Freiburg

My God, have I really forgotten to have breakfast again?" – I think, listening to my rumbling stomach." Probably". I look around squinting. No one ever managed to starve in a middle of a market yet. It’s nine in the morning. Street vendors have just finished setting up their stalls and are chatting, sipping hot coffee from thermoses, waiting for the first customers to come. In Freiburg, nobody buys anything in a hurry. In the city centre all shops open at ten, and then the city starts waking up, coming to life slowly, especially on a rainy day like today, sprinkled with colorful raincoats and umbrellas. This is why I am already here, at the market, at nine. No, no, not because I don't like people. Individually, I actually find some specimen quite nice. It is only when they appear back to back, turning into violent termite colonies, is when I try to avoid them. The crowd psychology, turning people who one minute quietly munch on their muesli into a sweaty, swearing and pushing tornado in another, will probably stay a mystery to me forever. On the other hand, I perfectly understand that if all of them adopt my philosophy, coming to the market at nine isn’t going to help me. This way I still have time.

I approach the window of the vendor’s car and order a crepe and a cup of coffee. The man starts to work immediately. With a skilled movement of a hand, he pours out a ladle of pancake batter into a huge, black skillet and begins to spread it methodically. I, with my hands deep in the pockets of my trousers, observe him turning my pancake, rolling it and covering it with a thick layer of sugar and cinnamon out of a huge shaker. In slow motion. And then, like a thunderbolt, a thought suddenly hits me. It becomes clear to me, that I am interested in this sugar and cinnamon pancake more, than in a person who so diligently prepares it for me. With horror I realise that I feel similarly indifferent about all other vendors too, who are sitting at their stalls, sipping their coffee and chatting on this wet, cool morning.

Other people start to appear at the market. Old women with baskets and nylon hats, ladies in elegant raincoats, unshaven men with cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths. All in-diff-er-ent. “This is awful!” – I inhale. “It’s not possible, is it? It can’t be right. Isn’t our society built on the idea that we have to love our neighbour?” But in the midst of deliberation, I suddenly feel a strange bliss spreading all over me, with the first sip of my aromatic coffee. “ Anyway, why is it awful? How many of those passers by care, whether I’ve had my breakfast this morning? Or whether I ever eat breakfast at all? How many kids, what problems and existential fears I have? They don’t even look at me in their stride, overwhelmed by their own thoughts. But… may be this is the right thing? Can it be that this mass indifference is what enables us to coexist with one another in this society? Could we, for example, concentrate on a good novel on a train, if our hearts would be suddenly overwhelmed with love towards a person sitting next to us? I doubt it. Moved by such feelings we, instead of reading, would be desperately peering in the faces of surrounding us people, looking for confirmation of our feelings – care, sympathy, love or disapproval, and most likely be consumed with indignation at not finding it.

By experiencing and showing such indignation, we could show the world how deeply moral and ethical we are. And more importantly, how unethical people trampling on these values are. Stéphane Hessel wrote once in his “Time for Outrage”:” From the bottom of my soul, I wish you a reason for indignation, because it is priceless.” Powerful. But can it be that exactly this continuous indignation happens to be this secret ingredient, which generates dissatisfaction and contention between people, turning into a spiral of self-destruction of our society as such? After all, isn’t real hatred in its essence, an absolute antithesis of indifference? Indifference is quiet and friendly; it doesn't inflame one’s mind or cause stomach ulcers. If my theory is correct, it may be that Religion used Morals since millennia, to indoctrinate us to do the opposite, kindling those very herds of hatred. To what end? To bring us, as sacrificial lambs, to the altar of Ethic? Ethic lives off the impression that any "Indifference" is bad and should cause remorse. According to it we "have to" love and respect all. What if it’s wrong? What if it was possible to create Ethic anew, embedding in it a concept of "Indifference", instead of artificial, disturbing "Duty to love"? Would it give our modern way of life a whole new meaning, declaring it absolutely normal to be indifferent, instead of constantly having to acquit it?

"Those pancakes taste really crappy cold..."