Scholé News – June 2024

The state is like a huge house

Today I would like to begin with a parable. It occurred to me after I had heard a wondrous true story, which I want to tell you at the end. The state is like a huge house with very, very many flats – small and large, some run-down, others beautifully furnished. Like all living spaces, the house belongs to the Creator, who makes it freely available to His creatures. But the residents don’t know this, because for many generations their ancestors always had to pay rent for their living space. That is why their descendants still do so today as a matter of course.

Nobody asks who owns the house, because one only ever deals with the seemingly all-powerful property management. It collects the rents and looks after the maintenance of roofs, corridors, stairwells and lifts. It is responsible for gas, electricity, refuse collection and the selection of caretakers, and occasionally inspects the tenants’ flats to check that everyone is obediently keeping to the house rules.

When disputes arise among the residents, they usually shy away from talking things through. In 9 out of 10 cases they turn to the property management and ask it to settle the dispute and ensure justice. The management, of course, knows exactly who the influential tenants are, whose interests always take priority, and which tenants can be fobbed off with friendly words and cheap sham solutions. To maintain this traditional order, additional rules are simply invented if necessary.

The tenants’ rights

Every 4 years the property management invites tenants to meetings that deal with residents’ complaints and planned repairs or improvements to the house. Because they are determined to keep their lucrative posts, the managers make a real effort and promise the tenants the moon every time. Since their promises cannot be enforced in court, they need not exercise any restraint.

Until now, the property managements have only got into serious trouble when they overstepped the mark so far that the tenants lost all trust and joined forces to defend their interests together. But such revolts never lasted very long, because the managements held the upper hand. They fell back on tried and tested tricks to split the newly emerging interest groups into hostile camps as quickly as possible and set them against each other.

Divide and rule

This principle has always worked perfectly so far, sometimes at the expense of the building, which suffered badly in violent clashes between hostile groups of tenants. But for the managements this ultimately meant only a welcome increase in lucrative repair contracts and new security measures – in the end, extra costs for the tenants and extra income for the managers and the companies they are in cahoots with.

Through the technological development of the last 3 decades, however, property managements now find themselves facing unfamiliar new challenges for the first time. The oh-so practical and convenient digitalisation of all administrative tasks initially brought them a lot of new staff and even more ways of controlling tenants and media. That was highly welcome.

Is a new wind blowing?

Unfortunately, though, a few unruly tenants have hit on the idea of turning the tables. Brazenly they misuse the new technology to inform each other and network. Behind the managers’ backs they gain insight into administrative documents that were wisely kept strictly secret, instead of believing the official statements as before and letting the in-house newspapers and media tell them what to think about what.

As if that were not enough, these rebellious tenants have infected first individual neighbours, and then even tenants of other houses, with their mistrust! It is to be feared that in future more and more tenants in various houses will ask awkward questions until the number of the dissatisfied reaches a dangerous level. Naturally, the property managements cannot tolerate that.

The empire strikes back

So they redouble their efforts to intimidate and divide rebellious tenant communities. They stir up fear and unrest by warning of impending weather disasters. They raise operating costs, electricity prices and charges for the residents considerably, while suddenly providing strangers with free housing. Of course this breeds bad blood and will hopefully soon create so much stress and chaos that the managements can once again appear in their favourite role as rescuers and emergency helpers.

Should the measures taken so far not be enough, however, the association of property managers has for some time been considering radically decimating the number of tenants. The first trials are already under way. Of course they must be kept strictly secret! Attacks disguised as accidents or staged conflicts with the residents of other houses are also being considered, in order to save their own existence together with their well-earned privileges. After all, charity begins at home…

New perspectives

And what does the matter look like from the rebellious tenants’ perspective? They have recognised that for countless generations the residents have let themselves be cheated out of ignorance and inertia. The leaked documents make it clear that the property managements by no means manage things as decently as they claim. Rather, through agreements with companies and insurers, they have kept increasing their partners’ profits and their own income – always, of course, at the tenants’ expense.

The rebels have calculated that they and their fellow residents would not only gain enormous financial advantages if they worked for each other instead of for the managements: they could agree on a few clear rules that would protect their interests far more effectively than the current impenetrable jumble of regulations. To beautify their living space, they would be free to lay out gardens and fundamentally redesign the standardised flats, instead of continuing to restrict their creativity to a bit of decoration.

They could turn every house into a family house, where everything is shared, people meet as equals and stand by one another. To do this, however, they would have to resist attempts at division from inside and outside by consistently relying on justice, trust, cooperation and personal responsibility, and stop once and for all delegating their most important affairs to anonymous property managements.

Who owns our house?

Lately, more and more rebels have also pursued the almost forgotten question of who actually owns the house they live in. To their great surprise they have learned that not only their unfamiliar new neighbours may live in the house free of charge, but everyone else too! For the owner of the house is the Creator Himself! He leaves every resident free to hand over their interests to overpowering property managements, or to entrust themselves to the truly almighty Creator and, with His help, take matters into their own hands.

As soon as the residents accept His invitation to discuss all their wishes, dreams, worries and needs with Him, the kind owner, all hierarchical orders among them would automatically dissolve. There would also be no more division, because the Creator loves all His children without distinction. With His almighty help, solutions can therefore always be found that are equally favourable for everyone!

If you think this is, alas, nothing but a nice fairy tale, then as a crowning conclusion please listen to the true story that inspired me to write this parable:

A true story that should make headlines

The exceptional American journalist Tucker Carlson recently travelled to El Salvador to interview Nayib Bukele, the 42-year-old president of this small Central American state. He wanted to know how Bukele had managed, against all domestic and foreign resistance, to become president in 2019 and to change the country so positively during his first term that he was recently re-elected with 85% of the vote. Whereas El Salvador had the highest crime rate in the world at the start of his presidency, today it is the safest country in the Western Hemisphere!

There are 2 explanations for this, says Bukele: an official one and a TRUE one. The official explanation speaks of a carefully drawn-up 6-point plan. However, implementing just the first of these 6 points cost so many innocent lives that the plan had to be abandoned. The gang members – robbers, drug dealers, contract killers and some self-confessed Satanists – grabbed random people off the street as hostages and murdered them in cold blood. Within just 3 days there were 87 murders.

And now the TRUE explanation of how the Herculean task of putting 70,000 dangerous gangsters behind bars could succeed: “IT WAS A MIRACLE!”, Bukele says literally in the interview. Prayers and the instructions of his inner voice led to this miracle, adds the devout young president, who sometimes even prays in public.

Piety and energy

With heavenly help, he and his comrades-in-arms managed to make the seemingly impossible possible. Step 1: using the military and police, bring the prisons, which had been controlled by criminal cartels for decades, back under state administration and build new detention camps. Step 2: motivate the long-suffering population to cooperate. Step 3: arrest the approximately 70,000 gang members and bring them to court. Within 3 years, only 8 security officers lost their lives in this operation.

The 6.3 million inhabitants of El Salvador, who can finally live and work in peace, showed Nayib Bukele their gratitude in the election of February 2024. The president was re-elected with 85% of the vote. In his second term, he now wants to use the same method to find solutions to the economic problems of his bitterly poor country – he is asking God for the wisdom needed.

This story, which sounds like a fairy tale to our ears, is even more revealing when viewed in the light of the endless Wikipedia entry on Nayib Bukele, who is described there, in the usual manner, as the “controversial” president of El Salvador. The undeniably positive facts are set against a host of negative assumptions and suspicions. That a committed young politician from a third-world country shows the whole world how violence and corruption can be overcome evidently runs counter to the vital interests of the propagandists of our Western community of values!

Victims or perpetrators?

How twisted these Western values have become by now is shown by the Spanish government’s reaction to an extradition request from El Salvador for a lawfully convicted multiple murderer who had fled to Spain. Spain refused to extradite the man, justifying the decision by saying that prison conditions in El Salvador did not meet European standards. There are, mind you, no proven abuses in El Salvador’s prisons! The offender would merely have to make do in prison with living conditions as modest as those of the majority of the population in his homeland, totally impoverished by violence and corruption…

Many people no longer even notice when, under “humanitarian” pretexts, perpetrators are turned into victims and vice versa, because lies dressed up as morality have become so commonplace in our part of the world. So that we don’t fall into resignation, we need encouraging counter-examples like this one, because they show that things can be different. If those of us who are slowly awakening no longer let ourselves be intimidated and divided into left and right, green and blue, top and bottom, if we take responsibility for our living spaces together with like-minded people, stand up energetically for truth and justice and trust in the Creator’s wisdom, humanity could experience quite different miracles in future!

With greetings full of joy for the future Alexandra

2nd edition of “Lernen ist wie Atmen” (Learning is like breathing)

The 2nd edition of our book meets a completely changed readership.

In 2017, the idea that learning outside school was possible at all was considered the eccentric notion of a few outsiders. Since then, all parents, whether they wanted to or not, have had to deal with forms of learning outside school.

The number of children withdrawn from school has exploded since then, and alternative learning projects are springing up like mushrooms.

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