mind

Day 1778, Sapiens.

Books, Daily picture

Yesterday I wrote that I wanted to start reading some of the books I have (read). I decided to start with Sapiens, from Yuval Noah Harari. It is a well known book that I read it a couple of years ago, well, I listened to it. I have listened to the first chapter today. I do this listening in the car and at work. Wile listening I sometimes get distracted and forget to pause, this is the reason why I didn’t mind listening to the book again. I took some notes this time, and after the first chapter I listened to it again in a faster speed. It is a good thing that I did that because I missed some parts again… Normally I don’t mind not getting it all in, but now I want to listen to it all I notice that that is not so easy. I am sure this will also happen when you read a book, but I was quite obvious now. I work as a carpenter, it is often impossible to concentrate on a book, but today the work didn’t need much attention, but I guess my mind wondered off at some point.

This is written on his website of Yuval Noah Harrari, a brief history of humankind.

Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights.

Starting from this provocative idea, Sapiens goes on to retell the history of our species from a completely fresh perspective. It explains that money is the most pluralistic system of mutual trust ever devised; that capitalism is the most successful religion ever invented; that the treatment of animals in modern agriculture is probably the worst crime in history; and that even though we are far more powerful than our ancient ancestors, we aren’t much happier.

If you are interested in human history than I recommend starting with prehistory. How did people live before the periods we have some (written)information from. I find it interesting, and this book tells it without nonsense and it is reasonable up to date with the latest findings as far as I can tell. The way he writes tell me that he is a skeptical person, he tries to show different opinions but he doesn’t shy away from telling his own opinion. It is by no means a book that will tell you everything you need to know, it is a book written for a large audience and the ideas it brings are a good starting point for more research.

A few things that I realize better now are the facts that not only Homo Sapiens and the Homo Neandertalensis lived at the same time, but that there were other Homo … living also at the same time. We also pride ourselves of the big brain we have and that this is the reason why we are ahead of other animals, but we had that brain for 2 million years and didn’t do much with it. He writes that those “brains” were as capable as ours, they could in principle learn what we can learn if one would wake up now.

There is also a discussion about how we became Homo Sapiens. Did we replace the other species or did we breed with them. Most scientist prefer the so called replacement theory because this fits better with the idea that all humans are the same. The other idea is known as interbreeding and suggest that some Home Sapiens have DNA of other species that where living in the area they moved into. They now know that a lot of people in the west have some Neanderthaler DNA and people in other parts of the world carry DNA from other local, and extinct species. This is something I like to know more about.

Tomorrow I will write more about chapter one.

Day 1777, change.

Daily picture, Poetry

Today I started looking for one of my old poems when I realized that I came close to the date where I stopped writing poems. Remembering them to well I decided that it was enough. I started looking back at my old poems on Day 1699, I did it to give myself a brake and to practice my writing. I am contemplating now if I will start writing my poems again that are inspired by the picture I post for that day, or shall I take one of my books from the shelf and write about that. I have read a lot in the past, these day’s I listen to books and hardly ever take the time to read.

I have written about a book of Nietzsche on this blog, it is called “reading Human all too human”, everyday I read one aphorism of that book and gave my interpretation of it. It did it quite thoroughly, reading the text in English, German and Dutch and the English books also in three different translations. It was a lot of fun to do but after a while I stopped with it.

Reading a short aphorism was relatively easy, now I would like to read a book and make a summery of that what I have written the day before. This way I can combine the fun I have with writing on this blog and really read, or study a book I have read before but never serious.

I will think of a book tomorrow (and a poem today).

The picture above is taken from my living room. We had some nice snow this weekend and now it is freezing -16 centigrade.

Most of what I bear

lays quietly

besides my feet

I almost forgot how mush fun this is.

Day 1776, self help.

Daily picture, Poetry

Why do we feel guilty, if someone who we are close to, fails in life. Guilty in the sense that we wonder if we did enough. In most countries there are rules that regulate when we can take someones freedom away as a measure to protect them from themselves. Submitting someone to some kind of psychiatric institute is probably the closest thing you can do, if you want to help. But our guilt doesn’t come from our inaction, most of the time, it comes from the help, or lack of help we gave in the period before the mental breakdown.

It is a difficult subject. Most people have a hard time taking care of them self. We all have to jump through hoops, and find all kinds of distractions to prevent ourselves from staring in the empty center we feel. We work to much, sport to hard, meditate, pray, eat bad, sleep around, get addicted to drugs and all of the above. We probably all have our distractions, even if it is living a calm life, where you don’t rock the boat out of fear, doing nothing is also a distraction.

We off course, are most of the time not on the brink of a collapse. Some say because we are over all healthy, others say that our distractions work. I personally think that we stand healthy on top of a foundation of cards. And what is healthy? I think that there is never been a person from who you could say that he or she is without flaws. For some reason we can imagine a perfect being, but we can’t imagine that there is one among us. Maybe the concept of a god comes from this idea. But we can imagine a dragon by combining different parts of different animals, in this way we can also combine all the good parts of different humans, and imagine the perfect human.

I started with asking if we can help someone else. Assuming that we are all flawed and walk ourselves half blind through life, we can, knowing this, at least try to help, and if we are lucky we can nudge someone in a different direction. This new direction might also lead to a precipice, but are not all directions eventually. I also don’t want to fall into the trap where people say that you can only help yourself. If you don’t know left from right, you need the help of someone else.*

Saying that we don’t need help is like saying that we don’t need all these distractions we cling to. Everyone needs something to hold on to, and if you lost that in yourself you can only hope that someone else reaches out.

Inspired by Day 1598.

The broken rope

haunts me

~

your failure

my guilt

~

my fear

your reality

~

I will try

to hide the rope

*I always wonder why these thousands, and thousands of different self help books that are sold over the last hundred years are not enough proof that they don’t work. You cannot fix the engine while sitting in the car.

Day 1775, lion’s.

Daily picture, Poetry

I sometimes wonder if the animal, or the human in us, takes life so dam serious. I don’t think that animals think in words and concepts like we do. A lion is not thinking about his vacation the coming summer, or why it is so hot. A Lion has urges and needs, and he moves with them. The animal in us moves also with our needs and urges, but we can reflect on them, and sometimes react on them.

Both the lion and human attack when threatened, because they feel like it. Humans can also attack because they “think” it. Attacking is pretty serious, you can get wounded yourself, even if you don’t loose. You might say that the lion takes life unwillingly serious, he acts on his instincts and this is no game for him. We humans act also partially on our instincts, and are serious in this, and when we reason our way into a war, we don’t joke around either.

It makes me sad if I see all these man and woman in suites, standing tall, growling in the air. They send their planes to spy, provoke the other, and look the other way when it suits them. Has there ever been a crossroad in our past, where we could have decided that the thinking part in us, was their to tame the non thinking part. It just amazes me that whole countries, with all their people in it, still feel the need to react like a lion, when a stranger comes near.

All these people in suites, they seem so important. They probably feel so important. I wonder if they still know what it is to wonder. Their concept of the nation they represent, this mighty construct that drives their moves, like the urges and needs that the lion feels from its instinct.

I think that the animal instinct in us, is the one that takes life so dam serious. That’s why no one wants to think about it, afraid as they are for the realization that it is not necessary. We are afraid for our thoughts, they can give us freedom, the freedom to overrule our animal instincts. Freedom in this case means free from our destructive urges and needs, freedom means letting go of the hand that guides. Because the hand that guides is no longer needed, this is the reason why freedom has a bad name with all the leaders that worship the state* as the savior of all.

Day 1590 was the inspiration for today.

I live above

and below you

~

I hear footsteps

and your music

~

I hear your door

and a toilet

~

I see someone

in the lift

~

and I wonder

if you wonder

*or church, philosophy, party etc.

Day 1774, Stockholm syndrome.

Daily picture, Poetry

I think I never blamed my parents for the way they raised me. It was never really in my character to blame them, and now that I am older I realize that they where just kids when they gave life to me and my younger brother and sister. The way that you are raised has of course an influence on you, but I don’t think we should overestimate it. I was at least lucky enough that my parents wanted to steer me in the right direction, and didn’t blame me to much for their mistakes, but I have to admit that beauty for me cannot go without some flaws, and I like mine.

No matter what kind of parents you have, there is some kind of Stockholm syndrome going on when you think back, and tell your story. Parents get these random, scared little persons thrown into their laps, to take care of. They are not allowed to go, and are ensured by their hostage-takers that they will be fine, as long as they listen to them. After what seems to be ages, they are suddenly free to go, they smell the freedom, like they never smelled it before. And the people that kept you hostage for all these years, you thank them for their protection, and you visit them once a year in their jails.

I am not a parent, but I can imagine that a parent with a conscience is, without a choice, put on a trajectory that revolves around their kids, and no longer only around their own will. This is the kind of jail I was thinking of, but I am not sure that what I feel, is freedom.

The inspiration for today comes from a poem I wrote last year, Day 1577.

I remember the house

where I thought I grew up

~

there was an old chimney

a corner where I played

and my father closed the door

~

in my memories

he was never there

in reality

he often stares at me

standing in front

of my reflection

Day 1773, just a role.

Daily picture, Poetry

I do this thing, that a lot of people get confused about. Maybe you do it to. I have thoughts about everything, and opinions about some of them. It often happens that I have different opinions about the same subject, at the same time. If I discuss one of these subjects with someone, I often choose to contradict.

I think I like to disagree because when you disagree with someone, specially if you put some heat in it, you will get a better sense of who the person is. Do they stay calm and collected, get angry or silent, or do they have a good argument or contradict themselves. An other benefit of this is that these sparring partners start to dislike you, and I like people that can see past this “outside” of who we appear to be.

I know that I often play a role, I know that other people do to, and others? They seem to believe that they are the role they play. We humans are also good in projecting a role onto someone else. If someone dislikes me because I argue to much, then they are right, but also wrong. I like to argue, it’s my favorite role so to speak, but I react mainly on the sent of doubt in the other. I have met enough people that saw right thru my charade, because they are wiser, or have played the same games.

I realize that it sound arrogant, like everybody that has argued with me is suddenly not that smart. I hope you will understand that that is not what I mean. There are several reasons why people seem to tel the good listener that they are not so sure of themselves. A lot of people tel you that it is “their opinion”, with other words: I don’t know. If something is red, you say: that is red. Not: in my opinion that is red. It is some sort of politeness that leans toward uncertainty.

There are also people that are really confident in their opinions. If you are patient, you will probably see them being all sure of themselves while being wrong. They can be right 9 times, but if they are wrong the 10th time with the same bravado as before, you could safely say that they where probbably just lucky the 9 times before.

I generalize of course in these examples, the world is nice to look at in black and white, but we all know that it is just gray all over the place.

Today inspiration comes from a poem written in August 2020, Day 1570.

It looks like

all the lines eventually

come together

somewhere near

the end

in the distance

~

till then

I just hang my thoughts

on them

Day 1772, how to repair a TV.

Daily picture, Poetry

We all know that if you want to become better in something, you have to practice and learn. But something strange happens if you learn more and more. There comes a point that you learn so much about a specific task or subject, that you loose control, to many variables make choosing the right direction, to hard.

If you are born before the 1990’s you probably know how to fix one of those old TV’s, you make a fist and bang on it, it is easy. You know only one way of fixing it, banging it. Now you’ve been to TV repair school and know all about TV’s, the next time it is broken, you have to go over a long checklist and rule out 50 possible problems. You gained a lot of knowledge, but it didn’t get easier, the only thing you know for sure is that banging on a TV is not good. This example is of course a little silly, but you can replace the TV with whatever you want, and you will see that this example still work.

Look at history, with little knowledge you can take big steps and proclaim that we are living like this because they did that 50 years ago. When you then start to read and learn more about that period, you will find out that it is more complicated once you take in account all the other facts and circumstances. A lot of historians will tell you that after many years of study they understand less of what happened, because they know to much.

It was still normal before the 18th century that a scholar was not only a philosopher but also a astronomer, chemist, physicist and also a mechanical engineers. All those different fields of knowledge where still so small that one person could understand it all. After the 18th century you will see that more and more people are specializing in one or two fields. These day’s you can be an engineer specialized in a subsection of a subsection of the department that is specialized in the designs of a wheel for an airplane.

If you know little, you will bang your fist on the TV in the hope you will fix it. If you know to mush you spend the rest of your life thinking about why the TV is broken.

I was inspired by Day 1548

In

and out of focus

we climb up

~

till our branch

bends down again

to where we started

Day 1771, metronome.

Daily picture, Poetry

I have a sad undertone in my life, my internal metronome swings from left to right, uneven before every step. The strange thing is that I am outwards, and inwards a positive person. Sure, I like to complain, but I do that merely to hide my detachment for what is trivial.

The poem from Day 1547 goes about the scars we all have.

There are day’s

that I look down

and feel good

about the scars that I have

These scars can be carved in your flesh, but also in your soul. My own scars are not a source for sorrow for me, I look down at them, and almost always feel good about them. I don’t know why I have this positive attitude, one rationalization is the simple fact that you can’t turn the clock around and change things. I am also happy with who I am now, despite all that has happened in the past. I might also have liked the person that I would have become, if things had gone differently , but that is like looking in the future of an alternate universe.

I sometimes try to tell people that they should forget the past, or put it in a better contexts, but I know that this is like a musician telling me to keep the rhythm. Maybe you can learn to be more forwards looking, but I know a lot of people that seem to be born with a certain preference in either direction. Some people change after they fallen down hard, the chock can help, but also in this case, in either direction.

Maybe Nietzsche was right when he wrote that one of the best blessing we can have is: having a bad memory. I have forgotten all the stress that you get immediately after a setback, I remember that I had stress, but that dark cloud is absorbed. Maybe the stress and sadness got absorbed by the sad rhythm of my internal metronome, maybe it drives it.

Day 1770, force of nature.

Daily picture, Poetry

All that lives, or is just matter on this earth, has to live according to natures rules. We all are slaves to friction, erosion, gravity and the sun that puts most of this in motion. Within these boundaries it seems to be a free for all, we see some order in for instance the erosion of a rock formation, but only when we focus on a part of all that is the cause of this erosion.

Wind and water take the softer parts of the rock in their own fashion. We know about the water, and the wind, and rain, we can go several steps deeper when trying to explain what the reason is that rocks erode. My point is that a four year old kid that starts asking questions like: why? That even the smartest person alive can maybe answer 30 times before they have to concede. We are not capable of understanding it all, the closest we get is imagining it in rough strokes and bold colors.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Albert Einstein

You can replace the rock example from above with history. History is also chaos when you try to understand it all, only when you zoom in, you will get closer to an understanding. But if you don’t zoom in to close, and try to look at that part of history trough the lens of “bolder strokes and many colors” then you will see some highlights, and the more important figures morph into easier to understand caricatures.

A person like Ronald Reagan or Michael Jackson can be described in a book with a thousand pages but I am sure that all of you can do it in three sentences or less. When you make such a bold caricature of a person, or situation, then you (should)know that you are maybe right from your limited perspective, but at the same time totally wrong. To understand Ronald Reagan better you should read a book about him, maybe several, and for good measure, study the eighties. If you have done that, then you can form a more accurate opinion. We are capable of understanding the smaller details in more details, only if you want to understand the big picture you should use your imagination. Don’t use your imagination, when your neighbor so noisy, ask it.

We all share this problem of our nature. It is all so hard to understand, so we adopted our look at reality in such a way, that we are most of the time satisfied with the (almost literal) picture we have of the situation. Look at all the wars that are fought over the years, most of them started because of a misunderstanding of the situation. Remember the Iraq war from 15 years ago, no one was in control there, we understood what was “eroding” our will not to fight, but we didn’t look much further than that.

Inspired by Day 1532

All these free wills

are

colliding

with each other

while nature

is holding there hand

Day 1769, fruitful.

Daily picture, Poetry

You sometimes hear these stories, where two or more people meet each other by coincident, and something blooms out of that encounter. It can be the start of relationship, or of a fruitful project, or along friendship. Maybe you have one of those stories, or have embellished the story of how you met a significant other, to make it more special.

I am not a statistician, but the chance that you have one of these encounters is probably small, maybe a couple of times in a lifetime. It is hard to say, but have you ever thought about all the near misses. Imagine that you live in a small town with 100 000 people. Of those 100 000, maybe 10 are a match for you, as a friend, lover, or for a partnership. The chance that you are at the same place, at the same time, and have some kind of introduction is really small. Even if you are in the same circle of interest, you have to be lucky that you get close to each other and have a reason to talk. It is not impossible off course, as I said, it will probably happen in your lifetime a couple of times.

Imagine that same town, where you have a small change that everything comes together for you to have this fruitful meeting with one of those 10 “matches”. The change that you get close to those people on a regular basis is probably high. You probably shared a bus together, or past each other in the supermarket or on the street, without ever knowing that you are close to someone of great interest to you. You might sit next to someone that, if you get acquainted, might mean that your life could make a significant turn.

It is just an observation, there is no moral to this story. It might help to be more friendly to others, and to keep your senses open for signs of shared interests, and maybe trow a line out every now and then, if you think someone might bite.

The inspiration for today comes from Day 1517, written in May of last year

I still follow the lines

that life throws

in front of me

~

maybe

I should have grabbed one