Poi c’è la questione di contenuti ovviamente. In rete decido io che cosa voglio vedere o leggere, e neanche sono costretto a presentarmi a una certa ora per non perdermi qualcosa di buono.

Quindi ero convinto, da anni, di aver superato la tivù. No grazie, non fa più per me. È stata bella nella mia infazia, ma bisogna passare ad altre cose. Invece in rete trovo contenuti molto più educativi tipo lezioni che mi possono insegnare un sacco di cose. Ne avrò viste migliaia ormai, su tecnologia, informatica, psicologia, politica, insomma su tutto.

Eppure ogni tanto mi ritrovo in circostanze diciamo meno istruttive. Si comincia da un filmato su youtube. Eh sì, bello questo. Ce ne sono di più? Ovviamente sì. E così mi scuoto qualche tempo in là. Sono passate un’ora o due e mi rendo conto che sono stato a navigare attraverso i filmati in continuazione perché più ne trovo più ce ne sono di simili.

Niente pubblicità e niente programmi mandati in onda senza consultarmi, però una somiglianza con la tivù c’è eccome. Un bello spreco di tempo, un modo di passare il tempo nell’illusoria consapevolezza che non ci si ferma qui: non bisogna perdersi il prossimo che sarà sicuramente imperdibile.

Mi chiedo: da dove vengono? Non è che questa roba appaia dal nulla e ci colga di sorpresa. Sono tutti vestiti portati una volta e che ora non ci piacciono più. O che non ci stanno più. O che, anche se ci piacciono, ci fanno sudare o ci fanno sentire freddo. O che abbiamo ricevuto per Natale o per un compleanno: insomma roba non scelta da noi stessi.

Ogni volta che ci penso (diciamo due volte all’anno, al massimo) mi dico: “beh ce ne saranno un paio, ma la maggior parte dei miei vestiti li tengo perché ogni tanto li metto”. Eppure non è vero. Qualche settimana fa stavo portando via quattro sacchi neri (quelli per la spazzatura) con dentro tutti i vestiti che non porto mai. Per fortuna c’è qualcuno (la Croce Rossa) a cui ’sta roba può anche servire. Altrimenti avrei dovuto organizzare un bazar per sbarazzarmene.

Ik denk dat als je heel veel leest dan geef je je eigen ideeën geen ruimte om zich te ontwikkelen. Geen tijd om te mijmeren, om na te denken over wat dan ook.

Hoe dan opnieuw te beginnen? Hoe kan je jezelf dwingen om iets te schrijven, wat dan ook? Tja, zoals ik nu doe waarschijnlijk. Het is niet prettig, maar toch beter dan niets? Of niet?

Ci s’imbatte in un equivoco pensando che un perfezionista intenda fare una cosa alla quale tiene in modo perfetto. Se uno si giudica perfezionista mi pare chiaro che costui si renda conto perfettamente (sì, in modo perfetto, questa volta sola) che la perfezione in realtà non esiste. È solo un traguardo irragguingibile a cui puntare per ottenere il miglior risultato possibile.

Allora perché si chiama perfezionismo? Secondo me nessun perfezionista si definisce tale. Questa è un’etichetta applicata da altri. Credo che non sia stato un “perfezionista” ad inventare il termine “perfezionista”. Penso che sia stato qualcun altro con aspettative più basse, il quale non è riuscito a capire quanto si possa esigere da un tale impegno. “Quindi tu sei un perfezionista, esigi la perfezione… non starai un po’ esagerando?”

Un equivoco, perché dal punto di vista del “perfezionista” si tratta semplicemente di un lavoro ben fatto. “Quello che tu definisci ben fatto per me è mediocre, quindi io esigo più di te.” Ecco, visto che io considero un tuo lavoro neanche ben fatto vuol dire che per me quel livello perfetto è molto più in là di quanto credi. Lo so molto meglio di te che non è possibile arrivarci, ma sforziamoci almeno un po’ per uscire dalla mediocrità.

L’etichetta “perfezionista” non centra il bersaglio, non si tratta di questo. Ma col tempo ti è stato detto che sei un perfezionista così tante volte che cominci ad accettarlo. Almeno è così che sembri ad altri.

Questo sistema mi ha sorpreso, perché in Norvegia ci sono i due compartimenti per uomini e donne separatamente. Tutta l’area in qui c’è lo spogliatoio e le docce (e la sauna, che non manca mai) è dunque ristretta. Quando andai in piscina una volta a Roma era lo stesso.

Sembra che gli olandesi preferiscono una maggiore riservatezza rispetto ad alcuni dati personali. Paradossalmente, c’è la sorveglianza per telecamera proprio dentro lo spogliatoio, in modo che da un certo angolo si vede dentro alcune delle cabine.

If I say to you “look, a pen on the table, it came into existence”. And you express great curiosity about the pen. “But how, where did it come from, how did it come to exist, why did it begin to exist?”. Then I say “Bill made the pen.” And then you walk away satisfied. “Okay, Bill made the pen.” What does your behavior suggest? You really don’t care about the pen at all.

You might be thinking “Bill made the pen, if I ever want to know how he did it, I can always ask him later. The question is not urgent.”

A person with genuine interest in the pen would say “the identity of the maker is immaterial, I still know nothing about the pen. I want to know how he made the pen, what did he make it out of, where did he get the raw materials, why did he make it?”. That is an attitude coherent with the stated thirst for knowledge about the pen.

Does a believer who says they urge to know how the world began really understand and correctly describe their own urge? Is the answer that “someone did it, but you will never know how or why” an answer that such a person should reasonably find satisfying?

If the believer was troubled originally by such dilemmas as “how can something come from nothing?” and “why is there anything?”, is he now cleansed from such thoughts? Has the wondering ceased?

What precisely has been gained in the knowledge that Bill is the maker of the pen, if nothing about the making of the pen has become known?

Maybe the urge was never about the pen’s origin in the first place. Maybe the urge for answers about the pen was only a misstatement about the the urge to find a scapegoat, an authority. Someone who can take the blame if it turns out that the pen is causing us a lot of problems.

The predicament is, in both cases, of a similar nature. The urge for an answer stems from our human psychology, but for he who wants a scapegoat, science or philosophy, which are not in the business of inventing authorities, will never fill the void. Mythology is thus the last hope.

It’s as if everyone is convinced that we have free will, and yet… there is absolutely no empirical basis to think so. Never has anyone had the chance to go back in time and make a different decision. So why do we seem to think it must be so?

Here’s the thing. It’s my impression that much of the debate on free will is shaped by an unwillingness to really accept the premise of the question and take it to its logical conclusion.

All too often I’ve heard people argue things like “well if there is no free will, then people cannot be held responsible for their actions, so we should let everyone get away with it”. What do you mean “let”? Here’s the problem: our form of expression is basically based on the premise of free will. So to even discuss it without commiting a fallacy one has to be careful.

The whole “ethical problem” of determinism seems to me nothing more than a false dilemma. If the actor has no free will to commit a crime or not, then why are we debating the problem of “deciding” how to respond if we have no freedom of choice? If the actor has no choice, then neither do we, there is nothing to decide, there is no problem to solve. Whatever happens is purely a matter of inevitability, however much it may seem otherwise. If the crime commited was deterministic, then our post-fact discussion is deterministic and whatever action we will take is also deterministic. The only way there is a dilemma is if the other guy’s actions were determined and yours somehow aren’t. But that’s not how the question is defined.

The free will topic also enters the religious domain often, and there too people make the same mistake. As in, if god is all powerful and all knowing, then he knows your future, thus your future is decided, thus “why are you praying to him hoping he will change his mind?” Wrong. If the future is decided then he has *already decided* that you will pray to him and that you will thank him etc, so your apparent gratitude to him is nothing else than him having decided to “program you” (if you will) to thank him.

I amaze so easily, and so frequently, that amazement has ceased to be special to me. It has become mundane. I need to check my standards for amazement. I need to raise the bar. I need to make amazement once again worth having.

I must stop being amazed, for example, when a man rings my doorbell because he cannot figure out the house numbers on my street. “Is this number thirty”, he asks. I lean out, in a mock gesture, to gaze at the street number opposite my front door. It does not say thirty. I imagine this gesture will suffice to make him understand. Instead he reiterates his dilemma. “Is this number thirty.” No. It is not. I must not be amazed, even if it is a man in his fifties. With gray hair, an elegant tie, and a fancy suit. Who proceeds to reenter his expensive automobile. How does a person like that not know how to read street numbers. I must not be amazed.

I must not be amazed, either, at the communal workers. Who must necessarily have intimate knowledge of such complicated administrative intricacies as are street numbers. Through their work of visiting various addresses everyday. Who still ring my doorbell by mistake.

One wonders how such people can accomplish complicated tasks like air travel, which requires all sorts of documents, procedures, requires remembering important facts and following a timetable. How do they manage it? It seems amaz I’m sure they pull it off somehow.

The biggest complaint among people today, once they stop complaining about lack of money, is lack of time. There is a strange kind of contempt for people who have time.
- Look at this cool thing these guys did.
- Yeah they really have a lot of time on their hands (those rich bastards!)

Strangely enough, there are also those who have a sense of pride about *not* having time. They just love fake-complaining to you about how busy they are. Well who decided you have to be so busy? Oh, I know, *you* did. Here, I have the solution for you. Ditch _everything_ that you’re doing right now and you’ll have more time than you ever dreamed of.

Being busy is also the standard way to lie to yourself when rejecting people. “Oh dear, I’d love to come to your whatever, but I’m just so darn busy”. No, you just decided that you’d rather do something else. *I* know what it means, and you might as well just have told me that you weren’t interested instead of telling yourself that you’re a caring person who never lets anyone down. Because that’s just plain obnoxious.

Now, what people seem to forget is that unlike money, time is very much your own choice. You don’t choose to be born into a wealthy family, but you can easily choose to be rich on time. Here’s a simple test: do you have a tv? Unplug it. You just won hours upon hours of time and it didn’t cost you a dime! (Unless of course tv is what you most want to use your time for, but then you shouldn’t complain about lack of time, you should revel in all the tv time you have!)

But it’s interesting to me that it works despite how flawed it is. Obviously, the premise for the “bad music” stigma is that we all agree on some common standard for what makes good music. This may have been possible in the past, with three radio stations to choose from and little selection in a record store. But today, with the amount of choice we have, and especially among people who discover music online, it just isn’t.

You just can’t make a meaningful statement about bad music when just about every person you meet has something in their collection that’s just awful. And half the people (or more) consider this something a cornerstone of their collection.

As far as I’m concerned, metal was invented to help us agree on the definition of bad music. But that’s actually not the whole story. It turns out that if you take groups like Metallica and Linkin Park, and make them stfu, they do sometimes produce interesting instrumental music. It’s just that all the yelling gets in the way.

There are subtler examples. Take Katie Melua. She has a nice voice, her melodies are pleasant, nothing wrong with her it would seem. But then you hear the lyrics. And I often don’t even notice (or care) about the lyrics, but hers are so simple minded and annoying that I can’t stand it. Same goes for Maria Mena.

And so forth.

But the practical impossibility of a consensus is not even the biggest problem with the “bad music” category. The more serious problem is that we still don’t know why or how music affects the brain. In the future, perhaps, we will know why particular harmonies or rhythms induce a positive response. And composers over the ages have surely understood this intuitively, using precisely those “atoms” of composition that please us. But noone has been able to explain why those. So for the time being, musical taste can only be a purely subjective matter. And “bad music” continues to be a contradiction in terms.