Philosophy

Day 3113, Disappointing.

Daily picture, My thoughts

Did you know that between 25 and 50 percent of the people of voting age living in the Netherlands and the USA think it is a good idea to deport people to wherever they can dump them? Two of the wealthiest countries in the world are too greedy to share some of their wealth: we want more, is what these people think, and I don’t care that you come from a war-torn country; we don’t want to give you a place where you can rest and start a new life. We want more stuff, and you mean nothing to me. 

I guess education is not the solution to a better character. First, religion fails to make people care for each other, and now education. What now. Internet was supposed to share knowledge, you say. I guess that didn’t work either. Disappointing. 

Day 3109, the sun.

Daily picture, Poetry

Friedrich Nietzsche

Daybreak
Book 1

3 Everything has its day.– When man gave all things a sex he thought, not that he was playing, but that he had gained a profound insight: – it was only very late that he confessed to himself what an enormous error this was, and perhaps even now he has not confessed it completely. – In the same way man has ascribed to all that exists a connection with morality and laid an ethical significance on the world’s back. One day this will have as much value, and no more, as the belief in the masculinity or femininity of the sun has today.

Day 3105, so far.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I’ve been a Dutch Marine for 3 years. Thirty years ago, and I still feel it. I still feel it, but not in a negative way. If I talk to an old colleague about the old days, we often also talk about what we do now and how we both miss the time when teamwork meant teamwork. As a Marine, you don’t have to tell your buddy to cover your ass; you know he does, just like any other member of the team; they all know what to do and what is expected.

The reason why we trained so hard to reach that level of cooperation is, of course, the danger that can be part of the job. I understand that, but I feel it is still part of me after 30 years. I often had and have too high of an expectation of the teams I worked in or led. I know that danger is not coming from the door in the corner of the office, but why don’t they close it when they know it’s a fire door? It sounds like a tiny thing, but for me, it is still a principle: attention to detail; in a combat situation, neglecting what is expected can harm you and others. I also understand the people who wonder why I bother; they have probably never bothered about things just outside of their reach. I have learned over the years to care less, but it eats at me.

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Day 3102, nothing against.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human
In Relations With Others

373 Arrogance. -There is nothing against which we should guard more carefully than against the growth of the weed that is called arrogance and that spoils all we reap; for there is an arrogance in affection, in signs of respect, in benevolent familiarity, in caresses, in friendly advice, in admission of errors, in pity for others, and all these beautiful things arouse repugnance if that weed sprouts among them. An arrogant person, that is, anyone who wants to seem more important than he is or is considered to be, always miscalculates. To be sure, he has a momentary success in his favor, insofar as those people in whose presence he behaves arrogantly generally pay him the degree of honor that he demands, whether out of fear or indolence; but they take a terrible revenge for this by subtracting exactly as much from the value that they previously ascribed to him as there is excess in the amount that he has demanded. There is nothing for which people make us pay more dearly than humiliating them. An arrogant person can make his genuinely great merit so suspect and so small in the eyes of others that they trample it into the dust.-Even a proud demeanor is something that we should allow ourselves only where we can be quite certain not to be misunderstood or to be considered arrogant, in front of friends or wives, for example. For there is no greater folly in our relations with other people than acquiring a reputation for being arrogant; it is even worse than not having learned how to tell lies politely.