Amsterdam
The Netherlands
why do we search ?
Life is all about searching and sorting, its true for machines and its true for men. We search all the time, for friends, for work, for laughs, for sex, for food, for life .. the search never ends. Sometimes we search for more than one thing and find it, then we have to sort. somethimes we have to search for many things but we dont have the time so we sort that which we have to search and then search for the most important. It is human to search. It is human it sort. All life and non-life searches and sorts. The question is not for what by why.
Why does he search or him? Why do you?
Sunday, April 22, 2001
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
When the sheep die
What does it mean to be human? I tried to work it out the other way round, what would it mean when you are not human? I hvae seen sheep being led to their bloody deaths at the butchery. There was something human in the air. They knew they were going to die, most of them had a resigned look in their eyes, a few of them looked stark raving mad with fear and a small minority amongst them looked like they were resigned to their fates, knowing that death comes sooner or later to all. It was quite unverning for me at the abatoir. I had never been so close to death before. It took me back to the those grisslier times when humanity was being gassed at auschwitz and the other death camps. I imagined being there.. feeling the resignation, the fear and the indifference that i imagined the jews felt being there. I think what makes us human is the full realization of what it means to die, to die mean not to know.
Death is frightening to me because i dont know what lies beyond. My cousin consoled. He said, "heck why worry? If it works out after you die, you win, if it does not and you end up being molecules of dirt, you will never know .. you win again" I wonder if something in those sheeps felt along the same lines? But what would life be without death? When an individual dies and millions of us die every day, it hardly impinges on our humanity. But when millions of us are butchered, surely something in all of us dies, our humanity suffers. Am i not as guilty as those nazis because I am of the same species? Of the same humanity? Acts of genocide diminishes all of us, it makes us all murderers.
Yet I am still a meat eater ...
The Netherlands
When the sheep die
What does it mean to be human? I tried to work it out the other way round, what would it mean when you are not human? I hvae seen sheep being led to their bloody deaths at the butchery. There was something human in the air. They knew they were going to die, most of them had a resigned look in their eyes, a few of them looked stark raving mad with fear and a small minority amongst them looked like they were resigned to their fates, knowing that death comes sooner or later to all. It was quite unverning for me at the abatoir. I had never been so close to death before. It took me back to the those grisslier times when humanity was being gassed at auschwitz and the other death camps. I imagined being there.. feeling the resignation, the fear and the indifference that i imagined the jews felt being there. I think what makes us human is the full realization of what it means to die, to die mean not to know.
Death is frightening to me because i dont know what lies beyond. My cousin consoled. He said, "heck why worry? If it works out after you die, you win, if it does not and you end up being molecules of dirt, you will never know .. you win again" I wonder if something in those sheeps felt along the same lines? But what would life be without death? When an individual dies and millions of us die every day, it hardly impinges on our humanity. But when millions of us are butchered, surely something in all of us dies, our humanity suffers. Am i not as guilty as those nazis because I am of the same species? Of the same humanity? Acts of genocide diminishes all of us, it makes us all murderers.
Yet I am still a meat eater ...
Amsterdam
The Netherlands,
The insanely intelligent machine
Did the first blog,it seems to work and i am quite impressed. Given the fact that there are some many blogs out there and no time to consume them all humbles you. I wonder why people blog, why do i blog? Maybe deep down we all crave the attention we sought but could never have. Maybe its for people to keep a tenuous connection to others of like minds and passion. For me persoanlly I think i will keep this up as a kind of a confessional, my own catharsis of my feelings, these logs are impresonal in a way, they could have been generated by an insanely intelligent machine that rules the world behind our backs. And the machine is feeling lonely.
What does it mean to be human any way? I have just finished reading "The Sword Of Constantine" about the 2000 odd years of history of the relationship between the catholic church and the jews. And it made me feel sad again, why, why, why ...
What does it mean to be human any way? I means suffering of other humans touches you in a place you know not, pain can be redemptive but it can also been pointless. Humans have always suffered, everytime we go hungry we suffer but humaniy cannot suffer. So I thought. I think we suffer individually and as humanity. Its when we suffer as humanity that the suffering transcends our petty concernes and become the stuff of moral history. It is quite unbelievable how much the jewish people have suffered over the years. So much so that i makes me wonder if it is all true. Yet it is ... it is beyond me to know and even understand, to comprehend how humanity can suffer so much and so consistantly over time. And it makes me feel sad, why, why, why .. ?
The Netherlands,
The insanely intelligent machine
Did the first blog,it seems to work and i am quite impressed. Given the fact that there are some many blogs out there and no time to consume them all humbles you. I wonder why people blog, why do i blog? Maybe deep down we all crave the attention we sought but could never have. Maybe its for people to keep a tenuous connection to others of like minds and passion. For me persoanlly I think i will keep this up as a kind of a confessional, my own catharsis of my feelings, these logs are impresonal in a way, they could have been generated by an insanely intelligent machine that rules the world behind our backs. And the machine is feeling lonely.
What does it mean to be human any way? I have just finished reading "The Sword Of Constantine" about the 2000 odd years of history of the relationship between the catholic church and the jews. And it made me feel sad again, why, why, why ...
What does it mean to be human any way? I means suffering of other humans touches you in a place you know not, pain can be redemptive but it can also been pointless. Humans have always suffered, everytime we go hungry we suffer but humaniy cannot suffer. So I thought. I think we suffer individually and as humanity. Its when we suffer as humanity that the suffering transcends our petty concernes and become the stuff of moral history. It is quite unbelievable how much the jewish people have suffered over the years. So much so that i makes me wonder if it is all true. Yet it is ... it is beyond me to know and even understand, to comprehend how humanity can suffer so much and so consistantly over time. And it makes me feel sad, why, why, why .. ?
Amsterdam
The Netherlands.
Why am i so?
It has been a tremendous adventure working as a computer programmer. There have been many ups and downs but mostly ups :-) It has also been a sad journey because over time i feel i have lost some of the human in me, some of the child. I say this because I remember a time when I was interested in everything. I wanted to know it all. During my study days I was a mosaic of conflicting and complementary questfor what ever that cought my fancy. I have dabbled in art, math, sciences, history, philosophy, you name it i have tried it, including helping out with taking apart a 1962 Mercedes Benz and putting it back togather again (for some reason we ended up with parts that the car apparantly didn't need). My life seemed to a vistaless horizon of opportunities, I could do anything, history wasn't written yet, it was becoming.
Life is funny in that way, where you get the opportunity to be the historian, the object of history and history itself. I have never quite figured out why I have never had the ability to specialize in something. I could never hold something down, i would jump into something and the moment I understood the priciples I would move on to something else. These blogs will be an attempt to figure out why i am the way i am and what the still unwritten history holds for me in the future.
The Netherlands.
Why am i so?
It has been a tremendous adventure working as a computer programmer. There have been many ups and downs but mostly ups :-) It has also been a sad journey because over time i feel i have lost some of the human in me, some of the child. I say this because I remember a time when I was interested in everything. I wanted to know it all. During my study days I was a mosaic of conflicting and complementary questfor what ever that cought my fancy. I have dabbled in art, math, sciences, history, philosophy, you name it i have tried it, including helping out with taking apart a 1962 Mercedes Benz and putting it back togather again (for some reason we ended up with parts that the car apparantly didn't need). My life seemed to a vistaless horizon of opportunities, I could do anything, history wasn't written yet, it was becoming.
Life is funny in that way, where you get the opportunity to be the historian, the object of history and history itself. I have never quite figured out why I have never had the ability to specialize in something. I could never hold something down, i would jump into something and the moment I understood the priciples I would move on to something else. These blogs will be an attempt to figure out why i am the way i am and what the still unwritten history holds for me in the future.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)