The first article for Kultur 6 was interesting, but also anticipated. It did not seem that the contents of the magazine were that radical, although I am not what the extent of the front-page nudity was. In America the media has a huge influence on political results and the development of a negative news story can spell death for a politician. In the office door article I was somewhat unsure what the significance was. Is it that the people never get up from behind their desk to greet you? The garbage gods article was somewhat intriguing. I am curious what the reason is for it. I assume that it is just saving a relatively small amount of public funds or that it could be a general attempt to set a precedent for citizen responsibility. The student housing situation in Germany was problematic. I was very surprised that rarely anyone lives in student dorms and I would like to see how that number compares to other Western European countries. The relatively subtle location of the universities was not that surprising considering the substantial difference in money, both in input and output, between German and American universities; I also think this has something to do with German cities being old, while places like Ann Arbor developed with the university.

For AMD 6 I read “Cornerstones of Socialism” by Karl Marx where he mocks specific attempts to justify Socialism. One of his first complaints is the attempt of the socialist writer to portray Socialism as natural, and man is the only exception; Marx contends that rather nature is actually a capitalist competition. He criticizes the claim the claim that there is no dichotomy between life and happiness; he exposes the circular logic of the author and laments that it is referred to as development in Germany. The author he is criticizing has attempted to portray society as the totality of existence and the person as individual existence, while saying that these contradict each other. He compares society to nature and humans to the things in nature. Marx mocks this as saying that animals do not make demands of equality on nature, but on the contrary, are not allowed to make any demands at all. Furthermore, totality of existence is merely the sum of the individual existences, and the former is maximized by simply maximizing the latter.