Day 702, driving to…

Day's pictures, Poetry

Day 702-1

In the morning, driving to work, waking up from a sleep.

Some caffeine to move and get up to sit and plan the day.

Listening to a book, enjoy the drive a thousand times.

Each bend is known, I feel the friction, the weather decides.

I wouldn’t mind driving all day, going nowhere to the next turn.

But then I arrive, open the door into my life and close my escape.

Day 701, a chance to hear myself.

Day's pictures, Our mind

Day 701-1

If I go outside now and walk to the water and stand still for a while I would hear nothing, maybe my breath and the beating of my heart. It is so silent here that no matter what you do it will automatically calm you down. I am not sure if I really need that silence for myself, but I really like the experience of living far away from a busy city with all its temptations and distractions. It was some kind of a gamble or dare to myself when I moved here over 10 years ago. I had a nice job and after work I went out to be amongst my friends and socialize. I was actually pretty comfortable with that life, maybe to comfortable. Moving to Norway changed all of that, no place to go in the evening in these small towns with maybe a 1000 people. There was one store in the first place I lived and no social live to speak of. It was difficult in the beginning, you get confronted with your own thoughts all the time, something I avoided back in Holland by going out so often. But I am now used to that and like those confrontations with myself, or maybe I am just used to myself now, something I wasn’t when I lived in the city, amongst the people and all the distractions. I guess the silence gave me a voice and a chance to hear myself.

Day 700, Treatise of human nature.

Day's pictures, Philosophy, Poetry

Day 700-1

We suppose to learn, our synapses do fire.

They shoot to make, to pave the way.

Information contained or lost in time.

A spark, an insight that turns away.

Overcrowded, congested, worn down your choked.

Start training does neurons, cleanup your mind

Fire away at does old rusted anchors.

Cut that chain, make room for your life.

Because to be is to think, like a motion in time.

Not to get stuck in one place, forgotten to learn.

 

Here is something to rattle does rusted synapses in your brain. One of the classic books in philosophy that still is useful today and abstract enough to make you think and thus train your brain. You can download the book for free on many places or buy a used one for a couple of dollars online r at your local used bookstore.

TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE
By David Hume
Book I: The understanding

Section 1: The origin of our ideas
All the perceptions of the human mind fall into two distinct kinds, which I shall call
‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’. These differ in the degrees of force and liveliness with which
they strike upon the mind and make their way into our thought or consciousness. The
perceptions that enter with most force and violence we may name ‘impressions’; and
under this name I bring all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul [= ‘mind’; no religious implications]. By ‘ideas’ I mean the faint images of the others in thinking and reasoning: for example, all the perceptions aroused by your reading this book – apart from perceptions arising from sight and touch, and apart from the immediate pleasure or uneasiness your reading may cause in you. I don’t think I need to say much to explain this distinction: everyone will readily perceive for himself the difference between feeling (·impressions·) and thinking (·ideas·). The usual degrees of intensity· of these are easily distinguished, though there may be particular instances where they come close to one another. Thus, in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent emotions of soul, our ideas may approach to our impressions: as on the other hand it sometimes happens that our impressions are so faint and low that we can’t distinguish them from our ideas. But although they are fairly similar in a few cases, they are in general so very different that no-one can hesitate to classify them as different and to give to each a special name to mark the difference. [Throughout this work, ‘name’ is often used to cover not only proper names but also general terms such as ‘idea’.]

Read more here

A Treatise of Human Nature (1738–40) is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, considered by many to be Hume’s most important work and one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy.The Treatise is a classic statement of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. In the introduction Hume presents the idea of placing all science and philosophy on a novel foundation: namely, an empirical investigation into human nature. Impressed by Isaac Newton’s achievements in the physical sciences, Hume sought to introduce the same experimental method of reasoning into the study of human psychology, with the aim of discovering the “extent and force of human understanding”. Against the philosophical rationalists, Hume argues that passion rather than reason governs human behaviour. He introduces the famous problem of induction, arguing that inductive reasoning and our beliefs regarding cause and effect cannot be justified by reason; instead, our faith in induction and causation is the result of mental habit and custom. Hume defends a sentimentalist account of morality, arguing that ethics is based on sentiment and passion rather than reason, and famously declaring that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave to the passions”. Hume also offers a skeptical theory of personal identity and a compatibilist account of free will.

Read more at wikipedia.

Day 699, Dumb rules.

Day's pictures, Society

Day 699-1

I was listening to a lecture from “the Great Courses” called History’s greatest voyages of exploration. There was one part where the lecturer mentioned the big Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan that were destroyed by the Taliban. I remember that vividly because I was so upset about it and also ashamed that I cared more about those statues than for the people that get killed in wars on a daily basis. I rationalized it than and today by saying to myself that my brain is numbed by all these killings and the news about it, the news has not the effect it had the first few times, whenever that was. But today I got angry again, when listening to this lecture, by the senseless destruction of our heritage. I almost compared the fanatic Taliban, who follow those stupid rules and commandments with those second amenders in America but that is not fair to the Taliban. What is it with these people that are so ignorant that they cannot have a consciousness. That they have to recite some rule books that guide there lives and thinking, quoting some chapter that tells them it is ok what they do without seeing what it does to society.  I think the world would be a better place if we took away all those rule books like the Bible, Koran or every constitution or book of law that is older than 10 years. Rules and laws should be a living thing adjusted by the times we live in. One of my firs contributions to this new book of laws would be: you don’t break really old stuff and there should not be any machine guns…in the world…period. What would be one of your rules?

Day 696, Art makes the thinker’s heart heavy.

Day's pictures, Human all too human

Day 696-1

The winter is not gone yet, the snow comes and goes but the ground is still frozen. Maybe 2 more moths ore a bit longer.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human all too human

153
Art makes the thinker’s heart heavy. – How strong the metaphysical need is, and how hard nature makes it to bid it a final farewell, can be seen from the fact that even when the free spirit has divested himself of everything metaphysical the highest effects of art can easily set the metaphysical strings, which have long been silent or indeed snapped apart, vibrating in sympathy; so it can happen, for example, that a passage in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony will make him feel he is hovering above the earth in a dome of stars with the dream of immortality in his heart: all the stars seem to glitter around him and the earth seems to sink farther and farther away. – If he becomes aware of being in this condition he feels a profound stab in the heart and sighs for the man who will lead him back to his lost love, whether she be called religion or metaphysics. It is in such moments that his intellectual probity is put to the test.

Day 695, Echo of the moon.

Day's pictures, Poetry

Day 695-1

This house where I sit is silent and only the moon echo’s the light.

Grey are the shadows inside, slowly finding their way, moving away.

I stair and see the dust caught by the moons darkened reflection.

The particles move without purpose they only know to go down.

Forced by the pull of the mass is what they obey, it’s the calm they prey.

They stay there till one day I may leave my print or brush them away.

Day 694, No power and compassion.

Day's pictures, Society

Day 694-1-

Yesterday around five we had a power outage till eleven, so I couldn’t post my daily picture, first time in almost 700 days. It was kind of fun to live by candle light and a stove to keep us warm, fun because this happens every now and then and we know it will come back eventually. We also cooked our dinner on the wood stove…well cooked…I made some soup from a package, but it worked. Because we are addicted to flickering lights we watched some old vacation videos on our laptop while eating our soup, something you never take the time for but was actually fun to watch and I read a book after dinner of course and called it a night early to catch up at some overdue sleep.

Now it’s morning and while doing this I watch some YouTube about the Florida shooting, I feel sorry for those students and parents and get angry at all those gun nuts that can’t let go of there precious. If America supposed to be a modern country it looks really like a backwater, how dumb can you be to let everybody buy assault rifles! But don’t forget, you people that cry over this, the American military wrecks many families in other countries almost every day with their drone strikes, those civilians that get killed are made of the same flesh and blood as the people in Florida and with our wealth we could save thousands of children from dying of hunger every day. Compassion is not something we can handle on a daily basis, just in small amounts.

Day 693, Authoritarian.

Day's pictures, Society

Day 693-1

This time of the year we have beautiful sunrises and sunsets round the time we drive to work and back. The pictures from the last few days are made from the car with my phone, with some tinkering you can make something nice out of these phone pictures.

I also finished another book yesterday, how democracies die – what history tells us about our future from Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. It is a n interesting book that gives a short overview of different political systems but mainly focuses on democracy and how it can slide into an authoritarian system or even become a dictatorship. The reason for this thorough introduction is the Trump government and where it fits on this gliding scale towards a more repressive regime. The authors claim that Trump shows all the signs of a wane be authoritarian ruler. Some of these signs are disrespecting your opponent and former rulers, something that can be expected during a campaign but not from a president in office. The same goes for harsh critique on the press or calling election result illegitimate.

coverI don’t have to be convinced that Trump is a terrible president and as far as I know also a lousy human being, but this book gives a lot of examples from history where similar people came to power and slowly transformed the government into a more authoritarian regime like what happened in Russia and a lot of South American countries in the 70th and 80th. The conclusions they draw out of their research are for the most part somber because it is not only Trump that worries them but also the two parties that are getting more and more entrenched. Read the book, it’s worth it if you are interested in political history and would like to put the current regime in its rightful place in history.

Day 689, By the waterfall.

Day's pictures, Human all too human

Day 689-1

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human all too human

106
By the waterfall. – At the sight of a waterfall we think we see in the countless curvings, twistings and breakings of the waves capriciousness and freedom of will; but everything here is necessary, every motion mathematically calculable. So it is too in the case of human actions; if one were all-knowing, one would be able to calculate every individual action, likewise every advance in knowledge, every error, every piece of wickedness. The actor himself, to be sure, is fixed in the illusion of free will; if for one moment the wheel of the world were to stand still, and there were an all-knowing, calculating intelligence there to make use of this pause, it could narrate the future of every creature to the remotest ages and describe every track along which this wheel had yet to roll. The actor’s deception regarding himself, the assumption of free-will, is itself part of the mechanism it would have to compute.

Day 688, Against stupidity.

Books, Day's pictures

Day 688-1

This week I listened to the book: Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray. It is a good book, it starts with a more general history of fascism and anti-fascism going over in a more detailed history and description of anti-fascism in America and several European countries up till now. The last part of the book is about the modern day and especially Trump and the alt-right and how to react to those negative forces. It is not a handbook in the sense of a guide on how to start a Antifa group where you live. There are some tips and different activist give their opinions about the things you should and shouldn’t do. If you don’t know much about fascism and Antifa than this is a good book to start with.

61a7Mz9PzQL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_The thing I remembered most is a quote: (and I’m paraphrasing) “white is an ideology”. Meaning that calling yourself white is not an objective thing but related to an ideology, there were times that Jews and Italians were not seen as “whites” by racist. I always knew that, but this quote made it simple for me and might help me when debating (mostly ignorant) racist people. Explaining people why refugees come here, for instance, will often help them to understand it and except it.

The place where I live in Norway is small, around 3000 people live here and last year we got our “quota” of refuge’s. I have to guess but there are probably between 50 and a 100 people from Syria and from some African counties like Eritrea that came here last year. I have not heard any complains but that can be because of the people I hang out with, but I have not seen any signs of hatred let alone neo-Nazi’s. In the book it is mentioned that the Antifa in Norway more or less scared away the neo-Nazi groups but that’s not to say that there is no racism in Norway, it’s just not something people talk about.

So, for me there is not much to do if I wanted to be more active like protesting against neo-Nazi’s and racism. I keep it to writing about it even when only a handful of people read it and probably no one that disagrees with me. I do think it is important to read about it because racism sneaks in. Even in Holland the more progressive parties say thing nowadays that were taboo thirty years ago,  they slowly move towards the right, pushing the right more towards the extremes. In this process the people also slowly move their moral compass towards the extreme-right, this is what happened in Germany in the thirties where decent, well educated people slowly closed their eyes and killed millions of people in gas chambers. And you might say that that will never happen here but that is what the people back than also sad. In America it is even scarier right now than I Europe, there government there discredits the news media and their political opponents and those tactics come straight out of a handbook for wannabe dictators, read your history.