The happiest nation on Earth! The happiest nation on Earth, yet not willing to share happiness. The happiest nation on Earth believing that happiness can be sustained in isolation; that happiness has no moral connotation!

Denmark, my home country, has decided that a Syrian life is not worth a bit of inconvenience, that Danish comfort dictates heartlessness! Denmark revels in its historic role as the saviour of the Danish Jews during WWII, but sees no relationship to the ethical imperatives of today.

One of the really depressing things about current political discourse is that any political action must be justified from the perspective of the national interest of the country, defined in the narrowest sense. This is the detestable legacy of Senator Jesse Helms and his ‘America first’ ideology. But why should this ‘national interest’ perspective be right. In our private lives we do many things that are not in our own interest, but we do them because they are right. We help those of broken minds or broken bodies although we dearly hope we shall never be in that position ourselves. We do these things because they are right. The same within our countries. We see that communities take pain in order to serve the general good, although the inhabitants of these communities will be worse off. A new motorway is built leading to more general prosperity but at the cost of all those living close to the new road. We do it because it is right. We then come to the national level – and suddenly we say that we will not sacrifice anything for the common good because it means that our own prosperity will be impacted. We will not do what is good, because it may not be good for us. This is the logic that would have kept us in the Stone Age if we had applied it across the board. But more importantly it is wrong, wrong, wrong!

The almost as depressing thing as the national interest perspective is its misapplication. Because even if you adopt its logic it does not lead to the xenophobic attitudes of Denmark. Denmark has the same problem as many other European countries of an aging society, and immigrants are on average younger. That will make the pension burden easier to carry. But also, figures from Germany show that foreigners there pay more to the state than they take out in social benefits, and, of course, the long term productivity boost can be considerable depending on how well newcomers can be integrated. Look to the US of yore to see how immigration creates wealth (a lesson the US sadly has also forgotten). But all this is secondary. The real issue is how it can ever be justified to deny refuge to human beings in terrible distress!

I love Denmark, still. After all, home is where the heart is. But if home has no heart how can you love it? When you live in Vienna you are confronted with the misery in the middle of all the incredible prosperity. You go about your daily life as usual, yet something is amiss. The horror of the migrants is there for all to see. In fact, not so different from life in Denmark during the occupation. Back then Denmark took action, showed heart. Now it has lost heart – does not want to see, does not want to understand, does not want to help. Denmark is better than that, I know that. But it is highest time to reject the demagoguery of xenophobia, and to finally show who we are. A nation of good people ready to help, a nation of happy people understanding that happiness does not grow on stones of inhumanity.

Does this have anything to do with my book? No! But there are things much more important! Do not be on the fence. Show heart!

Many years ago a friend of mine suggested that what one should aspire to is a rounded life. What she meant was that one should not only appreciate, or strive for the pink Champagne and caviar. One should embrace also the beauty of the mundane and should understand that a well-lived life contains both glittering balls and hoovering. One without the other would make the lived life unbalanced. I am ashamed to say that back then this perspective did not resonate completely with me. But with time I have become very conscious of the beauty of daily life. The people who invest more in the dinner jacket than in a well-designed kettle might have gotten things wrong. As my friend suggested it is a question of balance. There is a need and a time for the dinner jacket and there is a need and a time for the kettle. When billionaires are unhappy it is maybe sometimes because of the loss of roots in everyday life.

My book deals a lot with what it is that makes life worth living, and thus there is perhaps reason to reflect on why in my own life the mundane has become more appreciated now than when I was young. My youth in a small village in Denmark was overwhelmed by the mundane; the appearance of a new film in our village cinema was a major event. In such circumstances it is probably not strange that the pursuit of Champagne moments becomes dominant. But perhaps it is also not strange that after many years of much travel, and the intake of a considerable amount of Champagne, daily life becomes so attractive. Mind’s buffer containing much material means that daily life becomes a way to absorb all the impressions. Yet, again, the rounded life is the aspiration and that means that there is a time for the road and a time for the pleasures of home.

Publishing a book is obviously a Champagne moment – but I hope it is more than that. I hope publishing the book will stay with me as an element of contentment – will remain a notable element in my continuing quest for a rounded life!

Writing a book like ‘What If We Don’t Die?’ brings you intellectually around quite a bit. You dive into sources of very varied nature, and you get exhilarated by the thoughts of Plato, Kierkegaard, Einstein. The many unexpected discoveries are one of the rewards of writing interdisciplinary books – and one of the risks.

Sometimes on such a journey you encounter unexpectedly much of the unexpected. When the first draft of the book was finished I happened to read Max Tegmark’s ‘Our Mathematical Universe’ and it was like taking LSD without the actual drug. Wildly and durably expanding your consciousness! Suddenly you had not only one kind of multiverse, but 4 kinds. Reality could not just be described by mathematics, but as a mathematical structure – thoughts that take you on the Schrödinger wave function highway and beyond. My draft expanded in surprising directions! Tegmark may not be impressed with how I have used his insights, but it is in the nature of being an inspirator that you cannot control how your inspiration is being used.

Marco Aliberti, my colleague here at the European Space Policy Institute, can sing a song about that! When Marco came onboard I thought I had a finished draft more or less, and I asked Marco to read it to try to avoid the most glaring mistakes. But Marco came back with questions and suggestions ‘didn’t Schopenhauer say ….’, ‘you know the origin of the word ‘exist’….’ etc. etc.. The result of all Marco’s prompting was that the draft that did feel a bit bare originally became much richer, more full-bodied. The inspiration of Marco was crucial, even if Marco must often have felt that the inspiration he provided ended in surprising destinations when I appropriated it.

Now, neither Tegmark nor Marco are to blame for failings of my book. Tegmark’s book is ample testimony to the strength of his imagination and the mastery of his subject. And Marco has in the recent past himself published a book ‘When China Goes to the Moon…’, from which you can gather how strong Marco is in international relations theory and all matters space – in addition to his exquisite knowledge of philosophy and adoration of poetry.

I hope you will read my book, but you MUST read those of Marco and Max Tegmark!

Schönberg did not want to be Mozart. Schönberg wanted, first and foremost, to push intellectual barriers with his serial music. Mozart was appealing to emotion in the most direct form, freed from intellectualism, yet deeply intellectual. The master transcending his craft!

Schönberg’s music was and is ‘unangepasst’, edgy as we say nowadays. With Schönberg there was a willed ‘unangepasstheit’, shared by Stockhausen and Boulez, which in a round-about fashion almost makes the music angepasst. Schönberg wanted to take music down the path of intellectualism, and it has stayed on that path. The path became the destination. For most unangepasste human beings the state is undesired. There is a strong wish to become accepted, and for the work resulting from the unangepasste to become mainstreamed. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, of such beauty and romance, was famously derided as something ‘whose stink one can hear’ when it came out. Hard to believe as it is, perhaps Tchaikovsky was pushing boundaries, yet very soon the Violin Concerto was ubiquitous, mainstreamed. This was surely what Tchaikovsky wanted. Van Gogh, impossibly edgy in life, is now the favourite of billionaires (and me). Continue reading “Atonality” →

‘To publish or not to publish’ is the fundamental question for every writer. For some probably ranking up there with ‘To be or not to be’. Some writers will see publishing as an extension of existence, the treasured book becoming a material symbol of being there, of having seized the Word. The book becomes a way of communicating with a potentially large number of other human beings, becomes one of the writer’s faces towards the world at large.

Continue reading “On Gutenberg and Google” →

I shall bring out a book ‘What If We Don’t Die?’ with the sub-title ‘The Morality of Immortality’ in a few weeks’ time. The publisher is the Copernicus imprint of Springer.

In the blog I shall be writing about the book and about publishing, but may also stray into more general ruminations. Below you will find my first contribution. I hope you will like it, and that you will follow the blog and ultimately read the book!