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CURRENTLY
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| Interview with Bogdan
Fischer, unemployed: |
| Question: What influence do the unemployed have in the
society? |
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Reply:
There is little influence, you have to obtain
influence for yourself. It's very hard to get to that point. The most
important is the fact that you realize it's not your fault when you're
unemployed. As soon as you have understood this, and, let's say the media
have understood it that it's not our fault, you are able to start
something different.
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| Interview with Regina
Hammer unemployed: |
| Question: What role do the unemployed play in the
society? |
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Reply:
I was so much down because of my unemployment over
one year. I thought I was totally useless, I could do whatever I want,
rejection everywhere. ...I was just down and so I thought to myself, well,
what shall I do with all this or who to consult? However, I wanted that
computer course. I thought I couldn't throw out yet more money, and I
thought, well, bite into the bitter pill, listen to that stuff, can't be
bad anyway because it really had seemed to me that dull, the whole
stuff... But it was so interesting! I've found my self-confidence again. I
used to be self-assured before, but then, because of the unemployment I
was so depressed, I thought I was complete dirt, and then my illness...
Well, the course has brought me up again. I'm really the person now that I
used to be.
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| Interview with Evelyn
Dindinger, work creation scheme: |
| Question: How do you define work? |
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Reply:
Work is at first leaving the own four walls for
society, moving in there and doing something useful so that I know in the
evening I've done something today, I've got something finished. That's the
point which is most important, that you get recognition. Well, at home I
had always been very busy with three boys. Household, shopping, doctor's
visit... that's the same thing every day, nobody ever says you've done
that quite well.
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| Interview with Anett
Halbing, freelancer: |
| Question: What rank do intellectual and idealistic work
have? |
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Reply:
Intellectual work doesn't have great importance here. At least not for
the normal employees, surely for the big shots, but definitely not for us.
We ought not think so much, that's no good. We might find out what goes
wrong in our society.
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| Interview with Hermann
Leistner, press spokesman of the job centre: |
| Question: How do you define work in relation to leisure
time? |
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Reply:
Work has become enormously strenuous and it often demands nearly
anything from everyone, not only from those who get to their limit of
capacity because they have to draw a different line, either physically or
intellectually. And many people come home from work and are totally
exhausted. The batteries emptied. They feel worn-out themselves and they
think they have to - and this has become a rule -provide a certain
balance. The one tries to find this balance in resting, the other one in
excitement, in physical activity, in sports, in sweating. However, work
itself is for me always connected with the securing of the economic
existence on the one hand, and, on the other hand with the meaning of
life, because meaningful life can also be defined upon work. Work itself
is nowadays more than going to the office or to the workbench. Hence,
different fields of activity or work are conceivable.
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Interview
with Dr. Arend Oetker, entrepreneur:
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Question: What role do unemployed people play in the change
of the work society?
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Reply:
Need makes inventive. Unemployment is need. The
necessity of change is a creative process that maybe painful, but can bear
something new. The will to want that really and not to let oneself fall
into the social network, is part of that.
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Interview
with Peter Sloterdijk, philosopher:
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Question: Could you imagine that 20 million European
unemployed turn into artists?
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Reply:
I can imagine that all Europeans turn into
artists. The new installation of a field of concept in which one
speaks about the active human being has high priority on our
intellectual agenda. It would be good to give a farewell to
categories of the work society and to replace them by a new
description of societies in activity societies. The activity society
is a society that doesn't know the difference between work and
leisure time because it doesn't know the inactive human being. ...
That would be a description that gets very near to the
self-description of artists because the artist has identified him-
herself very rarely with an economic definition of work.
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Interview
with Michael Naumann, the German Minister of state:
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Question: How much leisure time does the human being
tolerate ?
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Reply:
Leisure time
is not there in order to indulge in hobbies, or to rake the
small-garden (whatever is very nice, too), to go for a walk, or to
sit in front of the TV. The question however, is: What is the offer
of a Vita Activa in a globalized industrial society?
The
answer is: a political one. That means through statistically
verifiable phenomenons of a society based on devision of labour,
there are two highly interesting things: firstly, a growing gap
between poor and rich, not only between the nations but also inside
societies. This gap causes social tensions visible for everyone in
the streets of so-called structural areas, meaning, impoverishing
regions, also in Germany. ... Here are tasks for those who have work
and leisure time. The same is also true for the international world.
The
so-called NGOs are nothing else than voluntary movements of people
who discover in themselves what makes them human - due to the medial
imparting of the misery of the world - namely pity and worry about
the loss of humanity, about hunger and illness and political
servitude on the basis of the medial intercession of the suffering
of the world which brings out their humanity. There, I see the
future of the concept of work.
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Interview with
Professor Dr. Hermann Glaser, Sociologist
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Question:
How much leisure time does the human being
tolerate?
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Reply:
Actually, if they live humanely, they don't
tolerate any leisure time but tolerate activity very well. ...Pure
leisure time, often stylized as a vacuum, (therefore one lies on the
beach), doesn't actually correspond any longer to the human needs,
if one is not entirely exhausted. The more leisure time people have,
the more opportunities for activity they must
develop.
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Interview with Frank Dittrich,
pensioner
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Question: How much leisure time does the human being
tolerate?
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Reply:
That is a difficult question, especially since we worked
from the morning until evening. The question is difficult to answer.
How much does he tolerate? Well, yes, I would say ...nine
hours!
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Interview with Dr. Christian Janecke, Art
historian:
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Question: Is there is a right to laziness?
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Reply:
I don't know
whether there is a right to laziness. Immanuel Kant once said ",
Laziness is the tendency to rest without preceding work ". It is
surely difficult to imagine a lifelong idleness, even an idleness
for weeks. Some people have no problem with that. I believe that the
formation of ideas and the creation of value connected with work are
still important for the self-formation of the individual, as well as
for the communication of members of society with one another.
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