I've been reading in India for three weeks now: Deleuze, Upanishads, Sri Aurobindo. Sometimes I meditate in between. The rest is still a remnant of everyday life in the New World. Reading the news, consuming entertainment media, organizing things that don't really have any meaning here but need continuity so that they don't break down in old Europe and the New [...].
Schopenhauer, who was a great admirer of the Upanishads, wrote a small book „Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde“ (1847). He identifies 4 forms of causality, e.g. small cause - large effect, or large cause - small effect etc... I was fascinated by this because it offers a broader understanding than the purely [...]
I was at a place for village children with special needs (Deepam) today. Someone from the guest house here had invited me to accompany them. It was a kind of ceremony as part of Navarathri in honor of Goddess Saraswathi - she stands for education, prosperity and success. In India today, the objects used for work [...]
On a boulevard in Paris, a cafe and bad music, sun and many people. So many people want to be seen. They present themselves as busy, sexy, cool, knowledgeable, adventurous, athletic, educated, cultured, or indifferent. Many want others to notice them. They see this as who they want to be. Perhaps they live their lives in a certain [...]
Yesterday, after many years, I finally went to the village 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 simple. 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 [...]
There was a time in Europe when people spoke of universal geniuses. In Germany, that would be Alexander von Humboldt or Goethe, in France an Enlightenment thinker, in Italy the Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci. In antiquity, Aristotle. Certainly, there are wise people in many cultures and eras that history tells of, they […]