photography

Day 3327, some more notes.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I like to believe that humans think the same way now as we did 50000 years ago. With thinking, I mean the strength of it, the speed, what we can accomplish with it. If it is possible to develop a good IQ test, we wouldn’t do much better now than someone living all those years ago, someone who’s figuring out how to crack the right stone to get a knife out of it. We have a much larger well of knowledge right now, which can aid us, making it appear that we are much smarter. On the other hand, there are probably not more than a 100 people who are living in modern houses right now who can make a good flint knife, and only because they studied it and not because they figured it out by themselves. All I want to say is that there were also Einsteins living at the beginning of our civilization; the only difference is that they lacked the instruments and wealth of knowledge collected and written down that they could build their theories on, and most of all, they lacked any means to let us modern people know what they knew. We have this wealth of apparent knowledge, and we all know more on average than someone living a hundred years ago, but that doesn’t mean we are smarter, let alone that we make better decisions.  

Humans are the product of many millions of years of evolutionary development, and how and why we think the way we do is still not completely clear. It is clear that on an evolutionary timescale, some form of consciousness just happened a second ago, and from the first caveman to me writing this is measured in milliseconds. Thinking in the sense of explaining ourselves also plays a minor role in our daily business, so to speak. We often react and come up with a reason for why we reacted that way after the fact. The words we use function more as bandages in many cases. An example of a trigger we inherited is that most of us jump from sudden movements in our peripheral vision because millions of evolutionary years have “learned” us that jumping is better than not jumping. After all, the jumpers get bitten less by that nasty snake crawling on their path and live to tell the tale. Many of our behaviours exist because they are part of millions of years of evolution. Before we had words, writing, and laws, we already had thoughts in the form of feelings that drove us and made us jump out of fear for crawling creatures, but for thousands of years, we could not talk about these feelings with each other. We moved together in small groups in similar ways, lived together like we do now, but in silence, doing what felt best. The different human species lived like that for a long time, and it is only a relatively short time ago that we started talking about what was driving us and why we are doing the things we do. 

In that sense, we are still infants. Look at our society now, in 2025. We have a democracy like the ancient Greeks already had, and people still vote, and like in ancient times, they still vote for the loudest baboon. It doesn’t matter that the baboon speaks; it matters that he touches the right feelings, feelings we react to more than words, let alone logic. The people who know the right words to “enhance” their feelings understand that the baboon only makes noises, but they also know that a modern human is no match for a baboon. There is no denying that a strong figure in a group is something that has helped the human species along. We all felt safe in our mother’s arms, and that strong feeling lingers on in adulthood. When a fire breaks out, we all probably follow the loudest voice.

Day 3326, Preface.

Daily picture, Quotes

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will to Power
Preface

1
Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness — that means cynically and with innocence.
2
What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism . This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.
3
He that speaks here, conversely, has done nothing so far but reflect: a philosopher and solitary by instinct, who has found his advantage in standing aside and outside, in patience, in procrastination, in staying behind; as a spirit of daring and experiment that has already lost its way once in every labyrinth of the future; as a soothsayer – bird spirit who looks back when relating what will come; as the first perfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself.
4
For one should make no mistake about the meaning of the title that this gospel of the future wants to bear. “The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values” — in this formulation a countermovement finds expression, regarding both principle and task; a movement that in some future will take the place of this perfect nihilism — but presupposes it, logically and psychologically, and certainly can come only after and out of it. For why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals — because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these “values” really had. — We require, sometime, new values

Day 3324, country above all.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I watched some America news again and realised….America is both the wealthiest country and the poorest country in the world. They truly believe what they tell themselves and don’t realize that there is another world beyond their own. Even well-educated people in America talk about America as being something special. The following quote from Barack Obama, for instance.

“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.”

In my book, the last people who were so proud of their country were the Nazies in Germany and Italy. Obama is of course no Nazi but for some reason he also worship the flag and obviously need it as some kind of security blanket like the rest does. Or did he had to play that card? And is that not even worse? Obama is probably a decent person, but the constant pledges of allegiance he made while growing up have also had an influence on him. Perhaps he could have said that we are all humans and that all these distinctions are merely made up.

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Day 3320, Bauhouse.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I watched a fascinating documentary about Bauhaus, an art school that had a profound influence on architecture and design. What I liked the most in this documentary was what it showed of the students and how progressive they were 100 years ago. It was, of course, only a tiny island of light in a large sea of backwardness, but it’s good to see that contrast when it is so hard to see now. I also understand better now why I enjoy taking pictures of all these straight and clean lines; perhaps that resonates with the progressive mindset I aspire to have.