»Savages«

»What I always strive for is to understand what keeps humans in motion so aimlessly that they divorce themselves from nature as if in a blind rage; trying to understand this great change which is about to be implemented without our even noticing« – says the Swiss-Austrian composer Beat Furrer, known mainly for musical theatre works. The new discussion series »Des Pudels Kern« (The Heart of the Matter) has him encounter the biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber, whose book »Indigenialität« might be summarized in the thesis »We are all savages!«. To Weber, »savages« are those cultures before the invention of agriculture whose self-concept over millennia was that they considered themselves part of an all-encompassing ecosystem of mutual giving and accepting. Today, civilization has colonized not only almost all indigenous peoples, but also our own thinking and feeling, driving the exploitation of natural resources to its limits. Suddenly, the nearly-extinct philosophy of life of the »savages« once again seems highly topical …