This is a birth of something new. It is build on old foundations. You clearly can see the lines that differentiates new from old. And you see the similarity between old and new, the contingency of the old in the new. If _this_ would be a social movement we maybe would call it a revolution. But _this_ is merely a weblog and still I’m using _it_ as a separation… an distinction between old and new. And surely you find the old here as well. Everywhere, in the words I’m writing, in the context I’m referring to, in the services that let you access this content.
What distinguishes the two parts that belong together? Something must have changed. Since everyting is changing all the time, this thought would end in insignificance. Maybe it – the thing we are talking about – must have somehow changed a lot and therefore the change itself has become significant. I say it is the other way around: It is mostly people who decide that something has significance and therefore changed a lot. Basically people define when they consider something as new. I’m not speaking about science here, but rather about philosophical thinking. In other words: if I try to compare one object to itself at different points in time (tp), the question is “What made it the same object in the first place?” [1]. We track all the small changes from one tp to tp + 1 to track the _same_ object trough time, and still maybe end up with a change that is considered big (significant). You maybe say: “What if the change between tp and tp + 1 wasn’t small?”. And I say: “Therefore we need to look into the time between tp and tp + 1!”, creating smaller time fractions, one hop = tp to tp + 0.1. This results in never ending loop if we assume that time is always dividable, which is probably still a hypothesis [2][3]. I argue: It is people who relate to it as a important change.
This concludes into a simple thought: people make their revolution. Simply because they relate to it as one. I have to make one thing clear: I’m not trying to say that a revolution is made up in your head or that it is something your merely imagine. I say: you relate to it as one; meaning that your surroundings (language, thoughts, social constructs, physical objects and so on) do this as well. I left this deliberately vague, because this is still a thought I’m looking into.
Did I show that a revolution is based on a reformation? No, because we have to be precise with the word _change_ and what it differentiate from _revolution_ and _reformation_. Change tries to be a objective measurement. Revolution and reformation are social concepts that are referring to a change – primarily social ones – by pointing at the difference between old and new. And because everything is changing every time, revolution and reformation refer to changes that are considered to belong to the same overall change. Again: revolution is something that is _considered_ as a big change for society. On the other hand: reformation is something that is considered as a small change for society. Don’t get stuck in the ‘1 hop = tp and tp + 1’ loop, when thinking about what is considered as a small change for society and what as a big change. You will end up here again, because my explanation is self-referential: Changes are big, when the are considered big. And they are considered big, when the are big – meaning the are considered big.
I consider something as revolutionary when it allows something that wasn’t possible before [4]. But it is the content that makes a revolution worthwhile. And specifically about this content I want talk about here in this weblog. Making it part of a revolution that has to come.
The correct title of this weblog is “Gedanken;-rausch”, containing two German words and two symbols. The first word is easy translated from Gedanken to thoughts (and is probably very difficult to define). The second one is not translatable. In English there exist many words that don’t describe the word all together: frenzy, intoxication, rapture, rush, jag, inebriation, exhilaration, flush, ecstasy, rage, inebriety, drunkenness, high, transport, delirious state, buzz … the list probably goes on. This is why I chose a German title in the first place and I’m thinking of spending early writings of this weblog on the meaning of Rausch. For me the semicolon implies a break between two thoughts. Lets quote good old wikipedia here [5]:
The semicolon or semi-colon (;) is a punctuation mark that separates major sentence elements. A semicolon can be used between two closely related independent clauses […]
On the other side hyphens (-) are used to join words. Together these two symbols might represent the contingency of two things and the break between them. We consider Gedanken and Rausch as two different _something_. I want to show how these two _something_ are interlinked. And how the interlink Gedankenrausch forms something new.
Rausch, Gedanken (thoughts), new, old, distinctions, contingency, society, revolution, Gedankenrausch … this is a deliberately vague range of topics and more will come. Because the content still has to be written, it will be born from the old and tries to be something new, invoking a social change.
One final word: this weblog becomes significant in the way how people relate to it. Practically this means that I hope to encourage people to own thoughts, that the weblog produces new knowledge and that it evokes at lot of disagreements. Especially the disagreements that are constructive, in the sense that they create new thoughts, knowledge and disagreements.