The NoSlave Manifesto

Berlin, 08.07.2023

Hi,

my name is Yannick and I'm 37 years old. I live in Berlin, Germany, and just graduated and got my masters degree in contemporary history a few months ago in September 2022. Since then I occupied myself mostly with approaching my goal to heal the world. My plan is to achieve that by healing myself first. This I want to do in the course of realizing my vision for a healthy society. Since 2016 I created a very detailed road-map on how I want to manifest my vision and continually expand it. At the moment I maintain myself as a self employed journalist as well as several jobs on an invoice basis, mostly in the field of political education, empowerment and the likes. I also receive welfare because I am not yet earning enough money to pay all that is asked of me. Along my way maybe your contribution, no matter how big or small, may be pivotal in making the transition to supporting myself and others happen.

The first step on my road-map is to establish my fashion label. When you read these lines I have hopefully protected it and can finally speak about what it's all about. I had the idea about 7 or 8 years ago when I was studying the B.A. program North American Studies in Munich. There I learned about the literary genre of the slave narrative and amongst others was told the story of Olaudah Equiano, a man who was kidnapped from his native home to be enslaved in the USA. Taking on extra work after his slave labor he saved up enough money to buy himself out from the slaveholder and become a so called free man. He learned to read and write and authored his biography. It became a famous representative of the genre. Having this knowledge when I first saw his portrait of a dark skinned African, dressed like a European renaissance noble man it inspired me in many ways.

In 2017 I spent some time in Montpellier, France and there was introduced to Non-Violent-Communication (NVC). Also there I first learned about the Wim Hof Method (WHM) breathing technique AND cold exposure. Both NVC and WHM became some of my main interest, orientation and pillars in my view of the world and life ever since, especially the NVC. Just very good tools.

At the time I was working with a radio station in Munich, M94.5. I had been hip to politics from an early age on. Especially the notion of skepticism towards the field of politics and the from my perspective obvious deep corruption of the entire political sector, as a system that by default natural selection will favor personnel that is complacent to all sorts of manipulation to hold key positions of power in that system (thereby being) became my base assumption of what the real state of the society was or is. I remember that through my English class in school I was having a subscription of the Newsweek magazine as a pupil maybe around 2003-2006. In retrospect I rate the analysis I was presented with there as in depth and above average for global events from a transatlantic perspective. In consequence by 18 I had already been relatively disillusioned about global politics and the human condition per se. The whole complex of Abu Graib comes to mind as one tragic example and detail in a chain of wrongdoings and abominations on a total scale.

Reading in general formed much of what my idea of a possible reality was. The first favorite book of my life I read with 8 years. Ottfried Preußlers Krabat. A dark and melancholic story about a life of hardship for a young boy in a school of magicians. Later, probably when I was 14 I took Hermann Hesses Siddhartha from my Moms bookshelf and read it in the summer holiday in French Bretagne region that year and it gave me ideas. Read Kafka's novels rather young, except Der Prozess, which I had started but put aside as I didn't feel it at the time (picked it up and enjoyed reading it years later). It must have also been around that time that I first read Jean Paul Sartre and learned about Existentialism. It resonated with me right away and until today, appears clear and applicable to me. Existence before Essence. Theses words fascinated me from the first time they were presented to me yet they received a completly different tone ever after I came in touch with NVC. Since then, to me these words seem to encapsulate in a way the very condensation of NVC: Self responsible behavior; In causality through the sum-total of ones choices (assuming we have what is widely referred to as free will) choosing ones own destiny, becoming the creator of ones own reality; Being responsible for the personal situation in all fields. This contains a promise but also a threat.

At least under the code of ethics that is broadly accepted in the west as of today. Additionally it appears the supposed education system is in many regards reminiscent of indoctrination and rather conditioning humans to become emotional cripples or mindless zombies that are highly susceptible not to say dependent to and of external suggestion.

It is my believe that we are being strategically led away from coming into intimate contact with ourselves, properly developing and integrating all aspects of our being or personality and thereby only in the rarest cases arriving at a realization of our true human potential. My claim is that being in contact with self is a necessary condition to become more independent, thereby experiencing greater levels of health, vitality and well being.

Vice versa I argue that the more we are out of contact with the full spectrum of our personality or self the more we will look for others to guide us and to make decisions for us and in consequence can easily be controlled. Especially in a setting that suggest that only specialists have a say in whatever topic and therefore as an average human being in the information age the least thing to be trusted is the own conception of reality. What is to be trusted though is authorities in any given field, so called experts. In reference to that Stanley Milgrim in his famous findings was able to show what humans can become under certain conditions: Dehumanized. Mindless slaves to whomever controls the programming. I often argue that the one property that renders us human is that we always have choice (Existentialism; NVC). Sartre speaks of the french soldier, who is forced to fight in Algeria at gun-point as otherwise he is to be killed himself. Sartre reminds us that this is not a true statement as being killed oneself constitutes an alternative option (one of infinite other possibilities). Thus the soldier does have choice yet it will have fatal consequences in this case. Arguably a decision can have grave consequences but it nevertheless leaves at least one choice that a self responsible individual might take or not. As soon as we can think of only one theoretical alternative to an action we take, it then immediately disqualifies any talk of outside force or compulsion or obligations in the first place, short, excuses for not taking responsibility for ones own decisions. (The same seems to be true for judgments and the decision (maybe even responsibility) for the thoughts we think day in day out). I live in a society of people who tell me all the time what they have to do in every second sentence. Language that denies choice, as Marshall Rosenberg might call it. I believe that autosuggestion is a reality and so with all this violence in our language we keep ourselves back in many regards. Violence that might be directed towards others but also and maybe even more important towards ourselves.

To be continued...