I wouldn’t believe it, but it was true. I was standing in front of a trash can at the airport with one handful of pennies, ready and willing to just throw them away. In the nick of time I realized what I was about to do and that this at least didn’t suit my serious education. I have always learned that you can’t just carelessly throw away things other people might desperately need. So you can’t throw away money, the exchange value for almost everything people need in this world.
Why was I about to do that? Every time I open my purse to pay in a coffee shop or a store I have to grapple with all the small change. At first glimpse I see the colour of copper all over my purse. In this moment the first awkward feeling arises. I want to get rid of that change making my purse feel like a brick stone in my bag. Hence I try to pay the accurate amount on the check to at least dispose of some of the coins. That takes time, grabbing the pennies, counting them, meanwhile trying to hold together all my other stuff. After some trials the line behind me starts to rebel against me. They want to move on. In most of the cases that is the moment when I start to get hectic and abandon my plans. In the end there are not less but even more pennies in my purse.
Frankly speaking: this small money bothers me. And the more: It is almost worthless. What can you buy for a penny? No wonder that in almost every store and coffee shop you will find a cup or a basket the customers immediately throw their pennies in. This small money has no compassion for me as a customer. It just takes too much time and effort to pay with pennies today. So why should I feel compassion for these coins and not just toss them into the trash can? Possibly because we should have pity on the penny that was outrun by growth and inflation over the years. In a globalized economy running on big scale the penny is just too small to make a difference. But with the smaller ones we should always be compassionate.
Coins + emotion + music = Beethoven, the rage over the lost groschen. (@Kata)
(http://www.noten-klavier.de/noten/wut-ueber-den-verlorenen-groschen.htm)
@ Walter: Nice subject, money and music…
Want another one?
Brecht/Weill: Dreigroschenoper Beggar’s opera)
Hey, that would make a nice subject for a charity concert… hand your money over, folks, or we keep singing about it… ;-)
@Walter:
But Schrödinger’s cat is more the kind I was talking about… ;o) Something, whose existence is sure and unsure at the same time, whose position is indeterminate, whose composition doesn’t comply with our imagination of composition at all… It’s absolutely out of our imagination, but it’s probably what we’re all made of in our microcosmic formation.
By the way: Look, how beautiful a diagram of an atomic orbital wavefunction is. It’s one of my favourite pictures ever… It’d be in my office, if I had one. ;o)
I believe in function-based aesthetics by the way. I think, much more, than we are aware of is brought about math. I don’t believe there is a real independent aesthetical cognition by humans. What just happens is the encircling of wishes and ideals by the media.
I got the talking a bit… Sorry.
…”TO talking”…
The beauty of nature.
Beethoven- one Groschen
Brecht/ Weill- three Groschen
= inflation?
@Cate, looks really nice. Could be also a modern illumination concept from a new and stylisch lounge-bar
‘I believe in function-based aesthetics by the way. I think, much more, than we are aware of is brought about math. I don’t believe there is a real independent aesthetical cognition by humans. What just happens is the encircling of wishes and ideals by the media.’
- Like Goethe?
@Walter: No, it’s not a question of perspective. It fact humans do have their own picture of what they see, as their eyes provide a unique view, but the way they feel about it is based on math. That’s my opinion. I don’t think, Goethe thought like that. He was still, after all, just a visionary. Even if he really took part on some scientific research or promted it.
Perhaps there is no great difference. The comparison with J.W. Goethe ist not so far, for he is as ‘a visionary’ the prototype of the ‘modern man’. he was influenced by I. Kant and the ideas of observation as subjective on objectives. And he tried to find analogies and laws (of form) between man and nature. These are mathematics?
He disagreed with Kant. And with Newton.
Laws of form, right. But I was talking about laws of cognition of form. That’s quite a difference.
I know the coins systems of two countries very well. New Zealand has 5 types of coints, Germany 8! types. Two years ago NZ abolished all small Cent-coins (as all peope were bothered with these) and even made all other coints smaller. The cash desks at shops either round up or round up the figures. The smallest coin now is the 10-Cent-Coin. You may not believe it but the whole country is happy now! Paying in this wonderful country is very convenient and fast. The weight of my purse in NZ is always quite light.
…. being back in Germany I have to be used again to the slow proceeding behind cash desks and the purse gets thicker and thicker…
The small “Penny”-coints even influence the econmy of a country and the leisure time of people. Think of the more time you have for yourself when you can leave a shop earlier (saving some time each visit!) and think of the potential of an increasing effectiveness for the shopping industry…
Isn’t it worth the thought to send a petition to the European Union for the aboliton of the “Penny”-coints in the Euro-Countries ?