Mart-deBlog

It is the last week of my academic year. I am writing deep into the night, where it is quiet, where I can only hear myself, breathing, thinking. I am doing philosophy 24/7 and I am starting to identify with a 'philosopher' as person; but I'm hesitant about it. I do not know whether it is right to identify with a character, to have an image of myself or to make myself strive towards an ideal (if it is an ideal...). Am I a philosopher? The question itself sounds sad, a little childish even. Is it even a valid question? Yet, I see the philosopher everywhere, even in these very sentences. My world becomes philosophical, questions the shadows of everything I see. The days I wander through labyrinths of thoughts and perspectives, through long hallways that do not end, opening on the sides, into new never-ending hallways around the corner. But they are all my thoughts, I know, I still know. So I wander through my own thoughts, endlessly. Like everyone else, but still differently, or not? Is philosophy different from thinking? Are we all philosophers? Doing philosophy becomes doing myself, doing what I am. Is there narcissism in this? Might it be perverse even, in a weird way? When philosophy becomes my identity, does doing philosophy become a masturbation?

Philosophy is quintessentially a journey. When we travel, when we make a true journey, we absorb the environment and experience a different world, we fuse with alterity, with the newness and the many differences that enstrange us from our past. Travelling is a metaphor for reading philosophy, because I enter into a new world entirely and experience everything differently. And I becomes different because of it. Are we not exactly that what we experience? The more I am becoming a philosopher, the less I have the urge to travel. A philosophy book is enough. Yet at the same time, I never truly leave myself when doing philosophy, I always remain within myself, I am always the one appropiating the new world, making the different thoughts my own, whatever that may mean...

{Fragment} My experience of a Nietzschean perspective:
Culture is permeated with oppositions, things of different nature clash with each other. There is a gap between oppositions, a nothingness. Humans are caught within this nothingness, in between all oppositions. For example, Good and Evil: are thought to be two wholly different things, an act is either Good or Evil. Or, Truth and Falsehood: there are things that change, they only appear as they they are and there is truth that is always the same, beyond appearance. Nietzsche undoes this opposition, brings the opposing elements into contact, revealing them to be of the same kind. They become mere points on the same scale, different values of the same variable. So, Good is what weak people use to restrain the strong, Evil becomes natural striving; good becomes evil, evil becomes good: they have become similar. And similarly, Truth is used conserve the old, it is dogmatic and denies real life while Falsehood is the origin of creativity and everything new; truth become false, false becomes true to life and growth. We should strive but we should not strive for that which denies life, we should strive to go beyond ourselves without making the 'beyond' other-wordly. Life does not know oppositions.

{Fragment} My experience of a Hegelian perspective:
The subject becomes only properly a self-conscious person when it is opposed by something hidden, something unlike one-self, a non-I, an object. The self receives its first delineation, its first definition from its difference to an other, the other opens up the possibility for the subject being reflected back unto itself and thereby gains self-consciousness. However, often the object will actually also be a human being, resulting in a clash of wills, of desires, of the need for recognition. From an outside perspective two parties risk their life for recognition until one side retreats and become enslaved. The victorious one becomes master, as his desires and will are recognized and absorbed by the slave. The master's will is imposed upon the slave's. However, the slave - through making changes for the master - truly recognizing its will actualized. The slave gets the opportunity to cause changes. From the perspective of the master, the slave will have become part of the master and will only see itself. And thus the master is not opposed anymore by something other than itself. The master slowly disintegrates, while the slave grows and gradually consumes its master, until nothing is left of the master's personality. Slave will become master and master will become slave. The circle of history.

These are just fragments, two examples of the experiences I wander through. I see these things everywhere around me. But they are not at all Nietzsche or Hegel, they are my experience of them. I have appropiated them, made their thoughts my own while bringing my own thoughts to them. They are not fully interpretations, they are also inspirations. The fragments are hybrids. But in the end, I mainly see myself in the experiences, my personal problems and my questions of life. Thus I am doing myself, I am reading myself. I get so sick of myself. The "I" is lurking behind every experience. I cannot get out of myself. Everything other becomes me. For a short moment the world becomes Nietzschean or Hegelian, it is my real relieve, my drug; but soon enough I recognize my doings in the adaptation, my own self that directs the misinterpretation. But I do not want to be the God of my experience. I do not want it at all. I do not want to be omnipresent. I do not want to be locked in myself. I do not want to have to distance myself from things, in order not to destroy them. It is lonely. It is perverse. It is boring. And the more I think, the more I turn everything into myself, the more I overcome my oppositions, the more I grow, the lonelier I become.

We value things in life. We value our possessions, pleasures and memories. And, of course, we especially value our friends and our family. Having priorities in life means that you value some of these things more than others, as you would readily give up your laptop to save a dear friendship. Your values and their priorities form - what I call - a 'pattern of valuation' that informs many of your actions and thoughts. In a way, you could say that the pattern of valuation is the world you experience, the world you live in.

Love is different. Your love is not a value, simply added to your pattern of valuation. Falling in love does not just reshuffle your values and priorities. If it does this, then it is a mummified love, a dead love. Rather, love demands to be the supreme and sole value in your life.

Falling deeply in love is like sinking into a depression with regard to the world around you. You start to care less for everyday things, then you care less for your normal pleasures like sport and partying, and then your ambitions. Your friends? Your family? The loved one is like a singularity that draws away the value from things. And - here comes the real problem - it is a process without a natural limit. Setting a limit will kill it, its voice says: "how can you be in love with me if you cannot go all the way?" But, would you be willing to become indifferent to everything around you? Do you have what it takes to experience this ideal called 'love'?

The meaning of 'true love' is something unrestrained, an Idea that can only propel its manifestation forwards. Anyone who claims this is not the case, mistakingly defines love as 'frienship with sex', 'deep affection' or 'having someone to spend your live with', just to name a few. No, love cannot be defined in other terms than its own Ideal: to be the supreme and sole value that gives meaning to your existence.

Thus the conundrum is posed: Will there be meaning in your love, or will there by meaning in your world? Or will you get stuck in the middle, somewhere between the value of love and the value of your world, forever in a twilight realm, halfway happiness?

So, what do you think?

Almost a year ago, I posted an article 'Freak Out' which defended two ideas:

• "Commitment issues" arise from a relationship extended into eternity as a subconscious substitute for not believing in one ideal partner in life. By imagining the relationship as if it were forever, it becomes clear whether the relationship is itself alive or dead, whether the other depletes or invigorates your energies. I said that a "commitment issue" does not really exist, properly speaking, and that only right or wrong relationships exist.
• "Commitment issues" seen as a confrontation with death, was further analyzed as being a fixation of both partners with regard to each other, one as needy and the other as giver. I assumed that in every human being both a needing-side and a giving-side were (sometimes only potentially) there, thus every fixation would feel as a contract, killing the dynamics and lively aspects of a relationship.
  

Back then I was remaining single because of having the freakout feeling already by simply observing and getting to know someone. Never could I be in a relationship with any of the people around me. Now that I am actually in a relationship, of course I have more to say on the freak outs that we all experience at some point. *Yes I have changed my view on freak outs and no, not because I freaked out myself and want to save my relationship...*

We freak out when we are confronted with, of course, some kind of freak. When we have a freak out because of a commitment issue, it is because our relationship appears before us as a freak. Indeed, I think there are instances when the relationship between oneself and the other suddenly appears as a thing, when the relationship has a sudden existence on its own before our eyes. Normally we are in the middle of it, encapsulated by it and there is no way to see the relationship from an outside perspective. Especially in the early stages when we are 'blind of love', we are simply lost within the growing relationship. But when the union (because that is what it is for partners to get to know each other) between partners momentarily stagnates, one's individuality is free to move outside of the relationship and observe it, before the union is fulfilled. The relationship becomes disclosed in a distinctive form. In other words, the form of our relationship is seen aesthetically, as something appearing with a surface to 'look at' and aesthetic qualities to please or displease us.

We are not used to this and especially relationships that are somewhere in between young and old (like all adolescents and middle-aged things) will often be horrific monstrosities, ugly freaks of nature. To describe it metaphorically bodily terms, you will see an uncompleted fusion, her arm to his shoulder, his eye and her nose, hairy and smooth legs coming together in a vagina with balls. Relationships in further stages become fused further, hopefully in better balance, with his eyes and her hair, his legs with her skin around it, and an androgynous body. Sometimes elements in a relationship are shared and averaged out between both, sometimes elements dominantly originate from him while other elements originate from her. The competitions and uncompleted fusions, can slowly synchronize and harmonize, while from the inside-out aesthetic principles will be at work from both of the partners. I think therefore it is crucial to have harmonious notions of a beautiful relationship, there cannot be friction there. The freaking out is due to the monstrous appearance of a yet uncompleted creation.

Now I still believe the other ideas apply in general, the freaked out relationship needs to change and cannot be prolonged into the future in the form that caused the freak out because it is simply ugly. One can start to feel trapped in the relationship, when a certain element has always to come from one person (e.g. she always has to be the feet on which they stand). The ideal relation should be an ongoing changing creation, sometimes it appears with his eyes and sometimes with hers. It is ideal since a relationship that continues to recreate itself in new forms, thereby extends itself beyond time and degeneration, having an eternal life or being that Romantic perfection which I still believe everyone should strive for.

When experiencing the freak out, when having a commitment issue, I think the proper question to ask oneself is why the relationship can appear before you as a thing, and whether you saw just a moment in a vigorous clash of elements or the end result of your relationship. Did the freak looked as if he was still growing and changing or did it look more less as the final product? If it is a freak with little prospect of further creation, then take responsibility and abort it. But it is also true that the serious relationship in their most earliest stages can freak you out the most, as the ugliness of initial chaos from which things still have to grow in their right proportion.

I am back in Berlin for my last ten weeks. The Doctor declared me sick and I am not allowed to go to class. So I went into the city to read, ending up in the S-bahn that goes around through Berlin and I sat there for several circles. In my window, the heart of Berlin passed by in the cinematic movement of the train, moving from East to West to East to West. On my lap lay one of the best books I have read in a long while. I was struggling, when I was looking outside the train, my book burned in my lap but when I was reading the book, the diversity of Berlin screamed for my attention.

Studying philosophy (or studying anything) implies that you close your eyes on the world, and direct them to the world of letters and concepts. Either you read or you absorb the environment. Essentially then, reading a book always disconnects you from the surroundings. And this the origin of the conflict between my stay at ECLA and my stay in Berlin: ECLA is a 'not-Berlin' and Berlin is a 'not-ECLA'; these two worlds oppose each other, one can only be in either one (see my previous post). And especially so because Berlin is my environment, I have never felt so easily connected to a place, so easily part of a culture but the same goes for the environment of philosophical discourse in which I am rooting more and more. But to leave Berlin for a moment, if I want to devote myself to philosophy it seems that this schism will be my home, I will always live between the book and the presence of things, as philosopher you can only be homeless.

But a small epiphany came over me while I was sitting in the train today, caught between book and window, between the abstract and concrete. Being homeless is not necessarily the same as being lost. There is a nomadic existence, the life of constant movement. Already, Plato wrote about the cave and the intellectual who breaks from the bonds of community and leaves the cave to see the sun, already Plato hammered on the act of traveling itself, advocating the return back into the cave. Philosophy is always associated with an ivory tower, and to be honest, my whole life I have actually dreamed of having a house with an immensely high tower. But I always have trouble dealing with elitism and I often prohibit myself from building the necessary towers of perspective. Then, today in the train, I had the simple realization, of building the highest tower possible, to strive for ascending high-up into the sun and then journey all the way back to earth, spending a nomadic life of transcendence, in never-ending circles of ascending and descending. Thus I calmed down, lowered my head to read, and I read about Hegel and the development of human consciousness in History through diverse Master-Slave relations, until I had enough and raised my head, to see a tough-looking skinhead nervously checking his pockets and the conductor with a self-aware grin...

Restriction is what our Zeitgeist lacks. Moralizing voices lack. We do not know how to restrict and what to restrict. We even ask ourselves: 'Do we have to restrict, or can we have MORE forever?' Everyone simply enjoys whatever is within grasp... This is the LOW live.

The true difference between ANIMALS AND HUMANS is that humans can restrict themselves. The true difference between animals and humans is that humans can have meaning in their lives. Restriction and meaning are two sides of the same coin.

The word 'dog' has meaning because I restrict the usage of the word 'dog' to dogs only. When I use the word 'dog' for cats, the word loses some of its meaning. When I call everything 'dog', then the word will be meaningless. When we act immedetialy towards everything in reach, our lives will be equally MEANINGLESS and we become equal to animals... And we eat animals because they do not have their own meaning..!

We travel when we can, because we want more experience. We study everything, because we always want more knowledge. We fuck WHENEVER AND WHOEVER we can, because fucking more gives more pleasure. Our time is growing with meaningless travelling, meaningless knowledge and meaningless sex... Our times are hollowing. Lives are losing their meaning everywhere around you. You see BEAUTY (as the expression of meaning) bloating up and losing its form, with ugliness growing on MTV, ugliness on the streets and the growing FORMLESSNESS in the people you know... And we wonder why we miss God so much. Why we desire Christian Politics and envy the passion of Muslims...

SO! Why do you not fight for your human life? Never call an enemy your 'friend', never use 'love' for physical pleasure. Spend time with true friends only, have sex with your true love only!

And it is so dissapointing: those who do not understand beauty, purpose and meaning... It is so good to be human, why waste it because the empty life is easier? Bare your teeth and defend the meaning in your life, meaning is all you got, NO?

People's slaving to desire is INFECTIVE. When you open yourself to the animality, to the life that always absorbs, to the life that moves along with the surroundings; it will suck the meaning right out of you. These temptations are the leeches. We have to be so careful to avoid these craving leeches that set their venomous teeth in your flesh!

God was the source of meaning before, now he is GONE. We lost God because we lost restriction. NOW, capitalism devours the weak first, like spreading black water, drawing people closer to animality, while they eat and fuck without restriction... BUT we can create meaning, just as we created God before: restrict and differentiate, create your own commandments, and things will become meaningfull through this delineation.

One quest, one holy grail, one cliché ideal: "master restriction and become an artist of meaning, create your OWN meaning of life. Inspire others, give meaning to their lives, if you can. Live your personal religion."

The genius of Nietzsche was wrong only HERE: ascetism does not deny the Will, it is the very thing that drives us, as we do things because they have meaning. Meaning makes humanity strong, not weak. Nietzsche lost his own meaning, became crazy, simple and unable to act. The philosopher became a donkey because he tried to create his God-like Zarathustra without affirming the art of denial.

People hurt people with empty words, empty deeds. The statue is created by what is carved away; but nowadays, our streets - and our personalities - are filled with formless LUMPS OF AMASSING UGLY ROCK. Does not the statue have more meaning, more beauty than the formless rock? So, we must carve away the low life. Carve away that animal. Separate earth from heaven. You must create our boundaries, make them clear and strict. Carve, prune, deny yourself! Or BE LOST.

Some time ago I was asked how it is possible for me to defend superficial and cliché statements; given my character as someone who pretends to hate the static normativity of mainstream opinions and despises dogmatism in general.

It is exactly the hate for dogmatism that can cause the occasinal defence of apparently simple views. Having been in a supposedly intellectual environment for years now, it still strikes me how often the origin of 'a more intellectual' opinion is the simple reaction against mainstream ideas, sometimes simply to demonstrate one's elevation while copying the intellectual environment. Surely, there is as much dogmatism on the street as there is in the many ivory towers. And thus it becomes interesting what superficiality exactly means? And what it means for an opinion to be deep? Being deep could mean that you really know what you are saying. But do we ever fully know? Superficiality sometimes means overgeneralization. But doesn´t a difficult abstract thought refer too almost everything. Philosophy is full of generalization, does this make it superficial? I do no think so.

For me, a deeper thought can be roughly defined as something experienced more intensely than a superficial thought. When we are influenced by mass opinion, we rightly say that we are probably being superficial because there is only acted, theatrical vehemence in the thought and the superficial opinion does not derive its meaning from our individuality. For example, ´the islam is bad´ is superficial when it is not embedded and consistent with your complete worldview and, more importantly, when it is not stated with authentic conviction. Some people hardly have a personal worldview, not even an unconscious one, and are therefore doomed to skim over the surface of life. But take the apparantly more intellectual view: ´judging different cultures from the viewpoint of your own culture is ignorant´, this is similarly superficial when the meaning of this statement is not intensely experienced but learned as a logical necessity imposed by some textbook. Something is lost when you recognize where someone's opinion comes from, it becomes simply boring and empty. So it is all about the foundation of what is said: is it your surrounding context, some empty logic or your personal history and individual mindset? Now your thought can be similar to the majority´s and yet have conceptual roots running deep into the meaning of your experiences. Could something be truly deep when you need a never-ending book that is both biographical and reflective to explain why and how you mean it?

Of course this is all a stub. There is so much more to say. For one, I am unsure whether superficialty is a bad thing or good thing necessarily. Superficialty can be a way of life, and as such there are so many ways of being superficial. Deeper people can be heavy, over-suffering and disconnected from society, as I see clearly in my own weaknesses. Superficial people can be boring and desperately empty, yet fast and part of world. It can be wonderful to live on the surface instead of underneath it. Still, I indeed pretend to hate superficialty, but even more so I deeply hate the people who grow stuck in either superficiality or depth. In my opinion, we should all strive to take things from the surface down along its deep roots, while also climbing up from the depths to bring something hidden to the surface. I think it is morally justified to despise people in whom-, or those character traits in which, either of these movements is lacking.

M 16 yrs
M has noticed the somewhat shy girl R for a long time already but suddenly falls in love. After several weeks of occasional eye contact, M asks the email address of R. They chat on MSN. By now M falls madly in love and confesses this to R, who replies that she likes M too. They dance together and they hold hands on the school square. M tells R that he thinks of her as his soulmate. But R just likes M and does not know what to do. After one week, R tells M that she prefers to be friends.

Twilight
The world collapsed for M. For the rest of the year he sunk into a deep depression. Until the summer revived M again, making him feel stronger than ever. After that summer M thrived in school. Some girls fell in love with M and taught M to be himself around girls. But M could not fall in love with any of these girls.

M 18 yrs
Somewhere in spring, R's best friend tells M that R is in love with him. But M is bittered and wants her to approach him as he approached her before. So M waits but R does not do anything. The school year of M and R come to an end. Forcefully, M and R continue meeting by going to the same beach with friends. M still waits for R to act. Although nothing happens, old feelings of M slowly grow to possess him more. When the summer ends, M meets in the evening with R on the beach. They confess their true feelings and it is one of the most magical nights in M's life. From that moment onward, M and R fall deeply in love. For many months, M and R share their deepest feelings and delve into each others worlds. But M becomes not fully satisfied and starts to doubt whether R is the one for him. He breaks up. But when he sees R again one month later, he runs after her through the streets. Thus M an R are back together again for a short time. Until, when M will go to university and R to the USA, they suspend the relationship, so M can learn about his Soulmate through other girls and R can rethink her life's directions independently from M.

Twilight
Immediately after goodbye, M found a girl who was quite different from R and he liked her. But after only several weeks his feelings for this girl dwindled down. Nevertheless, M tells R all about it and R wants to cut all contact. After that, M cannot fall in love for 4 years, despite his earlier intentions to experience more. Yet, M has intense friendships with girls and learns about many different and intense characters. During these years, M is always curious about R. After the cut of contact, R's world had fallen apart and she had sunk into a depression for a year. But the next summer revived her and she met other guys. After some years, R fell in deeply love with someone and had a relationship for more than a year. When R's relationship with the other had become problematic, M and R met again in Utrecht. The feelings proved to be strong between M and R. But R returned to the other to continue with him. Nonetheless M became convinced that the story was not yet over. So M waited.

M 23 yrs, Present
On turning 23, M receives a birthday note from R. And, when M hears that R's relationship is definitely over, he replies to the note by inviting R to Berlin. She accepts. Within one day in Berlin, M and R fall in love again. Now, M and R are growing towards each other. Some ancient feelings slowly rejuvenate little by little, other feelings are mortified by history. Entirely new feelings carefully sprout on older branches. Old clouds float by, leaving wide blue spaces of the unknown. There are dangers in the history but also the support of acquired knowledge. And thus, new momentum builds up to propel the story further through this unfinished history...

My mother visited me in Berlin this weekend. It was great, in many ways. The greatness comes especially from the displacement of the mother/son relationship away from parental home and the normal web of circumstances into the enormous city of Berlin. A city like Berlin is in many respects unlike home. Thus, when my mother visited, what one gets is an extreme strong emotional bond free from normality and everyday customs. The bond in its purity. Sometimes this can be scary, weird. I see the personality behind my mother, the child behind my mother and the woman behind my mother, and this intensifies the motherhood of my mother. Luckily Berlin provides everything to also simply and carelessly enjoy, many drinks, bars, art, jazz, sushi, shops and wide streets to stroll. Nevertheless, the intensity contrasts with the light air of the day. This became clearest when my mother left again. The little boy of 7 years old was back, suffering death from a simple goodbye, sad to even slightly separate from my mother, being left behind ruptured and torn. The honesty of this experience is memorable. It was a weekend of the authentic, true being together of a real mother and a real son. In Berlin style of course.

In our postmodern globalized age, we forgot all about the roots. The tree roots into the ground. On the side where the roots grow deeper and stronger, there the branches grow higher and wider. Roots give grip, stability and nutrients to the growth of branches and the branches sustain the roots energy. The taproot runs straight down from the tree deep into the ground, storing energy and supporting the tree for its growth upward. The lateral roots grow away from the trunk in the surface where there are the most water and nutrients.

There is so much to be learned from the quiet tree.

Growing the bonsai tree is studying the way life grows. The bonsai tree needs to be uprooted in order to prune the outbalanced or rotten roots, to give space to underdeveloped roots. I have been uprooted several times in life to cut some roots, most probably you have been uprooted at some point too. Philosophy is a form of uprooting, a process in which we lay bare the roots of our experience and maybe cut the undesired ones. These are the roots within the metaphysical and ethical grounds of our being but there are many more and they are uprooted by the digging of our introspection. We have roots in our social grounds, roots in family grounds, in intellectual grounds, in aesthetic grounds, roots in dark and hidden depths and we have aerial roots. And we tend to forget that all these roots need their nourishment, that certain roots dominate others and can always be cut if one so desires. Strongly rooted branches overshadow other branches that wither and die, leaving scars of dead bark on the trunk. Dead bark can be beautiful, but often it takes energy and makes the trunk crooked. We need to be aware that the healthy growth of one branch means the deprivation of another. In the end the tree wants to grow, upward into the sky and deep down into the earth.

Treeology I: grow the right roots and cut the rotten ones.

As many know, my life is quite possessed by my ambitions, I guess it encapsulates many of my biggest flaws in life. This was the week of my applications, thus of nervous breakdowns, of existential crisis's and sheets of paper throughout my room. I am applying for philosophy masters in Oxford, Cambridge and the Catholic University of Leuven. I am ashamed of telling people about this because - well - these are disgustingly elitist places. I do not consider myself an ivy league student (and that is a compliment to myself), I hate these places where you are not allowed to walk on the grass. But then again, I care about philosophy and it is simply a fact that the philosophy professors of these places are the best and the study by far the most inspiring.
My chances are not too great. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science instead of a Bachelor of Philosophy, thus their obvious problem will be my background. Still I have hopes. I want it so badly, though I realize they are desperate hopes. The University of Leuven would be an interesting place and it is cheap, I am still finishing that application but probably my chances should be highest here compared to the other two.

This might all sound boring but it matters. Imagine, when I chose to study philosophy I chose to spent my whole life with philosophy and I need to somehow secure my future in philosophy. Indeed it is incredibly difficult to get a job in philosophy at a university and the PhD's from ivy league schools take all the few open places, and even they have trouble. In a way, a lot is decided here, if I get rejected, I might stay another year in Berlin and try again next year, I do not know.

Halfway March I will receive the decisions and surely they will be here on my blog together with either black bile and self-torture or glee and Euphoria.

"You are so rational"
I hear it often, and it always means something like "You are a coldhearted, calculating, unromantic asshole." It means you do not feel. And I am so sick of it. Sometimes it seems you are allowed to be either a sensitive emotional soul or a calculator. Of course everyone understands the simple idea that these things are not opposed at all and that there are many who are emotional-rational and not to forget ones who are rational-emotional. Still, I hear it too often that I am just rational whenever I decide something that is not appreciated by others. The simple thought of the mixture-people can be pushed a little:
1. If you are an emotional rational then you emotionalize your thoughts, you reason about a situation and then feel something about the outcome. The origin is a calculated thought, the outcome a supposedly intense and intuitive feeling. And I suspect these people are best at cursing me for being "such a rational fucker" because they constantly fool themselves into believing that they act on gut feeling and deep-rooted emotions. And they can forget the hidden deliberations because they trust their calculation's outcome such that it is forgotten in the sensitive colors it gets. Seriously, the people I know who call themselves sensitive and intuitive are to me the most carefully deliberated people, who desperately long for being spontaneous and unpredictable. Sad.
2. If you are a rational emotional then you rationalize your emotions, which is quite different from the previous person. Your reactions are based on how you feel, and only afterwards do you explain them to yourselves. Maybe the reasoning is part of becoming more secure in your actions or maybe it is part of covering up your motives, to hide yourself from yourself because you find your emotions ugly or you simply do not want to know your emotions.
* Of course this is all just simple-minded pseudo psychology, yet people are more eager to say they know all this than actually acting like they know it. So let us hammer on it for a while.
** Of course, while you read it, you identified with the second category, everyone does although few actually are. I believe the rational emotionals are by far in the minority. I myself have thought a lot about what I am and genuinely think I indeed rationalize my emotions. And therefore I am pissed with being called rational. This weblog is itself a way to rationalize my emotions, and this two way character table of this post might be nothing more than a flake image of how I feel about being emotional and rational: "don't fucking make me the one or the other!" Or we should simply stop thinking in these terms at all, they are really quite pathetic, aren't they?

Of the many spheres in life, my time in Berlin leads me deep into the experience of the night. The night has come to stand for the world I experience and the mood of my character. In the night, there is the endless studying. And as I read the deeper I descend into the quiet and as I write, others seem unreal. The night is not dark. And it is all but sad. It is simply quiet and empty. Every book is a preparation for a next day, but simultaneously it is an end in itself as if nothing comes afterward. As a night does not truly end, it is only negated by the sun: the night lasts in the corners where the sun does not reach. And the submersion into books is the same movement as the journey through Berlin's nightlife. I do not know Berlin by day, I know it by its shadowplay. With a bottle of beer in my hand, Berlin passes by the window of the trains in the night. And in the clubs I journey through an underworld where one is not allowed to look back, where the day does not exist. Amongst the freaks of the nightclub I am sane, blind as the dark beats maim my senses, silence the voice of thoughts and turn them light and fleeting. As I dance, I learn about the space in between ideas, as they become a lightly breeze. And coming outside I am alone while everyone sleeps, they appear to be standing still as I move onwards through the shining dark. All is in nocturnal peace.

And that is the mood of how I live; the world I experience an empty sky, wherein ethereal clouds are passing by, a breeze and the sound of silence.

-

The gods were bored so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was created. From that time boredom entered the world and grew in exact proportion to the growth of the population.
(Kierkegaard, 'Crop Rotation')


The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard expresses a view that has been with me since I could think. People are boring. Some are amusing but they bore themselves (think of all those depressed comedians) and people who bore others don't even know about their boredom. We do not want to be boring, it is the most repulsive - yes even evil - state to be in. A child rightfully does everything to avoid boredom, but when we mature boredom sadly becomes stronger and is at times even defended. Depression is it's called, when boredom wins over you. Our society is depressed. Imagine that you deeply desire to divorce simply because you are bored, society would scorn you; yet isn't this the most valid reason to break sacred marriage? What about stealing out of amusement or hurting your friends out of arbitrariness...

In the Divina Comedia Dante pictures Satan amidst a plane of ice, covered in frost and with his wings freezing the sinners around it. In my view, boredom is the frost of Satan. It brings static and makes lethargic, one who is bored does not move. This is maybe the most important task in life: to fight habits and predictability. It is a fight against our biology itself, our body works by forming habits and fixing us into patterns. And either we resist or there is no point to living.

One of the most painful experiences is discovering the boring in someone. At some point, everyone dissapoints the interest: the joker makes the same jokes, the drama-queen magnifies the same events, the philosopher applies the same idea in different guises, the intellectuals copy each other just like the masses, even the madman is arbitrary with its single disease. And you can only take distance. It is just too evil.

One can only change. And Kierkegaard explains us here: one can change the soil or one can change the method of cultivation. The one is hard and the other almost impossible. Changing the soil stands for those extensive changes, when changing environment, going on a trip or starting a new job. We are driven by our boredom like slaves, like a puppet on strings. Changing the method of cultivation stands for differing the experience of the world, to remember things without pain and forget in the equality of memories. Do not marry and do not make friends and do not identify yourself with a job. Then we're driven by our boredom into indifference and arbitrariness. We would become fear-struck rabbits if you ask me.

Kierkegaard makes sense but is too symmetric. I say (and be ready for my boring preachings), embody your boredom. Get to know the boring ways and then play with it. Just laugh about your own boredom. Be boring in unpredictable ways. Bore others and do it on purpose. If you are bored by someone do not waste energy on resurrecting them but bore back and enjoy it (thus being amused by someone's boredom). Indeed you have to change yourself constantly. But you do not change your interests, rather move your boredom. Amuse yourself by being boring and bore yourself with amusement. And, especially, get stuck in things willingly, push it forward until you exhaust the boredom of it and then move somewhere else. The thing will be left purified and insatiably interesting.

If your resist boredom, only then you get caught in it and it will eat you empty. People just do not go far enough. Only when I dive into it does it feel that I overcome boredom. It is about striving for the impossible: to embody opposites and be mad and sane, joker and gothic, boring and interesting. Only by embracing boredom can you become truly interesting.

The devil lurks everywhere and its ways are devious. So keep an eye on it at all times and it cannot surprise you. Live with the devil. It is the only way.

If only I could truly live my thoughts...

Sincerely boring,

Martin

So here I am. My first week in Berlin is over and the settling feeling slowly fades away. Whoever moved somewhere for a longer period might recognize the feeling of many processes going on under the surface of your mind, times goes slow and it is hard to fall asleep. I have the feeling that I have been here for a long time already. That does not mean that I have completely settled, it only means that so much happens in my mind that time stretches out like a rubber band. People who know me, probably already expect that I am trying hard to be aware of what is going on in my head, to raise stuff above the surface. But well, I have not really been able to grasp it. Of course it is easy to make guesses, there should be tons of mental processes as social adaptation, new habit formation, setting goals and changing self-perception. But the real processes of settling are simply beyond me, it is too much and too intricate.

In Hong Kong my experiences were radically different. I think that I never truly settled there, I was lost in translation, lost in bewilderment and psychedelia. I was a constant stranger. Berlin is the exact opposite of Hong Kong, it is open. There is just so much within reach, so much things I could do or worlds I could enter. This gives rise to a certain pressure, "will it ever be enough, whatever I do?" Thus a paradox arises in which Berlin remains out of reach, there seems to be an infinite amount of necessary experiences lying between me and Berlin. And then there is the ECLA obstructing me from having these experiences, frustrating, since I just know that both ECLA and Berlin are the right environments for me in so many ways. But then maybe this is also a misperception of myself (maybe I'm thinking to be more alternative or more scholarly than I actually am, who knows).

But this is all nothing more than guesswork, I have no clear idea what is going on with me right now. But what I am driving at is that I might here confront that restlessness hidden somewhere deep in me. It takes an extremely ambivalent situation to bring up the true face of it, I think. And I start to believe that I am exactly in such an environment: I live as close to 'the right place' as possible, yet I am for removed from it, in my books and studies. What do I want from my surroundings? Am I a hermit or a social animal? Should I find peace or be forever on the search for new experiences? Is my time going to be spend in ECLA or Berlin?

There is the saying of 'uitvliegen', in the sense of flying away from home. When I was sitting in the train to Berlin with my fat suitcase and stuffed backpack, I really felt as close to flying as one can get. It is an experience in which the senses get clear, sounds become piercing and sight becomes full. There is a new sensitivity, well-known from the childhood when everything still hurts. Although it is sad to have a melting mind, it is rejuvenating at the same time. In a way my summer prepared me for it, like a circle coming around I softened my mind back to when I entered college. I went back to computer games and careless indifference, uprooting my ways of the past three years. It is an essential experience to feel the existential control over your life, the sense of power over who one is. During my teenage years, I consciously did this every year, I recreated myself during summer sitting in the sun and looking back without contemplation, but somehow I could not do it anymore when I got into my twenties. But I think I now know how it happens: by the bounding of a period, an absolute ending of a self and its time, after which an absolute a new beginning will always follow. In this case it was the moment between the leaving behind of a home and the entering of a new environment, a moment of being disconnected. My period in Holland was clearly bounded, it ended with the last high-five with my brother; just as my life in Berlin had a clear boundary: the moment I had set foot in Ostbahnhof surrounded by the mass of Berliners in which I just fit. Two clear boundaries and nothing in between. Discontinuity is the secret.

I have been thinking a lot lately about this simple question: can a feeling be true or false. If someone says that he or she feels something, can that be mistaken? For example, I say I am angry but you know that I am actually sad and not angry. However, if it feels to me as anger then how can it be anything but anger? Now the most pressing case is of course with judging love, it is here that the question becomes bombastic, but where it does really matter: Is there true love and false love, or just love? Who can judge and how do you judge?

There have been three situations in which a girl said she loved me and I knew she was wrong. I have reacted differently every time because I simply do not know how to deal with it. In the first situation, I was so sure of myself that I told her "no, you're not." I thought she played a trick on me because we had a history of mindfucking. The result was that she confirmed to herself that I was wrong ("Ey, only I know what I feel") and thus she felt more and more her false love for me, while I saw how it happened and could confirm to myself how false her love indeed was. A nasty circle was created, destroying a lot. With the second girl, I tried the 'show instead of tell' by saying that I was even more in love with her while I acted completely contrary, just as she did. But instead of the mirror-effect, I became the asshole evil liar while she could settle in her victim role. I could have seen it coming, I was stupid. With the third girl I just had sex, accepting false love, feeling bad about it while we both knew the lie.

I have the feeling I did something wrong in every case but I just do not know how to deal with this. So, maybe I might have been completely wrong all along, things are always exactly as they are said by the one feeling it. But my common sense speaks up, for example, too often we have trouble expressing our feelings, choosing the wrong words. No still I believe a feeling can be mistaken and not only the expression of it. But this opinion is not more than a leap of faith. If you do not believe in the truth and falsity it seems to me that the world becomes nihilistic and feelings never authentic. And it is useless to say "what anger might be to you, is what I would call sadness" because you can say that about every word you use, yet we understand each other.

Or to put the question in an extreme context, is it possible that you know the feelings of someone better than him- or herself. I clearly believed this, as arrogant as I can be sometimes. So all we could do, if I am right, is to strive for a certain clarity of feeling (or intensity for the blunt), because there is no other way of ascertaining the truth of your own emotion, they can trick you and lie. And you have to judge the emotions of another, trust them or reject them with confidence. If this sounds simple, do realize it implies a unromantic distance from your emotions. But how to do this right, I have no clue.

That is my way for now, until I know better.

Everyone knows that people who fall in love have less time for their friends. It is very natural and a true friend would never complain. But I've come to think this is only a symptom of something that runs much deeper and which I think can cause the ruination of your life.

Let us put it stereotypically. When we seriously fall in love, the everyday world turns pale and reality loses some of its intensity. In a way the normal values in your life (your best friends and family, but also other things you might care for, such as chocolate, music, sports) is drained by the love for your partner. In other words, the other person consumes all the value that you normally attribute to the various aspects of your life. It is as if your lover is a black hole catcging away the light of your day. And we wish it no other way. Don't we want to be swept off our feet? To lose ourselves in our lover?

But isn't there a sense in which the world is sacrificed to the love?

Of course it might all sound a little extreme. But beware, we cannot see it happening when we are in the middle of it. We notice that we have a little less time for friends, and the sunrise is nothing compared to the eyes of our lover, but we think it is all relative and we still care for friends and still enjoy the sunrise just as we did before. But how much of this is genuine? How much of this is mere habit, we know so well who we are and thus what we like. It is so easy to care out of habit, for the form of it. How often does not our self-image prescribe what we are suppose to like and what to dislike? This becomes clear when these things fall away from us while we are in love. Old friends are lost but our mind is not open to discover new personalities. The television replaces old hobbies. What happens is simply that what is empty of value does not leave an open space -or does not shift your interests when it vanishes. Only your love can move you.

To continue the tragedy. When one falls madly in the all-consuming love, the world can be lost to a point of no return. A vacuum of emptiness surrounds the lovers. This emptiness can cage couples, when the love grows corrupt and there is only darkness surrounding it with nowhere to go. This nothingness in the world is basically the same as indifference. As the fanatic lover of God does not care for the victims of a holy war. And we all know it, it is exactly the emptiness one feels when ending an intense relationship, when the value of life is depleted. I myself once felt the growing emptiness in my life while being deeply in love with someone. This paradoxical experience drove me crazy while inside myself I blamed my girl for devouring the world. I could not sacrifice my world.

And then come the questions. Is there a way out? Does the world consume the hermit's love in the same manner? Is there a way to love the world next to your lover? Is it not necessary to have contrast? Can you see white spots on a white wall? If you love everything equally, should not that be called indifference instead of love? And if you just love the other to a degree, does that not defy the whole idea of love? If the world keeps its values, are you then really in love?

Is love always destructive?

Currently I am in Zuidlaren at a pharmaceutical research institute, participating in the drugs trial of a potential new medicine for agitated intestines. Basically, I am a lab rat. They inject 230 mg of the chemical J-# in my cheek at exactly 9:00 and 21:00, and then they check blood pressure, hart rhythm, blood samples etc. I lie in a hospital bed and nurses wear their usual white, it's a pseudo clinical setting except that there are no diseased.

Some people have reacted fiercely against it. 'Why the hell would you do that?!' Often their point boils down to the idea that it is simply disrespectful to your body, selling it like a kind of prostitution, and remember: 'Health is the most important thing in life.' In March 2006, two men nearly died in a drugs trial ('Two drug trial men critically ill'), turning one man in an elephant man ('Drug trial creates Elephant Man'). I really feel no need to defend myself, I have nothing against prostitution and it is my body. Indeed, the only sole reason I am here is the money. I can see the point people have, it fits well in a society where people are sickly hygienic and afraid of all that is foreign. But I am neither one.

I can recommend it to anyone who wants to make easy money in a short time. I will receive a gross E1700,- for a mere 9 days in quarantine. That will roughly be enough for the nightlife in Berlin and some traveling. My neighbor has done it 8 times already, thus financing many great experiences (and never feeling any side-effect). To some people here it is also the idealistic reward of supporting medicinal progress and thus indirectly helping people in need. To me -personally- that feels like hypocrite self-rewarding (it's not the reason that brought me here).

It is also an interesting experience on itself. For one, there is the experience of the recluse. The solitary life runs deep in my veins, and here I can legitimately be a hermit. Everything is calm and there is no distraction besides the occasional needle in your arm. At home, while doing nothing I can never be at peace for long because of a nagging conscience, instilled by the workers mentality of 'normal people need to work for their life', but I strive to become a skilled philosopher and that needs the training of reading and thinking, 'doing nothing' in the eyes of normal society. Here I have a job in the background to silence that nagging voice of conscience. There is truly no hurry and life becomes gradual. There is a clear pattern, at 7:00 we wake up and at 24:00 we go to sleep, everything has its fixed time. The other lab rats are there in case you want to speak or play a game, but I don't have much need for it. No, I indulge in difficult books and slow movies for the time being.

And the alien chemical J-#? That just runs through my blood and supposedly influences the spasms of my intestine. As unnatural as that might be, my life here is more natural than ever.


For the interested, check: PRA International.

Every second cells collapse. We are all dying. Our body weakens. As the mask of death appears in the mirror. Staring at you. Do you know the face of your decay? Your nemesis? We all have our own destruction. My face of death has a bald head, some sleek hair on the side and a long straight nose. Its back is hairy and crooked, its carcass bleak and skinny. Eyes blue as ice. It is ugly and afraid of people. And in my reflection it grins over the sadness of lost youth. Lost attraction. Sucking the charm from my veins. But why its anger? What is the reason behind its fierce attacks? I aged fast. And I do not know why. Maybe it is because I am fascinated by death. Drawn towards its tune. Or maybe I do something wrong. Am I consuming life, do I live off the rhythm? Because there is a beat of life. Or a meaning. And thus I wondered, is philosophy the way to death? Socrates said that contemplation is the supreme form of dying and philosophers strive to die. Thinking moves the spirit away from the body, so he said. But Socrates knew only that he knew nothing. That was his one standpoint. And there is no meaning in it. And thus Socrates questioned. Drifting away from meaning. Away from life and towards his own death. Nietzsche did not know what to believe and became sick. I do not know what to believe and I age. To experience meaning is the task. Might truth be the only way -for me- to wear off the mask of death? To create a worldview that I believe to be true?

And so, is this all true? Is it all nonsense; genetic? Mere metaphors? And ask yourself, do you know the way of your death? And then there is the other way. The quest for immortality. As we search for the everchanging rhythm of life. Amen.