“Aber irgendwie legst du es auch darauf an”.
This phrase has been hitting me regularly for over 40 years and each time it hits like a 9 millimeter bullet almost to the heart. Not fatal but painful.
They fired you? There’s a hatestorm going on against you? You’re banned from Facebook again? There is a criminal case against you?
Somehow you have provoked this yourself.
So actually I got used to it. Also to follow-up sentences (depending on how I responded to this first reaction): “Well. Then you shouldn’t be surprised.” Or:
“Well, but then, to be honest, you can’t expect any compassion either”..
No! I do not wonder about the mechanisms of domination, I know them. And no, I do not expect pity, I fear it.
Antigone’s little gesture
When Antigone’s brother had fallen in the attack on the city, the king decreed that he was not to be buried under any circumstances. He was to moulder away like an animal in front of the city, to be eaten by the birds.
Antigone did not accept this law. Her brother was entitled to a proper burial, she thought. And so she decided to do it. The sister still said that she should at least do it secretly. But that was exactly what Antigone refused to do.
So she went to the place where her brother was lying in the field. Then she created with her foot just a little earth over her brother, though so that the guards could see it and understood what she was doing.
So what came next, namely her death sentence, she provoked somehow, didn’t she?
Why only? It wasn’t even a proper funeral. What did she get out of it?
It’s parrhesia.
I guess most of you’ll never understand us. You don’t have to. Perhaps we’re aliens to this earth?
Or you are?