Gerald Hüther - Wer nichts unternimmt, verliert seine Lebendigkeit!

Yes, so I have a special problem, I can't sleep very well in new beds in hotel rooms. So I have a very awake night behind me. And then I also had a lot of time to deal with all the problems of this world, as is then so common. The climate crisis and the extinction of species and the pollution of the environment and everything went through my head. And then I also found out yesterday that I'm actually only here for 20 minutes to address all the problems that are on my mind. And then I get into a kind of inner restlessness. And then I have a way of dealing with it. And then I always sing this wonderful song to myself. Good morning, dear worries, are you all here already? Did you sleep so well? Well, then everything is clear. It sounds completely different. And this is the result of modern brain research. Because the neurobiologists and biologists in general are beginning to understand that all living systems strive for a state in which everything fits. That is, a state is striven for. We call it coherence. And that is the state in which everything fits together really well. In the brain, for example, in the back and front and right and left. And what was stored earlier with what is added at the moment. And thinking, feeling and acting should also fit together as nicely as possible. And then, of course, you should also feel uplifted in such a wonderful community as here. And then maybe you still have this cosmic adaptation to nature anyway. And if all this fits so well, then a system consumes the least energy. That's what it's all about. It's about saving energy. Then, yes, if it fits right, the system consumes the least energy. So in concrete terms, at the moment when I do something, for example, I close my eyes and open them. Then there are some nerve cells back there. They had just gotten used to the fact that it was so nice and dark. And now they get impulses. And now they have to do something. It costs too much energy. And then they send a signal to another one. It does something, too. And in this way, everything is processed up there and done in a suitable way. So that in the end a state is created where less energy is consumed again. So we learn to turn incoherent states into coherent ones over the course of life. That's what it's all about. It's not about what we've always been allowed to talk about in the past. Peace, joy, egg cake. Or paradise and heaven, where everything fits. No, that never exists. It exists as long as I don't live in a state where everything fits together up there. If I just died, then. Yes, but then it's too late. And before that, in life, it's all about learning to make it fit again and again. That's it. We don't have finished programs in our brains. But we're looking for solutions all the time. And the solutions we find are anchored. There is an incoherent state where something doesn't fit through a solution. For example, singing this wonderful song with the worries can be missed in a state where it fits better. And in the first state, incoherent, a lot of energy is pulverized up there. And then I sing the song. Then less energy is pulverized. And the energy is released, so to speak. And it is used to activate these areas in the middle brain, which brain researchers call the reward center. And then these nerve activities come into play, which lead to certain nutrients being released. Endorphins, catecholamines, so a bit like cocaine and heroin at the same time. You get a completely different feeling. Not because of the nutrients. But because these nutrients activate other networks, which in turn are responsible for the regulation of physical processes that do us so good. It is not the nutrient that makes us happy, but the activation of networks that bring us into a physical feeling that does us good. And these nutrients do something else at the same time. And what does that mean? They are the nerve pathways in the brain that I have just used to find a solution. After this terrible night in this hotel, in this strange bed, that I then sing, Good morning, love. That is anchored in the brain. That's why I never forget the song again in my life. I always sing that. When it's crap. And then I always bring this incoherent state back into a coherent one. And now you realize what life is about. It is about not being happy in the course of your life, by having everything you want, but to become someone who is always able to restore a state where you fit a little better into the world and are pure with yourself. And this is a kind of feeling that develops over the course of life. And this is called coherence-reproduction-competence feeling. Madness, isn't it? That is, if you have to use such terms to describe something banal, then it is a sign that you have landed in complete new territory in science. There are no terms for it yet. Coherence-reproduction-competence feeling means nothing more than thank you, problem, that you came. I'll be done with you now. That's a feeling you have. And now you see, of course, I can only develop that feeling if I have enough problems. How am I ever supposed to develop a coherence-reproduction-competence feeling if there are no problems? That means, that's where I want to go with you now. I want to show you that we are completely on the wrong track with our patterns of thought. Because what we want is not what is good for us. We have moved so far away from ourselves that we no longer understand what it really is about. Let's take an example like this. Our belief in science. I think it's great that there is science. But it was also a solution for a long time, that everything has to be proven scientifically. Otherwise, everyone could have told us everything possible. But if science is now asked what it comes down to in life, no matter what discipline you take, in the end there is no right answer. Of course, they can only give an answer what it comes down to in life, if they have something they can measure. What can you measure from what it comes down to in life? These are two things. First, what someone has achieved. What he has built up, accumulated, made his own, or brought into the world. For example, for me these are 153 peer-reviewed original publications in English in experimental brain research. This is my life, so to speak, which can be scientifically proven. And the second, which is even more general, is that you can't measure anything more scientifically in life than how long it takes. And if you approach it like that, then you believe that in life it comes down to doing as much as possible and staying at it as long as possible. But it could be that this is wrong. It could be that it's not about how long you live and how much you achieve. It could be that it's more about how long you stay alive in a world that tends to, which we have created ourselves, which we maintain, and which is now a world that tends to bring us all into situations where we don't develop this coherence-reproduction-competence feeling, but where we tend to meet the needs of the second principle of thermodynamics and switch on the energy-saving program in the brain by sitting on the sofa and hoping that everything will be fine again, by running after people who want to tell us they know how it works and what other special strategies you can use. And it could be that at a turning point, as our Chancellor said, we have reached a turning point, but probably at a different kind of turning point than he thought and meant. It could be that we have reached a point where we realize that we are no longer separated existences from life, but that life is part of us and we are part of life on this planet. That we can't use life for our purposes, according to our ideas, that we can't bend and saw it the way we need it, but that if we use life in this way, according to our ideas, that we make ourselves an object in the same way and lose ourselves more and more. I see two tendencies there, and it would be nice if we could look at it in the remaining few minutes. I am also in a hurry. One is that we have created a world in which we are trying to disassemble everything smaller and smaller. There are two needs with which we are already coming into the world as humans. One is the need for connection. We bring that with us from the womb. There is no other way. Because we have been connected all the time and we find people with whom we can stay connected. Where we feel good, where we don't have to work hard, where we don't have to be the way others want us to be, but where we are allowed to be the way we are. That is one need for connection. And the other need, which is also brought with us from the womb, is the need for our own possibilities. It sounds strange, but of course such a child is already in the process of trying everything. It is not a passive state in which it just grows. This world is already opening up. Already in the process of trying. And it learns that it can learn more and more. It acquires more and more this coherence, this feeling of competence and then comes out. And of course it wants to create something out there. Every human being is an entrepreneur. At the beginning. And then you just experience that you grow into a world where the adults, for reasons that you would have to take a closer look at, we won't be able to do that today. Or maybe later in the discussion. Then you experience that you grow into a world where the adults no longer own this connection and can no longer pass it on. You experience that thinking, feeling and acting, which was always coherent with every child and with all of you at the very beginning and always belonged together. That's why the children are out there with the whole body. Then you have to experience that it has to be separated, please. So that you can survive in this current world. It has to go so far and it goes so normal that you don't even think about it anymore when such a father goes through Berlin with his son and then sits at the steps of the church with a beggar. And then you all know what happens. The son looks at the beggar and then he looks at dad. He wants to know from dad what he should do. He has a feeling that this is not okay, that he is sitting there and expects help from dad. And well, he sees that it is not the right time now. Dad looks somewhere else and then we still think it's a particularly great dad when he goes around the next corner and then bends down and explains to his little Fritz why they didn't give the beggar anything. Then the child gets a cognitive explanation for an empathic reaction. Wow, yes. And we all do that. And if you've learned that as a child and later in life it is constantly introduced to you and every evening on TV you get a cognitive explanation for an empathic reaction why this is the case, what happens then? Then the empathy goes past your ass. In the brain it means that I can't live in such a state. I have to get rid of my empathic feeling, I have to get rid of the networks in the brain that produce this empathy, this compassion. I have to hammer it away until it is no longer there. And I hammer it away by putting a cognitive explanation on top of it. And at some point inhibiting circuits are so well developed that I can explain everything cognitively and no longer feel anything. And then we have arrived in our present world. No wonder we are ruining it. It is no longer close to us. We are no longer connected to this world. We are no longer connected to our vitality. We only deal with what you can measure. That's how long we stay alive and how long we have been able to do everything on the way. Wow, what kind of crazy world has become? Yes, and that sometimes confuses you when you compact it very much. So we have the world that actually belongs to us, in which we are part and in which everything alive is connected to each other for different reasons that you can all think about yourself if you break it into pieces. And it has something to do with the fact that you can use and master it better if you break it. Caesar already knew that. And the second thing we did, we have, so to speak, and everyone of you feels that when he grows into this world, then he cannot follow his joy of discovery and his desire for design like a little child grows into this world with all this joy of discovery and desire for design. At the latest, when it is the third time as a four-year-old boy he has completely cleared the kitchen of his mother to build this sea-thief ship, he somehow makes it clear that this is not the optimal thing. As his mother wishes it differently. And he would rather go to his room and do it there or I don't know in other words. We are all through that. We have all experienced that we have failed with our desire for discovery and design. I often do surveys and ask adults what is the most vital need that they now as adults in your age, what they can no longer really live. And I get three quarters saying I would like to be a designer. I want to design something. I don't want to work in a hamster wheel all the time. I just want my autonomy again. I want to be the designer of my own life. And then I ask, and when was it that you had to suppress it? When did you first have to suppress your own joy of design? Then I thought, school is coming. Three quarters say at home, they are already getting involved in school. They already have their joy of discovery and their desire for design at home. They have to suppress, entangle and hinder until they are gone. And that's why they can sit on the chair all day in the first grade. Then they fit in. And that's why the school has become what most parents have started at home. Now, thank God, another generation of parents is growing up. I am very optimistic about that. If the children are sent to school that are not shaped like that, then these children will blow up the school. That's how you change schools. And not by constantly messing around at school, but by strengthening the children so that they finish school. Imagine, Bibi Langstrumpf, everyone would be Bibi Langstrumpf in first grade. They would give up their minds there. That didn't work at all. And that's where it has to go, this entrepreneurship, where you find your way back to the ability to design and what I have described here are basically entanglements that we fall into as we grow into this world. And we suppress our living needs until they are so far away that we function almost like a computer. That is the core of digital devices. They have no needs. And if we lose our needs and lose contact with us so much that we no longer feel what keeps us alive, this eroticism, this physicality, this joy of discovering and designing, if we no longer feel this, then we become more and more like our computers. And that's why it's all about one thing and nothing else in everything we do. And I wish that every company and everyone who wants to start something here, always thinks about whether what they do can contribute to people in this present world finding out from their entanglements and then modern entrepreneurship would be a strategy for development aid. Thank you. All the best.