Simplicius Simplicissimus

A look through my eyes at this world.

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The Adventurous Simplicissimus (Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus)

"I was born of fire like Phoenix. I flew through the air, and I wasn't lost. I wandered in the water, I roamed on land, in such wanderings I made known to myself what often saddened me and seldom delighted me; what was that? I have written it in this book here that the reader, like me, remove himself from folly and live in peace.”

-Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1668)

The Adventurous Simplicissimus (Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus) is set against the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany and is often called the first adventure novel in world literature. It follows a young man who moves through a shattered world with a mixture of innocence, bewilderment and stubborn curiosity. Only in old age does he retreat into solitude and write down what life has taught him.

This blog follows a similar spirit.

Life itself is an adventure - rarely linear, often ironic. Things unfold differently than we expect. Experiences shape us, redirect us, unsettle us, and sometimes illuminate what we didn’t know we were searching for.

What remains is the attempt to understand:

to trace the paths we’ve taken.

to make sense of what we’ve seen.

and to find a language for the truths that endure.

-Simplicius Simplicissimus 👋🏻

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Strolling A Dog Through Medieval Gelnhausen

Schmidtgasse in Gelnhausen - the hotel on the right is traditionally regarded as one of Grimmelshausen’s birth and residence sites

Untermarkt in Gelnhausen

Splashing in the fountain at Obermarkt

Dogs with insecurity tend to react in two main ways:

Withdrawal: They show stress signals - tail tucked, averted gaze, lowered posture - and try to increase distance.

Forward defensive behavior: They lunge or bite because they’ve learned that this is the most effective way to maintain the safety buffer they feel they need.

Such patterns are almost always shaped by human behavior - inconsistent boundaries, poor handling, or situations where the dog had to manage threats on its own. Once a dog discovers that aggression works, it can be very difficult to undo.

Simba in the pictures above, from the local animal shelter, is a good example. He’s considered hard to place because he has bitten people before. When we first met, he tried to bite me as well - only the muzzle prevented it. Now we’re “best buddies”. Beneath his insecurity, he’s actually a sweetheart - you just have to invest the time to truly understand him.

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People Who Fall In Love With Words

People who fall in love with words do not return romance by default - they offer something rarer, something that hums beneath the surface: resonance.

And why do they do it?

Because for such people, words are not mere signs. They are places of contact.

You touch them - and they touch back.

Comment: The film “Young Goethe in Love” portrays - in a modern, romanticized way - the love story between Goethe and Charlotte Buff, which served as the inspiration for his later novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. The novel became an immediate bestseller in 1774, spread across Europe, and made Goethe famous “overnight”.

The so‑called “Werther fever” swept across Europe:

Readers dressed like Werther (blue frock coat, yellow waistcoat).

There were pilgrimages to supposed “Werther locations”.

The novel shaped idioms and became a pop‑cultural phenomenon of the 18th century.

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The Psychology of Great Powers — And What Hannah Arendt Still Teaches Us Today

“The moment we no longer have the courage to think, we are no longer free.”

-Hannah Arendt

Great powers rarely understand themselves. They rise with confidence, speak in absolutes, and wrap their identity in grand narratives. In the United States, these narratives are everywhere — in politics, in media, in everyday speech:

• “The Leader of the Free World”

• “The Greatest Nation on Earth”

• “The Beacon of Democracy”

• “The World’s Policeman”

• “The Last Best Hope of Earth”

These slogans are not harmless. They shape the psyche of a nation. They reduce self‑reflection. They create moral blind spots. And they make it harder for a society to see its own decline.

Germany once walked this path. Today, the United States is walking parts of it too — not in the same form, not with the same ideology, but with similar psychological mechanisms. Hannah Arendt understood these mechanisms better than anyone.

I. The Psychology of Great Powers

Great powers tend to develop a dangerous belief: that their strength is proof of their virtue.

Germany after 1871 believed it had a “world mission”. The United States after 1945 believed it was the “indispensable nation”.

Both narratives produced:

• moral overconfidence

• reduced self‑criticism

• mythologized history

• a belief in exceptionalism

• a tendency to see dissent as disloyalty

When a nation sees itself as uniquely chosen, it becomes less capable of introspection. It becomes more vulnerable to political movements that promise to “restore greatness”. And it becomes more willing to rewrite reality to protect its self‑image.

II. Hannah Arendt’s Totalitarianism — And Why It Matters Now

Arendt never defined totalitarianism as “Nazism” or “Stalinism”. She defined it as a psychological and societal condition in which:

• truth becomes optional

• facts become negotiable

• ideology replaces thinking

• propaganda replaces journalism

• fear replaces trust

• loyalty replaces judgment

Arendt’s warning signs are visible in many places today — including the United States.

1. The Destruction of Reality

Arendt wrote that totalitarianism begins when people lose the ability to distinguish truth from fiction. Today we see political narratives that openly contradict lived reality:

• “We have a great economy.”

A phrase repeated by commentators like David Bessent, even as millions struggle with rising costs, unaffordable housing, medical debt, and stagnant wages.

• “We defeated Iran.”

A claim echoed by voices like Pete Hegseth, despite Iran continuing to launch missiles, operate proxy militias, and threaten the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes.

These statements are not mere political spin. They are attempts to replace reality with narrative, exactly as Arendt described.

2. Media ecosystems that function as propaganda pipes

Arendt wrote that propaganda becomes effective when it replaces journalism. Today, certain media outlets repeat political narratives without scrutiny:

• Fox News hosts praising economic “miracles” while ignoring contradictory data.

• Segments celebrating foreign policy “victories” that experts describe as incomplete or misleading.

• Talk shows amplifying conspiracy theories that have no factual basis.

This is not journalism. It is identity reinforcement — a psychological tool Arendt recognized as essential for totalitarian movements.

3. The rewriting of geopolitical events

Arendt warned that totalitarian movements rewrite history in real time. Today we see:

• “We destroyed Iran’s capabilities.”

A narrative repeated despite Iran’s continued missile launches and regional influence.

• “Iran is no longer a threat.”

A claim that contradicts ongoing military activity and regional instability.

• “This was a historic victory for America.”

A triumphalist framing of limited operations that experts describe as tactical at best.

• “We showed them who’s boss.”

A slogan that reduces geopolitical complexity to dominance theater.

• “America won, Iran lost.”

A binary narrative that ignores the reality of an ongoing conflict.

This is not analysis. It is myth-making — the replacement of reality with emotionally satisfying fiction.

4. The denial of institutional reality

Arendt emphasized that totalitarian movements destroy trust in institutions. Today we see:

• Courts dismissed as corrupt when they contradict political narratives.

• Economic data rejected when it challenges ideological talking points.

• Intelligence assessments ignored when they conflict with preferred stories.

This erosion of trust is not accidental. It is a deliberate strategy.

5. The overwhelming of thought

Steve Bannon’s phrase “flood the zone with shit” is the modern version of Arendt’s insight: Totalitarianism destroys the ability to think by overwhelming people with noise.

Outrage replaces analysis.

Emotion replaces judgment.

Identity replaces truth.

6. The hollowing out of political parties

Arendt warned that totalitarian movements turn parties into instruments of a single leader. A party that no longer thinks, no longer debates, no longer disagrees — becomes a vessel, not a political institution. Today we see:

• elected officials who repeat talking points rather than positions

• representatives who fear internal punishment more than public accountability

• a political movement that rewards loyalty over competence

This is not a totalitarian party — but it is a party in psychological submission, a phenomenon Arendt understood deeply.

III. The Banality of Evil — Why It Still Matters

Arendt’s most misunderstood idea is the “banality of evil”.

She never meant that evil is trivial. She meant that evil becomes possible when ordinary people stop thinking.

Adolf Eichmann was not a monster.

He was a bureaucrat.

A man who followed orders.

A man who used clichés instead of thoughts.

A man who replaced conscience with obedience.

Arendt’s warning is timeless: The greatest crimes are committed not by fanatics, but by people who refuse to think.

This is visible today in:

• political movements that reward loyalty over judgment

• bureaucracies that enforce harmful policies without reflection

• media personalities who repeat narratives without questioning them

• citizens who outsource their moral responsibility to leaders

In the last point lies the most painful lesson of all. After World War II, the German people were asked: “Why did you not stop this?”

The answer was rarely ideological. It was psychological:

• “We trusted the leaders.”

• “We thought others would act.”

• “We didn’t want trouble.”

• “We didn’t think it would go that far.”

• “We were afraid.”

Arendt understood this perfectly: Totalitarianism succeeds not because the convinced fanatics are many, but because the thinking citizens are few.

Democracy collapses when:

• people stop voting

• people stop questioning

• people stop resisting

• people stop caring

• people stop thinking

Non‑participation is not neutral. It is a silent transfer of power. When citizens withdraw, radicals advance. This is not a German lesson. It is a human lesson.

IV. The Antidote: Understanding Each Other

The author James Clavell discovered something profound after World War II. He arrived in Japan not as a romantic admirer, but as a British officer, shaped by war, carrying the prejudices, fears, and certainties of a victorious Westerner. He expected hostility, hardship, and a defeated nation. Instead, Japan confronted him with something entirely different: dignity, calm, and a worldview that did not revolve around dominance, but around balance.

Clavell found a culture built on:

• harmony rather than assertion

• duty without arrogance

• beauty that includes sadness and impermanence

• strength expressed through restraint

• identity shaped by community rather than ego

Japan forced him to unlearn Western assumptions — the belief that power is virtue, that victory is proof of moral superiority, that order comes from control. He realized that cultures are not obstacles; they are mirrors.

This transformation was so deep that Clavell spent years trying to translate it into a story Western readers could understand. The result was his famous novel Shōgun.

Blackthorne, the English pilot described in the novel, who enters Japan with arrogance and fear, is Clavell himself — a man who must shed his inherited worldview piece by piece, until he can finally see the world through different eyes.

Clavell’s insight is simple but profound: To understand another culture, one must first possess the courage to let go of one’s own certainties.

This is the opposite of totalitarian psychology. It requires humility, curiosity, and the willingness to be changed by what one encounters. It is the antidote to ideological rigidity — and perhaps the only path that leads away from the dangers Arendt described.

V. Conclusion: The Courage to Think

Arendt believed that thinking — real thinking — is the only defense against totalitarianism.

Not ideology - but he courage to question one’s own narratives.

Not slogans - but the courage to confront uncomfortable truths.

Not patriotism - but he courage to see the world through another culture’s eyes.

Not strength - but the courage to resist the seduction of greatness.

Germany learned this lesson painfully. The United States is now facing its own test. Great powers fall not because they are defeated — but because they stop thinking.

And as Arendt reminds us:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.”

The challenge of our time is simple: to keep that distinction alive.

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

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The World Is Changing

Comment: “The Donald” keeps repeating that the world is ripping off the United States. In reality, it was the U.S. itself that designed the very system after World War II under which its own middle class is now suffering. For decades, the U.S. extracted enormous advantages from its dollar dominance - and only now they realize that this system no longer works for them. Even Trump‘s economic advisor Jamieson Greer admitted this openly in Davos this year. Dear Americans, a bit of “socialism” would actually do you good, because your elites have sold you out - and they still are.

The U.S. traded its industrial base for a gigantic financial market that benefits only a small fraction of society. As a consequence, the U.S. stock market keeps pulling global capital - mainly into the “Magnificent 7“ which, by the way, are massively overvalued and only offer one success story: AI. AI will transform the world - but its real economic benefits do not justify the scale of these investments. Someone will eventually pay the bill for this speculation.

The author of the video shows the exact dilemma the U.S. is trapped in: you cannot maintain dollar dominance while simultaneously reshoring industry and creating well‑paid jobs - and keep prices low. The world is currently making this decision for the U.S. and is moving away from the dollar‑centric system: this year, gold has overtaken U.S. Treasuries as the most purchased reserve asset by central banks. That is a historic shift. As a European, I am not worried: we are not losing any privilege, because we have lived perfectly well in a world without such a privilege for 80 years. Europe is resilient - and is currently preparing itself even further - for this new world.

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Bob Seger - Still The Same

And you're still the same

I caught up with you yesterday (still the same, still the same)

Moving game to game

No one standing in your way

Turning on the charm

Long enough to get you by (still the same, still the same)

You're still the same

You still aim high

Comments: Last weekend we met P. again, and he slipped right back into his usual role. Some people stay the same because change requires vulnerability - and that’s exactly what they avoid throughout their lives. Seger captures the quiet melancholy that arises when you finally recognize this.

[mental-food]

That's all I've wanted - to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps...

-Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

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…such moments are rare because they cannot be manufactured. They arise only when one is willing to walk without inner maps.

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

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An Incredible Gift

“People don’t remember words. They remember moments that touch their inner world.“

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

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Cindy Lauper - All Through The Night

We have no past, we won't reach back

Keep with me forward all through the night

And once we start the meter clicks

And it goes running all through the night

Until it ends, there is no end

Comment: “All Through the Night“ is about two people suspended in a moment that doesn’t ask for a future - just presence. It’s intimacy without destination, a quiet orbit shared for a little while.

For me, it mirrors a special night over the Atlantic nearly three decades ago, when two strangers talked in the dim cabin light and then drifted apart as the plane touched down. A brief crossing of life paths - meaningful precisely because it ended where it began, yet stays alive in the mind long after the moment itself is gone. One of these “Before Sunrise” moments, but without the promise to meet again.

We remember feelings long after faces fade - emotion is the true shape of memory!

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

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Carly Simon - You‘re So Vain (Cover by Olivia Rodrigo)

You're so vain

You probably think this song is about you

You're so vain (you're so vain)

I bet you think this song is about you

Don't you, don't you?

Comment: The song is seen as Carly Simon’s takedown of her ex-lover Warren Beatty - a “narcissistic rooster”. But what makes it timeless, at least for me, is the psychology behind it: it doesn’t just ironically characterize one person, but a human pattern. Carly Simon holds up a mirror to many of us, saying: “If you think it’s about you, then maybe it’s about you for exactly that reason.”

[remanence-of-love]

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….and everything else….honestly….I really don’t give a shit🤷🏼‍♂️!

[mental-food]

They were two happy lovers among the crowd, and they came to suspect that love could be a feeling that was more relaxing and deep than the happiness, wild but momentary, of their secret nights.

-Gabriel Garcí­a Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Thoughts: The book One Hundred Years of Solitude was part of a second trip through the American South nearly three decades ago - South Carolina, Georgia, Florida. Another journey alone, driven by the wish to step into Margaret Mitchell’s “Good Ole South” and to understand, on the Florida Keys, what Hemingway might have sought in that place. Back then, someone stood at the beginning of his own path - much was still “in the making”.

Sometimes a book is read without truly being understood. Not because intelligence is lacking, but because life has not yet gathered enough depth. Certain lines remain silent as long as the experience is missing that sets the inner world into resonance. Only later, after years, does one begin to grasp what was meant.

How can one explain the feeling described above to someone who has not lived through two decades of it? Wisdom appears when something clicks inside - when individual puzzle pieces suddenly form a coherent whole. When it becomes clear that calm can be a powerful sensation, and that ecstasy, no matter how intense at first, is brief and fades. Moments are fleeting - their traces in time, the shared story, are the true treasure.

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

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The Guy Who Promised To Drain The Swamp….

….turns out to be “The Swamp“.

Elections have consequences — that’s why staying informed and thinking critically matters.

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Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars

If I lay here

If I just lay here

Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

…

Let's waste time

Chasing cars

Around our heads

Thoughts: Dogs live in the present moment. They pull you out of your worries because they don’t analyze the past or plan the future. When you look at a relaxed dog, you automatically become calm. Life can be simple and light - not unbearable at all 😂.

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.”

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Mentos will forever live in our hearts ❤️. This summer should have been his. Another soul from the local animal shelter is now benefiting from it.

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Places That Touch The Mind

The power of a place lies not only in its history, but in the atmosphere it creates. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the model for Toranaga in Clavell’s Shōgun, ended centuries of civil war and ushered in more than 250 years of stability - Japan’s long peace. At his mausoleum in Nikkō, that legacy becomes almost tangible. The towering cedar trees, the muted light, and the gentle fall of snow create a profound stillness. Even with many people around, the forest absorbs every sound, wrapping the mind in a soft, cotton‑like quiet. It’s like the place itself speaks to you.

James Clavell first encountered Japan as a British officer after the Second World War. He arrived with the usual wartime prejudices, expecting hostility, hardship, and a defeated nation. Instead, Japan confronted him with dignity, calm, and a completely different understanding of life. His assumptions dissolved; his Western ideas about order, duty, and human connection were quietly overturned. What he found was a culture built on balance rather than dominance, on harmony rather than assertion, and on an awareness of beauty that includes sadness and impermanence. That encounter changed him so deeply that Shōgun became his way of passing on this transformation - a story that lets Western readers experience Japan through the eyes of someone who had to unlearn and relearn everything.

I notice something similar in myself. The more I touch this culture - its gardens, its silence, its way of reading the world - the more it reshapes me. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I built a Japanese garden. Some places do not simply impress us; they speak to us, and in speaking, they change us.

-Simplicius Simplicissimus

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Unless I Win!

Yabushige: How does it feel to shape the wind to your will?

Toranaga: I don‘t control the wind. I only study it.

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View From A Cellar Window

“How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”

-James Clavell, Shōgun