The real value of a real education [has] almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
‘This is water.’
‘This is water.’
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
Time has grown into the most common way to divide the space given to you in this world. This is private time. That is time you spend on a job. This is time to cook your food. That is time you spend sleeping. This time you get paid for. That time you get not paid for.
Once a child is born into a family, that child becomes the clock that determines the spend time. Over time this child gets pushed mostly by school in the clock time we have all grown accustomed to. You pee, poop, eat and sleep by the determined laws of time.
This is not wrong. We all need to grow up and get into this shared time space. We humans have developed ways to measure time for thousands of years. The sun, the moon, the stars, nature surrounding us were all used for this. Now we use atomic clocks to measure the seconds ticking away. It is basically all the same.
In English the words time, person and year are the three most used nouns. A year is defined as a period of time, set by a single full rotation of Earth around the Sun. A person is an individual: man, woman or child. These three words set out the primary boundaries of our world.
Right now i am looking outside, looking at the trees standing out there, the sun shining on them. It is quiet. Time moves on. All the time.
I don’t know what my future will bring. I hope it will be something, i don’t want to be a derelict wreck heaped on the outside of humanity. I do think i need to solve something here, for myself. Solve a mystery. I don’t know if i will be able to do that. But I do need to let go of dreams i have of my life. They are so tempting. Wishing myself away. The last thing i want to do.
An interesting reading about the nature of time. He dismantles time taking apart four different aspects of time:
Time is different in different areas of the universe, depending on the gravity experienced in that specific place.
Now is a moment only experienced in small space in the universe. When we look at an event on Jupiter, we can only see it on this earth two hours after it has happened.
Entropy always grows towards the future.
Order is in the eye of the observer.
While i was looking into this video, i discovered Carlo Rovelli, the speaker, wrote a book The Order of Time published in 2018. I haven’t ordered it, but i might. I will look into this for a day or so longer.
This moment… relatively speaking, we can call it present. But if we look at the watch, then our minute consists of seconds. Seconds also can be divided to 60 pieces. Then, within one millisecond there is also past and future. So, half is past, half is future. No present. We cannot find the present. Without present, there is no basis for past and future. So, if we don’t investigate in such a way, then generally we can say “present”. Present minute means one minute period. Present hour means sixty minutes period. Today, present day, is 24 hours. Present month is 30 days. Isn’t it? Present eon is billions of years. Everything is relative.
Yesterday morning i walked up to the train station. Halfway up there i noticed i was angry. Angry at the cars, angry at the people walking up without looking up or down, angry at the multitudes of people simply living their lives as they think they should, whereas i think it should be wildly different. And i am fucking right of course!
Yeah, i feel that way, sometimes. Most of the time i’m quiet, observing, listening rather than speaking. Not always though.
I was mad the whole journey yesterday. Angry at the urban planners making this country this pile up of cities and houses and industry areas and distribution centers and roads. So many roads. And traffic signs and stop signs.
I will stay calm. But inside me there is an angry knot of anger.
Wu wei is a concept with its origin in old China meaning “inexertion”, “inaction”, or “effortless action”. Different meanings. From a non trying of things, a non doing of things to a with no conscious mind doing of things.
The way i lead my life is not very well thought out. Things happen to me, thoughts come into my mind, but finally i do what i do. It is not clearly envisaged beforehand. I know my money will be running out next year, but i am still not giving up.
This thought of wu wei is giving me hope. I am living very quietly, only meeting a few people each week. I am not going into any direction, i am standing still, here, in Rotterdam. Not wanting to go anywhere else. Not until i feel it’s the right time.
I try to live in this world with a generous nature. I try to say hello to most people i come across. Some simply walk me by. I don’t mind that. I am trying to write something here on this blog which makes sense. I often fail. But it is getting better. For the next two weeks i have some posts ready. I am working on a drawing, which i will post the last day of this year, Friday 24 December. I hope i can write more, cook something and make photographs.
It doesn’t stop. The virus keeps on mutating. The current mutation omicron, initially named B.1.1.529, is starting its spread around the world. It is already found in Belgium, Botswana, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom. In the Netherlands 13 cases are found this Sunday 28 November, who arrived from South-Africa last Friday.
I do feel the circle around me getting tighter. Three people who i occasionally see on the harvest market, had corona in the past two weeks. My life is quiet, so i’m not that obvious a victim for corona, but it does seem to be getting more and more infectious. Simply said, i don’t know. But i am not that worried about getting the disease. And if i do, i hope it won’t get too serious. My vaccinations should help me with that, hopefully.
And how do i feel now? I’m a bit down and then up again. A bit worried about myself mostly. And then i feel like i should be able to do something. Do something. What? Well, i’m still not burned up. I still have a bit of hope.
I’m not out there living my life. I’m in here, in my temporary house, living quietly. But i do have some antenna’s out there. I do hear about things going on. These twitters from Tinkebell and some she repeated about what happened on Lesbos got to me. It seems to me there are so many things going wrong. And here i am worried that in eight or nine months my money will run out. That is not a good way to behave and think Ellen!
verdomme. ik ben wóedend! een van de jongens met wie ik telefonisch contact had op #lesbos en die daar een tijd lang zijn live locatie met me deelde (dus ik weet 100% zeker dat hij daar was) is door griekse politie opgepakt, met geweld terug op een schip gezet. (draad) pic.twitter.com/E5Js9BMIX5
https://t.co/DXElsYl2Iu UREGENT PRESS CONFERENCE: KEERFA OFFICE (Aiolou 47 5th floor) with @looovetinkebell & lawyer about Lesbos Police Abuse during her questioning when she was arrested for helping newly arrived refugees – she saved 13, 14 sill missing, probably now pushbacked!
ter extra een korte video waarop te zien is hoe de ‘single men’ op #lesbos in tenten bij elkaar worden gezet. vaak voor een paar jaar. pic.twitter.com/zQM24g8I2V
And just another thing
There was a demonstration in Rotterdam last Sunday 17 October 2021. I saw this photograph of it on the Erasmus bridge. It looks weird. One comment said the police wanted to identify the ‘anarchists’. The anarchists are being said to be people clothed in black. Uuh..??
Another article on openrotterdam.nl about this stating the left party Groenlinks (GreenLeft) is requesting a debate in the local council about the behaviour of the police and the ME on this demonstration.
A tweet saying there are questions about the police actions in the Tweede Kamer.
1. We’ve all had a glimpse of mortality in this pandemic, and a premonition, while housebound by lockdown, of old age. These warnings remind us to use life well. In the words of the immortal Bard (Eminem), you only get one shot. So let’s not allow our lives to be ruled by lies.
2. I don’t mean only the lies we are told, though there are plenty of them, but also the lies we tell ourselves: the false assurances that might get us through the day, but that prevent us from connecting with what is real and worthwhile.
3. Let’s begin by admitting that we are in a bad place. A very bad place. Climate and ecological breakdown are happening at terrifying speed. Our own mortality is shadowed by a much greater one: the closure of the conditions that support life on Earth.
4. During the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, as contagious collapse spread from Earth system to Earth system, life was almost wiped out altogether. Roughly 90% of species became extinct. Biodiversity did not fully recover for 150 million years.
5. We are messing with a series of interlocking, extremely complex Earth systems, that we scarcely begin to understand. If we push them past certain thresholds (thresholds that may be invisible to us until they are crossed), we could trigger a similar, cascading collapse.
6. The world is wonderful, but it’s not magic. Its biophysical capacity is finite. We cannot endlessly extract from it, and endlessly load it with pollutants, without eventually flipping the system.
7. Flipping the system means a transition – possibly sudden – from the stable and benign conditions that have prevailed since the last glaciation into a completely different state, that's likely to be hostile to most life. A transition of this kind is effectively irreversible.
8. There are plenty of warnings – flickerings from a possible future – that the thresholds could be near. The fires. The freak weather. The extinctions. The spreading dead zones. We must listen to these warnings and hear what they are telling us.
9. We reassure ourselves that “they” won’t let it happen. But who is “they”? Governments? Look, they aren’t even prepared to save the subsystems: to leave fossil fuels in the ground, for example, or to prevent the collapse of marine ecosystems by reining in industrial fishing.
10. Why? Because we've allowed them to respond to commercial lobbyists. I mean we have failed to ensure that they respond to us. In other words, we have failed to mobilise in large enough numbers and make our voices heard about the non-trivial matter of life on Earth.
11. So if you are looking for meaning, it's right here. There is no greater meaning than fighting for the survival of life on Earth. And this starts by unmasking lie after lie.
12. I don’t just mean the familiar lies of the fossil fuel and mining industries. But also the less familiar lies of the banks, the consultants, the farming and fishing lobbies and, above all, the friendly, seductive faces selling us more stuff.
13. It means uncovering the comforting lies we tell ourselves: that it isn’t really happening, or doesn’t really matter, that it’s not our responsibility, that there’s nothing we can do, that it’s already too late.
14. Those of us who are alive right now live at an extraordinary moment. We are among the last people on Earth who are in a position to stop the thresholds from being crossed. Once it has happened, there really will be nothing we can do. But now there is.
15. Join the groups struggling non-violently to defend and restore our life-support systems – the more uncompromising the better. Take up their calls to action, lend your skills, whatever they are, to make them stronger.
16. If you haven’t joined such groups, please don’t ask me “but what can I do?”. There are good groups at every level: local, national, global. If they aren't yet strong enough, help them to get stronger. And if the right ones don’t exist, combine with other people to start them.
Monday morning i watched this video from De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World). While i watched this my mind did wander a bit. Fantasies about me being in a talkshow and asking a politician what he had learned the past year 2020. But i tried to keep myself focused on this video.
Halfway i decided to make a post about this video. I posted several other videos from this channel before. I do enjoy the tone and content of these people most of the time.
This video does center on Heidegger and his view on technology most of the time. I just did a search about this and found this Wikipedia page on his article titled The Question Concerning Technology.
I must confess, Heidegger is difficult to read, for me anyway. I never was able to really understand his work. I actually bought his book in the Dutch translation Sein und Zeit and was never able to get a grip on this content. But i persevere!
The text posted under this video, translated into English by me:
Marlies Dekkers in gesprek met filosoof Ad Verbrugge over zijn werk en de coronacrisis. “We dreigen voorbij te gaan aan allerlei facetten van het leven.”
In dit gesprek bespreekt Verbrugge op filosofische wijze het discours waar we ons momenteel in bevinden, en dan met name in relatie tot de coronacrisis. Hij schetst het moderne mensbegrip dat vanaf de 16e en 17e-eeuw opkomt. “Daar speelt techniek een belangrijke rol in, ook samen met wetenschap.” In de moderniteit heerst een bepaalde mentaliteit en een manier van leven. In navolging van Descartes en anderen beschouwen we de werkelijkheid primair als mechanische uitgebreidheid dat we naar onze hand kunnen zetten. Verbrugge: “Je ziet een homogenisering optreden in de manier waarop wij kijken. Alles wordt eigenlijk berekenbare materie.”
Verbrugge vertelt dat dit volgens Heidegger een voorbode is van wat hij ‘het gestel’ noemt, “een benadering waarin de sturing en beheersing van de werkelijkheid als bestand leidend wordt.” In de geest van Jünger spreekt Verbrugge over een ‘technisch collectief’ “waarin je ziet dat de werkelijkheid in dat collectief proberen te sturen [..] dat wij daarin de neiging hebben daarin te automatiseren.” Ieder tekort moet worden opgelost, een drang naar perfectie. “Ook het lichaam wordt onderdeel van die machinerie.”
De moderniteit heeft ons veel gebracht, maar heeft een keerzijde. Verbrugge: “We worden geconfronteerd met onze eigen eenzijdigheid op het moment dat die perfectie [..] niet goed kan toelaten dat de dingen gaan naar hun eigen aard.” Dat zien we nu bij de coronacrisis: iets breekt in. Dat proberen we met maatregelen en vaccins, het technisch collectief, weer beheersbaar te maken. Refererend aan complotdenkers en ook de rellende jongeren stelt Verbrugge: “Ik denk dat er een groeiend wantrouwen is ten aanzien van dit technisch collectief.” We dienen de eenzijdigheid te erkennen, anders leidt ‘het gestel’ tot destructie. Verbrugge: “Het gaat er niet om dat je techniek vaarwel zegt, maar wel dat je onderkent in welke mate we voorbij dreigen te gaan aan allerlei facetten van het leven”
Marlies Dekkers has a conversation with philosopher Ad Verbrugge about his work and the corona crisis.”We threaten to go past several facets of life.”
In this conversation Verbrugge discusses philosophically the discourse we are in at the moment, especially in relation to the corona crisis. He sketches the modern human understanding emerging from the 16th and 17th century. “Technology plays an important part in this, together with science.” In modernity a certain mentality and a way of live reigns. After Descartes and others we consider reality primary as a mechanical expanse we can shape with our own hands. Verbrugge: “You are able to see a homogenization in the way we look. Everything becomes computable matter.”
Verbrugge tells that according to Heidegger this is a harbinger of what he calls the Gestell, “an approach in which the steering and control of reality as file becomes leading.” In Jünger’s mind Verbrugge speaks of a ‘technical collective’ “in which you see that reality in the collective tries to control. [..] that we have a tendency to automation.” Every shortage needs to be resolved, an urge to perfection. “Even the body becomes part of this machinery.”
Modernity has brought us much, but it does have a downside. Verbrugge: “We are confronted with our own one-sidedness the moment this prefection [..] can not allow things to follow there own nature.” We see that now with the corona crisis: something breaks in. We try to control this with regulations and vaccins and the technical collective. Referring to conspiracy thinkers and also the rioting youth in the Netherlands Verbrugge claims: “I think there is a growing distrust with regards to this technical collective.” We do need to acknowledge the one-sidedness, else the Gestell will lead to destruction. Verbrugge: “It is not about saying farewell to technic, but to recognize in which degree we threaten to go past several facets of life.”
