Germany's Freefall

“The Good Old Days”

Some time ago I read from a journalist: “In the past, everything used to be organic.” My response to this at the time was rather clumsy: “Beating women used to be standard. Animals used to be petted?”

Kings had died from their beautiful red and green wallpaper. The colors of these had been made with mercury salts in combination with lead or copper. At some point people had realized that these bright colors were poisonous. They were then used as insecticides and fungicides. Today, organic farmers continue this beautiful tradition with copper.

Washing clothes was a challenge. You washed them with soap and a washboard – a thing with a metal sheet in the middle that was folded in a zigzag, and an insane hassle to the housewife.

Less than sixty years ago people had used a radioactive radiator with a shield affixed on top of it. People used to put their foot and their new shoes into it and could directly see the space left by their toes in the shoes. This wasn’t done at the hospital, but in the shoe store. It was considered progress when you could immediately see how your new shoes fit.

Fifty years ago, people who ate schnitzel received the same dose of hormones as from a birth control pill.

There were no nicotinamides for insects and no glyphosate. Smoking wasn’t harmful to your health. “Better reach for an HB (cigarette) - then everything will work out like a charm” was the motto. Beriberi was on everyone’s lips (which is why we should always eat “whole grain” food). Copha (“Palmin”) closed the pores of the meat. Scurvy was caused by a vitamin C deficiency, and the power of Omo detergent “went through the knot”. All this, by the way, “allegedly”.

What’s more, “innovations” hadn’t existed yet. These were dubbed “progress”. In the past, people moved forward, today everything is new.

Wikipedia reports that potato varieties were still being cultivated in the Third Reich (variety “Forward!”), which had about ten times as much solanine, the poison of the nightshade plant, as today’s varieties. Times back then were so good because less poison had to be sprayed because the poison was in the potatoes. One small disadvantage: If you ate 1 kg of potatoes you were dead. Rudolf Steiner (philosopher and founder of the Waldorf schools) said: “Eating potatoes makes you stupid”.

Since people knew about such things, no one would ever come up with the idea of doing something like that. The purpose of food was to get calories into your body – in contrast to today where we avoid calories in order to chase after an ideal of beauty.

No decent drugs were available. Women had a hard time: They died of childbed fever, or their children did, or both together.

Many people died of syphilis, which usually ends in dementia in its final stage. The first effective drug against it was called “Salvarsan”. It was a mixture of heavy metals. The Farbwerke Hoechst chemicals company produced the toxin during the Second World War. Local residents were often forced to shut their windows, as everything often became covered with the yellow factory dust. Near blast furnaces, on the other hand, the factory dust was red. Epidemics abounded as well as children’s diseases that resulted in permanent damage or death. Letterpress printing letters were made of lead, which is why many printers died of lead poisoning. Sweetening was done with lead sugar. Cars were operated on leaded fuel. The lead dust was blown into the environment. Water pipes were made of lead as well, but this was regarded relatively uncritically.

Plants were fertilized with excrement. It's well known that it can be toxic. EHEC sends its regards.

Since no insecticides existed, every household was plagued with insects such as cockroaches and the like. Windows had no glass – only the upper class had glass windows. The English word “window” comes from the word “wind-eye”. It was for ventilation purposes so that you didn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning when heating your quarters. As mentioned before, Immanuel Kant was also plagued by vermin in his study and certainly in bed as well. It would be interesting to know how many people suffered from arachnophobia, i.e. a fear of spiders. I almost wrote “arachidophobia”. No: Peanuts were unknown in Europe.

To stay with the subject: The old railroad trains used to be pulled by beautiful steam engines. The ride used to be quite ramontic – excuse me, I meant “romantic”. Apart from the fact that many stokers in locomotives went stupid because they suffered from continuous carbon monoxide poisoning (tunnels...). In December 1952, 12,000 people had died from the smog in London.

Romantic relationships were uncommon in earlier centuries. “Romantic love” was promoted in poetry, by the theater and the media. Marriage was for convenience and only had to do with “love” in exceptional cases. Children were needed to feed you in old age.

Five droughts were recorded in Germany around the year 1240, similar to that in 2019. This is evidenced by “Hungersteine” (“hunger stones”) that served as famine memorials in rivers, which had showed up again for the first time in 2019. There were no trucks and no water pipes. Thousands starved to death. First, the old people were left to starve and then the children. Survivors were marked for life.

In contrast, about 1600 people had experienced a cold period. The sun was at its “Maunder Minimum”, as sunspots had become extremely rare. The result was the Thirty Years’ War. This war may have triggered by the Defenestration of Prague and different political and religious objectives within and outside the territory of the Reich at that time, but the cause was certainly the migration of people as well, which was triggered by the cold temperatures. As a result of the effects of the war and the associated epidemics, famines and rabid wolves, the population was so decimated that no one believed in a possible recovery.

The Holy Roman Empire had no bathing facilities. In the Middle Ages, communal bathing establishments did exist in urban areas, but these were closed again for moral and hygienic reasons. Even in baroque castles you had to search a long time to find any bathing facilities. These were the high times for Europe’s perfume makers. The ordinary citizen in town or out in the countryside had to resort to the wooden tub. Travelers to Italy were not welcome there because of their body odor. Showers had not been invented yet.

When the farmer and his wife went to church, they came from the fields and often had to march to church for hours. That’s why the churches stank. Pastors often burned incense as a remedy. The social elite could already afford a lot at that time. Incidentally, the Native Americans employed the same method after the Spanish sailors had invaded America and brought their deadly diseases with them.

As far as the economy was concerned, most people worked in the fields or raised livestock. One farmer was able to sustain about five people. There was no social security and there were no kindergartens.

Colicky kids (“Schreikinder”) existed even back then. While their parents worked in the fields, their kids had to be kept quiet. Probably some of them had to be tied up. Another method was common as well: a pacifier trenched in beer or poppy extracts/opium was put in the mouths of children – lethal, but highly effective and certainly “organic”, even by today’s standards.

As far as education was concerned, compulsory schooling was introduced at the beginning of the 19th century. Learning meant multi-class, teacher-centered teaching. The cane was the means of choice when teaching discipline and the curriculum to students. This was the “pedagogy” of the time.

Until the introduction of forensics through genetic fingerprinting (DNA detection) a few years ago, it was not possible to convict many criminals, especially sex offenders.

Now to our terrible present time and its “plastic waste”.

The Terrible New Times

Regulations and rules can be found wherever you look. Only rules, standards and guidelines abound. It starts with vehicles, where “dual-circuit braking systems” have become mandatory. Even bicycles require two brakes. If you happen to question whether or not to allow those new electric scooters on the road and where and how – you’ll certainly be slapped with an anti-innovation tag!

Only officially permitted seeds are allowed to be grown, too. Vacuum cleaners as well are subject to an EU regulation that they mustn’t consume more than 900 W of power. The new EU regulations on factory farming define exactly everything when it comes to new barns, even the minimum amount of light required. Statics must be created for every house. The electrical system must be installed by an electrician. You aren’t allowed to do it yourself. Smoke detectors must be installed in every house. A mechanism is required for a window to open whenever a kitchen hood is operated together with a chimney. Cucumbers are normed according to their curvature and length. Carrots, too. Acrylamide is prohibited – very dangerous!

Tons of plastic are floating in the ocean. That’s why plastic straws and plastic bags have been banned (no joke). Cars have become more confusing to operate than ever before. Nicotine is toxic. Of course, nuclear power plants have been banned to avoid their nuclear waste. Now high-voltage lines are to be erected again, but these weren’t necessary in the past. Wind power plants are just standing around and blocking the view. They’re killing the birds, bats and insects. We have HIV. We have to get vaccinated for many more diseases than in the past. Car companies are constantly cheating on their fuel consumption figures. By the way: How come you don’t use “real” tires? The wicked automobile lobby’s to blame!

Everything everywhere is toxic. Roundup, nicotinamide, everything. Away with it all! To compensate, just blow your dog’s excrement around with your leaf blower. Dangerous when that stuff gets into your lungs as dust.

Everything is being genetically manipulated. Laundry detergents, dish washing detergents and basically everything else. Bioplastics are, of course, only possible thanks to that wicked genetic manipulation.

Trees are allowed to grow “naturally”, even grafted ones. Man must interfere with everything. Every farmer nowadays sustains far more than 100 people. This must be stopped! The best way to do this is with three-field farming. It's being taught in school again these days that this is best way to do it.

In the past fifteen years, bedlam has become commonplace in the classroom. The cane may have become extinct, but now some teachers only dare to enter their classroom with their cell phones in order to avoid being beaten up. There’s a shortage of teachers and suitable classrooms as the population had grown again. 700(!) teachers have resigned in Germany in Berlin in 2021, especially in natural sciences and math. The introduction of digital media has become an attempt to remedy these deficits, i.e. no discipline and incoherent teaching content. However, this has lead to a syllabus overload.

All you see is gridlock. The train’s never on time, too. The Hamburg opera house now officially costs € 850 million instead of the initially projected €77 million. The Berlin Brandenburg airport should already have been completed by 2011 and finalized in 2020 (for a standard flight traffic already too small). Train station “Stuttgart 21” has become a financial disaster. The military projects NH90, A400M and the Eurofighter were completed more than ten years too late. Actually, there’s no project in the recent past that hasn’t already experienced delays like this. Anti-nuclear protests and climate protests abound wherever you look.

And you have to get vaccinated and take stupid drugs. All stupid coertions! Homeopathy is much better!

At school you have to deal with physics and mathematics. The law of conservation of energy – for what purpose? Statistics – what nonsense!

Fashion – Perfecting the Body

In the past, food was used to get calories (or joules) into your body. Today, people chase an aesthetic ideal by avoiding calories. In ancient Rome, slender was by no means the aesthetic ideal. Obesity was probably the fashion. Prosperity was seen in “love handles”. Having a “noble pallor” was the fashion two hundred years ago, as this indicated that you didn’t have to work in the fields. Later, the tan became fashionable because it demonstrated that you could afford a vacation in the sunny south.

The latter, or “toasting” yourself in the sun, had been taken to such an extreme that skin cancer had become the inevitable result. A noble pallor had, in contrast, presumably resulted in a vitamin D deficiency.

Fashion is something that would most certainly ruin

your health whatever the time you lived in.

It’s the ideal that changes over time.

Delusional Causes

In order to be able to evaluate these kinds of systems like modern agriculture, which has undergone a centuries-long optimization process, you have to evaluate them and, to do so, understand the approach taken. As already mentioned, systems are becoming more and more complex. Since you don’t have any real chance to evaluate them without studying them in depth, you look to stay on the “safe side”.

This is because systems that aren’t understood trigger fears.

In order to avoid fear, you believe in being able to solve the various conflicting goals this way. The fact that even the (supposedly) safe side almost always involves negative repercussions can’t really be determined since you would have understood the system in order to be able to do so.

You’re thus caught in a typical dilemma.

Religions of the Modern World

The saying goes: “Man’s calamity is God’s opportunity.” As things are going downhill in Europe, and the “normal” religions are losing members, a new faith is finding more and more followers: Faith in the ideal per se: Nothing must include toxins, plastic, nuclear waste, and CO2. Let’s examine the reality, starting with plastic (waste), moving on to environmental pesticides and then by examining energy and mobility.

Plastic Waste

Plastics have been around for about 100 years. That’s not quite correct because natural plastics have already been produced in the past. Cheese is actually a plastic as well. However, the triumphal march of plastic commenced when it could be synthesized from oil.

In early 2018, one press release shocked Germany: “The Chinese are no longer taking our plastic waste!” What nerve! By now it’s probably being incinerated on garbage dumps in Africa or Bulgaria without a toxin filter. Out of sight, out of mind.

With press releases like these, people wonder why the waste is there in the first place and how it got there. In Germany, you have to pay money into the “Dual System” (called the “Green Dot”) in order to recycle any used packaging materials. This system has nothing better to do than ship this stuff, which an environmentally conscious person has already neatly sorted into the “yellow bag”, to China with a lot of effort and energy. No outcry here – not even from the Greens. In circumstances like these, you realize that the psychologist Manfred Lütz intended the title of his book “The New Crazy – Why We’ve Been Treating the Wrong Ones” exactly as he wrote it.

Many press reports chronicle the pollution of the world’s oceans with plastic waste and the wretched way it kills the animals that inhabit these. Of course, without examining the causes, a German immediately feels compelled to come up with ideas on how to reduce this kind of waste. An alternative solution? No idea. Anyone who has ever stepped on a piece of glass in the ocean or by a lake and almost amputated his or her little toe in the process will realize that sometimes glass is not the end-all solution.

Soy Plastics

In the past, plastic was made from plants. Car bodies were made from soy plastic, paints from soy oil. Soy was used as green manure – until the petroleum came. The toxic soy plant was first “fed” to pigs and then to the health-conscious European. You can find out more about this in chapter “Superfoods”. Since then, everything has been made from petroleum: Plastic racing car bodies, synthetic resin paints, plastics themselves and a whole host of other things.

Now plastics are supposed to be recycled. The magic word here is “sort-clean separation”. This may sound great, but it’s technically or physically difficult. Compare it to separating metals: Steel weighs three times as much as aluminum, is magnetic, in contrast to aluminum, and has a different melting point, which makes it easy to sort. All plastics are non-magnetic, have the same weight per volume (called “specific weight”) and sometimes don’t melt at all. So, you have to sort them by hand.

A particularly bad thing is that the specific weight of plastic is similar to that of water. It neither swims on the surface nor sinks to the bottom, but floats in water, harming marine life.

People get absurd ideas when it comes to recycling plastics: For example, some people wanted to add plastics to cement bricks in order to improve their thermal insulation properties. Even then you get the feeling: Just get rid of the stuff! This is even counterproductive since plastic has a property called “creep”. Plastic yields under continuous pressure. These houses will sink 2 inches after twenty years when you put too much plastic into the bricks.

When an engineer has to design something from recycled plastic, his hair will inevitably turn gray because the product’s manufacturer must guarantee its quality. To do this, the designer must be able to rely on its material properties. But if the plastic can’t be properly sorted, then these material properties will be fraught with uncertainties. Therefore, too much material is used so that the component won’t break, thereby destroying the world of the person who admired the thought of how great recycling plastic is.

That’s why recycled plastics are usually used to make kitchen chopping boards or similar products where the strength of the material is virtually irrelevant.

Over 95% of all packaging plastics produced in Germany are recycled, making Germany the world champion of recycling. That’s a good thing. However, why plastic should be banned on the grounds that marine animals are dying from it, the causality, i.e. the causation of this reasoning, isn’t given.

Plastic nanoparticles have been discovered now. This sounds dangerous: Nano. Nobody really knows what to make of it, and it can be used to stir up fear. ”Nano” means 10-9 meters or 10-6 mm, i.e. 1/1,000,000 mm. These small plastic particles are hydrocarbons, which means they’re made up of carbon and hydrogen and maybe a little oxygen. Plastic decomposes at some point to produce particles of this size. Every plastic entirely decomposes in the long run, but nanoparticles decompose particularly rapidly because their surface area is especially large in relation to their volume. In mathematics this is called the “area rule” (Glossary). They’re not toxic. Furthermore, bacteria that feed on plastics have been discovered, and the larger the surface area, the faster these can decompose the plastic.

If it were arsenic, mercury, lead or chlorine compounds, you may understand the concern. Of course, you can find (politically correct) scientific articles ad hoc on the Internet demonstrating that fish are being harmed from nanoparticles deliberately being added to water [42]. However, how much nanoplastic is in seawater couldn’t be found anywhere on the Internet. Normally, you check whether a problem exists in the first place. More about the nature and aim of this kind of an approach later.

Fig. 1 A typical street scene in India (author’s picture)

How does the plastic find its way into the ocean? India, for example, has regions that have not been developed for tourism. Every square meter of land can count one shred of plastic. A photo of a normal street scene in India (2011) is shown above. These plastic shreds are seen flying around everywhere because no garbage has been collected for a long time. The plastic is blown into the ocean and ends up in the stomach of animals. So, before creating a fuss in Germany, you should ask if you can give India a helping hand when it comes to disposing waste.⁹

But when the German “Green Dot” ships its plastic waste to Asia it looks strange when the German government pledges its support in finding the most clever way to dispose of the plastic waste of other countries.

After almost a decade spent on “bombarding” the population with images of suffering and dying marine animals, publications appeared in 2019 analyzing the composition of this waste.¹⁰ The majority of plastic floating around is fishing equipment, such as nets and the like. The origin of this waste was analyzed as well: Everything, in fact, is Asian. For a long time, Asia didn’t know how to dispose of its waste. Thus there’s little to no sensitivity to this problem among Asia’s human population. German politics is therefore able to solve non-existent problems in a media-effective way because the disposal of packaging materials is regulated very well in Germany.

Pseudo-Solutions

The envelope next to me is advertising donations. It’s filled with various “items” made from plastic – factually plastic waste. The following is written on the envelope: “A nice gift set with ballpoint pen in a practical gift bag is enclosed with this letter.” Above it reads: “I appreciate the extraordinary commitment from the many volunteers of the DLRG. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of Germany and patron of the DLRG (German Lifeguard Association)”.

The main point is that the German parliament banned plastic straws and bags by law. This is a classical example of the expediency of German politics. These “pseudo solutions” (electric scooters, plastic straws) do not contribute anything to the real solution of the problem and even hinder this by pretending to be solutions that they’re not.

It seems to be important to act in a media-effective way without the marine animals having anything to gain from it. Officially, however, one is working for the “welfare of animals”, of course.