Or did it?

Perhaps it began 2010, in Istanbul, Türkiye? Or perhaps even earlier, in the sixteenth century.

We should have been back home in Minnesota. After a vacation in Italy and Spain, we were merely transiting through Amsterdam. Unfortunately, the airport’s name proved strangely appropriate. In Dutch, Schiphol supposedly means “ship grave” or “ship hole.” That’s where we remained stuck for an entire week.

To be precise, we were stranded there because of what passed for severe winter weather. Half a million other passengers suffered the same fate.

The said weather condition was 1-2 inches of snow and a temperature of 30°F to 35°F (-1°C to 3°C for those who live outside of the US).

But back to the story.

On the very last day of our unexpected imprisonment at the airport – which lies some distance outside Amsterdam proper – the trains finally began running again. We seized the opportunity and ventured into the city.

It was one of those gray, drizzly European winter afternoons that I remember so well from my years in Germany. The wet streets were mostly empty; bicycles glided silently by. Bare trees stood patiently on the side, as if longing for the colorful, lively spring.

Amsterdam’s bridges have a nostalgic charm. We walked a few and watched the water below reflect the leaden sky above. A handful of small barges drifted quietly by. But you can walk only so many of Amsterdam’s roughly 1,200 bridges before longing for a warm, cozy refuge. We found ours, somewhat unexpectedly, in the Amsterdam Tulip Museum.

The museum occupies the basement of a shop selling tulip bulbs and souvenirs. The shop itself sits in an unremarkable building along one of Amsterdam’s many narrow, cobblestone streets.

Nothing about the entrance hints at the amazing story that awaits in the basement of the museum. It is the story of one of history’s most remarkable flowers. Tulips are not native to the Netherlands. And yet, over time, they became part of the nation’s visual identity.

While roaming the museum, I was reminded of a scenery of tulips long ago, in a different country. We were on a vacation in Türkiye back in 2010. One of my first impressions of Istanbul was the long rows of bright tulip beds along the highway all the way from the airport to the city.

I remembered the magnificent Gülhane Park at Topkapi Palace. A sea of red and yellow tulips swaying in the gentle breeze on a warm, bright day. I also remembered seeing tulips as an ever-present decorative motif throughout the city. But I was so conditioned to associate tulips with the Netherlands that I never thought deeply about this.

The museum changed that all. I learned that tulips were inhabitants of the East, and how Türkiye played a role on its journey to the west.

Tulips come from the wild mountainous regions of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and neighboring lands.

For centuries they were admired in Persia, where the red tulip became a symbol of passionate love. In the legend of Farhad and Shirin, when Farhad learns that Shirin has died, he throws himself from a mountain. Red tulips spring up where his blood falls. Elsewhere in Persian tradition, red tulips came to symbolize the blood of martyrs shed for a noble cause. Tulip’s brief but brilliant bloom is a reminder that life’s most precious moments are often the most fleeting.

The Ottomans inherited both the flower and much of the Persian artistic tradition surrounding it. They cultivated tulips extensively and bred new varieties. By the sixteenth century, the tulip had become one of the defining symbols of Ottoman elegance and refinement. That tradition lingers even today, as the ever-present decorative motifs testify.

European diplomats and botanists first encountered tulips in Ottoman palatial gardens, like the one surrounding Topkapi Palace that I had visited. Tulips were unlike anything growing in Europe. The Ambassador of the Habsburg Empire to the Ottoman court in Istanbul was so impressed by the flower that in 1550 he sent bulbs of the flower to Vienna. They soon arrived in the Netherlands.

Tulips found a new fertile ground there. The country was rich in scientific and commercial horticulture tradition. Also, its wealthy merchants had a fascination for enjoying and collecting rare and exotic goods.

Over the years, Dutch breeders and horticulturists produced thousands of varieties of tulips differing in color, shape, height, flowering time, and petal form. They studied how tulips reproduce and perfected large-scale bulb cultivation. As the leading commercial nation of the era, the country made the flower from the remote Caucasus an international attraction. Today, the Netherlands exports billions of flower bulbs each year.

Looking back at its journey, one can say that Central Asia gave the world the tulip, Persia gave it symbolism, the Ottoman Empire cultivated and celebrated it, and the Netherlands reinvented it.

That reminded me of potato.

Why so, you might say. There is nothing common between the two. The one is a beautiful flower; the other a humble, earthy tuber. One delights the eye; the other merely quiets a growling stomach. And yet, their stories are remarkably similar.

The potato, today a staple food throughout Europe, is no more native to the continent than tulip is. It originated high in the Andes of present-day Peru and Bolivia. They were brought back to Europe in the late 16^th century by Spanish conquistadores.

Over the centuries, generations of European farmers and breeders cultivated potato for the European climate and palate. They reinvented it too.

It is easier to associate the symbol of a nation with a beautiful flower than with a humble, lumpy potato. So, to be on the safe side, I’ll simply mention that German cuisine would be almost unthinkable without potatoes. Indeed, there is a friendly rivalry among Germany’s regions over the best way to prepare potatoes.

In the north they are boiled and served with fish, pan-fried as Bratkartoffeln, or mixed into a creamy potato salad. In Swabia they become Schupfnudeln. Along the Rhine they are transformed into crispy Kartoffelpuffer. In Bavaria they reappear as Kartoffelknödel, the indispensable companion to a Sunday roast.

I mention all this to illustrate how the potato - an outsider - conquered both the heart and the stomach of Europe. Few pause to wonder where it came from.

The potato was hardly alone. Tomatoes, maize, and countless other plants crossed oceans and continents. Over time, they became so familiar that we forgot they had ever come from somewhere else.

Tulip didn’t become any less Turkish because it flourished in the Netherlands, nor any less Dutch because it first bloomed elsewhere. The same can be said about the potato, tomato or maize.

Sometimes an outsider, given care and the time to flourish, becomes so thoroughly woven into a nation’s story that it is impossible to imagine one without the other. This is how our lives and culture are enriched.

I packed that thought in my luggage as we headed back home. During the long flight I wasn’t thinking about tulips or potatoes. I was thinking about my booklist – the books I wanted to read next. It was autobiography time. And at the top was Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov.

I was really looking forward to reading Nabokov. He was born in Russia and grew up multilingual in Russian, English, and French. Although he primarily wrote in Russian, he switched to English after immigrating to the United States. At that time, he was 41 years old.

His Russian soul never left his prose, but his adopted language became the instrument of his greatest works. Lolita is an American classic; Speak, Memory is often called the finest autobiography in English.

Something about that reminded me of tulips and potatoes. But the budding thought was cut short.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Minneapolis–Saint Paul. The local time is 3:10 p.m. The skies are clear and sunny, and the temperature is a brisk 15 degrees Fahrenheit,” announced the onboard speaker system.

I straightened my seat and looked out the window. I saw a white landscape blanketed in pristine snow. The sky was blue, the sun brilliant. Just like 35 years ago, on a winter afternoon, when I had landed in Minnesota as an immigrant. This time the snow was not foreign. It was familiar. It was home.

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Three years earlier, my wife had joined a local line dance group as a newbie. She fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Ever since, she had been working on me – gently but persistently.

If dancers live on Venus, I was born on Mars.

Harrison Ford had it easy. He could get off the hook in Clear and Present Danger by simply saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. President. I don’t dance.” That option was not open to me.

I searched for reasons why I shouldn’t line dance. Back then I hadn’t yet, in preparation for line dancing, bought my cowboy hat and western boots. So instead, I put on the only hat I have always worn – my rational hat.

Bad idea.

As we grow older, we are told to switch to physical activities that are low impact. Line dancing? Check.

One of the greatest dangers in old age is losing balance and falling. “Go line dancing”, said my hat. “You’ll improve your balance by hopping, jumping, and turning.”

Want to remain socially active? You got it. “You’ll be part of a group of like-minded enthusiasts.”

Maintain your sharp brain? “Go line dancing”, said the sign at the end of the cul-de-sac. Every dance is individually choreographed; and you must memorize them.

So, there I was. Every alley I took turned out to be a dead end. The only one left led straight to the local YMCA.

So, one fine evening, I marched off to the YMCA and joined a line dancing class for beginners. The rest is history. This time, it was I who got hooked.

The group of mostly elderly, health-conscious folks welcomed me warmly. And the teacher, Miriam, was a godsend. She had an amazing knack for teaching the uninitiated. She, if I may say so, was the perfect “Minnesota Cowgirl”, if you can imagine one. Besides line dancing, her other hobby was riding and caring for her two horses.

My initial shyness and awkwardness soon gave way to fun – thanks also to friendly fellow dancers. And to everyone’s surprise, but nowhere near my own, I turned out to be a quick learner. In hindsight, I attribute this to my subconsciously approaching the whole thing as learning a new language. More on this later.

But part of the reason I got hooked was my realization of what line dancing really is.

Until then, I thought you line dance in a cowboy outfit. I had already assembled my paraphernalia. Not so. I never used my impressive outfit for dancing.

My vague idea of line dancing was somewhat like standing erect on the dance floor with your thumbs tucked under the belt and stomping as the music goes. And every now and then throwing out a hearty “Yee-haw!” for good measure.

Not so either. I discovered, to my surprise, that line dancing actually involves … dancing!

Yes, the caricatured “Yee-haw!” kind does exist. It is danced to country western music and is quite popular. But line dancing is a broad genre. There is the crossover type - danced to a variety of contemporary pop, rock, oldies, and mainstream music. And then there is Latin line dance influenced by Latin rhythms.

This, too, is line dancing (embedded video).

Anyway, it didn’t take long for me to “graduate” from YMCA. Together with my wife, I joined a local line dance group. That’s where things got more interesting.

Here, the crowd was different. More of younger dancers, but also some elderly. Among the elderly, some were even in their early 80s. But on the dance floor, they left me in the dust!

More importantly, the variety of dances was much broader. And we learned more difficult ones.

The once reluctant line dancer doing “It’s America” shortly after graduating from YMCA (embedded video)

That’s when a riddle reappeared in my mind that had been bugging me for some time. How is it possible to learn hundreds of dances, each choreographed individually and lasting three to five minutes?

The answer, I realized suddenly, was language.

Every dance is poetry in motion – written in the language of dance. Let me explain.

A dance is not merely a sequence of steps. It is closer to a poem. The individual moves matter, just as individual words matter. But what we experience is the larger pattern - rhythm, repetition, surprise, flow, and expression.

The basic moves of line dancing (steps, step-touches, kicks, turns, toe touches, heel digs, and so on) are the letters of the language. Shuffles, jazz boxes, Grapevine, etc. are the sequences – equivalent to words in a spoken language. A series of sequences make up sections, just as words make up sentences. And several sections together form larger blocks of choreography – the closest thing dance has to stanzas.

When memorizing a poem, you don’t memorize the individual letters. You go by remembering familiar and notable phrases while remaining aware of the cadence, rhythm, and emotion.

And in line dancing? A grapevine here. A shuffle there. A turn that naturally follows. What had once looked impossibly complicated from the outside suddenly felt manageable.

And there was something else. In a well-choreographed dance, the movements seem to emerge naturally from the music itself. The dance becomes an expression of the music, much as a poem is an expression of the poet. Another reason to think of dance as poetry in motion.

Take all this with a pinch of salt though. I am no expert – not in poetry, and certainly not in dance. But thinking this way helped me understand why line dancing is easier to learn than I had imagined.

Then there was a second discovery. It was even more surprising than the language discovery. It was the discovery of playfulness.

Have you watched children play? They hop, they jump, they skip and move in silly ways – and they enjoy themselves.

Perhaps this is what the body wants – to release tension and feel good. But as we grow older, social norms get in the way.

On the dance floor, though, you can hop, jump, and turn - even wiggle your butt - with no shame. You can’t do that in a grocery shop. On the dance floor however, that’s what the choreography prescribes, and that’s what everyone else is doing.

Now you have the permission to get in touch with your inner child. Not a simple thing to do anywhere else, especially for a highly rational scientist and a male of age!

Looking back, I realize that my wife was right – as usual. And I’m so glad that my resistance was futile.

As a result, I learned a new language, one spoken not with words but with movement. And hidden inside that language was something I hadn’t expected to find at all: permission to play.

Postscript for Rationalists

Read this only if you are more rational than I am – if that‘s even possible. You should start dancing for one simple reason. It’s the science.

Researchers have shown that dancing improves balance, mobility, cognition, and healthy aging throughout life. Apparently, hopping around to music is better for us than it looks.

But if, for some strange reason, dancing still isn’t your thing (maybe not so strange – after all it took many decades for a smart guy like me to do so), then perhaps, eat plenty of curry.

Turmeric, the yellow spice that gives many curries their color, has long been studied for possible protective effects on the brain.

Although I can’t imagine anybody disliking both line dancing and eating curry, there is still hope. Become bilingual.

Which leaves me wondering about the prospects for a curry-loving, trilingual line dancer. That individual happens to be me.

Then again, every statistic has its outliers.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy my four real-life encounters in the former East Germany that shed light on the human side of German reunification — from quiet pride to lingering pain: Ossis, Wessis and One Traveler in Between

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When the plane touched down in St. Paul, Minnesota, one afternoon in late December, it was my fourth visit in six years and the beginning of my third emigration. This time, my wife and children were with me.

Earlier, looking out the window, I saw a white landscape blanketed in pristine snow. The sky was blue, the sun brilliant.

I had visited Minnesota in all three other seasons, but never in winter. Minnesota’s brutally cold winters are a legend. I had been warned never to touch a lamppost with my tongue. Of course, I had no intention of doing any such thing. But jokes aside, I already liked the prospect of a sunny snowy winter – even if a bitterly cold one – to the cloudy, gloomy winters of the part of Germany where we used to live, even if they were milder.

I had been living in Germany for almost two decades already. Not too long ago, I had started my professional career at a multinational corporation with a unique, can-do culture. It felt like having a dream career opportunity in front of me. I have written about this in a previous post A Gem in a Box of Chocolates (Part 1 of 4).

A few days before our departure, Herbert and Sigrid, our friends in the neighboring city of Cologne, had invited us for dinner. They wanted to bid us farewell. One of their friends happened to stop by. When he heard about our upcoming trip, he wished us well on our journey to the “land of unlimited opportunities.”

But he misspoke. Instead of saying das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten, he said das Land der ungeahnten Möglichkeiten - the land of unimagined opportunities.

He quickly corrected himself. But I still remember the slip, perhaps because he had no idea how prescient his parting wish would prove to be.

That was 35 years ago. The world was largely at peace; Germany rock solid in its industrial-economic foundation, and its society enviably tranquil and economically equitable. And America, as ever, was a land of dreams and contradictions.

“America doesn’t exist. I know this because I have been there” - wrote a German journalist in his memoir. And he felt homesick after returning to Germany. All other superfluous details have vanished from my memory – including the name of the author.

Yes, America, that strange union of promise and illusion.

I am recalling 35-years old memories. I do this not merely to tell my story. But as a preamble to what bubbled up in my mind after recently reading The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg. It is an epic immigrant saga about Swedish families who, in the 19^th century, came to Minnesota.

I have no connection with Sweden and have never been to that country. And yet, the book and its characters struck a chord with me. Why?

In the first paragraph I talked about the “beginning of my third emigration”; not “my third emigration”. You don’t call a seed a sapling. A seed sprouts and grows into a sapling only when placed in soil where it can germinate. That seed found fertile ground in Minnesota – and that in many ways.

I often say jokingly - and yet seriously - that I didn’t emigrate to the United States. I emigrated to Minnesota.

There was an understandable professional advantage. The headquarters of the large multi-national corporation I worked for is in Minnesota. But that was just one of many reasons.

We liked Minnesota in too many ways to count - the vast, pristine nature just beyond the metropolitan areas, its well-functioning infrastructure, and an easygoing way of life, to name a few. We also came to love the distinct rhythm of the seasons. I personally even liked the frigid winters, which brought out a certain natural vigor and a cold, bold beauty.

And behind all this was a subtle yet pervasive Nordic-German European culture. A culture that seemed perfectly at home in Minnesota and which we found deeply appealing. Is that because by that time I had already lived for almost two decades in Germany?

Perhaps that’s why Moberg’s book struck such a familiar chord. My finding Minnesota so likeable has something to do also with these immigrants from Sweden long ago.

There is, of course, another obvious reason: I, too, am an immigrant.

But before we set out, let’s pause and have a look at the landscape. Migration is a politically charged terrain, and taking that trail might leave us exhausted and contentious.

It is also an area on which bushels of Ph.D. theses can be – and have been – written across disciplines like economics, geopolitics, history, cultural studies, ethnography, sociology, and what not. That’s not where we are going either. We don’t want to lose ourselves in many directions.

Instead, let’s take a less trodden path – a somewhat personal one, if you will - and mull over a few thoughts that surfaced as I read the book. It is a quieter path, less contentious perhaps, and one that may even leave us a bit contemplative.

Most emigrants on board the brig Charlotta in Moberg’s book were leaving Sweden to flee poverty. These were the boat people of the 19^th century, crossing the Atlantic in search of a promised land. Call them economic migrants, if you will.

But there were other people too, leaving for other reasons. Some to escape religious persecution, some to cast off social stigma, and others to reunite with family, etc. Is that much different today?

Of course, humans are rarely driven by a single motive. Each emigrant carries a “bundle” of reasons with him. And that bundle is different for each person. No two bundles are arranged the same way.

Hidden in every bundle is a “blind passenger”. It can be the fear of the unknown, as much as deep attachments to home.

Kristina feared the Atlantic crossing itself and the unknown future in an unknown continent. She also felt attachment to the farm she was leaving, as well as the Swedish seasons, familiar customs, etc.

Karl Oskar, as the family head had additional worries: whether he is endangering his family, whether he is abandoning his obligations at home, whether stories of fertile land in America were exaggerated, etc.

Then there is the pain of irreversible choices: home abandoned, kinship network broken, and more.

Paradoxically, the weaker, the elder, and generally the women have a heavier blind passenger to carry than the stronger, the younger, and the men.

Getting back to the reasons that push an emigrant to emigrate, each individual reason lies somewhere between two extremes: the desperate desire to flee something and the intense desire to achieve something.

Therefore, emigrants come to a country both to take and to give. Do some take more than they give? Do others give more than they take? Yes, and yes. But the bottom line of the ledger, especially in the long run, is usually positive. Look no further than this country – the country of emigrants.

Looking back at my own three emigrations, I realize how different each bundle was. The reasons were different, as was the balance between the desire to flee and the desire to accomplish. And then there was the blind passenger. It never disappears entirely, but its weight was very different each time

And then there is the title of the book: The Emigrants. It tells stories of people leaving their country – seen from their own perspective. It is not about what others are saying about them.

Unfortunately, public debates about migration – so it seems to me - are typically from the perspective of those already in. If a book about this were to be written, it might well be called The Migrants.

Both perspectives are valid, and important. But they are the two sides of the same coin. Ignore one side, and you are left with only half the picture.

Let’s stop right here. I see a signpost to a trailhead ahead with a picture of Leon Trotsky on it. He is supposed to have said, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you”.

I happen to agree with Trotsky. But we don’t have to go down that trail today. Then not every conversation must become a political one. That shouldn’t stop anyone from mulling over political dimensions for themselves, however.

It is probably non-controversial to say that migration has always been one of the constants of human history. One could even say that human civilization itself is, in large part, the story of population movement..

Let’s remember that it was the descendants of Lucy in Africa who, through migration, populated the rest of the earth.

Going back further, we could see Adam and Eve as the first emigrants. Expelled from paradise, they had to find a new place to live. They were the ur-emigrants. Many of their descendants are still looking for a place where life might begin again.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy why you shouldn’t hold your opinions too deeply An Opinion About Opinions.

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The book was After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. I sometimes wonder whether it unsettled me as much as it did because I had only recently immigrated to the United States.

But as I picked up the volume, my unease turned to inquisitiveness. I learned from the back cover that he had foretold the collapse of the Soviet system 15 long years in advance.

Struck by his record of prescience, I bought it on the spot and spent the next few days unpacking the rather gloomy message. The argument was quite convincing. But the few people I shared it with were mildly derisive at best. It took roughly 15 years before I began to sense a shift in the broader sentiment.

The same author has now published a third similar book titled La Défaite de l’Occident (loosely translated: The Defeat of the West). I had to find out what grim news he has this time. But I don’t speak French, and there is no English translation. Fortunately, the German version came out recently. I got a copy of Der Westen im Untergang and read it with interest.

This time too, I found the book convincing - perhaps also because of my own observations. Here again, Emmanuel Todd uses a host of demographic trends - things like fertility rates, life expectancy, suicide patterns, marriage rate, literacy and education pattern, etc. – to make his case.

But I am not going to dwell on these metrics and trends. That would make for rather dry reading. Nor will I try to convince you that Todd’s conclusions are correct. Unless asked, I tend to leave others’ opinion be their own business.

Instead, I want to focus on why Todd thinks these changes are happening. That, to me, is far more thought provoking – even if open to debate.

A brief aside: I used to read nonfiction mainly to learn new facts and assumptions. That’s still true to a degree. But over time, I’ve come to value something else even more. It’s the ways in which other thinkers connect facts and assumptions.

I find this interesting because conclusions are, in essence, opinions. We arrive at them by logically linking together what we take to be facts and assumptions – or “dots” as I like to call them. (I explored this idea in an earlier post, An Opinion About Opinions.)

Coming back, then, to Todd’s book, I found two of his whys for the decline of the West especially intriguing. As you’ll see later, they offer an interesting way of connecting “dots”.

Dramatic changes rarely happen for a single reason, and what one sees as a why often depends on one’s perspective. For the decline of the West, one of Todd’s more surprising explanations is religion. It is surprising because he himself has a secular outlook and is not a religious thinker.

The other why is nihilism. This is also unexpected, because Todd is not a philosopher.

Religion

My aha moment came in the section on religion. I was already aware that religion has always been deeply interwoven with human history. But I had not thought deeply about the cause and effect relationship Emmanuel Todd presents here.

Todd, however, approaches religion not as a theologian or moral thinker, but as a demographer. He views religion as a force that shapes culture and institutions. These changes ultimately influence the course of history.

He starts off by providing an example from the past. There was a clear asymmetry in the rise of the West.

Regions that were predominantly Protestant (England, Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia) became early centers of education, industrialization, and political modernization. Regions that were largely Catholic (Southern Europe, and parts of France), followed later.

Todd explains this difference through certain features of Protestantism. For example, its emphasis on individual Bible reading encouraged mass literacy. It is easy to forget how revolutionary universal literacy once was, and what it can do to a society.

A focus on a personal relationship with God in Protestantism encouraged individual responsibility. And its relatively weaker hierarchical structure was more compatible, in his view, with democracy and capitalism.

Also in the United States, one might loosely connect the country’s early development to the historical influence of the WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) culture.

At this point in the book, I started wondering how societies and, perhaps history itself, would change if the influence of religion declines. That’s exactly what Todd does next – explaining the changes that unfold in a sequential manner.

When religion is strong and active, both belief and practice are deeply rooted in everyday life. They play a strong role in shaping family structures, moral expectations, and social norms.

But as religion weakens, many values - like discipline, literacy, family norms, etc. – still persist but more in a cultural sense. Formal opposition to practices such as divorce, abortion, non-traditional family structures, etc. remains, but their practical acceptance grows. For many, the connection to religion becomes limited to life events like birth, marriage, and death. Religion now becomes more of a cultural phenomenon.

Soon, religion is no longer meaningfully believed in, and its practices thin out. The remaining fragments of social habits and intuitions that remain often do so in unstable or contradictory ways. The society reaches a “zombie” religious phase.

In Todd’s account, societies may eventually move toward a post-religious phase. As the role of belief and religion disappear, shared common norms and values erode – both at individual and societal level. Something starts to emerge that Todd calls “nihilism”.

Nihilism

Emmanuel Todd’s use of the term “nihilism” is somewhat unusual. He doesn’t use it in the traditional philosophical sense – such as the loss of meaning, truth or value – nor in the looser cultural sense of disillusionment or skepticism.

Instead, he uses it more as a diagnosis of societal breakdown. His question is not what happens when meaning collapses, but what a society looks like once the collapse is already underway. I find this shift in perspective particularly striking and interesting.

Therefore, when he gives examples of “nihilistic” patterns of behavior in a “post-religious” society, he does so less by establishing clear cause and effect relationships than by drawing connections across a range of observations.

Some of these relate to individual or societal behavior (rising suicide rates among young males, declining fertility, household structures). Others extend to political/economic decisions that are self-undermining. He specifically points out European Union’s sanction policy towards Russia. Other examples include increasing polarization in politics and a sense that the government is more focused on managing a decline rather than creating true alternative solutions.

Emmanuel Todd explains the West’s decline in a way by placing religion near the center of the story. Others have tried to explain the decline in other ways.

Thomas Piketty, for example, assumes that economic inequality and capital concentration play a central role. But for Francis Fukuyama institutional decay and political dysfunction play a central role. Still others view civilizational decline as part of a broader life cycle (Oswald Spengler).

Who is right? That would be the wrong question. Complex processes defy one single explanation. The decline of the West is no different. It’s a tangled web of many strands that push and pull in many directions. Therefore, I don’t believe that just one factor decides the outcome.

Instead, the question I ask is whether Todd has illuminated a corner of the tangled web that I hadn’t quite seen before or shed light on a strand I wasn’t aware of before. The answer, at least for me, is yes, and yes, on both counts.

It was a great read. But like many great reads, it answered some questions while raising other, even bigger, ones. One of them has stayed with me in particular: why do human societies need religion at all?

But that is a much larger trail, perhaps one without a clear trail guide. Who knows, I might wander down it one day.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy how my life changed When My Grandfather Challenged the Truth

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

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Not a good omen, I thought. If this was the welcome greeting, I didn’t like it. A sign hung on the bathroom door of the dorm. It said the water was bad. Three awkward days followed. Then I tripled my German vocabulary.

Leaving Home

It was many years ago. Bangladesh had only just emerged from a bloody war of independence. Its founding leader had recently been assassinated. I had just graduated from high school. Times were uncertain.

Quite out of the blue, I saw a small notice in a newspaper: a scholarship to study Chemistry in East Germany. I hadn’t studied German and never considered Chemistry. I made a hasty decision – totally unanticipated, and against my parents’ wishes. I applied anyway. Within a month, I was accepted.

Within weeks, I was on an Interflug turboprop, headed for Berlin. It was my first flight, and my first journey abroad ever. As if that were not enough, I was going to a country where I did not know anyone and whose language I did not speak.

But I was prepared - as well as I could be. I had a small suitcase, carefully packed with things my mother had thought I’d need. She herself had never left her country. And I had 50 U.S. dollars – my emergency fund – tucked in a pouch tied around my chest.

I have never been adventurous. And yet, looking back, I recall no fear, no doubt, no apprehension. Youth, lacking life’s experience, must resort to ignorance. Sometimes, it even works.

In those days, traveling abroad was still a novelty. That meant a festive farewell at the airport. My extended family had gathered at Tejgaon International airport. They bade me goodbye with much fanfare. After the formalities, I walked out on the tarmac to the plane.

On my way, I looked back. I saw my family waving at me from the rooftop visitor platform. I remember it was a beautiful, sunny September day. But I don’t remember noticing my mother’s grief. Who can tell whether that was a failing on my part or a blessing?

I climbed up the gangway into the plane, found my seat, and buckled up, waiting impatiently for my maiden flight. I had a window seat. I was mesmerized by the view as we took off. First the airport, then the city, and finally the country of my birth became smaller and smaller - and then disappeared altogether.

All the while, I remained blissfully unaware of a quiet truth: once you step out of a stream, you can never return to the same stream again.

Free Grapes and Culture Shift

Memories of the flight are sketchy now. But I remember the breathtaking view of the Hindu Kush Mountains in the warm glow of a late afternoon sun. Our first stopover was in Tashkent. As the plane refueled, we waited in the transit lounge. There were free snacks! That’s where I got my first culture shock.

I could eat as many grapes as I liked.

In my mind, grapes were associated with being sick. They don’t grow in Bangladesh and must be imported. They were expensive. That’s why, I suppose grapes had a special healing power. Things may be different today.

The next stop was Moscow – Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport. We arrived shortly after midnight. I had to wait several hours for the connecting flight, in a quiet and deserted transit hall.

Suddenly, chatter and laughter broke the silence and pulled me from my stupor. A group of middle-aged cleaning women had arrived.

It may sound trivial, but I was struck by how different they looked compared to Bangladesh.

Clearly, things are going to be different from now on. A harbinger of what was to come?

​

Berlin to Leipzig

Then another long flight to Berlin - this time with Aeroflot. We arrived in Berlin Schönefeld at the crack of dawn. By then, everything was a blur. I vaguely remember someone from the Herder-Institut being there - taking care of immigration formalities.

I was headed to Leipzig, where I would first learn the German language at the Herder-Institut, before going on to study chemistry at a university.

The final leg was a long train ride from Berlin to Leipzig. A Bangladeshi student who had arrived the year before came to accompany me.

We rode for several more hours. Bleary-eyed, I watched the landscape drift past the window – a gray countryside punctuated by small towns; occasionally stopping at a somber, deserted train station in the early morning light.

Arrival and Confusion

Finally, we reached Leipzig. The senior student took me to the dormitory at Herder-Institut. He arranged the formalities and left. He was a physics student in the nearby city of Halle.

The long journey and the jet lag had taken their toll. I was happy to finally settle in and rest.

Then I saw the ominous sign.

It was on the door of the dorm’s bathroom. It showed a running showerhead, with the word “Bad” scrawled across it. Naturally, I assumed something was wrong with the water. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to use it?

I couldn’t ask anyone. The semester hadn’t started yet, and few students were around. Even if they were, they probably wouldn’t speak English. This was East Germany in the 1970s.

Fortunately, I spotted another dorm across the cobblestoned street. I collected my towel and toiletries, walked across, and used that bathroom instead.

And so began my awkward daily ritual. Towel in hand, crossing the cobblestones like a fugitive. Every day I was grateful winter hadn’t arrived yet - all the while wondering when someone was finally going to fix the water.

Vocabulary x3

On the third day, the senior Bangladeshi student came to check on me. I told him of my misery. He burst out laughing.

Then I got my first lesson in German. It came in three parts:

First, “Bad“ means bath in German.

Second, Bad is neuter, so its definite article is “das“.

Third, stern advice - never learn a German noun without its gender.

The third piece of advice was priceless. Anyone who has learned German will understand why. For everyone else, I can only recommend The Awful German Language by Mark Twain.

And just like that, I tripled my German vocabulary. Until then, the single German word I knew was Achtung - thanks to dog-eared, WWII comic books I used to buy from used bookstores in Dhaka.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy A review of Lütten Klein and why many East Germans still feel they were absorbed, not united: German Reunification – The Eastern Perspective

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

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Relax. This is not a political essay. Not because politics are not important. Quite the opposite. Here, I want to explore something unfashionable: bring people together.

“Who are you?” is an uncomfortable question, even when it is asked innocently. There is an added sense of awkwardness when it comes from a friend. Not any friend, but one you’ve known for more than half a century.

But that’s exactly what my friend asked in the middle of one of our long irregular phone conversations where we chat about essentially nothing.

We were reminiscing our shared childhood in Bangladesh - how we drifted apart for many decades and eventually reunited again in the United States. My own journey was longer, and less direct – winding through multiple continents, cultures, languages, and political systems during the most formative years of my life.

My friend asked a perfectly reasonable question. Who am I indeed? Or perhaps meaning who have I become.

To my surprise, I realized I had never thought about this seriously. Wrong-footed, I deflected the question with something trivial that I don’t even remember anymore. But the question lingered unanswered - until my next visit to the local library.

One of my small rituals in the library is to browse the staff display table. This time, as I was about to leave, I saw a librarian place a book on the table titled “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny”. The word “identity” immediately caught my attention. What a coincidence! I thought. (Only later did I notice the author - Amartya Sen – someone I had long meant to read.)

But isn’t life itself an unbroken chain of coincidences – from birth to the present moment? I don’t say this in a deterministic sense. At every turn, we have a choice to make. This time, I made mine and took the book home.

As I began reading, I understood why my friend’s question had felt impossible. It assumed there was a single, tidy answer. But our identity rarely offers one.

For example, I am - in no particular order - a baby boomer and retiree, a scientist and inventor, a naturalized American fluent in Bengali and German, a husband, father, and son, a Muslim, a hiker and tennis player, a hobby photographer, a hobby writer, a reader, and a one-time line dancer (until the Covid killed my local line dance scene). I am also someone deeply interested in geopolitics, who has lived on three continents under very different systems.

Where would I have started to answer my friend? He knew all these anyway.

I am not special. Each of you have a similar long list of identities –with different details., of course.

As I read on, I encountered a second aha moment: our identity is not permanent. The identity we project depends on the context or the situation. I had difficulty answering my friend’s question also because it lacked context.

That reminded me of a kaleidoscope.

The picture inside a kaleidoscope comes from many differently colored and shaped pieces. Rotate the kaleidoscope, and a different picture emerges. Our identity behaves similarly – different contexts bring different aspects to the fore.

I like the kaleidoscope analogy also for another reason. If some pieces are removed or others added, the pictures that emerge will be different. We too, add or remove aspects of our identity over time – I was not always a scientist or a retiree, and I am no more a schoolboy.

The biggest aha moment though, was about group identity. If our personal identity is kaleidoscopic, the identity of a group is like a magnifying glass - focusing on some pieces while ignoring others

Take five random people. Thanks to everyone’s multifaceted identity, it’s always possible to find some aspect they share. Sometimes the commonality is small; sometimes it is large. See the “yellow” area in the Venn diagram.

Defining groups this way is legitimate and useful. The danger comes when we focus solely on the “common identity” and ignore everything else. Soon we start viewing people through a distorted prism – narrowly focusing on the mole but ignoring the beauty of the face.

What also gets lost is that each member of a group carries many other identities. Some of those identities can be common with a supposed rival group.

I’ll keep my promise not to write a political essay, but as Leon Trotsky said, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.” Be aware that idea of a single, unitary identity is often used to divide society between “us” and “them.”

It’s a bit like the classic glass half-full versus half-empty question. We tend to be happier when we appreciate what we have rather than obsess over what we lack. Likewise, a society becomes richer and more harmonious when we look beyond the aspects of identity that divide us and recognize the many ways we are connected.

As for my friend’s unanswered question? I am ready for it now. Next time, I’ll start with a kaleidoscope – and maybe we’ll both enjoy the view.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• If you enjoyed this reflection, you might also like Reading English with Chanachur

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

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Until that trip, I associated Iceland simply with a historic event: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s meeting in the capital city Reykjavík. They talked about a nuclear treaty.

And a barely worth mentioning association was my having read “Independent People” by Halldór Laxness - Iceland’s only Nobel Prize winner in Literature.

To be honest though, there was already another quasi-personal connection with Iceland. An Icelandic volcano had erupted in 2010, spewing ash in the atmosphere and bringing transatlantic air traffic to a halt. We were on our way back from Europe to Minnesota, and the eruption nearly stranded us in Istanbul, Türkiye.

That volcano was Eyjafjallajökull.

I know what you are thinking. Yes, I did know about Eyjafjallajökull, but I didn’t understand Eyjafjallajökull.

The understanding began with beer. With Egils Gull - simply called Gull – to be precise.

The process needed waterfalls too. Fortunately, there is no dearth of waterfalls in Iceland. Iceland is one of the most glacier-rich countries in the world. Most of them sit right on top of volcanoes. Not surprisingly, there are literally hundreds of waterfalls in Iceland.

One of the first waterfalls we saw was Gullfoss. It is an iconic, multi-tiered waterfall with massive amounts of water plunging into a deep canyon. I remembered the hotel bar from last night, and simply assumed that Iceland’s most popular beer was named after the country’s most iconic sight.

“No, gull means golden,” said the bartender, when I asked him later that night.

🎥 Gullfoss waterfalls

We visited more waterfalls: Goðafoss, Skógafoss, Dettifoss, and others. It dawned on me that foss probably means waterfall in Icelandic. And Goða sounded so similar to God. This time I was proven right on both counts – with the proviso that the accurate translation of Goða is “of the gods”. The names translate neatly into ‘waterfall of the gods,’ ‘waterfall of the forests,’ and simply ‘the falling waterfall”.

🎥 A brief moment of sun on a rainy day was all I needed to capture a rainbow at Skogáfoss waterfalls

There was another insight. Icelandic language loves compound words.

I tucked that insight into my mental backpack as we continued our road trip. And unpacked it again as we were climbing Vatnajökull - Iceland’s largest glacier. Of course, we had a professional guide with us.

By then, I was having fun trying to decipher strange-sounding Icelandic words. I learned that the name of the glacier combines two words: vatna = water, and jökull = glacier.

That’s when I understood Eyjafjallajökull.

It is simply the combination of three words: “eyja + fjalla + jökull“. Translated literally “island + mountain + glacier”.

That solved another riddle that has been bothering me for a while. How on earth can Icelanders remember such strange words like Eyjafjallajökull? It’s simple. Would you have much trouble remembering the name of a place if it were called “Islandmountainglacier”? I bet you wouldn’t. But for non-English speakers that would be a challenge!

For many people, including me, compound words inevitably bring the German language to mind. Sometimes that association is simply fun. Consider a made-up word that nobody actually uses: “Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft”. It is grammatically correct but exists mostly to amuse or intimidate. It means “Society of junior officials of the main electrical works department of the Danube steamship company.”

On the other hand, Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung, with its 34 letters, is a perfectly customary word in everyday use. It means “motor vehicle third-party liability insurance”.

It turns out that German isn’t unique. Most languages allow compounding in some form, including English, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic.

Compounding is especially prolific in Germanic languages such as Dutch and the Nordic languages: Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, etc. Germans, however, are simply bold about it.

As I dug a bit deeper, I discovered that while Germans are bold about compounds, Sanskrit takes the idea to the extreme: entire sentences can collapse into a single word.

In case you are not familiar with Sanskrit, think of it as India’s version of Latin. Both are ancient, classical languages. They are no longer spoken daily. Latin gave us French, Spanish, Italian, and more; Sanskrit gave us Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and their relatives.

It is likely that some of you have encountered Sanskrit words – especially if you are into yoga. Many yoga positions are named in Sanskrit. Some examples:

• Śavāsana (corpse pose) is a compound of Śava (corpse) + āsana (pose).

• Trikoṇāsana (three-angle pose) comes from tri (three) + koṇa (angle) + āsana (pose).

• Bhujaṅgāsana (cobra pose) comes from bhujaṅga (cobra) + āsana (pose)

• Adho Mukha Śvānāsana (down facing dog pose) comes from Adho (downward) + Mukha (face) + Śvana (dog) + āsana (pose)

I don’t know Sanskrit, but my mother tongue is Bengali – which descended from Sanskrit.

Bengali, too has compound words, although I never thought about it consciously. Partly because they are not as bold as German ones. Perhaps also because one uses a native language more instinctively than analytically.

There was another surprise. I had learned German many decades ago, including its fondness of compound words. But it took my engagement with the Icelandic word Eyjafjallajökull to start thinking about compound words in Bengali.

Here too, I have a hypothesis. German language and its compound words were taught to me, whereas Icelandic compound words came to me through self-discovery. The latter is always a more powerful way of learning.

As I looked inward, I realized that Bengali is replete with compound words. Many evade detection unless consciously scrutinized. They are usually simple, short and poetic.

But here, I wanted something bold and bombastic to stand head-to-head with Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung or Eyjafjallajökull! And I found one. My favorite is কিংকর্তব্যবিমূঢ় (pronounced: king-kortobbo-bimurh). It can be broken down as:

কিং (king) - what

কর্তব্য (kortobbo) - duty

বিমূঢ় (bimurh) - confounded

It literally means “utterly perplexed about what to do”.

Call me biased, but in elegance, the Bengali compound word কিংকর্তব্যবিমূঢ় beats German Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung by miles.

As we have seen, compound words are not a German eccentricity; they are one of the quiet universals of human language. That brings to mind the concept of a universal grammar (UG) underlying all human languages. Many linguists have proposed such an idea, including Noam Chomsky. But the concept remains controversial.

Chomsky once remarked that a Martian linguist might view all human languages as little more than dialects of a single language: different on the surface, yet strikingly similar underneath.

I often write about topics for which I have no official credentials. But here, that would be a bridge too far. I’ll instead wait for a Martian linguist to read this essay and tell us whether Chomsky was right.

Note: Like Icelandic, Bengali too has a single Nobel laureate in Literature - Rabindranath Tagore.

Besides being a poet, Tagore was a language-shaper. He was deeply attentive to how words combine naturally rather than mechanically. If German compounds are engineered, Tagore’s Bengali compounds are grown. They often feel organic, almost inevitable, rather than constructed - mirroring thought and emotion rather than logic alone.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• If you enjoyed this reflection, you might also like An Opinion on Opinions .….. or When My Grandfather Challenged the Truth.

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

Still, I take courage from my recent post, The Art of Photography, which, to my great surprise, has garnered the highest views among all my posts!

In that post I had suggested that there are two kinds of photos: photos for preserving memory, and photos as art.

I also proposed that the latter involves two distinct steps. First, a photographer discovers a beauty worth photographing. This beauty may be overt or covert, as noted in my previous post.

Next, the photographer takes a photo to capture that beauty. A photo is a success only to the extent that a later observer gets a sense of the emotions that moved the photographer to pick up the camera in the first place.

Then I went on a vacation.

A Roman Interlude

I went to Rome, to be precise. That was last December. The timing was good for avoiding too many tourists. But the weather was rainy and gloomy – something most photographers would rather avoid.

In hindsight though, it was a blessing. The difficult conditions forced me to think more deliberately about taking photos. As I did, three ideas emerged:

1. Talk to the “beauty”

2. Shoot the vibe, not the thing, and

3. Bad lighting? So what?

Let’s look at them one by one.

The Conversation

A photographer can capture only a beauty he or she actually sees. Unfortunately, beauty doesn’t reveal itself willingly. It is obviously true of covert beauties. But even an overt beauty does not reveal all its layers at once. They must be discovered.

Here I am reminded of a recurring theme in the Persian poet Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát: truth and beauty reveal themselves naturally, not through coercion.

To paraphrase him - in spirit, if not verbatim:

“The gentle touch, not force, unlocks the rose;

The beauty of the beloved yields to patience.”

And that gentle touch, for me, takes the form of a conversation with the beauty. Perhaps it is merely a conversation with myself, but it feels real as it unfolds. As I frame the picture in the viewfinder, a silent voice begins to guide me. It points out elements and subtleties I had missed. Things that make the picture more appealing. I continue this exchange until I am satisfied. It is an intense yet fleeting process.

Looking back, I realize that every one of my photos that I find impactful was guided by such a conversation – even though I wasn’t aware of it until my Roman vacation. Since then, I no longer attempt to photograph anything, however interesting it may seem, unless I feel that the conversation has begun.

Shoot the Vibe, not the Thing

Even in December, Rome is full of tourists. As we trekked from one historic must-see to the next, I observed the same scene repeated: tourists clicking away, posing before landmarks or framing themselves against historic backdrops. If preserving memory is the goal, that’s perfectly fine.

But that’s not my thing.

I remember visiting Paris long ago and feeling no desire to photograph the Eiffel Tower.

Part of it stems from my lack of interest in photographing something everyone else is photographing – much like my lack of interest in reading a book everyone else is reading. (If you are curious what I mean, you can check it out here Reading Like a Drunken Sailor).

Another part is an awareness of my own limitations. After all, for a dollar or two I could buy a postcard with a photograph whose quality I could never approach. So why bother? I did eventually take a selfie with the Eiffel Tower in the background. That was purely for memory’s sake.

There was, however, a third reason, one I recognized only after my Roman vacation. That is my interest in shooting a vibe rather than an object. My goal is to capture the feelings and emotions of a moment. The object may appear in the photo, but only as a prop.

Bad Lighting? So What?

Lighting conditions are among the most important elements in photography. True - but not decisive. Good photos can be taken in any lighting condition; they will simply be different kinds of photos.

So, instead of making the absence of sun an excuse, welcome the rain and the darkness. Embrace the shadow, the reflection, and the imperfection.

Couple that mindset with shooting the vibe, and you might even be thankful that it was a rainy day. That’s exactly what happened when I took Photo A below.

With that in mind, let’s look at two photos I took in Rome – Photo A and Photo B – and see how these three ideas came into play.

Photo A (St. Peter’s Dome on a rainy day)

“The best spot to see St. Peter’s Dome is from here,” our guide announced, pointing towards the distant dome. We were about to begin a guided tour of the Vatican Museums, and she wanted us to take advantage of the vantage point.

People rushed outside. I too, followed – reluctantly. It was a lightly drizzling, gray day, matching the gray dome in the distance. I stood off to the side. People got busy taking pictures: group photos and selfies, with the gray dome serving dutifully as background. Some aimed straight-up.

I watched them, rather than the dome. I don’t shoot things anyway - certainly not on a dull, cloudy day like this.

As I stood there, I became intrigued by the deep black sheen of the wet pavement. It reflected the people walking around. On one side, I noticed the reflection of a green tree. Interesting contrast with the dark black, I thought, and moved around a bit. Then I saw the distant dome reflected as well.

What if I take a photo of the reflection of the dome rather than dome itself?

That’s when the conversation began.

Good idea, came a quiet response.

I opened my phone’s camera and framed both the distant dome in the distance and its reflection. Get down close to the pavement. I did. Lower still. I did that too, giving the dark, wet pavement more emphasis in the foreground. What about the tree? I made sure to include it, and its reflection – on the left. And the beautiful façade on the right? Now I did. I saw its reflection too.

The conversation continued until I was satisfied. I clicked the photo. In that moment, I was grateful it wasn’t a sunny day!

Photo B (Sunset at Santa Marinella)

Santa Marinella is just one hour away from Rome by local train. It is a small coastal town on the Tyrrhenian Sea, and we visited it one afternoon for a few hours.

As the sun began to set, I stood at a lookout facing the sea. The narrow coastline was strewn with large, dark boulders. The sea was calm and gray beneath a dim sun, and the sky littered with unremarkable white-gray clouds. The small lookout itself was untidy, framed on both sides by high fences.

I saw no beauty and felt no urge to take a photo. No reason to come back to the Tyrrhenian Sea again, I thought, and started towards the train station. Then I turned back – one last time.

That’s when I noticed the balustrade. It bordered the lookout towards the sea. It had been there all along.

Interesting, I thought. I liked the classical, vase shaped balusters. I opened my phone’s camera and framed the balustrade - with the sea in the background. Only then did I notice the large paver stones beneath my feet.

That’s when the conversation began.

Frame the balustrade diagonally, I heard an instruction. I did, leaving generous space for the pavers in the foreground. Pay attention to the sun, a quiet voice suggested. I placed the dim sun near the upper-right corner. And the clouds? Yes - especially the woolly white pattern at the very top.

Suddenly, I could see the beauty in front of me and around me. I made a few quick adjustments and clicked, then hurried back to the station lest we miss the last train.

Summing it all Up

There are several other photos I could add here. But these two already illustrate what I learned during my Roman vacation.

First, I realized that taking a photograph involves three steps. Until then, I had been neglecting the most important one: the conversation.

Second, any photographic subject – even one whose beauty is immediately apparent - contains additional layers not visible at first glance. A photo becomes more impactful when those layers are gently unlocked. This can happen only through “a gentle touch”, as Omar Khayyám suggests, or through a gentle conversation as I have experienced.

Third, and perhaps unexpectedly, a successful artistic photo can preserve memory far more intensely than any simple memory photo. During this vacation, I took my share of memory photos as well. But the emotions they evoke pale in comparison to those stirred by the two photos above. Part of the reason is that a successful artistic photo captures not merely an object or a person, but a vibe.

A Few More Vibes

A Brief Note

You may notice that I have said nothing about the technical act of taking a photograph, for example, the many parameters photographers often consider, such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, white balance, or depth of field.

That is because I took these photos with my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Modern smartphone cameras are now sophisticated enough to make most of these decisions automatically - for better or worse.

Cell-phone cameras certainly have limitations compared to SLRs. Still, good photos can be taken with them. They will simply be different kinds of photos.

If you haven’t yet, check out my previous post on photography The Art of Photography.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• If you enjoyed this reflection, you might also like my earlier post about how William McKnight’s legacy built a legendary culture at 3M Company and how I was fortunate to be part of it A Gem in a Box of Chocolates (Part 2 of 4) .….. or a light-hearted look as why scientists and artists aren’t as different as they seem - until they are Science and Art are Different.

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

And yet, I read it. And yes, there’s a lot of good stuff in it - things I’ve heard from others who’ve read it, and things for which it’s justifiably on so many must read lists.

But there’s also much that remains unsaid – or at least, things I haven’t heard others say. That’s exactly what I am going to do now.

But first, a quick recap for those who haven’t suffered through it yet. Frankl’s book recounts his survival in Nazi concentration camps. It’s a story of resilience and strength in the face of horror.

Later in his life, Frankl, a psychoanalyst, went on to develop a school of psychology, that became known as the third Viennese school of psychotherapy. It places the search for meaning at the very center of human psychology.

By the way, the first two Viennese schools were led by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Freud believed that human behavior is driven by the pursuit of pleasure – along with the guilt and repression that accompany it. Alfred Adler, in contrast, saw the striving for power and dominance as the core human motivator.

In the concentration camp, Frankl saw first-hand that those who had a purpose for living were more likely to survive. Makes sense to me. Nietzsche had put it long before: “If one has a why to live for, one can bear almost any how.” This “why” is what helps us transcend the now and the present, especially under difficult conditions, and gives strength to reach a better future.

So far so good. My problem began when Frankl suggests that this “why” is the meaning of life. Is this whyuseful? Yes. But is it the meaning of life?

Imagine a convicted killer, whose purpose – his why – is to avenge the person who put him behind bars. It might help him survive prison, sure. But blame my high expectations, that’s not the grand meaning of life I was looking for. It’s too utilitarian, stripped of moral or ethical underpinning.

In Frankl’s defense though, he was writing about survival in a concentration camp. Priorities are different when it’s about life and death. To quote his contemporary, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, from The Threepenny Opera (1928): “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral” — or in English, “First comes the grub, then the morality.”

That’s fair. Survival naturally comes first. But problems arise when Frankl generalizes that truth beyond the camp.

The simplest one is this: the challenges one faces, and the skills one needs to survive in a concentration camp, are different from those in everyday life. Just as ordinary life skills won’t get you through a concentration camp, camp survival strategies may not be ideal for ordinary living either. Honestly, I’d be fine if Frankl had titled the book “Man’s Search for Meaning in a Concentration Camp”.

But there’s a deeper problem. This one goes to the very heart of the book.

Most of us, even as children, have asked at one time or another, why we’re here. Sometimes after staring up at a starlit sky and realizing the immensity of the universe, sometimes after the death of a loved one. Or sometime after a different kind of quiet epiphany. That’s a primordial search for meaning we all share.

As we grow up, that search continues. Some lucky ones find an answer. Many, perhaps, never do. Among those who are lucky, the answer is rarely the same. But it is never as simple as mere survival.

Survival is certainly not trivial. But by equating survival with the meaning of life, Frankl does the human spirit a disservice. He is really writing from the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy (food, shelter, and raw survival) and mistaking it for the summit.

The misguided focus on the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid has consequences that reach beyond the individual searching for meaning. As implied earlier, survival can trump moral and ethical considerations. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it also affect those trying to help? A psychotherapist, for example?

Put differently, is it acceptable for a psychotherapist to put a patient in a “mental bubble” untethered from ethics and morality? If meaning can be detached from moral judgment, then therapy risks legitimizing destructive purposes. A chilling possibility. Then a well-adjusted sociopath is still a sociopath.

I’m not sure if I can pin this problem solely to Frankl or this book. But they’re not innocent bystanders either.

I wrote this essay to practice critical thinking. Did I succeed? What do you say?

Epilogue

The main reason I wrote this essay was not to critique Frankl’s book or explore the philosophy of life’s meaning. I wrote it to practice – and perhaps demonstrate - critical thinking.

Critical thinking is essential, yet scarce. And despite its importance, it receives far less emphasis in our education system than it deserves.

I am neither an educator, nor a pedagogue. And I have no grand prescription for this problem. But I do know what the practice looks like for me: having the courage to challenge conventional wisdom, and then defending that challenge with clear, convincing justification.

If you can do this, then you’ll see more than what lies beyond the obvious. And what lies beyond the obvious is usually as important as the obvious - if not more important in certain cases. BTW, this is one of the methods I use to “deconstruct the matrix”, as indicated in a previous post Reading Like A Drunken Sailor.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• If you enjoyed this reflection, you might like my earlier post Reading English with Chanachur, a heartfelt, humorous tale of how a packet of chanachur changed the course of my life .….. or how a card game with my grandfather became a lifelong lesson in questioning conventional wisdom When My Grandfather Challenged the Truth.

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

Or do we?

How unified are the two parts of Germany today? How do people on either side remember what happened? And how differently did they experience it as it unfolded?

If you are curious about such issues then you might also enjoy two earlier posts: German Reunification – The Eastern Perspective, and Ossis, Wessis and One Traveler in Between.

This time, though, I explore the same subject from a different angle – a linguistic one!

A Clue

“I was right” is rarely a good way to start a conversation - or a blog post for that matter. It smacks of a lack of emotional intelligence. But still, I was right. Something was hiding in plain sight, and yet no one seemed to notice.

When I mentioned this to a German friend, she was surprised. But a few weeks later - after we’d returned from Germany, and she’d asked around – she admitted that yes, I was indeed right.

The German friend comes from an old, socially privileged family in East Germany. They were not politically privileged. She left before the fall of the Wall, while others in the family remained. She now lives in West Berlin. Her background gives her a rare vantage point on the subtle and persistent divides between East and West Germany.

So, what was it I noticed? Simply this: former East and West Germans use different words to describe the same event. It is the most important event in recent German history - reunification. And they’ve continued doing so, more than three decades later.

To me, this linguistic curiosity is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it lies a deeper divide. I’ve come to believe that reunification holds distinctly different meanings for East and West Germans at multiple levels - as I’ll explore below.

I’m not a linguist. I am trained as a natural scientist. So, why did this subtle language detail stand out to me when most others seemed unaware of it? Perhaps because I occupy a strange middle ground. I am neither a complete insider nor a total outsider. That in-between position offers a kind of “outsight”. It is a perspective that is neither fully inside nor entirely outside.

I had the above conversation two years ago - in 2023 - when I revisited eastern parts of Germany after more than 30 years. Some of the reflections I shared in an earlier posts about reunification also came from the same trip. Se here and here.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Almost all West Germans use the word Wiedervereinigung to refer to German reunification. It is also the official designation of the event. But East Germans, especially when they speak among themselves, use the word Wende. Both are nouns but are not synonymous.

So, let’s take a closer look:

• Wiedervereinigung is a compound of wieder (again) and Vereinigung (unification), meaning reunification. It implies a completed action, an accomplished fact.

• Wende means “turning point”. It refers to a change in direction in a process - not the end state. (For those familiar with calculus, Wendepunkt means inflection point.)

When two people use two non-synonymous words to refer to an event, it signals a deeper divergence in how they understand and interpret that event. Here, the differing terminology betrays the contrasting ways West and former East Germans frame the experience of reunification.

Simply put, Germans in the West look at this as a destination that has been arrived at, whereas their eastern countrymen see this as a milestone along a journey.

Technically, the West German term reflects the legal and political reality. Even former East Germans don’t dispute this. But they continue to speak of a turning point. Why, then, does the term Wende persist with former East Germans?

The answer lies beneath the surface of the iceberg. That’s where we’re going next.

What Lies Beneath the Surface

To solve the riddle, we must explore two submerged substructures of the iceberg. They are: the event horizon of reunification and political consciousness. More specifically, how they differ in the minds of Germans in the west and east.

For East Germans, die Wende began on Oct 9, 1989. But for West Germans, die Wiedervereinigungbegan one month later, on Nov 9, 1989. Here again, assessing the difference based on what’s visible – a gap of merely one month – would be hugely deceptive. So, let’s look at the two “beginnings” one at a time.

The Wende (East)

The Wende began when 70,000 people marched peacefully through the streets in Leipzig. This was triggered by an event two days earlier: Soviet General Secretary Mikhaill Gorbachev, attending East Germany’s 40^th anniversary celebrations in Berlin, had hinted that reform was inevitable.

His remark, “Life punishes those who come too late” (“Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben”), was understood by East Germans as a signal that political changes will be tolerated. The phrase remains etched in collective German memory. It was a symbolic green light that initiated a cascade of events….

• Oct 7, 1989: Gorbachev’s comment

• Oct 9, 1989: peaceful march in Leipzig by 70,000 people

• Oct 18: Erich Honecker (Gen Sec of the Socialist Unity Party SED) resigns

• Nov 4, 1989: Largest peaceful demo in Berlin Alexanderplatz with 500,000 participants

• Nov 9, 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall (see the following picture for subsequent events leading up to the official day of reunification on Oct 3, 1990)

• Followed by events leading up to the official reunification on Oct 3, 1990 – see the following timeline)

The Wall (West)

For West Germans, it was the fall of the Wall (Nov 9, 1989), that defines the beginning of the process. It was a photogenic event, broadcast live around the world. They experienced it passively - as spectators - witnessing what seemed like the triumph of the Western system over East. This moment, more than any other, shaped West German political consciousness of reunification.

For East Germans however, the fall of the Wall was just another progression of events – important but not decisive; neither planned nor intended. In fact, it was the result of bureaucratic miscommunication, public pressure, and a bit of historic accident. As a result, this event plays a relatively minor role in their collective political consciousness.

Instead, what stands at the core of East German consciousness is something more profound: the fact that they wrested the power of self-determination from a non-democratic system – and did so peacefully.

The rallying slogan of the Wende was “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the people) – emphasizing that the power lies with the people, not with the state.

This is a historic accomplishment, and one worthy of pride. Holding on to the word Wende keeps that pride alive – even if it betrays a sense of unfinished business; a destination not arrived at yet.

Undercurrents

Like the course of an iceberg, the path of reunification was difficult to predict. Around 90% of an iceberg’s volume lies submerged. Its course is shaped not only by surface wind, but by hidden undercurrents. The same is true for the reunification iceberg. It did not reach the destination that people of East Germany, who started the Wende, had in mind.

This brings us to a poorly understood aspect of the Wende – especially in the west. Wende was not about reunification! Rather, it was about creating a new, better East Germany that was democratic in nature.

No matter how naïve that might sound today, that vision had mobilized East Germans. Week after week, they marched peacefully in large cities in so called Montags Demonstationen (Monday Demonstrations) - bringing up to 500,000 people in Ost Berlin.

But in reality, East Germans were underpowered against vastly more powerful geopolitical forces that had other objectives.

As Steffen Mau argues in his book Lütten Klein – Leben in der ostdeutschen Transformationsgesellschaft, they lacked both the organizational structures and the resources to effectively advocate for their interests. As a result, they were sidelined and reduced to passive observers as a wave of immense changes swept over them.

This book, unfortunately unavailable in English, offers valuable insights in this process. I have reviewed it recently.

When all these were happening, I was living in West Germany. Back then I had no particular interest in politics or geopolitics. Still, I vividly remember how the rallying slogan slowly shifted.

It began as “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the people) - a direct challenge to the East German state. A declaration that the sovereignty belonged to the people.

But over time, it morphed into “Wir sind ein Volk” (We are one people). It was a call for reunification.

One could certainly argue how far this was a natural evolution, a response to emerging realities, or a result of external influence. Either way, it was a Wende within the Wende.

Here is an interesting fact to mull over. Immediately (or shortly) after reunification, three of the five new federal states that joined West Germany had Minister-Presidents who were highly experienced and prominent West German politicians. They were Kurt Biedenkopf (in Saxony), Werner Münch (in Saxony-Anhalt), and Bernhard Vogel (in Thuringia).

The Epicenter

With all this said, it is worthwhile to clarify another often misunderstood aspect of the Wende. Its epicenter was in Leipzig, and not in Berlin. The tipping point came on Oct 9, 1989, when 70,000 took to the streets of Leipzig in a peaceful demonstration.

It was no coincidence that the march (and the weekly demonstration that followed) began at St. Nicholas Church (Nikolaikirche). Then the Nikolaikirche had been holding a Friedensgebet (prayer for peace) every Monday at 5 pm since 1982.

East Germany had very few public spaces for dissent. Some churches, including Nikolaikirche, cautiously provided room for critical reflection, while being careful not to appear overtly political.

In my recent trip to Germany, it was only natural that I visited Leipzig. After all, it was in Leipzig that my German experience had begun many decades ago. It was also there that I had learned German. For more on that experience, see here and here.

During this recent trip to Leipzig, something unexpected happened. We were walking through the city center when the five o’clock gong sounded. We looked up and found ourselves standing right in front of the Nikolaikirche. It was a Monday. It was time for the Friedensgebet!

We stepped inside spontaneously, along with a handful of others. A short prayer was offered, followed by a simple appeal for peace. A banner hung quietly inside: “God does not approve of war”.

I sometimes wonder about that chance attendance – returning decades later, to the very epicenter of the Wende. Did that quiet moment at Nikolaikirche somehow prime my mind to revisit the Wende? Would I have otherwise noticed the different words Germans use to describe reunification?

Sometimes it takes a quiet echo from the past to sharpen our awareness to what lies beneath the surface. And that reflection revealed to me the multi-faceted nature of German reunification.

This is the third of a 3-part series on German reunification.

• Part 1: German Reunification – The Eastern Perspective

• Part 2: Ossis, Wessis, and One Traveler in Between

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• If you enjoyed this reflection, you might like my earlier post, An Opinion About Opinions – and Why You Shouldn’t Hold Yours Too Deeply, where I explore how we form, and sometimes misconnect, the dots of our beliefs.

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

It all started as a one-liner. A classmate once quipped that he doesn’t care about other people’s opinions. Why? Because everyone has one, and most of them are, well, deeply rooted. Like a certain body part.

It was at a gathering of old acquaintances, late in the evening, in an environment already well-lubricated for loose talk. There was uproarious laughter and many compliments on his wit.

I must have joined in too. But his punchy one-liner got me thinking - about opinion itself. Deeply. Pun intended. Not about his specific opinion though, but about the fundamental nature of opinion.

Unlike him, I’m actually quite interested in other people’s opinions – especially when they differ from mine. That’s partly because of the French essayist Montaigne, who’s supposed to have said, “there is no conversation more boring than the one where everyone agrees.”

But also because one of the best ways to get grounded in a topic is to understand how and why others see it differently.

The Structure

As I mulled over it, it dawned on me that all opinions have a common structure. They are a collection of facts (or assumptions) strung together with logic. Let me explain by taking you to your childhood.

Remember those puzzles where we had to connect numbered dots? And - lo and behold - out of a cloud of dots emerged a flower, a bird or a fairy!

Opinions are no different. We form them by connecting the bits and pieces of information and assumptions we are aware of on a given topic.

Unlike those childhood puzzles, though, everyone has a different set of dots. And these “dots” aren’t numbered. We must decide for ourselves how to connect them – what rules to follow, and what logic to apply.

No surprise, then, that the picture each of us sees is different.

A Visual Example

The model is simple enough, but here is a quick pictorial explanation. In the left box are 5 random dots – to be connected starting from “x”.

On the right-hand side, you see what emerges when you connect them using two different logics.

• Logic A: connect to the farthest dot

• Logic B: connect to the nearest dot

The two logics reveal two different “pictures”. They also end at different points.

Translating back to the topic at hand, one could say that, depending on how one connects a given set of facts and assumptions, the emerging weltanschauung is different (yes, that’s your SAT word of the day).

And naturally you end up with different conclusions – signified by the two end points in the illustration.

If a simple change in connecting logic can make that much difference, imagine how much more varied people’s opinions can be when they

• start with different sets of dots (facts and assumptions),

• use different logic to connect them (Edit: It’s more about “how” someone connects the dots)

• begin from different starting points (Think about the Ukraine crisis. Do you start in 2022, 2014, 2010, 2008, …?)

What is it Good For?

Here I can only speak for myself. Ever since I started seeing opinions as “dot connections”, I’ve reacted differently to views I don’t agree with.

Instead of focusing on the person - for example, instinctively pigeonholing him into a stereotype - now I try to understand what set of dots he is using and, if possible, the logic by which he’s connecting them.

This is easier said than done, especially on certain topics. After all, we are all emotional beings. And, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. The other person may not be familiar with this model.

Truth be told, most people are unfamiliar with this model. Then again, this is the first time I’ve written about this.

Not that it matters. Who cares what a retired scientist has to say about how people behave? But who knows? Maybe you readers will make this post go viral! Just kidding….

But there is another challenge: It’s getting harder to agree on what counts as fact and what’s misinformation. That’s a whole new can of worms. I might open it in a later post.

For now, though, I am content with how this approach works for me. That’s because my main purpose in a conversation with someone I disagree with isn’t to convince him he’s wrong. Rather, to find out why I might be.

If the evidence calls for it, I am happy to adjust my views. After all, the last thing I’d want is to discover, one day, that I’ve lived my life believing in the wrong things.

If you liked this then you might also like why scientists and artists aren’t as different as they might seem - until they are.

More from this publication

New here?

• Start with WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific - a short introduction to what this space is all about

• You might also enjoy A Gem in a Box of Chocolates (Part 1 of 4) - my winding road from polymer science in Germany to Minnesota winter.

A note from the author

I write solely for the pleasure of it. That pleasure grows when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email whenever something new appears.

And if you know someone who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

As I mulled over the unexpected question, I realized that he hadn’t asked the really interesting one - “how do you read?” I am glad he didn’t. Because I’d have to tell him that I read like a drunken sailor.

But first things first. I read for three reasons - probably like most people. Firstly, to learn – both professionally and personally. Second, to stay informed about the world. And finally, I read for the muse – purely for pleasure, expecting no “practical return”. (Though there’s always a return, isn’t there?) And that’s the kind of reading that interests me most.

Let’s look at the reading of the first kind. Reading for skill building used to be my primary reading for a long time. That’s all I did during my education and professional life.

Now that I am retired, I have no interest in it. Unlike many former colleagues I do not teach or consult in retirement. One of my retirement goals has always been to do something outside of my profession. And the second goal was not to work for money . Otherwise, what’s the point of retiring?

The second kind of reading is for staying informed. This is no easy task. As my favorite American author, Mark Twain, once said: “If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.”

How I deal with this challenge is a whole different story – maybe for a different time (see here) . All I’ll say for now is that this kind of reading fascinates me because it give me the tools to “deconstruct the matrix” we live in, or to “pierce the simulacrum” (i.e., see through the illusion of reality shaped by media and culture), if you will.

Which brings us to the third kind - my favorite: reading for muse. Few pleasures compare to curling up with a book, especially when so much needs to be done around the house!

Joke aside, one of my fondest childhood memories is about reading. At the start of each summer break, my mother would take me to a bookstore. I have long forgotten its name. What remains is the memory of browsing the children’s section and picking up whatever I wanted for the long summer days. Then, happy with my booty, we’d stop at the neighboring bakery. There, I’d savor a cool, crispy cream roll, and sip ice-cold Coca-Cola. To make it perfect, the Coca-Cola came in one of those small, iconic glass bottles, fresh out of a cooler – condensation beading on its surface in the thick summer humidity.

Then I encountered life – first formal education and then real life. Less and less time remained for pleasurable reading. My high school curriculum in Bangladesh was narrow and overly technical, which I took quite seriously. I had little curiosity for most things outside the bubble, including pleasurable reading.

Later came a technical education in Germany. First, in what was then East Germany. The only non-technical subject offered was Marxism-Leninism. Fortunately - or unfortunately - it was optional for foreign students like me. I took the easy way out. Later, in what was then former West Germany, my Ph.D. course comprised entirely of independent research.

Things didn't get better when I started working. I was consumed by building a career, raising a family, and two emigrations. One day, I realized that I had become a Fachidiot. That wonderful German compound word combines Fach (technical subject matter) and Idiot (which needs no translation). I also realized how much I had been missing reading for pleasure.

It was time to act. I had two birds to kill: return to something I had always enjoyed and start a remedial course for recovering Fachidiots. That’s when I started thinking about how I read.

In practical terms, that meant reading up on things that I have missed - which is just about everything outside my technical field. To make it more fun, I added a drunken sailor in the picture – zigzagging from book to book, topic to topic – guided by whim rather than plan. (Apparently one cannot escape one’s technical field entirely. The “drunken sailor” or random walk model is an idealized concept used in polymer science to describe how long-chain molecules (polymer) behave in space).

I began to read randomly - anything from fiction, history, philosophy, geopolitics, biography, psychology, anthropology and whatever caught my eye. But the books must meet four conditions (with occasional exceptions for the first two):

1. Not on any recent bestseller or recommendation list

2. Published at least 20 years ago – preferably earlier

3. Not a self-help or how-to book

4. Unrelated to my profession or technical training

Rules 3 and 4 are obvious. Pleasurable reading automatically excludes such books. But how about rules 1 and 2? Idiosyncratic? Read on…

The best argument for the first rule comes from Haruki Murakami: “if you only read the books that everyone else is reading, then you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” What a nightmare! Why would I want that?

As for the second rule, just remember that roughly a million books are published each year (for adults, in English). Not to speak of the gazillions that have already been published since Gutenberg! But I have limited time. And I need the best filter I can find. And that filter is “time”.

Stated differently, a book that was published long ago and yet has remained relevant today has proven to have a high “signal to noise ratio”. Nothing can beat this filter, including pundit recommendation, current popularity, book club endorsement, or sales figure.

Here too, I found support from an unexpected corner. It came from Nassim Nicholas Taleb - the provocative thinker, mathematician, and philosopher of uncertainty. He wrote: “the show running the longest on Broadway is more likely to outlast the younger ones".

Just to give some examples: which book would you rather read in each pair? It’s not about which book must be read vs. which one mustn’t. No two books cover identical ground. There are always valid reasons to choose one over the other. But if you’re broadly interested in a given topic and limited by time, which one would you pick?

• Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (2020) or Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life (1845)

• James Patterson and Bill Clinton’s The First Gentleman (2024, NYT Bestseller) or Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907)

• Christian Brose’s The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High - Tech Warfare (2020) or Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (circa 5th century BC)

• Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (2020) or Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

• Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat (2005) or Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society (English version 1964)

• Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020) or W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

• Ian Bremmer’s The Power of Crisis (2022) or George Kennan’s American Diplomacy (1951)

I have no doubt which one I’d pick in each pair. And I’ll gladly pay the price of not shining in social gossip or water cooler conversations for not being current on the latest bestsellers.

BTW, I discovered Murakami’s and Taleb’s quotes long after I had made my rules. As they say, great minds think alike.

Finally, here are some of my recent ports of call in four continents…

Philosophy, Psychology & Ideas

• Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

• Identity and Violence – The Illusion of Destiny by Amartya Sen

• The Art of Memory by Frances Yates

• The Vision of Islam by Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittk

• The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

History & Geopolitics

• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

• The End of Tsarist Russia – The March to World War I and Revolution by Dominic Lieven

• The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order by George Kennan

• Lütten Klein – Leben in der ostdeutsche Transformtionsgesellschaft by Steffen Mau

• Sun Yat Sen Liberator of China by Henry Bond Restarick

• The Age of Gold by W. H. Brands

• From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra

• The Geographical Pivot of History by Halford Mackinder

• The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun

• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian

• Imperium by Robert Harris

• Augustus by John Williams

Fiction & Literature

• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

• Walden Two by B. F. Skinner

• The Importance of Being Ernest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

• Notes from Underground by Fedor Dostoevsky

• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

• The Quiet American by Graham Greene

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

• The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

• Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

• The Abundance by Amit Majmudar

• Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

• Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Göthe

• English, August: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee

• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Memoir, Travel & Biography

• How I found Livingstone by Henry M. Stanley

• The Travels of Marco Polo by Manuel Komoff

• The Inkblots by Damion Searls

• Saint Augustine: A life by Garry Wills

• Harvard and the Unabomber by Alston Chase

• The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer

So, go ahead - read like a drunken sailor. You will be in good company, and you just might enjoy the voyage.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy My winding road from polymer science in Germany to Minnesota winters: A Gem in a Box of Chocolates (Part 1 of 4)

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

Here, I’d like to share some of those personal anecdotes and encounters. They took place two years ago - in 2023. That was when we returned to the eastern parts of Germany after decades!

It was an emotional trip. Not because of the long absence, but because my German experience had started in East Germany. I had lived there for 6 years. Later, I spent twice that long in West Germany. And yet, it is East Germany - a country that does not exist anymore - that lives more vividly in my memory.

I had gone back with two goals in mind. First, I wanted to rediscover former East German cities that are home to a rich heritage of classical German culture and history. Cities like Leipzig, Weimar, and more. That’s where Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Weimarer Republik, Bauhaus, etc. came from.

And secondly, I wanted to understand how German reunification has changed East German people and their society.

During our three-week trip through both parts of Germany, I took every opportunity to bring up German reunification with friends and acquaintances. I even struck up conversations with locals whenever I could. The responses ranged from mildly apologetic to openly defiant – and things in between. But each added color to the complex tapestry of how former East Germans feel about reunification.

Here are four such encounters….

Mildly Apologetic

As much as we looked forward to the trip, we were a bit apprehensive. Reports of xenophobia, especially in eastern parts, were making the rounds in the news. Should we be worried?

How appropriate, then, that we had this conversation on our very first day in Germany. It was an omen.

It happened on our train ride from Frankfurt Airport to Stuttgart. We were going to stay the first few days with our friends in a suburb of Stuttgart, in the western part of Germany.

As we approached Stuttgart, I helped a woman in her sixties and her mother get their luggage from the overhead rack. We exchanged pleasantries. I mentioned that we had moved to the U.S. three decades ago. Now we are back to visit some former East German cities.

“We're from Hoyerswerda,” she said. “Do you know Hoyerswerda?”

Yes, we did.

“Not everyone in Hoyerswerda is like that,” she added quickly. Her mother nodded in agreement.

Hoyerswerda is a small town in Saxony in the former East Germany. More than 30 years ago, the town made national headlines for a violent xenophobic incident. The woman’s defensive tone hinted at a deeper insecurity. It comes from an awareness that many in the West paint all East Germans with a broad brush based on the actions of a few.

That encounter stayed with us – especially as we traveled through places often mentioned in the media as hotspots of xenophobia. We carried their reassurance like a talisman. Over the course of our three-week trip through the former East, we didn’t have a single unpleasant encounter.

Regions of former East Germany now carry a stigma of xenophobia. I don’t believe this is intrinsic to East Germans. Rather, they were ill-prepared for the changes that came with reunification.

In East Germany, less than 1% of its population were foreigners – mostly unskilled workers from Vietnam, Cuba, and Mozambique – as Mau points out in his book. It’s ironic that international solidarity played a prominent role in state ideology. But in real life, East Germans had little connection with the people they were supposed to be supporting!

When the Hoyerswerda incident took place, we were living in West Germany. That was shortly after the reunification. I remember the trigger: the accommodation of a large number of foreigners in a small town already facing existential struggles. One has to question the wisdom of the authorities.

After returning to the U.S. I read another book by Mau. Here Mau provides more insights into xenophobia in former East German regions. He points out a contradiction: regions in the East that have a higher propensity for xenophobic violence, are actually more “ethnic-German” than the West. That’s because more immigrants settle in western regions.

He explains the contradiction with demographic “masculinization”. This is especially dramatic in Saxony-Anhalt with 115 males for every 100 females in the 20–29-year age group. The numbers are even starker in places like Schmalkalden, Suhl, and Ilm-Kreis: 128, 138, and 140, respectively. Mau also points out that men represent 80% of members of the right-wing party the AfD.

But I am digressing…

Looking back, I wish I had struck up that conversation with the fellow passenger earlier in the journey. There was so much I still wanted to ask.

Good Old Days​

Leipzig is in the federal state of Saxony. It is one of the states cited for higher incidence of xenophobic attitudes and right-wing extremism. Leipzig also happens to be the city of my first German residence back in 1975.

We had timed our visit to Leipzig to coincide with the 300^th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s arrival in Leipzig. Bach lived and worked in Leipzig for 27 years, serving as the music director of the four principal churches in the city. As an avid Bach fan, this felt like a pilgrimage.

We planned to stay in Leipzig for several days and intended to make full use of its excellent public transportation. Shortly after arriving, I found a branch office of the transit authority just around the corner from our hotel.

It was late in the afternoon and there was a long line. At the counter was a fifty-something, visibly stressed out, employee. She responded curtly when she realized what I wanted – compare various ticket packages none of which I understood. She turned to her computer in silence.

To break the ice, I mentioned that I had just returned to Leipzig after 47 years. “This is where I learned German - in 1975,” I said.

She looked up and seemed more relaxed now.

“Those were the good old days,” she confided. I was taken aback by her frankness.

Before I could respond, she added, “Yes, I’m an Ossi and will always be an Ossi”. There was a note of defiance in her voice, spoken with an unmistakable Saxon accent.

I don’t think that all former East Germans feel this way. But I don’t think she is an outlier either - despite the visible improvements all around the city. What a gold mine for conversation, I thought. But behind me, the queue was getting longer. So, wisely and considerately, I focused on the transaction at hand.

Her unprompted frankness surprised me, especially with someone who was clearly not German. Perhaps she thought that, since I had known Leipzig in the late 70’s, I would understand her. Besides, she could tell I wasn’t a Wessi.

Here, I suppose, I owe you an explanation of the words Wessi and Ossi. These playful, informal words are used by former East and West Germans to refer to people from the “other” side. Wessi literally means “someone from the West” and Ossi “someone from the East”. The channels of communication between Ossis and Wessis remain difficult – even though they technically speak the same language.

Subtly Proud​

My next encounter in Leipzig was entirely unexpected: Dr. A.M., the recently retired director of the Herder Institute. Our paths crossed purely by chance.

Herder Institute, affiliated with the University of Leipzig, is where I once learned German. It’s a preparatory language school for foreign students. Understandably, I felt drawn to revisit it. Finding it wasn’t easy. Not only had decades passed, but the street layout had changed as well. Still, I found it.

I arrived late in the afternoon. Classes were not in session, but the front doors were open. I walked in and wandered through the empty hallways. I climbed the staircase, that I knew so well, to the second floor. Where is my classroom?

I was too engrossed in the past to notice a young woman observing me from the far end of the empty hallway. She walked over and asked if she could help. I told her that I was a student in 1975.

“I am a teacher here,” she said. But 1975 was a very long time ago.”

Then she added, “I think there is someone who might be able to help,” and excused herself.

A few minutes later, she returned with the retired director. It was purely by chance that he happened to be at the institute that afternoon.

We introduced ourselves. Our paths had not crossed in the past. He had joined as a teacher the same year I had graduated. Still, we had a lot to share. He knew the teachers who had taught me. They were retired – one of them had moved west before the Wall came down.

He complimented my German proficiency. I am not sure if he realized that although I have been living in the U.S. for the past 30 years now, I had lived 17 years in Germany prior to that.

Then we took a trip through time, reflecting on how much had changed.

The Herder Institute had an excellent system for teaching German to foreign students. It was a complete and targeted immersion. Back then, everything at any university was conducted exclusively in German. At the Herder Institute we learned how to comprehend a lecture in German, how to take notes, how to ask questions, how to answer, and how to write. All foreign students were brought to this level of proficiency in just two semesters. Many of the foreign students, myself included, had no prior knowledge of the language.

Dr. A.M. told me that this is no longer possible in two semesters.

“Why?” I asked.

“Some things,” he said, “were done better in East Germany.” There was a quiet sense of pride in his voice.

After returning to the U.S., I wrote to thank him for taking the time to meet me. I also expressed my gratitude to the Herder Institute, which had opened a door to the German language and culture all those years ago.

In response, he wrote, “You don’t have to thank me. My delight in such an excellent graduate of Herder-Institute is enormous….” He had even shared the message with two former colleagues from the 1980’s. “Evidently, “ he added, “we hadn’t done much wrong as teachers.”

He didn’t hide his teacher’s pride. And I felt grateful to be part of it.

End of Homo-Sovieticus

This encounter was neither unexpected nor unplanned. I’ve known DG since our student days more than 40 years ago. We lost touch when I left East Germany.

Incredibly, we reconnected just a few months before our trip. Digitally - thanks to a sequence of unlikely events. Of course, we had to catch up.

DG and his wife drove up from Halle to meet us in Weimar. They took me and my wife to dinner – a dinner that lasted four hours! We had so much to catch up with – both personal and professional.

Among those hit hardest by reunification were East Germans of our generation. That’s because, when the tsunami hit, they were too old to restart and reorient in a totally new system. But they were too young to have already built a solid existence professionally or financially.

That may be true in general. But DG didn’t quite fit the mold even during his student time. He had a reputation for doing unusual things. I remember him talking about how he’d read materials that are not generally accessible – for example, on the Third Reich - at the central library of the neighboring city Leipzig. He’d gained access under the pretense of conducting research for his Ph.D. in chemistry. His music taste was distinctively western. He was a Jimi Hendrix aficionado.

German reunification worked out splendidly for him. For a while, he researched and taught chemistry at a US university. He has authored some world class scientific publications.

Today, he is the founder and owner of a small company commercializing a niche product for chemical research. The customer base is global. His entrepreneurial journey had started before the reunification. It was a long, arduous, and uncertain journey over many years. He finally succeeded in the unified Germany.

“Steffen Mau’s conclusions are correct” he wrote me later. “But my personal experience is split.” He added. “With the reunification, the “Homo-Sovieticus” in me died. In its place, a new, adventurous self was born. And I am much happier now. I am one of the winners of the reunification.”

DG has long moved on. His interests and worries now relate to the trajectory of Europe. I share his concerns. But that’s a whole different story….

Wrapping it up

Historic events paint societies with a broad brush, swaying the entire population one way or another. Sometimes the brush carries a rosy color, sometimes a darker one. Even then, if you look closely, you’ll find many hues blended into the paint. And you’ll find individual stories that can contradict each other.

German reunification was no different, as you can see from these four personal anecdotes. They tell different stories. But that should not be a surprise.

If you enjoyed this essay, stay tuned for the third one in the series. In it, I’ll explore a curious linguistic divide between Ossis and Wessis.

This is the second of a 3-parts series on German reunification.

• Part 1: German Reunification – The Eastern Perspective

• Part 3: 36 Years After the Berlin Wall Fell - The Unfinished German Reunification - A Linguistic Exploration

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy My winding road from polymer science in Germany to Minnesota winters: A Gem in a Box of Chocolates (Part 1 of 4)

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

It was a quilter who made me think about photography. She told me that anyone with a camera can take a photo. She was right. Supposedly, roughly 2 billion photographs are taken every day worldwide. Her tone implied that photography is not art because, unlike quilting, it requires little skill or creativity. She was a kind, elderly lady, and I chose diplomacy over debate.

Photography, of course, is a form of art. It begins with a photographer (the artist) getting inspired by a moment of “beauty”. That beauty is then reimagined by the photographer in two dimensions. A work of art is born when the artist’s inner vision takes shape in two dimensions – be it in print or pixel.

That said, most photos are not art. They are memory makers for the future - and in this digital age – to be shared instantly with friends, relatives, and strangers. In that sense, the quilter had a point.

Consider the photo above. I am pretending to roll a several-ton boulder into a river. It captures a moment in Grand Teton National Park. With Teton Range in the background and the meandering Snake River in the front, it captures a beautiful scene. But its purpose is simple - preserving memory. While I do take such photos, (this one was taken by my wife), my real interest lies in photography as art. That’s where I find the greatest joy in photography.

The Two-Steps of Artistic Photography

Artistic photography is a two-step process. No, not in the old way of first developing a silver-based film and then printing. I mean it entirely differently.

The very first step in artistic photography is the discovery of beauty. This is trivial - if the beauty is overt. It is practically impossible to overlook beauty when a young doe, framed by lush greenery, gazes straight at you with its wide, innocent eyes. See the above photo I took in our backyard.

And then there is covert beauty – the kind hidden in plain sight but revealed only to trained eyes and a conscious mind. Can you see the hidden beauty lurking in an ordinary chicken wire fence on a cold gray winter day? I took the photo below in our neighborhood park. Capturing such beauty is more challenging - and more satisfying. The real challenge is noticing what others overlook. The satisfaction? Capturing it in a way no one else has.

In the second step, all you have to do now is capture the beauty in a photo. I say that in jest. “Capturing beauty” is much more than a mere click on a button. Let me explain…

The Perception of Beauty

Our perception of beauty is an emotional response to what we see. And what we “see” is no simple matter. It begins with a flood of sensory information: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and more – coming at us from all directions. This would overwhelm our brain, were it not for our sensory system filtering out all but a tiny fraction. That filtered information is what gets passed on for further processing. Only then, does our brain create an image for us to “see”, which also depends on our mood and memory. No camera can do this.

Also consider that when we look at an object or a scenery, we constantly (mostly unconsciously) scan it with different framing, perspectives, depth of field, composition (in relation to the surrounding), etc., and often do so while changing our position. A photographer must cut through this silent chaos and capture the beauty in a “single shot”. And then reproduce the three-dimensional beauty in a two dimensional image.

Despite limitations of a camera, and the constraint of a single shot, sometimes a photo can have an advantage over the “real thing”. That is true especially for covert beauty – which all too often remains hidden. But once a covert beauty is captured in a photo, as in a chicken wire mesh displayed above, the beauty cannot be unseen again.

Emotion is the Key

That said, focusing on “beauty,” as I’ve done in the preceding paragraphs, is only part of the story. It doesn’t fully capture the richness of artistic photography. In the end, it’s not just beauty, but emotion, that matter - emotions like joy, serenity, awe, and even melancholy and sadness. For me, the mark of a successful photo is its ability to stir in the viewer the same emotional depth that moved the photographer to lift the camera in the first place.

What Kind of Camera Do you Use?

Staying true to the spirit of this blog, I have once again wandered into a subject where I have no formal credential. I have no formal photography training and never taken a single course.

Still, I often get asked, “What kind of camera do you use?”

My standard joke: ”It’s not about the camera but the person behind it!”

Of course, that is only partly true. Certain types of photography do require specific cameras, lenses, and settings. But the heart of my answer remains valid. If someone responds emotionally to a photo, it is rarely because of the camera.

To illustrate the point, I’ve included below photos taken with:

• A basic point-and-shoot camera

• A cell phone camera

• A Nikon DSLR camera (D80 or D7500)

You decide: is it the camera or the person behind the camera that matters?

Point-and-Shoot Camera

iPhone Camera

Nikon DSLR Camera

Whether quilting or photography, true art lies in the ability to make others feel what you once felt. That, in the end, is what binds all artists together. I wonder what the kind lady would say if she read this post. She was a chance encounter at my local library where a quilter group had laid out a quilting display.

What are your thoughts on photography and art?

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy this light-hearted look at why scientists and artists aren’t as different as they seem - until they are: Science and Art are Different

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

The book was released in 2020 to coincide with the 30th anniversary of German reunification. It became an immediate hit. That, however, wasn’t my reason for reading it. (You’ll understand if you read my essay “Reading Like a Drunken Sailor”.) I chose to read the book because of the author’s unique qualification to write on this subject. Steffen Mau was a twenty-something military conscript when the Berlin wall came down. Today he is a prominent sociologist in Germany.

There was a second reason though. Having lived in Germany, including in the eastern part before the wall came down, most things about Germany continue to interest me. I was living in West Germany when the reunification took place.

The title of the book can be loosely translated as Lütten Klein – Life in the East German Transformation Society. Lütten Klein is the name of the suburb near Rostock where Steffen Mau grew up. This book is not available in English.

I enjoyed the book very much for multiple reasons. First, Mau’s conclusions, substantiated by solid research and verifiable statistics, generally resonate with my own anecdotal experience. Secondly, the insights gained from this book help understand the emerging East-West political divergence in Germany.

THE EAST GERMAN SOCIETY

Steffen Mau begins with a sociological portrait of the East German society. He highlights some unique characteristics of the society that later influenced people’s behavior (both individual and collective) when the sweeping, life-altering changes came upon them.

He takes Lütten Klein as an example. It is one of those satellite towns with multi-story prefab apartments - monotonous and unsightly - but functional. Such housing developments were built all over East Germany in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. No social stigma was attached to such neighborhoods - as might be the case in the west. That’s because East German society, shaped by the working class, was relatively homogeneous. There was minimal vertical hierarchy and limited horizontal diversity. This applied broadly to ethnicity, income, wealth, opportunities, cultural norms, social status, etc.

Employment was universal, and essential services like education, healthcare, and childcare were free and accessible to all. Housing was subsidized and allocated – usually not at the desired level and quality. (I’d add that access to education, which was excellent in quality, was tilted towards children of socially disadvantaged backgrounds).

East Germany, being ruled by the Marxist-Leninist party SED, did not have a western style free society. People’s lives were heavily regulated by the government. But even today, most former East Germans would not say that they lived under dictatorship.

A discrepancy between what one had to say and do publicly vs. what one said and did privately was tolerated as long as one did not cross certain redlines – which were well known – and did not challenge the system openly. (Based on personal experience I’d add that the extent of intrusion in private lives by Stasi is vastly exaggerated in the west.) People found breathing space in the family and in an extended circle of friends and acquaintances.

Most people worked for the same employer for many years. It was not merely a place of work. This is where lasting friendships were built, camaraderie found, and mutually beneficial relations formed.

Employers, whether big government entities or smaller cooperatives, did their part too. Lavish employer sponsored festivities – traditional, political or otherwise – were part of the deal. Such events were boisterous, and widely popular. (I’d add that I have seen nothing like this in the west – neither in West Germany nor the USA). In East Germany, the workplace played an unusually central role in peoples’ lives.

Women’s participation in the public life was strikingly high – much more than in the west. At the time the wall fell, women made up

• 30% of elected representatives in East Germany vs. 15% in the West

• 50% of judges, vs. 18%

• 38% of Ph.D. candidates vs. 26%

Travel, even to East European countries, was restricted. Very few foreigners lived in East Germany. The number of foreigners in East Germany, mostly unskilled workers from Vietnam, Cuba, and Mozambique, amounted to less than 1% of the population. These foreigners spoke little German and lived segregated from the society. As a result, while international solidarity played a prominent role in state ideology, East Germans had little real-life connection with the people they were supposed to be standing with.

THE SHOCK OF REUNIFICATION

In the second part of the book Mau describes East Germans’ response to reunification. This was shaped both by the nature of the society they grew up in, and by the process of reunification itself.

I will skip the details and jump right to the explosive conclusion. A plurality – perhaps even a majority - of East Germans came to feel that they were colonized by West Germany.

This, of course, is factually incorrect. The reunification process enjoyed electoral legitimacy in both East and West. So why this sentiment? Mau points out four reasons.

• Lack of Choice: When changes rolled over their country, East Germans were given no other choice but to fit in a tight western straitjacket.

• Loss on Identity: They were forced to abandon their entire sociocultural traditions and institutions - even those that they were proud of. Some of these traditions and institutions would have made unified Germany a better place. Examples include free education and childcare, integrated healthcare (so called Polyklinik), women participation, social harmony, etc.

• Privatization Disaster: The way East German public assets were privatized by the newly founded government agency (Treuhandgesellschaft) was disastrous. Most East Germans felt the process to be overly hasty, opaque, destructive to local economies, and benefitting economically dominant western entities exclusively.

• No True Representation: And finally, throughout the rapid reunification process, East Germans had neither the organizational structures nor the resources to effectively advocate for their interests. They found themselves sidelined and reduced to passive observers as a wave of immense changes swept over them.

LEADERSHIP PURGE AND INSTITUTIONAL TRAUMA

Another grievance that still lingers is the swift and sweeping purge of leadership across all sectors of East German society – government, education, industry. These positions were filled by West German expatriates, many of whom were not seen as top tier talent.

More importantly, they usually lacked a real understanding of East German concerns, prides, grievances, and even cultural identity. Even today, more than thirty years later, a deep divide in mutual understanding between East and West Germans exist.

The sweeping leadership overhaul was particularly painful for East Germans, as no other Eastern European country undergoing a similar transition experienced such an extensive purge.

Mau notes that the impact of the leadership purge continues to be felt even three decades after reunification. Today, only 23% of top leadership positions in the former East German regions in politics, media, economy, science, and technology are represented by former East Germans! Until recently, three federal states (out of the five that make up the former East Germany territory) had prime ministers transplanted from West Germany (Kurt Biedenkopf, Werner Münch, Bernhard Vogel).

MASS UNEMPLOYMENT

Then there was the practical reality of mass job loss. When the economic and monetary union swept in like a tidal wave, hardly a single East German family was spared. This blow to livelihoods came on top of sweeping institutional changes, and the sudden disappearance of most key sources of social identity, including the workplace.

It’s no wonder that many East Germans felt conquered. Mau recounts how some described themselves as becoming immigrants without having left their country.

THE REUNIFICATION BOMBSHELL

One of the most provocative arguments Mau presents is legal rather than emotional. German reunification was not a Reunification but an Accession (of East Germany to West Germany)!

That’s because instead of using Article 146 of the Grundgesetz (Germany’s Basic Law) that regulates reunification of Germany, Article 23 was used - which is designed for territories to join West Germany.

Article 23 was previously used in 1957, for example, when Saarland acceded to West Germany. Saarland is a region on Germany’s western border that was under French occupation at the end of WW2. The use of Article 23 for reunification implied that East Germany was simply absorbed into the West – not merged with it on equal terms.

Of course, this decision was driven by urgency. The international situation was delicate, and time was short. It was a matter of expediency. And of course, German lawmakers made sure that the approach was legally sound. But a sense of betrayal is palpable by many – a betrayal of the spirit of reunification, if not of its letters.

Expediency has its price. A proper reunion under article 146 would have required unified Germany to draft and ratify a new constitution. Now they are stuck with Grundgesetz, a provisional constitution imposed by the three western Allied forces in 1949.

The other price was paid exclusively by East Germans. Reunification would have implied coming together as two equal partners – accession not.

REUNIFICATION TIMELINE

• Nov 9, 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall

• Mar 18, 1990: First free elections in East Germany

• July 1, 1990: Economic and Monetary Union

• Sept 12, 1990: Two Plus Four Agreement: (between the two German states and the four Allied powers - US, USSR, UK, France - to secure full sovereignty for a reunified Germany.

• Oct 3, 1990: Official Reunification Day

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS AND ANECDOTES

And finally, here are some personal observations that relate to the topic:

• A significant gap in mutual understanding still exists between East and West Germans. A striking example is the continued use of different terms to refer to the process of reunification – reflecting a fundamentally differing perspective on what actually took place.

• I was unaware of the constitutional nuances involving Articles 23 and 146 of the Grundgesetz until reading this book. These issues are rarely discussed in mainstream sources. Even among the Germans I have spoken to, few were familiar with them or understood their implications.

• It’s noteworthy that the unified Germany retained what had been West Germany’s flag. East Germans had to give up their flag. Similarly, east Germans gave up their constitution, while the Basic Law of Germany.(Grundgesetz) remained intact and became the constitution of the unified nation.

• Reunification changes were so sweeping that the survival of the pedestrian traffic symbols Ampelmänchen (in East German regions) is jokingly cited as a big accomplishment. Initially abolished, it was reinstated (in easter parts) after public outcry.

• But a more meaningful, though rare, example of cultural continuity is Unser Sandmänchen (Our Little Sandman). It is a beloved children’s TV program that had existed in both East and west Germany since the 1050’s. It tells gentle and whimsical stories to small children before they go to bed. The East German version, known for its artistic and whimsical storytelling, ultimately prevailed and replaced the Western one. It is now recognized as the world’s longest-running children’s TV show.

• I have consciously left out issues related to xenophobia, including the rise of the political party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in former East Germany – not because they are unimportant but because they deserve an in-depth treatment that will require a lot of space to do justice. I might write about tis topic another time. For now, I’ll just say that the mainstream narrative doesn’t fully capture the complexity and nuances of the issue.

What I definitely plan to write about soon is a recent personal experience that highlights the ongoing linguistic divide around the word “reunification” in East and West Germany. So, stay tuned…

If you’ve lived in Germany - East or West - or have your own thoughts or memories related to reunification, I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments.

This is the first of a 3-parts series on German reunification.

• Part 2: Ossis, Wessis, and One Traveler in Between - Personal Anecdotes from Reunified Germany.

• Part 3: 36 Years After the Berlin Wall Fell - The Unfinished German Reunification - A Linguistic Exploration

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

• You might also enjoy what began as a card game became a lifelong lesson in questioning conventional wisdom: When My Grandfather Challenged the Truth

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.

One day, my parents told me that they will send me to a Cadet College – a prestigious, all-boys boarding school with strict discipline and located outside the cities. It felt strange - hadn’t my grandparents already tried sending their youngest to a Cadet College with little success? My uncle had returned home the very next day. He had bribed the guards and sneaked out. That was the end of the experiment.

But at least that attempt had made sense. Cadet Colleges were thought to be educational correctional facilities for the bright but unruly boys. But me? Of course, my parents knew the difference between the uncle and the nephew. But they thought it wise to sacrifice my present happiness in pursuit of happiness and success in a distant and elusive future.

Cadet Colleges were selective and had rigorous entrance exams. I was not too worried though because I was a reasonably good student. Except for one matter. Cadet Colleges taught in English, and I went to a Bengali medium school. Don’t get me wrong, we had English too. But what we learned was pretty basic. I remember showing up for the final English oral test wondering why a colorful umbrella was hanging near the door. It turned out that you aced the test if you didn’t call it “a” umbrella instead of “an” umbrella.

The Cadet College entrance exams came and went. I took them, and to my parents’ relief, I got in. But what no one expected, least of all me, was how well I did on the English test. How? By visiting my grandparents just a few days before the tests.

My grandparents had eleven children, half of whom were already married. My grandparents’ home functioned as the watering hole for the entire clan. On any given day of the week, in any week of the month, and in any month of the year, you’d be guaranteed to find clan members there – close or distant, from the city or village. We visited my grandparents frequently. My mother could meet any number of her siblings and their families. She could forget us children for a few hours, and we children could bond with whichever cousins happened to be there.

On that day, one of the adults had sent a servant to buy snacks for all of us. He went out to the sprawling street food bazaar in the neighborhood and brought back chanachur. It is a snack consisting of a variable mixture of spicy dried ingredients. The snack came in improvised packages made of newspaper or book pages, as is/was the norm back then. Don’t ask me about the “nutritional ingredients”, including lead, that came free of charge.

Joke aside, I noticed that the snack was packaged in pages from an English textbook. Being the bookworm I was, I waited until everyone was done. I collected the pages, retreated to the empty drawing room, and found a quiet corner. I lay down on the floor and started reading the oil-soaked pages. It was a difficult text. It kept on referring to something mysterious, something I had never heard of – a slow loris. I read and reread, until it made sense.

Imagine my surprise, when just a few days later, I encountered the text again. This time as a comprehension text in the English entrance exam! Without the recent chanachur reading the questions would have been a tough nut to crack. But I aced it. Good for me, you say? Not if you were in my shoes.

The batch of the 50 incoming 7th graders were split up in two parallel classes of 25 each – one for those coming from Bengali medium schools and the other for English medium schools. I was one of the few exceptions. Thanks to my high English score, I was placed with English-medium students.

Things were fine on the first day, until the English period began. A lanky, stern looking Englishman walked in. He was Mr. Simpson - our English teacher. As he spoke, I listened. I am sure he was speaking proper English, but I could hardly understand him. Until that day, I had never interacted with a native English speaker, let alone be taught by one. This was not going to be “umbrella stuff” anymore, I realized. My instinct told me to avoid attracting undue attention. Fortunately, Mr. Simpson graciously ignored me for the entire period.

At the end of the class, Mr. Simpson gave us a dictation test. He read aloud a passage - in “Simpsonian” English. I could tell from his tone that something suspenseful was happening around a staircase or perhaps something that had many, many steps. Thirty-three? Thirty-nine? I couldn’t be quite sure. We students dutifully wrote down what he dictated. Then Mr. Simpson collected the papers and left. I heaved a deep sigh of relief.

The next day was different. Mr. Simpson returned with the graded papers. When I got mine back, I realized I had gotten more than just the number of steps wrong.

Mr. Simpson had a unique way of grading. Every paper started with a balance of 20 points, but one point was deducted for each spelling mistake. You see the problem? It was a classic case of high risk and low reward. I had everything to lose and very little to gain. (Any risk expert will tell you this is a classic “convex”, or “rowny face”, risk situation. That’s the kind you must avoid in life. What you want is a “concave” or a “smiley face” risk).

To this day, I promise I wrote exactly what I heard Mr. Simpson say. But clearly, that wasn’t what he had said. I don’t remember my score, except that it was in the rarified negative territory. My psyche instinctively switched to survival mode and erased it from memory. Thus, a childhood trauma was averted. Nothing stood in the way of my pursuit of success and happiness in a then-distant and still-elusive future.

I was quietly transferred to the Bengali medium section. That’s where I recovered for the next two years. Eventually, we were regrouped by academic focus – science or liberal arts – rather than language background. By then, I had not only recovered; I had grown. As Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t visited my grandparents that day, or if the chanachur seller had wrapped the snacks in math notes instead.

Life, like English, is full of irregular verbs and unexpected clauses. Once, I had freedom inside a cage; at Cadet College, the cage became real. But so did the learning. And down the road came even bigger cages and greater challenges.

Alongside that strange little paragraph on an oil-stained paper, I carry Nietzsche’s words – and the memory of chanachur – wherever I go!

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How and why did 3M’s winning culture change? The obvious answer might be the size. As organizations grow, it becomes increasingly challenging to manage them without introducing more rules and a more hierarchical structure. While this is generally true, it doesn’t quite explain what happened at 3M. In 1966, the year McKnight retired, 3M employed 54,000 people. Today, (in 2024) the number is 61,500 - not a huge difference. When I joined in 1985, 3M had 85,500 employees, and the peak came in 2019 with 96,000. So size is not the root cause. The factors must lie elsewhere. They fall in two categories: internal and external. Some internal ones were self-inflicted, and others were a response to outside pressures.

Internal Factors

A big internal factor was the “musical chairs” approach to leadership. In good old times, business leaders came up through the ranks of successful business units - units that eventually grew into full divisions. These leaders knew their businesses inside and out. They understood the market, the trends, the competitors, and where the real opportunities and threats lie.

But when leaders are parachuted in and out every few years from one division to another, that’s a problem. By the time they’ve learned the ropes, it’s already time to move on. Even worse, they’re often either unwilling—or maybe just unable—to take the kind of risks needed to drive real innovation. That’s because their time horizon for success is short, and their perception of risk is often skewed.

Risk isn’t just about facts and numbers. Any risk is part objective and part subjective. When someone isn’t familiar with an environment then they’re far more likely to play it safe. That’s a problem for a company like 3M, which has traditionally thrived by launching groundbreaking, innovative products.

From what I’ve seen, the most successful innovations at 3M had two things going for them: an early bet from leadership and a sustained executive sponsorship over multiple years – especially during the uncertain early phases, when commercial feasibility wasn’t yet clear. That kind of support only happens when the person in charge both understands the long game and is in a position to take calculated risks on high-potential ideas that might not pay off right away.

The marketing function suffered from the same issue. It used to be common for marketers to spend many years in the same business area. They had a deep understanding of 3M’s products and the market. Equally importantly, they had a broad understanding of 3M’s technical capabilities and limitations. That kind of experience was very valuable for connecting customer needs with technical possibilities.

External Factors

The biggest external disruption of McKnight culture came with 3M’s first external CEO Jim McNerney. He came from GE’s Jack Welch school. In a way, it wasn’t such a bad thing to have someone from the outside come in and shake things up a bit - trim the fat, bring in fresh energy, and give an old, somewhat stolid company a jolt. And to be fair, he did just that. During his four-year tenure, 3M’s stock price rose by over 30%.

He brought in a wave of Six Sigma projects aimed at improving efficiency and optimizing how 3M operated. And that’s not a bad thing either - efficiency matters. But too much water can drown what you’re trying to grow.

Before long, every problem seemed to call for a Six Sigma solution - and every Six Sigma project, unsurprisingly, was predestined to be a success. Standard Operating Procedures began to replace common sense. Formal meetings and structured reviews took the place of spontaneous collaborations and initiatives. The focus shifted from what 3M actually sells (i.e. products) to a “flawless execution” (of processes).

The many Black Belts minted to lead Six Sigma programs had front-row seats on the career conveyor belt. The “musical chairs” approach to leadership became more the rule than the exception. Technical background in the business area one was assigned to lead was considered unnecessary.

(I must confess that in my own career, I’ve also moved across industries – shifting from automotive and industrial to dental to medical fields. Each time I had to learn a lot of new things. But at every move, the risks were entirely mine – my own career on the line. For business leaders, however, it’s the business that is at risk.)

I realize some of my words may come across as harsh, and that’s not my intention. I’ve always seen my role at 3M in what’s often called the “fuzzy front end” of product and technology development where Six Sigma fits about as naturally as an elephant in a China shop. So, it’s probably no surprise that I didn’t feel at home with the way things were shifting. Fortunately, the McNerney era lasted only four years. But the cultural changes it triggered didn’t leave with him. The impact lingered—and in many ways, still does.

McNerney left 3M in 2005 to become the CEO of Boeing, where he served until 2016. At Boeing he focused on increasing productivity, cost-cutting, out-sourcing, etc. In the short term, this brought a nice bump in revenue. And midterm Dreamliners started falling from the sky. This happened several years after McNerney’s departure. Fruits do not grow on trees overnight either. He was the first Boeing CEO without an aeronautical engineering background. Instead, he brought to the table a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Then there were changes that came in response to external forces - more specifically, in response to Wall Street.

Back in the good old days, 3M’s R&D landscape felt like a garden where a thousand flowers bloomed – because they were allowed to. Many of them started as 15% projects. Sure, lots of them didn’t go anywhere commercially. Some found modest success. And a few turned out to be spectacular wins. That kind of outcome is only possible when you're playing the long game.

It's a bit like building a retirement portfolio. With a long horizon, you can have a mix of long, short, risky, and safe bets. With a short horizon, you must play safe. Unfortunately, Wall Street’s expectations were not just short - they were steep too, like asking for a harvest every quarter from seeds you planted last week. One answer was to go hunting for “low hanging big bets”. I have never understood that phrase – if the fruit is ripe and low-hanging, wouldn’t someone have picked it already?

3M and all other companies were up against a broader shift in the economy – from “industrial capitalism” to “finance capitalism”. In case you're wondering about my sudden turn into economic jargon - let me be clear: I'm no economist. But hey, I did stay at a Holiday Inn once. So, take the next few paragraphs with that in mind.

Industrial capitalism is centered on the production of real goods. It creates real growth through long-term investment and innovation. This is the environment in which 3M was born and thrived – an era that broadly defined the US economy from the late 19^th century through the early 20^th. There were similar periods of growth in Germany (late 19^th to early 20^th century), Japan (late 19^th to late 20^th century), and South Korea (1960s – 2000s). In each case, industrial capitalism helped raise broad living standards by creating well-paid, productive jobs.

Finance capitalism, in contrast, is about extracting value rather than creating it. It focuses on immediate returns and quarterly profits at the expense of long-term investment in innovation, people, or infrastructure. It often makes money by cost-cutting, repackaging assets, and financial engineering. Even worse, it influences corporate decision making to focus on maximizing “shareholder value” at the expense of the long-term stability of the corporation and the interests of the employees and the community. Stock buybacks get priority over developing new technologies or products.

A good analogy to explain these two systems is that of a farmer planting seeds and tending crops (in industrial capitalism) to someone flipping farmland for profit, even if nothing ever gets grown (in finance capitalism).

Given everything, I can’t be too hard on 3M or its leadership. They navigated the strong external headwinds better than many of their peers and managed to stay the course longer. That’s no small feat.

Parallel to the economic trend, came a societal one. There was a growing preference for finance-related careers over those rooted in science and technology. In social circles, it became more glamorous to introduce yourself as a Wall Street analyst, banker, or investment banker rather than as an engineer or scientist. Talented students leaned towards finance related fields – often encouraged by parents. It is hard to resist the dual pull of big, fast money and social prestige. As a result, there was a declining pool of talented technical employees for companies like 3M to draw from.

Never mind that the former group rarely produces anything tangible. More often than not, they make money out of thin air - sometimes while eliminating jobs in the process. Scientists and engineers, in contrast, are responsible for actually building things: creating, scaling, and sustaining well-paid industrial jobs.

To be clear, I’m not dismissing the vital role of financial services in a healthy, competitive industrial economy. Finance plays a critical role - it should act like a lubricant in a motor, helping everything run smoothly and efficiently. Unfortunately, the lubricant has flooded the entire motor. And, well... we all know what happens then.

Despite it all, I remain immensely grateful, and incredibly proud of the time I spent at 3M.

Pride and Gratitude

This is my fifth year of my retirement. I’m having far too much fun reminiscing - but as with all good things, this too must come to an end. Not, however, before I say how fortunate, thankful, and proud I feel about my time at 3M.

Fortunate - to have had spent 35 fulfilling years at an incredible company. 3M instilled a strong sense of pride in its employees and offered exceptionally generous benefits.

Thankful - for the opportunity to build a successful professional career, and in doing so, create a solid foundation to support my family. I'm especially thankful because I came to this country as an immigrant.

And yes, I’m also proud - proud to have developed healthcare products that make a real difference in people’s lives (a space I moved into later in my career). Just as importantly, I take pride in contributing to 3M’s commercial success - and, through that, creating and supporting well-paid manufacturing jobs here in the US. While 3M did outsource some manufacturing, its approach was more balanced and measured compared to many other American companies.

Finally, let me end with a little anecdote:

A colleague once told me about a plaque hanging on the wall of his new office - the one he moved into after a promotion. Yes, back then, we didn’t have to remain cubicle dwellers forever. The plaque read: “Inventions create jobs. Someone did it for you, now it’s your turn”. I am proud to say – I did my part. And I am proud that I am a STEM graduate.

Posted previously

Part 1 of 4: Learning the Ropes in the Nudelfabrik

Part 2 of 4: McKnight’s Legacy and the Culture that Built 3M

Part 3 of 4: No Risk no Gain

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This, however, did not guarantee that you’ll not land in hot water occasionally. On one occasion, my exasperated technical director, MT, candidly remarked that he had never encountered anyone as willing to take risk as I was! I had only recently relocated to St. Paul.

Back in Germany, America was called “das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten” (the land of unlimited opportunities) – with the supposition that it was inhabited by risk takers. I took Morgan’s comment as a complement – though I am not sure he meant it that way.

All ended well though. Almost a decade later, long after MT had retired and I was in a different business unit, he called me at 3M. We have had no contact with each other for a very long time. MT wanted to tell me that my risk was worth taking!

Then there was the lab manager whose name will remained unmentioned. I had come from 3M Eurolab to the corporate lab in St. Paul to develop a new technology. The goal was to later develop products tailored for one of 3M’s business units.

I was making solid headway on a product idea when a European tech service colleague pointed out that it could potentially solve a major problem for a key customer in the UK. The US tech service colleague confirmed similar interests in the US too. But the lab manager had a different idea. I was told to divert my attention to product concepts he liked better. Several people in his lab were already working on them. He was the lab manager of the business unit that was sponsoring my work at the corporate lab.

I disagreed, and it really set him off. The only way he could compel me was through my reporting line, which was the corporate lab, with a dotted line to 3M Eurolab in Germany. I won’t bore you with details – it was an uncomfortable situation, to say the least. But in the end, I prevailed! I guess you could say that the lab manager was outgunned. He was fighting alone - against me and William McKnight 😊.

I had won the first battle, but the war was not over yet. Product development is a complex process that requires collaboration across many functions, which are only available within a business unit. I had to work with those functions, and it went wonderfully well. But my skirmishes with the lab manager continued. During one of them, he actually threatened to get me fired. I haven’t forgotten that 😊.

Things moved along nicely though, and once early prototypes were ready, my US tech service colleague began testing them with customers in the States. This, despite having previously being told by the lab manager not to support the project. I suppose my colleague finally decided to cash in his 15% rule rain check!

In due course, the product was launched - first in the UK, then in the US, and eventually in Germany. Little did I know that the manufacturing industry this new product was intended for would soon undergo technological shifts, and that the product would be perfectly positioned to meet those changes. The product soon reached global markets. Over time the product platform has brought in billions of dollars in new business for 3M!

The products promoted by the lab manager never materialized. I wasn’t a clairvoyant and had no idea how successful my project would become. But neither could the lab manager see the future. So, the credit goes to McKnight instead. I was incredibly fortunate to have worked in an environment defined by empowerment and minimal bureaucracy - a culture that encouraged risk-taking, self-initiative, and mutual trust. I was made to feel that, at times, it was acceptable to ask for forgiveness rather than always seek permission.

The above two examples were not my only rodeos, though the future ones were less risky. Maybe I had grown a little wiser by then – or maybe the culture at 3M was beginning to shift. Whether I’ve actually gotten any wiser—I’ll let others be the judge! But the larger question remains: why has such a proven formula—the McKnight principle - faded over time? There may be as many perspectives as there are people to offer them.

My view on this? Check out the next post:: Culture Shift – Internal and External (part 4 of 4)

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Part 1 of 4: Learning the Ropes in the Nudelfabrik

Part 2 of 4: McKnight’s Legacy and the Culture that Built 3M

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

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It’s impossible to understand 3M’s cultural DNA without recognizing the influence of its legendary CEO, William McKnight. He had joined the company as a low-level employee but rose to become its CEO - an office he held for 37 years. McKnight is credited with transforming the then “troubled and debt‐ridden” company to a successful diversified corporation. Part of McKnight’s success relied on creating a unique management culture for research and development.

McKnight’s genius wasn’t in micromanaging innovation - it was in getting out of its way. His management philosophy boiled down to a few memorable principles, as reflected in many of his quotes ...

· "Hire good people and leave them alone."

· "If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give the people the room they need."

· “Do not push people to innovate but allow them the freedom to do so."

· “Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative.”

I had joined 3M 17 years after McKnight’s retirement, but his management style still hung heavily in the air. I found a culture that emphasized the role of research and development. It was a culture where technical people were genuinely empowered - to take initiative and take calculated risk. A “15% rule” allowed employees to spend 15% of their time on any project of their choosing. Supervisors were discouraged from micromanaging technical work. A dual ladder career path promised equal opportunity for the technical and the managerial track. Add to that a policy of open technology sharing throughout the corporation (with a few exceptions), as well as a culture of win-win collaboration within the technical community, and you create a fountainhead of innovation.

Technology sharing is a bigger deal than it might appear. 3M’s technology base is exceptionally broad, as demonstrated by the diversity of its (current and former) products: adhesives, aerospace, automotive industry, construction materials, consumer, dentistry, DIY products, electronics, filtration, healthcare, hearing aid, heart/lungs machine, industrial, light management, magnetic media, medical & surgical devices, mineral products, office products, pharmaceuticals, protective devices, safety, telecommunications, traffic control, solar and wind energy, and so on.

In most other companies with a diverse product and technology base, their technologies are usually sequestered within the related product/business groups. In contrast, 3M made a deliberate effort to ensure that its entire technical community was aware of the company’s diverse technology portfolio. Couple that with the many formal and informal initiatives that encouraged technical people from unrelated fields to interact with each other. This was a fertile field for innovation.

Then there is “Genesis Grant”. Through it, the company provides seed money (typically for a year) to small technical teams, enabling them to demonstrate feasibility of a new product or technology idea they had pitched. These were often big ideas - too risky or far out for a business unit to touch. Many of 3M’s most disruptive products or technologies can be traced back to the Genesis Grant program. What a wonderful opportunity for anyone with an entrepreneurial streak! And you can do this within the safety of a large corporation. Is this what Joe I. was pitching when he told us to think like an independent contractor?

The whole concept made such a deep impression on me that when, later in my career, I mentored younger employees, I’d start by claiming that my career success came from not following my supervisors’ instructions! Naturally, after the initial shock, I would clarify the point I was trying to make.

But even in such a supportive environment, taking initiative could sometimes land you in trouble. Check out the next post: No risk no Gain (part 3 of 4)

Posted previously….

Part 1 of 4: Learning the Ropes in the Nudelfabrik

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

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“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Who doesn’t remember that iconic scene from the movie, where Forrest Gump sitting on a bench at a bus stop, mutters his mama’s wisdom? Well, if he’d taken a peek inside my box, he might have added, “Sometimes, there’s a gem in there too.” One such gem in my box was my long career as a scientist at 3M Company.

It was an unlikely gem. Then my parents had planned for me to become an actuary – supposedly the first actuary in the then freshly born country of my origin. I was fine with the plan. But neither they nor I had peeked into my chocolate box just yet. So, I ended up in Germany instead, becoming a polymer scientist. But that is a whole different story.

Today’s story began in 1985 when, fresh out of graduate school in Germany, I had joined 3M. To be precise it was 3M Eurolab, a recently established lab for Europe. Later I moved to 3M’s headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota. Altogether it added up to 35 long years with 3M. Now, as I approach the fifth anniversary of my retirement, I feel like sharing what an amazing place to work 3M was.

3M Company, originally known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, was established in 1902, in Two Harbors, Minnesota, by a group of five entrepreneurs. After its initial mining efforts proved unsuccessful, the company pivoted to producing sandpaper and other abrasives. Over time, 3M evolved into a diversified global corporation generating over $30 billion in annual revenue. While it's best known to the public for popular consumer products like Post-it Notes and Scotch Tape, such consumer products account for just 15% of the company’s total revenue.

When I joined 3M Eurolab, I knew right away it was the right place for me. Tucked away in the backstreets of Neuss’s (Germany) industrial area, it sat alongside the old harbor of the Rhine River. We fondly called the old five-story building the Nudelfabrik—the noodle factory. What drew me in was partly the lab’s non-hierarchical environment, that is so untypical in Germany.

The other part was being in a newly established lab that radiated a can-do attitude. I liked the way we had to step into shoes much bigger than our feet. For example, in the third month of my job, Joe M., the lab manager, declared me to be the adhesive expert of the lab. Never mind that that was not my area of expertise.

Joe wasn’t being irresponsible, though. I did have a polymer chemistry background. And back in St. Paul, Minnesota headquarters sat some of world’s best adhesive experts. As I interacted with them over the years, to become the expert Joe had wanted me to be, I got to visit and get to know Minnesota. That’s how I came to discover, and even grow fond of, Minnesota – including its frigid winters!

Then there was the procurement of pilot coaters for the new lab. That was what Joe asked me to coordinate in my second year of employment. I had no engineering background, let alone in coating technology. But the project turned out very well – thanks to close collaboration with, and generous support from, relevant 3M experts, both in Germany and in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I don’t mention these to boast, but to offer a glimpse into the unique work environment I was fortunate to work at. Such assignments wouldn’t have come my way in a large, established lab. And I wouldn’t have succeeded in them without 3M’s culture of technology sharing across the globe. But let’s talk about the shocks too – they were just as much a part of the experience.

The most memorable shock came in my sixth month of employment. I still remember the name of the person who had delivered it. It was Joe again, but a different one. Joe I., to be precise. He was a retired 3M employee turned consultant. 3M flew him in from the USA to teach us, the new “labbies”, the secret of becoming successful at 3M.

Joe completely flipped my understanding of employment. Then he asked us to do things that, at first glance, seemed downright disloyal. Until then, my concept of employment was simple—follow orders, put in the extra effort, and success would come your way. “Not quite,” said Joe. “Instead, think like an independent contractor.”

You must remember that it was back in 1986 when, especially at 3M, a sense of mutual loyalty and the expectation of lifelong employment was common. Was I now supposed to put my own interests first, over that of 3M? Then came the second blow. Joe told us not to do what our supervisors told us to do. Okay, I might be exaggerating. What he meant was that we should not do only what our supervisors told us to do.

After getting over the initial shock – and doing a bit of mental recalibration - I began to blend these two ideas together. And bingo, it all clicked! It was about taking initiative to generate ideas beyond your assigned duties, rallying potential collaborators into an informal team, and then pitching those ideas to management. The talk of entrepreneurship was not vogue back then – certainly not in Germany. But Joe’s advice was exactly that - although he never used the term. His advice shaped my mindset for rest of my career.

This mindset doesn’t always fit in every organization—and in some cases, it could even backfire and hurt your career. But at 3M it not only worked, it was the origin of 3M’s many innovations.

Check out the next post on McKnight’s Legacy and the Culture that Built 3M (part 2 of 4).

I write solely for the pleasure of writing. That pleasure is even greater when others enjoy reading.

If this piece resonated with you, feel free to subscribe (it’s free). I publish about once every three weeks, and you’ll get an email when something new is out.

And if you know someone else who might enjoy this kind of writing, please consider sharing it with them too.