Day 3641, the end.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak
Book V

564 just beyond experience!– Even great spirits have only their five-fingers’ breadth of experience- just beyond it their thinking ceases and their endless empty space and stupidity begins.

575 We aeronauts of the spirit!– All those brave birds which fly out into the distance, into the farthest distance- it is certain! somewhere or other they will be unable to go on and will perch on a mast or a bare cliffface- and they will even be thankful for this miserable accommodation! But who could venture to infer from that, that there was not an immense open space before them, that they had flown as far as one could fly! All our great teachers and predecessors have at last come to a stop and it is not with the noblest or most graceful of gestures that weariness comes to a stop: it will be the same with you and me! But what does that matter to you and me! Other birds will fly farther! This insight and faith of ours vies with them in flying up and away; it rises above our heads and above our impotence into the heights and from there surveys the distance and sees before it the flocks of birds which,
far stronger than we, still strive whither we have striven, and where everything is sea, sea, sea!- And whither then would we go? Would we cross the sea? Whither does this mighty longing draw us, this longing that is worth more to us than any pleasure? Why just in this direction, thither where all the suns of humanity have hitherto gone down? Will it perhaps be said of us one day that we too, steering westward, hoped to reach an India- but that it was our fate to be wrecked against infinity? Or, my brothers. Or? –

Day 3834, all this.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak
Book V

560 What we are at liberty to do. – One can dispose of one’s drives like a gardener and, though few know it, cultivate the shoots of anger, pity, curiosity, vanity as productively and profitably as a beautiful fruit tree on a trellis; one can do it with the good or bad taste of a gardener and, as it were, in the French or English or Dutch or Chinese fashion; one can also let nature rule and only attend to a little embellishment and tidying-up here and there; one can, finally, without paying any attention to them at all, let the plants grow up and fight their fight out among themselves – indeed, one can take delight in such a wilderness, and desire precisely this delight, though it gives one some trouble, too. All this we are at liberty to do: but how many know we are at liberty to do it? Do the majority not believe in themselves as in completefully-developed facts? Have the great philosophers not put their seal on this prejudice with the doctrine of the unchangeability of character?

Day 3828, good for us.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Poetry

In my mind
most bridges can either open
or are high enough to let good ideas through


but looking around me
most people seem to live
where no ideas float
or bridges are too low
unable to open

Some of my notes from today that somehow belong together. 

We live in a strange world. For 2000 years, the Christian churches have tried to sell their story, backed by mighty institutions, governments, and armies that did their bidding, and still most people don’t believe their story, while the rest made it into one of their own. And what about the real thinkers, the philosophers? Yes, they have their institutes, the universities that are dwindling away. Their truths come closer to what that might be, but who still believes them these days?

Once, we apes just lived our lives, and from child to child we learned our place. Not only where we were, but also what these hands can do and who the others are. We started to see the world and became aware that we did. We became aware of our thoughts, not in words but in emotions, and somehow connected them to our drives. We lived, as a species, much longer with our consciousness expressed through emotions, drives, and feelings than with the words we now often misconstrue for our consciousness.

We often know what is good for us. That’s what you tell yourself, but these little words are no match for the part of us that is much older, has had much more practice, and is also cemented much deeper in society at large. We vote for the baboon who ruins our country because it didn’t speak with words, but with emotions.

Some people are ruled more by their words than by their emotions, even if only slightly. Or their emotions better understand the blindness of their goals and also remember that no one is the same person in the morning or evening or on a Wednesday as on a Sunday.

All of this goes on between our two ears, and no matter what story we hear and feel, it is our story, and for some reason it seems to be taken for real. I do believe that there are ways to live a life where you believe less of what you feel and think. The reason why I think that is, is because we do make progress living together as 8 billion egocentric prisoners on a big world but so close together.