Mart-deBlog

I have not been able to write on my blog for a long time. The reason is that I got caught in a vicious circle here in Leuven and when I noticed, I simply turned my mind off. No more expression, because the expression was only negative garbage. O how I wanted to curse this fucking shit-hole called Leuven (seen In Bruges? Leuven is worse), this Catholic university, the BA program, Belgium, my house, Christianity, party-students etc. etc. etc. etc. And the more I aired this anger and frustration the deeper I circled right into it. So no more writing. It worked, I stopped circling deeper into the bitterness but I also stayed at the level I had already sunken to, unable (maybe even unwilling) to swim back up. Now I am dried up, static like an Islandic rockscape, with a numbing sound of distortion in my head. Probably nobody is checking this blog anymore, and rightly so.

"Second Impression", should be positive now. But no. Leuven truly sucks and there is nothing I can do about it. After 5 months I still do not at all feel at home and I do not understand how anyone can, it is like Disneyland, somewhat wonderful but very fake and alienating. The reason I hate Belgium is easy, it is too similar to Holland so that the cultural differences become an annoyance, making life difficult. Because it appears so much like Holland, I think to know how life works there and constantly have to find out that I do not know it. There are other rules at work, with such subtle differences that I cannot discern them, yet with great consequences to everyday life. Thus it feels like I am living in a twilightzone, a freaky David Lynch movie where everything is completely recognizable yet unreal. It still feels as if everything is working against me, that Belgium is a collection of disconnected villagers that do not understand one another and are frustrated with their lack of identity. Not lost in translation but lost in similarity.

Image.
Imagine the human being as layers of spheres. These spheres are the way in which we experience the world in relation to ourselves. A sphere is a way in which we identify with the world around us. Some spheres are empty, some full. The division of experience into these different spheres is given by the culture into which one is born. For example, there is an ethical sphere wherein one can live as an ethical being, or a religious sphere in which one experience the world as being spiritual. Further examples, are a national sphere, an economical, aesthetic and intellectual sphere. Spheres can also be created, for example, only recently do we experience ourselves as ecological beings, with a certain place in nature and a designated proper behaviour. In the beginning, when a child is born, all spheres are empty. In the beginning the human being is nothing but potentiality, it can experience life in many possible ways. Surrounding people assert themselves over these spheres, they fill up the space with their actions and behaviour. Nobody actively copies someone else, nobody simulates another person, but the other simply acts in the spheres of someone that are empty. Thus a child is an extension of its parents. Because some of the spheres are full (i.e. filled by the ideas, behaviour or moods of the parents) and because other spheres are empty, the child can say or act in the mode of 'this and not this'. By being a this and not this, so by differentiating the full and the empty spheres, the 'I' is born: 'I am this and not this'. The 'I' is the relation between the spheres and character is essentially the pattern of tension between the full and the empty spheres. This 'I' can copy itself, for example, the religious being can assert itself into the ethical sphere, where one becomes an extension of oneself. Growth of character is either narcissistic (one sphere mirroring another sphere) or submissive (acting as the other). The natural flow of things is the filling of spheres, of oneself or of another human being.

Question.
The question is, should one go along or against this? Should we battle nihilism, the leaking of meaning from the spheres of our being? Should we allow values to spread endlessly until they have lost all intensity? More and more I see the purpose of leaving spheres empty. For example, there is a political sphere, in which I could experience myself as a political being, as the embodiment of certain political ideas and conditions. But I could also leave this sphere empty and deny that I am a political being. I could try not to identify with anything political whatsoever. I could embrace political nihilism and I could realize the created nature of political values. If this is possible, my character (the contrast between the different spheres of experience) would become more expressed, more articulated and intensified. And maybe, the political emptiness in my experience of the world could contain, preserve and contrast with my experience of the ethical fullness of life. Would political emptiness heighten my aesthetic experience of the world, would things become more beautiful when rid of political implications? And the same for the religious spheres of experience, does not the lack of religious meaning in my life carves me into who I am? Clearly, the emptiness and meaninglessness of our experience and behaviour identify us as much as the values we live by. Maybe it is something like a colored rubber band, stretch it and it will be become bleak and vague, contract it and the color deepens. What would happen if I stop asserting myself over others? What if I learn from contemporary art to appreciate the empty canvas? What if I accept the empty, the nihilistic and the boring in certain spheres of experience, carved out and neatly separated by the culture I live in? Is it possible to maintain layers of nothingness in myself and control them? Would I become worthless to others? Would I vanish from the flow of humanity or learn to direct it? Is the image I suggested a natural flow that one should embrace or something to be overcome?