Category: Life course

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Olympic Competences

The athletes who managed to participate in the Olympic Games dispose of a specific skill set beyond their more narrow sports discipline. The general competence is long-term planning and sticking to training schedules. These schedules involve multiple deadlines with well-defined training goals. Coaches accompany the athletes in this endeavor. The competence to listen to advice from one or more persons to achieve personal goals is an important factor of success as well. Rather than being a personality trait this can be acquired through learning experiences. Coaching helps to achieve targets short and long term. Endurance in mental and physical form are trainable and most Olympic athletes have spent many years to prepare for the singularity of the Olympics like in Paris 2024. The same holds true for the participants of the Paralympic games. Maybe the most important competence of high level athletes is to keep exercising, training and trying despite many backlashes and missing of goals. (Image: Extract from Gustave Caillebotte Le Plongeon, 1878, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris).

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Sports Beauty

Since the days of ancient Greece the combination of sports and the ideals of beauty has been praised. The many representations of mainly sportsmen at the time were copied by many artists to represent ideal forms of bodies and beauty. Only more than 2000 years later the female sportspersons find equal admiration in sports and the imagery of beauty. The Académie des beaux-arts in Paris 2024 has chosen this as a topic to guide visitors of the Olympic Games through the vast collections at the Musée Orsay (imaga below). The depiction of Hercules, for example, has idealized the strength of men. The beauty of sports movements reaches levels of dance or ballet. The precision of performances highlights the not only the physical qualities, but also the beauty of the body in motion. The popular appeal of performance and perfection contribute to the admiration of ideals. Reaching these ideals is a completely different story. The training and preparation may take years mostly invisible to the one time spectators. However, the glory stays for decades or until a closer match to the ideal is achieved by another athlete or another person. Even ideals are time dependent and rarely eternal.

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Olympic Prevention

In the streets near the Stade de France at Seine Saint Denis the team of street workers addressed spectators with little presents. Each of these little items served the purpose to remind people of the prevention of disease or later consequences of the Olympic atmospheres in PARIS 2024. Sex, booze and drugs, but also noise were the topics of the prevention patrol around popular venues. Great way to bring home a message for visitors and the local population as well. Health and Olympic Games is a huge topic with many facets to it. Not only athletes are concerned, but also spectators. The team agreed to pose for media coverage as this is their reason of existence. Reaching big crowds is essential especially if big sugar is among the big sponsors of the games. It is another kind of competition with rather unequal starting conditions. You might loose some fights against yourself, but trying to overcome alcohol addiction or sugar overdose is worth a repeated game. Prevention is key.

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People’s Olympic

The Olympic games have an elite touch attached to them. The selection beforehand is though and during the games another selection has to take place. After all there are only 3 medals to be awarded per competition and the runners up receive much less attention. That’s what the Olympic fame is built upon. To get more people involved in the games Paris 2024. had started the running and arrival of the flame weeks before the game so that public attention and awareness that people are part of the game as well. As spectators participation is feasible but rather expensive and out of reach for many supporters or locals. Hence, criticism of this kind is as old as the Olympic idea. Paris 2024 has tried several ways to mitigate the selectivity. Even distribution of tickets for free to visit performances has been widely spread. Most people will watch on their couch even if you live nearby. Places in Roman “panem et circenses” games in amphitheaters were scarce as well and reserved for citizens. Paris has built a brand new train station and lines to the stadium and the Olympic village. ( Image below RER Terminal, Saint Denis) on the outskirts of Paris. This will serve after the Games for many years to come. Inclusion of people has many facets.

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Olympic salary

According to an information in the Wall street journal 2024-8-6, the self-reported annual income of top athletes who participate in the Olympic games Paris 2024 for example has a large distribution from those who go into debt to finance their personal or national dream and those who have already a comfortable income due to their sports commitment. 26% of athletes are reported to live with less than $ 15.000 per year only. However, at the other end of the distribution of income we have 23% of athletes earning more than $ 100.000 per year. A lot depends on the kind of sport you practice and the earnings of sponsors and “maezene” or professional attachments to professions that rely on physical strength as well. The average or median of the distribution is at a decent level albeit far from spectacular for the amount of effort a d time the athletes devote to their activities. Many other professions earn much more accompanying the athletes and those professions are also a likely later steo in a sportsperson’s career. Life course analysis remains an important field of study which informs the chances of winning medals in Olympic competitions.

Paris 2024
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UNESCO Art

The UNESCO building hosts fine examples of modern art. For example “L’homme qui marche” by Giacometti (Image 1 below, focus on shadow of the figure) is one of the treasures exposed next to the conference center. The statue is very fitting as introduction to the exhibition “Fit for Life” during the Olympics, although it has been there for many decades. Taken on a photograph from a specific angle, the marching man appears like a crucified person without the crucifix. Each athlete has a long march behind him or behind her to reach the landmark of participation in the Olympic games. The media attention puts the spotlight on the winning persons albeit the many splendid performances of all other athletes. The cultures of the games is to be found in the millions of people who are inspired by these outstanding performances to also try their best in whatever conditions are encountered locally.

The strive by each athlete to achieve the highest goals, possible or even impossible, is reflected in the big wall painting by Picasso, 1958,  which was especially commissioned by UNESCO as the new building was inaugurated in Paris. The title of Picasso’s painting is “The fall of Icarus”, an ancient narrative of mankind reaching for the sun, but ultimately failing. Let’s keep waling despite the risk of falling short of ideals. A reasonable vision for diplomacy as well.

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Olympic Equality

Of course, first of all the Olympic Games are about making a difference with respect to your opponent. However, there has been a thrive to achieve an equality of genders for more than 100 years as well. Women had to battle such a long time to achieve the right to participate in the Games in the same disciplines as men. For the first time in Paris2024 men and women are represented with the same amounts of athletes. Each gender is participating with 5.250 athletes and astonishing progress has been made to ensure that male and female athletes perform in the same or similar disciplines. Even if it took decades for women to run a marathon at the Olympics, the inclusion of a triathlon for women was already much more rapid.
This constitutes a real milestone in the progress towards equality in Olympics. Equal numbers of athletes is a quantitative form of inclusion, the qualitative level of inclusion remains to be accomplished. The qualitative dimension consists in the inclusion of women at equal footing in media reporting and sponsoring. On the organizational level of the IOC the organizing committee is still dominated by men and statistics on the accompanying teams of coaches, therapists and representatives a lot of progress still needs to be accomplished. Paris made already a huge difference and several exhibitions of the “cultural games” around the city during the Olympics 2024 make this point quite forcefully.
The sociology of the Olympic Games has a lot of topics. It is great to see the progress made in Paris on Olympic Equality, after all “égalité” figures prominently in the definition of modern France.
(Image: BNF 2024 exhibition “A History of Women in Sport” own translation)

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Knowledge Work

In the social sciences the term knowledge work defines the group of professions that deal with and deal in knowledge. Most of them are in academia, but there are many other professions like ICT professionals or lawyers that used to shuffle paper who now work all digital. Hence the relatively new addition to the sociological vocabulary is “mobile knowledge work”. We, and yes I am part of this group, can do our job from almost any place with a stable internet connection. Breda Gray et al. (2020, Made to work: Mobilising contemporary worklives.) highlight the importance of gender considerations when we study these new forms of work. Similarly, social class and cultures of more or less trust are thriving for independence. This will play a role in who choses these new forms of work. The digital technology enterprises, media and social media workers are and will be the forerunners of this change. The education sector and academics in general have followed suit.

The issue of autonomy has also received some attention by the authors and this is likely to be a big challenge to standard work relationships as we knew them before the digital turn and the Covid-19 pandemic. The mobile knowledge workers were the first to insist on change of work practices, there will be other professions that will strive for greater autonomy of various kinds.

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Generational differences

The study of generational differences has a long tradition in sociology. A recent study by Wysmulek et al. (Acta Sociologica 2024, 131pp). highlights changes in how youth values education, abilities and hard work. The study carried out with Polish data shows that it is not the straightforward historical grouping of birth cohorts that matters most, but the experience of living through a period of crisis or stability during the formation of so-called meritocratic beliefs. Once formed, these beliefs tend to persist for prolonged periods of time well into middle and late adulthood.

Many judgements about young people might suffer a substantial generational bias when viewed from another generation’s vantage point. Cross-generational differences in beliefs and behavior are dependent on homogeneous or heterogeneous experiences of the respective generations. Disrespect of such generational differences is bound to yield severe misunderstandings. Who told you that social life was easy anyway? (Image decorated piano in shopping mall, Berlin 2024)

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Social Science Experiments

In the social sciences experiments are harder to do as there are ethical concerns to offer with random assignments only some access to a treatment or a (supposedly) preferential treatment. Combet (ESR, 2024) conducted an experiment about school major choices in order to learn about gendered school subjects choices. The findings that female students tend to stay away from STEM subjects is reiterated. The question remains why the gender stereotypes are still as strong after the schooling in co-educative settings. The old question whether separate schooling might encourage female students to study more analytical rather than creative disciplines remains an issue. Boys tend to frighten away girls from science related subjects at an early age, maybe just due to excessive affinity to competition. The skill gaps in society later on are to the disadvantage of all. Additionally, lost innovation is the consequence. We know that international competition relies on those persons who combine the analytical as well as creative abilities to come up with new solutions. We dearly need to encourage all talents in society to persist in their occupational choices. (Image Painted ceiling Paris Opera Garnier by Chagall)

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Swimming Pool

Summer time is the time to enjoy outdoors. Hiking, biking, climbing as well as swimming are high on the agenda. With the Olympic games 2024 around the corner we rise to the challenge and get started again with more sports activities. Swimming has many health advantages. Most people think of cardiovascular training and relieve of back pain. Exercise without carrying your body weight is great for your joints and ligaments. The benefits for psychological wellbeing have long been underestimated. Diving into silence under water even if it is only for some seconds or a minute calms your spirit. The water pressure holds you tight without restricting your movements. Breath control is an almost meditative experience. Everyone can do it, again and again. Childhood memories, good and bad, are associated with swimming. Choose your style, costume and pool. The summer break is an ideal occasion to test the marvelous experience again of cold or warm water. The cold water bucket challenge of everyday life takes a break. Time to find your pool again. (Image extract from Susanne Hay, Swimming Pool II, 1996 in private collection, exhibition in Yerres, summer 2023)

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Chapelles Sportifs

In Paris the “Chapelle Notre Dame des Sportifs” was benedicted in 2023 in view of the Olympic Games 2024 in France. The catholic church is following the popular Olympics to call for “Holy Games” with subtitle “L’évangile c’est sport”. The chapel can be visited in the splendid church “La Madeleine” in the middle of Paris. You can buy candles with inscriptions like “the last ones, will come first (Mt 20,16)” or other citations from the bible. On Friday 2024-7-19 a special ceremony was held where you could jointly pray to win in your discipline or, of course, for other noble causes. The whole service was recorded with multiple cameras from a professional television team for a worldwide dissemination. It remains an open question, whether the church sponsors athletes as well or whether the athletes sponsor the church through their followers on social media. in any case it is a bigger media event accompanying the Olympic games in Paris.

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Impressionism 150

How many impressions made impressionism? Too many to be expressed in a single number. 150 years after the movement started with a spectacular exhibition in Paris the admiration of the paintings still attracts huge crowds. As a kind of revolutionary movement the artists mounted their own exhibition as they were not allowed to expose their paintings in the official exhibition of the Academy of arts in 1874. They accumulated a sufficiently large group of artists to form their own distinctive style of paintings. Painting outside in the countryside was a joint predilection. The regions, nowadays in the suburbs of Paris where many people daily commute to Paris has discovered the attraction to review the original scenario of the paintings as well as their living environments. Yerres, for example, hosts in 2024 an exhibition to show paintings from Claude Monet and Gustave Caillebotte which highlights the inspiration both painters took from the surroundings. Nowadays it is also interesting to see that the agglomeration makes efforts to make more people aware of the treasures to see in their own surroundings. Even if conservation of nature is hard to achieve the parks of yesterday have remained visible today. For us to transmit the cultural heritage and landscape to future generations as well. An affordable booklet that documents the cultural heritage allows people to dig deeper into the subject also for those who live in the region only because of a job nearby in Paris or Orly airport.

Park surrounding Maison Caillebotte, Yerres
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Live longer

It is an old dream of mankind to live longer and longer. The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons that there are powerfully viruses and their continued mutations which threaten this. Life expectancy declined slightly during the pandemic and we learned that long Covid is yet another threat to our life expectancy. Scientists have found other sources that are crucial for survival. Like sepsis, it is the constant inflammation processes in our bodies. Long working times, stressful commute to work and interrupted or shortened vacations all contribute to keep inflammation at higher levels than is healthy from a longevity perspective. The research note published in Nature on the inflammation enhancing protein IL-11 highlights the chain reaction process of inflammation causing cancer and autoimmune disorders and diseases. Hence, it is essential to watch the biomarkers of inflammation and probably adjust our lifestyles accordingly. The sources of inflammation are manifold, but the potential rewards to address the issue are huge as well. Among the easy to address sources is nutrition, exercise and working life. Changing just a little bit here and there can make already a change. Monitoring how you feel about such changes puts you on a learning curve for your own inflammation levels. Vacation times are also perfect for adaptive behavioral changes. We just need to keep trying.

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Plastic wasted

The amount of plastic that is wasted exceeds our imagination. Even in the most distant islands we find remaining pieces of plastic from our careless consumption. The European Directive 2019/904 has set the limit on detached bottle tops to July 2024. The industry waited until the last few months to implement the old directive. Great that there is hope to find less detached plastic in oceans across the world in some years at least. The behavioral change to move beyond plastics everywhere in our nutrition delivery system is long overdue. We shall get used to bring our own bottles for a refill or other devices to reduce plastic waste further. The change begins with thinking about the topic and finding suitable reusable packaging solutions for yourself. Children learn in art projects about the importance and creativity potential to reuse otherwise wasted materials. Reduce and re-use can be turned into an own competence. Competence in sustainability has been neglected for decades in school curricula, despite its importance for our own health and survival. (Image James Ensor exhibition and competition KBR, Brussels 2024-7)

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Narrative Object

Objects tell stories. Stories get condensed into narratives. Narratives become objects. Yes, we are going round in circles here. Artists have transformed an old splendid atelier and factory building into a new gallery space for “Objects with narratives” in Brussels. We construct, reconstruct and deconstruct narratives almost continuously. However, if narratives are transformed into an object or objects they will become something tangible or a fixed expression of the moment or process. The concept of art objects with narratives invites us to look for the narrative linked to the object. Just like in other disciplines like economics we have ample dominant and heterodox narratives. It is important to reflect on narratives and empirical evidence in their support. When we look at the mountains of plastics and garbage on our planet we see how an economic narrative has been turned into nasty objects. Objects with narratives is also how future generations will confront us with the pollution and waste objects we left and still leave behind us. (Image Bussels Gallery Objects with narratives 2024-7-13 Exhibition Marius Ritiu.)

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Sport Fashion

Sport is fashion and fashion is sport. Not only in the Euro 2024 the teams make a big fuzz about the design of their sportswear, but certainly the Olympic games in Paris 2024 will demonstrate the close links between the 2 worlds. We might say playing football is a bit like a fashion catwalk. Keep going right on target, despite obstacles, when thousands of people are watching your performance and potential failures very closely. Making a “bella figura” is a must in both spheres. There is also a strong tendency for “the winner takes all”, that s/he takes the trophy and the jackpot.
Both worlds are also big business in their own right. It is at least 100 years old that sport and fashion got married. The “Musée des arts décoratifs” in Paris had an excellent exhibition on the combination of sport and fashion (booklet link). According to the curators both spheres have always been interlaced. High-level performance and specialized fashion just made for a splendid combination. As the rich and wealthy had more than a penny or two to spend on their leisure activities the combination of sport and fashion soon became itself a big business, beside the visible beauty of the bodies, movements and dresses. Just watch the breakdance fashion as the latest addition to the repertoire of olympic disciplines. In a recent article in “Le Monde” (2024-7-11) the value of the market of sports including its fashionable merchandising is estimated to reach a turnover of € 500 billion in 2022.
The competition of sports has been turned into a competition of the best images and videos. Fashionable as well as functional clothing can assist in climbing the podium. In the Euro 2024 Football Final the teams equipped with Adidas (Spain) and with Nike (England) compete for the trophy. Changing equipment sponsorship from one to the other can raise substantial amounts for a team (€ 100 million/year for the German national team). Big business seems to take over sports and fashion after the century-old marriage of sport and fashion. Since then, they have jointly been on an extended honeymoon. (Image from www.emptyspacetm.com 2024-7)

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Couch Cottage

As vacation time is approaching, we ask ourselves, whether to choose the comfortable couch or the remote cottage. This is the proposition of Roger-Pol Droit in “Le Monde Livres” (“Sagesse 2024: cabane ou canapé“, 28.6.2024 p.36) based on the reading of “Ma cabane sans peine” by Alain Guyard and “Philosophie du Canapé” by Stefano Scrima.
The couch stands for the lazy life or “vita contemplativa“, thinking about philosophical topics that need a certain form of laid back behaviour to allow your brain to sort out tricky questions or to ask yourself, what is, was or will be important questions. Many academics shut themselves away from the busy life outside to reserve more time for couch thinking. The usual products of this activity practised on chairs and couches is more or less digestable books. Some make a comfortable living out of this active inactivity.
The cottage approach follows another longstanding philosophical tradition associated with Dionysos. Living a simple life in a remote place, but full of life’s enjoyment allows to exalt in the dithyrambic atmosphere of the countryside.
Rather than the either, or issue: couch or cottage, I go along with the dialectics of Hegel, who forms out of thesis and antithesis the synthesis. In our example this is obviously equal to “take the couch to the cottage“, problem solved. Additionally Nietzsches version of “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft” seems to prolong the dialectic experience of going beyond the “neither, nor” dichotomy to combine both couch and cottage.
You sensed it. It will be a rather exciting summer break to pursue on the many roads to “Sagesse 2024” (Wisdom 2024).

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Schooling Ukraine

It is hard to imagine what it will mean to go to school, if your father has to defend your country, Ukraine, and freedom of education instead of Russian indoctrination. This is tough for all children in countries that have to defend themselves today or in the past. For Ukrainian children and families who had to flee their country this means that they have to go through another education system, not out of choice, but instead of their normal way through their education system. This means a lot of additional challenges for them. In Germany alone the educational authorities have counted more than 200.000 children in schools at the beginning of 2024. Additional efforts are undertaken to allow mothers as well to learn a foreign language to facilitate communication with the receiving countries. We have to make huge efforts that these children are not a scared generation of pupils but rather a strengthened generation of young persons with solid learning experiences in another country. Some will stay in the receiving countries, many will return and rebuild their homes and communities. Our support and assistance needs to be a long term commitment beyond the end of the war after an eventual Russian retreat from Ukraine territory. Solidarity is not a fixed-term commitment. We shall be put to the test and should not hesitate about our continued support.

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Art or Profession

In political science it is a long tradition to discuss, whether politics is an art or a profession. The idealist tradition, going back as far as Plato in ancient Greek history of ideas, puts the exercise of politics near the exercise of a divine art to do justice. Much later in the history of ideas Max Weber rather bluntly defined politics as a profession (original in German) that requires to master a set of competences.
Recent elections in Europe (EU, France, UK, Belgium) and around the globe (India, USA) in 2024 add interesting case studies to the old question. Is politics an art or a profession?
In modern politics the life course or life cycle of a politician consists of at least 2 phases: (1) the electoral campaign before and (2) the potential of governing or opposition. Each phase requires a different set of competences. In phase 1 it is important to propose a new or different ideal from the previous government. Charismatic presentation of an ideal set of policies is asked for.  In phase 2 it is required of the politician to forge compromises, either within the own political party or beyond boundaries of political parties. Certainly, in multi-level governance systems like the European Union additional forms of coalition building across countries is required, intercultural competence or language skills are an advantage here.
The 2 phases of the life cycle of a politician require different sets of skills. Charisma as mentioned by Plato and Weber can get a politician into power and charismatic leadership can get you through a lot of coalition building. On the other hand, modern campaigning in repeated elections is a specialized competence that resembles marketing expertise as well as “reading of statistics” and in-depth analyses of shifting or stable preferences of electorates and to succinct conclusions on this basis. Running a political party or a parliamentary group is yet another leadership skill just like communication skills that, beyond many prejudices, can be learned.
In a nutshell. Politics is an art and a profession. The art consists in the variable combination of different sets of competences. Art requires competences just as professions can be turned into art.  Welcome to the hybrid world of modern politics. (Image extract from MAD Paris, Picasso, Schiaparelli)

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Searching Beauty

The search for beauty is an endless story of humanity. We have searched for it almost everywhere. Depicting beauty is probably the oldest form of artistic endeavors. We have invented numerous ways to find and represent beauty in a rather restless manner. We tend to find it in other persons of the same or other gender. The challenge is to keep trying to see the beauty in persons when others don’t, or don’t admit to it. Andy Warhol made this search for beauty his primary aim in his life as well as for his artistic work. The “Neue Nationalgalerie” in Berlin presents the, at times controversial, perspectives on beauty through the eyes and artwork of this exceptional artist. Beauty is at times a holistic concept or a detail by detail, piece by piece approach. Being open to other visions and versions of beauty is the major thrust of Warhol’s work. There is so much beauty around we just have to bother to focus on it. If not satisfied design it yourself. Start with a tour of exhibitions and experience the endless scope of imagination through the eyes of artists. (Image from Warhol exhibition in Berlin 2024 Neue Nationalgalerie, series „Ladies and Gentlemen“ 1975)

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1Person Nation

One single person can stand for a whole country. At least that’s what mass media have tried to make us believe. Whole countries or even empires have been associated with single personalities. Maybe for simplicity we start with Caesar, Cleopatra and the like. These personalities reach historic status through the literature that has reported on their achievements and fame. Mass media of today copy that strategy to create fame out of images. The American journal “Cineaste” has recently exemplified the making of an idol with the popular actor “Jean Gabin”, who happened to be the representative not only of French cinema, but the image of France across countries and even continents. Identification with an actor or the projected image of a person are common goals in politics as well. The actor Ronald Reagan became elected as president of the USA. Zelensky in Ukraine has followed a similar trajectory. The examples are manifold, but the underlying mechanism remain pretty similar. Before we had the concept of influencers, not influenza, popular spreading of messages is key. Only the technology changed. New ways to prepare a 1person nation have been added over time. Followers are the new political currency. Beware of signs “Follow Me”, even if it is the police asking you to do so. (Image: Deutsche Kinemathek Exhibition 2024)

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Back pain

Most people know some form of back pain. This is understandable as an ever increasing share of people work in seated positions and spend additional leisure time in a similar position (gaming). Recurrent back pain is a frequent diagnosis. An Australien study has found a rather simple remedy for the widespread pain. The WalkBack experiment succeeded to significantly reduce recurrent lower back pain in study participants. Individualized and progressive walking accompanied by an education program did the trick. Keep on walking and try to extend the range of the exercise. It’s amazing to witness how the human body adapts to being challenged. Learning about the mechanics at work like the release of own personal “pain killers” hormones helps to trust in your body’s positive response to each dose of the challenge to pain. Do not walk too quickly too far. Stretching is a must and not an option. Go for it. Modern technology (in any smartphone) supports your efforts with counting your steps and measuring distances. Keeping track of a “pain diary” might give you guidance not to overdo the exercise and pause activities. Join a group of friends or people who are like-minded and get adequate shoes and clothes to feel comfortable while walking and afterwards as well.

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Nutrition Competence

Nutrition is a good example of how a long lasting disregard in education and learning systems has led to huge medical costs for individuals and societies nowadays. The obesity pandemic calls for urgent action and policy changes in the field of nutrition policies and learning goals for children and adults. Medical doctors have mostly discarded that it is also their responsibility to provide medical guidance on nutrition, as this is highly controversial at times and asks for behavioural changes of the patient. School teachers see little scope to act on the issue due to increasing demands in fields of literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, digital and communication skills. Hence, the hope is to fill the instruction and learning gaps with a hybrid approach of nurses taking on both roles and communicate with children as well as adults alike. This is a tough challenge for these persons, but hopes a high that they can make a significant improvement to the nutrition competences of individuals, pupils, their parents and specific target groups.
The starting point is to recognize that there is an issue with nutrition. The next to establish the best evidence and based on this to develop a curriculum for the nurses to be well-prepared for the challenge in the field. Even with the differentiation of different levels of competences, the learning has to be rather encompassing several related fields as well. Individual, behavioural as well as society-level factors like biology, technology, religious beliefs, economic and social factors determine nutritional choices and consumption. Just because there are so many factors to consider  does not justify to keep nutrition out of school curricula for example. Nutrition is a fine example of a topic which links disciplines across a broad range. It is a tasty, at times spicy mixture of issues to learn and apply. The former is the beginning, the latter the real challenge which needs ample and repeated guidance or coaching. (Image: Extrait of Abraham Mignon, 1640-1679, Undergrowth with flowers, animals and insects, MRBA Brussels)

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Nutrition Policy

The evidence on nutrition policies has accumulated a series of policy recommendations based on the best available evidence. The German Institute of Human Nutrition has presented these results repeatedly not only to the scientific community, but also to the interested public at the Science Week or the Long Night of Science. Their leaflet on the tools to improve our human nutrition in market economies highlights “nutrition competence” as a key component of a broad strategy to improve our food and subsequently health. Nutrition goes beyond the biological ingredients of food to include basic understandings of human metabolism including the times and timing of meals. This competence has to be transmitted to preschoolers, pupils as well as adults to stem the waves of obesity (ARTE Docu). Learning how to manage your own nutrition is a crucial competence to strive and survive. In schools it can have substantial impacts on performance and inequality of opportunities as well.

The science-based policy recommendations propose to alter the structure of costs, for example via tax reductions, in favor of healthy food. Plain water should be substantially cheaper than sweet beverages or alcoholic drinks. Nuts and proteins from vegetables fall in the same category as plain water. It is in the longer term interest of all of us that schools, canteens at work places or homes for the elderly offer also healthy nutrition at least as a daily option. More sustainability in food production is last, but not least part of nutrition policies. A lot to chew on to improve nutrition.

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Violence Potential

The book (editor Sabrow 2023) and the exhibition “Gewalt gegen Weimar. Zerreißproben der frühen Republik 1918-1923” need a broad European audience. The violence, which in the medium term destroyed the newly founded democracy of the Weimar Republic in Germany, is linked to the immediate aftermath of the 1st world war. The relatively calm abolition of monarchy in Germany did in no way prevent the eruption of violence within the new democracy. Extreme forces prepared in organized ways (Organisation Consul) and some in open public discourses the potential for the use of violence. Armaments left over from war equipped the Freikorps Movements and the potential to use the weapons was present at all times in the aftermath of WW1 in Germany. The contributions to the volume provide a detailed account of these 5 crucial years when democracy was able to defend itself against all odds. The strategies to take control of the country were built on a violent rhetoric which prepared the ground to put violent talk into action later on. This spiral of violence is hard to de-escalate once started. However, democracies have to foster ways to calm the spirits in periods of high potential violence. Elections as well as the campaigns before are the arms of democratic change. They should be used as such to pave the way to compromise.

Exhibition at Topography of terror Berlin 2024-6
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Composing Assisted

Before the existence of digital composition tools composers were assisted by “Kopisten”. These persons rewrote the original draft of a composition into a “proper” version of the original document. Musicology has a tough time to deal with deviations from the original. It needs to be clarified which is the final and authorized version. In some instances this is far from evident. Just as an example Robert Schumann made ample use of the assistance of Kopist Otto Hermann Klausnitz (cf Nr 6), sometimes for the preparation of the composition, the finalized versions or the explicit drafting of different voices. Klausnitz himself was a flautist in Leipzig (Gewandhausorchester) and a conductor in Duesseldorf. Overall the debate is still going on, whether the composer’s draft or in many instances the Kopist’s version of the composition (authorized or not) prevails. In the age of AI, which is highly influential in modern music, such questions will most likely be intrinsic to the process of composition as well. AI is influential in evening out rough edges. Anette Mueller (2010) has done a great job to make this work of “Kopisten” much more transparent and her concluding chapter is programmatically entitled “Komponist und Kopist- Aspekte einer produktiven Kooperation”. (Image Mueller, A 2010 p. 340).

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Betting vice

Betting is considered a vice. The industry has moved from the local bookmakers to the internet and is spread across countries and continents. Some legal advisers have classified betting as the fastest growing vice industry and it is about time to launch a wake up call for more oversight of what is going on in the sector. As betting like gambling seems to be working in conjunction with other addictions the potential of cumulative risks is quite high. Our brains tend to wire things together which frequently occur jointly. It is difficult to disentangle these co-occurrences later again. The major angle of attack is prevention.
Health journals start warnings of the detrimental effects persons and observe that the industry follows similar strategies as the tobacco industry to address as many people as possible. And this is very successful and profitable for them. Hence, prevention strategies should also follow what has been applied to smoking like the ban from restaurants and bars as well as the restrictions on advertising. We will have to accept that betting and gambling should not be as easily accessible as it is currently. Age restrictions have to be applied stringently. I bet this will take quite a long time until Europe and elsewhere the regulations will change. Some of the young get interested in even more stimulating activities like exploring arts (image below class at Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin 2024-6) rather than betting on who is going to win the Euro 2024 football matches.

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Smoke Gamble

Smoking is like a gamble. Your input is your health and money. This is not including those who might rely on you or family relationships that might suffer one way or another. The other link has gambling at its source and smoking goes along with the continuous risk taking or the belief to be able to master the risks involved with both forms of potential addictions. Research has accumulated evidence that in fact both smoking and gambling occur frequently in combination with each other. Taking risks against the odds of suffering losses, maybe only in the medium or longer run perspectives like for health seems acceptable for those people. Society has put rather high taxes on both activities to discourage people and invests in prevention of addictions. However, it does not have substantial effects on people as smoking remains around the same level and gambling (poker online) or betting on sports (Euro 2024) are rising rapidly. Vaping and internet gaming have broadened the spectrum of addictive behaviors mostly for younger persons and young adults. The risks are manifold and increasing in their addictive potential since the smartphone is always in some pocket just like the smoking device. The behavioral turn in the social sciences has been well understood by the industries as well. The stakes for human development are high in this endeavor to offer young people equal opportunities at entry into adulthood.

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Cannabis Alcohol

The use of cannabis and/or alcohol is yet another question where we are used to ask questions in the form of: either the or the other? Over generations we have gotten used to no longer ask for each do you or don’t you. With the controlled liberalization or legalization of cannabis in some Western European states the framing of the question is more like you do the one or the other, particularly for many younger persons.
Decriminalization of both drugs in small quantities is apparently reducing crimes link to drug use and drug dealing. On the other hand, the thresholds for doing drugs are lower than they used to be. In inner cities it is therefore no longer a surprise to find both kinds of drugs with addictive potential next to each other (see image below). We know that it is a slippery road from regular drug use to uncontrolled dependency and personal disaster. For cannabis a study published in the Lancet (Petrilli et al. 2022) added the importance of the potency of tetrahydrocannabinol to the estimate of risks. This is similar to the studies that differentiate the level of alcohol in drinks consumed. The higher the concentration, the higher the risks. A simple proportional relationship prevails in both drugs. The cumulative effects of consuming both together might have quite surprising non-linear effects.
The big issue is the risks of mental health related to these drugs. However, the causal direction is not easy to detect. Drugs induce mental health problems, but also mental health issues lead to drug abuse. This remains quite a puzzle for scientists to disentangle.
Additionally, the link to smoking and addiction to nicotine is a frequently observed corollary. Studying just one single source of health problems and addiction might be too restrictive to learn about the whole set of causal effects and casualties. For the time being we seem to jump from one field of attention to the next one ignoring the multiple interrelated factors at hand.