Ego: The game of life

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EGO: The Game of Life is the title of a German non-fiction book by Frank Schirrmacher . The book was published in 2013 by the Munich publishing house Karl Blessing . The topics are to be assigned to the areas of metaethics , philosophy of mind , social philosophy , sociology of domination and Kantianism . The book was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for 5 weeks in 2013 .

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The book asks questions about the free will of people and the democratic ability of states in the face of an apparently predictable, automated “monster” economy of radical egoism without morality .

The author tells of a general manipulation of people by a “monstrous” economy, a new Cold War in which “only one's own advantage counts, morality does not matter.” The dictates of the economy do not only question the free will of individual souls : In a predictable game of radical egoism, in which automated machines on the stock and currency markets such as Wall Street make states that were originally thought to be autonomous appear as an illusion . Even democracies would be transformed from political actors into the plaything of the markets , into puppets of a “monster” as a result of the Cold War being transferred to computer machines .

“The logic of the Cold War has become the logic of civil society and it is corrupting it. The egoism machines have long been playing the big game without humans. The loser is certain from the start: we all. "

“What do we allow, [...] which game do we want to play? Do we want an improper game of hidden chess moves, of clandestine, indirect speech in our societies, in our democracies, or do we want something else? Do we reward open play with others? "

Frank Schirrmacher expects a way out from the real economy , especially from - German - medium-sized companies :

“Take family businesses , they all think what happens there is terrible. These are companies that Marx might have called capitalists , but these are companies that say: 'We are after sustainability '. That which Germany consists of, the German middle class , is here in the boat of the criticism of capitalism . "

Reviews

Schirrmacher's book was already commented on by numerous German-speaking media before the official publication date. The sociologist Ulrich Beck speaks of the fact that Schirrmacher's book has added “something essential, new, original” to the decades-long debate about homo oeconomicus , “namely the digital Faust III, more precisely: the Faustian delusion of ego-capitalism”. According to Beck, Schirrmacher's fascination with this model that has become real is also transferred to the reader, who reads the book like a “sociological crime thriller”. In order to "consistently tell the new drama of the digital Faust, Frank Schirrmacher has once again broken out of the left-right coordinates, conservatively and progressively," said Beck in Die Welt .

In his review at the time, Thomas Assheuer also praised the author's gripping style and emphasized that this is not a factual report, but a description of trends. Schirrmacher makes it clear to the reader in an impressive way that "Europe has been fascinated by mechanical engineering for two hundred years and, with a few exceptions, has dreamed of being into the automaton people, the cold, calculating gambler, the rational egoist," said Assheuer. According to Assheuer, Schirrmacher is trying “to bring the bourgeois-conservative intelligentsia up to date”.

The former Federal Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum agreed with Schirrmacher that humans have become more and more predictable and manipulable.

In the magazine Focus, for example, Rüdiger Safranski , Peter Sloterdijk , Richard David Precht and Henryk M. Broder commented partly on conspiracy theories around homo economicus , partly on isolated counter-movements from “ empathy , philanthropy , dignity and the regaining civic virtues ”. Josef Joffe , the editor of Die Zeit , criticizes, for example:

  • the thesis that there is brutal egoism, that the thought models of economics have conquered all other social sciences, has been refuted for years by behavioral economics , before Keynes and Herbert Simon had already shaken this assumption.
  • the "Homo oeconomicus" was not invented in the 20th century by the Chicago Boys , but by the liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries.
  • Game Theory ( Game Theory ) be with operations research been confused. Game theory is not a guide to war.
  • Speaking of the fact that the teams at RAND Corporation that did operations research during the Cold War, later found new jobs and dealt with automating markets, Joffe says that these financial experts had no talent, and therefore none Could influence the trading rooms.

Cornelius Tittel compared Schirrmacher in Die Welt with a poster-bearing conspiracy theorist and stated "that almost none of the basic assumptions with which Frank Schirrmacher operates" are correct.

In contrast, Ulrich Beck described Schirrmacher's book around the world as a “furious attack on financial market capitalism”, which, however, shows alternatives: “Here lies the European option: systematically raise the question of the alternative to digital ego-capitalism. The question is, how can another Europe make more freedom, more social security and more democracy possible? "

The Freiburg economist Jan Schnellenbach pointed out that Schirrmacher shortened the development of the "homo oeconomicus" in terms of the history of ideas and did not mention its roots in, say, David Hume and John Stuart Mill. This long development towards "homo oeconomicus" contradicts Schirrmacher's strong emphasis on economics during the Cold War. He also pointed out that Schirrmacher's reasoning was very similar to the book Machine Dreams by the American economist Philip Mirowski .

Andreas Zielcke wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that this work “should not be confused with traditional criticism of capitalism”. Anyone who portrays Schirrmacher as a “left” opponent of capitalism is wrong. For him, ego is a description of the victory of a synthetic, ultimately inhumane model - the homo oeconomicus - "over real individuals, their world, their society and institutions, their democracy."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stefan Gagstetter: The plaything of powers ... (see web links)
  2. ↑ a b c quote from Frank Schirrmacher, in: Stefan Gagstetter: The plaything of powers ... (see web links)
  3. ↑ a b Nina May: The game of life runs without people ... (see literature)
  4. ↑ see the sections literature and web links
  5. ↑ a b Ulrich Beck: Doctor Faust made of ones and zeros , In: Die Welt (February 16, 2013)
  6. ↑ a b Thomas Assheuer: Bottom line, I count , Die Zeit from February 21, 2013, accessed on May 11, 2013
  7. ↑ "The bottom line is I count" - Are we on our way to an ego society? ( Memento from May 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Josef Joffe : The state as an accomplice . In: Handelsblatt , No. 35, February 19, 2013, page 48.
  9. ^ The monsters of Doctor Frank Schirrmacher in: Die Welt from February 17, 2013, accessed on February 22, 2013
  10. ↑ Doctor Faust from ones and zeros in: Die Welt from February 16, 2013
  11. ↑ Economics and Egoism: Comments on the new book by Frank Schirrmacher
  12. ↑ On the victory of an inhumane model in: Süddeutsche Zeitung of February 16, 2013