The barrier we lean against

comforts us

After almost 15 years of seclusion from much of society our move to the city was both a welcome surprise and change. Before I moved to North Norway I lived in Holland where you can meet all kinds of people if you want to, and I did. I have had a lot of good conversations, I was already interested in philosophy, psychology and more and I always tried to talk about these subjects but with little success overall. Most people have some interest in for example philosophy but up till a certain level. Its like talking about your train collection, at first people indulge your enthusiasm but if you still talk about the different train tracks you can buy after 20 minutes you start to see in their faces that you went to far. So, my move to Norway, and thus lack of social contact, was not a big problem because I could do without the disappointment of people losing their interest when I wanted to dive deeper.

I never really missed the times that I could talk with people about the things that are important to me. But I never dozed off and every time I got the slightest hint that someone was interested, I jumped on it like a hungry tiger. This didn’t happen often in a place with a few hundred people though. But now I am back in the city and Covid prohibited me to spread my wings physically for now but the smell of opportunity turned my attention online. With online I don’t mean the well-known social media places but people on this website or writers of books, creators off podcasts etc. I am not on social media, I don’t have a real reason for it and I know that as an aspiring photographer it might be smart to put more eyes on my work but it’s just too much, and it is nice if people like my work but for me the whole process of making nice pictures is reward enough and I put it out there for others to enjoy if they choose so.  

This longwinded introduction is now at its end so now I can’t write about what I wanted. As someone who is interested in philosophy, I purposely stayed away from politics in the sense that I learn about the different system and ideologies you have. I didn’t ignore it out of a lack of interest but out of economy. I can only read and learn so much and philosophy and psychology used up more or less all of my “reading time”, politics is interesting but to do it right I would have been forced to leave one of my babies behind. But there is such a thing as Anarchy as a…let say for now: a political orientation.

Anarchy is different amongst the other political ideas, like Harry Potter… Who got pushed in a house where he didn’t fit, the grownups treated him like shit and he had to live under the stairs where everybody can trample him. But Harry had some secret powers, an though he didn’t know that at the time, he already had the mark that he was special. (couldn’t resist)

So, anarchism. I hope the reader has an idea and opinion about it, I certainly do but it is a premature one. I am not going talk about what anarchism means for me today, I can tell you that my first word that I associate with anarchism is freedom and not the kind of freedom where you can do what you want to but freedom from…anchors. You can live a ridged life with many fixed ideas and still demand freedom, but I look for the kind of freedom where you try to evict those internal demands so to say. I want to know more about anarchism and free myself of any misconception but in the meantime, I will use my knowledge of Nietzsche to find aphorisms and other texts from him that support my idea of “anarchism in your mind”.

First of all, I use Nietzsche a lot in my conversations. I don’t do that because I adore him or something like that, I use him more as a symbol that represents critical thinking. Nietzsche was also really good at what he did so there is nothing wrong with admiring his skills. There where probably many people that had similar thoughts and ideas but Nietzsche could use our limited language in such a way that he was able to make these ideas clear for others to understand.  He was not a saint, he was just really good in writing down his thoughts like Mozart was with music or Rembrandt with paint, we all can all pick up a pencil and paint, but not like Rembrandt and we can all think like Nietzsche, but not many can write it down like he did.

I was planning today to start writing and searching for text, even though it is to hot here. But I was lucky, like most times I start with Human all to Human and in the preface on paragraph two he started talking about the free spirit:

 -Thus when I needed to I once also invented for myself the ‘free spirits’ to whom this melancholy-valiant book with the title Human, All Too Human is dedicated: ‘free spirits’ of this kind do not exist, did not exist- but, as I have said, I had need of them at that time if I was to keep in good spirits while surrounded by ills (sickness, solitude, unfamiliar places, acedia, in[1]activity): as brave companions and familiars with whom one can laugh and chatter when one feels like laughing and chattering, and whom one can send to the Devil when they become tedious – as compensation for the friends I lacked. That free spirits of this kind could one day exist, that our Europe will have such active and audacious fellows among its sons of tomorrow and the next day, physically present and palpable and not, as in my case, merely phantoms and hermit’s phantasmagoria: I should wish to be the last to doubt it. I see them already coming, slowly, slowly; and perhaps I shall do something to speed their coming if I describe in advance under what vicissitudes, upon what paths, I see them coming?—

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human all to human, preface 2, page 6, Hollingdale translation

There is not much to “explain” about this text but it touches on a hope I have that if more people become “free spirits” the need for an organized society would slowly disappear and with that hopefully a large part of the problems attached to these organizations. On a personal note: I can relate to Nietzsche’s experiences of feeling alone in your thoughts and the need to invent a “voice” in your head that is not touched by your problems and works as a counterbalance.