Day 3511, Looking against the light.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Revisiting

As human beings, we can easily feel overwhelmed. For example, you might go on a date with someone, and everything seems to click, making it feel as though you’ve known each other for a long time. Then, suddenly, they snap at the waiter. Or consider that new phone you’ve wanted for ages; after setting it up and trying it out, the excitement fades away in just three days, leaving you with just another phone.

Our expectations act like the bright sun, illuminating certain things while casting everything else into shadow, making the good seem overwhelming. That person or item feels so alluring that we desire them so badly, which can cloud our judgment and make it hard to think clearly. This realization can hit us quickly, as it does with the rude date, or it may take a few days, like with the phone.

We all understand this phenomenon; there are plenty of sayings that illustrate it, such as “blinded by love.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Approaching any date with the mindset that they are likely flawed, which is often true, isn’t conducive to a pleasant date, a fulfilling love life, or even the potential for building a family—the cornerstone of our existence. In a way, evolution has wired us to be less skeptical when choosing a mate. This skepticism often arises only after time has passed, when good memories are replaced by reality.

While a bit of drama can make life more interesting, the downside of our impulsive behaviors is evident in the unnecessary purchases we make—like the telephone I just bought, which I didn’t even need. This irrational tendency within us fuels our lifestyle and the capitalist system we live in. If we all acted as responsible consumers, our economic system would come to a halt, which poses a problem for those who appreciate it. Personally, I wouldn’t mind finding a more responsible alternative.

The primary concern is the potential destruction of our environment. The excessive production of goods, the energy consumed in that process, and the waste generated. However, for now, we seem blinded by our desires and are unable to see the consequences lurking beneath the surface.

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Day 3506,

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

To Paul Deussen
Leipzig, second half of October, 1868

My dear Friend: — Your letters arrive of late at some special festive occasion. Thus, when, not too long ago, I moved to my new residence in Leipzig, your letter which our friend Roscher had correctly dispatched here, was lying on the table. Soon thereafter I addressed the first part of my Laertianum to you so I may not be accused again of being ungrateful to my friends and through continuous silence create the impression as if I were dead. Nay, I live and, what’s more, live well and wish that you would sometime personally convince yourself of it, especially to realize that ϕιλοσοϕε (to philosophize) and being sick are not really identical concepts, but that, on the contrary, there is a certain “health,” the eternal foe of profound philosophy which, as you know, nowadays has become the nickname of certain kinds of border heroes and historians.

Day 3504,

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of Idols
How the ‘Real World’ at last Became a Myth, The Four Great Errors

4 The error of imaginary causes . – To start from the dream: on to a certain sensation, the result for example of a distant cannon – shot, a cause is subsequently foisted (often a whole little novel in which precisely the dreamer is the chief character). The sensation, meanwhile, continues to persist, as a kind of resonance: it waits, as it were, until the cause – creating drive permits it to step into the foreground – now no longer as a chance occurrence but as ‘meaning’. The cannon – shot enters in a causal way, in an apparent inversion of time. That which comes later, the motivation, is experienced first, often with a hundred details which pass like lightning, the shot follows .… What has happened? The ideas engendered by a certain condition have been misunderstood as the cause of that condition. – We do just the same thing, in fact, when we are awake. Most of our general feelings – every sort of restraint, pressure, tension, explosion in the play and counter – play of our organs, likewise and especially the condition of the nervus sympathicus – excite our cause – creating drive: we want to have a reason for feeling as we do – for feeling well or for feeling ill. It never suffices us simply to establish the mere fact that we feel as we do: we acknowledge this fact – become conscious of it – only when we have furnished it with a motivation of some kind. – The memory, which in such a case becomes active without our being aware of it, calls up earlier states of a similar kind and the causal interpretations which have grown out of them – not their causality. To be sure, the belief that these ideas, the accompanying occurrences in the consciousness, were causes is also brought up by the memory. Thus there arises an habituation to a certain causal interpretation which in truth obstructs and even prohibits an investigation of the cause.

Day 3500, especially.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human
Tokens Of Higher And Lower Culture

230 Esprit fort. – Compared with him who has tradition on his side and requires no reasons for his actions, the free spirit is always weak, especially in actions; for he is aware of too many motives and points of view and therefore possesses an uncertain and unpractised hand. What means are there of nonetheless rendering him relatively strong, so that he shall at least make his way and not ineffectually perish? How does the strong spirit (esprit fort) come into being? This is in the individual case the question how genius is produced. Whence comes the energy, the inflexible strength, the endurance with which the individual thinks, in opposition to tradition, to attain to a wholly individual perception of the world?

Day 3498, seen them all.

Daily picture

Over the 3500 days I have been posting a picture each day, only 1% have humans in them. I am not exactly sure what that says about me, but I do think that the buildings around us and the nature we walk through are so much more unique and interesting than the people I meet walking where I walk. If you’ve seen one, you have seen them all.