What a cruel fate, to be only in relation to someone else
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Can we think truth? Are we as humans capable of that? Is there even truth to be thought or is it also merely a human concept
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This pride is because of and the cause of inequality
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What a bizarre inequality: that some people are allowed to use certain words and others are not
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Words in decay. They are so distorted that they can never be used again, or at least not in this generation. Maybe in a hundred years when everything is ‘better’.
[When words become slurs, they have decayed]
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We (want to) build on something on which we cannot build
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So indeed we separate the real from the practical. So the practical is the human story where we assume certain certainties to function. I find it very hard to talk in that practical
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We can’t know how much we can’t know
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Are there truly still new paths to take?
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An uncommitted life? Commitment is expectation, is less freedom
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We see a difference between night and day but we do not have an absolute point or thing we can use to distinguish between these. There is not one moment that day turns into night. Yet this is how we make structures as humans.
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What do you think is weird? What would the person next to you have to do for you to deem them ‘weird’?
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Perhaps a distinction between the human story and the human theatre: the theatre is the daily show that we participate in.
[See also 227, 228 and 681]
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We are all doomed to play out this absurd story
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Am I doomed to be only an observer of this extraordinary phenomenon or will I one day be granted to experience it?
[The phenomenon that is this boy]
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Me in two years: ‘I was really searching in that time of my life. Like I was lost, didn’t really know what to do’
Me in two years after that: exactly the same
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Emptiness and chaos is our standard which we clothe with structure and ‘things’. Just like nakedness is our standard and we clothe ourselves to hide this
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All I’m saying is that that feeling you get when you understand something is also something that is not a stability. Because we can never understand anything fully, our understanding and theories are also not something to hold onto.
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With everything that we say, write, express about the world, we bring something human into it. Therefore, we see that we can never truly understand the world, because the world is not human and we are. Understanding the real world goes beyond our human capabilities.
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Don’t ever think that you understand ‘the whole’ of something
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You cannot only be an observer. You must live in it
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Experience life. Must that have a purpose or reason?
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And in that moment it felt like I had some fundamental insight, but the next moment already felt like it was nothing
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Every moment a different me, a different Dasein because Dasein is a being-in-the-world and the world is different every moment
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Having no basis as a basis
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To what extent is philosophy something personal? To what extent should philosophy take into account human emotions?
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There is no gradual knowledge of something incomprehensible
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The same thing that makes our societies function, restricts us
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You can hardly break society while being deeply rooted in it. It is perhaps necessary to not-be in society to clearly think. And also to clear your mind of societal eyes.
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Our ‘philosopher-philosophy’ is of course efficient but with it we also often miss what it is really about. Why does it matter who posed an idea?
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If even my own expression of myself does not adequately describe me, how much more will the description of others about me not be adequate
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‘Order’ is the name we have for the least chaotic parts of life. Life is a scale of chaos
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Life is fighting against the much more logical option of not existing
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I must observe, analyse, explain the human story, while simultaneously living in it. And also this analysis is part of the human story itself, how paradoxical that might seem
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The human story of course makes it easier. Like colouring by number; we don’t have to think for ourselves anymore
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Once you realize it’s a story, there seems no way back into ignorance
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Why would we do that if it is nonsense? [But] what are the criteria for nonsense?
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I’m going to miss this time in my life, I realize I’m in the good old times right now
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The human story is like an advertisement; everything is made to seem more appealing, to seem better than it is in reality. The human advertisement says there is order when actually there is chaos. It says there is stability when there is actually nothing to hold onto.
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Where does our desire to understand come from?
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It is so hard, when the story you want doesn’t exist in this theatre. When the path that fits you isn’t one that has already been pre-chewed. Because of that, you truly have to find your own way.
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What is worth talking about?
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The unreachableness of everything (of all truth)
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The human story is not necessarily bad, I just don’t believe it is the best story we could make. So I don’t want to participate in it, that would be putting on a mask
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Are there only homes in the human theatre? Does a home not exist outside of it?
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What is a human life if it is not in relation to another?
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Love is not part of the human theatre, it is not made up. We have taken it and twisted it to fit the human story though.
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For some people, the human theatre might be enough, even though I doubt they understand that they are in it then. Some people are intoxicated by their role in the human story, they love playing their part and telling people about it.
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I encountered this scary thing called emptiness and made it my friend. Turns out, it wasn’t so scary after all
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The fundamental emptiness of the human life
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Social interaction coaxes us into the story we made. Not necessarily bad, just an observation
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Prayer has something beautiful if it is not forced, if it is genuine
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Every interaction has a certain fakeness. Right? Or does the most intimate relationship not have that? Only a person by themself seems real.
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Composure. We want some sort of composure when we are in public. Why? Why are the eyes of others always on our minds?
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‘Crazy’ is refusing to play along with the theatre show of humanity. It’s crazy how that works
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We are programmed to live life without asking too many questions, even though it makes no sense
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And I told them: ‘I’m done. I’m going next week’
Through the arguing and tears I had found peace in departure
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By trying to get away from something, we can’t get away from it.
By wanting to become independent, we become dependent on becoming independent
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Language itself has silenced me
[The limitations of human communication struck me so hard, I realized I could never say anything again]
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Do I still want to have a thought that is well-known?
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How do we talk with the unknown?
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Reality is never how you picture reality
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The unknown of a teenager is what makes them intangible, scary.
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If you lip-sync an insult, is it still an insult?
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On what do you build? Do you build on the words of others? The words of friends? The words of your parents? Do you build on the words of a book? The words of a person who says they understand a certain book? Where are you, if you build on other things than yourself?
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If you expect poetry to be a certain way; you have greatly misunderstood it
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What kind of life are you living if you are ghosting people?
[I mean, seriously, has no one ever taught you how to communicate?]
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Looking for a balance or a middle always implies a duality: a balance between good and evil. etc. But what do we do when suddenly a third option comes into play? Or when we realize that the world is not dualistic at all?
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Definitions are too rigid for life, we will not capture the truth with western theoretics. But the far side of the eastern tradition captures nothing, it is too loose, it says nothing real. So somewhere in between those is perhaps our best bet to approach truth.
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We are held captive by our ideas of how things should be
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What significance does this photo have? What does it say about me? What does it say about you? Does the sight of me in the eyes of others mean anything? Do my words? Why would I be talking to you if you have never listened before? What life do I have if I live only in the eyes of others? If I live only in this photo? What is this photo? Is there any part of me there? Is there anything there at all? What do I show of myself? What do I let you see? Surely, not all of me. So not really me at all. So in this photo you see nothing of me or the world in which I am, alongside you. Do not attach meaning to photos. If you want meaning, look at the world. And it will look back at you with her blank face. And you will see your life in the reflection of her eyes. And you will cry at your reflection; cry and break. Break down to the ground. And slowly build up again. And then… You look into the eyes of the world and you do not cry. You look at her with a blank face. She does not shake you. Because she has broken you before and now you are a part of her, truly a part. Truly alive and not merely someone waiting to be broken.
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Why truth?
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Sometimes life feels old fashioned
[Don’t you ever see the future around you and then laugh at how antiquated we are?]
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We place a system atop reality and then choose to live in that system
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Forever trying to understand that which we cannot understand
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The idea of sex is better than sex
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If something is the norm, you’re not really going to think critically about it anymore
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Nothing is ever what you imagine it to be. Not sex, not a relationship
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To feel sadness because you know your grief will pass. You don’t want to stop grieving them
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Real philosophy is wordless
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My lovers killer does not deserve to die
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It is not wisdom to repeat another’s words
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You are not the labels attributed to you
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Within our limitations, we are limitless. Like the finite infinity between 0 and 1
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A desire can always have its origin in an escape from life
[‘I am scared to be alone, so I desire company to escape from this,’ instead of ‘I know and accept that I am fundamentally alone, but I desire company because I enjoy it.’]
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The thing about change is, it never stops
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A comment on the back of a philosophy book: ‘sets the bar high.’ What?? Sets the bar high for what? Why does philosophy have anything to do with ‘setting the bar high’?
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How do you live:
Everything is allowed until you find a reason something is not allowed or
nothing is allowed until you find a reason something is allowed?
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Self-deceit is essential for humanity
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[Philosophy students] read texts of philosophers and are stimulated not to write like them. Is [the study philosophy] a place of second-hand philosophy? Real philosophers are discoverers, but we are trained to be interpreters
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I care not much about some of these holidays but I must pretend to somewhat care because the people I care about seem to care about these holidays
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Colourlessness in the men’s section
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It is fun to have to search
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Saying that something is indescribable, is a form of describing
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Dare to try something new
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Everyone asks themselves; who do I have to be? Society gives certain suggestions for that. The problem is that people take that as an answer in stead of suggestion. You don’t have to be anyone.
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When you don’t understand anything, it is a consolation to realize nothing can be understood
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We have divided everything, to understand it better. We have done this to humans; we made (labeled) many groups. We have done this in science; we have made many different disciplines. But now we should again realize that the world is actually one, and that dividing it up can never lead to true, complete understanding. We see that some of the philosophy of this age is bringing together again what was once divided.
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No reflection or brainstorming for new ideas when socially active
[Being socially active takes up space that you need when thinking deeply; therefore these two should and can not mix]
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Life is duality
[Or rather: humanity perceives life as duality]
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We’re all scared of uncertainty, so we create a fake certainty and pretend it is real