Concerning the blindness of value-oriented thinking

The interesting but also tragic thing about occidental naivety is this belief that one's own values will one day become attractive to everyone if they just think about it long enough.

This overlooks the fact that even a large part of the West's own citizens do not believe in it in the sense that they are not prepared to act on it - be it for ideological reasons, be it for lack of education, be it simply out of habit, opportunism or corruption.

Some then try to whitewash this problem with developmental stage models, but overlook the fact that in order to be interested in working on oneself in a specific way, for example, certain environmental conditions have to be met, not only material but also social and cultural - and these are by no means all of a pleasant nature, as becomes readily apparent when we think about opportunism and corruption in the context of the climate crisis.

Not everyone can be negotiated with, by no means everyone accepts values that we take for granted, and by no means everyone is interested in being measured by personal development and/or spiritual values. Many not only do not care about such things, they will not respond to even the best arguments about them. China and Russia are two excellent examples of this: they exploit such ideas as our weakness for their own advantages.

We can talk about someone like Lavrov here for a long time - and from the tactical point of view of Russia, we SHOULD, because the longer we deal with our own illusions and marvel at them and enlighten each other about what a liar he is and that you only have to realise that and then everything will be fine (including him), this naivety of ours will be exploited to push through their own plans further and further.

China does not only consider Western values irrelevant to itself - China considers Western values a weakness that can be strategically exploited over a long period of time. China has only one human right: the right to wealth (of China).

The same that applies to politics also applies to the economy: as long as the West does not understand the weaknesses of its own discussion of values, graduated models for "further development" and "personality development" and so on as weaknesses, crisis-functional models will also be blocked in the economy and China and others will exploit this weakness economically and geo-politically.

To conclude from this that Western values are wrong is one-dimensional thinking.

But to conclude that Western values are superior is also one-dimensional thinking.

Integrative, multidimensional thinking must be global thinking. It has to integrate the reactions of other nations, other thinkers, other cultures, other value systems in such a way that this is not done in stages, but as present-time images of complex intercultural entanglements regarding the cultural history of all nations - and with regard to the question of how the insights from this can be skilfully used in such a way that the whole planet benefits.

That is not something easy to do and many untrained will fail.

Relying only on "the good guys", on people with well-meaning intentions, capable of appreciative criticism, can only lead to disaster. Resilience also includes the ability to be tough and unwilling to cooperate where necessary. It includes the capacity for tough negotiations, cold hierarchies, even antagonism.

Those who cannot do this or who, based on values, do not want to, become part of the problem, because we know from experience that people who think this way refuse to cooperate at the moment of confrontation. From the perspective of the evolution of cooperation, we have to take this into account as potential bad-boy behaviour and think integratively from there.

There are no easy ways when it comes to global cooperation, no ways without hard conflicts and confrontation of values.

By no means everything can be discussed at the negotiating table, by no means everything can be created "together".

Being able to play across borders characterises the better billiard player, thinking ahead in the long term and integrating the opponent's moves into the game characterises the good chess player.

You cannot do this by playing by the book alone, and in in many ways predesigned models and graphics will block you here.

We cannot rely on good values alone and the hope of further development in the context of growing prosperity. It takes more than that to navigate the complex - and I have not even begun to talk about the conflicts and crises that can arise from communication alone, without the intervention of those involved.

Spirituality and reflection on constructive values are without question important and driving forces in human nature, but Friedrich Nietzsche very rightly recognised that the good in people is what they want for themselves. And that - we should neither forget nor believe that it is the same for everyone or can be evaluated and measured in proportionally the same way for everyone.

So, in the end, we must be always ready to through everything we believe in over board and start to think from scratch, and we must always include that we are always wrong in many ways.