Category: sociology

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Autonomy as Happiness

The French philosopher Émile-Auguste Chartier, better known as Alain, is a proponent of a rational approach towards fundamental issues. Therefore, we should expect from the reading of “Propos sur le bonheur” a thought-based conception of happiness. In his propositions on happiness, autonomous decision-making and autonomous actions play a decisive role. Rather than writing a voluminous “treatise” on happiness, he had chosen in the 1920s, the form of 93 about 2-page long propositions about happiness. These propositions are a bit more explicit than, for example, Nietzsche’s aphorisms, but they remain short without much literary context to the kind of rational analysis based on observations and anecdotal supporting evidence.
In propositions 42 “Agir” and 44 “Diogène” he deals with autonomy as subject. “on veut agir, on ne veut pas subir” (in short, “act, not endure”, own translation), that is his quintessence. “Tous les métiers plaisent autant que l’on y gouverne, et déplaisent autant que l’on y obéit.” (44). (All professions are pleasant if you govern, and are unpleasant if you have to obey). More than 100 years later, empirical studies on job quality, job satisfaction and happiness still build on this rationale.

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Press in the 1970s

In the 70s there were many so-called underground or alternative papers printed. For people in bigger cities or in cities with universities, the 70s flourished with independent journalism which addressed small audiences. Each access to printing materials and paper allowed to go it alone for groups of society that did not feel they were adequately represented by established media. Some of these “underground” papers published texts that could be considered going against the dominant legal principles. Topics like feminism, birth control, abortion or more left wing political statements against private property had to fight to reach their audiences. The cold war period created another overarching threat to the representation of all opinions. Hence some groups we t underground to function as they wanted and how they interpreted the freedom of expression and being published. (Image: BNF Exhibition Underground 2026-6). 

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Marilyn Monroe TM

The image and probably even the person of Marilyn Monroe has become a trademark of its own. Since the choice to change her name and outlook to become or be created as the objectified trademark of Marilyn Monroe, the financial interests to gain money using every image, sound or video have reached above average returns. The profits mostly accrue to those owning the commercial rights. At the occasion of her 100th birthday, this continued rent seeking keeps spinning.
It has been well documented that the early death at just 36 years of age is linked to her exploitation or “commodification” as a trademark rather than a person able to cope with the overloaded imagery of herself. Bookshops, even in 2026-6, decorate their windows with books with her image on the cover as eye catcher. As with few other persons, Marilyn Monroe stands for an objectified person where the property rights of the image keep being exploited long after her tragic death. (Image: Marilyn Monroe, tramage by Bruno James BdF, left and algorithmic on the right. Transbordeur 2026).

 

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Security and Popularity

With webpages it is a bit like in the world of glamour. The more popular a webpage becomes, the more you have to invest in security features.
In a parallel webpage project, the choice has been to go for a popular name for the webpage and blog activities. After a year of sporadic blogging the site has become a regular target for hacking attempts by means of login attempts. This has led the administrator to previously allow only one single login attempt before banning login attempts from the same IP-address for several days. This does no longer allow a misspelling of the tricky password on your own behalf or the password-manager, if you happen to use one.
Security becomes a “sine qua non” condition for web-users as well as web-developers. We usually take only sufficiently care of this point, when it is “almost” to late. With 16.000+ login attempts over the time of about 1 year and 6 running locked-out IP-addresses, I almost gave up already on another domain with a more popular name. External backups become another necessity to prepare for the eventual failure to access own content and data bases.
Actually, I feel rather safe going out at night as a man in Europe, but the dangers of the global access to a web-page feels much less safe most of the time.

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Latent social structure

In empirical approaches to sociology we occasionally apply “latent variables analyses”. The aim is to uncover links between data that are not obvious in standard analyses of data. We are pretty convinced by evidence that age correlates with the probability of death. However, most tragedies are created around exceptional counter examples to this “rational expectation”. We also somehow have an intuition about the positive effect of social networks or the social fabric in a more general sense on living and survival. In some of those latent variable models we find evidence for an underlying factor without being able to properly name or frame it. Hence, as social scientists we continue to be interested in ways to make latent social structures more visible. With such an approach in mind I visited the exhibition by author and photographer “John Kolya Reichart” in the “Schöneberg Museum” entitled “Die Kette” (The Chain, 2026-5). The start of the chain is a familiar person in your neighborhood who leads you to the next person and so on. It is explicitly a non-random procedure, which complements proceedings of strictly random sample selection of survey methodologies. The sources for bias outcomes are multiple, however, an underlying or latent social fabric of a friendship and support mechanisms can be shown. Besides the b/w portraits and audios, giving a justification for the choice, the documentation of the process of production gives more insights into the risks and potentials of this form of insights into latent social structures.
(Image: Schoeneberg Museum, “Die Kette” by John Kolya Reichart)

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Post-sacred architecture

As with our human bodies, and in many instances already, sacred architecture follows a life course pattern. The thriving religious communities build and expand their faith to larger audiences. In these expansionary phases of the faith many monumental buildings, known as sacred architecture, as well as splendid interiors or artefacts enter the “built faith”. After the peak of membership and in periods of contraction, the question of how to scale down the splendors starts to arise.
Eventually, the ceding of the sacred architecture to the non-believing communities comes into consideration. The sacred architecture needs to find its place in the evolution of societies as well as urban and rural local space. Depending on the intentions and resources of communities, post-sacred architecture has to redefine its purpose for its own survival.
An interesting example of post-sacred architecture constitutes the “Friedrichswerdersche Kirche” in Berlin. The use as a historic exhibition space for sculptures of the 19th century works particularly well in combination with an active program on art, architecture and history. The statue by Ludwig Winckelmann (image below) depicts the reflection on and about a miniature sculpture in space. The post-sacred use of this fine and luminous architecture continues to reach an enlightened audience.

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Pictures at an exhibition

The playlist on Spotify, which accompanies the exhibition “Unforgettable” in Ghent, is an interesting extension of the unforgettable artists into today and tomorrow. You may be inclined to share your opinion in the way Maria Iskariot does it in “Dat find ik lekker” or more like Sophie Straat in “Dansen met de dood”. Anyway, women artists are coming front stage and this is great news despite all the backlashes we, unfortunately, witness in the 2020s. The curator of the playlist Murielle Scherre has managed to take us, a bit like the exuberant Modest Mussorgsky in his “Pictures at an exhibition”, beyond the marvelous exhibition rooms to a broad exploration of contemporary women artists’ world of imagination in music, visuals and songs. A great intergenerational accomplishment. 

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Jobs First

The Berlin demonstration of the 1st of May has chosen to put „Jobs First“. Jobs before profits is a widely accepted claim by trade unions to highlight the importance of work in our societies. Particularly in times of robots and AI taking jobs away, this motto is well chosen as a principal risk in 2026. The current technological innovations seem to aim primarily at the maximization of profits for companies rather than the benefits for society as a whole.  The Berlin parade on the 1st of May managed to achieve a great mobilization, which is a great success for the labor movement and a demonstration of power and solidarity when in many countries basic employment rights and even the 1st of May as a social tradition is attacked.

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Mobile Web Search

The smartphone is ruling the internet. This is probably a well-known wisdom in 2026. Just looking at the basic statistics of which browser people use to contact this webpage, it is evident that Chrome is vastly dominating search on the internet. Even the mobile version of Safari outnumbers the desktop browser access. Information gathering, viewing and reading have all moved from the desktop to the handheld smartphone, and maybe our glasses or wristwatches in the near future. For those still programming or designing webpages, the choice of “mobile access and functionality first” is an obvious choice for business, and even more so, for leisure purposes, like it or not.
Some parts of this evolution of search behavior are quite obvious, as we are more erring around cities like Paris, Berlin or Brussels than searching in front of our desktops or notebooks.

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Autonomous Robot

We have been used to computers beating the average chess player and even the best players. In 2026-4 the journal “Nature” published the documentation of an autonomous robot (Ace) winning the occasional game against top-level Japanese table tennis players. Peter Dürr et al. (2026) described the robotics challenge as constructing a robot that can match the human capability and reaction time of “fast, precise and adversarial interactions near obstacles”. The high speed perception of movement is coupled with event-based vision and builds on AI-algorithms like reinforcement learning. The step ahead is remarkable.
About 50 years ago, as coach in table tennis we used a machine or robot throwing balls towards us which moved from left to right in timed routine, for example. These simple robots we used to train humans. Now the robot is reactive and even interactive, learning from strategies and tactical moves. Technology can outperform us in most singular tasks in 2026. The combination of several of these skills is still quite unique to humans, but the clock is ticking for human singularity in technical matters. What was considered a “false good idea” in the Paris exhibition “Flops” at the Musée Arts et Metiers (see image below), might be an interesting response to challenge the new generation of autonomous robots.