What shapes contemporary life? | Big Think

What shapes contemporary life?

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Riemen frames contemporary life and the values that construct our society.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rob Riemen:

Rob Riemen is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Nexus Institute, a leading international center for intellectual reflection to inspire the Western cultural and philosophical debate. Mr. Riemen is also the editor of the essay journal "Nexus."

He is the author of Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal (2008), which has been translated into eighteen languages, and the new international bestseller To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism (2018)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What shapes contemporary life?

Rob Riemen: I don’t want to be a name dropper, but it’s . . . no. But it’s . . . It’s the world I come from and the language I know. But we have had the phenomenon in Europe of Friedrich Nietzsche. Now Nietzsche is well known for the death of God, nihilism and so on and so forth. And that next to Nietzsche we had Dostoevsky – Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment and so forth. Those two quite different figures had something in common. And this . . . And that is that they realized . . . They realized all too well that if we lose the idea or the awareness that the most important things in life have an intrinsic value, then you will get . . . then you will get nihilism. That is to say if we really think that, that if we don’t understand what freedom is, and we think that freedom is equal to “everything is permissible” – but for everything to become permissible, you get __________. When things no longer have an intrinsic . . . intrinsic value, then you don’t value your child because it is your child; but you value it because you think he will become a movie star, or a football player, or will do a lot of work for me. You can no longer value the great love in your life because you think, you know, it would be . . . You see, I mean that’s . . . that’s . . . It is the gigantic stupidity of a society with this bombardment by . . . by mass media which is constantly lying to us. It’s constantly lying to us. They want to give us the idea that Mr. Trump, for example . . . Mr. Trump is the incarnation of Mr. Kitsch because he truly thinks that money is the most important thing in life. And if you become a Kitsch-like figure like he is, yes you can make a lot of money. But look every __________ can tell you that there is nothing in money. And this is what nihilism is – that it’s absolutely nothing. So this is what I called the kitsch society. We aim at the pleasant. We ignore the best. We do not understand that the most important things must have an intrinsic value, and that was a . . . that some things have to . . . have to be sacred. And on the level of politics, I mean look. Mr. Karl Rove when he was still there, “mission accomplished”. It was the perfect example of what . . . When politics is no longer the real debate about the good society; when politics is reduced to, you know, serving part interest, or serving self-interest, and to do it well we have to create a certain image like “mission accomplished”; I mean it worked for at least half a year that the majority of the American people thought “mission accomplished”. Now in the meantime they know the truth – it’s not there. So when the kitsch society is there, we are constantly _________ with the fact . . . Again, education. Education should be pretty useless; should focus on the useless things; should try to make us, you know, aware of what the masterpieces have to tell us how to gain a certain wisdom in life; and then of course yes, you have to develop your talents and you should follow your passion. But for so long we’ve been living in a society where wisdom has been replaced by know-how; in which history according to Mr. Forbes is bunk. And all you have to . . . The religious sects who are telling you there is only one truth and authority, and you have to obey and so on and so forth – I mean are we surprised about what’s happening in our society? Are we surprised about the senselessness, the killing? And the interesting thing is that look, we are still living in democracy.

Read the full transcript at