We lose control!
Two year olds roll over on the tricycle, Grannies make belly-punch in the garden pool, David Hasselhoff mumbles drunkenly a hamburger: mishaps like these can be seen on YouTube, MyVideo or in the TV show "Pleiten, Pech und Pannen". Day by day, people enjoy the clips. Apparently, there is an insatiable need to see mortalites tumble from the chair and celebrities from the corporate ladder.
The enthusiasm for the misfortune of others is understandable when we realize that this is not about any jokesbut something existential, namely our most important basic psychic need - which we usually perceive only when we lose it: the control. Preserving them costs us a lot of concentration and strength. Because control losses are so embarrassing and therefore frightening, we unconsciously watch over it all the time, just to not show us any nakedness.
And enjoy it all the more, when other people happen, what we want to avoid at all costs: The others lie down on their faces. But we stay safe and sound. Our tension escapes in a mean, liberating laugh: the glee is a little feast for the soul.
Losing control - this feeling is as threatening to us as the fear of falling. Maybe because our ancestors once slept on trees and the panic from falling out of the treetop still slumbers deep in our genes. Separations are unbearable because we feel helpless, addictions and addictions dangerous, because everything threatens to slip away from us. A total loss of control is reflected as a trauma in our psyche.
But at the same time, it is one of our greatest sources of pleasure to drop us. From the ass bomb in the outdoor pool over the roller coaster ride to orgasm: We have a deep yearning to give up control. We want to fall in love, relax and surrender.
The consequence of these two contrary needsEach of us lives in a two-zone world. In the public area, we make sure to be well dressed, to curb our feelings, to show good behavior. In the family, with friends and lovers, we are far less controlled: We walk around with greasy hair, cry or scream with rage and leave dirty underwear lying on the bedroom floor. Sometimes we even let ourselves go. This is the zone of intimacy. Or better: it was her.
For the greedy participation in the lives of othersThe curious look behind the facades is being used more and more intensively by the media. The paparazzi's telephoto lenses, the video cell phones of random reporters or fake friends are constantly searching for cracks in that façade that separates the immaculate public star from the normal, unvarnished private person.
Did they discover a crack?In the meantime, it only takes them a few hours to present their discovery to the world on the Internet: the footballer Ronaldo as the alleged transvestite suitor, Kate Moss or Ronald Schill cooing, Jack Nicholson in swimming trunks or the Paris Hilton whirling around in homepornos.
But while in the past it was almost exclusively celebrities who always had to be on guard, In order not to be disenchanted, the public display of intimate information has long since become a weapon between private individuals: Teenies publish videos of drunken, passing classmates, students are attracted to teachers on the Internet, the spurned lover puts secretly spun private pornos on the net.
Every third child in the US is allegedly the victim of cyberbullying. And a Tricia Walsh Smith has proven that the virtual sleazy war has long since led to all ages and shifts: she is probably the first Upperclass spouse who tries to pressure her stout husband in the divorce war by chatting on Youtube about his potency problems , The enemy is wounded where he is most vulnerable: in his dignity.
Intimate knowledge about the other means having power over him, as employers have discovered: Not only Lidl, Schlecker, Penny and Co - every medium-sized company can spy on and pressurize its employees with now inexpensive video systems. Every third office computer is controlled. The days when trust was an alternative to control are over. Even if we do not give our boss any reason to be warned, there remains a sense of vulnerability: Who scratched behind the door to the staff rooms at the Po or drilled in the nose, does not want to be watched by a secret camera and the eyes behind it.
The zone of intimacy is that zone of our lives that others may enter only at our personal invitation. Anyone who spies on it without us having opened the door deprives us of our self-determination - and leaves the same traces in our soul as a break-in in our home: Suddenly we feel defenseless against powers and fellow human beings. We lose the security of being protected.
We lose our dignity, If we can not defend ourselves and our anger runs into emptiness, we despair and resign ourselves. In the end, perhaps we will lose control of our lives, such as the persecuted Britney Spears or the footballer Ronaldo, whom all the world could only observe at a meeting with prostitutes and then at the collapse of his life. "It's as if I've built a house," Ronaldo, apparently unjustly described, described his condition, "and then it was destroyed by a heavy hurricane."
Although it is now well known that private information can become an explosivewho chases down our lives, our love, our career plans, when they involuntarily fall into the wrong hands, more and more people reveal more and more personal details of themselves to an anonymous audience - voluntarily. Today 400 million people use social online networks like Facebook, StudiVZ or MySpace. They all trust that only those virtual "friends" will have access to their data, to which this access is granted. And they ignore that it is a no-brainer for any expert to crack their zone of intimacy.
After the near-crash landing of a Lufthansa pilot was filmed by a Hamburg Plains Potter and put online, researched the "image" on the Internet. The editors found what they were looking for and presented their "millionaire audience" the "beautiful pilot" and "their sad secret", including private photos - on the front page.
On the next page: The propensity for self-expression
Other people in turn renounce the pseudo-security of social networks: They present their inner life in blogs and on personal homepages. With the promise to rise in the Olympus of the models and pop stars, they can be filmed during Heulkrampf. They do not realize that they have no chance to become a star.
Who publicly drools, moans, curses and can be made small by Heidi Klum and her auxiliary admirer, which surrounds no more secret, which is not suitable as a projection screen for the dreams of the people. And anyone who spreads on the Internet as a 17-year-old, standing on big breasts and chilling instead of working, forgets that in addition to the girls from the school may also read the first employer. Every third hiring manager googles his applicants.
How the unprotected private can be used against us, witnessed the mayor of an American nest called Arlington. Her political opponents used a photograph that had been innocently posted by a cousin of the incumbent; it showed her in underwear and became the basis of a campaign that toppled her.
All these people succumb to the charm of self-expression because it flatters their vanity and enhances self-esteem. They are wrong. The media public is a dazzling seductress who has nothing to offer except curiosity - neither security nor recognition. But it makes us dissolve the boundaries between inside and outside. The sociologist Richard Sennett described in the 70s "The tyranny of intimacy". To establish closeness, to show oneself personally and openly, has become more and more a central value of our culture.
On the next page: Learning to stay in control
We will have to learn to protect ourselves, to defend our intimate space. We will not always succeed. And no matter how virtual and crazy the beautiful new world of the next few years may look - our reactions remain the same as they were in the mammoth roast before the cave.
We will go through the emotional cascades of shame, anger, despair, hate and resignation, feeling helpless. And then we will express our feelings for so long, talk to real friends, pay therapists, arrange thoughts and fantasies until we finally feel again that we care so much about having control over ourselves.
