Categories for World

When we look back on the history of humanity from this point of view, we seem to see ourselves perched on a toppling Jenga tower of incredible coincidences. So many factors had to line up perfectly for us to come into existence; change just one and we would not be here. The effect is vertiginous, reminding us that everything we take for granted about our world is in fact radically contingent. Not only do life and human life not need to exist; it would be immensely more reasonable for them not to exist.

A few weeks ago i read the article The great silence: why haven’t we found any aliens yet? in the Guardian. Over the past years i have read posts and articles abut the Fermi paradox, which asks why, given the vast number of stars and potentially habitable planets in our observable universe, there is no clear evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations.

I enjoy reading the Guardian article. I enjoy seeing videos on Tiktok about these subjects. I follow many different science channels on Tiktok and Youtube. And cats of course. So here is an example of a tiktok post from Brian Cox.

@brian.cox368 Why Every Civilization Might Destroy Itself…#LordOfTheRings #ArchitectureDesign #BrianCox #usa #unitedstates ♬ original sound – BrianCox

Today i watched the third prequel Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. As far as i remember, i only saw it once or maybe twice before. It was my post of last week about The Art of Storytelling which made me wanna see it again and take a months subscription to Disney+. That and The Bear, a series i do enjoy lots.

That’s it for now. I will leave you a video with the Star Wars theme, a cat and a fluffy dinosaur. Enjoy!

@julesthetuxedo Dino trying to impress Jules ‍⬛ with his spaceship. ‍⬛ #funnyvideo #catsoftiktok #tuxedocat #jules #fyp ♬ The Imperial March (From "Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back") – Geek Music

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.

I wish you way more than luck.

Source: This Is Water: David Foster Wallace on Life

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.

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.

Just so you know!

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.

I hope you will have a good weekend. Salute!

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

— TINKEBELL. (@looovetinkebell) October 18, 2021

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!

— Ingeborg Beugel (@IBeugel) October 16, 2021

meanwhile in greece… pic.twitter.com/wA6ISJ9s00

— TINKEBELL. (@looovetinkebell) October 15, 2021

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

— TINKEBELL. (@looovetinkebell) October 14, 2021

wanneer een van je lievelingsmensen voor @nrc schrijft.
❤️ #ellendeckwitz #lesbos pic.twitter.com/yhmB3CbEkA

— TINKEBELL. (@looovetinkebell) October 14, 2021

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.

Kamervragen van @SylvanaBIJ1 over het politie-optreden in Rotterdam en over überhaupt demonstratierecht en persvrijheid in Nederland. #woonopstand pic.twitter.com/KTsPUvVLPp

— Rebekka Timmer (@RebekkaTimmer) October 18, 2021

A post today in the left field online news outlet Joop Harde kritiek op gewelddadig optreden Rotterdamse politie bij woonprotest (Hard criticism on violent actions Rotterdam police at housing protest). Another post on the NOS website Verontwaardiging over politieoptreden tijdens woonprotest Rotterdam (Indignation about police actions during living protest Rotterdam).

Lieve demonstranten, luister naar de politie. Als je de wet zo nodig wil overtreden, dan word je maar lid van de regering.

— Pieter van Breevoort (@pietur) October 18, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

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.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

17. But it begins with ceasing to lie to ourselves about what we face.
Our own mortality.
And something worse.

— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 3, 2021

George Monbiot