Episode 05 The Weekend in Baden-Baden
Part 1/3
Carine and Patrick received a simple and warm welcome on Friday afternoon. They had certainly found themselves a little confused in this new setting that reminded them more of their family universe than the club where they had known each other.
The chalet was magnificent with its two floors, its wooden balconies with geranium balustrades, its roof whose majestic advance gives a real feeling of protection, security, calm and warmth.
Each couple arrived as agreed around 3 p.m. The Germans and Swiss worked until noon or 1 p.m. on Fridays. For the French, it was more complicated and they had to take a day or half a day off or use their credit to manage the variable schedule. The adults would stay in the large dormitory and the children would go to a cottage a little further away.
By 4 p.m., all had had a drink and some cakes to renew contacts and get their children to know their future weekend friends and parents.
A stroll around town
It was five o’clock. The end of the afternoon had prompted them to start their weekend work to develop the project to create their dating club.
They went downtown, walked the Langestrasse to reach the Sophienstrasse. Patrick and Frantz led the group. They headed for the Casino. The terraces of cafes frequented by golden youth, rare places in the city where teenagers predominated, failed to hold them back.
In front of them the Kurhaus, its luxury shops and the welcome freshness of its chestnut trees attracted them.
The women made a point of window-shopping. Summer filled the city with vacationers and tourists. The youth of their group, their exuberance denoted among the crowd of people fiftieth or older in bourgeois outfits worn even in this heat and that could not frighten the benches of their Daimler, Mercedes, Jaguars or big BMW.
Baden-Baden Casino
Around the Casino, the German opulence showed itself elegantly, believing that the emulation that would be to the courtiers of the past century was still rampant to remember indelibly that you were here in what was a summer capital in the nineteenth century.
The façade of the Casino imposes its whiteness and its Greek style columns that support the pediment with golden borders. This whiteness denotes in the greenery. In winter, only snow is able to match this presentation and to attenuate the contrast between this whiteness coming from another age and the green of the foliage and lawns that run to the river.
The place nestles in the landscape like a clearing on the edge of a stream in the middle of a completely wooded valley. From the top of the mountains that surround the site, the trees stand out until the middle of the roofs of the city.
Nature has remained the master of the landscape.
The church steeples, the new castle that faces are fragmentary images of a panoramic puzzle that allows you from a bench to let your mind wander and rest. Your steps are guided by the red and gold flower lines that, like lace, draw the paths of the park among the lawn.
The Trinkhalle
The benches were monopolized by the elderly. While most wanted to stop, Patrick invited them to win the Trinkhalle. Through the side door, they entered the gallery. They looked at the height of the vault, the length of the gallery and then the Corinthian columns that cut the landscape with a toning greenery in as many postcards.
The group split up to be sewn on either side of the columns. They sought to see the Merktur and its small deforested line where the funicular goes up. But more than the view of the landscape, the gallery and its high and regular arches acted on them.
Everything is breathtaking, and the warmth and size of the space is much larger than the walls and columns alone. The warm sand colored tiles, the whiteness of their contours that enhances the pure lines of the columns and vaults, the rhythm of these colors that invariably follow one another from one bay to the next open up the space in a continuity here present.
Unlike the façade of the casino, where the gilding, however magnificent, has a hard time decorating the whiteness of the walls, here the place has a unity that will make you think of ancient Greece, even in bad weather.
Peter felt above all this call to rest of the mind. He preferred by far remote and wild natural places, mainly in the mountains but here the symbiosis of places and nature offered equally interesting conditions for the rest of the mind. Patrick came to more physiological considerations and invited them to drink a glass of spring water.
As a regular at the place, he took them into the room that serves as a bar. An imposing column with purplish, gray and white lines carries very high the four Romanesque red sandstone vaults. Opposite the entrance, a canoe-shaped fountain basin catches the eye with its bright mosaics. The bar is at the far end of the room to the right. The white lacquered counter furniture, new copper taps, a surgically clean white tablecloth, and the waitress with the appearance of a nurse can at first stop you from having a glass of water.
You were not sick and yet the solemn architecture, the scrupulous attention to serve you the cleanest this water pushes you to communion to the mystery of this philtre. Patrick silently approached the counter. The waitress, in silence, passed him the glasses of water that he distributed to the group.
Nietzsche
Dominique, served one of the first, saw on the right wall the bust of Frédéric Nietzsche.
She haunted the group. When they were gathered in a semi-circle around her, the professor of letters invited them to raise the glass in honor of the philosopher. She threw: ” for all that we will do together beyond good and evil! “ and the group, in French, repeated the incantation.
After returning the glasses, they went out noting the presence of other busts of philosophers, doctors. Pierre wondered if the others could feel like him that here they had a place where they could take a step, let their minds regain strength in the march he wanted with Laurie to make them undertake.
Did Nietzsche also need this place to calm the course of his thought?
This natural freshness, this captivating greenery, this clear water was surprising but there was also this warm color of the gallery that invites you to stay under other skies.
Did Nietzsche grasp the same call for an even warmer sky? What was the relationship between this landscape and the burning sun of the village of Eze where Nietzsche lived afterwards?
Pierre did not know that two years later, at the top of the village of Eze, he would ask this same question again, already guessing that the answer was no longer in the soothing powers of a landscape as once in Baden-Baden, but stood entirely in the only blinding light of the sun… light present on the coast invariably every day and able to burn forever in your head the last traces of the fundamental and appalling doubt about the fate of man, the fate of humanity constantly doomed to the lowness and horror generated by those who do not know, just for a moment, let themselves be invaded of light…
Nietzsche cultivated under this fiery Mediterranean sun his genius of suffering: an infinite, terrible, awesome ability to suffer… But what remedies did he draw from these ills? Had he not, faced with the impossibility of leaving his mind in darkness, he who had decreed the death of God, had to replace this divine light by the irreparable and mortal glare of the sun in his head?
picture
He who wrote that all that is deep likes to cover himself with a mask, what mask did he seek to break by burning his eyes?
He understood that the truth is the veil itself and this veil, Peter called it mystery, mystery as the first step in the translation of the supernatural encounter with what lives in us. Was it this mystery that led Nietzsche, at the end of his life, to write letters signed from the Dionysus or the Crucified?
Should the poet be content to write letters once again, or should he again follow the spiritual and human journey of the Dionysus and the Crucified ?
The whole era of the industrial age rise shocked artists and thinkers with the outrageous and outrageous way in which she used man as a mere means of material production and how she broke people’s revolt by ordering the army to open fire on women and children. The novelty and the global and irreversible scale of the phenomenon led Nietzsche to no longer believe in God, weakness of the philosopher who cannot leave the framework of his thought to seek the splendid intrusion, the illumination of our soul by the presence in us of God. But between the enigmatic and destructive exile of a Rimbaud in a burning desert near Nubia where the Egyptian priests were hiding their secrets and the determination of a Nietzsche to furnish his skull with a blinding light, which is the most subject to pity?
Enlightenment and then revolt before evolution in sharing the experience of the unspeakable.
Peter lingered to breathe under these Corinthian vaults to enjoy the calm and to make more distant the suffering that sooner or later would arise at the bend of the path when the revolt born after enlightenment and which since simmered in him, would finally burst.
He smiled, however, remembering that he now had a psychologist at his side who could treat such torment. He smiled at the fact that he knew that Laurie, despite all her experience, would not be competent in the face of this incredible suffering and that only the poet that he was, could overcome it. The group paid little attention to the frescoes whose awkward and awkward subjects were in bad taste in such a place.
Instead of these scenes of Germanic mythology or the exploits of knights of the middle ages dictated by the political choice and serving to flatter an outrageous and outdated nationalism, Pierre dared to think that today, with the greater affirmation of cultural exchanges, one would be less hesitant to mix the best of each culture to perfect the meditation of the public.
The group sat on the lawn to get to know each other better.
There were only foreign tourists to dare to do that! Admittedly, the lawn did not have the size of an American campus or a public garden, but on this point ecumenism was already working and Anglo-Saxon habits, letting it live French overcame the reluctance of the German and Swiss members of the group who sat last. In the calm found, everyone was able to put their ideas in order, in the events they had just experienced since the evening before and thus better prepare for those who were coming.
The presence of the children introduced a new and inescapable element.
Werner and Barbara introduced their 16-year-old boy and their 14-year-old daughter. Sepp and Sandra their two daughters, aged 17 and 15, and their 10-year-old son. For some Germans, this couple was already an exception with this number of children. Gerard and Dominique advanced their 15-year-old boy. Patrick and Carine their 8-year-old boy and 6-year-old daughter. Pierre and Françoise their two daughters, 6 and 3 years old. The total of 4 boys and 6 girls added to the 14 adults was a sizeable group.
The conversation was tricky to start. We didn’t know what pretext each had given the children for this meeting. Patrick took charge of the case and went to fetch two young women:
Christine and Évelyne.
Christine was a secretary engaged in the French army. She was originally from Toulon and had everything of a Mediterranean character. Waiting for a position available near her home, she had been posted here and worked with Patrick. She would volunteer to keep the children in a nearby cottage and take them with an army minibus to Baden-Baden or to the Mummelsee side in Schwarzwald.
Evelyne was a translator and interpreter. She was going to be the first employee of the club since she would be paid as of Sunday night for her task of facilitating communication between members. She worked in Strasbourg for companies as a translator or as a language trainer. In some cases, it provided work or acted as an interpreter in the Council of Europe or the European Parliament when reinforcement was needed. For several months, she had been working as an interpreter with the French Forces of Germany, when the Franco-German Joint Brigade was being set up. That’s how Patrick met her, and by working together, connections were made.
When Evelyne had finished her presentation, Patrick added that he had made her aware of their company’s activity and that she was ready to be more closely involved in the future. To cut short any discussion on the subject, Patrick gave the signal of the departure of the children. Their mothers would accompany them, while the others would set the table for dinner. The impulse was given and their weekend could begin.
The meal and then their first working meeting to organize their club.
At the beginning of the meal, Werner asked how these two days would unfold.
He was the oldest, and it was known that he was to have the most professional responsibilities. He didn’t want to waste his time. Sepp insisted that before they knew what they were going to do, they should get to know each other better on a personal level, who they were going to spend this weekend with and what everyone’s real motives were for the weekend. Most agreed even though they immediately understood that Werner and Sepp had organized their intervention together outside the group.
A map of their group,
Pierre offered to take stock from their first meetings. He found it interesting to do a cross-presentation. A pair would be described through the representation that the six others would have made themselves of it and to be able to better position each other, he suggested to draw a mapping on a board of paper. Evelyne went to get one. They first discussed to determine the criteria, the axes of this mapping. By proceeding in opposition, they retain these key words: sensual-intellectual, conformist-libertarian, distant-sympathetic, secret-open. By retaining the dominant perception of each couple, they impartially drew the following mapping:
Not everyone agreed with these positions.
Mainly Anke, who felt much more sensual than Laurie. Of course, they took some liberties with the pudibund morality and if for the most part, their income offered them a classic prospect of gentrification or yuppies of the new age, they preferred the adventure of encounters off the beaten track.
But a few couples held ideas, made remarks, and behaved more strongly than others.
Laurie had surprised them with her natural nature and freedom of thought, her natural way of loving, the phenomenal effectiveness of her commitments to translate her words into action.
Sepp and Sandra accumulated and the extreme sensuality she had produced during their first meeting by loving herself so intensely in front of others, and the provocative and sometimes mocking tone of her husband.
Pierre and Françoise were located around the central point, her buttocks and his interventions put them in the sensual-libertarian corner. Everyone agreed that there were no conformists posted among the group.
Patrick and Karine, apart from their invitation to receive them this weekend, had not shown much hence their punctual place which had to evolve.
Gerard and Dominique, a couple of teachers, were probably under the image of their profession but they were well on the side of sympathy.
The group shut up when they came to the last two couples. Laurie took the floor to question them: was it the fact that Anke first expressed her intense desire to pray, was it the too deep words of her husband, the fact that he also spoke about his work in a bank in Karlsruhe or simply the part of mystery that he conveyed through his too assertive interventions, his projects too built in his head, that put them in this position opposite to Dan and Laurie?
Frantz and Anke smiled at each other, and then she said that between them, they had to live naked and get naked intellectually. Yes, they didn’t say everything but they planned to say it tomorrow night if the group could wait until then! Dan questioned Frantz. He had to tell them a minimum of things and not act behind the group’s back. Frantz, sensing the tension mounting against him, said that with Anke they were already part of another group, a learned society that cultivated esotericism, parapsychology and some form of sexuality. No, to answer Barbara, it was not a cult but a group of elders among whom they were the youngest. They had worked, if you will, for them and had made a lot of money. It was with that money that Frantz wanted to create a club and he had planned to invite them to the restaurant tomorrow night so he could talk about it better.
Werner didn’t wait for us to get to his case. Joking, he speculated that his Swiss nationality could probably play into the group’s perception of their couple. He had noticed that their age, his professional activity, which gave him more responsibilities in relation to others, his more directional positions, showed a little among them.
Barbara’s very good manners even when she was being shagged in public further added to this impression that they were not part of the same unapologetic world in which their group was immersed. But both wanted to make an effort to blend more into the general mood.
The skills and motivations present in their group.
Frantz asked everyone to express themselves on their passions, their hobbies, their professional activities so that they could evaluate the human resources on which a club project could be built.
Dominique naturally relayed Pierre to the paper board and while taking the dessert, they noticed that Werner, Sepp, Patrick, Frantz, Françoise and Pierre agreed on management and knew how to use a microcomputer. Moreover Frantz on the phone had agreed with Sepp and Werner and all three had brought their compatible microcomputers and a printer.
By the end of the meal, they had agreed on the agenda and schedule for their weekend. In fact, most of these executives were well versed in the pace of business executive seminars.
They would work from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. to define the purpose of their business and to set out the strategy that would allow them to use the resources available as part of a 3-year viability of the business.
They were going to materialize objectives and agree on a method for evaluating and selecting concrete projects that will be set up. The following day, sub-groups would further develop these projects and, at regular intervals, plenary meetings would decide and validate the progress of the work and the instruments for steering the company.
For members working in a company under the status of manager, this organization was part of a routine residential management seminar.
- Werner and Frantz facilitated the first working session and would ensure that the rules adopted were respected throughout the weekend.
- Sepp, Dan and Françoise would present at the end of the weekend the provisional budget and the financing plan that would summarize their decisions.
- Gérard, Patrick, Sandra and Barbara would work on the real estate and furniture elements useful and necessary for the activity of the club: the premises, their layout, the restaurant, the hotel, the concert halls, the possibilities of activities outside the club, the trips…
- Pierre, Dominique, Carine, Anke, Laurie would establish cultural programs, shows, training seminars, meditation sessions…
The presence of so many women in this sub-group beside the poet was easily explained by the fact that it was the women of the group who would initially be the performers of the shows open to the public. It would be nice with their nudity as a sign of appeal, with the full use of female resources that the business activity would be formed. It was up to women to say how far they wanted to go, to show themselves, to give themselves.
Pierre was of course thinking of other sources of activity: the physical overcoming of oneself through the sporting effort mainly in the high mountains, parapsychology, the methods of the new age, the mechanism of poetic creation and the positive visualization which is a fragmentary application, the extrasensory communication without going as far as the techniques of decoration and journeys outside carnal limits… but nevertheless it was up to women to decide the content of the activities.
Their first working session to organize their club.
Patrick invited them to start the working session in a room on the ground floor. They were favorably impressed upon discovering it.
It was a large conference room with a huge round table. At the bottom, in the chimney, a fire was burning; it was actually an electric light bulb illuminating the reproduction of a fire. Despite the heat of summer, the image of this fire gave greater privacy. Red and white checkered curtains adorned the windows. The ceiling and its large rustic beams, its paneling, corresponded with the large walls where a few stones stood out from the white plaster.
Around the table, in front of each chair, a microphone and headset explained the cabin installed in one corner of the room. It was Evelyne’s simultaneous translation material.
In the middle of the table was a floral arrangement around which four small sets of mini-flags were arranged at the four cardinal corners, each of which featured the flags of the members of the group surrounding that of Europe.
Werner began to applaud the display of these working conditions. They would not be reduced to tinkering. They were going to use the most modern technical means, the best management and management methods. They simply had to share their faith, their enthusiasm, and they now knew that by having these material means, their professional experiences, they were going to succeed.
Werner made the audience laugh, taking the Swiss flag to task; he declared with his heart on his hand that he was abandoning Swiss neutrality for himself and his wife, but that he preferred to wait a little longer to say the same about his children.
Evelyne, the master of the premises, explained to them that last week, she had worked here during a Franco-German working meeting, a place much more conducive to rapprochement than the rooms of a barracks, the offices of the headquarters of an institution and that other working meetings were planned here, hence the presence of this material. Finding a small Swiss flag the size of the others had taken him some time. She then explained the buttons to them and the group settled in.
Many women couldn’t help but express their astonishment and joy. For once they were at a management table, they were dating the event. Carine went to the refrigerator to get some small bottles of mineral water. When everyone had their bottle of water and their glass in front of them, Werner and Frantz understood that the meeting could begin.
Pierre noticed quite quickly that there was a group animation problem.
Most were unaware of their place in the group in the process and how decisions would be made. De facto dominance by one or the other of the members of the group had to be prevented from turning into moral ascendancy or even de facto power.
Pierre went to the blackboard and explained the decision-making scheme to them.
Defining the objective of each operation, assembling the data, sorting and evaluating them, positioning alternatives, measuring the risks, deciding, monitoring the decision through a dashboard: these were the seven steps they had to go through to correctly solve a project and make the right decision. The plenary meetings will validate the definition of the objectives, decide on the measurement of risks and, above all, decide by unanimous vote as long as the company’s rules do not define a qualified majority vote.
The remaining steps of this decision-making scheme will be carried out in a sub-group. The microcomputers will be used to collate data, sort it, evaluate alternatives and measure risks.
Finally, Pierre talked to them about skills management that would optimize the intellectual contributions of everyone in the life of the company. They met most of the necessary qualifications and by holding the various positions in the structure of their company, they would acquire the practice of management, organization, service rendered and sold to clients, a practice that would make them competent.
At about four in the morning, they suspended their work.
A final text was printed and given to each participant in French and German. The English version would be released the next morning, with Dan trusting Laurie’s immediate translation.
Very spontaneously, all of them had rejected the idea of opening a meeting club that would mix discotheque, restaurant, private lounges, swimming pool, sauna, hammam for a rather anonymous clientele.
The purpose of their business is to promote spiritual development
members and the most faithful audience by seeking the revelation of moments of life beyond the human body.
This spiritual development complemented other ways of minimizing and eliminating individual and collective violence.
The sub-group of Pierre, Dominique, Carine, Anke, Laurie began by presenting an account of his work on spiritual development, the purpose of their common activity and the object of the activity of the club they had decided to create.
To better position this spiritual development, a key step to maximize social peace, two conceptions arise:
– the purification method :
the aim is to eradicate violence from human beings or to lock it up under the weight of social constraints. This often borrowed practice has always contradicted itself in its persecutory efforts and manages to deny the personality of individuals who do not comply with its dogma. Above all, it creates unnecessary suffering and abuse of power.
The purification method generates too much social violence, discrimination and intolerance. It denies the reality of the living being in the name of an impossible ideal. It does not recognize the reality of man-sphinx: a man’s head on an animal body. It presents the human being as an inseparable and perfect unity originally which would have been perverted by something external to him and which would belong to the powers of evil. It only works through strict obedience to the power that conducts this purification and legitimizes itself through it.
This method of purification is closely associated with the dogma of elite predestination in order to govern the world according to precepts defined by these elites as being of divine origin. The Anglo-Saxon sect of the Puritans uses this dogma of elite predestination to achieve the common good according to the divine will.
– the method of reconciling opposites :
the human being is violent but it is also a social being that cannot keep its characteristics as a human being without living among other human beings, otherwise it falls back into animal ways of living.
He must therefore learn to minimize his violence to be part of a human group and learn to collectively manage this violence to ensure the maximization of social peace. It’s a learning in the uncertain. Violence is a feature of his daily life that he manages and channels to find the satisfaction of his personal needs and thus of social needs.
The conciliation method considers the human being as the association of three dimensions:
- the body dimension similar to other animal species and which includes, among other things, the energy of violence.
- the intellectual dimension produced by the works of his mind and his particular intelligence among living species, dimension which gives him more or less polite answers and with high social value according to his education and culture. It is she who chooses the forms of violence to impose the solutions drawn from the order of her rationality.
- the spiritual dimension produced by contact during his earthly life with the mystery of another life and which allows him to find his reasons for living and dying.
Pierre, as a poet, said that these are our two sources of knowledge:
- the first source does not need to know how to read and write, it is personal and guides us through the spiritual initiatory path.
- The second source of knowledge is the intellectual and rational source.
Several paths are possible to pursue a spiritual initiation.
- exceeding the limits of our carnal body through sports events, mountain hiking, expeditions in preserved natural spaces…
- the fusion of bodies in love ecstasy, a spiritual path available to every human being who encounters Love.
- the mystical path that uses the teachings of the insiders who lived before us on Earth. It is based on the prayers they have given us. We must distinguish this spiritual teaching from the religious dogmas imposed by theocracies.
- the direct way of the dialog of the soul with the soul and the use of poetic writing that draws its content from the source of life present in each of us, once we have discovered it through our spiritual journey.
Peter told the group that he was careful to use these four spiritual paths in his human condition. The first three will be part of the activity developed by their club. The fourth would not be excluded but the requirements of initiation to complete it are not within the reach of all novices and every applicant for initiation.
The poet thought it was too early to explain to the group his plans to lead Laurie down this direct path to the highest initiation. He had discussed it with her at their last meeting in Pirmasens. For the time being, that was enough.
Their group refused the purification method. It chooses the work of minimizing or redirecting the energy of violence which rests on the path of conciliation.
They would work to minimize violence in and around them in order to develop their mission of authority, exercise power directly and share command within their group and then within their club and their political, economic, social, cultural, military movement. They would succeed by using both of our sources of knowledge.
Pierre added that the mere fact of openly using our first source of knowledge, when it is forbidden in systems of power and even more so in theocracies, will represent a source of violence because the leaders of these theocracies and systems of power will not accept this direct and powerful attack on the foundations of their enterprises of subjugation of peoples to maximize endlessly their material wealth and their intoxication with power, especially if they claim to be elites destined to govern the world.
The poet’s warning did not surprise them. They had established a level of trust among themselves that was beginning to produce tangible results. In addition, Pierre was speaking as part of his group, working on the cultural activities of their club. Among the ladies present in this working group, Dominique took the floor to continue the restitution of the minutes of their discussions.
In order to deepen this spiritual development, their working group identified three paths taken here and there by humanity
which could serve as a starting point for their club’s activities:
- that which leads to the realization of the absurdity of human life.
The poet and the French teacher had presented the works of writers of this trend, in particular Albert Camus. This absurd is covered by the struggles of ideologies that try to erase this absurd. The hero in this disproportionate but magnificent struggle can only succumb under his destiny distorted by this absurd. Despite this tragedy, man’s destiny is to fight, always and despite everything because it is the only way to affirm somewhat the marks of his dignity, the claim of men in the course of their earthly lives.
- the person who claims that life must be nourished by meaning in order to be satisfactory.
A positive and constructive sense can be sought and defined in the intellectual construction of a wisdom. All rational wisdom fed by a scientific mind or a philosophical discourse more or less atheist. More mystical wisdom developed through the follow-up of a religious dogma that presents the possibilities of salvation and the human and social conditions to obtain this salvation, this rescue of our earthly existence in another life with God.
- the way that says that it is possible to find the link between the soul and the divine presence to answer our reasons for living in our human condition on planet Earth and to live the two essential values of humanity: love and peace.
The human being is educated to realize his initiation, the more or less complete contact with the supernatural dimension in which the human existence is inscribed. The acquisition of this human experience, the completion of this involution, of this spiritual journey, then provokes the evolution of the human being. Through poetry, this journey that leads to enlightenment and then evolution, through the arts, the human being transmits this experience so that the group draws its human and social values from which it will elaborate its standards of collective life.
The establishment of an initial assessment following this working meeting,
The group ruled out the first two ways of placing the development of its business in the third, using the method of reconciling opposites.
They remained thus consistent: the use of the method of reconciling opposites would concern the first three spiritual paths: the overcoming of the limits of our fleshly body, the fusion of bodies in love ecstasy, the mystical way.
This purpose, this main mission of their club would develop using our two sources of knowledge and especially our first source, the one that is forbidden to us by the leaders of the systems of power and theocracies.
Pierre defines their optimal offer as that which, in the same period of time, would bring together moments belonging to each of the three paths.
The competitive advantage in their strategy would be to demonstrate to the public that from a rather peculiar erotic show and a certain relationship with an actress playing the most complete and natural role of Femininity, Surogate, Shakti or Egyptian or Greek priestess, the public could invest in a progressive spiritual approach more intimate… (by Femininity with a great F and according to Dominique who had spoken of it, it was necessary to hear the one that Marcuse had said was one of the rare chances of the future new society to regain the dimension of man and defeat them links of alienation with capitalist and industrial materialism).
The public would have the choice of determining the gradation of their engagement and, if they wanted, they could go to the end of their frustration or curiosity, first sexual and then extrasensory.
He could rediscover a loving path and thus understand the political relationship between the infinite love that calls us when we cross the limits of our bodies and the conventional love transcribed into the social codes of human cultures.
This progression on one track or the other, on one and then on the next, would constitute the main axis of customer loyalty. The third way was no longer about an involution but about an evolution by the fact that they would have to agree on the message drawn from enlightenment.
They agreed that the first two years would see the predominance of work on the second track. The group was able to estimate that after about five years of operation, all the activity would be about the stage of evolution, the political, economic and social management of the message, but all this was not very clear. Pierre, who had been keen to register these perspectives, promised to be much more explicit next weekend.
The other sub-groups presented their first conclusions.
The development of the company would be done simultaneously by internal growth and diversification. Internal growth would depend on the club proposing second-track activities and pushing them to their ultimate stage.
Laurie and Anke had ideas on this subject!
The development of customers at European level would ensure this growth, given that the group could split up to run activities under this route in several places. Entertainment outside the club would be lighter and would in fact be an appeal product for sessions at the club.
In turn, a couple will be available every weekend to take care of the children and accompany their instructors.
Diversification should be understood to mean all activities relating to the three areas, which would be carried out on a piecemeal basis and without any deepening or retention process.
It would allow a more focused audience to come into contact with a given subject; the potentially most interesting sessions would be related to the third area of activity: parapsychology, extrasensory communication, prayer and the search for the incarnation of the human soul in the divine plot that lives in us… But these subjects would then be dealt with in the form of a conference and in a rather superficial way. It was not said that through these contacts even at the broadest level, a loyalty of some to the club does not take place!
For example, the almost free training of adolescents in sexual life and love would be an avenue for diversification with its own organizational structures. Laurie’s therapies were also an important focus of diversification.
The erotic shows open to the public, which were to be the first appeal product for the club’s activities, would be organized in a similar way in a diversified and filialized structure. On this point Sandra had to look for a club on the side of Frankfurt-Weinheim that would be to buy or rent.
All these diversifications could also develop on the model of networks of exchange of knowledge or barter.
Moreover, the latter formula had the merit of establishing a common currency: grain of salt, talent or other symbolic value. This currency could then also constitute a means of payment between the salaried members of the club to self-consume the goods and services produced by the company. Frantz added that in the medium term, he planned to establish a full currency, free of debts, to expand the exchanges in their movement. Werner, anxious to highlight his experience as a Swiss citizen, pointed out that Swiss entrepreneurs use a full currency, the W.I.R. He proposed to make a presentation later on this means of payment for debt-free exchanges.
All of these projects were scheduled to begin over the weekend and their order of priority was defined. They were on their way to participatory local direct democracy, leaving the systems of power from which they could no longer bear the subjugation they were imposing on them.
This first working meeting had therefore taken place in a constructive manner and without any significant event other than that which had occurred at around 1 a.m.
Fatigue settled in the group and Pierre had asked for a break. He knew that managing breaks is one of the key points of meeting conduct.
In the ensuing informal conversation, many had noted unease about one thing: until now, they had known each other more or less naked. Between them today clothes created untold social obstacles. So they decided to take off their clothes.
Evelyne, for her part, was invited to take her clothes off the last time after she had been on the table. With encouragement and applause, she threw her clothes at each of them, her panties going around the audience. She was then able to return to her position as an interpreter after putting a towel on her chair like the others.
Saturday morning
Waking up in the morning provoked a battle of duvets and a few spanking for the latecomers. It was the first time they had all woken up together in the same large room and they had been able to enjoy the charm of the moment. Eager to continue their work, breakfast was not prolonged.
On the other hand, the question of whether or not to wear clothes rested, especially as it was going to be very hot. Everyone dressed in an unbridled and very fanciful way so that, if necessary, later on, they had the opportunity to easily remove all this!
The palm went to Laurie. She had dressed in a military fatigues jacket that she borrowed from Dan. The jacket came to his buttocks and according to his gait, we could see everything from his anatomy. As she did not button the top of the jacket, the cleavage was more than deep! Finally, she wore a U.S. soldier’s cap that she wore wrong. His clownish, terribly sensual air won everyone’s support. To the applause, she imitated a guard who raised a section of her jacket higher and it made the bravos double.
Patrick, who luckily had a stock of old trellis at home, went to get it. The women took the jackets, the men took the pants. They demanded caps and belts that Patrick was able to bring back.
Laurie reviewed her sisters. She was pleased to see that the way she dressed at home on weekends, which Dan preferred, had been so widely emulated so quickly.
But the psychologist this morning had it right!
A formidable group dynamic was born and by far not ready to stop!
They had started by creating unforgettable moments, moments of life and intense love that they had capitalized, enriched, charged with emotion, and this communion now continued to equalize everything, level, harmonize.
They had the faith and strength of a real commando capable of operating in silence when nothing is said but where everything is done and progresses in confidence as when in the depth of the night, fifty meters from each other, it is at the same minute to leap to the onslaught to discover a few seconds later that everyone is indeed there in the night and accomplishes his mission, observation supported by explosions and crackles of automatic weapons which immediately multiplies your momentum!
Then, with an imperial gesture, Laurie caressed the right cheek of each, with her two hands she lifted their breasts and arranged their cleavage then, after a pat on the naked buttocks to make them better straighten, she gave them a kiss leaning on the mouth.
She then turned to the men she lined up. With a punch, she brought in the bellies of those who were not standing straight. She then began her inspection. With one hand she stroked the man’s chest, with her other hand shook the sex through the pants and also gave them a kiss leaning on the mouth. The few hands that ventured under his jacket were put back in their place.
Peter looked at her dreaming. He imagined the day when this same group would put on another uniform, wear another symbolic sign to testify before others and break this straitjacket that will stifle their evolution until they embark on their inescapable revolution.
But then Laurie will have to behave differently. She could start like that before going up to the fire but after…could she lead the assault? Should she be in combat or was she not in the poet’s seat? Pierre knew that his place was not to lead an assault but to bear witness to the crossing of death. Pierre smiled at Laurie, it was only fun for him. Laurie was not to take this role of leading a commando seriously. This place wasn’t for her…
Every two hours in a subgroup, they would meet in the large conference room to make decisions.
Little by little, they became intertwined and the viability of their business was decaying.
By the end of the afternoon, several points had been made.
Three couples agreed to quickly get involved full-time in the company:
Frantz and Anke, who were the most determined, all remembered that Frantz introduced himself by saying that he and his wife had made a lot of money in an esoteric group.
Patrick and Carine because he knew that his job was going to be cut and that this was an opportunity to retrain and stay in Baden-Baden before opening a second club at the bottom of their Vosges valley,
Dan and Laurie who saw this as a more immediate and comprehensive response to their humanitarian vocation. Laurie understood how much freedom she would have to organize her therapies, stay longer in the Zagreb region and how much free time she would have to follow her loving poet. Dan understood that in the European business of the company, the question of transport would be crucial and from there to buy their own helicopters and do already laying on névés, there was only one step that he could list among the activities of the first track!
Following these positions, Pierre decided to settle the issue of salaries immediately.
A first rough simulation of a forecast budget was made on the basis of the entry price and attendance initially lower then equal to that of the club of Amadeus and Regina.
The assumption was that each member running the club would receive an income equal to that of an executive in the same age bracket. Françoise, Frantz and Werner worked to build a model giving the main management indicators: break-even point, calculation of working capital, calculation of instruments for monitoring the operating cycle: working capital requirement, calculation of cash flow.
Then they discussed the numerous simulations. Carefully, they looked at how best to achieve a self-financing capacity, the debt capacity that would not jeopardize the club’s survival. The issue of capital formation closed this working session. Gérard suggested the idea of using a tontine: customers would pay a sum corresponding to shares and the club would reimburse them in the form of admission fees, various services: catering, overnight stay, erotic services, etc.
Frantz was insistent, he repeated that he and Anke were responsible for the initial capital payment. This sum would be divided into equal shares between the seven couples and after one year of activity, the participation of each couple would be sufficient to repay this advance and ensure that each couple had become the real owner of these shares. It was sort of another way of organizing a tontine reserved for their group of founders. Anke promised to explain how they could have raised the money.
Dan insisted on demonstrating the risks of their enterprise, not so much the risks from competing societies but the risks raised by their approach: to venture beyond good and evil, to teach the youth an additional degree of freedom in the expression of his vitality and his loves, to work on suffering, death with new spiritual approaches meant to ignore the political, economic and social dogmas of their society.
They would be a minority that might find themselves in a struggle with other minorities more fanatical than their own.
Developing the spiritual dimension and completing the reconciliation of the domains of the human being brought about the contradiction in the industrial society and its law of exclusive profit and money-king. This, too, broke the fundamentalist religious dogmas.
Daring to speak in order to be silenced immediately was not appropriate. They could be denounced, maligned, and imprisoned – especially if their success disturbed established interests. They would have to check that their company is not infiltrated by spies or unwanted elements.
Dan was a professional in violence management, and he put his skills as a US Army officer into play to decide which group he wanted to quickly put in place a training program in close combat, intelligence and covert operations, shooting, and weapons handling.
He explained to Anke that the “obstacle clearance” part could be incorporated into the activities of the first lane because practicing recall, climbing the jumarts, ziplining, climbing were part of the high mountain sports program.
Anke enjoyed Dan’s attention. Frantz and Anke were singularly supportive of Dan’s initiative. They suddenly gave the impression of fearing something and in a hurry of questions, Frantz suggested the threat of a racket on German territory by neo-Nazi groups and the mafia of the countries of the East and the Balkans. He promised them that in the evening he would clarify his thinking on this point!
Dan didn’t want to stop without talking about the helicopters.
He indicated that it would be good for some members to pass their passenger aircraft pilot certificate and the helicopter pilot certificate.
Dan was recently in close contact with a group of helicopter collectors. Based in an aero-club near Aachen, these collectors include former pilots of the German, Belgian and Dutch armies as well as a few German, Dutch or American military or asset pilots. They had managed to buy six Bell 205 UH-1D helicopters, colloquially called Huey, from the US military at a friendly price and maintained them with minimal weaponry for air show presentations, for film purposes or for their own enjoyment.
They were decommissioned by the US Army but because of their wide use during the Vietnam War and then throughout the world, these models retained a significant esteem in the helicopter enthusiast community.
Their maintenance was facilitated by the fact that they were the most common type of helicopter gunship. The ideal for Dan was to establish an association with these collectors. The members of the group of 14 who would be driving these Hueys would benefit from savings because Dan would serve as a free instructor and this would make the investment of the collectors group a little more profitable.
Most couples, for the time being, did not see a fundamental need to equip themselves with six combat helicopters, even on a part-time basis. However, unanimously, it was decided that each couple would immediately equip themselves with modern means of communication: fax, encrypted messaging on a microcomputer and connection to the Internet, electronic listening detection device to secure their home, etc…
Pierre was remarked once again saying that we should not leave out the use of the Hueys, they will need them in a while… This was part of the poet’s vision on the development of their movement.
They decided to reserve the rest of the Saturday day for the definition of the club and nightclub programs in Frankfurt-Weinheim
because that was where the future was going to play out in the first six months.
Francoise and Frantz, at about 4 p.m., distributed the first three-year forecast operating account and a first balance sheet.
Frantz once again solemnly promised them to explain themselves during the evening. He had booked a table at the Europaïscher Hof and then invited them to finish the evening at the Casino. Anke insisted too. As a consummate banker, Frantz explained that later, some might buy back shares in the company, or the capital increases would rebalance the capital structure among themselves according to how much investment each couple wanted.
For the time being, this capital injection in no way altered the law of the unanimous decision to which their couple was subject. This boost definitely launched the company. It was 5 p.m. They went out into town.
Now they tasted a few minutes of calm and relaxation, lying on the lawn of the park.
The women relaunched the conversation in an informal context and a horizontal, spontaneous communication.
They were unanimous in summarizing their project: it was better than at Amadeus!
But now it was better, could they say the same tomorrow, in the next few weeks? What to do with the children?
Barbara asked them if this weekend where everyone could play with their dream, putting it on paper through projected budgets, rules of procedure, was not actually their last weekend?
Would they take action and for what reasons?
Laurie answered him to ask them if they had ever thought of living naked with their children, to tell them about these moments of sharing that were the purpose of their business?
Pragmatist Carine suggested that on Sunday morning, children aged fourteen and over should accompany their parents to the Friedrichsbad for a Roman-Irish bath. Living naked in the beautiful setting of these thermal baths was an opportunity not to be missed. The group agreed to this proposal. For the rest, were the children not able to understand that their parents would go to work in a new society, a company where they would train people to live better, to be less sick, depressive, alone, subjected to fear generated by the uncontrolled environment, to mobbing, victims of the ill-treatment of their children or their parents, rejected in misery?
Barbara could explain to her family that she was going to do as Laurie did, go and treat the victims of the wars, the women who were raped, the children who witnessed the murder of their parents, those who spent the night on the cold bodies of their families.
Laurie spoke in German to question Anke, the athlete. Wasn’t every movement the result of a contraction and elongation, an impulse and a relaxation? Didn’t everything come from the meeting of two antagonisms? Laurie proposed a theory to her friend: before thinking about one problem, she had to look for another, if possible the opposite of the first. The problem wasn’t just whether they were going to take action, there had to be another problem opposite to this one, perhaps in a different dimension, and they had to find it to get them to react together. Was not the problem also this: why not see each other again, separate, why endure this fear of failure, let yourself be won by fear? Did they no longer want to earn their living?
Laurie made them think. They were going to work in the market segment for people who have already understood what jail time represents, what injustice there is between those who still have to work and pay and those who keep getting richer.
This segment of the population corresponded to their ages or even to older people who, after twenty to thirty years of work, knew that they had only earned money that was quickly spent and that a period of precariousness was before them. Were their firms to keep them on, keep increasing their wages, or push them toward accepting unwanted part-time work, reducing their wages or even leaving the firm, and being forced to work as “freelancers” on their own account?
The club would bring together an audience eager to embrace a new political, economic and social logic characterized by the pursuit of personal enrichment and the establishment of a new balance of life. The political, economic and social legitimacy of their movement lay in the advent of a new economy, the quaternary economy organized around networks of mutual aid and an increasing investment in the community sector, a greater commitment to the life of the city. This new economy is essential at a time when productivity in the service sector is destroying jobs, especially intermediate jobs, when the phenomenon of jobs being dumped from one sector to another is no longer working in the market economy, when new production lines are creating few jobs in the market economy, because these new jobs are already using the most productive means and are reserved for high-tech and very well-paid qualifications.
Yes, they grew to the point that their company presented a credible alternative to our Western societies. Pierre and Gérard led this discussion with real passion.
Pierre intervened as soon as he could to repeat his legal position. The change of political regime they were putting in place is simple and clear: leaving the systems of power to rebuild our networks of Life in the framework of a participative local direct democracy, without state and without centralized power with systems of representative democracy, electoral systems, taxes, ruling elites…
This vision of another civilization that is far more humanistic is possible only with the use of our two sources of knowledge and first with the use of our own spiritual initiatory source.
Gerard remained too much of a teacher in his academic remarks. He did not yet have the vision of the poet.
Sepp intervened. The engineer wanted to show that he knew how to challenge himself.
For a while, during his studies, he had fallen into line with the dominant and optimistic ideology that the domination of the world brings to humans both happiness and freedom, that thanks to the new powers of science, men will be freed from all obscurantism: religion, superstitions, ignorance, prejudice. Sepp to tease Peter, added to this list of obscurantism, poetry.
Françoise and Laurie immediately intervened to ask Pierre not to reply and to invite Sepp to continue his remarks. The engineer confessed that he did not believe that by understanding and mastering nature, humans will be able to use it for their own benefit. He distinguished this scientific utopia from reality. The capitalist industrial society is based on many contradictions. The engineer left it to the professor of economics to develop the contradiction that rests on the primacy accorded to capital in the combination of factors of production, the primacy of capital which devours jobs and constantly causes new social miseries.
Peter approved, and he specified the existential choice: labor precedes capital, not the reverse, which exists in a liberal capitalist economic system. These are two opposing views on the place of the human being in a society. Their movement will put labor before capital!
For Sepp, in capitalist societies, this project of mastering the world through science becomes society’s own end.
Technologies develop among themselves without any other social need. Do we need multimedia mobile phones to see the face of the person who comes to tell you that he will be a few minutes late? Does this message need to use radio waves passing through a satellite?
Sepp could not bring himself to monitor the trajectories of satellites used mostly only to satisfy the need for chatter between people except the need of the secret services to spy on all these conversations to find out what the opponents of the political powers are up to.
Yes, this weekend their group was doing something quite different. Each couple had moved, spent time and money to meet, love each other, make plans, build a more fraternal and egalitarian common future.
Laurie smiled at the space engineer. She made him confess that he adopted Heidegger’s thesis in his remarks. Sepp was a techno science with uncontrollable industrial goals. The engineer quite rightly recognized that all this energy, this formidable power of industrial society no longer corresponds to any social purpose.
The economic rationale for the mad race was to achieve new economies of scale in order to offer the public at the most affordable price new products and services packed with technology.
For Laurie, this technological gavage involved the creation of a dependency similar to that created by drugs, alcohol, the automobile, television, etc. With the most visible outcome here, the upsurge in illiteracy is a sign that reliance on image and sound is already producing its misdeeds.
Sepp concludes that today no one thinks that freedom and happiness are at the end of this capitalist industrial process. Dan added that in politics, the evolution of this severely defined process is reflected in the reign of cynicism. The primary objective is the conquest of power for power.
The poet, looking for the last word, will suggest that it was time to abolish the current form of power regulating our societies. It was time to change civilization and abandon systems of power. No one added a word. Everyone knew what he was getting into.