiding idea!
Protect the youth, encourage and challenge them!
Give if you can and do not hate if you can!
Intervene as an intellectual and show a constructive and non-violent way out!
And non-violent way out!
Have compassion for all creatures, for only this makes you a real human being!
Really a human being!
Rudolf Hänsel, March 2021
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.
Notes
(1) Hagen, Friedrich (1977). An atheist in a priest’s skirt. Jean Meslier and the French freethinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. A polemic by Friedrich Hagen. Leverkusen and Cologne, p. 42
(2) Op. cit. Blurb on the back of the book
