My thoughts

Day 3331, imagine.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Let’s imagine. Let’s imagine, or maybe better said, presume, that we are all here by coincidence. This spinning rock around a sun has had billions of years to produce us, and this rock will be swallowed by the same sun billions of years from now, long after we are all gone and forgotten. We are not more than a sneeze of our galaxy, and our galaxy is also not much more than a collection of rubble attracting each other. 

Out of this will follow that all the rules, morals, and judgments are worth nothing besides their role in other made-up constructs. So what if we stop judging, and even better, and in theory even possible, what if we no longer learn kids how to judge. Show them the world in all its glory without judgment and let them grow up that way. Kids don’t care about the color of your skin, the country you’re from, or the gender you have or don’t have. The imagination in my thought experiment is thus the following: what would a world look like in 50 years, when most children have never learned how to judge? Imagine all these so-called world leaders who stink up the place now, and the only thing they do is to make sure the trains run on time and that there is food on the table. Politicians are no longer needed in a world like that, just people who know how to manage and organize, and they do that purely because things have to be organized, and do that without any imaginary reasoning.

Continue reading →

Day 3327, some more notes.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I like to believe that humans think the same way now as we did 50000 years ago. With thinking, I mean the strength of it, the speed, what we can accomplish with it. If it is possible to develop a good IQ test, we wouldn’t do much better now than someone living all those years ago, someone who’s figuring out how to crack the right stone to get a knife out of it. We have a much larger well of knowledge right now, which can aid us, making it appear that we are much smarter. On the other hand, there are probably not more than a 100 people who are living in modern houses right now who can make a good flint knife, and only because they studied it and not because they figured it out by themselves. All I want to say is that there were also Einsteins living at the beginning of our civilization; the only difference is that they lacked the instruments and wealth of knowledge collected and written down that they could build their theories on, and most of all, they lacked any means to let us modern people know what they knew. We have this wealth of apparent knowledge, and we all know more on average than someone living a hundred years ago, but that doesn’t mean we are smarter, let alone that we make better decisions.  

Humans are the product of many millions of years of evolutionary development, and how and why we think the way we do is still not completely clear. It is clear that on an evolutionary timescale, some form of consciousness just happened a second ago, and from the first caveman to me writing this is measured in milliseconds. Thinking in the sense of explaining ourselves also plays a minor role in our daily business, so to speak. We often react and come up with a reason for why we reacted that way after the fact. The words we use function more as bandages in many cases. An example of a trigger we inherited is that most of us jump from sudden movements in our peripheral vision because millions of evolutionary years have “learned” us that jumping is better than not jumping. After all, the jumpers get bitten less by that nasty snake crawling on their path and live to tell the tale. Many of our behaviours exist because they are part of millions of years of evolution. Before we had words, writing, and laws, we already had thoughts in the form of feelings that drove us and made us jump out of fear for crawling creatures, but for thousands of years, we could not talk about these feelings with each other. We moved together in small groups in similar ways, lived together like we do now, but in silence, doing what felt best. The different human species lived like that for a long time, and it is only a relatively short time ago that we started talking about what was driving us and why we are doing the things we do. 

In that sense, we are still infants. Look at our society now, in 2025. We have a democracy like the ancient Greeks already had, and people still vote, and like in ancient times, they still vote for the loudest baboon. It doesn’t matter that the baboon speaks; it matters that he touches the right feelings, feelings we react to more than words, let alone logic. The people who know the right words to “enhance” their feelings understand that the baboon only makes noises, but they also know that a modern human is no match for a baboon. There is no denying that a strong figure in a group is something that has helped the human species along. We all felt safe in our mother’s arms, and that strong feeling lingers on in adulthood. When a fire breaks out, we all probably follow the loudest voice.

Day 3324, country above all.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I watched some America news again and realised….America is both the wealthiest country and the poorest country in the world. They truly believe what they tell themselves and don’t realize that there is another world beyond their own. Even well-educated people in America talk about America as being something special. The following quote from Barack Obama, for instance.

“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.”

In my book, the last people who were so proud of their country were the Nazies in Germany and Italy. Obama is of course no Nazi but for some reason he also worship the flag and obviously need it as some kind of security blanket like the rest does. Or did he had to play that card? And is that not even worse? Obama is probably a decent person, but the constant pledges of allegiance he made while growing up have also had an influence on him. Perhaps he could have said that we are all humans and that all these distinctions are merely made up.

Continue reading →

Day 3320, Bauhouse.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I watched a fascinating documentary about Bauhaus, an art school that had a profound influence on architecture and design. What I liked the most in this documentary was what it showed of the students and how progressive they were 100 years ago. It was, of course, only a tiny island of light in a large sea of backwardness, but it’s good to see that contrast when it is so hard to see now. I also understand better now why I enjoy taking pictures of all these straight and clean lines; perhaps that resonates with the progressive mindset I aspire to have.

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.

Continue reading →

Day 3279, walled in.

Daily picture, My thoughts

This weekend, someone mentioned that he has been influenced a lot by Iain McGilchrist. I never heard of him. He has written some relatively famous books that are also very lengthy. YouTube to the rescue, and there you can find many lectures and interviews. I like many of his ideas; some of them are inspired by ancient wisdom and religions, and it has to do with the way people act and react in the world, but as a neuroscientist, he can look at the actual brain and see, in fact, what happens if you “turn off” the left or right part of the brain. His theory, in short, revolves around the idea that right-brain people are more thoughtful and left-brain people are more efficient without regard for the consequences. He argues that a balance is necessary and that there have been times when rulers, or the societies as a whole, were more in balance. It is interesting, and It is worth learning about it. There is an agenda for why he is pushing his ideas, and that has to do with the environment and how we destroy it and with the mindless rush for more power and money by a small elite that, in his mind, is on a trajectory to destroy the world.  

YouTube cannot be YouTube if it does not recommend other similar programs, and one of them was from another thinker and activist. His name is Daniel Schmachtenberg, and he is not only looking depressed, but his message is also depressing. Just watch the video, and you will know what I mean.

The thing is that I can understand what they say. The hard data is not lying, and though the world is always governed by people with little empathy, insight, and wisdom, the problem is now that besides the nuclear weapons that could kill us, it is now also possible to develop with the help of AI viruses that have the potential to kill us all. And climate change seems to be something that everybody tries to ignore. It might not affect us, but the story might be different in 50 to 100 years.

I don’t know what to do with this. I try to live my life as consciously as possible. I try not to pollute more than necessary and try to be thoughtful in my interactions with the people around me. I educate myself and think about ways to educate others. I like the idea of anarchism because it has the potential to take away the handful of leaders who always seem to mess it up for us. But all of this is child’s play, and the best thing it does is keeping my consciousness clean(ish). 

Continue reading →

Day 3278, Sunday morning.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I walked through the city today and brought along an old friend, my Nikon D700. I have not used it in a while, but like many old friends, I still knew how to turn it on and what buttons to push. 

Like most Sunday mornings, there were not many people around, which made it easier to ignore them. People are interesting, but I prefer the spaces they leave behind. The empty streets with all that is left tell many stories; I don’t need the noise from whoever left it.

Day 3260, against ideality.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Poetry 
Abandoned factories are often more interesting than the ones still in use. 

For me, it is the activity, the moving parts, and the workers doing their work in silence that I see projected on what is now, old.

I imagine, and what I imagine is often a more refined version of reality, with harmony as its guide. 

Reality necessarily rubs against ideality.

Day 3255, and study history.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I don’t have many feelers in the world about what is going on. I get a notification on my phone if something noteworthy is happening, though I block all the news regarding certain billionaires in charge in a country I think is not even real. I listen to some podcasts, and the commentary I get there tells me a lot. One is from an old Dutch historian, Maarten van Rossum. He is over eighty years old, and he has seen it all. He often gets the question if he is not worried about what is happening in the world now, and he laughs about it. Of course, some things are not good, but all the alarm is so dumb (his words). I also remember the Reagan days and the fear we had of nuclear war. I though life as we know it would end, but it didn’t.

I don’t listen to what is happening in America because I am worried; I don’t listen to or follow the news from that place out of some sort of shame. Can you imagine if the Martian came and asked for our leader, and he showes up… it’s just so ridiculous that I have a hard time believing that it is happening.

I also have to say that in between getting up, going to work, being busy with restoring these wooden boats, coming back home, drinking some coffee, making dinner, writing something on my blog, and playing some mindles games while listening to something interesting leaves little room to be worried or feel threatened by the world. Things are safe here in Norway. The doors are still unlocked, and I can’t remember ever seeing the police this year. Most people’s lives are pretty uneventful, and an information overload causes most worries, I think.

In the early eighties, I was worried, but also just 9 or 10. I was worried because my mother was a lefty, and we went to anti-war and nuclear bomb demonstrations. And there were also posters in the house warning about these bombs. I was not worried because I understood the danger; I was told to be worried. If my mother had been a right-leaning conservative, I would probably have felt safe with these nuclear weapons protecting us from the comies, and I would have had an other memory.

There is a big difference between the immediate danger of a real war that is happening around you or if you live in an objectively dangerous neighborhood or the danger you feel because you are spoonfed fear from whatever direction you lean your mouth to.

I recommend looking at your news app only a few times a week but leaving the notification on in case something important happens. No social media except if you only follow family or specific interest groups that are not news-related. Reading books is healthy, and good old-fashioned magazines, even if they are digital, are a good substitute for flashy websites.

Having discussions online or in the real world seems to be interesting, and maybe it doesn’t matter that the social group that influenced you in the past was your family and some friends, and now half the world, but discussions about your opinions are as fruitless as trying to describe the Mona Lisa if you have never seen or heard of it.

And study history. We live in strange times now, but you will be amazed that there have always been periods that were strange and, more often than not, much more dangerous than the time we live in now.

Day 3227, Spinoza.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Video

Almost thirty years ago, I read about Spinoza for the first time, and he became one of my inspirations to dive deeper into the world of philosophy. Every now and then, I will get a reminder of why he inspires me so much, and this video is one of those. 

I dare to say that without Spinoza, there would be no Nietzsche, maybe a little exaggerated, but not in my world where Nietzsche followed Spinoza. Here is a quote from Nietzsche from one of his letters.

“I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by “instinct.” Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect—but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness.”

Day 3224, the futere is clear for some.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Poetry 
I recognize that shape from the past
it looks like stairs going up
but I am fooled before
and wonder if I ever
should even go there

The former Dutch prime minister is now the boss of NATO. He is warning everyone that we have to prepare for the next war. He is doing that because the warmongers in Washington told him to. Russia is doing the same, and China has joined the party too. I am pretty sure that most people don’t want war, especially not the one these so-called world leaders wish for, because the next war will probably cost half a billion people their lives. We, as outsiders, can do very little because a couple of thousand people, at most, decide our destiny. In the USA, there is a democracy, Russia has a strong leader and a very weak democracy, and China is a dictatorship. It does not really matter what kind of government there is; in the end, a handful of people always decide the destiny of the rest. It is frustrating, and it can make you angry. As an Anarchist, I just hope that in the distant future, we all live in small communities, so small that even if one produces a little dictator, he or she could do little harm to the communities around him let alone the world.

Governments are hiding places for people who wanna play Risk with real people; we are and always will be children, only our toys change. I never took any active part in our so-called democracy and hope no one does in the future.

Day 3216, no time to look.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Can you imagine that you lived a hundred thousand years ago? On a calm morning, you walk to the lake and look down into the dark water just before you put your hands in it to scoop so you can drink. You see a face, reflected, we might say now, a face like all the others you see around you, but this one is unknown.

These days, you see yourself more often. In the morning, in the mirror, and on pictures you have hanging around or on your phone. I am not sure if we really look at ourselves, but we know it is us that we see, though we probably have a hard time describing ourselves if we have to.  

I have to be careful when discussing how important your looks are and how much it contributes to your self-image. I have had the same haircut and beard lengths for half my life. It was never a choice out of style but out of laziness and practicality. I can trim my hair and beard once a month and be done with it. It is a style I am used to, and it bothers me when my hair gets too long, partly because of how it looks, I have to admit, but also because I don’t like to trim it. I know enough people who pay more attention to their appearance; maybe because I have little to work with, I never really developed that urge. 

Maybe because I was already partly bold and grey when I was twenty-five, I stopped seeing myself in the mirror as any competition in the particular world I was living in; there are standards, no matter where you live, and I didn’t meet them hair wise and didn’t care. Maybe not entirely because of this, but I started paying more attention to how I looked on the inside. To understand what beauty is inside, I started reading books that talk about this, and though beauty in this realm is also in the eyes of the beholder, we can all agree on what is ugly and what is not, even if it is not fashionable and politically correct. 

The mirror in this inner world can be your consciousness. And just like in the real world, we often don’t look deep enough into the eyes we see reflected in the mirror. Maybe this is because of the attention you don’t give it or because you see the look you want to see, the one that is in fashion; the world’s approval is enough for you. Perhaps you are like that person who lived a hundred thousand years ago, and you never had a clear, calm morning when you looked down into a deep lake to see your reflection for the first time.

Disclaimer: these words are a work in progress, and I know from experience that I would write them differently tomorrow, but we live now, and this is how I say it now.

Day 3206, have a nice read.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Yesterday, I wrote about the possible origins of war. When I write these pieces, I don’t devise a plan; I just count on myself to write what I think right now. What often happens is that my thoughts about the subject evolve while writing, so it can also be a surprise what my point is when I am done. I am not a scientist in the sense that I do extensive research and fieldwork to gather data and, from there, a theory about a problem, one that I stated at the beginning. I am curious and know that what my opinion is; it is probably nonsense or just vaguely hitting some truths. So today, I searched on the internet for some academic papers about wars and whether we homo-sapiens made it up when we had already evolved into what we are now or if we inherited this trade.  I may think more like an old-fashioned philosopher who searches for solutions and problems (either order will work) while sitting in an armchair, but these scientists might be strict and rigorous in their methods, they also disagree with each other, even with all their theories and proofs. It is not a practical science where a big bang clarifies that that recipe didn’t work or a pill cures or not. My first thought after reading and browsing through some of these papers was that they should do some interdisciplinary work. A philosopher and psychologist might have some helpful input. But they might have already done that. This kind of research reminds me of the time when we tried to dive as deep as possible without scuba gear; the deeper you get, the more you get overwhelmed by the thought of suffocating; the deeper you dive into this material, the more you realize that there is too much information to consider, you struggle to get deeper out of pride and want to get air out of cowardice.  

The following is a quote from a scientist named Luke Glowacki. I read most of his paper, and though I don’t know where he stands in his field, he seems legitimate and a real scientist. 

“Abstract: The role of warfare in human evolution is among the most contentious topics in the evolutionary sciences. The debate is especially heated because many assume that whether our evolutionary ancestors were peaceful or warlike has important implications for modern human nature. One side argues that warfare has a deep evolutionary history, possible dating to the last common ancestor of bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans, while the other views war as a recent innovation, primarily developing with the rise of sedentism and agriculture. I show that although both positions have some support warranting consideration, each sometimes ignores uncertainties about human evolution and simplifies the complex reality of hunter-gatherer worlds. Many characterizations about the evolution of war are partial truths. Bonobos and chimpanzees provide important insights relevant for understanding the origins of war, but using either species as a model for human evolution has important limitations. Hunter-gatherers often had war, but like humans everywhere, our ancestors likely had a range of relationships depending on the context, including cooperative intergroup affiliation. Taken together, the evidence strongly suggests that small-scale warfare is part of our evolutionary history predating agriculture and sedentism, but that cooperation across group boundaries is also part our evolutionary legacy.”

Link to the paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VEDNdEgRpG2IovIIP9if_gR8NBm5Wh3T/view

I also read a paper by Guy Massie. I don’t know him either, but he is also interesting and more scientific than I ever will be. 

“Abstract: Much of the academic literature written about the First World War has tended to revolve around questions of diplomacy, foreign policy, and the International System as it existed in Europe in the decades before the war began. To balance this, I analyze the intellectual history of evolutionary thought as it applied to the question of war, peace, and the alleged “pugnacity” of man before and during the war years. Many people viewed the world of international conflict through the lens of socio-biological progress and a “struggle for existence” among humans, nations, and races. By identifying three broad intellectual trends, I argue that these evolutionary narratives of the war question were diverse. Some used the language of human evolution to argue that war was an inevitable engine of progress whereas others stressed different concepts in evolutionary science, such as cooperation, to make pacifist arguments. A third school of thought, the pessimists, argued that man was inherently warlike but that this instinct could be tamed. As the centennial anniversary of the July Crisis and the beginning of the First World War approaches, it is worth investigating the ideational “mood” of the era and the intellectual climate which allowed for such a devastating war to take place.”

https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/cria/article/view/116/61

Day 3203, an other day.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I have no real attachment to celebrating the new year. When I was young, it was exciting to buy fireworks and search for leftovers long into the night. Later, I had work where I had to work on those days, and as an anarchist, I can’t help but see the relativism of all these celebrations. And I don’t know why that one day a year is chosen as some kind of turning point, mainly because most of the time, maybe all of the time, real changes happen on entirely arbitrary days. All these traditions come from your surroundings and are fed and seen mostly uncritically, the same traditions that make us anxious about foreigners and let us see women as something other than men, to name just two of the more nasty ones. Traditions are fascinating when you read about them in a history book. 

A part of relativizing your own (made-up) culture is realizing that what is normal for you is not normal for others.

  1. Lunar New Year – Date varies (between January 21 and February 20)
  2. Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year (date varies, usually in September)
  3. Nowruz – Persian New Year (March 20 or 21)
  4. Ethiopian New Year (Enkutatash) – September 11 (or 12 in a leap year)
  5. Thai New Year (Songkran) – April 13-15
  6. Burmese New Year (Thingyan) – April (date varies, typically mid-April)
  7. Hindu New Year – Various dates depending on the region:
  8. January 1 – Gregorian Calendar (widely celebrated globally)
  9. Korean New Year (Seollal) – Date varies (between January 21 and February 20)
  10. Tibetan New Year (Losar) – Date varies (usually in February or March)
  11. Sikh New Year (Vaisakhi) – April 13 or 14
  12. Bengali New Year (Pohela Boishakh) – April 14 or 15
  13. Assamese New Year (Bohag Bihu) – April 14
  14. Odia New Year (Maha Vishuba Sankranti) – April 14 or 15
  15. Māori New Year (Matariki) – Date varies (usually in June or July)
  16. Celtic New Year (Samhain) – October 31
  17. Kazakh New Year (Nauryz Meyrami) – March 21

Day 3198, choices.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Part one 

The choices we make

We all know ourselves; no matter how old you are and how much attention you pay to who you are, each day will make you more confident in your beliefs about yourself. We can talk about ourselves, where we come from, and how we grew up. Important experiences that we remember, some might say that they have formed us. If you know this and pay attention, you might understand that our past is essential for who we are today and our future choices. So I ask you, are you in charge of your future choices, or is it your past?