Luck, Karma and Happiness

In the first scene of Woody Allen´s latest movie "Match Point" you see a tennis ball on his way over the net, hanging on the net´s edge - on which side of the court will it fall down? The question of luck or unluck can decide a whole match as every tennis player knows. And so it is in every aspect of life. Is it true that sheer luck is more important than talent for success?

Chris, Allen´s hero in this movie, is obviously lucky, starting as a middle-class tennis-trainer he becomes the beloved son-in-law of a high-society family, a business-man in daddy-in-law´s company, owning a penthouse at the Themse with a view on Big Ben, involved in all of the high-society-activities and cultural events. But he is not happy. The new society he got into is a boring and empty bunch of people. Happiness and fulfillment comes only in his sexual relationship with the unsuccessful actress Nola (Scarlett Johansson).
But this contradiction in his life can not last, and when the point of decision comes, Chris is unable to fight for happiness against his new standard. Even with commiting a murder he is lucky. And even without the psychological grief of Dostojewski´s hero Raskolnikov, Chris is not getting happy.

Is happiness the most important thing in life? Then, what is happiness? What is more important: to feel absolute happy in a single moment or to be happy through the continuation of your whole life? Has it to do with doing the right thing, according to your values and ideals or is it an ecstatic experience of joy and love? Is happiness something that we achieve as a fruit of our deeds?

In the end of the movie "Family - Ties of Blood" we see Amitabh Bachchan as the broken gangster-boss, covered over and over with the blood of the people he killed, getting slightly insane - and then a sentence:
"Your karma is your destiny."

You reap what you have sown. It is your karma that decides your future. Also if you do not believe in reincarnation, you can understand "Karma" as "Action". And obviousley your acts in the past have influenced your present situation, and so your present deeds will influence your future.

Getting back to Allen´s movie, we see a hero who is seemingly not getting punished for his deeds, who is not losing the high standard of living he gained by luck. But he gets caught in a golden cage.
And the question remains: what is happiness? and what is a "good life"?

Here comes the sun ..

According to Hermann Scheer, expert for renewable energies and winner of the alternative nobel prize in 1999, the sun gives us more than 2800 times of the energy we need currently on the earth every day.

Masters of Energy

Without energy there is no motion and the masters of energy rule the world. Wars are fought for oil (yes, sure, all the American soldiers in the Arab region just want to build up democracy there..) and as prices rise voices are asking for alternatives. Surely the best alternative would be some kind of clean energy as the renewables from the sun, wind or water. Oil and natural gas are not only dirty in the way they cause polution of the environment, but they are also limited and therefore cause conflicts, too.

For Europe, natural gas from Russia is still the most important alternative to oil. And it was Gerhard Schröder´s last big deal as chancellor to make a contract with his friend Wladimir Putin about a pipeline through the Baltic Sea that should bring the Russian Gas to Germany in 2010. East European countries like Poland are not very amused about this plan, because they fear for their own energy industry. Schröder himself is lucky: the unemployed ex-politician now got a leading position as a manager for the Russian gas-tycoon Gazprom. Gazprom belongs to more than 50% to the Russian state and controls more than 60% of the Russian gas-resources. A big concurrence was destroyed with the oil-company Yukos whose former chief Chodorkovsky is now in prison.

Putin, the king of natural gas, is now able to use Russia´s energy ressources as a political instrument. White Russia for example, Europe´s last dictatorship and still a loyal servant to Moscow, gets the gas dirt-cheap (less than one fourth of the world market price). On the other side there is the Ukraine that since the "Orange Revolution" wants to be more independent from Russia and a member of the EU. Gazprom now raised the price for the Ukraine to the level of the world market.
This dispute between Russia and Ukraine made the Western Europeans aware of their own dependence. And the old supporters of the nuclear industry, as the bavarian conservatives in Germany for example including the new minister for economy, now see a chance to demand a new chapter of nuclear energy in Germany again. Certainly, they have not learned from Hiroshima and Tschernobyl!

The only solution (beside not wasting so much energy) is the support of the renewable natural energies from the sun, wind and water. That would be a good thing for the human beings and the environment - but maybe not for the bank accounts of the masters of energy and ex-chancellors.