Social issues

Digital Media – “Loss of Reality”

Joachim Bauer* warns of the psychological consequences of digitalisation

by J. J. Wehrli

(12 September 2023) In his latest publication, “Loss of Reality – How AI and the virtual world take possession of us and threaten humanity”,1 physician and psychotherapist Joachim Bauer deals with the influence of digital media. His core thesis: virtual worlds and social media enable, if not downright promote, an escape from the real world. As a result, humanity and thus all of society suffers.

No propaganda – no war

“Cognitive Warfare” against one’s own population

by Robert Seidel

(5 September 2023) If you want to gain an orientation in today’s world, you must learn to distinguish and assess information more accurately. The debate about “fake news” has shown that not all information can be taken at face value. However, not every item of “fake news” is actually a fake. Since the Ukraine war, it has obviously been a question of the prerogative of interpretation in the minds of one’s own population. The people in the individual states are to be mobilised for this war – which has now taken on a global proportion.

The new El Dorado for cocaine traffickers

Cocaine does not seem affected by inflation. Here's why.

by Celine Pina,* France

(5 September 2023) As with our European neighbours, cocaine is now available at bargain prices in our cities and countryside. Imported in bulk, it ceased to be a luxury product. But its disturbing power of corruption and destruction has not diminished.

The dark side of calling for responsibility

by Antoine-Frédéric Bernhard,* Switzerland

(29 August 2023) Get vaccinated? An act of "responsibility"! Just like lowering your thermostat to 19 degrees, no longer flying or lowering your meat consumption. This rhetoric of calling for responsibility, omnipresent today, has a dark side.

Digital horror in children’s rooms – how much longer unprotected?

Is the turnaround in child and youth protection coming?

by Robert Tauschke*

(22 August 2023) After new studies on the hitherto more or less uncontrolled digitalisation in the children’s and youth area, as well as the first consistent governmental measures abroad, the course has been set for a turnaround in the German-speaking countries as well. The disastrous consequences of media consumption in “children’s rooms” are becoming increasingly evident.

“Oppenheimer” and the ABC’s of the Atomic Apocalypse

by Scott Ritter,* USA

(15 August 2023) Assessing the birth of atomic America, put on display as only Hollywood can, I watched Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. I walked away from the theater acknowledging the success of the film in portraying the protagonist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, as a fellow human traveler in this adventure known as life.