Editorial
Respect for freedom!
"Once upon a time, these guys squatted in the trees, hairy and with evil visages.
Then they were lured out of the jungle and the world was asphalted and raised to the thirtieth floor.
There they sat, escaping the fleas, in centrally heated rooms.
Now they're sitting there on the phone. And the sound is exactly the same as when they were in the trees.
[...] So they have created the progress of mankind with their heads and their mouths. But apart from that and in the light of day, they are still basically the old apes."
Erich Kästner wrote this in 1932 in the poem "The Development of Mankind" - at a time when manners and tone were often moving away from what could be called social decency.
The coexistence of many people in a society is not easy. Different interests and priorities clash with the essential need to create a basis for living together. This requires clear rules and equally clear enforcement of these rules. Ideally, there should be tolerance and understanding to maintain social consensus. Contradictory views and wishes naturally lead to friction.
The more freedom individuals enjoy in a society, the more difficult it is to keep that society together. In this sense, freedom also brings with it the responsibility to preserve the freedom of others as well as our own. Unfortunately, we have to put up with populism and provocation as "other opinions" on a daily basis. But then we must also learn to tolerate those with different opinions. The tendency in recent years has been to extend the freedom of opinion further and further. Freedoms must end where rules and decency are violated, where the freedom of others is curtailed or even their health is harmed. People who take the liberty of violating the rules of society and thus society itself have not understood and must learn that they owe this freedom to the tolerance of others.
Physically attacking people because of a different opinion, culture or political orientation disregards all rules of decency. What is going wrong here? What happened here is also the responsibility of those who are always out to provoke, who constantly push the boundaries, who show no respect for their own freedom.
The brutalization in tone goes hand in hand with the brutalization in spirit. And once again, as I see it, we are on the subject of education. Those who have learned nothing about decency and living together in freedom will not be able to appreciate the responsibility for their own freedom and the value of the freedom of those who think differently.
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