When countries grow together, different nationalities come closer, cultures respect each other and can live together, this is desirable and worthy of support.

Creating a bureaucratic, Babylonian-chaotic translation complex with free borders and a free economy does not constitute growing together. The current EU is suffering from the hope that jointly binding rules with a common currency would lead to greater understanding and unity in the long term.

What the British have anticipated with their Brexit threatens the entire EU in the medium term. Disintegration, members leaving due to lack of interest, economic upheaval and permanent crisis.

This does not necessarily have to be the case, but it will inevitably happen if the EU in its current form is not radically changed towards a common European understanding and away from the interests of individual states, tied into ever more restrictive bureaucratic rules.

A united Europe must be shaped by the citizens of all participating countries and not by political elites who send their desired representatives and who have never been confirmed by the electorate. Europe’s democratic legitimacy suffers just as much as the individual local democratic systems do.

A democracy is an evolving construct, not a rigid structure which, once designed, never needs to be improved. This is the main problem of modern democracies. A fundamental improvement of the inherent rules (e.g. the Basic Law) is hardly possible, but is absolutely necessary in a rapidly changing world.

Since the concept of lateral thinking has been hijacked by an ideologically driven movement, it has been difficult to move away from the negative connotations of the term. Lateral thinking used to have a consistently positive connotation, but is now mostly used in the mainstream media to describe the lateral thinkers.

Thinking differently, as lateral thinking should be called today in order to stand out from its new connotation and at the same time to be widely accessible and which also sounds pleasantly different from lateral thinking, is a way of looking at the world in a refreshingly different way – necessarily different.

Science can complement a different way of thinking, but it cannot replace it. This has to do with the fact that the sciences are collections of methods, procedures and building blocks of knowledge that secure facts and knowledge, but do not produce them directly. The creative process of thinking differently can be pursued separately from the sciences, or it can be embedded in their methods and procedures.

Thinking differently without science can lead to art and culture or to crude world views, ideologies and conspiracy theories. Thinking differently, supported by science, usually brings new insights, understanding and progress.

Of course, this presupposes that the different thinking is free of prejudices, mental blocks and false knowledge. If the basis of the basic consideration is nonsense, then the conclusions will only be “quackery”.

Freedom, being free and thinking freely, is often postulated, but is almost never a reality and is thwarted by many types of dependency. More on this in another article on this blog.

The right to stand for election means that anyone of a certain age who is a German citizen and who has not been deprived of the right to vote due to political offenses may vote.

This minimum standard does not exclude retards, psychopaths and sociopaths, fanatics and zealots, as long as they have not committed a “political” offense. And the controls on delinquency are extremely lax. And this is precisely where the problem lies: with such a virtually non-existent standard, precisely those unsuitable people are attracted to politics who should never have become politicians in the first place.

A democracy can only function if it pushes the best people to make a contribution to society. And on the one hand, the best must be selected, so there must be an assessment standard that checks the prospective politicians for suitability and, on the other hand, the best must have a positive interest in serving society and their fellow human beings.

The standards to be applied could be determined by suitable scientific institutes on the one hand in feedback with a referendum on the other, so that the basis for filtering the suitable and the willing is laid democratically / professionally / scientifically.

The same should apply here: The higher the offices, the higher the standards that must be met. It is not enough to meet the minimum standards and then to have been a narcissist’s porter for 20 years in order to qualify for a high state office.

Whether there are still willing people who meet the standards and at the same time are prepared to work for a symbolic salary (current salaries of parliamentarians can be regarded as symbolic) is a question of social esteem.

People who have built up a reputation through outstanding political work will certainly be able to monetize this reputation after their political career. And whether this would be the only motivating factor remains to be seen.

If, as expected, no suitable candidates for political office can be found, either due to a lack of qualifications or a lack of pecuniary motivation, the result without representatives could not be worse than in the modern Berlin Republic, in which blind actionism does more harm to society than inaction ever could.