Confession
When the internet became publicly accessible, meaning in the mid-90s, there was the phenomenon of people putting their deepest secrets online. The anonymity, the simplicity, and the speed were alluring. The confession was quickly made, anonymity largely preserved, and perhaps there was even that little thrill that someone one knows might be reading the secrets without knowing who was behind them. These tele-confessions were cathartic. Today, it has reversed: everyone is supposed to see what you're doing, without noticing...
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Dreams
Today I dreamed that I was setting boundaries. I changed something in my life because I could no longer bear it. My dream provided me with an image for it that I could easily understand. Dreams have always fascinated me. I dream a lot, vividly, entire
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Grow
Many communities around me are currently experiencing a stress test. The term "midlife crisis" often comes up. I find it a silly word because it suggests that life, individual life, is in crisis. This perspective disturbs me. Why should life have a crisis? It seems more like communities are being called into question. A break-out, a desire for freedom, self-fulfillment, wanting to catch up on something. This idea also disturbs me. Was the past wrong? That would be a concerning notion. How...
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Collision
It was a feat of strength. Disposing of the apartment, moving with friends, storing things, reorienting oneself before a new chapter begins. Leaving behind the familiar, breaking the status quo, doing what is important and right without compromise. But that also means suffering and inflicting hurts, breaking things, and planting new ones. It's strange, though, that some friends are going through similar things. The world is different after Corona. We don't want to live like we did before anymore. Disillusioned, midlife crisis, utopian thinking, realizing wishes, one's own...
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Metamorphosis
I am currently undergoing a metamorphosis. Recently, at a meeting, someone said it was a wonderful group of caterpillars. I paused. He said, yes... soon these will be butterflies. A friend once said that metamorphosis is proof of God. How else could it be explained that a butterfly emerges from a caterpillar in purely evolutionary steps? Is such a leap in complexity even conceivable evolutionarily? I am not a biologist, and this only interested me as a thought experiment. To a Christian God...
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Many me
Today I heard a quote from Sri Aurobindo. He said, in essence, that each of us has multiple selves. That was clear to me. For decades, that has been my experience, that the different aspects of a personality are many and the idea of a subjective identity is a construct. I always saw the principles of construction as ideological, serving the logic of passports, individual responsibility and jurisdiction, but also of guilt and atonement, the idea of a soul in the Christian context, etc. My reaction...
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Farewell
A while ago, I was talking to a friend about letting go of many ideas. I told her that, unscientifically, I visit my memories and think about why certain ideas are no longer interesting to me, that these are often ideas I engaged with during my studies. Big ideas! From Kant and Hegel, etc. She was quite taken with my story and asked if I would write it down. I said, "Why? I'm saying goodbye, after all…"
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Possible worlds
The best of all possible worlds? When I was studying philosophy in Heidelberg, I read about the logic of possible worlds. Everything possible is also real, just not accessible to me at the moment. This was an answer to a fundamental
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Insight
When I was a teenager, I 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 awry. We shared a pizza, but otherwise, I had a lot of time to myself. On one of the hills, I spent many hours looking at the sky. I thought about Einstein. What else. Everything else seemed too trivial. There, for the first time, I had…
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Representation
When I first came ’home‘ from India, 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 taught in Europe and the USA. It contains many books that deal with discourses of modernity and postmodernity – theoretical, historical, analytical, comparative... Often, the topic of representation is addressed. What is...
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Foucault said that the soul is the prison of the body
Can large topics be approached with small texts? The Mediterranean region is the birthplace of monotheism – Judaism, Christianity, Islam. India is the birthplace of Hinduism. Countless gods are conceived here, or else the absence of God, or the universality of the divine, depending on which of the numerous strands one follows. Two principles are visible here, however: the maxim of individuality, which continues even beyond death, and the idea of being part of something much larger, within which the...
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Technology
I grew up in the country where cars were invented. The roads and cars here seem safe, at least everything is done to ensure you are safe. Accidents are anticipated, risks calculated, potential collisions computed, and damage minimized through modular construction, or so they say. We want to be prepared for everything, here. This logic of safeguarding, risk calculation, and prevention is why I want to leave this country again. There is no room for the unexpected, this…
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