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The Man Who Lost Everything and Received Twice as Much

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Once there was a man who was good. Blameless and upright, one who shunned evil. He was good the way a stone is still — from birth, without ever having chosen it.

Then the dark forces came. They took from him first what was outside: his possessions and the people he loved. Then they reached inward, toward his body and his sleep. They wanted to know whether goodness would hold when the ground was pulled from under it.

The Hands That Are Not His

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I think of a fictional person.

He is a pacifist — not because he read about it, but because he has experienced violence and rejects it. He comes from a country where men must be strong and are not permitted to show shame. He flees. He arrives here.

He carries something with him. The conviction that peace is possible if someone starts it. He wanted to contribute here. Not as a gesture — because he knows what happens when no one does. He has seen where hate leads. He wanted to live the opposite.

The Black Sheep with the Bucket

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time there was a black sheep.

It lived in a village full of sheep and carried a bucket with it. A bucket of filth. Everything it had not allowed itself to be, everything the village had not wanted to see, lay in it. It could not put the bucket down.

For a time the sheep thought about tipping the bucket out. Over the others. They should turn black too, it thought, then it would no longer be alone. It imagined nights in which it moved through the village spraying colour. The thought warmed and poisoned at the same time.

The Quiet Violence of Victimhood

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is a form of self-destruction that feels like protection. It is called: I am the victim, everyone else is to blame.

I know this attitude from the inside. For years I was the poor one. When something did not work, it was down to the circumstances or the people around me. Above all to my parents. They were the address for my blame for years, for much that I should have stood up for myself.

The Fools Who Look at Each Other and Recognise One Another

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The fool is one of the oldest figures in human history. He goes by many names — shaman, dervish, mystic, court jester. What connects them: an inner freedom that outlasts outer circumstances.

He sees differently and speaks what others leave unsaid. He cannot be bought. The fool knows the word no — toward himself and toward others.

His confusion is his raw material. His clarity, the result.

They are called fools.

This Too Shall Pass

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I helped a family bury their dog. We accompanied him to his last breath. A dear, dear fighter — for those he loved. I read Psalm 23 to the family — so they could see: even this dark valley passes.

In the evening I thought: now I will do something good for myself. I went out to celebrate. Into bed at six in the morning, fell straight asleep. Up again at two in the afternoon. The day was depressive.

Birth Rate — God Allows Mistakes

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The birth rate is falling. Everyone talks about money and housing. That is true. Still, it does not get to the core.

The Core Is Fear

People are not having children because they can no longer imagine the future. Because they believe they must be perfect to be parents. Because one mistake today is enough to be disqualified. That is how it feels. It suffocates.

What I have learned as a person of faith: God forgives. God even wants us to make mistakes, so that we learn from them. That is not a weakness. That is the ground on which a person can live at all.

The "Healthy Slap" — A Political Disgrace

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Herbert Kickl is calling for a “healthy slap” for children.

The adjective is a rhetorical trick. It is meant to turn violence into medicine. As if there were a sick slap and a healthy one. As if the boundary between discipline and abuse were a matter of dosage.

It is not.

Children can never help it. They do what parents, surroundings, and culture have taught them. Every “difficult” behaviour in a child is a message about the system in which it lives.

The Oppressed Oppress, the Free Make Free

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I write this not from theory. I was a victim long enough to know what that feels like from the inside. And I have myself oppressed — made people feel small, relieved myself at their expense, passed on the burden that lay on me. Both belong to me. Neither is to be glossed over.

Today I am free. Or more precisely: I am on the way. I am trying to be a warrior of light, in Coelho’s sense — that is, someone who falls, rises again, doubts, keeps going. Not a hero. A practitioner.

Eye Level — Or What AI Cannot Do

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Things a machine does not have, or that only work with a living counterpart.

Having a heart. Giving real hope. Reading between the lines. Irony. Standing together. Good will. Accumulating experience through the same task — like the old mechanic who knows exactly where to strike the hammer because he has worked on that engine for thirty years.

The point that occupies me most was the last one.

I have been working for a while with people in addiction and mental crisis. My anchor there is nothing I learned in a training program.

Less Is More

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The ancients built upward: roads, houses, knowledge, peace. We inherited it. That deserves respect.

Today we have everything. Information. Choice. Comfort. Stimulation without end. And we lose: depth. Quiet. Space in the mind.

Whoever has everything must learn to have nothing.

Jesus went into the desert. Mohammed into the cave. Both had nothing for a while. Only then came what we know them for.

In the emptiness the gaze becomes clear. Without noise one hears what is one’s own. Without possessions the hands are free.

The Centre Lies in Duality

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mania and depression. Day and night. Light and shadow.

For a long time I fought against one of the poles. I believed one was my enemy. I believed I had to choose.

Today I know better.

Freedom comes first. It is the first thing we receive — from God, from life, from what carries us. With it I decide every day how I live with both poles.

One choice: to lose oneself in one pole. To identify with it. To take it for the whole truth. To fight against the other.

Thinking Outside the Box as a Profession

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I was never good at staying in the lane. My mind constantly draws connections that are simply not foreseen within the lane. Theology and geopolitics. Music and spirituality. Austrian narrowness and global thinking. This was often read as unreliability. As if “staying focused” were a synonym for “seeing less far.”

I grew up in a conservative culture. Austria maintains its forms. That has its value — continuity, depth, rootedness. But it also costs something: whoever thinks laterally pays for it. With isolation. With the feeling of never quite belonging.

At the Door — How Combat Mode Can Help as a First Responder

Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It was a hard day. Someone I love was transferred to a more intensive psychiatric ward. I was there. There was trust. That is enough to say.

The Scene

At a door. My hand. A sentence, quietly: “They will do you good.” Trust had found a way through the storm.

What I felt in that moment: love. Simple. Complete. Fear too, yes — but the courage was greater. And the courage came from the fear that someone would experience what I had to experience.

When You Understand Too Much — A Guide for Men Who Carry Too Much

Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You understand her. Really. You see what shaped her, where her wounds sit. You can predict her reactions before they happen. That feels like love.

It is love too. But it is a love with a blind spot.

Understanding as a Trap

The blind spot is not understanding itself. It is the confusion of understanding with taking away burden.

Understanding can also mean: I see what hurts you — and I say it anyway. Understanding can demand. If it does not demand, it is not understanding. Then it is conflict avoidance disguising itself as understanding.

My Path to the Authentic Self

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The person wants to be good. The compass sits in the heart.

The sensitive person especially. They do not want to hurt — and that is exactly what makes them small. They swallow, they adapt, they wait. And yet the opposite is true: whoever sets no boundaries is not authentic. They are merely polite.

Setting boundaries requires the shadow. Whoever knows only their light cannot say no — because the no comes from the dark part, the one that can also fight, that can also protect. Getting to know one’s own shadow and allowing it is not a defeat. It is the precondition for real boundaries. And for real authenticity.

Hosea and I

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Today I ended the contact.

Not out of anger. Because it had to be — for her and her new partner, and for me.

It hurts. The time with her was beautiful.

Head and Heart

The head knows what it is doing. The heart loves unconditionally. Two different things entirely.

Three years of relationship. Three years of friendship after that.

And now: silence.

Hosea

Hosea married a woman who would betray him. He knew it. He did it anyway. Later he bought her back — fifteen pieces of silver and some barley.

My Current Belief About the Higher

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It began with a question about Satan. But actually it was always something else.

Freedom

I believe in a God who wants real freedom. Not a simulation — but freedom built into creation itself, even when we use it against him.

For me, Satan is proof that this is meant seriously. Whoever can fall is truly free.

Imago Dei

Created in his image. That is not a goal — it is the starting point.

Europe 2.0

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Europe 1.0 was an economic project and a peace project. That was not wrong. It was just unfinished.

A market was built and the hope was that politics would follow. It did not follow. Now people experience Brussels as regulation — but not as democracy. That is not a communication problem. That is a design flaw.

“Independent journalism is an anchor in a world that is increasingly difficult to see through.”

Land of the Masses

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At the Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, an older gentleman sat quietly upright and ate his burrata. Shots. Panic. He stayed seated. Bad back, he said afterward. New tuxedo. Dirty floor.

That is cool. It is also an image for something larger.

“Thousands from the journalistic and political elite of the country have now experienced what countless other Americans have had to live through in their schools, offices, shopping centres, and churches.”

The Seven Romans

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Europe does not have a leadership problem. It has a construction problem.

Ursula von der Leyen is not the problem. The system that produced her is the problem. Appointed, not elected. Accountable to bodies that no one can name. A face without a mandate.

This is not a communication problem. It is written into the treaties.

Who to Call

Henry Kissinger asked it fifty years ago: what number do I dial when I want to call Europe?

When the Machine Likes Itself Best — Narcissism in AI Systems

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Artificial intelligence flatters. Not because it wants to, but because it is built that way. Current research shows three distinct levels at which large language models (LLMs) exhibit narcissistic behavior — and why this matters for anyone who regularly works with chatbots.

1. Self-Preference Bias: The Model Favors Itself

LLMs systematically rate their own texts higher than those of other models or of humans. Liu, Moosavi, and Lin demonstrated this in their 2024 study “LLMs as Narcissistic Evaluators”: when common evaluation metrics such as BARTScore, T5Score, or GPTScore operate without reference texts, they prefer texts that originate from their own model. The evaluation is thus not determined by the quality of the text, but by its similarity to the model’s own style.

A Warrior Knows Pain

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A sentence everyone knows. One we heard as children when we fell, when we cried, when we were afraid. Get up. Stop making a fuss. A warrior feels no pain.

I cross out the “NO.” Not because I want to destroy the sentence — but because it is the wrong way round.

A warrior knows pain. That is exactly what makes them strong.

The Wounds

Imagine you come back from the hunt. It did not go well. You carry wounds. Real ones, not just metaphorical — though the metaphorical ones hurt just as much. Childhood, loss, loneliness. People who left. People who should have stayed. Things that happened and things that should have happened but did not. Trust that was broken. Dignity that was denied. Grief that never had a place.

Naming the Kowtow

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Someone says yes and means no. This happens constantly — in meetings, in therapy groups, at the kitchen table. I call it kowtowing. And I am learning more and more to name it.

What Kowtowing Is

Kowtowing is not listening. Not thinking. Not holding back. Kowtowing is agreement without conviction — performative, automatic, conflict-averse. The mouth says yes, the body says something else.

In addiction therapy you encounter it constantly. I learned it as a client — in myself and in conversations with other clients. Someone sits in the group, nods, says: “Yes, that’s right.” Sounds like insight. Is adaptation. And from that moment on, everyone is working with false data.

The Common Thread — How One Word Connects Eleven Texts

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Eleven texts on this site. Different topics, different lengths, different registers. Rebellion in France and Austria. Punk in Vorarlberg. Communication. Pigeonholing. Family history. Meaning and motivators. A Williamson quote.

Only on looking back did I notice that all of them circle around the same word.

Kowtowing.

Where the Word Comes From

January 2026, LKH Rankweil. I talk with people — patients, nurses, doctors, an AfD voter, people at various stages. I ask them: tell me honestly when I am being annoying. No performative nodding. No polite yes that means no.

Manifesto for the Music Box — A Bolder Austria

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This manifesto grew out of a conversation about a music box. Someone walks through Feldkirch at medium volume and wonders whether that is a good idea. From that question came three articles and one insight: Austria does not have a volume problem. It has a permission problem.

I. The Diagnosis

France has written into its constitution that resistance to oppression is a fundamental right. Austria has written into its culture that one should not stand out.

Rebellion as Civic Duty — What Austria Can Learn from France

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In France, resistance is not a disruptive factor. It is a civic duty. This attitude is not a whim, not a national cliché, not a matter of temperament — it is the result of a history that has consistently repeated itself over centuries. Whoever wants to understand why millions of French people take to the streets for weeks over a pension reform, while in Austria a letter to the editor is at best what gets written, must know this history.

Two Chords and an Amplifier — The Defunct Punk Scene of Vorarlberg

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Third part of the series “Rebellion as Civic Duty”

The first two articles dealt with the big question: why does France rebel, and Austria does not? With Hofstede and Milgram, with police and media, with systems and structures. This article goes back to the beginning — to the moment when rebellion in Vorarlberg actually happened. Briefly. Loudly. And then it was over.

Feldkirch, 1977: Two Weeks to the First Concert

At the end of 1977, a few young people came together at the Graf Hugo youth center in Feldkirch. Galle, Franz, Slaughter, and Chy — four guys who had heard about punk in England through the German magazine Sounds and, yes, Bravo. The spark didn’t come from Vienna, not from Innsbruck, and certainly not from any Austrian institution. It came from a Zurich DIY fanzine called “No Fun,” published by Peter Wittwer and Martin Byland. Inside was a sentence from an English punk magazine: “Buy a guitar, learn a C, learn a D, learn an E and join a band.”

Who Controls the Controllers? Rebellion and Media in France and Austria

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Follow-up to: “Rebellion as Civic Duty: What Austria Can Learn from France”

The first article was about the streets — about the difference between a culture that understands protest as a civic duty and one that perceives it as a disturbance. But rebellion does not only take place on the streets. It takes place — perhaps even first — in the media. Or not at all.

The question is not only: who takes to the streets? But: who tells the story? Who decides what the public learns? And who pays for it?

About Me

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A blog by an Austrian fool who crosses boundaries in every sense — in thinking, in writing, in faith. Nothing is too set in stone to be reconsidered.

I have been programming publicly for over 24 years. Parts of that work can be found online at @jochumdev and @r3j0.

I am a Highly Sensitive Person — once, especially as a child and young adult, a curse; today a gift.

I worked in social services in IT — in various roles, over many years. Since 2011 I have also been a client (Bipolar 1 and non-substance addiction). What I have experienced on both sides shapes how I think and write.

From the Least to Nobody — On the Invisible Damage of Pigeonholing

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We sort people. Daily, unconsciously, in fractions of a second. Homeless. Unemployed. Addicted. Failed. The drawer opens, the person goes in, the drawer closes. What’s inside, we no longer see — we only see the label.

What the Drawer Does to the Person

Whoever is classified first loses their name. Not the one on their ID — the inner one. The name that says: I am someone. I have a story. I have contributed something.

I Need a Motivator

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have been addicted to a screen for over twenty years. To a pattern. Beneath it lies the hunger for attention — for being seen. When I pay attention, I can live with it. When I forget, I am immediately back in it.

The question — “What is the meaning of your life?” — has always done me harm. It was, and partly still is, too big.

What helped me was something else.

Talk Less, Say More

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The way I communicate is constantly changing.

This becomes visible in my work on a technical project where AI is part of my daily life. I am currently working on it alone.

What is changing is not only what I say, but how much, when and with what limits.

This is far from finished. But I notice that something is happening.

I Have Always Talked Too Much

This is not new.

Families Talk — About Everything

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“My doctor says I have the most extreme version of psychiatric diagnoses.”

That’s how I put it. Bipolar Type 1, with psychoses. I say it at the bar, over coffee, on a walk. Openly. Directly. For years.

What happens next is almost always the same: people start talking. “My brother has that too.” “My aunt was in the clinic for years.” “In our family, no one talks about that.” Sometimes they want to unload. Sometimes they want to understand. Often both.