John Dewey and the Shortcomings of Industrial Education

 There is a trend that emphasizes success and revolves around a successful career before anything. The financial aspects, being defined as the ends (not the means) are ruining the foundation of education and the well-being of society. I have had a philosophical clash with this mentality from the get-go. I've seen this ideology spread throughout the educational system and respected in professional spheres.

The concept of being this money-generating machine and obtaining this social status is dorky, stale, and in many instances, a fantastic breeding ground for concealed fascism while acting politically correct. There is no two ways around this pseudoscience of evolutionary humanism or societal classes founded upon god-given privileges. The consequent hubris is one of the prime examples of post-industrial banalities. 

While this social superiority is attributed to inherent characteristics and essential differences, the root causes lie in a secure childhood in an affluent household and a protected track to a flourishing career. We witness a certain class arrogating to itself the right to be leaders as if being born in an affluent suburban neighborhood dismisses any need to hustle and bustle for a competitive position. The old stories of royal blood in someone's blood are as alive as ever.

 These trends are anti-meritocracy, anti-progressive, anti-humanistic, and basically at odds with all the values the Enlightenment era bestowed upon Western civilization. As long ago as 1670, mankind embarked on pursuing happiness and progress regardless of an individual's indulgence in fantastic social classification or genetic lineage.

This notion is in line with a part of John Dewey's ideas that I recently read. The following lines are excerpted from "Democracy and Education", published in 1916. While Dewey shows the importance of having an education that empowers individuals and ultimately provides financial independence, he warns about the grave dangers of the  "industrial education":

...social efficiency indicates the importance of industrial competency. Persons cannot live without means of subsistence; the ways in which these means are employed and consumed have a profound influence upon all relationships of persons to one another. If an individual is not able to earn his own living and that of the children dependent upon him, he is a drag or parasite upon the activities of others. He misses for himself one of the most educative experiences of life. if he is not trained in the right use of the products of industry, there is grave danger that he may deprave himself and injure others in his possession of wealth. No scheme of education can afford to neglect such basic considerations. Yet in the name of higher and more spiritual ideals, the arrangements for higher education have often not only neglected them, but looked at them with scorn as beneath the level of educative concern. With the change from an oligarchical to a democratic society, it is natural that the significance of an education which should have as a result ability to make one's way economically in the world, and to manage economic resources usefully instead of the mere display and luxury, should receive more emphasis. 

There is however, grave danger that in insisting upon this end, exisiting economic conditions and standards will be accepted as final. A democratic criterion requires us to develop capacity to the point of competency to choose and make its own career. This principle is violated when the attempt is made to fit individuals in advance for definite industrial callings, selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the wealth or social status of parents. As a matter of fact, industry at the present time undergoes rapid and abrupt changes through the evolution of new inventions. New industries spring up, and old ones are revolutionized. Consequently an attempt to train for too specific a mode of efficiency defeats its own purpose. When the occupation changes its methods, such individuals are left behind with even less ability to readjust themselves than if they had a less definite training. But, most of all, the present industrial constitution of society is like every society which has ever existed, full of inequities. It is the aim of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them. Wherever social control means subordination of individual activities to class authority, there is danger that industrial education will be dominated by acceptance of the status quo. Differences of economic opportunity then dictate what the future callings of individuals are to be.  We have an unconscious revival of the defect of the Platonic scheme without its enlightened method of selection.

Dewey, John, Democracy and Education, p. 219

As mentioned above, this model has several limitations. First, it's constructed upon multitudes of inequities, unsolicited advantages, and unqualified privileges. Second, it is inherently protective of the status quo of the industrial society's constitution. Third, it is too specific to be adjustable to the dynamic social scene of modern life. Therefore, trainees will be kept high and dry amidst the shifting sands of modern life. The current consensus of many private education institutions and the sidelining of liberal arts and the opprobrium they hold against public engagement will jeopardize social integrity.

Pedram

11/10/2025

Book Review: We Have Never Been Woke

The nascent terminology and concepts are inevitably rough and subject to refinement in the future. That can be regarded as a side-effect of articulating a new theory. "We Have Never Been Woke" is a 2024 book written by sociologist Musa al-Gharbi. The book is a deep dive into the fourth wave of "Awokening" in the US labeled as "Wokeism". The book investigates the origins, formative phases, and the torchbearers of the Woke movement. Furthermore, the book critically looks into how these movements actually managed or cared to connect to their alleged target population. 

Several ideas explained in this book are not necessarily novel or earth-shattering, but the systematic formulation of the pathology underlying the movement is something that makes this book worth your while. The main target of current analyses is a stratum labeled as "symbolic capitalists". These are liberal elites holding managerial or academic authority, and they mostly define their social status under the umbrella concept of progressivism. One major example is the current state of Ivy League institutions, as the major bedrock for the progressive ideology, is very alarming, and Dr. al-Gharbi's narrative regarding these elite universities rings true to my ears. 

The truth is, Woke slogans, good or bad, were merely applied as ploys for symbolic capitalists to gain more control and boost their authority. That is the canonical point that makes the whole read more alarming. The beneficiaries of the current Awokening are not the minoritized or marginalized sects. But the subgroup of influencers with Democratic-leaning political orientation and hailing from higher socio-economic percentiles, who, in line with their power-craving modus operandi, want to exploit Woke language as an extra muscle for their political grip on power. Social justice, diversity, equality, and inclusion are mere code-names in the game, as abstract as it gets. In reality, in the political scene, they are fierce observers of the current framework at best and sympathizers of social injustice at worst. This unfortunate situation will inevitably deepen the gap between political parties and activists with a disenfranchised social base. 

"We Have Never Been Woke" is a good book; it is a nascent formulation of a decade-long social issue.

Pedram

10/13/2025

Not for Profit

 

"Not for Profit, Why Democracy Needs the Humanities" is a short book by Martha Nussbaum. This is a critical view of the education system from elementary and secondary levels through high academic ranks. The worrisome pattern with emphasis on profit-generating has come at the cost of humanities and liberal arts. The signs are the decline of critical thinking toward authorities, compromised problem-solving skills over complex global matters, and a lack of sympathy for underprivileged and marginalized subpopulations. 

Democracy needs competent democratic citizens and to reach this goal a balanced and comprehensive education is key. A balanced pedagogical method should include humanities in the curriculum to broaden the students' viewpoints and help them cultivate empathy. This will serve as a preemptive measure to solve the pathologic social insouciance. The recent waves of execrating diversity and various tribalist sycophants spreading hatred as the new real political wisdom, maybe a reflection of this oversight in the upbringing of the children. Whether these are wangs of a temporary philosophical spasm or a profound drawback in the evolution of education, is yet to be seen. Nevertheless, they require immediate attention.

The book explains the history of the endeavors to include humanities in the framework by philosophers and educational reformers from Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827) to John Dewey (1859-1952).

Pestolazzi believed in the incorporation of arts and actual emotional responses in tandem with a child's gradual emotional development. Highly influenced by Rousseau's Emile, he mainly focused on participatory creative activities. 

Dewey's works in particular underline the importance of transferring living-oriented knowledge to students. He believed education is a regulatory process to oversee social norms and consciousness. Dewey believed in the involvement of the students to go deep and the proper educational method should provide information aligned with their prior life experiences.

In "Not for Profit", Nussbaum raises concern regarding the profit-oriented incentive in public and private schools. The resurgence of technology and the prediction of marketable occupations penetrated the social psyche and now parents are mostly supportive of this direction to secure their children's future. With a new economic and technological milieu looming at large, the need to renege on fundamental principles of comprehensive education is felt, more desperately than ever.

فرهنگ شفاهی

 غلبه ی فرهنگ شفاهی و سواد شفاهی به جای اتکا به منابع متنی، خطری بزرگ برای جامعه ایست که به دنبال  دانش و تقویت فرهنگ استدلال ورزیست.

How Did Mahsa Amini Become The Key?

From time to time, life takes some unpredictable turns that catch us all off guard.

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old girl from the Kurdish city of Saqez in Iran traveled to the capital to have a few days of fun and visit her relatives. She was apprehended by Morality in Tehran and died under suspicious conditions while in custody.

The way the news spread and the heartbreaking nature of this death, gravely saddened millions of people in Iran. Nationwide protests flared and a full-blown crackdown ensued.

These are not unfamiliar scenes for many middle-aged Iranian people. Over the past 25 years, there have been a number of protests over various social, political, and economical crises. However, this time looks different to many observers. Here are a few points that in my opinion make this round unique by the standards of Iran's protests:

1- Generation Z: This is a fundamental factor, the demographics of this round of protests make it completely different. The majority of individuals on the streets are from Generation Z. This generation is well recognized for its particular characteristic and their different upbringing conditions. The main player is ubiquitous Internet access. The new technologies are the bedrock of their  There is a demanding aspect of societal management of movement. 

2- Woman, Life, Freedom

A central theme of this movement is women demanding their fundamental rights. They feel the regime has robbed them of their innate rights throughout the past four decades. The motive here is captured in the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom". This is a very modern, politically-neutral, and timid type of manifest encapsulating the core values of modern civil society. Coming out of decades of policies crushing middle-class society, facing such a slogan becoming the canonical point of protests is telling.  

3- A Leaderless Movement

This is massive without prominent leadership. The conventional conservative, reformist, and opposition fronts are completely out of the leadership picture and are actually catching up with the slogans and the mindset of protests.

4- The Role of Social Media

As global connectivity soars, the news of the Iranian protest broke despite strict censorship by the regime. The shocking footages, voices, pictures spread to the people, and news agencies in the free world. Social tools such as hashtags were decisive in attracting attention and most online activities were spearheaded toward promoting these hashtags with the canonical one of #MahsaAmini and later #NikaShakarami 

5- Diaspora and Expats joining Iranians Inside Homeland:

Usually, Iranian expats are demonstrating poor collective spirit, communicating and finding the common ground. This time is different. Probably scope and depth of human tragedy, affected people across the political and ideological spectrum alike, Large unprecedented marches in more than 150 cities across the globe with a consistent slogan (Woman. Life. Freedom) is a testament to this evolution.  

While there are some distinct characteristics in this "Woman.Life.Freedom" movement in 2022, there are similarities with the previous civil movements in 2009 and the students' unrest as in both we have the central role of universities and the security measures against these highly influential institutions, shows how much the authorities rate and deter the elites. While this is in continuation of 2009unrests, the government did its best to rattle the foundation of grass root institutions/organizations such as labor unions, or student groups. These were originally designated as valid roots for citizens to engage with policymakers and explain their concerns. The logical outcome of this is that society resorts to violence and a flurry of radical slogans. As a person who was closely witnessing 2009 unrests, I can notice the stark turn in the contents of slogans as they've become extremely radical with profane language targeting the supreme leader. Interesting is that the protestors do not address anyone below the supreme leader of Iran in their slogans and this may suggest the common consensus that all the rest of the political figures in the system are insignificant in deciding the main policies. 

Populism: Gendered and Dangerous

This was a fantastic article by Julie Mostov.

The article points out that populism follows a gendered undertow and always jeopardizes democracy. The undercurrent of populism movements is the strengthen the "us" vs. "them" narrative. Populism is all for the continued rule of majority and the would-be infiltrators of the status quo are not desirable players. This POV also affects immigration policies and curbs democratic institutions with the intention of serving the national interest. This will most likely progress in parallel with the disenfranchisement of entities deemed as disloyal and the silencing of the suspect voices within the demos. 

Link to the Article

Inauguration Day

I am a staunch believer in baby steps. As Michael K. Williams put it more accurately "concrete baby steps". That is the way civil society moves forward and evolves. Peaceful, calm, and yet exciting. Pretty much all the elements of modern civilization share commonalities such as gradual formation. The temple so to speak is built by these small but sustainable actions. Those are the most productive ones as history has shown. 

Alternatives to Schools

 This was another hard and gut-wrenching report related to the COVID-19 crisis.

As schools are being closed in some regions of the developing world, child are being sent to the street, exploited as sources for cheap labor. 

While hunger is stalking children from Afghanistan to South Sudan, young girls in sex works and pregnancies shooting up in Uganda.

This happens while other sectors of society (bars, gyms, subway, etc.) have been allowed to reopen, begging the question: what is the root of all this discordance.  

Beyond Revenge

it's an interesting article ,psychological analysis of ecstatic joy after Bin Laden's death/Pedram

Some Americans celebrated the killing of Osama bin Laden loudly, with chanting and frat-party revelry in the streets. Others were appalled — not by the killing, but by the celebrations.
“It was appropriate to go after Bin Laden, just to try to cut the head off that serpent, but I don’t think it’s decent to celebrate a killing like that,” said George Horwitz, a retired meat cutter and Army veteran in Bynum, N.C.
Others were much more critical. “The worst kind of jingoistic hubris,” a University of Virginia student wrote in the college newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. In blogs and online forums, some people asked: Doesn’t taking revenge and glorying in it make us look just like the terrorists?
The answer is no, social scientists say: it makes us look like human beings. In an array of research, both inside laboratories and out in the world, psychologists have shown that the appetite for revenge is a sensitive measure of how a society perceives both the seriousness of a crime and any larger threat that its perpetrator may pose.
Revenge is most satisfying when there are strong reasons for exacting it, both practical and emotional.
“Revenge evolved as a deterrent, to impose a cost on people who threaten a community and to reach into the heads of others who may be contemplating similar behavior,” said Michael McCullough, a psychologist at the University of Miami and author of “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct” (Jossey-Bass, 2008). “In that sense it is a very natural response.”
Many of the sources of the joyous outburst were obvious: A clear victory after so many drawn-out conflicts. A demonstration of American competence, and of consequences delivered. The public relations value of delivering a public blow to a worldwide terror network. And, it needs to be said, the timing: The news hit just as many bars were starting to clear out for the night.
But this was much more than a simple excuse to party.
“Pure existential release,” said Tom Pyszczynski, a social psychologist at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, who has studied reactions to 9/11. “Whether or not the killing makes any difference in the effectiveness of Al Qaeda hardly matters; defeating an enemy who threatens your worldview, the very values you believe are most protective, is the quickest way to calm existential anxiety.”
After almost 10 years, the end was nothing if not final. “The emotions were so strong, I think, because the event was compacted: Bin Laden was found and killed, and it was done — done and over, just like that,” said Kevin Carlsmith, a social psychologist at Colgate University and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. “We’re so used to people being brought in, held at Guantánamo, the trials, the appeals; it feels like justice is never done.”
As a rule, people are far more forgiving than they might guess, studies find. After most betrayals, like being dumped by a love interest or insulted, the urge for revenge erodes around the same rate that certain memories do: sharply in the first few weeks, and much more slowly afterward. The same kind of pattern can follow even physical assaults, depending on the circumstances and the personality of the victim.
“The intensity of the emotion falls off precipitously, simply because the body can’t carry such a giant load of outrage and function very well,” Dr. McCullough said.
But the urge for payback — especially for a crime like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which killed almost 3,000 civilians — never goes to zero. “There is a stubborn part of the memory that hangs on to the urge, to a little piece of it,” and the pain is refreshed every time the memory is recalled, Dr. McCullough said.
It is easy to forget how much fear was in the air after the 9/11 attacks: the anthrax    mailings, the airport lines, the color-coded terror alerts. Many of those celebrating late on Sunday and early Monday were teenagers during those years, young people who have lived much of their lives under the threat of terrorism — and this terrorist in particular — and who had the time and energy to hit the streets and share the moment.
“For them this was a chance to be a part of history,” Dr. Pyszczynski said.
In a long series of studies, psychologists have shown that when people are reminded that they will one day die, they fixate on attributes they consider central to their self worth. Those who are religious become more so; those who value strength or physical attractiveness intensify their focus on these qualities; and people generally become more patriotic, more supportive of aggressive military action.
“Even subtle reminders of 9/11 have the same effect,” Dr. Pyszczynski said.
The sight of Bin Laden’s face on television or a smartphone news feed might have been enough to move people from the sidelines into the streets, to cheer for the home team.
Finally, people everywhere have a strong belief in “just desserts” punishment. In a 2002 study, psychologists at Princeton University had more than 1,000 participants evaluate specific crimes and give sentencing recommendations for each. The subjects carefully tailored each recommended sentence to the details of the infraction, its brutality and the record of the perpetrator.
The drive to enforce those sentences varies widely from person to person. But in a crowd of like-minded people, the most intense drives for justice become the norm: People who may have felt a mix of emotions in response to the news can be swept up in the general revelry.
Thus the natural urge for revenge — satisfied so suddenly, releasing a decade of background anxiety, stoked by peers — feeds on itself. Delight turns to chanting turns to climbing on lamp posts.

by : Benedict Carey

الگوی روسی

کماکان با مجله ی مهرنامه مهر ماه  مشغول هستم و باید بگویم که مجله ی ارزشمندیست و در حوزه ی علوم انسانی کاربسیاردرخشانی محسوب می شود.در بخش فلسفه ی ساسی در پنجمین شماره مهرنامه گفتگویی با خسرو ناقد درباره ی دیدگاه های پوپر انجام شده است. ..بسیار خواندنیست:          پدرام

جامعه ی باز تنها اقتصاد بازار آزاد نیست ، بلکه با حقوق مدنی شهروندان و نیز با دولت مبتنی بر قانون که طرفدار اصلاحات  اجتماعی است، پیوندی تنگاتنگ دارد . به نظر پوپر تنها وجود قوانین کافی نیست تا جامعه ای را "جامعه ی باز " بنامیم.

برپایی دولتی مبتنی برقانون که پایبند به چنین قوانینی باشد، از تدوین خود قوانین مهم تر و دشوارتر استف و از آن دشوارتر تحقق نظم حقوقی در سطح کشور است.این توصیه پوپر به خصوص برای روسیه و برخی کشورهای اروپای شرقی که صورتی زشت از سرمایه داری بی ریشه وبی هویت و افسار گسیخته در آنها در حال رشداست و فساد و دیوان سالاری نظام گذشته کمابیش بازتولید می شود و آزادی به معنای آزادی مافیای اقتصادی وصاحبان قدرت است،از اهمیت ویژه ای برخوردار است.

Football : An Empty Pleasure

An article written by Mario Vargas Llosa in Nou Camp 1982;dissecting the entertaining might of Football ,as it meets the characteristics of a innocuous ,ephemeral and non-transcendent entertainment.
Pedram 


A couple of years ago, I heard the Brazilian anthropologist Roberto da Matta give a brilliant lecture in which he explained that the popularity of football expresses an innate desire for legality, equality and freedom.

His argument was clever and amusing. According to him, the public sees football as a sort of model society-one governed by clear and simple laws which everyone understands and observes and which, if violated, bring immediate punishment to the guilty party. A football field is an egalitarian space which excludes all favouritism and privilege. Here, on this grass marked out by white lines, a person is valued for what he is: for his skill, dedication, inventiveness and effectiveness. Names, money and influence count for nothing when it comes to scoring goals and earning the applause or whistles from the stands. The football player exercises the only form of freedom that society can allow its members if it is not to come apart: to do whatever they please as long as it is not prohibited by rules that everyone accepts.

This is what, in the end, stirs the passions of the crowds that, the world over, pour into the grounds, follow games on television with rapt attention and fight over their football idols: the secret envy, the unconscious nostalgia for a world that -unlike the one they live in, which is full of injustice, corruption, lawlessness and violence-offers harmony, law and equality.

Could this beautiful theory be true? Would that it were, for nothing could be more positive for the future of humanity than to have these civilised feelings nestling in the instinctive depths of the crowds. But, as usual, reality overtakes theory-showing it up as incomplete. Theories are always rational, logical, intellectual (even those theories that propose irrationality and madness); but in society, in human behaviour, the unconscious, unreason and pure spontaneity will always play a part. This is both inevitable and immeasurable.

I’m scribbling these lines in a seat in the Nou Camp, a few minutes before the Argentina-Belgium game that is kicking off this World Cup (Spain 1982). The signs are favourable: a radiant sun; an impressive multi-coloured crowd full of waving Spanish, Catalan, Argentine and a few Belgian flags; noisy fireworks; a festive atmosphere and applause for the dancing and gymnastic displays which are a warm-up to the game.

This is a much more appealing world than the one left outside, behind the Nou Camp stands and the people applauding the dances and patterns made by dozens of young people on the pitch. This is a world without wars, such as those in the South Atlantic and Lebanon, which the World Cup has relegated to second place in the minds of millions of fans throughout the world; they, like those of us here in the stands, will be thinking of nothing else in the next two hours except the passes and the shots of the 22 Argentine and Belgian players who are opening the tournament.

Perhaps the explanation for this extraordinary contemporary phenomenon, the passion for football-a sport raised to the status of a lay religion, with the greatest following of all-is in fact a lot less complicated than sociologists and psychologists would have us suppose; football might simply offer people something they can scarcely ever have: an opportunity to have fun, to enjoy themselves, to get excited, to feel certain intense emotions that daily routine rarely offers them.

To want to have fun, to enjoy ourselves, to have a good time, is a most legitimate aspiration-a right as valid as the desire to eat and work. For many, doubtless complex reasons, football in the world today has taken on this role with more success than any other sport.

Those of us who get pleasure from football are not in any way surprised at its great popularity as a collective entertainment. But there are many who do not understand it and even criticise it. They see it as deplorable because, they say, football alienates and impoverishes the masses-distracting them from important issues. Those who think like this forget that it is important to have fun. They also forget that what characterises entertainment, however intense and absorbing (and a good game of football is enormously intense and absorbing), is that it is ephemeral, non-transcendent, innocuous. An experience where the effect disappears at the same time as the cause. Sport, for those who enjoy it, is the love of form, a spectacle that does not transcend the physical, the sensory, the instant emotion; a spectacle that, unlike a book or a play, scarcely leaves a trace in the memory and does not enrich or impoverish knowledge. This is its appeal: it is exciting and empty. For that reason, intelligent and unintelligent, cultured and uncultured people can equally enjoy football. But that’s enough for now. The King has arrived. The teams have come out. The World Cup has been officially opened. The game is beginning. That’s enough writing. Let’s enjoy ourselves a bit.


@Prospect Magazine

Leadership and Leitkultur

Since the end of August Germany has been roiled by waves of political turmoil over integration, multiculturalism and the role of the “Leitkultur,” or guiding national culture. This discourse is in turn reinforcing trends toward increasing xenophobia among the broader population.
These trends have been apparent for many years in studies and survey data that show a quiet but growing hostility to immigrants. Yet it is as though they have only now found a voice: the usual stereotypes are being flushed out of the bars and onto the talk shows, and they are echoed by mainstream politicians who want to capture potential voters who are otherwise drifting off toward the right. Two events have given rise to a mixture of emotions that are no longer easy to locate on the scale from left to right — a book by a board member of Germany’s central bank and a recent speech by the German president.
It all began with the advance release of provocative excerpts from “Germany Does Away With Itself,” a book that argues that the future of Germany is threatened by the wrong kind of immigrants, especially from Muslim countries. In the book, Thilo Sarrazin, a politician from the Social Democratic Party who sat on the Bundesbank board, develops proposals for demographic policies aimed at the Muslim population in Germany. He fuels discrimination against this minority with intelligence research from which he draws false biological conclusions that have gained unusually wide publicity.
In sharp contrast to the initial spontaneous objections from major politicians, these theses have gained popular support. One poll found that more than a third of Germans agreed with Mr. Sarrazin’s prognosis that Germany was becoming “naturally more stupid on average” as a result of immigration from Muslim countries.
After half-hearted responses in the press by a handful of psychologists who left the impression that there might be something to these claims after all, there was a certain shift in mood in the news media and among politicians toward Mr. Sarrazin. It took several weeks for Armin Nassehi, a respected sociologist, to take the pseudoscientific interpretation of the relevant statistics apart in a newspaper article. He demonstrated that Mr. Sarrazin adopted the kind of “naturalizing” interpretation of measured differences in intelligence that had already been scientifically discredited in the United States decades ago.
But this de-emotionalizing introduction of objectivity into the discussion came too late. The poison that Mr. Sarrazin had released by reinforcing cultural hostility to immigrants with genetic arguments seemed to have taken root in popular prejudices. When Mr. Nassehi and Mr. Sarrazin appeared at the House of Literature in Munich, a mob atmosphere developed, with an educated middle-class audience refusing even to listen to objections to Mr. Sarrazin’s arguments.
Amid the controversy, Mr. Sarrazin was forced to resign from the Bundesbank board. But his ouster, combined with the campaign against political correctness started by the right, only helped to strip his controversial arguments of their odious character. Criticism against him was perceived as an overreaction. Hadn’t the outraged chancellor, Angela Merkel, denounced the book without having read it? Wasn’t she now doing an about-face, by telling young members of her Christian Democratic Union party that multiculturalism was dead in Germany? And hadn’t the chairman of the Social Democrats, Sigmar Gabriel, the only prominent politician to counter the substance of Mr. Sarrazin’s claims with astute arguments, met with resistance from within his own party when he proposed expelling the unloved comrade?
The second disturbing media event in recent weeks was the reaction to a speech by the newly elected German president, Christian Wulff. As the premier of Lower Saxony, Mr. Wulff had been the first to appoint a German woman of Turkish origin as a member of his cabinet.
In his speech earlier this month on the anniversary of German unification, he took the liberty of reaffirming the commonplace notion, which former presidents had already affirmed, that not only Christianity and Judaism but “Islam also belongs in Germany.”
After the speech the president received a standing ovation in the Bundestag from the assembled political notables. But the next day the conservative press homed in on his assertion about Islam’s place in Germany. The issue has since prompted a split within his own party, the Christian Democratic Union. It is true that, although the social integration of Turkish guest workers and their descendants has generally been a success in Germany, in some economically depressed areas there continue to be problematic immigrant neighborhoods that seal themselves off from mainstream society. But these problems have been acknowledged and addressed by the German government. The real cause for concern is that, as the Sarrazin and Wulff incidents show, cool-headed politicians are discovering that they can divert the social anxieties of their voters into ethnic aggression against still weaker social groups.
The best example is Bavaria’s premier, Horst Seehofer, who has declared “immigrants from other cultures” to be detrimental and has called for a halt to immigration “from Turkey and Arab countries.” Although statistics show a net outflow of people of Turkish origin, Mr. Seehofer invokes the phobic image of unregulated masses of social parasites crowding into our welfare state networks as a way of building support for his own political aims.


Social and political developments in Germany, given its ghastly history, do not necessarily have the same significance as in other countries. So, are there grounds for concern that the “old” mindsets could undergo a revival?
It depends on what we mean by “old.” What we are seeing is not a revival of the mentalities of the 1930s. Instead, it is a rekindling of controversies of the early 1990s, when thousands of refugees arrived from the former Yugoslavia, setting off a debate on asylum seekers. The Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, then endorsed the position that Germany was “not a country of immigration.” At that time hostels for refugees went up in flames and even the Social Democrats gave ground, agreeing in Parliament to a shabby compromise on asylum law.
That dispute was already stimulated by the feeling of an endangered national culture, which had to assert itself as the leitkultur that all newcomers must follow. Yet the controversy of the 1990s was also driven by the fact that Germany had recently reunited and had reached the final stage in an arduous path toward a mentality that provides the necessary underpinning of a liberal understanding of the Constitution.
To the present day, the idea of the leitkultur depends on the misconception that the liberal state should demand more of its immigrants than learning the language of the country and accepting the principles of the Constitution. We had, and apparently still have, to overcome the view that immigrants are supposed to assimilate the “values” of the majority culture and to adopt its “customs.”
That we are experiencing a relapse into this ethnic understanding of our liberal constitution is bad enough. It doesn’t make things any better that today leitkultur is defined not by “German culture” but by religion. With an arrogant appropriation of Judaism — and an incredible disregard for the fate the Jews suffered in Germany — the apologists of the leitkultur now appeal to the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” which distinguishes “us” from the foreigners.
Nevertheless I do not have the impression that the appeals to the leitkultur signal anything more than a rearguard action or that the lapse of an author into the snares of the controversy over nature versus nurture has given enduring and widespread impetus to the more noxious mixture of xenophobia, racist feelings of superiority and social Darwinism. The problems of today have set off the reactions of yesterday — but not those of the day before.
I don’t underestimate the scale of the accumulated nationalistic sentiment, a phenomenon not confined to Germany. But in the light of current events, another trend is of greater concern: the growing preference for unpolitical figures on the political scene, which recalls a dubious trait of German political culture, the rejection of political parties and party politics.
During the parliamentary election of the federal president last summer, Joachim Gauck, the politically inexperienced and non-party-affiliated civil rights campaigner, stood as the opposing candidate to Mr. Wulff, the career politician. Against the majority in the electoral college, Mr. Gauck, a Protestant minister with a history of opposition to the old East German regime, won the hearts of the broader population, and almost won the election.
The same yearning for charismatic figures who stand above the political infighting can be seen in the puzzling popularity of the aristocratic defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who, with not much more than his family background, polished manners and a judicious wardrobe, has managed to overshadow Ms. Merkel’s reputation.


Of even greater concern is the sort of street protests we are now witnessing in Stuttgart, where tens of thousands of people have come out against the federal railway corporation’s plan to demolish the old central train station. The protests that have been continuing for months are reminiscent of the spontaneity of the extraparliamentary opposition of the 1960s. Unlike then, though, today people from all age groups and sectors of the population are taking to the streets. The immediate aim is a conservative one: preserving a familiar world in which politics intervenes as the executive arm of supposed economic progress.
In the background, however, there is a deeper conflict brewing over our country’s understanding of democracy. The state government of Baden-Württemberg, where Stuttgart is located, sees the protests narrowly, as simply a question of whether government is legally permitted to plan such long-term megaprojects. In the midst of the turmoil the president of the Federal Constitutional Court rushed to the project’s defense by arguing that the public had already voted to approve it 15 years ago, and thus had no more say in its execution.
But it has since emerged that the authorities did not, in fact, provide sufficient information at the time, and thus citizens did not have an opportunity to develop an informed opinion on which they could have based their votes. To insist that they should have no further say in the development is to rely on a formalistic understanding of democracy. The question is this: Does participation in democratic procedures have only the functional meaning of silencing a defeated minority, or does it have the deliberative meaning of including the arguments of citizens in the democratic process of opinion- and will-formation?
The motivations underlying each of the three phenomena — the fear of immigrants, attraction to charismatic nonpoliticians and the grass-roots rebellion in Stuttgart — are different. But they meet in the cumulative effect of a growing uneasiness when faced with a self-enclosed and ever more helpless political system. The more the scope for action by national governments shrinks and the more meekly politics submits to what appear to be inevitable economic imperatives, the more people’s trust in a resigned political class diminishes.
The United States has a president with a clear-headed political vision, even if he is embattled and now meets with mixed feelings. What is needed in Europe is a revitalized political class that overcomes its own defeatism with a bit more perspective, resoluteness and cooperative spirit. Democracy depends on the belief of the people that there is some scope left for collectively shaping a challenging future.


By : Jurgen Habermas
@NYTIMES
Image : Thilo Sarrazin
Thanks to Hossein for sharing the article