Essays

Pogingen om iets te zeggen op een manier die ik niet gewend ben

Professor Trompsky #3
Professor Trompsky, what do you think of the intellectual climate of today? There is a worrying decline of what I call the culture of wisdom. More often than not, people engaging in debates are more concerned with cementing their own argumentation, making their own narrative waterproof as it were. Instead of trying to integrate the ...
Meditation on Art
We want to breathe the art of wit when we sit for our meditations. Art, from the Art of Altamira to the the Art of the Deal, is, we don't shun this bold statement, first and foremost a celebration. We imagine anthropological researchers digging up objects with no evident usefulness. What to do with them? ...
Meditation on the sacred
May we think about the sacred without informing ourselves as thoroughly as possible about our species' rich religious traditions? Isn't our meditation predestined to be a desecration, a profanity, no matter what we might arrive at? Philosophical contemplation of the sacred seems to be implicitly critical of the religious authority that decrees what is sacred ...
Meditation on freedom
Breathe in and think about a beginning. How to start a meditation on freedom? Do we have an entry point, a route that we can follow? Let's clear our head of all that has been said about freedom. Smile. We are going to choose freely what we mean by freedom here. We are gaming ourselves. ...
The be-who-thy-be new age bullshit
I watched a well-intended speech today for fifteen year old level A students. The gist was that life happens according to your own internal clock, not according to the timetable imposed on us by society. It's okay not to be married at 30 or graduating after 25 or getting your first job at 27. Did ...
Meditation on friendship
Close your eyes. Breathe calmly. You sit here alone, master of your own thoughts. Imagine I am talking to you. I want to know what friendship means. Quickly, construct a differentiation. Which opposite op 'friend' have you found? Mere acquaintance? Or: enemy? But what can we say about a thing of which we cannot determine the ...
Sneeuwpoppop
Ik maak Miru graag met voorbeelden uit haar eigen belevingswereld vertrouwd met abstracte concepten. Toen ze van een vriendinnetje een knuffel kreeg van een sneeuwpop, zag ik mijn kans schoon. "Hé Miru", zei ik, "dat is een sneeuwpoppop." -"Een wat?" "Het is geen sneeuwpop, toch? Want die is van sneeuw." -"Oh ja." "Dan is het ...
Small big data
Today's hype is Big Data. As with other hypes, such as 'sharing economy', 'cloud', 'blockchain', the hype is simultaneously promoted as a commercial instrument that is indispensable for companies and as a pervasive phenomenon that redefines the fabric of society. Every big corporation sits on a heap of big data about their customers. Statistical analysis ...
Good riddance: Arnons voetnoten
Vriend en vijand zijn het erover eens: Arnon Grunbergs laatste voetnoot op de voorpagina van de Volkskrant is een heuglijk feit. Als wat hij achterlaat een zwart gat is, ben ik met liefde nihilist. Dat de tweeëneenhalf duizend schrijfsels die hij de afgelopen jaren produceerde taalkundig om te janken zo belabberd en intellectueel onhoudbaar zijn, ...