Consciousness only exists in connection with other consciousness
Goday, after many years, I finally drove to the center of Roubion. Vilém Flusser lived here for many years. I quoted his books a lot in my seminars and used them as a basis for discussion. Especially his philosophy of photography. Flusser is a wild theorist. He has written a lot about images, media, language, technology, signs, history... It seems to me that [...]
What should I take with me to India? I want to live a different life, in a different society, with different ideas and goals. It's warm there, life will be easy. Apart from the basics like a few items of clothing, I'll need my technical devices such as my laptop, cell phone and camera. And what else? A good flashlight, because the field paths there [...]
SI've been waiting for some time now. Actually, I like waiting. Waiting is a space and a time in which there is nothing else to do but wait for time to pass. As a rule, there's not much else to do apart from read, talk or think. Waiting times are therefore always free spaces for me. [...]
Aighways have always been special places for me. Most of the time I wasn't under time pressure, I rarely had to get from A to B in a certain time. Rather, highways are travel routes. I find myself in intermediate states there, a kind of no man's land with an infinite number of possibilities. That opens up thinking spaces. They are often simply empty. The brain is busy [...]
Doday life is so complex and there are so many different ways of living. There is no right or wrong way to live. Life is a gift. But what do you say about the negative energies, the destruction and aggression, the greed and resentment? That's all part of it. There is only acceptance. But acceptance means [...]
Ialways had a stomach ache with an atomistic world view. We learn at school that the smallest components of the universe are atoms. Now physics has moved on and we are talking about protons, electrons, positrons, quarks and strings etc. ... ... But at its core, the idea remains the same: the world is made up of the smallest pieces of matter. This is [...]
Ene of the most serious misunderstandings of recent generations is the confusion between economic and political theory. It seems to be almost a consensus that capitalism is understood as a political theory. There may be many reasons why capitalism needs to be understood politically. There are certainly also reasons why capitalism is often thought of together with democracy. For many [...]
Slack holes are a mystery to us. I am not a cosmologist and deal with black holes in a popular scientific way with a philosophical interest. They mark a limit to our imagination. Gravitational force influences space and time, says science. Concentrated at one point, it compresses matter to its pure substance, squeezes atomic nuclei and electrons together to form a mass [...]
Hoday, after many years, I may have come to the market here for the first time. There are so many economies here. Shopping - of course - routines run their course too... Efficiency - the best for the best price. Meeting people, looking out for acquaintances. What I've never seen is the social aspect. People know each other and play [...]
Et is definitely time to rethink. What our fathers and grandfathers called progress is destroying our planet. Science is not an end in itself, not everything that is technically feasible is good, not everything that is fun and satisfies our senses is useful. Now we keep hearing from many sides that we should focus on the small steps ahead [...].
In Plato's allegory of the cave, people sit in front of a wall on which the shadows of real objects in the world can be seen. As they have only seen the shadows in their entire lives, they think that these are reality. The philosopher's task is to explain to the people that they should turn around in order to [...]
Dhe forest is a wonderful habitat. I recently heard a little story about a man who whistled a tune whenever he entered the forest. The animals recognized him after a while and accepted his presence. They no longer ran away and sometimes even greeted him. We usually don't see the forest as it is, [...]
II took part in a Zen meditation circle last year. Not so much because I see myself as a Zen Buddhist, but because I was looking for a quiet community to pursue my practice. During the Dokusan, I got involved in actively exploring my questions. I gave up a lot and left a lot behind. It was surprisingly easy. The 'teacher' made [...]
Ihe Kena Upanishad describes how the self as such does not exist. Who sees in seeing, who hears in hearing? This cannot be answered. In the Christian tradition, a self has been constructed for this purpose. I see, I hear, cogito ergo sum, imago ergo sum.... What is this cogito (I think), the imago [...]?
I have been thinking about Marx for so many years. Who hasn't? The idea of an equal and solidary community, free of ideological superstructures or irrational will-o'-the-wisps. A world that knows only matter and sees in it a scientific, progressive movement. Their goal? A world in which humanity is perfect, i.e. harmonious, [...]
Cézanne drew and painted Mont St. Victoire over 80 times. From different perspectives, but essentially just the mountain. This mountain has been there for a very long time, it exists in another time. The fruit fly has one day to live, then it's all over. If we extend our time horizon, we think in generations. A [...]
Hoday I heard a quote from Sri Aurobindo. He said that each of us has several selves. That was clear to me. It has been my experience for decades that the different aspects of a personality are many and that the idea of a subjective identity is a construction. I always saw the principles of construction as ideological, which [...]
Ahen I was a teenager, I had lost my heart to someone who lived in Rome. I traveled to the Eternal City with no money, no plan, it was supposed to be a surprise. That went somewhat wrong. We ate a pizza together, otherwise I had a lot of time to myself. I spent many hours on one of the hills [...]
Ahen I returned 'home' from India for the first time, I looked at my library and saw that almost nothing in it interested me anymore. What had happened? What is in this library and what is not? My library is that of a philosopher and art historian who has taught in Europe and the USA. It contains many [...]
SI approach big topics with small texts, is that possible? The Mediterranean region is the birthplace of monotheism - Judaism, Christianity, Islam. India is the birthplace of Hinduism. Countless gods are thought of here, or the absence of God, or the universality of the divine, depending on which of the numerous strands you follow. Two principles are [...]
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