Editorial

Far worse than murdering things is repairing them. It is pure cynicism to repair things no longer work. Repair is the extension of imperfect being. outstanding among the repertoire of fundamental motives for repairing things is a fainttheartedness, an inability to part with broken things, the lack courage required to overcome insufficiences - soul doctors, bunglers and botchers, the boring legions of idiots who have allowed themselves to get caught up in the do-it-yourself campains; no income earners who comb the suburban DIY-stores in their search for no.name tools - the kind of people, that is, who, instead of doing a job rihgt and investing real capital, waste their free time and welfare payments supporting the turnover of huge chain stores. Repair represents the rediscovery of drudgery - it is a barrier to the success represented by the fact that everything is already easier, more automatic, more intelligent and better-designed. It stands in the way of the liberating joy felt when throwing things away , stands in the way of the self-satisfaction felt at being on the top rung of the consumer society, the very summit of which is to voruntarily  do without things which can still be used; it inhibits the emancipation from the burden of all these things, from the materialism of the world. Those who do not want change are those who repüair. And to create the appearance that some good has been done, this procedure is srrounded with the language of virtue: the environment and the cities are salvaged, which, of course, has the ring of salvation. And as this is not an extremist, not a radical, not an innovative magazine which gets to the roots of a problem, because the very notion of social democratic reforms almost threatens to bring our hearts to a standstill, we have dedicated this edition to the theme of the preservation of things of value: value-conservatism.

Jörg Petruschat