Summary: Thoughts in a Digital World: Free, but no Longer Secret

Peter Seele and Lucas Zapf
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Peter Seele: Università della Svizzera italiana
Lucas Zapf: University of Basel

Chapter 5 in Behind the Cloud, 2022, pp 169-174 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract ‘Thoughts are free’ (Die Gedanken sind frei)—this lyrical manifestation of inner autonomy first spread in the eighteenth century as a poem, later as a song. The message: despite autocratic systemic constraints, state persecution and repression, there is at least the inner life, the thoughts that no one can control—‘I think what I want […] but everything in the still’ […] and ‘as is fitting!’ What clearly emerges is the need to control one’s own desires and wants, self-determined and without outside influence. But it is also clear that all this must remain within. Thoughts are free, who can guess them, they flee by like nocturnal shadows. No man can know them, no hunter can shoot them, it stays that way: thoughts are free. I think what I want, and what makes me happy, but everything in the still, …and as considered appropriate. My wish and desire no one can deny, it stays that way: thoughts are free. “Die Gedanken sind Frei”, first and second stanza. Folk song from the eighteenth/nineteenth century, quoted in Breuer 1920, p. 118.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-64502-4_5

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