What Robert Musil Teaches Us Today About Responsibility, Energy, and Transformation
- Frank Hummel
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Some societal crises arrive with a bang. Others begin quietly.
Not through collapse, not through revolution — but through a gradual decoupling from reality.
Robert Musil described this dynamic with remarkable precision over a hundred years ago, on the eve of the First World War. In his work, we meet elites who are highly educated, morally articulate, and organizationally impeccable — and yet increasingly lose touch with reality.
Elites: not stupid, but out of touch
Musil does not criticize elites in terms of power or wealth. He describes an intellectual elite that:
talks about values,
designs programs,
perfects processes,
dominates discourse,
yet increasingly loses touch with real-world impact.
The problem isn’t malice—it’s abstraction.
Societies don’t fall apart because they lack knowledge, but because elites replace reality with language.
How reality gets displaced
This displacement doesn’t happen openly; it happens structurally:
Complexity replaces responsibility.
Efficiency replaces morality.
Loyalty to the system becomes more important than judgment.
Decisions are formally correct, legally sound, and communicated clearly—but they are no longer supported internally.
The result is a society that functions, yet one in which fewer and fewer people feel at home.
The link to energy and climate
This pattern is especially visible in energy and climate policy.
We see:
ambitious goals without a credible implementation logic,
strategy papers with little physical grounding,
moral narratives without local responsibility.
But energy is not an ideology. Energy is reality—physical, economic, and infrastructural.
Transformation fails not because of a lack of will, but because of a lack of willingness to be corrected by reality.
Why large systems are especially vulnerable
Large organizations are built for stability. That is their strength—and also their weakness.
The larger the system, the greater the:
distance from impact,
insulation from error,
temptation to delegate responsibility.
That is how institutional attitudes form—while personal conviction gets replaced.
Decentralized responsibility as an alternative
Renewable energy, energy-independent buildings, and local solutions therefore stand not only for climate protection, but for something more fundamental:
responsibility belongs where impact occurs,
judgment instead of mere compliance,
resilience instead of dependence.
Decentralized energy is not a romantic ideal. It is a societal necessity.
Musil’s message for our time
Musil might have put it like this:
Society does not fall apart because values are missing, but because they are functionally replaced.
People behave correctly—but they no longer feel they belong.
Why Frank Hummel Consulting
Transformation requires more than strategies, funding programs, or PowerPoint slides. It requires conviction, sound judgment, and a willingness not to outsource responsibility.
Frank Hummel Consulting supports entrepreneurs, organizations, and decision-makers in implementing energy, building, and mobility solutions not only in a technically correct way, but responsibly and effectively—close to reality, on site, and with a long-term view.
Because the crucial question of our time is not:
Do we have enough knowledge?
Do we have enough technology?
But rather:
Are we ready to take personal responsibility again—even against convenience, narratives, and system logic?
Guiding principle:
Societies don’t fall apart because they lack knowledge, but because elites replace reality with language.
