Conformist

At least that's not something that can be said about my beloved father. He truly believed in the superiority and blessings of the natural, new order called fascism.

They called him an idealist.

As a non-conformist, is it self-preservation to live in a world with conformists?

It sounds like I have to watch this.

(Non) conformism from an un-Dutch point of view:
http://www.taz.de/1/politik/europa/artikel/1/holland-geht/

(non) conformism from an un-Dutch point of view:
http://www.taz.de/1/politik/europa/artikel/1/holland-geht/

(non)conformism and self-preservation from an un-dutch point of view:
http://www.taz.de/1/politik/europa/artikel/1/holland-geht/

Conformism and self-preservation in an undutch perspective:
http://www.taz.de/1/politik/europa/artikel/1/holland-geht/

@Mieke
An idealist, maybe, and why not?
(My father has more or less the qualities of the figure called by Harry Mulisch in his novel Siegfried: "Nothingness.”)

Bernard

My father ran from the Russians in the Ukraïne to Salzburg in Austria to surrender to the Americans. That was a matter of self-preservation too.

My father died when I was 7. He was 36, so he hadn't done all that much. My mother is 49, but she hasn't done all that much either. If I write a novel about my parents, it would be on the uselessness of it all. But then again, why write about it.

I'll say what no one dares to say: What we, the Western world, need, is a war. Although I've never experienced war, I think it would be benificial to society. It's like when I was a child. I had fallen off a deathride and broken one bone in my forearm. To make my forearm heal properly, they had to break the other bone.
I had taken a painkiller just after I fell, so I couldn't take anything else at the hospital. "This is going to hurt", they said. And I guess it did hurt, but I didn't cry. At that moment I was more concerned with what the doctor thought of me -wasn't I a special and good kid, a kid that doesn't cry when someone deliberately breaks its arm?

I feel we need to break society's forearm to make it heal again.

Dens

More people than you think dare to say this.

War as therapy !!

Because they don't know what war really is.

Dens

That is nonsense, no one dares to say it but i'm a pacifist.

Dens

Do you mean a civil war or selecting another enemy from outside, an outgroup? We seem to have created them already, or not?

Well, if you suffer from boredom and need a war maybe you can better start writing after all.

Milan van Opmeer

I have absolutely no idea what kind of war we need. (I guess preferably no nuclear war). My war-knowledge is close to zero, my experience is even less.

Maybe I should start or stop taking anti-depressants.

Dens

i've heard many half literate people in bars say that after a few beers, when discussing the world.