Reflections of culture with regards to the issue of 'child sex tourism'

Review by Hatto Fischer, adviser to the Greens in the European Parliament

Implementation of measures to combat child sex tourism

discussion of these proposed measures as based on the

DRAFT OPINION ROURE PE 2312.384

As presented to and amended by the

Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sports

of the European Parliament

Reflections of culture

Introduction

The purpose of this review is to show the relevance of culture when it comes to understand in particular the plight of children once subject to abuse by adults. It shall be used to reflect in general upon values and attitudes shared by members of the European Parliament when it comes to apply specific measures at European level in order ‘to combat (note: official language use) Child Sex Tourism’.

Naturally the approach taken here means having to explain what difference it would make once EU institutions include substantial ‘cultural reflections’ in all of their deliberations. This is said because despite declarations for culture in the Amsterdam treaty, Europe is not known for a conscious cultural policy as integral part of the integration process. In absence of such policy, there is instead the danger of ethnic self-assertiveness attempting to use culture for a single political purpose and even worse for discriminatory practices. It makes the argument for culture that much more difficult.

The argument for ‘culture’ has to start with pointing out that this means becoming involved in a self-creative process capable of experiencing life in a differentiated, that is non conformist way. This ‘morality of creativity’ can act as guideline for good practice. It presupposes paths taken by artists like Picasso or Max Ernst, is shown through actions like those of Rostropovich, reminds of Beethoven and lives on in numerous poems, theatres, songs, films etc. Being creative takes the meaning of existence further than just meaning nothing. As an expression of an ethic of life, it underlines the belief in human beings and in the beauty of this world even though in rough times expressions thereof may turn out to be ‘abstract’ (Paul Klee). Yet these aspects seem to be more of interests to artists than to those moving in-between political decision making processes.

For when it comes to policy matters, conflicts of interest have to be resolved differently to what would be mediation through the arts. The former understands itself by definition as seeking a reasonable compromise while the latter lives out of an uncompromising standpoint. Consequently all the more creative solutions are needed at all political levels when it comes to self-governance based on bringing together these two positions. That touches upon dimensions such as human self-consciousness (Marx) and epistemological orientations around key concepts such as ‘meaning of life’, ‘love’, ‘artistic endeavors’, ‘human values’, ‘responsibility’, ‘innovation’ etc. The outcome will be tangent to prevailing self-understandings mediated and articulated in various forms through the different cultures of Europe.

Above all the topic of ‘Child Sex Tourism’ touches upon a hidden agenda of modern life linked to both culture turned into commercial activities and tourism transforming ‘codes of behavior’ of the visitors into something else than just normal conduct towards others. It questions the traditional self-understanding prevailing especially at local levels in Europe until now, namely that the future of society depends upon safeguarding the interests of children and that things are done out of respect for their Rights in order to give them opportunities to grow up. This is not the case once children become objects of all kinds of abuse both at home and abroad by adults who do not seem to care about the consequences of their actions upon children and their future life’s.

If one single word can describe why harm and damage is created, then because of a kind of consumerism driven by ‘egoism’. The latter is ready to abuse anything for the sake of own advantages, so that the world is bent on offering everything that money can buy. That includes ‘children’ who as commodity can be traded for money in various forms e.g. a childless couple desiring to fill that gap in their lives. Such single, even commercial language has nothing to do with the need to act in accordance with the vitality of a culture nor does it heed the up to now existing ethics, including the one created the basis for making possible a sound business.

Obviously with the collapse of the ‘morality of payment’ (Louis Baeck), that the world wide competition has brought about, it seems almost impossible or at least it is most difficult to uphold ‘good practice’ in all fields of human activities. Especially children feel that absence of good practice once everything depends upon ‘money’, while society turns the other way in order not to see when children are send out already at a young age to earn money in all kind of ways.

Collecting money at traffic intersections is, however, but the beginning of the world wide phenomenon of child labor, that is children solicited to do all kinds of work and services with payment not going to them, but to those who owe them. Like slaves or the past, their lack of freedom due to single dependency upon the adult world makes them both vulnerable and easy objects of exploitation and abuse.

Subsequently the position taken in this review will draw upon examples where abuse of children can be compared to abuse of culture as well. Decisive seems to be both the language in use and various forms of communications society has modeled and adopted according to what governs nowadays human relationships, in order to ascertain what needs to be discussed and what has been decided already as being matters of interest. Most of the time, that leads to the kind of politics known primarily for preventing identification of the real issues at hand and if not prevents at the very least hinders society from coming to terms with reality. The extreme case seems to prevail that the society of ‘capitalist consumerism’ cannot emancipate itself from the egoistic forms it needs to sustain itself. Apparently the drive towards enjoyment as a way of seeking pleasure has to deny the freedom of the others and thus human relationships enter the kind of perversity that shocks society when new incidences of child molesting are revealed. Most of the time it is done with children of families visited by so-called friends of these families who take advantage of both familiarity and inert pressure to keep everything a secret.

Consequently such a society is not really in a position to create the kind of humane conditions adults need for living and working in such a way that their children can grow up freely, that is with self respect and without being coerced into all kinds of wrong doings. A society wounded in terms of human dignity will doubt itself whether it can emancipate itself in any meaningful way. Resignation is a part of accepting already bad practices. It becomes worse when this leads to all kinds of submissive behavior at the slightest signs of intimidation by those using power to instill fear and conformist behavior.

That basic doubt in an amoral society is substantiated by how children and the youths grow up in skeptical even bitter mood while the way they are treated even by young and progressive parents shows that this society has little time and patience with their need to grow up first. Rather the impatience of the kind of society around them pushes them at an early age into the need to just cope without having the experiences to survive. Consequently that society inflicts daily numerous physical and moral damages upon children. The kind of punishments parents and authorities can think of, that goes well beyond the imagination, but it is only one side of the story. The other is a society pushing children at an early age into all kinds of performance enhancement programs as if competition means having no time to play or to learn but using merely the time to become better than all others. It means adults intervene so much into the lives of these children that they have no chance to develop amongst themselves a kind of solidarity which would allow them to resist any form of abuse. Consequently reactions to what a child does seem to be especially hard, if it tends to go against the kind of order it supposed to know as the adults understand it and who forget that children need to create their own order before being able to understand what is being asked of them when society asks of them to become responsible citizens.

However, the worst kind of punishment any child can experience is withdrawal of love. Even the mere threat is like a lethal weapon capable of coercing a child to go against its better knowledge and feelings. The turning of love for a child and its need for love against itself is but the beginning of extreme forms of mistreatment and abuse.

If culture itself is a reflection of the state of affairs, then it is always an indication of what ‘ethics’ prevail in order to make possible the artistic freedom of expression. Art reflects, therefore, in its way of speaking up as to what is allowed, what not within the societal and individual framework of values. Over time and in history the ‘story of art’ is according to Gombrich a point of departure for new perceptions. This is being articulated by various forms of art works. Van Gogh’s potato eaters underline how poor people live during those days. But Van Gogh did not paint as Marx would portray them as being alienated; rather Van Gogh showed them as people having stored still the good old stories in their hearts. This makes life possible even if outer circumstances go beyond their own strength and capacities.

As George Steiner posed the question in his book ‘Language and Silence’, “why did Communism, but not Fascism manage to produce great art works?”, the question hast o be repeated today: what culture exists if children and youths are allowed to be abused especially for sexual purposes? Is it in the absence of any morality or rather of moral restraints that other things become possible without fear of consequences? Would it mean really that only in the absence of culture such things as child abuse are possible? Judging alone by what countless television films portray as to what is allowed, what not, these questions can be answered already by decoding this kinf of entertainment as the propagation of the idea ‘everything is allowed, provided you do not get caught doing it’.

In the end, killing and other forms of violence to get your way seem more appropriate than critical dialog and pursuit of questions as to what can make life into a creative process made up of experiences and articulation of different forms of expression. Commercialized culture simply does away with the struggle for meaning and gives only recognition to what can be had immediately; therefore, violent acts are identified by mistake as signs of strength, power and heroism.

Such a culture of cheap entertainment cannot convincingly portray that life is worth living by staying on this path of ‘morality of creativity’. One outcome is then a young student wondering why Vincent Van Gogh continued to paint even though he did not sell any of his paintings? As if only that exists, what makes money! But like the smile of child when truly happy, the existence of culture reflects the extent to which ethical concerns are heeded or not. In other words, culture can be understood as a reflection of what possibilities exist to follow up personal meanings of life and this on the basis of ethics related to the ideals of mankind. At least George Steiner thinks that this can give rise to inspirations for great works of art. It is reflected how Picasso loved the children since he saw in them all the creative potentialities of mankind. At the same time, Andre Breton considered Picasso to be one of the artists that stayed on his path as described by the ‘morality of creativity’.

Depending, therefore, on how society answers the question of culture, honesty and truth shall prevail in reality. Naturally this follows but also determines the kind of ‘politics’ practiced at a certain period of time. As Pericles of Ancient Greece stated in his funeral speech, ‘the best defense of civil life are not protective measures like walls and a standing army, but active citizenship with each and everyone sharing in both responsibilities but also profits gained out of the collective endeavor to sustain life.’ Neglect of culture leads necessarily to wrong conclusions and loss of citizenship while all solutions attempted shall be based on fear and bad advice.

By favoring, for example, the military rather than the diplomatic solution as was the case with Kosovo when the promise ‘never again war in Europe’ was broken, Europe has departed even further from its cultural premise. This is indeed a sad note at the end of the twentieth century making life ever more abstract and out of reach for many people due to so much destruction of personal meanings attached to life’s experienced differently at every location where human beings reside. As Bart Verschaffel would say, ‘it makes little sense to talk about nomads in an age transforming so many people into refugees once they have become victims of circumstances beyond their control’. It shall be fore most the children that will suffer when there is no longer any real beauty in life. Paul Klee anticipated this tendency by turning towards ‘abstract expressionism’ in his art because all the beauty that was destroyed during First World War could only be remembered, any expression thereof would be by necessity ‘abstract’.

At the political level, a crucial aspect for this argumentation in favor of taking culture into consideration is the reminder that self-clarification is only possibility in all honesty. It is not possible within a corrupt society. The latter would only prevent people from bringing about such creative process that would allow them to come to terms with reality. By not being cut off from their imagination, they would not be limited to only that what prevails at any given moment but go beyond in order to bring out the best in each and everyone. Consequently they would not feel trapped but see alternatives to present circumstances. They would not despair but act as people with future and, therefore, find the time to work out the best solutions for their children. Above all this would express itself through adults giving time to their children in order to let them be present in their own time. After all what is childhood if not the present tense of social development with cultural outlooks.

Right now the world appears to be dominated by hectic, with no one having any time, lest for children. Behind everything there stands the necessity to earn and to get money. In the working world it seems that only managerial methods dictate time flows and allow only such human interactions which reaffirm the kind of hierarchical structures favoring unjust distributions of resources for those with money i.e. with money. The latter stands for a success story not to be questioned.

In real terms, such dictum means more not less cultural inequality (as measured by access to not merely tangible but especially intangible resources, including knowledge and information) and that a real lack of freedom shall continue to prevail. People will be held in a modern kind of slavery and they will limit themselves according to what they think they can afford.

Consequently if parents are mistreated at work and face the prospective loss of their human dignity every day, they can hardly pass on the demand for self respect to their children. Vice versa children will begin to fear those adults who have lost their human dignity to be noticed in how life has been thrown away and with it also themselves. Solutions to loss of human dignity are not easy to come by. It will require a culture of redemption as minimum prerequisite for being able to work through the problems until people can stand up to themselves.

In short, solutions will be if at all possible, then highly costly and insufficient in terms of ‘human justice’ based on respect of human dignity in everyone. The biggest challenge will be how to live then in such in complete world without turning cynic, becoming apolitical and just passive vis a vis the most apparent abuse of natural and human resources?

Moreover society tends to give in to whimsical wishes of the privileged having developed all sorts of fears due to leading an artificial life, than remaining attentive to those with real needs, fore mostly children. The negative weight of the privileged comes about due to having grown afraid of the very world they have helped to create or rather abused instead of using its resources wisely. This negative aspect is linked to having earned money more often by dubious ways than heeding cautions. That includes the construction of nuclear power stations and selling weapons as means of making a living. Due to their inner guilty conscience or even worse lack thereof, they base all concerns upon measures meant to protect them against other human beings, that is against all possible retaliations for their doings known to be wrong, but nevertheless legal due to politics having become ‘real politic’.

Indeed, in the so-called Information Society, there is even less communication when taking culture to mean dialogue based on personal meanings and exchange of opinions leading to intellectual inquiries. All this leads, as Michael D. Higgins (former Minister of Culture for Ireland) would point out repeatedly, to an over alienation of everyone because imprisoned in a world of consumption. There has to be added the negative component of being ‘consumed by fear’ rather than living and enjoying life close to the ground in order to share its diverse meanings with others.

Therefore, instead of having an over-expensive management world of pseudo-important activities, culture as substance of life would mean human activities are coordination in a way to make possible ‘sustainable development’. The real argument for culture begins with point out how in a more humane way things shall be dealt with in reality the moment ‘complexity’ is not excluded but dealt with consciously and in all freedom present when creative minds begin to relate to one another. The less fear of complexity there exists, the more sophisticated the approach becomes and finally politics shall be in a position to respond to people’s needs while issues can be identified in such a way that it respects people’s wish to relate to one another over and beyond mere commercial interests.

As architecture has neglected the social question, so has the economy in the strive for more profits the impact of this development upon the environment. Following that trend, society as a whole has neglected the impact of all of this upon culture and hence upon its own self-understanding. At the best, there exist nowadays ‘confused minds’ between questions of practical orientations and what can be considered still to be a matter of desire or wish linked to a dream like vision of a fulfilled life.

Under modern conditions of traffic jams, environmental catastrophes, unemployment and various forms of misery with AIDS and mental disorders taking a lead in the causes of disorientation, people seem more breathless and hardly better in a position to cope than what was the case at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a matter of fact the world is loosing all differences or as James Clifford would describe it in his book called ‘Predicament of Culture’, ‘it is a world beset by being the same everywhere’. In the absence of any ‘otherness’ as prerequisite for finding one’s own identity, the world of McDonalds and Coca-Cola, but also of Mercedes, VW, BMW, Ford, Toyota etc. allows only confusion about one’s identity to reign before anything else. This confusion is intended since a person living in a modernistic world supposed to gain his or her identity by taking possession of things that have already established identities in the world of glitters and consumption. Modeled like advertisement suggests identities are gained apparently only by consuming something as if by doing so one becomes a representative of the suggestive power of the acquired product and in turn is able to promote still further commercial activities in support of the same product. The suggestive power is all along by having such a product the individual has a chance to become someone known through the product in the world of consumption.

Trends of that are shown in shopping malls and huge supermarkets whose sheer size and quantity of products indicate here is a world which can and at the same time cannot satisfy this need of consumption. It becomes an endless task to satisfy that never ending appetite. Like a neurosis the secret is that people want others to buy the same as supporting evidence of having made the right choice while they want it to remain exclusive in order to delineate themselves from others. It is an ambivalence being played fully every day when people go to the cashier in order to pay for what they have collected in the aisles of the supermarket.

Herbert Distel, founder of the ‘Museum of Drawers’ makes the point that there is one place where consumption is taken a step further, namely to using money to consume money. The place is called ‘Rodeo Drive’ and has one of the most expensive real estates in the world. It is confined to but one mile of road and shows what happens once money is seized upon to consume just more money.

No wonder then that the EU Commission is getting worried about over-commercialization as threat to cultural identities and cultural landscapes. These worries are expressed in particular in conjunction with tourism and urban / regional development not heeding their negative impacts upon ‘cultural heritage’ and local / regional cultures. The EU Commission has yet to realize fully that the kind of perversion of life styles brought about by mass tourism affects also people’s behavior especially towards children and the youth.

Along those lines of identifying problems in connection with culture and cultural identity, it shall be argued here that if EU institutions adopt the self-creative process of culture as their model for both reflections and practices, they would fulfill more substantially the intentions of the Maastricht Treaty. It means the current situation in which only political and economic arguments prevail cannot be upheld. This has to change to include cultural considerations as foreseen by the Treaty. ^¹

Especially when it comes to face consequences and problems of mass tourism, ‘complementary alternatives’ are needed to a world restricted to mere consumption of other lands and their people. This applies as well to how things are organized and administered. There is a need to counter an all out organizational and ideological drive towards still greater efficiency in exploitation of resources, if only to the sake of not economic development but ‘expansion’ based on just more and mere consumption of everything: land, resources, people, time and money.

In order that cultural values are not given up nor land abandoned i.e. forsaken to let very arbitrary economic forces exploit all natural and human resources so as to foster still more commercial activities (it includes making the pension fund work by building more hotels not in the UK but abroad to earn more than the interest rate given by banks), ‘complementary alternatives’ must be created. This is only possible if there are set ‘cultural constraints’ to preserve and to guarantee the continuity of identities linked with cultural landscapes and ways of life. It is a failure of culture, if these constraints are not set. The blame cannot be put permanently upon the economy alone. People will find always ways to make a living i.e. start a business in a similar way to all others. Interesting would be, therefore, if that negative pattern of copying merely the others by becoming just another distributor of well established companies and their products could be challenged. This would mean among others using cultural considerations to act as constraint against ‘inward investments’ to ensure the impact thereof can be sustained by the culture existing already at that place. According to Michael D. Higgins this requires, however, that governments and the EU Commission adopt a ‘conscious cultural policy’ capable of preventing that the economy drives out all values and meanings needed to sustain an authentic life in the city and in the region.

Provisions for such a cultural policy have to include new forms of reflections that take into account further going aesthetical considerations of such notions as ‘beauty’ as it has been expressed by the art and literary movement throughout the twentieth century. While Picasso, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Fuentos, Neruda, Seferis and many others have practiced this ‘morality of creativity’ (Andre Breton), there must be made at institutional level an all out effort to let everyone become creative (Beuys).

As recommended by the CIED (Cultural Innovation and Economic Development – an Article 10 ERDF project, 1996 – 99) project, economic development should be based in future on culture while all political decisions of importance should rely on ‘cultural consensus’ yet to be shaped in Europe. The purpose of such a cultural consensus is to give to the cultural sector especially a voice when it comes to planning and investment decisions having a cultural impact upon place and time in European cities. This means political authorities at local and regional level will have to learn ‘how to use, but not abuse culture’ (Brendan Kennelly).

At political level of the European Union ‘cultural consensus’ would mean retain the rule of unanimity in the Council when it comes to making decisions on cultural policy in Europe. It shall be argued here that this consensus once based on citizens’ participation and in giving to the cultural sector a real voice will allow for such mediation that all European and other cultures will create the ‘moral base’ for shaing values throughout Europe and in the world.

Culture in conjunction with the European integration process underlines the fact that there are many more than just financial issues at stake. These cultural and cultural heritage issues need to be taken into consideration by all member states so that the people of Europe can come to terms with EU institutions in terms of a reality of their own doing. The difference to America is that Europe is not made up of a single nation state and requires, therefore, the institutionalization of the relationship between all various forms of political decision making and the need to heed cultural differences. This is only possible by creating a multi-cultural level facilitating cultural inputs from all sides so as to heed the impact of the European Union integration process upon all European and Non-European cultures.

It goes without saying that knowledge about such a cultural consensus in the making has to include history and forms of politics practiced throughout the various centuries that have marked Europe’s evolvement. As MEP Alecos Alavanos would argue, there are different ways of reading the history of Europe. This needs to be brought out in order to give the freedom of interpretation to all when it becomes a crucial and critical matter of understanding Europe in the making.

Only once this cultural sovereignty can be articulated, then it can be expected that the European Parliament does not operate in a vacuum of cultural values but is rooted in the people’s cultural dispositions and self-understandings expressed when becoming creative with regards to EU institutions. Unfortunately right now there prevails but a negative consensus, namely that European institutions are too detached from the daily lives of people and their concerns. Consequently parliamentary deliberations are hardly seen in their relevance for Europe’s future. ^²

It is one of the tasks and responsibilities of the Committee on Culture, Youth, Media, Education and Sports to ensure that all EU actions entail a cultural component and heed the cultural compatibility of these actions. Therefore, it is to be expected that through parliament’s actions all EU institutions base their deliberations on culture. Given the crucial term of ‘cultural heritage’ as common source of European identity, something which is advanced in particular by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, such task should refer to the kind of self-understanding Europeans have developed over the centuries and given a form though the European Union institutional set-up is far from complete.

Culture means before anything else a value system affecting people’s attitudes and their ways of coming to terms with reality. By referring to culture, attention is drawn to details and to the fact that things are more complex and complicated then originally presumed. Out of that follows that any substantial solution is not merely an enactment of law, but an endorsement of a way of life governed by law and respect for other people and their cultures. This goes beyond any previous notion of cultural identity since it is now linked to European citizenship and the kind of self-understandings that determine those assumptions meant to ensure that all actions empower ‘good governance’ at all European levels. It is important that here mistakes of the past are not repeated while all solutions should be positive in their impact upon European cultures and the way they seek to express themselves.

For European integration to be recognized as a solution by all cultures, then surely actions undertaken in the name of the European Union should not take on the negative characteristics of being mere ‘punishment’ and/or mere ‘prevention’. If Jean Amery could write as survivor of Auschwitz a book titled ‘Beyond crime and punishment’, then this Dostoevsky dimension of redemption between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ needs to be kept in mind so as to sustain dialogue and governance by consensus. The solution must indicate itself how to ensure the continuation of positive development while addressing attitudes shaped by and within societies so that all citizens adopt ‘good practices’ towards children and all future generations. Children grow up in dependency upon the adult world. There growing independence is like a positive emancipation provided this is guided by an inter-generational dialogue as well. An indication of finding solutions between generations would be that an issue like ‘child sex tourism’ would not arise in the first place.

Thus the opportunity is taken here to reflect upon what was articulated in the draft opinion of the ROURE report on ‘Child Sex Tourism’, then discussed and amended by the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, Media and Sports of the European Parliament during its meetings in November and December 1999.

By doing so the review invites equally to a critical self-reflection as to what interventions are possible by the GREENS / EFA group, given the fact that the group has yet to develop a cultural agenda.

The issue of ‘Child Sex Tourism’ serves, therefore, a double purpose. First of all, there is a wish to examine politically what positions and actions can be taken when faced with such an issue as ‘Child Sex Tourism’. At the same time, the review wishes to illustrate that the argument for culture cannot be understood, if the following thesis is not taken into account, namely that ‘culture is theory’.

Culture is a complex way of combining values and attitudes with a way on how to perceive and do things. Theory is involved in perception and in the knowledge of how to do things i.e. go about doing things. For instance, Martin Jay describes the changes in perception being reflected in altering theories of how the whole can be perceived, if at all. This can be described as going away from ‘totalitarian theories’ claiming that the state must have ‘eyes to see all’. Action, doing, praxis etc. follows wisdom of doing things. It let already Virgil say about the Roman Empire that it will decline once people know no longer how to train horses and trim the trees. This means including also in culture the kind of myths and festivals linked with that as a reminder when to do what e.g. during harvest time. Once culture is perceived as a reminder for doing things at a certain time, then the rhythm of life is no longer arbitrary but follows a certain lawfulness of the seasons.

Politics is about letting future actions be governed by such laws and guidelines that can refer to philosophical reflections and in practice to cultural wisdom, so that arguments for culture have to be substantiated further if this is to be heeded. So to avoid also possible misunderstandings, culture stands here for complexity demanding differentiation and reflection as to use of what ‘theory’ – way of explaining things. That extends to implementation of theory adopted to express both viewpoints taken into consideration and means decided upon and sought to find a solution to the problem at hand. Recently arguments extend this to include cultural evaluation as a way of gaining knowledge about what not only individuals, but organizations and institutions like the European Parliament are doing. All that points to a need for critical self-reflection in order to continue relating to the needs of others and real problems faced by all in the world.

There is a danger to forget about the need to constantly reflect upon the theoretical context from which was taken originally the meaning of action. As Adorno would say, if only one component is taken out of the complex relationship making up a theory and acted upon, it would but lead to ‘reactionary practice’. The art of doing things depends upon the ability to uphold the full theoretical reflection in order to know what one is doing while attempting to implement an idea or in the case of EU institutions a measure.

Consequently the starting and end point have to be always reflections of the cultural impact of such measures. They are only then good measures if they allow for a self-critical mediation between measures used and results attained in order to realize not just any objective, but livable solutions based on human justice, cultural equality, dialog and freedom of artistic expression – the four main pillars of European cultures.

This is to say ‘culture’ cannot be misused as discriminatory tool. If the demand for culture is to retain the self-understanding of everyone, then it must be filled with the life of all. Culture exists when the possibility is given to mediate between needs and conditions of fulfillment. One of the main conditions is that things are done out of respect for the human dignity of children and for the sake of all wishing a ‘good life’.

1. Theory and Practice – the position of Culture in EU Institutions

The way European institutions have been constructed and decision processes organized around the trilogy of Council, Parliament and Commission, that does heed the need for consensus, but it leaves ‘culture’ at the same time in a very weak position. The political weakness is reflected in the meager budget of 167 Mill. Euros (the European Parliament had asked for 250 Mill. E) that is given for the next five years to the new single framework program called Culture 2000. Partly due to member states like Holland, England and Germany not wishing for different reasons to exceed a certain budgetary limit, the delegation from Parliament failed also to convince both Council and Commission of the need for more money. Arguments for culture with financial implications have to be simply more convincing, if there is going to be an opening up or rather a removal of budgetary constraints in this direction.

At the same time, the Commissioner for Culture, Mme. Reding, made it difficult for Parliament to demand more funds by acknowledging that she could operate or rather implement the Culture 2000 program with such a budget. Even though there have been enough voices expressing criticism that the Culture 2000 program is not innovative enough, such a position taken by the Commissioner forces Parliament really into a position of ‘wait and see’ what the Commission can do with such amount of money. While it was clear to many members of the Cultural Committee that the budget is inadequate for 15 member states in need of financial support of cultural activities over a time period of five years, they accepted finally rather than blocking the decision. The main argument persuading everyone to come to an agreement with such a budget limitation was finally the preference given to a unified cultural program (the first time at European level) rather than having none at all.

This agreement came about despite the fact that especially those involved in translation of literary works voiced great concern about the new program due to the loss of the ARIANE program. However, the Committee members pointed out that despite being really a failure in their negotiations, the European Parliament had to accept at that point of the conciliation process the common position taken by both Council and Commission.

The only concession granted at the end of the conciliation was a commitment by the Commission to make a mid-term re-evaluation of the Culture 2000 program. This shall be done especially with regards to whether financial means and objectives match in order to find out whether or not the financial constraints imposed were too severe.

The claim by Mme. Reading in the ear, members of the Committee together with cultural groups, artists, actors and other operators in the cultural fields will have to develop a method using cultural measures to see if Culture 2000 has been truly implemented. If meant to stimulate innovation and creativity throughout Europe, then ongoing evaluation has to take that into consideration. It may well mean quite other cultural activities will require EU funding compared to which activities have received until now EU co-financing support. Here it is not merely a matter of large, easy to manage cultural projects that is an issue, but whether or not cultural diversity and diversification of cultural activities can go together with development based on creative ideas? In brief, whether or not the budget will prove to be adequate, that depends upon what one wishes to do in the name of culture.

It is a common rule in Europe that cultural budgets are kept low while elsewhere expenditures on road systems and technological development exceed normal expectations as if that can be justified more easily through political and economic arguments in favor of the free economy. Then there is always the risk that security needs will be considered more important than cultural ones. In that sense, it is of great political significance that the Council has instructed the Commission to inform European citizens and groups more intensively and directly as to how funding for cultural actions can be obtained not alone through the Culture 2000 program, but also through the Structural Fund. The advice was heeded by Mme. Reding when she reported to the Committee and stressed again this point of funding to be obtained elsewhere. It did not occur to her at that moment that she admitted really in the name of both the Council and the Commission that the budget made available for culture was clearly not enough.

Such a ‘cultural turn’ at highest European level signals something very important. It can be anticipated that in future the Committee on Culture shall work especially together with the Committee on Budgets, Economic Affairs and Regional and Urban Planning, in order to discover those budget lines that can be used potentially to fund cultural activities. The ‘cultural turn’ acknowledges at the same time something known already in practice by various Commissions, namely that perhaps more than 90% of the funds for culture can only be obtained ‘indirectly’. As one member of the Cultural Committee puts it, ‘that means if you wish to obtain financial support for cultural activities, then you must go to funds made available by the EU for, as example, the promotion of tourism’. The Article 10 – ERDF program did provide explicitly funds for implementing a philosophy on how to link culture with tourism in order to promote local products and identity finding processes. This program intended to further ‘innovative actions in the cultural fields to create jobs and to protect cultural identities against overcommercialization’.

However, there are many more difficulties attached to such intricate funding possibilities and procedures. They leave very often culture at the disposition of management and common trends in order to simplify European projects rather than coming to terms with something complex and whose value may be recognized only much later especially if to be gained and realized after years of investment and being taken care of through ‘good practice’ e.g. like watching a child grow up.

Methodologically speaking, ‘cultural impact studies’ and ‘cultural planning’ is needed as much as a greater systematization of knowledge about the cultural sector, so that politicians can justify better expenditures for culture. Generally speaking, politicians at all levels will prove to be hard to convince if positive outcomes of investments in culture may be but qualitative ones e.g. a larger learning process. They prefer direct, concrete and visible outcomes to which they can point as achievements of their policies and which are convincing in the eyes of the general public. As a matter of fact, they are concerned that the larger public remains under the impression that things are being done. Politicians need also proof of economic successes in terms of money earned as compared to not having spend the right amounts and if only on unsure outcomes. Consequently politicians will not support cultural projects if they are not very concrete and as embodiment of certain ideas do not reflect decisions made at political level to take certain things forward e.g. urban renewal. On the other hand, experts dealing with cultural projects and who manage like Bob Palmer to link cultural projects to urban renewal as part of the Cultural Capital City concept can convince politicians to support activities that link culture and economic development much more substantially than previously thought to be possible.

Still, if statements like those of Mme. Reding are an indication of something at EU level, then these are worrying signs that funding for culture is being watered down even more in 2000 than what has already been a long record of neglect of culture by the EU. Again funding shall only be provided for what is clearly visible i.e. with promise of having an impact. Her idea is to make an exhibit of the EU at the biennale in Venice since crowds of people are already coming there and what the EU needs only to do is show presence i.e. without any artistic contribution of its own. Such Public Relations exercises explain, of course, why the EU is not really present at local levels and common citizens throughout Europe having if any, then only vague notions about the workings of the major EU institutions. Clearly that is altogether the outcome of but a superficial and highly inadequate understanding of culture. If her idea was to be taken over by the EU Commission, it would mean promotion of culture shall be reduced to the ‘Trittbrett-Fahrer’ or the one who jumps on the bandwagon. By hitchhiking a ride to an already recognized cultural event like the Venice Biennale, the EU Commission would not have to finance an artistic event of its own nor seek through its activities that what needs cultural recognition i.e. active promotion and funding. Rather the EU would economize really on culture by sponging off already existing events while the showing of presence would be but a superficial presentation of Europe’s cultures. If such a trend will hold due to a Commission leaning towards media-presence, it shall accelerate even more so the systematic neglect of culture by the EU Commission.

In the past European integration was considered to be merely a political and economic matter. Culture was left to the member states so that they could preserve vis-à-vis their own populations a sense of sovereignty and thereby guarantee a continuity of identity despite all of the changes that the integration process has provoked by now. Article 218 or the subsidiarity principle gives priority to the small over the large. This principle seems to reflect the concession the EU makes to the member states in the cultural fields. However, members of the Cultural Committee are beginning to question that principle. It has given rise to further going questions about future reforms needed of all EU institutions with regards to culture.

Allocations of resources reflect in repeated EU budgets over the years the low priority given to culture. Compared to the structural fund receiving about 37% of the total budget, agriculture getting even more i.e. around 48%, expenditure on culture does not even reach 1%. This is odd given the growing significance of the cultural sector and cultural industries when it comes to creating jobs and to contributions to the Gross National Product. It is said that culture contributes 27% compared to agriculture being a mere 5% while receiving the greatest amount of subsidies. Such low priority is all the more a surprise when taking into consideration the growing needs to adapt to the Information Society and what innovative capacities culture does give to European societies.

Naturally to all of this there has to be added the provision that the new communication technologies do not end up reproducing even more cultural inequalities than what was known to exist in the past e.g. educated elite and average citizens or ‘folk’. One concept indicating growing fears of cultural inequalities increasing is that of the ‘digital gap’.

However, lack of proper funding is but only one of the problems, another is the absence of some forward looking perspective in order to activate the innovative capacities of people. This is only possible if people can relate through culture in a meaningful way to what shall give them access to substantial work. It begins with better information and improved upon descriptions of the problems in need of being resolved so that each person has a chance to contribute. And it does not end with cultural cohesion when it comes to using different spaces. For what matters just as much is use of resources (natural and cultural) in such a way that this ensures an economic development which is based on culture so as to attain ‘cultural sustainability’ of the way of life envisioned with such economic strives towards a better world.

At the level of the EU Commission, by linking DG X for culture with DG XXII for human resources, education and youth, it is hoped that new innovative EU programs shall facilitate the re-organization of society when it comes to transfer of knowledge. The program CONNECT may be such an example. Care has to be taken that this includes also knowledge about other cultures. Of interest is that one of the 42 funded projects focuses on diverse cultures existing in European ports and that these unique entities continue to exist despite a large influx of people coming temporarily before moving on e.g. Marseilles and the multi cultural complexity within that port city.

Nowadays culture is perceived unfortunately or fortunately more and more as an extension of entertainment. This is partly due to the influence of the media and multi-media interest groups which do not take culture to be an issue of articulation of human self consciousness and of problem formulations but a mere form of making money by artistic and other cultural means e.g. festivals. All this leads to distortions and a reduction of what is linked to any identity question, namely a culturally motivated self understanding of the person attempting to relate to other people in this world. Once culture is used to further mere success in the media world, and for which the Barbie doll stands emblematically as to how children, in particular girls find a mode of taste and aesthetics as propagated by fashions and the world of consumption, then this can give rise to extreme claims by one single culture out of fear of over alienation and loss of identity. That argument has been carried forth most vigorously by the European film industry, in particular by certain key national film industries such as those in France, Germany but also in Flanders, Belgium. They argue that Hollywood films are flooding Europe due to the power movie studies have via their distribution systems. They claim the need for such policy measures as ‘culture exceptionelle’ in France and link this with the wish to hear and see films in their own rather than just in the English language.

Nevertheless recent examples in Poland show that the local film industry can be successful, if they speak in a language that relates to what people need and want, namely to come to terms in their own way with the new reality they have to face at the end of the twentieth century. Along with such revival of the Polish film industry goes enhancement of ‘cultural diversity’ as model of cultural competition at all levels. Europe’s cultural strength can be seen and experienced where such diversity is allowed to exist and to express itself.

1. First premise for a cultural agenda of the GREENS / EFA group

Obviously underlying this review is a wish to clarify first of all the political position within the GREENS / EFA group as to the relevance of culture. There is a need to take up in near future within the group the debate about issues related to culture. If there is controversy about the position of Members of Parliament coming, for example, from the Basque countries, then this extreme claim for one cultural identity will have to be dealt with.

Politics turns out to be progressive if politicians are able to relate different issues to one common theme such as ‘identity seeking measures in schools’, in order to illustrate and to support the role of the arts in the educational path of children growing up in the Information Society. Also there exist in Europe valuable insights as to what can bridge economic development and culture, namely a refinement of Good Practices in urban and regional planning. At the same time as cultural industries and in particular the audio-visual sector are growing in importance, the sense for the future needs to be articulated more consciously not merely at policy, but equally at cultural level. ^³

The GREENS are already considered by experts of the audiovisual field as the party of the Information Society because of not being stuck to traditional categories like the Socialists and Social Democrats. . However, if this future society in the making is to retain a human dimension, then politics is about making possible the ‘work of culture’. This the GREENS and EFA group in the European Parliament needs to understand for the political task is to give to this new kind of society such a critical self-understanding that lets people interact and co-ordinate their work as autonomous individuals precisely that work is based on culture.

Such coordination leading to ‘good practice’ at local, regional, national and European level by all political authorities needs to be done along that prime axiom of ‘learning to use but not to abuse culture’ (Brendan Kennelly). The latter is one of the 5 objectives of the EU Article 10 – ERDF CIED (‘Cultural Innovation and Economic Development’) project. Of interest is, as stated above, that all recommendations by both the Council and the Commission point in the direction of the Structural Fund to finance in future more cultural projects or more specifically culture and cultural heritage orientated projects. The budget lines for cultural activities in these areas need to be identified.

Daniel Cohn Bendit pointed out in a recent interview given to the German daily newspaper ‘Frankfurter Rundschau’ that the GREENS’ main position is that of being for ‘sustainability’, but “which has yet to be implemented”. To this has to be added the practical judgment that such political practice works only if care is taken that future developments fulfill equally the criterion of ‘cultural sustainability’: a development which people can support despite all burdens of daily life. The cultural dimension would be missing if people could not explain to future generations the meaning of their own actions.

This is to say culture stands for participation and freedom of artistic expression. Cultural sustainability would not be possible if people would be excluded from crucial learning processes and which the entire society has to undergo in order to be able to adapt to future developments and their challenges. This is made possible by transfer of knowledge but would be incomplete if not new art forms lead to other questions as prerequisites for understanding the own and other cultures. Cultural adaptation is brought about by the articulation of needs on the one side while it would be impossible to adapt to future changes if there would be no anticipation of these other needs, including the needs of others. There has to be brought about an accommodation for these future potentialities if ‘making it’ is to become a success story based on such methods and ideas that bring about a ‘way of life’ suited best for everyone, culturally, economically, socially, politically and institutionally speaking – the five basic tenants of sustainable development. Consequently the ‘cultural agenda’ of the political group should facilitate before anything else the articulation of real needs in view of such broader definition of sustainability.

Problems are solved the moment they are formulated most clearly in terms of the conditions needed for finding a sustainable solution. Hence a prime need of the GREENS / EFA group is to connect culture with innovation. ^⁴ At the same time, connections between cultural and other activities in terms of their impacts upon society’s development should be monitored and evaluated. In that sense, all efforts should be undertaken to advance newly tested ideas about governance and political responsibility insofar all the processes initiated by the European Union must work towards and fulfill the criteria of accountability, transparency and substantial renewal of democracy.

The parliamentary process itself is a reflection of how decisions are arrived at. If culture is taken to mean a most stable framework of values for actions based on a consensus as to what everyone wishes to uphold, namely such an institution as the European Parliament, then such measures have to be undertaken that ensure this needed consensus exists and articulates itself as most appropriate response to situations and problems as they may arise in any political process. The involvement of culture means strengthening before anything else the ability to anticipate future developments. The ability to do so depends largely upon politics coming immediately to terms with problematic areas as they become evident in the course of any development.

The case involving adults abusing children as brought to the attention of the European Parliament by the issues arising out of ‘Child Sex Tourism’. The way to handle these issues (from new forms of exploitations in tourism to lack of education and other perspectives for earning a normal income in developing countries) is to illustrate what the European Union understands as ‘Good Practice’. For the degree to which real work on cultural solutions are initiated and brought about by wise counsel and far sighted political decisions, that is in itself a reflection of the maturity attained by a political group within the European Parliament. Here the measure becomes more distinct as the GREENS and EFA have come together as a political group due to certain principles and in the wish to undertake appropriate actions in line with these principles. This is to say any measures proposed should be merely repressive, indeed of reactionary and very punitive nature, but depart first of all from a clear identification of the problem linked to ‘Child Sex Tourism’: the exploitation of children and minors of all ages.

Indeed, at issue is to identify appropriate measures which respond to inhuman and criminal actions without victimizing the already brutalized and hurt children still further. If one contradictory example stands out then the boycott of Iraq, a measure that has led to still further suffrage of children but not to any change of government under Saddam Hussein.

The cultural linkage between those efforts that try to define legality and to develop a moral codex of behavior and conduct of tourists when abroad has yet to be found. Equally monitoring observance of ‘human rights’ has to be distinguished from active support in need to be given to human values only to be realized when children are not robbed of their last human dignity for various reasons. Then, it should be realized how difficult it is to prescribe own values to others without that leading to further conflicts (Cornelius Castoriadis). Finally, culture as mediation should be used to avoid violent reactions and coercive principles even those symbolic gestures of outrage have either ‘no’ or very little impact upon the real behavior in need of correction and change.

1. Cultural Agenda for Children and Youth

At the outset in search for such a cultural agenda, it should be said that members like Eurig Wyn of the GREEN / EFA group are worried that the topic of children and youths has not been secured as of yet within the overall political agenda of Europe. Right now other topics seem to dominate e.g. the European security system. Eurig Wyn is not alone in that opinion and has every reason to be apprehensive about recent developments. Many feel that a special concern for children and youth in connection with culture should become a main part of the GREEN / EFA agenda.

The worrying fact is that there exists right now a huge gap between general political interests of the group and what would constitute such a cultural agenda. The latter does not seem to exist. Yet a political approach to things has to take care that the language spoken allows people to recognize themselves, for only an unfolding self-understanding gives them orientation as to how they can make a positive contribution to society while their needs are being met.

Especially in the case of children and a new youth growing up, neglect of culture will make itself felt in many ways. Robert Musil in “Man without Attributes” describes the beginnings of Nihilism as entering a kind of nothingness or void in which no matter what thoughts are placed, nothing happens. This is because ‘the worst thing that can happen to young people is to sent out their ideas into the world and not getting a reply; that is worse than receiving criticism’. The GREENS seem to be especially negligent when it comes to giving feed-back. They fail to respond substantially to further going ideas about use of power in politics and appear not to care about the opinions of others. Indeed ongoing consultation and communication with those outside the political institutions has yet to be put into practice.

Culture is about given ‘feed-back’: responses to ideas in the making. Everyone who has children and a doubtful, equally rebellious youth knows that even a tiny drawing or art work requires recognition that goes beyond the mere comment of ‘o how nice’ or ‘how beautiful: did you do t h a t?’ Children and the youth need authentic recognition and true criticism, not false praise. That in turn is only possible if it is recognized by the GREENS themselves, that the arts and culture are created and formed by many ongoing negotiations and discussions about standards and forms of expression while things are constantly tried out. One form leads to the questioning of another one.

At the same time, a careful observant of Youth culture will notice that there appears to dominate for many reasons an attitude as if influenced by well calculated moves so that expressions used by the youth seem to be a kind of imitation of ‘black humor’. It helps to reproduce a more general mood or kind of ‘misery’. Some underline this mood with such remarks as ‘life is only outside of school’ and thereby they risk denying any learning chances or that what would give them a real future. This pessimism becomes stronger once employment chances sink with poor grades, wrong friends or broken off friendships as a result of a socialization process running astray. Some kids turn also negative out of disgust what they see their parents and other adults do or rather neglect to do. Once they believe no one, deep cynicism speaks really out of their voices of resignation. Still, the pressure upon the youth to conform to usual patterns of social integration is tremendous. That makes growing up all that more difficult.

Such tendencies give something to think about when trying to identify trends among the youths and wishing to anticipate things to come. That something is amiss, this is underlined by the fact that so many children with abilities to draw and paint, to make music or to dance, suddenly stop all these creative activities when they enter adolescence. Michael D. Higgins remarks in his autobiography when looking back at his educational path that he regrets today of not having received proper education in music. He feels it has remained to this date a kind of ‘mental bloc’ for him because of the inability to play any music.

Culture is, therefore, about opening up children and the youth to the many hidden talents in themselves and by letting them become free to express themselves, mature in their self understanding as in the relationship to others and their forms of expression. Art lets them find other outlets to their moods and fears than what society seems to accept while they can explore in an innovative way different ways of life. Art is more than just experimentation since it has its own lawfulness and leaves only one thing abandoned: arbitrariness or what children and the youth fear the most in what appears to be a general treatment of them.

Politically speaking, culture is about an interweaving pattern of true spirits relating things to be done to the abilities to create such an atmosphere in which people can get together and connect by opening up to one another. By comparison, the outside world marked by super markets and urban fragmentations is often hideous and without any special atmosphere. A deserted street at night with only some spare lights at the gasoline station gives not necessarily a good reason why to have a friendly attitude towards such a world as painted so starkly by the Surrealists. As a matter of fact even in day light not too many children play anymore in the streets. They no longer set sail in puddles or venture down brooks in order to feel the flow of things and the earth as prime matter. Mark Twain and his raft adventure many children experience only in the virtual reality of television which has replaced direct contact with the outside world.

Indeed too many children and youth end up sitting in front of the television and without realizing it, they perpetuate in their minds endless reproductions of typical images of a princess or a monster. This is because such symbolic images replace the real work with their imagination. Nothing is done at school and in education that they learn to decode the images they are pounded with day in day out. The vicinity to cheap advertisement is still another matter. The borders between the world of fantasy and consumerism are often so blurred that children wander in and out of both worlds and end up being confused in what they should have instead of what they could create themselves.

With television and overuse of the new media children and the youth tend to loose the dialog of their senses with the real world. The virtual reality presented to them is in a double sense an abstract world far removed from what they really long for and in despair because trapped in such a fake world from an early age. After all, television has become the electronic grandmother and replaces all needs of the parents to interact with the child. They are rather glad if the child or children are occupied and do not bother them in their daily chores difficult enough to fulfill, as they want to be given a lesson in their own failures or rather shortcomings by children demanding real interaction and not fake but real learning experiences.

The multi media presents an oversimplified version of the world and acts as a mere distraction from ‘not lived times’ or ‘dead periods’ covered up by noise and sensations. It amounts to a systematic avoidance of the world outside their house or apartment since that world speaks another language: that of cement, of parked cars, of anything but a place where you want to be. At the level of acoustics, and children ears are most sensitive, there can be added the observation, if not screaming tires, there are the screams of a mother who has lost all patience. That scream pierces through their souls and leaves them breathless.

Insofar as they flee into that other world of rock stars and acoustic acrobatics on the electric guitar using amplifier and other technical means to intensify the volume, they really shut out that ‘other’ noise of a world that disturbs them deeply. They learn also early that the noise they make when playing really happily, that it disturbs most those who no longer know how to live except spend their time with a bottle of beer in front of the television set themselves. As if adults resent that children have still a whole life ahead of them, they revenge themselves by attempting to drive out life first from the house, then the apartment bloc and finally from the entire city quarter. The famous saying at the dinner table that ‘children should be seen but not be heard’ underlines just that. What may be a relict of the past in some cases, the intolerance shown by society against the noise children create, is alarming. For here present society begins to show real borders.

Thus before talking about a cultural agenda, the GREENS must clarify as part of their own maturation process where to draw borders, politically speaking, when it comes to altering a society tending to shut out life rather than letting it in. It should be recalled that Ernst Bloch made the distinction between ‘Ruhe’ or calmness and ‘Friedhofsstille’: the silence of the cemetery. When Mozart went to Italy, he wrote his best operas because outside his window he could hear someone shouting to sell his vegetables, while above him an opera singer was practicing while next door children were playing with their dog. Sounds of life are important. Alone to make sure that society comes and stays alive, that would be already a huge political and cultural task, enough to keep everyone busy with listening and expressing something as sounds tend to resonate, one after another. The importance of sound should also be recognized. Kant called sound as the most important way to detect the memory track for listening to what we say is also about remembering what we said. There are people who do not wish to die before they have not heard for a last time a church bell ringing – something they missed so terrible by having immigrated to other places without these church bells. That means sounds are deeply ingrained in the memory tissues of every child and youth growing up. This means the piercing sound of a screaming father or mother is as terrible as the warm tone grandfather had when he told good night stories so that the children could drift softly off into sleep. In other words, there is a need to take another look at the world as it has become and presents itself to the youth forced to grow up in this and not in another world.

1.4 Borders of the real world and the ‘self’ at crossovers

Sounds of the world are nowadays mostly hideous. There is even talk about noise pollution. It goes together with a changed environment offering little to children and youths growing up. Instead the world has become a series of confrontation with all kinds of new, including very sharp and dangerous borders. They mark among others private properties, safety zones and areas off-ground for anyone under 18 years of age. Parents are responsible for their children if they trespass, warns the sign. Society disposes off its own responsibilities and seeks to allocate liability elsewhere.

When speaking about an over alienated world, then also in view of what an underground garage offers, namely a fearful nothingness. Certainly the garage is not a play ground or an area where one could explore things. The same goes for a small three room apartment without any hiding places for children. Nor will they really know what they are missing if in their house there is no extra room for a guest! It will reduce their own personal life and world to an inadequate model so that they cannot really cope with life. Rather than being open to others, they will grow afraid of the world and develop a stereotypical way of thinking. If left onto their own, they will fix their value judgments to prejudices and even racial attitudes while adopting an outright hostility to fend off any possible fears. They end up confusing toughness with certainty while never realizing that certainty without the language of the senses and love for other people means but absolute negativity: the negation of everything.

In looking at many places confronting children at an early age, they have no longer natural spaces for exploration. Instead there comes to mind the dripping water from cement pillars or screeching tires as a car comes around the corner. There are no other sounds to make that place appear pleasant. It is not even by means of any magical power. The street noises are altogether what they are: either too loud or too muffled but in either case just artificial. If a car honks, then as a sign of angry protest. There is no mediation. The same goes with doors being slammed shut. It remains of a single cut off from the rest of life. By pretending to be final, there is no mercy and no second chance. Children and youths grow up in fear in such a world.

Everyday children and the youth have to face on their way to school or back the same hostile borders of uninviting even dangerous streets. All that is expressed in the need to get into a car if they wish to go somewhere else; because they cannot do it quite often on their own, they need to be taken there. As this extends their dependency upon adults when to be taken anywhere, it leaves them without horizon only to be experienced when they venture by themselves into the world. It would require the trust of the parents that they can find their way safely. Apparently this is not the case, especially if parents fear them being even kidnapped as the case in Brussels in 1999, that is at the height of children disappearing, so that they would take them across the street to make sure they would enter the school bus safely. As such parents feel they cannot be left alone in the streets. What is not seen in such cases: children are too often abandoned by being left alone at home for hours. There is only television to look after them and given the type of programs this means even more fear is instilled in them than what they could experience and handle in their daily lives.

What adds to the agony in such world they have to face daily, is that this constructed urban maze offers little for the senses to experience. As a matter of fact the architect Tafuri says, what is to be expected of buildings when constructed with materials that do not mean anything? Consequently the city itself has become a hostile place, and if not over dangerous, then still a place not really to be going through alone. As a result children tend to adopt all sorts of security measures like a constant blanket or friend. By not letting go, they show that they trust no one. Consequently they inhibit themselves when it comes to making valuable learning experiences since they do not expose themselves to others but use the blanket or the one friend to fend off all others. This is because the urban world has too many real and hidden danger zones. Added to that is the fact that mothers and fathers inhibit them out of their own fears and this already at an early stage. They tend to stifle their children’s wish to explore such a world.

By all the anxieties and fears they have from their parents no wonder then that they draw already at an early age sharp and tough borders for themselves. Crossing them becomes more than a challenge. On the other hand, not doing it transforms experiences in this world into a sum of such negative ones or rather into such an absence of experiences, that they are marked at already an early age by a new kind of poverty regardless of economic and educational background: ‘the poverty of experience’.

By the time adolescence is over, they seem to have very little of that needed trust needed for interacting with this world and for becoming active and creative citizens. This is why culture should facilitate the growing up by activating the dialectic of trusting and perceiving (Jean Amery). Such dialectic in trusting what one sees is most important when it comes to know what one feels and how to recognize what one sees. The confidence that goes with such perception grows as that what is seen can be shared with others since there are common meanings. That leads to entry into social communication and into reciprocal relationships. (Piaget)

It will facilitate as well the development of such moral concepts as they are useful to integrate the self into a world made up of rules and different forms of reactions if they are broken. Morality has very much to do with knowing what kind of punishment shall follow if these rules are not observed. It is a first insight into any philosophy of law and what a legal system means when parents say one has to abide by the rule of the law while standing up to one’s own opinion and consequences thereof.

Learning to articulate one’s own opinion is not easy, even less to face the consequences. However those children that succeed in doing though are far better off, especially if they learn from the beginning that not just the rule of the law applies but also their own opinion counts. They learn to appreciate that the interpretation of the law has also to mean individual freedom, if everyone is to become responsible for his or her own actions. That freedom needs to be tested and tasted before children can become mature adults.^⁵

Maturity is learning to relate to emotions as a way of telling the difference between truth and falseness. Without such distinction they cannot learn to use a simple language they can trust, but also not enter the language of knowledge which would allow them to question things and go further in their thoughts. At the same time, they have to learn that the emotional base for such practical judgments is not to be perceived within an either/or schemata. Staying in touch and in tune with one’s emotions means being differentiated at all times rather than remain in stereotypical thinking patterns. And as Sigmund Freud pointed out, the emotions can only be experienced by literally stepping out of any system and into them as they come up to the surface and by doing so create a ‘memory track’. Without memories no such differentiation would be possible nor could the learning process towards maturity be perceived as trust in what one is doing and how one relates to other people as much as to the own parents, brothers and sisters, close relatives and friends.

Apprehension about growing up is linked with experiencing all kinds of borders. Not all are to be crossed ever while others may be crossed at certain times. The most subtle crossover from the self to the world is to know how to draw oneself borders as recognition of limitations rather them being drawn by others or even imposed by strict order. Here resonates the question of Dostovesky, namely if ‘God is dead, is then everything allowed?’ Yet these metaphysical queries are but one kind of border. Others have to do with learning from the physical world what should be limits to what man can do on earth.

By growing up in times that believe in overcoming borders is everything, Western Civilization has above all forgotten about how a river finds its way rather than eradicating all resistance. There is a lot to be learned from how borders are drawn or set while not all attempt to cross them. Kafka was famous of wishing to marry but he never could take that final step even when the prospective future wife was waiting on the other side of the barrier. He just could not cross over out of some internal, indeed deeper fear. This fear of commitment and thereby making one reality possible by excluding all other realities is a huge dilemma to be faced by all youngsters facing not only choice of job but also of partner for life. Anthropology has long recognized that especially this question tends to over demand the youth and so they try to coax themselves into situations as if that can ease the burden of having to make a decision.

1.5 What borders are we talking about in a world that knows no borders?

A child may start with assuming the world is flat and it ends there where the forest begins for the imagination says on the other side of that forest is a deep, deep abyss that no one can cross. Later, when growing a bit older, that same child will venture through that same forest and discover on the other side wide, open fields running up a gentle slope. This is when the discovery is made that the world continues but where to? With the help of the imagination but also based on real experiences, more and more that child will venture forth and rediscover like Galileo did that the earth is round and circles the sun. It will be still a mystery for a long time to come why no one falls off that earth. Is it only because of the law of gravity? Surely something else must be added to explain to oneself this miracle of life on earth? More amazing and equally frightening is then the looking up at night towards the millions and millions of stars. Once the mind becomes something like a comet streaking past all stars and traveling ever further out, there comes a moment of fright: but where is the end of this universe? There is no answer forthcoming but only a frightening silence. The child comes to his senses only when mother calls to remind that it is time to go to bed.

In one way mental borders are linked to how the world is being perceived from a child onward and throughout adult life. Children and youngsters need to develop, question and reshape their models according to how they experience the world, but they must also learn on what assumptions their perceptions are based on. Only then they can learn once the earlier made assumptions can be refuted by new experiences and a new way of thinking. In the end, they must learn to live with open questions which shall never be answered. Michel Foucault would say this ability to hold out the tension is rare especially in a society becoming highly impatient if there is no quick and ready-made answer to everything asked for.

Children should never be trapped by ready-made pictures or images. Here especially religions play a negative role in their tendency to replace open questions with closed in holy pictures. This is not how the world can be explained nor be upheld. Of interest is here how Giotto showed the two sides: the people worshipping the cross but when seen from inside the church as institution of power it is but a symbol of manipulation making people believe something rather than looking for themselves.

It is most difficult but everyone must learn to live with open questions, in order to stay free from such manipulations and determinations of ‘mind sets’. Insofar no one can answer these questions, no one can have power over anyone else. Such is the nature of freedom that any superior knowledge can be questioned for there is no hierarchy to uphold the one over the other sense. All people are equal in that respect. It means those questions can never be fully answered and therefore by no one else as well. All claims to the contrary, may that be out of religious or ideological motives, are false by default.

In relating to these questions openly, it will give children and youngsters free and continous access to the world. At the same time, it is important that they do not grow afraid when they cannot answer all of them. For there are distinctions to be made between various answers given to these questions while the open questions continue to exist even after having answered some of them partially. Here then it is a matter of linking the senses to the ability to think in abstract terms. The abstraction itself is significant.

As such the key open questions such as the ‘meaning of life’, why life, why death?’ shall never be fully answered in a whole life time since a part of what is unknown to humanity. The same goes for the limits of the universe. There are no borders. Kant tried to reformulate that as a paradox between infinite space and finite space, infinite time, finite time. There is a different way of explaining why such paradoxes prevail in our thinking.

Certainly with the imagination everyone can fly farther out into the universe and never come to an end. It is our mind that cannot stand such openness and thus instantly we close it by drawing borders even if they are only fictitious ones, temporarily erected so that we can withstand the pressure of living on an earth that flies through the universe with no real borders in sight.

Learning to relate to especially these types of questions, here children and the youth must experience at home, in school, in the streets and throughout society open discussions that show that these questions cannot be answered. At the same time, the discussions should make visible the many unresolved practical questions and the problems that go with them and which are in need to be resolved. Society does give recognition to the legitimacy of activities which are in pursuit of those questions. If adults are honest about what they can solve, what not, as did Sigmund Freud in his writings, they give those who grow up and who shall take over responsibilities once mature enough a chance to continue where the others have left of. It is best that they grow into solutions conceived as they think about these problems. Indeed growing up means developing alternative solutions and requires that honest relationships to these open questions remain intact in all phases of societal development.

Such a culture of discussing problems in all openness allows younger generations to relate to the real needs of people especially if this goes with the recognition of how difficult it is to realize a ‘just society’. It gives perspectives to children and the youth insofar as they become knowledgeable as to where they can and want to make a contribution i.e. if not in the economy, then in the field of the environment. Culture serves here as crucial orientation towards finding such a job that has meaning i.e. real substance and a good dose of human honesty about what can be done, what not. They find such perspectives through work if it goes beyond mere earning of money and lets them enter meaningful relationships with other people. All this relates to the pressing need for children and the youths that they receive not only a good education, but by having access to practical experiences begin to participate in making possible ‘cultural innovation’: the transfer of know-how and knowledge from generation to generation, culture to culture, situations in the city to places in nature or vice versa.

The biggest stumbling bloc for cultural efforts to facilitate an open transfer of knowledge appears to be the low esteem children and youth enjoy in daily life. The reality of modern and especially global society tends towards ‘abuse of children’ rather than safeguarding them, so that they have time to play in order to grow and to mature. The very absence of playfulness as a creative process leads to still further neglect as adults are at a loss on how to occupy children in any meaningful way. Instead children are forced to do all sorts of things and even in worse cases pushed into situations where regular abuse of them has become the norm.

As a matter of fact there is a social tendency to let them grow up completely alone. As this risks producing autistic like people, emotionally and mentally speaking, more ‘social isolation’ (a problem Descartes mentioned already) is being reproduced rather than social participation made possible. Once cut off from the world, these children and youngsters feel that they are forced to confront and handle more things, incidences and questions than what they can handle. More often than not this leads to children closing themselves to the point that they are inapproachable. They will not talk nor show their feelings. Usually what happens in the worst of all cases is that they are cast adrift in torrents of changes. No one will know where they will wash ashore finally, if at all.

Without culture lending strength to their intuitions, cognitive and emotional developments will not be brought about. They will remain severely handicapped for life as they are simply overburdened. It is another way of saying that children are what they are: they have no way to protect themselves. They are innocent and too open to protect themselves. By nature children and youngsters are ready to absorb all kinds of influences whether good or not and to take on every kind of responsibilities regardless whether their tiny shoulders can carry such a weight or not. They demonstrate over and again one simple fact: they do not know how to protect themselves.

What influences bears down upon them, remains then to be seen. A lot will depend on that all important feeling that they are loved and not just perceived as a nuisance or even worse as only an object of abuse. If so, it will decide negatively on how future developments shall grab them and no longer leave them alone but entangle them in a maze of coercion and corruption with human justice fainting away as they experience more and more abuse.

Clearly children are socially and personally deprived if they do not develop a rich enough model that would allow them to extrapolate from the world they know to the unknown one: the still larger one. They need the trust in their original models if they are to learn even in unknown situations on how to orientate themselves. As they grow older, they see that they must give up some things while pursuing more clearly other goals. By getting to know culture, they begin to appreciate that life is a selective process made up of many choices, dilemmas and even pitfalls in need of being avoided. Culture can give them some protection especially if it acts as a kind of filter to select some things while not being exposed to everything. The vulnerability of children can be explained by the fact that they do not have any protection i.e. filter nor can they set clearly priorities for themselves. With age the youth can begin and refine such filter mechanisms once they have acquired a sort of cultural filter around the age of 10 to 12. This is when they begin to know how to select, be critical and make choices while giving to themselves hypothetical bur reliable answers to the questions life poses all the time.

The entry into adolescence is marked by experiences which can be defined until the age of 18 as a way of testing and improving upon this model needed for experiencing the world. Linked to that are closer examinations and decisions with regards to the choices to be made e.g. what path of education to take in relationship to what friends one has. Subsequently those children which are already over demanded and in stress when entering that critical phase, they will end up not merely isolated, but are excluded and tend to exclude themselves. This is especially the case if they give themselves the blame for the choices they made, in particular if negative choices and if they have not learned to respect themselves despite all negativity. The latter is less likely the more they had to endure already abuse from an early age on.

By being cut off from this all important learning process and any self respect, they will not be able to valorize any experiences they make. They will be too weak or too doubtful to link up with the rest of the world, so to speak. Instead that world will appear to them if not outright hostile then just an abstraction. It will be a world which they think cannot be approached by them with confidence and openness.^⁶ If they do not trust their models enough, then they cannot really extrapolate from the known to the unknown. They will fail to go out to make experiences on their own or if they do, then by becoming another person having nothing to do with the one left behind.

If not careful, they will develop a schizophrenic perception of themselves and hence tend to become over aggressive at the slightest challenge to their versions of the world upheld for the moment because of lack of any good alternative. The failure to connect between their inner self’s and the world means the way they experience themselves when with others is schizophrenic because they either have to give up any of their own identity or else assert their own without accommodation for anyone else. This ‘either/or’ attitude explains underlining tone being aggressive as much as playing the shy when in fact they are easily intimidated by all kinds of fears ranging from imaginary ones to those resulting from deep wounds and traumas. Indeed many children suffer from an early age already under such traumas that all of their articulations will be distorted due to internal conflicts with themselves having not been resolved and the wounds caused by a screaming and violent father or mother not healed.

Often these kids and youngsters end up doing nothing all day long. They have lost all feeling for what they could do to improve their situation. They feel hopeless, without ‘dignity’ especially if they have lost ‘face’ and ‘faith’ in their own eyes by not standing up to injustices inflicted in front of them upon others or else even upon themselves. Standing aside they feel and think everything they do has no real bearing upon their lives. This is because what they do almost routinely or automatically to blunt the sharp pain of degradation through meaningless activities is that they see these activities have no bearing upon the problems they are confronted by in reality. They can imagine a great deal but they know very little on how to get out of that confrontation. That makes them silent, tired, restless and wild at one and the same time. Often they feel trapped and adults can then be seen like prison guards.

In their failure to revolt against all these fears that prevent them from emancipating themselves, they end up leading a life of boredom because there is nothing else to do. They can only wait until old enough to leave the house of the parents but till then they are forced to swallow a lot of shallow statements about life. This is usually when adults make stupid statements as if they have all the practical wisdom when in fact the failure to come to terms within such ‘waiting times’ (Beckett describes it in his play about Godot) is linked to the only knowledge prevailing as a stand-off between parents and child, namely the knowledge neither position of the child or of the parents will stand the test of life. The failure articulates itself through the lack of practical judgments or rather in extreme forms of verbalizations taken to be a sign of being ‘radical’ both in intentions and purpose. If here no voice of modification can be heard, the chances are that not only this important parents-child relationship is lost but also many others, including the child’s or youngster’s relationship to self-esteem and self-confidence.

Consequently when looking underneath the surface, it can be seen that young people are filled with anxiety about outcomes more often beyond their control but still decisive upon them since linked to the crucial question, whether or not they shall make it. Often such turning points linked to school exams but also personal relationships leave them after having gone through highly dramatized stages of different actions nearly out of self-control. They will have difficulties in coordinating themselves as they have both an abundance of fear and of extra energies but due to not knowing where to make use of the latter while getting rid of some of the worst fears, they will be lost and more so the worst enemy to themselves. There are different patterns of self inflicted forms of punishment if they fail to convert their energies into positive and purposeful actions. This is partly due to the fact that no one seems to care or is able to address them substantially, that is without air of superiority or artificiality. They go hungry for lack of something authentic. Consequently they risk growing up without such culture that could give them orientation on how best to develop their skills and character. They will have as much personality as they succeed in bringing their potentialities to unfold in a manner that gives them insights into the ‘arts and practice of living’.

There are many critical situations in which everyone feels confronted but no adequate response appears to be possible as if a part of the ‘handicapped society’ not in a physical or mental sense but due to inhibitions and strange conventions clashing with the moment. Instead of getting a response youth face usually the indecision of society and boredom. That provokes them to do extraordinary things.

For example, how to deal as simple passenger in a commuter train when a young guy on the other side uses his fire lighter as a torch to burn the rubber of the window frame? What makes the situation even worse is the fact that he happens not to travel alone. There are not many other passengers on board and yet no one says anything. Is it out of fear to get involved in something where the outcome is less than clear? Not even the girl that sits across from him and who appears to be either with him or at least knows him from school seems to know what to do. At first she pretends not to notice. Then she tries simply to show that she is not impressed by his actions. The small incidence in the train underlines thus something very important, namely that nothing seems to work: looking the other way or else attempting to make the situation appear to be normal when in fact it is not. Rather the helplessness mixed with all sorts of pretensions to look the other way so as not to show how deeply perturbed everyone is that proves to be an extreme way of ignoring the problem and, therefore, just as counter productive as definitely not the solution. ^⁷

Vandalism, the going against all aesthetical norms, furthered by ‘hate’ campaigns, is not just the outcome of alienation amongst the youth, but a deeply disturbing sign as to the absence of culture in the life of those youngsters. Something was missing when growing up or else these youngsters were left too much alone. Consequently they began to organize themselves in a completely negative way.

Culture can and could guide the youth during that difficult age when everything is in transition and practically no understanding for what they go through from the side of parents, teachers and, generally speaking, all adults who have forgotten what adolescence is all about. Whether damages made to public amenities such as the window of a train or to themselves, the costs incurred at personal and social level compared to those linked to material things reflect a gap in investments. They are made primarily in highly expensive technical systems and not in the future of these children and kids.

By growing up in a world that appears to them as not caring about their future, overt aggression can become very easily amongst such youth a dangerous habit of not caring about others and even worse lest about themselves. As if they smell dangers, they throw themselves into it more to provoke unconsciously than to extinguish the fire before too late. Over and again social workers would say after a shooting incidence at a school, no one took notice of the early symptoms and then it was too late. Always reference is made to experiences of being bullied and in being threatened by expulsion from school.

Indeed, young people can get very easily trapped by their lack of control over their fantasies in not livable forms of alienation. Hurt by what parents say about them, but stung even more so by some rejections made by those they thought to be real friends, they end up leading a life at the brink of a very dangerous self-negation of any responsibility, lest to themselves. ^⁸ This period is a very dangerous one because of this enormous oscillation between wanting to care but being unable to do so, they loose their sensitivities for most issues. As if they no longer know how to set their priorities or to do things right (at least they feel in the eyes of their parents or peers they are doing everything wrong), they reject any possible demands made upon them. They go off on a spin or tangent when even the slightest word of criticism is uttered. This then makes them so vulnerable.

The German philosopher Ernst Bloch said once that young people catch easily ‘right wing fire’. Their vulnerability to reactionary forms of politics poses a huge challenge since the wish to get acknowledgement as a way to get out of that dangerous zone of non- or even very negative recognition can easily be confused with roles of politicians or types of heroes who harmed humanity more than anything else. Wanting to lead a country like Alexander the Great may easily turn out to be in reality a contribution to extreme nationalist movements. It was significant that Right Wing movements end up in a split between generations with the younger ones promising to themselves to be much more radical than their parents ever were. The philosopher Gadamer did not reflect about what he said when describing why he was suddenly so fascinated by the philosophy of Heidegger, but he did reveal unconsciously why all other philosophical standpoints were silent when ‘Time and Being’ was published in 1929. Gadamer said in the lectures given by Heidegger he finally learned on how to beat his father when he had arguments with him. ‘Beating’ means needing a victory over the father and not dialogue. It made Michel Foucault say that ‘only once we have not victory necessary, than we speak really with the other’.

Thus youth can easily be exasperated by parents who think they are always right when in fact they contradict themselves constantly in the eyes of the youth. Overcoming negativity on both sides while learning to speak with the other is really a lesson about modesty and moderation brought about by an effort to be honest and truthful, but not ‘radical’ in a negative way.^⁹ Ernst Bloch thinks this is only possible if there is ‘hope’, but not blind hope; rather it has to be ‘founded’ hope in order to be able to learn out of failures before it is too late.

How then can adults reenter the world of childhood and communicate with the children and the youths that follow them before it is too late? It is too late if they catch ‘right wing fire’ and find themselves on a path of destruction of others as much as of themselves. A lot seems to depend on how adults can enter the world of the imagination without breaking the tissues of the imagination. It is like entering a rain drop without breaking it. One possibility is to show them indirectly a way out of this self negation by communicating with them about cultures. Above all this would mean spelling out the clear conditions under which it is worthwhile to seek recognition in society for what they are doing. Indeed, the youth detests as much false praise as they suffer if they are not recognized if they are doing really something honestly, for the first time, and with a lot of effort behind to make it happen, be good and beneficial to all. Deep down they know that they are egoistical, a bore, even a monster at times so they long for some deep and authentic recognition where they feel to be true to themselves and at the same time closer to the dreams of humanity. It may start with playing the trumpet not as good as Louis Armstrong but still it would be a start if birds would listen when playing all along on top of a hill. That is not a crazy thing to do: testing the self confidence or the ability to stand up alone to what one wants to do. However, that has to be coupled with the hard work on oneself as much as on the surroundings. The latter starts with mother and father but does not end there. They know a lot more needs to be done to improve the overall situation.

The burden can be felt at all times; the risk to become overburdened is, therefore, all the greater if the environment in which they grow up in is not responsive enough to their own specific needs but pushes them right away into not only the adult world as it has become but in a competition with themselves. The latter is most horrible for they know right away that they shall not be able to win that competition. Rather they step back and let someone else win or take over since they often believe not to be capable of taking on those tasks or these set of responsibilities. After all, they are still busy growing up and waiting for a clear signal that they are ready for life.

Depending upon society and the times, the transition into adulthood is made easier or more difficult according to the fear the adults have of the youth. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that many young people confront that time when they have to enter the military and serve for a period of time not under rational, but paradoxical and even rules that make no sense. Rightly so they fear such services will change them, rob them of their own identity and if at war even risk loosing altogether dignity and a sense for human decency. They risk such alienation all the more when they seek recognition through other forms then what they could recognize themselves as being important to sustain life.

To come back to the matter of recognition, much is always made about ‘recognize your self’ but this leads many astray and into the abyss of endless self scrutiny without any concrete outcome. Rather there should be reminded a beautiful reflection by Vincent Van Gogh who said in one of his letters to his brother Theo, that he considers it to be a sign of greatness in someone if that person is able to recognize the greatness in others. In other words, recognition means not degrading either others or oneself for it has very much to do with equality while entering a living process enriched by different people and their ideas.

Hence any understanding of the youth may come further if it is realized that in the absence of an authentic culture they will have to seek through other mechanisms and forms of not so much expressions as ‘outlets’ of their bursts of energy (e.g. in a car race at the risk of their lives) recognition. They will not realize at that time the inherent contradiction when seeking recognition under such terms that they risk their lives. But they feel the weight and need of making a stand. They know that if they are going to live in a certain way, then they will have to be prepared to do it their way and not what always the adults and especially the parents tell them to do. Insofar taking a stand is like a revolt against everything that has been said so far, then they risk throwing all caution to the winds and forgetting at the same time that listening to ‘inner fears’ has nothing to do with being a coward or not. However, by taking a stand, by becoming passionate about something, they find themselves and grow in confidence.

In search for outlets and forms of expression, there are many interesting discussions going on with regards to, for example, graffiti. Werner Henne, an artist with knowledge of the scene in Berlin, points out that youngsters taking to graffiti as form of expression fight really outside all rules (legality) for recognition within the scene. They do mark each graffiti they do with a signature to indicate this is their own artistic work and no one else. Anyone trying to destroy or to deface it, is a marked person. It is worthwhile to understand this scene better for it reflects an important component of modern youth culture.

The outer, very often desolated and alienating spaces like tunnels or pathways underneath bridges have become artistic spaces in which they can express all their feelings from anger to pepped up energy. The main concern in those lightening like writings on the wall appears to be the question but how to resolve the search for personal identity in view of all the problems seen around one in the ‘naked’ city. The latter is autark and often un-relentlessly cold. They realize that any of the solutions they might prefer, that there stands in the way not only the disbelief of everyone that there is a solution. Even worse, there is the city as model of ‘the wrong way adults have been living for too long now and what they have allowed to not only shape their lives, but take possession of’’.

Artists like Kyong Park in Detroit or the photographer Mevin in Brussels would depict that as the broken dialect of urbanization best demonstrated by city life continuing if not in a run down than in another kind of ghetto. With new technology and digitalization allowing to show a sequence in the destruction of life and what replaces the old life, namely in Brussels the former red light district by anonymous buildings of the European Commission, it becomes evident that the past remains as residue in-between home and work. Andre Loeckx calls it the fragmented city with one street being completely normal while just around the corner urban squalor can hit the person passing by at every foot step.

When there are no such linkages between home and work place, when the city is experienced only as a kind of disorganization of everything seeking rhythm, spatial outlets, normal functioning in day to day activities, then there also no longer vital time bridges to link the past with the present and the ongoing changes seeking a future within the city. Rather displacements follow one trend after another but not like a trial and error but as an expression of negative freedom. In the end, nothing can be done but consume not only clothing and food, cheap articles and spaces (in the form of housing estates reproducing their own anonymity), but also time and experiences. Much was said in the past about Walter Benjamin’s reflections about ‘Passages’ becoming the home for those who idle, who have nothing to do nor to say. Since the twenties this urban life has been shaped by the increase use of mirrors and shopping malls with a key emphasis being on transparency or the ability to see through everything as mystification of society’s openness when in fact the opposite is true. The youth finds too many doors closed, in particular the one leading to their own future.

In reality, the youth experiences that world of consumption as the one hiding effectively the real social, economic and cultural borders which mark society. That they exist, this they experience daily in their lives but because of remaining ‘invisible’ no one seems to believe in their existence. As if a social lie, the youth can be exasperated between what they see and feel and what the adults deny. And yet the youth sees that alone the remark ‘but that is too expensive, we cannot afford that’, draws such borders all the time and this without apparent reason. Rather the borders are drawn like the drop of the guillotine. It cuts and divides up time. Sartre said dividing time infinitely makes it impossible to live in the present. Instead it is a displaced life in which the need to figure out what comes next becomes a guessing game while the dissatisfaction with oneself grows since all previous solutions were at best shallow i.e. not satisfactory. But having established that as hindrance is not all what prevents the youth from thinking in terms of ‘lived through experiences’. Sartre would add that only once one knows the future goals, then one can live in the present. If such certainty does not exist, then the borders are felt even more directly. It is this that prevents the youth to dare to go outside the borders of society and to make the experiences gained in the process into an integral part of their growing up.

Crossing borders, never mind trespassing and even violating them, is no simple matter. Even though Ernst Bloch said ‘striding over borders is thinking’, this kind of expansion of the mind is neither self understood nor to be taken as the only possibility left for not only individuals to grow but societies to sustain themselves. This is said in light of Hegel’s testimony that bourgeoisie society needs to expand but if that leads to Hitler crossing the borders of Poland then the meaning of ‘borders’ has to be reviewed not merely in light of history and political events, but also as to how borders are drawn nowadays compared to the Middle Ages or other periods of time. For there is an entire range of meanings from self drawn borders due to the realization of not only what are one’s own abilities and disabilities, but also what has become an internalized value such as ‘you should not kill another person nor do harm onto yourself’.

The political scientist Richard Loewenthal condoned during the Cold War period especially after the invasion of troops of the Warszawa pact into then Czechoslovakia such stifling of aspirations for freedom, but he admitted that world peace might need ‘stable borders’. The borders he meant came down in 1989 and yet even united Germany struggles today with the cultural differences and perhaps borders of another kind between East and West. So borders may be constantly redrawn as people try to figure out and to uphold such significant value premises as ‘your freedom ends really there where the freedom of the others begins’. Certainly the need to respect sovereignty meant also viewing state borders as a difference between what happens inside that state compared to what the rest of the world might think about such affairs. Of course, there were many violations of borders since 1945 and young people growing up in such a world would rightly be confused as to what safeguards really the human dignity or rather what could prevent political forces from trespassing these personal borders and thereby violating human rights? It is also not clear why people resisted Communism when it meant as compromise to the other option that personal freedom may exist only in private spaces, but not in public or in society once it comes under the rule of dictatorship of the kind of Pinochet in Chile? All along it is nevertheless conceded that power can be best described as having the means to draw or set borders while power can be gained by stepping over these borders (Michel Foucault).

Still, ethnologists and anthropologists like James Clifford have shown that power is not that simple for it involves decision making processes and relating to others in a certain way in order to consider and to know what a binding decision for all entails. For instance, there is already a huge difference between Indians giving collective land quite another meaning than what land owners would describe as their own property compared to the land belonging to the community. With the claim of private property goes the interpretation of freedom as being able to do what one likes even if that would mean hitting one’s own wife and children. Again this allusion to freedom turns out to be a tough contradiction when someone says to the others that ‘it is none of their business what he does to his wife and children’, while certainly at another level many reactionary forces make parents admit first of all that children need to know their borders i.e. to know what is allowed, what not and even if this means using violent means to make that point or to draw that border.

Research into literature of the nineteenth century has come up with an interesting finding, namely always any woman making a try for her freedom by leaving marriage, the family or not listening to her father, ends up if not sick, then in a disaster and most often in certain death. Writers had simply internalized the absolute borders of their times and could not describe any other but a negative outcome for a woman attempting to find her freedom outside society’s conventional wisdom and rules.

The famous account by Douglas, a slave in the South and who finally made it to freedom in the North of America during the times of disputes about slavery or not leading towards civil war, shows what negative freedom means. He would describe that almost every slave preferred the known hardship of the master, including the whip over the back, to the unknown of the swamps through which they would have to flee on their way to freedom. The unknown territory provoked in their imagination all sorts of things from wild animals to even more dangerous men than their master. There was, however, still another way that borders were drawn when in slavery. The only day off or the free hours in the evening were not used to read and to study, but to drink till unable to think through options of gaining freedom through certain steps. It is interesting to read such an account, namely that free time was often the most counter productive measure since none of the slaves knew really to take advantage of that extra or free time in order to educate him- or herself.

As a matter of fact, the projection of fear upon the unknown is one of the strongest forces drawing constantly borders. Especially the youth must come to terms with that fear in view of so much devastation having created the conditions for a frantic, equally haphazard life capable of producing only one negative force: hatred, and above all self hatred for allowing to be treated in such a way that one has become or is threatening to become like what one is already. This force should not be underestimated for paired with boredom it leads easily to violence also against the ‘self’. Violence is here a first expression of a kind of punishment especially when directed first against the self. It is a crude way of saying because you have allowed yourself to be treated like this and now you don’t look only like a fool, but you are the most stupid person, then punishment is the escalation and alternative to the ‘if you don’t want to listen, then you must feel it’.

Most of the time this goes hand in hand with what Herrmann Broch said in his political psychological studies about ‘ecstatic personalities’: they repeat things to the point of ecstasy because they are ruled by an inner fear which they can never overcome. An outer symptom is that they are always ready to panic the moment some problem occurs for they fear failure above everything else. This drives them not only into the illusion of being able to overcome this inner fear by being radical, consequential, hard against themselves, but also into the absolute fear of their illusionary fear. They fear in reality the break-down of any kind of positive image they have created of themselves while knowing deep down that they are really another personality, indeed violent and savage at one and the same time. It can be that this fear of their own wildness makes them resort to all kinds of methods to tame themselves, or to keep themselves at bay, so to speak, and if that fails, what outbreak of violence can erupt to the surprise of everyone, including themselves, that resonates not only in stories of families but in societies at war with as much with themselves as with others. George Steiner called this element of surprise the ‘ennui’ of culture.

Footnotes:

1 Point 4 of Article 124 of the Maastricht Treaty commits itself to take into consideration the cultural aspect when fulfilling all communal tasks.

2 This aspect should be all the more of a concern since the basic value premise of the EU constitutional treaty in the making is that all citizens are equal vis a vis these EU institutions – a not tenable premise given these conditions of alienation and negative consensus.

3 See Final Report: «Exploitation and development of the job potential in the cultural sector in the age of digitalization”, commissioned by the European Commission, DG Employment and Social Affairs and presented by M Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH, Munich, June 2001

4 ‘Cultural innovation’ is a new consciousness for the changes and methods needed to ensure that the adaptation process links needs, resources and forms for the materialization of the process to sustainable development.

5 David Mantell in ‘Family and Aggression’ shows that families in which there was preached only ‘law and order’ while stifling the freedom to express an individual opinion drove literally the children underground. They started doing illegal things while absorbing the hits and blows of their parents if not obedient enough. They took out a revenge on others for what they did not challenge at home. By the time they were thirteen, these children had learned to steal and to coerce, and even in some cases to rape girls. No wonder that these kids tended towards volunteering for military service especially in war times for then things were allowed they did at home but still deemed by their parents as illegal, even though a direct outcome of all the repressions they suffered under while constantly being told what was allowed, what not without them free to interpret what that meant in terms of their own lives.

6 Cassirer describes what consequences it has upon communication and understanding if the world is not perceived and approached on the basis of a ‘friendly attitude’, but everything made to appear as if hostile to oneself and others.

7 There are other similar incidences described by journalists when traveling by train through Eastern Germany and hearing one young man answering a call to his mobile phone with ‘Heil’. Although the use of Fascist greetings are forbidden in Germany, nobody seems to care or prefers to look the other way. The facit is that if things remain unchallenged, then Fascism and other forms of violence become the norms of daily life despite them being anything but ‘normal’.

8 One youth expresses it in the following way: when you are especially around the age of fifteen or sixteen, then if anything goes bad, it can leave a scar; only later you learn how to go through negative phases without that leaving behind some permanent mark. You have to learn how to get over set-backs and not to let it bother you too much. Of course, you care but then it is difficult if you think your parents do not care. You are ready to give up everything while fighting for your life. That is when you are ready to do almost anything to get out of that feeling being trapped in a negative circle.

9 As Dimitra Petanidou puts it, youth can be identified as being ‘radical’, but the very consciousness of the youth should be determined by knowing when to be radical is good and when the time has come not to be radical but wise in terms of diplomacy and mediation.

Dr. Hatto Fischer

Advisor to the GREENS / EFA group

for

The Committee on

Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sports

of the European Parliament

Brussels

1999

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Reflections of culture with regards to the issue of 'child sex tourism'