wolfgang hofkirchner

for this year’s emcsr we made in facebook a t-shirt competition to find the best slogan. people could make suggestions. the one with the most likes made it onto the t-shirts for our staff and for those who wanted to buy a souvenir.

i put the t-shirt on too. however, it’s not completely to my taste. it seems to lay emphasis on individual change which is hard to accomplish, given constraints by the system we are all part of.

it is that very system we need to change. and as soon as we agree to that, we – as individual systems – change our minds and do already the first step to change the overall system and anticipate another system. in this struggle, we co-evolve with the system we want to see in the world. that struggle is not against certain individuals but, in the first place, for a change in the structure of society that we do not deem fair because it allows members of society to take roles and positions by which they can exclude other members from the production of and the provision with commons. that struggle is not for us to take over the power. and, for certain, it is not a struggle with ourselves to make us apt to the unfair relations in society.

Dino Karabeg, a participant of the emcsr 2014, showing the t-shirt (photo: emcsr)

– p.s. 12.5.2014. for the sake of completeness: last weekend i came across the following poster in a swiss protestant seminar hotel:

(photo: Lisa Schlager)

it means roughly “be yourself the change you wish for the world”, paraphrasing a quote that is attributed to gandhi. notice, however, the dispute: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/08/be-the-change-you-wish-to-see-in-the-world-not-gandhi/