Tag: Philosophy

Day 1759, island.

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1406. If you click on the link you will see the picture that inspired me to write that poem. When I write these short poems I try to describe the picture, and at the same time I want to put some philosophy in there. I have lived at a place that was once an island, but because there is a bridge now, I wondered if it is still an island. There are all kinds of opinions about this question, but for me it didn’t feel like an island. Your stuck on an island when it storms, we could just leave when we wanted. It’s a silly question, but the poem can also be seen with a philosophers eye.

I live

on an Island

~

but

there is this bridge

to the rest

of the world

~

I sometimes

wonder

if

I really live

on an Island

We humans, I don’t know if other animals do this to, are good in getting stuck in our own heads. We all know what it feels like to worry about, for example, the bills that have to be paid, what your knew boss and colleagues thinks of you, or your new lover. You can think of many other examples that make us think and ponder way to much in our own heads.

There are of course enough legitimate reason to worry and stress about a situation, like when a family member has to go to a hospital, or your marriage is coming to an end. But if you have lived for a while, you can tell yourself that you have worried about paying the bills for years now, and you are still alive, you always managed. And that new job, when you just started you had a reason to question your skills, but now you have proven yourself, you don’t have to fall back to these old habits. And worry about a new lover… well, if you are afraid to live alone after, lets say your 30th birthday, than you have bigger problems.

When it is storming outside, and your are stuck on your little island in your head, you have to remember that there is still a bridge to the mainland. A bridge to family members or friends that can help you. Even if you have no one on the other side of the bridge, just the act of crossing it can be a big help. I always promote to people the idea that they have to try to broaden their horizon. When your stuck on your little island, you have only access to what is on that island. If that is the only knowledge you have, that can help you out of a bind, and it is not working, you have to put new knowledge in your head.

I like the island metaphor, but I also have a metaphor with a car. A lot of people have problems with metaphor’s, they tell me halfway: but I am not car. If you one of them, then I am sorry.

The metaphor goes like: When your car breaks down, and you don’t know nothing about cars, then you have a problem understanding what is going on, or explaining the problem to an other. The only thing you can say is that it stopped and no longer works. Lets now say that after this experience you take a course in car mechanics, and you read some books about cars and how they work. With this knowledge, you can maybe find the problem with your car, the next time it stops working. You know all the parts, and you can maybe see witch one is broken, and if you can’t find the problem you can tell the mechanic more accurate what happened, and point him or her to the right direction.

The car is of course yourself, when we brake down, and stay on our island of knowledge, we might never find out what is going on. If you start reading some books about us, humans, and how we work, you might find clues about your own problem much easier, or tell a friend clearer what is going on with you.

P.S. I feel a little stuck in my head, had a demanding job at work, and it seems that I have totaled my car in a minor crash with a ditch that was pleasantly dug besides the slippery road. So in my head I feel that I have rambled on for to long…

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Day 1757, school of life.

As a carpenter, I sometimes have apprentices. As a teacher I have to try to imagine what they are going to do, so I can stop them when they might cut their finger in two instead of the peace of wood. I have to look at their movements and expressions in the face, is it showing doubt, or confidence? They can both be dangerous.

Outside of these kinds of teacher vs student situations, we also like to “imagine” the movements of the people we meet and live with. We are specially interested in the movements of their thoughts, and like to predict them, and why they do the things they do. The problem is that we don’t like to be judged like a student when we talk with the people we meet and/or care about. There are of course all kinds of signals that can lead the astute observer to predict what the other thinks or is going to do. Just read stories about con artists and their ability to “read” people. But it is not polite to do it, at-least not to much.

The biggest problem we face while we interpret the other, is our own lack of objectivity. When I tell my apprentice not to put their finger at this or that place, and I see their finger starting to move their, I can intervene. I know from my own objective experience that your finger wants to go there, but you have to resist that urge, that’s what I have to teach the apprentice, and I can do this objectively. When they are young they will often complain and tell me that they know that, but their body language tells different, and to protect their fingers I have to insist and tell them that they are wrong.

As a teacher you have, most of the time, more knowledge, and because of this you can “predict” what your apprentice is going to do. The problem is that there are no teachers in life, or living. We are all apprentices, and as such it is difficult to maintain a healthy teacher vs student relation with anybody when the thing you have to learn is…living. There are many people that have really good ideas about life, and they can be worth it to be studied and taken serious. But good advice is not life, even Gandhi had horrible idea’s, and mother Teresa is also no saint in all regards.

Life is a project we are all working on in our own pace, and we will meet a lot of people that know a shortcut to finish life’s project, but look around, and look at the state of the world. It is better then before but there was never and is not now, someone that has finished “project life”…without cutting their fingers.

Today writing was inspired by a poem I wrote for Day 1400

I don’t think

there is anyone

that knows

what you see

~

but it is

in our nature

to imagine

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Day 1756, flat.

An empty mind

makes nice echo’s

This is a poem I wrote on Day 1396, January last year.

An empty mind

makes nice echo’s

This is a poem I wrote on Day 1396, January last year.

I have always had an interest in conspiracy theories. I remember reading books from Däniken, about aliens, and I also bought books about other kinds of conspiracies, more general. I was in my early twenties and it was kind of exiting reading about things where no one talks about. This was all before the internet became a big thing, so it was not possible for me to get sucked in, on a downwards spiral, on you tube. I soon started seeing all kinds of inconsistencies, and started reading books that debunked a lot of these strange, but interesting, and exiting idea’s.

The strange thing is that I was still young, and knew little about the world around me. I still had to learn a lot about politics, society, history and so on. So my world view was still kind of empty, but when I read these conspiracy books I enjoyed shoving it in the face of my empty worldview. I think I just liked to “shove it” into something, like young people often do. It is also the way these stories are told, there is a constant undertone of hidden secrets and powers. These hidden powers control the world, a world that I just started to learn, but more important, still didn’t.

That was my small laps into insanity, but it is useful, I have my own experience, though it is 28 years ago, so I don’t know how reliable my memory is of that time. As I said before, I am still interested in conspiracy theories, and specially the mindset of people that believe these idea’s. Last year I watched a lot of you tube video’s about people that debunk flat earth believes. There is an overwhelming mount of evidence that the world is round, but there are thousands of people that believe otherwise. I have to tel one story, because it is still with me. They asked a flat earther why he didn’t hop on a bout and sailed to the edge to take some pictures, as proof that the earth is flat. He said that they patrol the seas to stop this from happening. The interviewer then calculated that you need around 50.000 boats to stop anyone from entering the “forbidden” zone. You have to man these boats in shifts, they have to be maintained and build, millions of people have to be involved in that task…why has no one ever talked about this secret project? It is ridicules of course, but we people like to make our little tree houses to play and hide in, and as long as we keep our knowledge of the world as minimal as possible, we make sure we have enough room for loud voices to fill that empty dome.

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Day 1755, art.

I like going to modern art museums. I like to go, because of it’s popularity, it’s most of the time nice and quiet to walk around. I walk around in other buildings to, looking at the details of it’s architecture and other details. But walking in a public building like that feels often awkward, that’s why I like to go to a museum. In a museum I can walk around, enjoy my surrounding, without feeling out of place.

I put meaning in my pictures, when I write a poem based on it, but I never take a picture with a particular poem in mind. I just take pictures, and surprise myself later. My girlfriend starts with a more elaborate plan when she makes her paintings, that’s another way to approach it. I never thought deep about why there are these different approaches, my first guess is, that it has to do with how our brains are wired. Another reason can be that I never learned how to take pictures, I know all the technical details, but a technically bad picture can still be good. Other photographers know more about light en moods and how to manipulate their gear to the fullest, and repeat that process. These are the kind of artist that plan their photo shoots, and they get at least a technically superior picture.

You see these different approaches in art museums to, blobs of colorful paint, detailed depictions of reality or beautifully made sculptures of nothings. I always look at them as beautiful accidents, like I take my pictures. I am always amazed when people tell all kinds of stories about the meaning of some of the details, the combination of colors, and why the artist did this or that. I personally think that if an artist has something to say with their art it should be “readable” with maybe some explanation, for everyone. If you have to tell what it means, then you should just tel people what you mean without wasting a canvas and paint.

I know that this is not fair. I read philosophy books that need some prior knowledge, and otherwise a lot of explanation. Maybe I miss that knowledge, regarding some of the modern art, to appreciate it in it’s fullest. But I don’t go to art museums to learn, I just enjoy the surrounding, the quietness and the architecture is often beautiful (and hopefully without meaning). And what’s hanging on the wall, can please the visual cortex to, and that’s a bonus.

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1375.

Modern art

seen

as a reflection

of life

is difficult

to understand

if you look at it

from the wrong

angle

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Day 1754, judgement.

I sometimes wonder why we people have such a hard time “showing their through colors”. I can of course dig around in myself to find out, and tell you what my “true” is, but I am not crazy.

Today’s poem is from Day 1336.

They turned off

their light

insight

I can’t see

just

dark eyes

I can’t imagine a person, who would tell everything they consciously know, and think at that moment, to an other person. There is of course no way you can tell, we can’t read minds so we assume that no one shows it all. Even if someone tells you all their darkest secrets, you still don’t know that for sure. We have to assume that we all have something hidden for the other.

Maybe this is the origin of the myth of the “soul-mate”. I would tell myself everything gladly, if I could meet myself, a soul-copy so to speak. There is no other like us, but what if you find a partner that comes close, one you can forge a bond with, a bond that is strong enough for you to let go of all that is cooped up in you. I don’t think relations , every kind of relation, would last long if you let it all go uncensored, even if love is in play…specially when love is in play. I am afraid that we all go to the grave with unspoken words.

It could also just be me, having this particular need. Maybe I have to become Catholic, and take the the judgment that I have sinned for granted.

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Day 1753, layers.

There are all kind of different people, when you meet them for the first time. Your first impression, and judgment, is the layer you make, for the most part your self, you “pressed” it on them. It is hard to judge someone you just meet without comparing what you see with what you have seen before. It is not something you do consciously, for the most part. Try, the next time, to look at someone new and don’t think: that’s a woman. “She” can turn around, and be a man with long blond hair. It is a simple example that shows that we make a judgment based on prior knowledge, in western societies, long hair is more associated with woman, we learned that. The same goes for other external, and internal signs, we see an outline, or hint of a character trade, and a judgment forms. The real person is hidden behind several layers, some you made, and some that the person you meet, made themselves, to hide behind.

The poem from today is from Day 1333.

I see several layers

when you paint

me

your picture

~

but why did you stop

I always look forwards, to the layers that come, when time passes.

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Day 1752, tired.

I live in Trondheim, a normal city in the middle of Norway. If you look at the map you will see that it is only 600km from the polar circle, around the same height as Fairbanks in the middle of Alaska. We have more of a sea climate here so it is not as cold as in Fairbanks, today it was -13. The thing that is strange here, something I am used to, but also not. It is the lack of sunlight. The first ten years in Norway I lived above the polar circle , and there you have some light between 10:00 and 13:00, but we didn’t see the sun for almost two moths. Here in Trondheim we have more daylight, but because I am at work during the day I can only see the sun in the weekends. I think there is a reason why people that live in the North are more mellow, specially compared with the more vibrant people that live closer to the equator. This is just a long way of telling you that today, at the end of the week, I am pretty tired and monotone.

Today I am not gonna write about one of my old poems. When I have little inspiration I will pick one of the books from Friedrich Nietzsche and pick a random aphorism and let my brain chew on that for a while. You can see that I have a separate tab on my blog about Nietzsche. He is not the only philosopher I like to read, but he is the one that spoke to me the most. People sometimes ask me what I like about him, and I have to admit that I have a hard time explaining it, specially when the person that ask me knows only little about philosophy. The problem is that there are no philosophers that stand alone and isolated in history. Every thinker, scientist or inventor stands on the shoulders of his or her predecessors. Nietzsche is one of the first philosophers who also was a psychologist, he is really good in dissecting the mind and pointing at the reasons why we do the things we do. But giving this as a reason is only half the story because attached to Nietzsche are all these predecessors and the people that came after him. Nietzsche is the spill in my world of philosophy, and the spill is important but so is the rest around it.

 

There are a lot of things we know better now, then before. I rather go to the doctor now then 2000 years ago, the same goes for traveling or just living in a house. All these things have improved over the years. What Nietzsche, off course, talks about, are the so called thinkers and moralizers. If you just pickup a book about the history of philosophy, you will soon realize that the Greek, 2500 years ago, already where walking in the direction we are still going. Around that time there where also other places around the world where people started to think about, and explain the world. Because I am born in the so called west, I recognize more in what the ancient Greek where writing back then then I do with what the thinkers from India or China wrote for instance. You can read text from Greek philosophers that are so modern, that a lot of people today would have problems agreeing with it, because it is to progressive.

We live in modern times but the barbarians are still among us, some are even rulers.

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Day 1751, looking back, forwards.

In 2016 I came back from a visit to my parents in law in America. My girlfriend is African American* so we were extra exited by what’s going to happen, specially if T…p would win. When we came back at the end of September we anxiously waited till the election where over. It was off course a big disappointment. The good thing is that I started this blog. I already had an other place where I posted my daily pictures and now I wanted a blog again to vent on. I made a whole series of photoshopped pictures of the situation in America and wrote about it. Now it is almost over, I wanted to wait with it but after what happened last night I might as well post it now. I re-upload most of the pictures I made in 2016, and I will tell something about it. I was hoping back then that the readers would understand the pictures, including all the details, but that didn’t happen.

*I asked my girlfriend if I could still use these words to describe her…mistake;-)

We took a drive from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, this is the most beautiful countryside in my opinion. We drove past this sign that welcomed us into Utah. I changed YOUtah into MEtah as is sign of the selfishness of so many people.
This is a building in Pittsburgh. I have studied the third Reich a lot, it is the best way to understand why well educated people turn into conspiracy crazed murderers. They where cleaning the building I guess, i took the opportunity to make it look like they just installed the sign for the new ruling party. The NSDAP stands for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
We visited Gettysburg, impressive. I changed the text on the building and put a leftover sign leaning against the canon. The text is from Abraham Lincoln and is well known and thru: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
This is some random street in America with the expected signs in support for the new leader. I added 6 things…
In the right corner you can see Lady Justice, in front i placed a sign that was standing in front of a beggar, it reads: Dirty Broke and hungry , anything helps .
This was in New York. These people where trowing away a bunch of fashion photo’s. I put all kinds of dictators on it, including one of T…p, maybe you see him. The massage is of course that they belong there.
This is Columbus, the one from the monument at Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. Columbus just landed here in the America’s, he had to call home, telling them that there was a little problem.
I found this really cool idea of some kind of public library in a bird cage. I put the “my country became to rich…I left”sign. It is from Loesje, a dutch initiative that started somewhere in the eighties. The put all kinds of thought provoking signs on random walls, very cool. I also put two fictitious books in there, written by T…p. One of them is called . My struggle, the English translation of the book by Hitler, mein kampf. (I just see that i spelled struggle wrong at the book cover…)
This was taken i some museum. I just changed a bunch of words on it, just look.
There where warning signs.
The Nazi’s are known for their book burning’s, i was afraid back then in 2016 that T…p would not literally burn books but that he would rewrite history in the heads of his followers.
This is the famous dried up lake of good idea’s in Utah. The text at the bottom reads: Erected by the department of the American mind, June 1972.
After four years it is still not clear if every vote should count.
This is what happened in my head when I saw the unraveling of America the last four years, and for most people life seems to just go on.
And this is hopefully the end result. This is a famous picture of Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trial. Goering was a famous Nazi, he enriched himself over the backs of many corpses. It has really heard me that America was on this path the last four years. If you study what the Germans have done to millions of people in the second world war, then you will understand why even the smallest wink to those day’s is very dangerous. I hope that the people that voted for him stop looking at the horizon in the rearview mirror.

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Day 1750, white road marks.

I had periods in my life that depression debilitated my will. The light, life, all of it, felt like it was not there, and at the same time, it was all there and pressing the air out of me. Like a good Marine I obeyed my superior, in this case my shrink, and injected my life with routine like walking the dog everyday for a couple of hours. The same route, the same stick to throw. All this outside, and the world, that had made me sick, was also the thing that healed me at the end.

In life, the things you love, are often also the things that make you sick. An obvious one is off course unhealthy snacks, a cigarette or driving to fast on your motorcycle. You can also think of the relation you have with you parents, friends or your wife or husband. The unhealthy things in the first category are never healthy, they are tolerable when you reduce the intake to a minimum, and if you like driving fast, you should go to a race track twice a year. The second category can also be toxic at the same time that you love them.

With your friends and family you might take a little bit more distance, if you feel that gas is building up in your stomach, but if you are married, and also have kids, it becomes much harder to put distance between you and them. A lot of people will choose the easier road that leads to a divorce, but if you use the same routine that helped me getting over my depression, confronting it all in a structured way, you might find the reason again why you once loved this all.

There is a reason why you loved your life, wife, husband and kids once. The reason is… that you loved them…and there is nothing rational about it. Al the stupid things you do in life, you do because you love it, not because you thought your way into it. And because there is no reason for it, there is no reason to stay with it, or with the person you once loved, if that love is gone. But I once lost my love for life, and life has also no reason, but I found the love for it back again when I walked the dog.

My girlfriend and I, we are no sentimental fools or hopeless romantics. We have our routines that guide us like the white road marks besides the road do. This guidance helps us, specially when it is dark, you can see where the road ends, and the ditch starts, and steer the relationship down the road with more ease. This way I also have more time to look to the side at her, like I did in those first days when the car was still in cruse control.

The poem is from Day 1324, November 2019

I turned

and a dark forest arose

from where I was

before

~

lost

~

though soon

the familiar sound

that brings you down

brings you back

to the light

like a stream

to the sea

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Day 1749, interesting.

Everybody that looks at my pictures knows that I like objects that are often overlooked. Lately I have been taking a lot of pictures of doors, widows and other things connected to a house.

If you look at the picture above this text you will see an old drain. Maybe it’s because I am a carpenter that I see what they did to mount it, and repair it. Like the little screw that secures the pipe to the squire attachment on the next pipe. I not only see these objects, but also the work that someone has put in it, and the thought processes that might have been going on to find solutions for some challenges and mistakes. It’s the same for the windows and doors, they all have stories to tell and hours of work stored in them.

You can also look at the cracks in the paint. Are they there because the paint is old , or is there some movement in the bricks behind the plaster where the paint is once smeared on. Maybe the ground underneath the house is slowly shifting, or…or…well you get the point. These objects have a lot of stories in them, if you are interested and look at them.

The poem I found for today is one that I have written for Day 1318.

Even a fake flower

will one day

be loved

for its purity

Years ago I bought some fake flowers in a thrift shop as a joke for my girlfriend, who doesn’t like fake flowers. It’s also a private joke between us, because we from Holland are known to be cheap, and I was always complaining about the expansive flowers that came all the way from a warmer place to the North of Norway, where they got sold, while already halfway trough their life. After many years these fake flowers slowly grow (haha) on here. I think because there is a specific story attached to it that has inflated the real value.

People are interesting, some more than others. Objects are interesting to, some more than people than others.

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Day 1748, remembering.

There is something curious with our past. On the one hand, we do have a factual past, where all the things we have ever done are true. The other past we have is the one that we remember, and to be more specific: the one we remember on the exact moment we do the “remembering”. The reason why I specify the memory of your past at a specific time, is because it changes over time when you, for example, get confronted with contradicting facts or because you slowly and physically deteriorate.

The thing with your factual, point to point past, the one that really happened is kind of mysterious. You can imagine that there is such a…thing, but also not. It’s just strange, you know it all happened but there is also no one (thing) that knows it, or has recorded it.

An example can be when you move your hand upwards in front of your eyes. You know it happened, you saw it with your own eyes just a few seconds ago, but there is also no way for you to exactly describe the trajectory your hand made, it’s remembered past. You may get close, but the exact trajectory is lost forever. Where is that exact trajectory? I guess it’s gone forever, just like your past.

So you have a past, your real one is gone forever, but the one that is important, is the one that you remember, and…constructed, probably for the most part unconsciously and/or passive.

The inspiration for today was from Day 1312. The poem touches on what I have written above, but also goes further by pointing out that our past is made more colorful in the act of remembering, and this coloring will be projected into the future when we envision, and tell our plans.

When we erect

with remembrance

colorful scaffolding

~

we can already see

the shape

of what we wish

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Day 1747, sack of meat.

One of the recurring themes in my writing is the idea that we are “made” by the past in general, and our own past specifically. I don’t think that many people have a problem with that idea, they might have a problem with the amount of autonomy I subscribe to us, while steering our own history, forwards.

It is the whole idea of free will, do we have it, or not. You can think, write and talk about it forever, but in my opinion it is impossible to give a straight answer. For practical reason we assume that we decide the things we do on a daily basis, and most people will agree that the things “we do” in the long term are more guided by what kind of talents we have, our family history, where we are born etc.

I think that giving blame to someone gives us some kind of satisfaction. We all know the stupid, and blameless, stuff we have done in the past. We didn’t drive that car in the ditch on purpose, we were driving to hard OK, but 21 and literally driven by hormones, what can you expect. We all have countless examples of things we did wrong unwillingly, and still you feel guilty if your elbow pushes that glass figurine of the counter, and let it tumble to the floor.

Maybe this is on good grounds: you where not in the room, figure stands on the counter. You are in the room and leave a while later, figurine on the floor. You didn’t do it on purpose, and are not to blame, but the air you fill with your body, that sack of meat, is to blame for just being there.

You can explain all the reasons why someone does what they do, at the end, that entity (fancy word for sack of meat) was, or is in the world. Because it is in the world, things happened. It happened without a predetermined plan and intention, but it happened. Maybe deep down we all know this, this coincidental life. You can not blame yourself, you can only blame the other.

Inspired by Day 1299

There are two roads

coming together

in me

~

my past

and a past

~

my future depends

on how they are

joined

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Day 1746, I might.

There are a lot of theories why marriage, or a similar relation, is important for raising children, your well being and for the society you live in. I never took the time to delve into this subject, to find out what others have written about it. From what I have gathered from normal conversations and the culture I live in, is that there is a broad spectrum of opinions, and though there are some groups forming in the different “areas” of that spectrum, it is quit evenly spread out. As I said, I have not based this on some kind of research, it’s just what I make of all the opinions I have heard.

In regards to children: In my opinion it is important to have some kind of role model that is around long enough for the child to form some kind of bond. We humans need of course a lot of help the first years of our lives, we would die if there was not someone around to feed us. Some kind of affection seems to be helpful, but the German boys in 1943, who were raised in model families, had no problem taking a job as camp guards in Auschwitz. Getting all the love and attention from both of your parents, is no guarantee for success, and spending your first 16 year in an orphanage is no guaranty for failure. There are so many variables that determine the “outcome” of your upbringing, a happy and healthy family life is just one cog in that complicated machine.

A normal upbringing is…what is a normal person? What is a norm? Is that not all the people, from one end of the spectrum to the other, and then you average that? I guess that only when there are an uneven amount of people on earth, you could point to one person that is standing right in the middle. That’s an impossible job, specially when you take in account the babies that are born every second. I make off course a joke out of it, but you can conclude: there is no average Joe (or Jane) P.S. Just had dinner and like we do these days, I looked at my phone when I was done. I was doubting about my use of the word “average”, according to Wikipedia the word median is better when you want to know what the thing in the middle is.

When I write these interpretations of some of my old poems, I never make a plan, I just start writing and see where it goes. I say no plan, but I know that I want to go in the direction of the poem, or at least, circle around it. Today when I read the poem from Day 1296 ( picture that inspired this poem is telling) I thought about the relations we have with others. Sometimes you have the feeling that you might walk in front, to protect the other for the hailstorm you both are facing, but the light touch on the belt is stronger then your will, it makes you realize that your not alone. I wanted to go here, by starting to talk about relations in regards to children. Forgot why, and I already past 500 words so I leave it here…hanging. P.S.2 It might have something to with the fact that this is the first time that I write before dinner, guess your mind is not the only thing that has to be full.

I might

be stronger than you

but you

tie us together

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Day 1745, contradiction.

More contradictions in humans. We all know that if you are born in Japan, Canada, Syria, Estonia or any other country or region, that you have learned your own set of customs and habits when you grew up. You can divide it even more into the villages and cities within these countries, and what class, gender and race you come from. We all recognize these differences when we get confronted with them. Most of us will also understand why there are these differences, and the rest will probably to, if it is explained.

We probably learned why we should not like particular others. This dividing of people we encounter into good, neutral and bad is learned at school, and the house in the neighborhood we lived, while growing up, plunged from the womb into this culture. If life was this simple, we would still live like they did thousands of years ago, when you had to travel for days into the unknown to meet other people and their ways. These days it is much easier to come in to contact with other cultures.

One of the reasons why the scientific and industrial revolutions were at it strongest in Europe is because of the sea voyages around the world. Europe, the middle east and parts of Africa were already “used” to each other through their shared histories. They shared similar origin stories and philosophies, and in those 3 to 4 thousand years they lived with each other without ever questioning their status quo. When the seafaring adventures came back with stories of other, unknown cultures, a fuse was lit that would blow up this truce between the cultures and the scientist was born.

We could no longer believe what our traditions told us was the only way to go. If other, for us unknown, cultures can thrive and have long histories like ours, then we have good reasons to doubt our “answers”

What is the contradiction you might ask after this short history lesson: we learn our way of living from the place we are born. We come in contact with others, and learn the relativity of our viewpoints. This is how we, cultured animals have evolved, because we asked questions we live now in a much better world than 500 years ago. The contradiction is that now, a large part of the people on this planet still believe their own viewpoints, without questioning it. We all benefited from the progress we made, but this progress still rests on the shoulders of a few.

The poem for today is from Day 1287, it speaks for itself I think.

I unearthed

my house

and try

to be

~

human

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Day 1744, light.

When we are born we come equipped with an array of feelers, they give us information about the world, and when everything is working right, also what to do with this information. You can think of “feelers” like pain receptors all over your body, or the “feeler” that senses danger and gives you anxiety. There are many more, and we share these protective systems with other animals.

We, and some other more evolved animals, can also feel anxiety, fear, arousal and other specific states of mind, when there is no apparent reason for it. Fear for a poisonous snake was and is important for animals and our ancestors, if they want to have a chance to evolve. We as humans still share that fear for snakes, and most of us still do for good reasons, but if you have lived in a city your whole life, and you come across a snake in a terrarium at your friends place, you might feel this fear and anxiety, though it is no longer necessary. These emotions are still triggered the same way as they did with our ancestors, hundred of thousands years ago. 

What about the fear of losing your job, your money or anxiety over your relationship? These are all constructs, we don’t share these kinds of “relationships” with other animals, or for that fact, with our ancient forefathers. You might say that anxiety covers all of these, but losing your job has little to no effect on the evolution of mankind, and relationships are not helping for your chances to reproduce at all.  

These kinds of fears are spoonfed when we grew up, and within certain cultures. They feel the same as the  evolved fears we share with other animals, and they are also hard to ignore or suppress. Nonetheless, we as humans have brought them on ourselves, though you might argue that we had no say in it, when evolution made us smarter. We became smarter to solve problems, and paradoxically, invent more problems too. 

The poem that inspired me today is from Day 1270.

The road

is not lit

by the light

but by the darkness

on its sides

If you look at life, history, where we all are now, and the future, you should be somber, there is no other way to look at all of this. Still, for some reason, I am positive. 

It is dark besides the road, but I can still see it, as well as where i have to go. Every little joy, good news or hope is not shining enough in daylight, but in this darkness, it’s there to find the way. 

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Day 1743, horizons.

One of the more awkward things for us to react on is when someone tells us something we didn’t know, when we just told the opposite. Depending on your character you try to save face in different ways, or you don’t care and acknowledge that their right and you are mistaken.

I is of course liberating when suddenly, your horizon is broadened. Were you before looking in that one direction, now you have the other next to it, and you can look back and forth, to the past and the future.

The poem if found today is from Day 1267, posted on my birthday in 2019.

From here

I see lines

coming together

in the future

when I wake

on my side

I am not

so sure

I can read it in different way’s, your mind can change when your perspective changes, like in the example from above. You can also see it as a prediction for what’s in store when you are in a relation and you start waking up with your backs to each other, literally and figuratively.

A note for the people that know me and might worry: when I write, I get my inspiration not only from the present but also from the past. I can write dramatically about relations and my own well being but that doesn’t necessarily say anything about my current relation or state of mind. You could say that I try to use my full horizon.

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