We all want to determine our own lives. Our dignity and happiness depend on it. What exactly does that mean? Our thoughts, feelings and actions are based on the circumstances of our life stories. What does it mean to be able to change our lives instead of just letting life happen to us? What role does self-awareness play in all this? When do others help the process of self-determination and when do they become obstacles? How are self-determination and cultural identity connected? And what role can literature play in all this? Bieris contemplations in this book are a sequel to his observations in “Handwerk der Freiheit” (2001).

Someone who neither consumes nor produces is redundant - according to the cutthroat logics of late capitalism. International elites claim that overpopulation is our greatest problem. If the population needs to be reduced, who will have to disappear asks Trojanow in his humanist essay that argues against the redundancy of humankind. In his forceful analysis he covers points such as devastation caused by climate change, ruthless neo-liberal politics on the labor market and the apocalypses presented in mass media that we, the seeming winners, fervently consume. One thing we have failed to realize is that these issues also concern us. They concern everyone and everything.

Theweleit describes the laughter of killers using a selection of case studies, including German soldiers in British prisoner of war camps during WWII, who are said to have told each other about the atrocities they had committed with considerable mirth. The laughter masks another aspect of killing for pleasure however; the cold rationality with which murderers speak when they justify their acts in public. Anders Breivik’s defence in court starts to sound like a statistical analysis of Norwegian immigration figures, for instance. Theweleit’s essay reveals the language of justification as a foil for sadism, because, according to the author’s provocative argument, anything can be ‘justified’; we should avoid believing a word of it.