New Spirits – Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness exists only in connection with other consciousness
Observations on culture, community, society, everyday life, tradition, and social forms between Europe and India.
Today, after many years, perhaps for the first time I have arrived at the market here. There are so many economies here. Shopping – of course – following routines too… Efficiency – the most beautiful thing for the best price. Meeting people, looking out for acquaintances. What I never saw is the social. People know one another and play music for one another. Share coffee and quiche, stories, and sing together. How do you perceive a market, how do you…
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It is now definitely time to rethink. What our fathers and grandfathers called progress is destroying our planet. Science is not an end in itself, not everything technically possible is good, not everything that is fun and satisfies our senses is meaningful. Now we hear again and again from many sides that we should concentrate on the small steps in front of us; only in this way would we move forward together. This may occasionally be right too, but it…
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In Plato’s allegory of the cave, people sit before a wall on which the shadows of the real objects of the world can be seen. Since they have seen only shadows throughout their lives, they think these are reality. The philosopher’s task is to explain to people that they should turn around to see how the apparatus of light, which serves as a projection mechanism, produces an illusion. Once people had recognized this, they would free themselves from the chains…
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The forest is a wonderful habitat. Recently I heard a little story about a man who whistled a melody whenever he entered the forest. After a while, the animals recognized him by it and accepted his presence. They no longer ran away, sometimes even greeted him. Most of the time we do not see the forest as it is at all, because we often disturb it. Today I was in the forest. Instead of going for a walk as usual,…
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I am sitting in a café in France. Around me, lively chatter. This morning I was ‘on the internet.’ How different these experiences are. Now, pears are difficult to compare with apples, and yet we often do this. Working in an office and working from home, for example, are similar; seeking community on social networks or in a café, for example; reading in the library or researching on the internet. These are apples and pears, similar and yet categorically different.…
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For so many years I have thought about Marx. Who has not? The idea of an equal and solidary community, free of ideological superstructure or irrational will-o’-the-wisps. A world that knows only matter and sees in it a scientific, progressive movement. Its goal? A world in which humanity is complete, that is, harmonious, without envy and ill will, solidary and equal in rights, without alienation and external determination, which alone makes possible the unfolding of the individual within a collective.…
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Cézanne drew and painted Mont St. Victoire more than eighty times. From different perspectives, admittedly, yet essentially simply 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 is all over. When we extend our temporal horizon, we think in generations. A few hundred years seems much to us; five thousand years ago our cultural history began. For a mountain, that is practically…
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Today I dreamed that I was drawing a boundary. I changed something in my life because I could no longer go along with it. My dream gave me an image for this that I could easily understand. Dreams have always occupied me. I dream a lot, colorfully, whole stories; I work through situations, dream of things I would like to do but that are impossible in so-called reality. A few years ago I was at a conference. There was a…
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