Don't think about the Eiffel Tower. And already you are thinking about it, you can't do anything about it, for a fraction the image of the Eiffel Tower flares up in your mind's eye. When messages are marked with a "not", it's as if the "not" doesn't exist. But the word behind it does. Do not think of death. Voila, you think of death. Don't ask questions. Already you think, why not?

I grew up with disaster messages since childhood. The news was always full of them. Whether it was Chernobyl or nuclear waste disposal, Pershing missiles, acid rain, dioxane in shampoo, the hole in the ozone layer, forest dieback, fish dieback, the melting of the polar ice cap, and always nature documentaries showing beautiful pictures from Africa or the rainforest or some other region, always with the message that "this could end soon", that "if man continues like this, he will have destroyed everything.

Already in the 70s there was an oil crisis, in Germany the motorways were at a standstill. There is always a peak this and peak that. Oh, and not to forget the miserable labour market. As a teenager who was supposed to choose a profession, I was full of fear that I wouldn't be able to get an apprenticeship. "Is the pension safe?" was a catchphrase of my time. I wrote in my childhood diary how bad the world was and was always afraid when everything in the media called for fear. The "violence is on the rise." Also a popular phrase and right now you often read that "parts of the population are becoming radicalised" and that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is watching them. They "could endanger the state". blablabla

Mark Twain is reported to have once said that "the worst things in my life actually never happened" and I agree.

Man seems fascinated by death and disease and the more pleasant his life, the more he fears the unpleasant, no?

But I have a question that leaves the noble side line from which to look at things. Since the whole affair came into the world two years ago with a sledgehammer, demanding of all people alike a "Submit!", loud, commanding, warning, would it not have been far more surprising if nothing at all had been done to counter this loud force? Wouldn't it be the strangest thing of all if all people had unanimously tended towards the same result, the same realisation? Doesn't the loudness demand that people respond in the same volume?