During meditation, I often watch my thinking, let thoughts come and go, and try to slow the thinking down. Thoughts come and go, and often I do not understand where they come from, and why at some point they are replaced by an entirely different thought. What chain of association is at work here? These chains of thought seem to be random, prompted by experiences that still resonate and are being processed further. This reminds me of a philosophical thought.…
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…
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.…
When the internet became accessible to the public, that is, in the mid-1990s, there was the phenomenon of people putting their deepest secrets on the internet. Anonymity, simplicity and speed were seductive. The confession quickly made, anonymity largely preserved, and perhaps there was even this little thrill that someone one knows might read the secrets without knowing who was behind them. These tele-confessions were cathartic. Today this has reversed: Everyone should see what one does without finding out what one…
