Key Thinking (Aloud)

Freedom, specifcally personal liberty, is one of my fundamental values. There are some current events that might be threatening it. The Canadian government's threats against a trucker Convoy, and the recent attempt at canceling Joe Rogan, are both kind of interesting topics to discuss through the lens of personal freedoms. When are we not allowed to say what we think?

I like recognizing the pagan roots in our holidays. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, where the sun is at its lowest point. It's a good reminder of the delicate balance of life, of how unkind nature can be, but how bountiful it can be in the future. I'm feeling especially pensive this year, especially worn out, and also sick. I have Covid.

What does it mean to have an open mind? Is it possible to have strong convictions if you're mind is actually open? Are there any dangers to opening your mind to certain ideas? Is it always the coolest thing, or is passé now to be open-minded?

Kyle Rittenhouse is a 17yo boy on trial for murder right now in the USA. Is he guilty? I don't think so. And I say that without any ideological allegiances. Let's take out our political biases and look at this case as rationally as possible (if it is even possible). There's a lot to unpack here.

I aim for a minimalist life with maximum output. I succeed at one of those more than the other. I believe technology and design can help solve my output issues by removing barriers - both physical and mental - in my work. This applies to travel as well, and to my neurodivergent brain in particular.

I took the Wahl-o-Mat online quiz and it tells me I should vote for the Humanist party.

"(Die Humanisten) see themselves as a social, liberal and progressive party that focuses on the freedom of the individual. In doing so, she invokes evolutionary humanism and advocates a critical-rational political approach that relies particularly on scientific knowledge and - regardless of the political trend - is open to all effective political concepts."

I go through the 38 questions and compare my answers to the Humanists, as well as the SPD, and also the AfD, just out of curiosity.

Just a bit of an anxiety attack on an autumn day; lots of admin stress. I'm bad at bureacratic work.

Just a few thoughts on the Afghanistan situation that I haven't heard articulated yet. Mainly:

"A flâneur is an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander detached from society with no other purpose than to be an acute observer of industrialized, contemporary life."

I am a flaneur.

"The flâneur was, first of all, a literary type from 19th-century France, essential to any picture of the streets of Paris. The word carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. It was Walter Benjamin, drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, who made this figure the object of scholarly interest in the 20th century, as an emblematic archetype of urban, modern (even modernist) experience.[1] Following Benjamin, the flâneur has become an important symbol for scholars, artists, and writers. ... The term has acquired an additional architecture and urban planning sense, referring to passers-by who experience incidental or intentional psychological effects from the design of a structure."

"The flâneur's tendency toward detached but aesthetically attuned observation has brought the term into the literature of photography, particularly street photography. The street photographer is seen as one modern extension of the urban observer described by nineteenth century journalist Victor Fournel before the advent of the hand-held camera."

Presence, awareness and trasnscendence of ego - reflections on reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. Be one with the universe.