On systems and their agents, epikie and civil courage
Now they are probably again going to postpone the trial in Munich. I am sure that this is quite awful for many persons, because it is all about a particularly unfortunate chapter of our national history. After the trial, said chapter will probably turn out to be even “more unfortunate”.
However, the NSU trial is also a good example for another negative development in our society. Our social systems get both a life of their own and de-personalized. The employees become more and more system agents and remote from reality. They ignore what our society actually needs and subordinate themselves to some super regulation, questionable rules and their own paranoia when having to make decisions.
For instance, from the outset, they decided to choose a trial chamber that is too small “for reasons of safety”. But what stage have we reached if we cannot even guarantee safety in our trial chambers? Can we really permit the rightist scene to restrict our freedom of decision to such an extent?
At this juncture, I just have to hint at our Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: maybe they should focus more on the safety of our judicial institutions, rather than doing one disservice after another to our democracy by probably illegal and totally controversial activities of their dubious v-men.
And since we are all afraid the verdict might not hold in the appeal stage, the law is interpreted in such a way that it no longer has anything to do with what our society actually needs. Of course, it was totally out of the question that, for instance, the Turkish Press representatives were not admitted as observers of the trial. Just as it is out of the question that now a newspaper like the FAZ – with its many readers – is allegedly to be excluded from trial report status.
Processes and rules obviously were often given priority over common sense. Unfortunately, they interpreted the actual wording of the law in a most restrictive way, ignoring what had actually been the purpose of the law. Instead of looking for solutions that would make sense and have a chance of survival, they bowed like slaves before what was allegedly inevitable.
In our system, epikie (Epikie), an important even if hardly known virtue, is too often forgotten. In a nutshell, epikie means you should “hold up the laws of a nation in such a way as a sensible legislative body would have meant and wished for them to be held up”. If you want to practice epikie, you often need another primary virtue, namely civil courage (Zivilcourage), also known as moral courage. Those are the virtues we need, along with common sense. Both should be applied, based on socially accepted values.
And I am afraid there are sectors of our society where these virtues, as well as a healthy and value-based common sense, dwindle more and more. But that is not a problem, because there are still humans around who actually practice all these things and have an influence. Consequently, when all is said and done, I am quite optimistic.
My readers, however, are welcome to speculate which circles I am talking about …
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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