Author: Christiaan van Gaal

Day 2026, translation.

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If truth is a woman, does that then mean that truth is just beautiful or difficult, fleetingly or any other prejudice a slightly misogynistic man has about woman.  If truth is a woman, does it give birth to new truths and untruths? If truth is a woman, does truth then hit that glass ceiling and never reach her full potential. If truth is a woman, do you expect her to fall for you because you treat her as equal, or do you attempt to lure her with your strength, your good looks, your brain, or your money.  

Vorausgesetzt, daß die Wahrheit ein Weib ist — , wie? (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1885)

This is the first sentence of the book Beyond good and evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. I want to use this short text to illustrate how difficult it is to interpret what a philosopher wants to say. Like always, I looked up the different translations to English, and you can see for yourself that even the translators can’t agree what these few words suppose to say when translated to English.

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Day 2025, Underneath.

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“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

Charlotte Brontë

Underneath, you can read a quote from Nietzsche about morals. He was an atheist and as such. Nietzsche didn’t believe that the moral rules we should follow came from a God-like figure. Nietzsche almost always approaches his subject from different directions, making it difficult for the casual reader to understand where he is going. Whenever I read Nietzsche in English, I will read one of the more modern translations, but if I quote him a lot, I will fall back on the earlier translations because they are copyright-free. It is always fun to see what the different translater make of the original text. I cannot be the arbiter because my German is not that good, especially compared to scholars that have studied German and philosophy.

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Day 2024, delicate.

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They grow in circles

to be

poisonous

I have set myself a goal to find out what I know about certain subjects after 49 years on this rock, I did that with the question: what is gender? I have given it my best shot a few days ago so today I was searching for a book related to that question,  I did that on one of those book sites, and before I knew it, I saw all kinds of recommendations in the corner of my eye, and one of them was “delusion of gender” by Cordelia Fine. I realized what I already knew: I would like…to read many of these books and question my presumptions.

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Day 2023, big.

Day's pictures, Poetry

I grew so big

while I played

I pretend the grass

to my waste

for a better world

is big

Yesterday I wrote about philosophers and how seriously they can take their task. You can widen this, of course, to all kinds of professions. Today I listened to a podcast where some biologists talked about the history of the crocodile. One thing they have done the last ten years is scanning fossils with all sorts of equipment to see how many different kinds of crocodiles there were 200 million years ago. It’s fascinating and cool to spend your day doing that, and it probably has some purpose down the line. I myself restore old wooden buildings and boats, and I can tell you precisely why it is important but, as I do now, I can tell you also why it is not that important. This finding meaning in what we do is something we all do. That’s why I called it “playtime” for grownups yesterday, and that sounds all jolly, but there is also a downside. We are so rich that we can do all of these fun but unnecessary jobs and produce so much stuff that we don’t need, and this pollutes the world and maybe even cynical.

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Day 2022, unstuck.

Daily picture, Poetry

My thought was still

sitting in a faded memory

looking for a reason

to fly

 

Yesterday I wrote that I don’t necessarily look for proof when writing something in one of these blog posts. I want to elaborate on that a little bit; I don’t look for proof when it comes to my ideas, the ideas that come to me when I start writing. As I wrote yesterday, I want to see what kind of thoughts are in me, and those thoughts need no proof. Only when they hit the real world can they be judged, but not by me the moment I write them down. I do, of course, check arbitrary things like quotes, dates, specific historical facts, and so on.

That I don’t judge my thoughts so harshly is something I started to do not so long ago. Doubt about what we can know (Epistemology) has been strong with me. Part of my character has very little doubt; I have no problem saying yes to tasks I know little about. This more practical fearlessness has been in me as long as I know, but it got stronger over the years. Getting face to face with death and hitting rock bottom a few times has put a lot of things in perspective. In the world outside my head, I downplay my bravado and be the stubborn, nice guy I am, but in my head, I have a “fear” to say what I think out loud.

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Day 2021, telling.

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I also want to tell stories

that floats away

and hopefully find an echo

Yesterday I wrote some of my thoughts down about what it is to feel like a man or a woman or even none of those. I have no scientific training, and I have not done any extensive research in this specific matter. The way I write on this blog is: I pick a subject, or it pics me, and I begin writing what I know about it without a plan where I want to end; I use what is still there from 49 years on this earth and a 25-year interest in science, philosophy, and psychology. I enjoy writing like this because while I write, thoughts start flowing, and often things float by that I haven’t seen in years; I can even surprise myself where I end, usually after around 1000 words.

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Day 2020, gender.

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In the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about gender and why we live in a world where the genders are clear and divided in most cultures. I do not have a big problem with the imagined separation between the genders, but I also don’t mind if someone doesn’t follow the “rules”.

But what is gender? We all have our thoughts, but it is pretty apparent in the western culture where I come from. When you walk in the mall or meet people, we all know from when we were young who is a girl and who is not. It is hard to deny this, and the times that you were in doubt are sparse.  Everything screams man or woman, and if you take away the clothing, it becomes even more apparent. I can’t speak for the modern wave of gender confusion, but I don’t think that someone who calls themselves non-binary means that there are no differences.

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Day 2019, Photography.

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The last two day I talked about looking at art and how I think we “decide” what we like. I also make some sort of art, I like to take pictures and you see them here everyday. Like with all types of art with photography you can go from a snapshot on your phone just to document a moment to elaborate productions to make the ultimate art picture. But a snapshot on a phone combined with a story or a massage can easily become art and elaborate photoshoot are most of the time only used for commercial use and that is not really art. What art is or not that is another discussion but if you make something like a photo, sculpture or painting with the intend for it to be pleasing to the senses you have to make certain discissions, the colours you use, the framing or size. It doesn’t matter if you do this professionally or as a hobby or with the intent to make art, you want a result that pleases you or maybe better said: it comes close to what feels good with you.

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Day 2018, Art 2.

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I saw this bird sitting on a wire, for a while it was just staring at the clouds and the colours, well…it was pointing in that direction. I wonder what this bird sees, does it feel joy? Yesterday I wrote about art and what kind of art I like; I don’t know if I said it yesterday but, I cannot say in all honesty why I like something. I can think of all kinds of reasons but I am pretty sure that the split-second it takes the visual information from my eyes to go to the brain and from there to ooze into my consciousness, the feeling of bliss is already there to feel. Somewhere between what happens in my brain and the route to consciousness a detour is made to my happy center, or the room opposite of that door.   

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Day 2017, art.

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I have written about art before, I don’t know when but I remember telling that what I like about art is the building it is hanging. I like walking in these large, empty and silent rooms where I can look around without disturbing anyone. That there is art is off course a plus and I might even look a little longer if it is pleasing to the eyes or my soul.

I like to take pictures in art museums and one of my favorite things I take pictures of are the signs you see and the fire extinguishers, I frame them in such a way that when you see the picture you doubt if it is part of the exhibition or just a utility.

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Day 2016, In the clouds?

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If I talk to people about life, politics and what is important for them in life the one thing that gets mentioned a lot is tolerance for each other’s views. I cannot agree more if, and I say if everybody would follow that rule.

But if I think about it more, I immediately see some problems with this ideal of respecting each other’s way of life. It is the wet dream of all the libertarians in the world off course, a society of loving egoists but we all live in some kind of group. At work you live in a small group where you might have a lot of freedom, but the workplace expects from you that you follow certain rules like safety instructions and the expectance that you deliver some sort of work or added value for the money you get paid. You cannot go to work and expect your boss to respect your personal opinion that following safety rules is wrong, your boss can’t be tolerance towards you, he can at most tolerate that you want to work unsafe in your own time.

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Day 2015, Random.

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Last week I decided to start reading Charles Darwin’s book “on the origin of species”. I had this book already in my possession for a couple of years, a side note: I am bad in saving money but what I do every now and then is buy some expensive books if I have money over, this way I have something valuable to read for the leaner times. I think that most people know something about Darwin’s theories, I have read several books about him and the theory of evolution so it’s not new for me. The reason that I read this old book now, is the same for whenever I read books from the nineteenth century, you get a look into that time and the world those writers lived in, the nineteenth century is great. If you like, you should go to this site: https://archive.org/details/scientific-american-1845-1909 here you find old scientific American magazines. They invented most of the things in the nineteenth century we now take for granted, the only difference is that they where still really clumsy and often only worked in theory. Imagine the difference between 1900 and 2021, it is big but most of what we have now was already imagined in 1900. Now think of the difference between 1900 and 1800 (or even better, “the long nineteenth century” from the French revolution in 1789 til the first world war in 1914), that is a much larger difference, in 1800 they still live more or less like the Romans did 1600 years before them…ok I exaggerate a little but the 19th century was the one century where everything changed including the way we looked at ourselves.

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Day 2014, progress.

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Yesterday I wrote about Covid deniers and how baseless their arguments are specially compared to the research that has been done for many years towards understanding these kinds of deceases. The people that have a hard time believing in what science has to say are often also negative about the progress we have made as humans.

The humans that lived 200.000 years ago where more or less like us in capabilities, if you put modern clothes on them and teach them English for instance you wouldn’t see a difference. Why is it important to know this you might wonder? It is important to know because most modern cultures look at the people that still live as hunter gatherers in remote places as primitive and backwards. But these people are exactly like us, the biggest difference is that they are raised in a totally different environment than ours. But they also have ambitions, fall in love, some like adventure others like to learn like we, people that live in cities. The biggest difference between the hunter gatherers from 200.000 years ago, and in a lesser amount, the “modern” hunter gatherers, is that they live(d) more in fear than we do.

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Day 2013, research.

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I like to discuss endlessly; I think because truth is hard to get and when someone claims to have it (including myself) I will question it. Most of the time it stays civilized but I am sure that a lot of people avoid me if they can. These people I helped when I moved to Norway where I discovered another benefit of moving to a country where you can only speak the language like a child who’s 6 years old.  Discussing with the vocabulary of a 6-year-old is not easy so besides discussing that I got less candy than the others I stayed away from discussing more difficult subjects.

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Day 2012, cold war.

Daily picture, Poetry

I don’t like to write about politics though I did it a lot when Trump was president, he was a special case, to put it mildly. But now politics in the world is back to “normal” I had some hope that I could forget about it again, at least on this blog. But last week I got really disappointed in president Biden, not that I had high hopes on many issues but maybe he would be less of a…I don’t know. He more or less ended one war and immediately starts provoking China out of some idea that China is dangerous and banging on your chest is the only solution to stop them. I know that international politics is complicated with thousands of moving parts but once again a group of privileged, (middle)-aged man decide the direction the world goes. I understand that a captain of a ship can not steer the boat democratically but a nation is not a ship and should not be treated like one.

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