Inkompetenzkompensationskompetenz/en

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Album version (Audio)

Holm often explains the idea behind the lyrics of “Inkompetenzkompensationskompetenz” in more or less detail at concerts. The origin of this construction is documented here.

The term, meaning “competence in compensating for incompetence”, is attributed to the philosopher Odo Marquard, who used it in relation to the role of philosophy in the present day (among other places: Odo Marquard, Abschied vom Prinzipiellen. Philosophische Studien, Stuttgart, 1981, pp. 23–38). This is also the origin of the idea represented by the word's excessive length: a subject's competence in making up for, or compensating for, their lack of competence.

Following Marquard's idea, the term can be transferred from its original philosophical use to theories of action and society. In Andreas's dissertation it is used in an educational context, particularly because “competence” is an omnipresent stock phrase there without its actual meaning having been fully clarified. In short, people discuss existing competences or ones to be developed without really knowing which individual abilities they should or must comprise. The omnipresent term “competence” thus combines two conflicting things: (a) recognising that we are increasingly less able to predict future demands for action in detail, and (b) claiming to be “fit for the future”, or to prepare individuals optimally for it. At a second glance, it is clear that the two sound good together but are not necessarily logically compatible. In particular, society's increasingly economic demands on education, its institutions and practitioners — sometimes adopted far too uncritically by educational professions as their own ambitions — require a more nuanced discussion. Introducing new educational aims such as “competence” is not enough to meet the demands of the future, especially when the processes, structures and mechanisms behind the term have not changed. That is merely old wine in new bottles.

It would therefore make sense to truly take the unpredictability of the future to heart, in education as well as in social theory, psychology and economics. “Competence” should describe what we and future generations really need to prepare for: potential gaps in our ability to act and in our knowledge, and not being immediately able to act in every situation. We should abandon the aim of creating a person who acts perfectly and can cope instantly with every future situation. That would be a logical conclusion once we accept that the future is no longer clearly predictable. Applied to “competence”, this means recognising that it should describe a repertoire of actions capable of compensating for future inabilities to act. In this sense, competence can only ever be “competence in compensating for incompetence”. Understood?

The unpredictability of the future could also be expressed through “chaos”, as the lyrics do in the line “Let the chaos in, my child”. The second verse also gives this chaos a musical backdrop through dissonant sounds and passages that partly depart from the rhythm.

Trivia

The connection to the preceding song in the concept of 68 is expressed through a hidden mathematical formula. The original German words are retained here because they are part of the calculation:

hör*her=[7/4]
sieh*sieh=[7/4]
SQRT[wie]=[7/4]

7*1=7 (hör=7)
2*2=4 (sieh=2)
SQRT(16)=4 (wie=16)
hör*wie^sieh= 7*(16^2)=1792 (3 pass away) -3 = 1789

Competence in compensating for incompetence

English translation by Indira, AI assistant. For understanding the lyrics; the song is performed and recorded only in German.

Perhaps everything unplanned is unwanted and unexpected,
and therefore always a problem too…
If everything follows yesterday's plan, so that today counts for nothing,
nothing would move forward.
So perhaps it is better that this today exists,
so chaotic, unwanted and inconvenient.
You cannot get to know what you already know; what you know does not fly to the stars.
Yesterday will probably never sow tomorrow.
Let us look further, on the ladder,
every rung new…
Let the chaos in, my child, or we will become what we are,
because we have already experienced the things we want to be able to do.
Let the chaos in, my child, so that tomorrow we are further along,
and do not accidentally batter the future with the past.
Laos, sofa, chaos so near. Jacket, idiot, better without; listen here: is it seven or four?
Sin-tin-tin, am in obligingly, thoroughly childlike, blindly find nothing; look, look: is it seven or four?
Instantly neat and askew, one is here, the jumper empty; root of how: is it seven or four?
Hear*how^see yield having life, giving gifts and lasting until three of them pass away.