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Day 675, On the Genealogy of Morals.

Day's pictures, On the Genealogy of Morals

Day 675-1

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

12

At this point I cannot suppress a sigh and a last hope. What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!

How much one is able to endure: distress, want, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude, fundamentally one can cope with everything else, born as one is to a subterranean life of struggle; one emerges again and again into the light, one experiences again and again one’s golden hour of victory—and then one stands forth as one was born, unbreakable, tensed, ready for new, even harder, remoter things, like a bow that distress only serves to draw tauter.

But grant me from time to time—if there are divine goddesses in the realm beyond good and evil—grant me the sight, but one glance of something perfect, wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant, something still capable of arousing fear! Of a man who justifies man, of a complementary and redeeming lucky hit on the part of man for the sake of which one may still believe in man!

For this is how things are: the diminution and leveling of European man constitutes our greatest danger, for the sight of him makes us weary.—We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian—there is no doubt that man is getting “better” all the time.

Here precisely is what has become a fatality for Europe—together with the fear of man we have also lost our love of him, our reverence for him, our hopes for him, even the will to him. The sight of man now makes us weary—what is nihilism today if it is not that?—We are weary of man.

Day 674, Caged animals.

Day's pictures, Poetry

Day 674-1

Caged animals

From cage to cage.
From decoration to decoration.

From this cage to the other I move
but what changes is the decor
but I’m still not.

The world out there is maybe,
only in my head
as my hope unleashes.

All those people outside there, outside my cage
I despise, not for their freedom
but for their neglect, their lack.

Lack of appreciation for their
innocence and
not seeing their bars.

As a caged animal I cannot speak
back and forth I can walk
but I cannot talk.

Like an animal I think in images
re-actions without words
useless outside my cages.

Only in words that go around
would they understand
without feelings and images.

Images from the deep
from what we all are,

caged animals

Day 673, How to get depressed.

Day's pictures, Society

Day 673-1

To prevent complacency and happiness I took my weekly dose of depressive literature today. The book I chose and started listening to today is from Noam Chomsky and is called: Who rules the world Chomsky is a thinker I can recommend if you want your opinion of the world to get lowered by a mile. I really like his work and I get a lot of inspiration from him, but it is depressive to read his view of the world. In short, he sees America and their friends as a cause of much suffering in the world, a returning theme is the hypocrisy of these states when they call out terrorism done to them and the ease they dismiss there meddling in the world as being seen as terrorism by the receiving end of their meddling. I have no time or the capability to check all the cases Chomsky so easily sums up, I rely on others to do that kind of work and I can safely say that I agree with him after reading a lot of other books about the specific cases.  There is a lot going on in the world and if you only consume one side of the story you will miss a lot.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it. Noam Chomsky

Reading the specific American or western side is for us westerners not necessary, our cultures is drenched with messages on how to see certain world events. Most of what we consume, through film, tv, media, books, or the internet; even if it is against America and their allies, is for the most part seen through our western eyes and not from the other side.  A good example is the recent missile alarm in Hawaii. For 38 minutes those people were afraid that their life was going to end. It was all over the news how terrible that experience was. I happen to watch Democracy now on YouTube that day, I like their critical view. Someone compared it to people in Pakistan and Afghanistan that hear drones flying invisible in the sky, over their heads. For those people it’s like a missile alarm almost every day, they don’t know when the next bomb is coming down, but they know it will, they live in terror on a daily basis like those Americans did for 38 minutes. Which story did you here the most? You probably never realized that those people live under that kind of pressure, and we admire Obama who in this case terrorized those people for years. Obama is the terrorist in the eyes of the victims of a missile hitting the wrong house.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. Noam Chomsky

 

While doing my picture today I had some Chomsky on, on YouTube. It was a google interview with him. One thing I liked was the story of the workers and artisan’s a hundred years ago who would hire a young boy, if they could afford it, to read books to them while they work. Something I don’t have the money for but thank god for the audio-books. But the point of his story was that the working class in those day was often better informed than the other classes, something that is no longer true. And I agree with him on this, knowledge is so important. People are no longer interested to learn more about the world, it’s easy to pick a side by reading some headlines and following the people you like. On social media an amateurish poem or story about my work gets always more reaction’s than some depressive message about the world. Most people just don’t want to know that stuff, they tell me. But if you want a better world you have to start educating yourself, it’s like the plastic bag they offer you in the store, what does it matter for the environment if you take that one bag, it’s already made… you tell yourself.

Day 671, Einstein and the lift.

Day's pictures, Society

Day 671-1

Think about it…we live here, all 7 billion on a planet in a vast universe. Those 7 billion people have all an opinion about this life but…is there anyone who actually knows what’s going on? Imagine this: we are all stuck in an elevator, all 7 billion of us, and the button to call for help is missing, we all been in situations like that, its uncomfortable, you start looking at each other for answers, your mind start racing and you try to stick to some thought that calms you down. I think we are in that situation here on earth and there are a lot of people shouting what is going on, but that doesn’t help you one bit in figuring out what really is going on. We just don’t know what’s going on outside the lift.

I thought about this when someone on YouTube quoted Einstein in saying something like: “the universe is not stranger than we do imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine”. Einstein, is in this “locked in a lift scenario” the lift repairmen locked in with us. What he say’s has some weight and if he point’s out that we could not imagine a solution to the “why is the lift stuck” problem, who can? There is no one at this planet that can say with certainty what’s going on, even the president of America, the best specimen earth has to offer, doesn’t know that, and he’s is the one that opens the door when the Martians knock on it and ask: “why are you stuck here?”. (Did I just prove Einstein wrong?)

Day 670, Hypocrites.

Day's pictures, Society

Day 670-1

It is always nice to visit your home country. I had my reasons to leave the Netherlands and moved to Norway but some things I miss. Walking in Amsterdam with my colleagues from Norway and seeing their reactions to red lights and funny smells reminded me how used I am to the Dutch way of dealing with drugs and prostitution. I think that my colleagues are seen as progressives in Norway, but their reaction genuinely surprised me. They were opposed to it and telling stories how bad drugs is and how prostitutes are all forced in doing their work. We discussed it and how I think that their view is influenced by the propaganda the Norwegian government is spewing, something the Dutch government does to off course, but then the other way. I learned that Drugs and prostitution can be found in any society and that it’s stupid to bury the problem like they do, for instance, in Norway. For us it’s legal to buy soft drugs to prevent kids from coming in contact with hard drugs and some prostitutes might still do their work against there wishes but most of them don’t and can leave their job mush easier and work safer. I know it’s a culture clash, but more and more countries are going this rational way, so I think it is the right way. But Norway is in many ways a paternalistic country, or as they say in America: they have a nanny state. Alcohol is also strongly regulated here, you can’t buy a beer after a certain time and all the other kinds of alcohol are only for sale in stores controlled by the government. Thankfully I am detached enough from Norwegian society that it doesn’t border me that much, but if I think about it, it can annoy me that they don’t give me the freedom to do what I want with my own body, these colleagues literally say that they don’t mind taking away my freedom to buy beer at 20:05 or smoke a harmless joint. On of there arguments is that they have to pay for the damage I do to society when I get sick or addicted. But what about the people that do dangerous sports, don’t sport, eat fat, work to hard or do whatever life choice they make that is dangerous and unhealthy, do you forbid those activities? I see no reason why someone could withhold you from doing potentially stupid things to yourself, as long as you don’t endanger others it’s fine for me.

Related to this story and how hypocritical people are is this story from today in the Guardian: Link It’s about the legal and synthetic version of heroin: OxyContin. Hundreds of thousands of people have died from these legal drugs that are as addictive as the illegal versions.

“But few know their wealth comes from Purdue Pharma, a private Connecticut company the family developed and wholly owns. In 1995, the company revolutionized the prescription painkiller market with the invention of OxyContin, a drug that is a legal, concentrated, chemical version of morphine or heroin. It was designed to be safe; when it first came to market, its slow-release formula was unique. After winning government approval it was hailed as a medical breakthrough, which Goldin now refers to as “magical thinking”.

It was aggressively marketed to doctors – many of whom were taken on lavish junkets, given misleading information and paid to give talks on the drug – while patients were wrongly told the pills were a reliable long-term solution to chronic pain, and in some cases offered coupons for a month’s free sample.”

I always like to look at today’s society from the future, let’s say 300 years from now. I think that they would describe a drugs problem around the end of the 20th century but the biggest criminals are not the small fry like Joaquin Guz or Pablo Escobar but the large pharmaceutical companies followed closely by their supportive governments.

 

 

Selfie.

Pictures explained, Society

Photoshop 1-13

This picture is taken in a beautiful part of America and the sign tells a story of that place. Look at all the marks that the foreigners left as a sign of their appreciation, to show the world that they traveled all the way to this great place. I chose this picture and changed it to use it as a commentary on our society that is heading more and more towards a “me” focused world instead of a world where the other (you) also counts. People say more and more:  “I don’t want refugees because I don’t trust them” instead of YOU come from a country destroyed by a war and YOU have it much worse than I have so YOU can come here.

The internet brought the world and its people closer together compared to 20, 50 or a 100 years ago but this technical marvel has not brought our hearts closer together. Twitter brought us the Arab spring and a fifth of the world is connected on Facebook and you would think that we would be more understanding of each other. Instead we see more and more people and governments closing their doors and longing back to the day’s where everything was neat in a box and labeled for clarity. Our modern need to take selfies is a vivid reminder of this, we like to share with the world a picture of ourselves, look at me.

I was this week for work in Amsterdam and there I saw the famous selfie sticks in use and I paid some attention. To be fair, the people were taking photos of all the sites, but they stuck their head in front of it and the camera every time. Imagine these people showing their pictures back home to some family members: here is a picture of me, and me, and me and my friend, and me etc. They showed the world where they have been instead of what that other world looks like. But maybe I’m not fair, 20 years ago it was not possible to easily make selfies with the film camera’s we had back then and it was a lot of work to send a couple of hundred friends a copy of your pictures. Maybe the modern technique has only awoken a slumbering need in us humans. Maybe there was never a Youtah and always a Metah

CVG_1397

Day 666, The mysterious boat.

Day's pictures, Poetry

Day 666-1

The mysterious boat
Last night, as everything slept,
The wind sighed with unknowing,
Running through the lane,
I found no rest upon my pillow
It is the moon, still, that gives me
A deep sleep, – a good conscience.

I brushed sleep away from my
Senses and ran to the beach.
Moonlight shone and I met man and boat
Calmly upon the warm sands,
Sleepy both – shepherd and sheep –
Sleepy the boat slips away from land.

One hour, maybe two,
Or, was it a year? – to me
Suddenly sense and thought
Seem to be an eternal sameness,
Amid this abyss without limits,
I do myself upon the past.

– Morning came, a boat stands
In the black depth and rests – rests . . .
What happened? She called – hundreds
Called me: what was it? Blood? – –
Nothing happened? We sleep, sleep
All sleeps – ah, so good! So good!

Der geheimnisvolle Nachen

Gestern nachts, als alles schlief,
Kaum der Wind mit ungewissen
Seufzern durch die Gassen lief,
Gab mir Ruhe nicht das Kissen,
Noch der Mohn, noch, was sonst tief
Schlafen macht, – ein gut Gewissen.

Endlich schlug ich mir den Schlaf
Aus dem Sinn und lief zum Strande.
Mondhell war’s und mild, ich traf
Mann und Kahn auf warmem Sande,
Schläfrig beide, Hirt und Schaf: –
Schläfrig stieß der Kahn vom Lande.

Eine Stunde, leicht auch zwei,
Oder war’s ein Jahr? – da sanken
Plötzlich mir Sinn und Gedanken
In ein ewiges Einerlei,
Und ein Abgrund ohne Schranken
Tat sich auf: – da war’s vorbei!

– Morgen kam: auf schwarzen Tiefen
steht ein Kahn und ruht und ruht . . .
Was geschah? so rief’s, so riefen
Hundert bald: was gab es? Blut? – –
Nichts geschah! Wir schliefen, schliefen
Alle – ach, so gut! so gut!

From:

The Peacockand the Buffalo
The Poetry of Nietzsche
Translated by James Luchte

Day 663, On the Genealogy of Morals 2.

Day's pictures, Philosophy

Day 663-1

Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morals

Preface

2

My ideas on the origin of our moral prejudices—for this is the subject ofthis polemic—received their first, brief, and provisional expression in the collection of aphorisms that bears the title Human, All-Too-Human. A Book for Free Spirits. This book was begun in Sorrento during a winter when it was given to me to pause as a wanderer pauses and look back across the broad and dangerous country my spirit had traversed up to that time. This was in the winter of 1876–77; the ideas themselves are older. They were already in essentials the same ideas that I take up again in the present treatises—let us hope the long interval has done them good, that they have become riper, clearer, stronger, more perfect! That I still cleave to them today, however, that they have become in the meantime more and more firmly attached to one another, indeed entwined and interlaced with one another, strengthens my joyful assurance that they might have arisen in me from the first not as isolated, capricious, or sporadic things but from a common root, from a fundamental will of knowledge, pointing imperiously into the depths, speaking more and more precisely, demanding greater and greater precision. For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to isolated acts of any kind: we may not make isolated errors or hit upon isolated truths. Rather do our ideas, our values, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the necessity with which a tree bears fruit—related and each with an affinity to each, and evidence of one will,one health, one soil, one sun.—Whether you like them, these fruits of ours?—But what is that to the trees! What is that to us, to us philosophers!

Day 662, Heraclitus and time.

., Day's pictures, Philosophy

Day 662-1

Artical from “Encyclopedia of time” SAGA publication 2009

Heraclitus
(c. 530–475 bce)
Heraclitus is considered among the greatest of the Presocratic philosophers. Flux and time play particularly important roles in his thinking. Even though the fragments of his book On Nature had an enormous impact upon such diverse philosophers as Plato, G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, not much is known concerning the particulars of his life. However, we do know that he was born in Ephesus, came from an old aristocratic family, and looked unfavorably upon the masses. According to Apollodrus, he was about 40 years old in the 69th Olympiad (504–501 BCE).
Relativity of Time
The most influential aspect of Heraclitus’ thinking about time is the concept of the Great Year or the eternal recurrence of everything, an idea that was taken up later by Zeno of Citium (the founder of the Stoa) and Nietzsche. However, within his philosophy, Heraclitus also clarifies other aspects of time. He was clearly aware of the relativity of time. When he explains that the sun is needed for the alteration between night and day to occur, it becomes clear that he was conscious that daytime and nighttime are dependent upon certain conditions. A certain time exists only within a specific
framework or paradigm. If the framework changes, then the concept of time within it changes, too. We would not have daytime within a world without the sun. Time is dependent upon a specific perspective, and many distinctions concerning time cannot be drawn from only a cosmic or universal perspective.
Unity of Opposites
Heraclitus criticized Hesiod for not having the best knowledge concerning daytime and nighttime. Only the masses regard Hesiod as a wise man, but truly he was not. According to Heraclitus, daytime and nighttime are one, which Hesiod had failed to realize. From a global perspective, one cannot distinguish daytime and nighttime. One has to be a participating spectator in order to employ the distinction meaningfully. Even though the distinction in question works well from a pragmatic perspective, this does not imply that it is correct. From a universal perspective, the distinction between day and night is not supposed to make any sense, as God is supposed to represent the unity of opposites; that is, God is supposed to be the unity of day and night, as well as summer and winter.
Time as Metaphor
Even though opposites do not exist, Heraclitus himself employs opposites. Concerning time, he clearly holds that there are people who are connected to the night and others who are linked to the day, and he attributes different values to these two types of paradigms. According to him, only the night-roamers are the initiated ones. They have wisdom and they do not belong to the masses. The masses are uninitiated and are connected to the day. Even though, from a global perspective, night and day are one, nighttime and daytime stand for something different. Here, they represent people who are either initiated or uninitiated into wisdom.
Time and Order
Only the initiated know what time really is. Time is a type of orderly motion with limits and periods. Heraclitus also specifies in more detail what he understands as order concerning time, and he explains that it is important that the same order exists on various levels. However, time cannot be reduced to only one aspect of order, as Heraclitus also identifies time with a playing child; that is, time is the kingdom of a playing child. Even though the aspect of order is necessary for games, there is more to the process of playing a game, as there are also the aspects of playfulness, freedom,
and chaos. To stress also the important disorderly element represented by time, Heraclitus attribute to this concept his idea of the unity of opposites. Wherever there is order, there has to be chaos. However, that chaos is relevant might only mean that even though there is one certain order in the universe, we cannot securely predict the future. Even though everything is necessary, from our perspective anything can happen, as it is impossible for us to foresee the future.
Time Is Cyclical
According to Heraclitus, the order of time is the cycle. Periods and cycles appear at various levels of existence. There is the world cycle or Great Year, but there is also a human cycle, the cycle of procreation. Human beings are born, grow up, and give birth to other human beings so that the cycle of human life can start again, which happens approximately every 30 years. In this way, a man becomes a father and then a grandfather. However, the most important idea in the philosophical reception of his thought is Heraclitus’ world cycle, referred to as the Great Year, or the eternal recurrence of everything. Analogous to human lives, there is a period or a cycle in the progression of world history. The world is supposed to be an ever-living fire that is kindled and
extinguished in regular cycles. One cycle represents a Great Year, which has the (surely metaphorical) duration of 10,800 human years. By presenting the Great Year in his philosophy of time, Heraclitus also reveals an option for an immanent type of immortality. The concept of the Great Year is of relevance on various levels. It may be analyzed from a metaphysical, natural philosophical, scientific, ethical, and religious perspective.

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

 

 

Picture explained 2

Pictures explained

Photoshop 1-50

This time no heavy stuff, just a fun picture made from 3 different ones taken in Iceland. I like to make some rules for myself, I often start with one picture  and for this one I could only use pictures from that trip, just to limit my choices. Another limit is time, you can spend hours fine-tuning a picture, but I have other things to do to. Normally I have no plan and just start playing in Lightroom with one picture and see where it goes from there.

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Day 661, On the Genealogy of Morals.

Day's pictures, On the Genealogy of Morals

Day 661-1

Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morals

Preface

1

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge—and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves—how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”1 our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart—“bringing something home.” Whatever else there is in life, so-called “experiences”—which of us has sufficient earnestness for them? Or sufficient time? Present experience has, I am afraid, always found us “absent-minded”: we cannot give our hearts to it—not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed inhimself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: “what really was that which just struck?” so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, ”what really was that which we have just experienced?” and moreover: “who are we really?” and, afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being—and alas! miscount them.—So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law “Each is furthest from himself” applies to all eternity—we are not “men of knowledge” with respect to ourselves.

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