What Now? The Newsletter
These are the tips, recommendations and caveats that I send out with my monthly newsletter. Which you can subscribe to here!
February 2025
Vote — With this I’d like to address in particular (but not only) my neighbours and friends in Germany, who will have the opportunity to choose between «Jamaica», «Kenya», «Germany», «Dirndl», a Fourth Reich or some other colorful option on February 23. It’s of immeasurable importance that every rational voter exercises her or his right. (While everyone else is welcome to stay home.) Because it’s true what Winston Churchill said: that democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others. But it’s also true what Henry Mencken said: «As democracy continues to perfect itself, the presidency will more and more accurately reflect the inner soul of the people. One great and glorious day, the people’s heart’s desire will be fulfilled and the White House will be adorned with a true idiot.» Fortunately, at least in theory, there are different ways of perfecting democracy. For those of you who haven’t completely given up on it, here’s a suggestion (in German).
Eat mandarins (don’t learn Mandarin) — Learning foreign languages is, sorry, passé, and it’s not coming back – may the pupils of Zug and Zuoz say what they will. Simultaneous translation has simply become too good, and soon we won’t even try to talk to the cameriere without a button in our ear. This applies even more to China and Mandarin. Duolingo, thank you very much, it was nice knowing you. Now, however, the fruit called mandarin – also known as tangerine – continues to be shamefully underestimated. It is the absolute queen of fruits (and, did you know?, the common orange’s mother) – no other fruit can rival it in terms of aromatic complexity, subtlety and idiosyncrasy. Unfortunately, many decades ago, some ignoramuses bred the seeds out of it, and, with them, all its flavour. The result they chose to call «clementine», and pitiful it is, indeed. I can hardly imagine that anyone in China, the country where the mandarin comes from, would consider eating something like this. As soon as they understand me simultaneously, I’ll ask some Chinese tourists.
Cook with Anna Jones — To come back to the adorable mandarin: Anyone who actually has a problem with seeds in a fruit (I wonder if these people also have a problem with clouds in the sky, or waves on the water) – that is, people unfamiliar with the cultural techniques of swallowing or spitting, can still cook the rice pudding that Anna Jones describes in her book One Pot, Pan, Planet. She uses only the juice and zest of the mandarin, but they alone are enough to make it by far the best rice pudding I’ve ever had on a spoon.
January 2025
Moralise — Morals are not exactly fashionable. Even those who try to uphold them prefer to talk about ethics, which somehow sounds more contemporary. They’re not the same thing, however: ethics are purely descriptive, the scientific analysis of good and bad behaviour. Morals, on the other hand, are prescriptive, they define what is right and wrong, what we should or should not do. An ethicist thus can’t be accused of much, unlike a moralist: she risks being labelled as «lecturing», as a «do-gooder» with a chronically raised indexfinger. These accusations reliably come from those who have the most to fear when their questionable behaviour is being called out: from self-righteous egoists, cynics and thugs. If you think about it, however, much-ridiculed moralising is at least the second-noblest activity a human can pursue – right after exemplary behaviour. Doing good ourselves is undoubtedly our first moral duty. But encouraging others to do good – moralising – may have an even greater effect. We need more, not fewer, moralists.
Breed mammoths — The mammoth is my favourite animal (or would be if it still existed). I was therefore delighted when I heard on Sam Harris’ podcast that the American entrepreneur Ben Lamm wants to resurrect the woolly giant – not at some distant point in the future, but before the end of the decade. Delighted I was, and also a little frightened, because interventions in the planet’s gene pool tend to come with mammoth-sized uncertainties. Lamm is serious about this, though, and he seems to have the best intentions. According to him, the reintroduction of extinct species (he also works on the genome of the Tasmanian Tiger and the Dodo) could not only be spectacular, but also ecologically sensible. Listen to his and Harris’ conversation here.
Open email blindly — I get about three or four dozen emails a day. Most of them are harmless (my favourites are simple spam that I can just click away). But what if a request pops up that you know is going to turn your whole week upside down? What if the French Road Traffic Office suddenly gets in touch? Or that long-forgotten school friend who thinks that it’s «finally time for a drink after all these years»? I’m afraid of messages like that, not to mention the really bad news. And I’m not the only one: according to a recent German study, more than 60 percent of us feel stressed and consider their health affected by the daily flood of email. What to do? Unwanted messages and requests can’t simply be magicked away – there comes a time when you must deal with them. What can be eliminated, however, is the stress we feel before opening them. In most cases, the sender’s name or the subject line is enough to make us break out in a sweat. We may still be on the first email of the day, but we’ve already glanced over what is lurking fourteen lines further down. And twenty-two. And thirty-five … Unread messages can upset us so much that we can’t even concentrate on the one that’s in front of us, let alone anything else. That’s why I’ve got into the habit of moving the email window to the left side of the screen – so far that I can only see the «sent» dates, not the senders and not the subject lines. This way I know how many messages I have left to read, but not who they come from or what they contain. Going through email thus feels like going through a pile of letters used to feel: You calmly open one after the other, not knowing what to expect. This won’t protect you from unpleasant surprises, but it does take away the fear of them because you can’t see them coming. Also, every now and then, you might be in for a nice surprise.