How to be a better human

Or: No meat for a week

Die Welt ist schlecht, aber mein Leben nicht. Deshalb akzeptiere ich das Lächeln in meinem Gesicht.  Edgar Wasser

It’s not that easy. Yes, the world is bad. We all know it. In fact, we’ve known it all along. 

Documentaries such as FOOD Inc. informed us about… well, food. They told us about the ways of food production in a capitalistic unfair world (fun fact: The world we live in!).

A world that neither cares about quality, nor about animals or workers in the industry. Others showed us that global warmingis going to kill us and that we have a global footprint. With every scandal, with every investigative article or film, we learn more cruel facts about the world. The politicians don’t trust each other and surveil their friends and neighbors (and your grandma, too?).   

You, as the ordinary human, as the ordinary citizen, get the impression that our world sucks.

Is this cheese bad, too?

It doesn’t get better, only worse. The world seems to become an even shittier place. There are “bad people” everywhere ruining it in a thousand different ways. And there are we, supporting them. We are guilty. For a system we’ve been born into. For a system that hides its downsides in every possible way. The “Made in China” tag in my shirt doesn’t tell me the working and living conditions of that poor Chinese 12-year-old who produced it. The tag doesn’t inform me how toxic the bleaching process was or how much of this poison is still in the shirt, it doesn’t let me know how many liters of drinking water were polluted during the production. It just tells me: This shirt was made in China.

I hate to admit it. We are guilty. The accusations are true. 

Es ist nicht deine Schuld, dass die Welt ist, wie sie ist. Es wär‘ nur deine Schuld, wenn sie so bleibt.

Die Ärzte

We are here, learning about all this information… and still not changing anything. We travel with airplanes, buses and cars – because it’s so easy. We still eat the meat and the eggs produced in factory farming. We still buy at H&M. We want the big companies to change for us, we don’t want the challenge to change ourselves. We still use whatsapp, we still buy new smartphones every two years. I hate that we do. But we do.

Why? Pure convenience. 

But how can we stop? How can I stop doing what I hate? 

A Guide:

1. Don’t become numbed by the news. 

Personally, I struggle with the overload of badness in this world. All the things I hear about (e.g. about human trafficking in Europe & the US – recently in a TED talk) evoke strong emotions in me: Anger, fear, sadness or disappointment. But instead of doing something, I just want the bad feeling to go away and put on a new episode of my favorite series on Netflix. All this horrible information makes me jaded. And ignorant. And little. I tell myself that I can’t change anything. This is wrong. You need to see that this is wrong.

2. Money

Being good is expensive. You can’t buy meat by cows that had a good life, ate good natural food without antibiotics and pay supermarket prices. It’s impossible. Or Bio-products. They are expensive. They have to be. Because quality means costs. 

Warning: This doesn’t mean that a pricy product is automatically a good product.

I bet you can afford tomatoes.

(For example expensive jeans that are produced under the same shitty conditions like PRIMARK jeans) What I want to say: There’s a reason for FairTrade and Bio-products to have a certain price. You can look up the standards of labels online. A product of good quality is distinguished by the transparency of the process!

Not everyone is able to live healthy and “good”. But I bet you are. I bet you can spare a dollar or a Euro here and there. HEY, WAKE UP! IT’S YOUR BODY. IT’S YOUR LIFE, THE FOOD YOU EAT, THE PRODUCTS YOU CONSUME. IT’S YOUR WORLD. 

 

3. Start anywhere & try it out

You see something that sucks. You see that you support it. You stop doing it.

It’s not that easy, I’m aware. But just start with something now. Change your electricity provider and use eco power.  Tipp: Changes you have to put effort into once are easy – Even for reeeeaally comfort-loving people

But on the other hand, when you have little decisions to make in your daily life, make them actively and consciously FOR a better world. Like: Today I take my bike instead of the bus.

START ANYWHERE. You read: “Company X has bad working conditions. Their workers are underpaid, work too many hours and have to live in sheds.” – You don’t buy their products. It’s that easy.

For me: After a conversation with a friend (who lives vegan) I thought again about becoming a vegetarian. It’s not just that Freiburg as a green & alternative city is the perfect seeming environment to do it. It’s that I’ve known the production process and problems of the meat industry for like 4 years now. And what did I change? I’ve stopped eating at McDonald’s – Ok, 1 point for me. But, except for that? Not much. I can say about me that I don’t like lots of meat sorts. But for someone who doesn’t love meat eternally, I still eat a lot of it.

I want to reduce my consumption. And when I eat meat, I want to be sure about its quality (see 2).

Therefore I will start small: No meat for a week. After that, I’ll see how I get by. If I “need” it or if I feel a big loss… I’m not making assumptions, I’m not going further. I’m just trying it out. 

I'm glad I can still eat waffles

4. Focus

You have to accept that you are just one person. A person that counts, yes, that is true. But also just a human who can’t be perfect in everything – and still have a life, a job, a family, and other stuff.

So, I tell you: It’s true that you can’t be good in every way. But can be good in some ways. So choose something that you care about. And commit yourself to it. Engage in changing things you can change and things that are important to you.

If you love animals – help out in the animal shelter or become a vegetarian. If you care about equal rights for men and women, print feminist stickers and spread them on campus.

Focus on something!

The vlogbrothers established the “foundation to decrease world suck”.  Any member can suggest ideas how to do it (in any way possible) and find (financial) support by the foundation. If you want to help from the comfort of your home. Donate!

- If you want to donate to an organization, make sure they have enough transparency(!) so that you can be clear about how your money is used for a good cause. 

 

     5. Stay informed.

Last of all: Don’t let yourself fall back into the comfortable sofa! Or if you do: Make sure you have your veggie snacks with you and watch the news.

We already think: The world sucks. The world is bad. – And that’s true

But: There are still shitty things that happen and that nobody knows about. There’s this mountain of problems and shitty things we have to get rid of – and still it’s becoming bigger.

What not to do: Nothing. That’s what too many people did who came before us.  I am angry at them. And so will our children and  grand-grand-children and if you don’t want children your nephews or any other people that will  live in this world when you are gone hate us.

And if you don’t care about this then maybe you are one of the “bad people” and you are yourself leading one of the capitalist and unfair companies that I was talking about.

Here’s to you: You can still change. You have got the money and the means. You just have to use them.

Sorry about the random food pictures from my recent Paris trip - Here are potatoes!

Plato, give me some space!

On: The projects in my bag (begging for attention), how my mind works & a little peace and quiet

Please, I need some rest.
Just one minute in this nervous rush that I call "daily routine" these days. I did it yesterday. Went for a walk with my diary. Inhaling the silence. Some damn peace & quiet.
Okay not real silence. 

Crickets in the knee-high grass, music from a festival not far away, random lonely people strolling by talking softly to their dogs... or their wives.
I wasn't searching for the quietest place. The goal was to just be freed from my thoughts and troubles and plans and projects for a rare moment.

Take a pause sometimes.
Really. This Be Dottie's videos help me doing so at times. One of the recent ones kind of got stuck in my head. I feel like she gets what's happening inside of my mind. 

My very own "head room" has been unorganized these days. Chaotic. 

Since July started, I've been trying the hardest not to become a hot mess. Please don't even ask about the real bedroom I actually live in... The last two weeks, I rarely cooked meals at home. 

• First excuse: Summer. I just couldn't eat warm meals. (#tbh)
• Second excuse: Work. I spent many days folding T-shirts (YES! I got a job! San Francisco here I come!) and printing them. That can be cooler than it sounds - creative people with cool ideas. But also suckier - tees for bachelor parties (-.-). 

> Note to Myself: Don't do a bachelorette-party. Just don't. 

The point is, I was busy doing stuff in the city centre (T-Shirts & University)all the time, so I didn't really got to being home at daytime at all. Lunch break either meant a sandwich or running to the cafeteria. So many sandwiches... It's not only annoying, it's expensive, too.

Our crossmedia project started. We will do journalistic research (& jokes, I guess) on "Yuccies". Since June, the internet is full of them. So that's a thing. 

Writing an article, a radio broadcast and recording it. Planning and filming a TV feature. This includes: Finding interview partners, drawing a storyboard, writing a script, researching information, taking pictures, cutting the scenes, montage... Okay, I don't want to complain. It's work, but it's fun.

Not a very new meme, but (unfortunately) still relevant.

The not so fun part: Exams are coming (Spanish tomorrow - No me gusta). But Spanish looks like a joke, compared to my Politics exam. Learning all the political philosophers and theorists is as much fun as it sounds! From Plato, over Marx to Rawls - Gotta know them all!(what up, Pokémon reference?!)

What I like about learning this stuff, is that, even though most of the people we talked about in the lecture ("Einführung in die Entwicklungslinien und Geschichte politischer Theorie" = lovely) are male (FEMINISM- tbh) and DEAD, their topics are still relevant!

They wrote about how to build a functioning state (and believe me, EVERYONE had his own REAL, PERFECT, DIFFERENT idea 'bout it...*rolls eyes while studying*), what people are like and how they behave in society. They talked about love and "Glückseligkeit". They looked for the essences in human beings (okay, some neglected that there are any) and finally, some covered even the meaning of life.

For me this shows that there are indeed such things as "universal ideas" (Plato would pat me on the shoulder, I guess); ideas that last longer than a lifetime or an era. 

Ideas that always concern humans. In all times.

That's why we can still profit from all the endless hours of meditation and reflection these old wise men surely have put in their works. (And now you can even watch some of them easily explained on youtube, thanks to TheSchoolOfLife)

Yeah, okay, it's kind of okay I guess. But it's a lot to learn by heart.

What else? Me and my drama group want to have our play on stage soon. I hope we find a stage, because our planning lacked a bit and we started our search very late. Hints are always welcome!

Argh, and that Essay I haven't started yet...  that's due to the 24th of July. And all this time, the media center (where we cut and lend camera equipment) is closed. Also the University Library, because they move places this exact month. Yep, I'll stop whining and start writing instead, soon.

Did I mention I went to a festival again? I didn't? Oopsy daisies!

I know, this post (especially, after such a long period of not uploading ANYTHING) is a bit like that annoying conversation with this oh sooo busy friend of yours. 

"I've got so much work and studying to do - I barely find time for myself, not to mention for doing anything with my friends" - that person is complaining over and over.

While you are here asking yourself silently: Why did they come to meet me anyways? - If they're too busy and won't even talk about anything else than the stuff they got to do at the moment... blablabla

So I try to stop being that friend! 

Hey, even in my studies (that may sound like a "fairytale-dream-kind-of-media-you-don't-have-to-do-anything"-thing to people) you sometimes have tense periods of studying and working! Cool?

And yeah, this kind of stress makes me messy, because I prefer not walking around with a pocket calendar all the time - checking the dates like a freaking business woman - And I prefer having time for grocery shopping and cooking.

Maybe even cleaning.

I took time to clean my room this week. Because, like Dottie says, sometimes you have to clean your bedroom to clean your head room. 

(Yes, this was a rhyme and a wisdom - I'm an aspiring rapper.)

Unlike my boyfriend (subtle relationship criticism, right here!), I am willing to always slide in some hours to spend time with him or my friends. Good thing, I'm doing my crossmedia project with Lena, a friend from my studies. Work time that equals time with a good friend is half as bad ;) ! By the way, check out her blog, she's an awesome photographer and hers is much cooler than mine.

Speaking of blogs... I don't know if you know but if you know me better, you know for sure... that I write in German for another blog these days, a blog from our field of study that we brought to new life a month ago.

You can catch a glimpse of my projects (like the short film we produced, remember?) there, and you can read (only if you are fluent in german, of course) blog entries - surprise: By me and other people from my studies.

Like recently I was ranting about why everyone wears BIRKENSTOCKs or in another entry about my hometown.

There comfy, yes. But what else?

This long entry has to come to an end, now. (Why? Cuz I decided to, that's why)

I hope that I was able to give you insight into some aspects of my life that are keeping me on the run this hot July of 2015. Why political philosophers and spanish speaking latino lovers follow me in my dreams (I'm not joking here! HELP!), what is going to happen next and why I really anticipate summer break... Like any other student on the campus, I guess.

... and why you sometimes have to take a festival break! Just to not go mad.

The Soundtrack of my Youth

„Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind“ - Marlene Dietrich 

This is the ultimate song to my childhood. Played and sung by my Dad as a lullaby when he sat by my bed. I remember being cozy, feeling loved, safe and warm under the blanket but with a sense of melancholy and sadness of a time that wasn't mine and struggles that I would never meet. For a long time I was too little to understand the meaning behind the song, I only felt that it wasn't a happy one. I often pretended to be asleep and when my Dad left, trying to be very quiet, I felt a rush of being lost and living in a secret world inside me, noone would ever know like me.

In the end, the song's about death and how to go on.

“Zu spät” - Die Ärzte

The first lyrics I knew by heart. Liking this German band was a family thing. My dad loved the music when he was younger and brought me and my brothers to it. Around the time I started to take guitar class (in third grade), it was also one of the first songs I could play on my own – more or less fluent and harmonic. The song talks about a disappointed love and a person who was dumped. He sings about the glorious future that he'll have as a rockstar and how the girl who dumped him is going to regret this very very badly. But with a sassy “too late” he rejects her like she had did earlier. Lyrics always play a role for me when listening to music, this was maybe one of the songs that started my enthusiasm about it.

“Sk8ter Boi” - Avril Lavigne

Avril Lavigne was kind of my heroine when I was younger. She was all I wanted to be.

And I think of Punk-Avril, 17, with ties and baggy pants and not her later version with pink skirts, skulls and strands of hair. She was cocky, sometimes rude, she made punk music – she was everything but a girly girl. “Sk8ter Boi” was the first song I was able to translate to German, when I was, let's say 11 or 12 years old. It was my Sims 2-phase and I loved the fan-made video of the song, too – It truly inspired me. I was digging it!

And let's be real, I still sing along today.

“Cornerstone” - Arctic Monkeys

A story I never told my ex-boyfriend, but still was my best moment on a music festival ever: That moment, when a guy behind me in the crowd agreed to lift me up on his shoulders and I could sit there, enjoying a much better view on the Arctic Monkeys playing on stage at Southside 2013. When Cornerstone came up and everyone was singing along, I had goosebumps. I felt magic. All along, I petted the hair of this guy I didn't even know the name of. I only remember someone had spider pig (from the Simpsons movie) drawn on his arm with sharpy marker and he was hella proud of it. As a thank you he received a kiss on the cheek. I never ever saw him again.

“Stolen Dance” - Milky Chance

One true friend who I've been so lucky to meet in Paris last year, introduced me to the song. I was kind of late liking it (a year earlier, it had been all over the radio but it kinda slipped through my field of... listening?). The song was one of those you listen to a thousand times until one day you get tired of them. When I catched a bike at République and cruised down the Boulevards, it was the soundtrack I would listen to, over and over. For me, it symbolizes all this year meant to me: Freedom, being young, living life like a party. For sure, I never danced like this before! (We don't talk about it)

"She Moves in Her Own Way" - The Kooks

First of all, I thought it would have been a shame if my favourite band was not represented on this list, so they had to be here. Secondly, this was the first song ever I knew by The Kooks so it was the song that introduced me to them. Thirdly, I still can blast this tune even though I listened to it a million times and lastly, maybe I like to think of myself als the girl "that moves in her own way". The girl that leaves a mark, that dances to her own melody, that is herself and herself only. I wish to be that girl.

“Today” - Joshua Radin

The ultimate Goodbye tune. This song was obviously only written to make people cry. The impermanene of life, of love of frriendships – The uncertainty of looking forward, of parting from people who have grown so close to you that you don't want to lose them ever. You don't want to get them out of your sight in the fear of never having them back in there.

"Kiss" - Prince

More recent, but still my youth (I just turned 20, okay?!), I got to be addicted to this song. My "new" (*coughes* SIX months already!) boyfriend showed it to me. He is kinda into old films and music - one of the many things that I like about him. And he loves to make his own playlists for occasions when he hasn't got a vynil record of that artist. The song kind of represents our relationship to me. It's fun, it's nice, it's exciting. I remember that one time when I visited him in Cologne where he lives with his Dad when he's home. When this tune came on on his stereo we both jumped out of the bed and started acting crazy. 
Dancing like we were in an embarrassing 80s music video. 

One thing for sure: If not one of the others, this song will get stuck in your head!

I hope you've enjoyed this soundtrack. Of course there are many more songs that I love and that were and are important to me, but I just selected these few spontaneously. Check out my friend Philipp's approach to the soundtrack of his youth. And have a really nice day! :)

Hard to remember

On: Memory

I wish I had a Polaroid ...

So I could remember - Shwayze

Memories get blurry after a while. Do you remember who you spent this day with?
I do, because it was only last weekend when we jumped into the April-cold Belgian sea together

So this is something was occupied with in Uni a while ago (in my cultural studies lesson). But since then, it hasn't left my mind completely. It keeps spinning round and round and I'm still trying to figure out why it concerns me this much.

Remembering. And, inseperably connected to it, Forgetting.

I reflected on changing in the past. And changing goes along with creating different versions of yourself. The past-version of you is different from yourself today. If not superficially, I'm sure, under your skin. We learn, we evolve, we grow, we make mistakes and so we alter our habits, interests, lovers, opinions, friends and lived spaces. 

Nights out. Getting french fries at 3 am.
But what did we laugh about again...?

But we are able to remember our past-versions, so these things don't get lost forever. 
In a round of friends we discussed past-versions of ourselves in a bar. One said she used to be a total punk when she was younger, wearing ripped gloves and studded belts and she even had dyed her hair neon pink at the time. 

Another one told us about a wild phase of hers when she was desperately (but successfully) trying to get into night clubs even though she was underaged. Except the one time she and her friend got caught by the police and she recalled how frightened she was back then.

We wouldn't know and we couldn't tell these stories, if we weren't able to remember them. I read that (following recent research, but not for sure though)  the amount of data our brain can store equals 2500 hard drives of 1 terabyte. That means you could remember three million hours of TV shows and maybe there would be still space left to fill up in your brain. 

But still, all day long we perceive millions and millions of things, we see a lot of strange faces (if we decide to leave Netflix alone for a minute and actually leave the house - I know... absurd). I read (but I don't remember where...badum tss) that all the people who play roles in our dreams are real or parts of real people we have once encountered. Even though our consciousness can't remember them, unconsciously, a catalog of faces is stored in our mind and re-used to fill up random characters in our dream world. How crazy is this???

A picture I took  when I visited my brother the last time. How does his face look again?
(I'm kidding)

The point I wanted to make is that we are not only able to conserve a ton of things, thoughts, places, feelings - but there are at least another ton of things a day that we immediately (or after a short while) forget. Mostly things that our brain sorts out as "not important" or "irrelevant" for our life. That's why it is so hard to recall what you had for lunch on Tuesday, two weeks ago.

And why you may better remember that big fight with your brother you had on the exact same day. Memories that are connected to strong emotions, such as anger, are more likely to be categorized as "relevant" by our brain.

Sometimes our brain works in mysterious ways. What we keep can seem random. For example, I am very good at remembering song lyrics and exact lines from comedians or youtubers I enjoy watching... Pretty random - But who knows maybe someday this will save my life...? Well, rather unlikely. 
What we lose is terrible. Maybe we wanted to keep it - beloved childhood memories, nice days with friends and family or things you did with your boyfriend. But hey, it's gone. At least I don't remember having a good time with him. Do you?

Remember cuddles in the kitchen, 

yeah, to get things off the ground...?

It was up, up and away - Arctic Monkeys

No, for real: I am afraid of losing my memories. It is losing a part of yourself at the same time. 
What am I when I have no memories? I can't tell my story. I don't have a story anymore. I'm so sad and sorry for Alzheimer's patients. I am afraid of getting the disease. I don't want to forget. Noone wants to. Not being able to recall your own child's features. Imagine, your mom doesn't know who you are anymore. Just imagine.
Another fear of mine is that my memories aren't real. It's scientifically proven that we alter our memories everytime we bring them to our minds again. Which means that our favourite, most beloved memories are the most fake of them all.


So what are they, in the end? Memories are such blurry, unstable, unclear thoughts, emotions, they are partly or completely changed fragments of our past.
What do we do with them? - We build on them, we base our identity on them. We live and decide in ways that "experience told us". We trust them blindly. We cry over them. Constructs of our minds leading us. 
But in a different way, they are not solid, always changeable, always adjustable for now and the new actuality. The same story, concluded by a different moral. Or different way of telling it. It's fascinating. It's frightening. Is anything of it real?

Hey, remember last summer when
we decided to make "Guerilla Street Art" for one night?

In the movie of "Divergent" (I'm sure you know it, don't you?) it is possible to view the dreams of the protagonist on screen. That's utopic for us today (Or dystopic?). 
But I am quite convinced that we will be able to do this in reality in the future. Will we be able to see our memories, too? Like literally seeing them on screen, letting other people be part of it like they are watching a movie? Whaaat?!
We would be able to compare memories of different people of the same incident. We would realize why they are so sure about what "really happened" - each one telling a different version of the story. Awesome!

But in some way, it would be creepy and unpleasant, too. Because, like our dreams and inner thoughts (as long as we don't brag about them on the internet, like I love to do), our memories are private. They are some of the most intimate things. Some of them are even secrets. 
There are others we love to share, of course: Funny things that happened, good news, wedding plans, a good book we read last week... But some are restricted. Some may never be told at all. Not forgotten till the end - but not told to anyone EVER. How would we react if there were people that were able to show these memories on screen? Maybe using them against our will and against us? 


Away from this dystopic, controled(-by-evil-leaders), futuristic world! 
Back to my memories. I remember a line on the receipt of a bar in Paris. The bar was rather shitty. It tried to hard to be an Irish Pub and showed a lot of soccer and Rugby matches on badly placed TVs. The drinks were too pricy and the seats uncomfortably high set. 
But on the receipt it said the name of the bar and after it "Easy to find - hard to forget". In a way, this saying was ironic. In a way, I thought, in a sudden semblance of melancholy: This is what I want to be for other people. Or maybe this is already the case. 
Thought of my ex boyfriend. Thought of people I don't know anymore who were close friends 10 years ago. Thought of how many people I had forgotten. Thought of all the people who met me once and had already forgotten me. 


But mostly I thought about the people who will remember me.

 "I could die right now, Clem. I'm just... happy. I've never felt that before. I'm just exactly where I want to be."
(katarinavelika.files.wordpress.com)