Philosophy

Day 3284, single act.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human
The Wanderer and His Shadow

39 Origin of rights. – Rights can in the first instance be traced back to tradition, tradition to some agreement. At some time in the past men were mutually content with the consequences of the agreement they had come to, and at the same time too indolent formally to renew it; thus they lived on as though it were continually being renewed and, as forgetfulness spread its veil over its origin, gradually came to believe they were in possession of a sacred, immutable state of affairs upon which every generation had to continue to build. Tradition was now a compulsion, even when it no longer served the purpose for which the agreement had originally been concluded. – The weak have at all times found here their sure stronghold: they tend to regard that single act of agreement, that single act of grace, as valid eternally 

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 3277, a road.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak
Book I

26 Animals and morality. – The practices demanded in polite society: careful avoidance of the ridiculous, the offensive, the presumptuous, the suppression of one’s virtues as well as of one’s strongest inclinations, self-adaptation, self-deprecation, submission to orders of rank – all this is to be found as social morality in a crude form everywhere, even in the depths of the animal world – and only at this depth do we see the purpose of all these amiable precautions: one wishes to elude one’s pursuers and be favoured in the pursuit of one’ s prey. For this reason the animals learn to master themselves and alter their form, so that many, for example, adapt their colouring to the colouring of their surroundings (by virtue of the socalled ‘chromatic function’), pretend to be dead or assume the forms and colours of another animal or of sand, leaves, lichen, fungus (what English researchers designate ‘mimicry’). Thus the individual hides himself in the general concept ‘man’, or in society, or adapts himself to princes, classes, parties, opinions of his time and place:

Continue reading →