The Mood of the World by Heinz Bude

Author:Heinz Bude
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509519934
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2018-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

There must be a pause to allow a mood change to take place. All at once, stability loses its charm and change becomes appealing. Hirschman speaks of a repulsion effect where one wants to get rid of something that has become boring and painful. With the student movement of 1966–1968, a mood of political passion suddenly spread across Western European societies and some Eastern European societies too. The withdrawal into the private sphere stopped being seen as a reasonable reaction to world war and genocide and began to be condemned as an evasion of questions of social responsibility and a diminution of human possibilities. A new generation raised its voice, condemning the absence of any concept of public happiness and instead searching for emotive formulas for political engagement. In Paris and Prague, Berlin and Berkeley, Tokyo and Caracas, Amsterdam and Seoul, students took to the streets, as the saying goes, to herald the mood of a new era.

Hirschman was not interested in momentary moods that decide elections. Instead, he wanted to understand epochal mood swings that intersect the histories of national societies and define historical periods. Willy Brandt, in his inaugural speech as German chancellor on 28 October 1969, famously declared, in accord with the general mood across the western world:

We want to dare more democracy. We will reveal how we work and want to satisfy the critical need for information. We will give every citizen the opportunity to participate in reforming the state and society, and not only through hearings in the Bundestag, but also through our constant contact with representative groups within the population and by offering transparency about government policies.8

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