Author: Christiaan van Gaal

Day 3305, walk through the city while charging.

Daily picture, Poetry

From:  Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche   

84. To Peter Gast
Marienbad, July 18, 1880 

My dear friend:
I still cannot help thinking several times a day of the delightful pampering I had in Venice and of the still more delightful pamperer, and all I can say is that one cannot have such good times for long and that it is only right I should once more be an ancho rite and as such go walking for ten hours a day, drink fateful doses of water and await their effect. Mean while I burrow eagerly inside my moral mines and at times feel quite subterranean in the process — at pres ent I seem to feel as if I had now discovered the principal artery and outlet. But this is the sort of belief that may return a hundred times only to be rejected. Now and again an echo of Chopin’s music rings in my ears, and this much you have achieved, that at such moments I always think of you and lose myself in meditating about possibilities. My trust in you has grown very great; you are built much more soundly than I suspected, and apart from the evil influence that Herr Nietzsche has exercised over you from time to time, you are in every respect well conditioned. Ceterum censeo mountains and woods are better than towns and Paris is better than Vienna.

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Day 3301, and yet.

Daily picture, Quotes, Video

And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.

Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

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Day 3299, draft.

Daily picture, My thoughts

They say that the earth is not doing well, or, to narrow it down, the people living on this rock are not working together well.

First, the Earth. I am no expert, but even if we all wanted to, we could not destroy the Earth. I doubt that in 500 million years, there will be any trace left of us, and we could not even imagine what will see the sunset by then, but I am pretty sure it is not reminiscing about us while enjoying the colours.

On working together. If you read history in a certain way and combine that with some unattached observations made during your own life, you will know that two or more people working together is more often than not a challenge. Even if you live with the same person in the same house for many years, you will still encounter odd miscommunications that result in late arrivals or worse.

Most of us have also worked in groups, whether at work, in a sports club, or organizing a family event. If you work together enough, a certain rhythm will take over, but I can’t imagine someone who has never felt a slight chaos while achieving a goal. Sometimes you see this happening right in front of you, as someone who is led around, but also when you have been in charge, the feeling of a loss of control will not be unknown to you.

Now extend it to the country you live in. There are good leaders, and the bigger the pool, the larger the chance one of these exemplary leaders will be in charge. But even if this is happening, these people’s organizing skills have to be delegated downwards, and the first layers in this bureaucracy might be staffed by competent people, but soon the first administrators are directly recruited out of the cultural habits of that particular country, and acting accordingly. From a few people to the largest countries, they all had and have their goals, they started in the direction they wanted, and sometimes reached them. However, they all share a low efficiency, a high amount of wasted resources through mismanagement, and incompetence.

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Day 3298,but.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols
Reason in Philosophy

2 I set apart with high reverence the name of Heraclitus . When the rest of the philosopher crowd rejected the evidence of the senses because these showed plurality and change, he rejected their evidence because they showed things as if they possessed duration and unity. Heraclitus too was unjust to the senses, which lie neither in the way the Eleatics * believe nor as he believed – they do not lie at all. It is what we make of their evidence that first introduces a lie into it, for example the lie of unity, the lie of materiality, of substance, of duration.… ‘Reason’ is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.… But Heraclitus will always be right in this, that being is an empty fiction. The ‘apparent’ world is the only one: the ‘real’ world has only been lyingly added …

Day 3297, This explains a lot.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will to Power
Book Three

494  It is improbable that our “knowledge” should extend further than is strictly necessary for the preservation of life. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves, as well as the brain, develop in proportion to the difficulty of finding nourishment.