JACKSON IS THE MOZART OF OUR TIME

In the recent days many comparisons have been made between the deceased Michael Jackson and other icons of our time, most notably Elvis Presley.

One other comparison has been drawn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Michael Jackson too was a child prodigy who was pushed onto the stage by an ambitious father. Like Mozart Michael Jackson was crowned a King of his art and public performance. They both inspired an entire culture, for many decades, whether in classical music or pop.



So indeed, Michael Jackson will stand on a high pedestal, almost in the way he had already depicted this in the pictures of his album “History”.

To some extent Michael Jackson isn’t history yet, nor for that matter can we call Mozart ‘history’. Most likely Michael’s voice will be heard for ages to come in the same way as the sounds and tunes of Mozart’s sonatas and concertos.

And what about the culture itself? Our popular music already has passed Michael Jackson’s heydays. Yet his legacy continues to resound in many new albums of a wide range of artists, his dance routines re-emerge time and again in video clips, and Michael’s own music will of course continue to be played for quite some years to come.



Still our popular culture may be up for some sizeable innovation, the way Michael Jackson single handedly ignited the innovation of the late seventies, right after Elvis Presley’s death. It will be interesting to see what it takes to be star with revolutionary potential in our time. We can not sit and wait. We just have to recognize it when it arrives.

A GLOBAL TREATY TO SAVE OUR PLANET

God does not mingle with the odds

God does not temper with destiny, this is my conviction. Whether or not he plays dice.

Or should we say: life is one big game of dice. The only thing a God can do is show us the consequences of our own actions. But it is the human society that determines those consequences. Nothing actually is “an act of God”.

And because there is no God who actually sets enforceable rules, we have created the institution of law to rule us. Law is a fundamentally human logic. A necessary or inevitable effort towards logic, if we want to maintain the equilibrium of hour human societies. And perhaps by virtue of that its mother is the logic of God, or Nature.

I had a conversation, recently, with a colleague. I don’t remember how we got there, but he said: “Natural law was a great philosophy before Darwin. We never again looked at natural law after Darwin, did we?” I mumbled in agreement and immediately started to reflect on it.

Although I do not believe in legally relevant natural law, I do believe that there is much that law can learn from nature.

For instance: that we may fight crime better by bringing home the consequences rather than by mere punishment or retribution.

Or: that we must have some tolerance, however difficult emotionally, for accidents to happen, unless we want a rigidly policed and tightly secured society. Such society can only be sustained on the basis of human enslavement not human freedom.

That we must emphasize our individual duty to find the niche in which we can survive and sustain ourselves. One could indeed say, this is our natural duty as it is our natural opportunity. To go and find our own, individual niche and work towards our own sustainability in the first place.

The essence of human evolution is the ability and drive to quickly adapt to new niches, new circumstances, and yes, entirely new environments from very warm to very cold. We have reached the stage – as a species – at which we are a serious force with an impact of unknown consequences on the environment itself. To a large extent we have created, and engineered our entire human existence, and our potential peril.




We have been on the road of submitting nature to the human wishes and now we have reached the point of reversal. Shouldn’t our responsibility in respect of nature of itself not be the key principle of natural law to be imposed on all humans living now and in the future?

And if this is not self-evident, then perhaps we should ourselves articulate our responsibilities regarding nature in a global treaty of all humanity, strictly reinforceable, by force if necessary.

Let’s newly address the question of ‘natural law’: not simply as a source of guiding (or inspiring) principles for the human society, but as the prime expression of humanity’s responsibility in respect of its true mother Nature. And whoever wants to believe in God will most likely wholeheartedly agree. Even the Pope in Rome should be in total agreement. Nearly fifty years ago an American President spirited the Western world to the Moon. Perhaps in our time we need an American President who inspires us to reach a global agreement regarding our own planet Earth.