“We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.” | Philip K. Dick – The Man in the High Castle (p. 216)

If you ask someone if they think they are a good person, chances are they’ll give an affirmative response. After all, we consider ourselves an above-average good person, just like we find ourselves above-average funny and above-average nice (which is of course paradoxical and therefore not possible). But why would we want to be good people anyway? Life has shown often enough that people can get away with a lot of bad deeds. Does something like karma even exist, or is it a utopian illusion of which we’d wish it’d exist? And yet many of us try to be good, only to be disappointed and pained over and over again when something bad happens to us. Where we ask ourselves the question: …

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I’m in a bar, when suddenly a half-drunk man comes up to me and asks me the following question: “If you were a coin, which coin would you be?” It’s a very random question at a very random moment. But I can’t let it go. Because if I were a coin, what coin would I be? Would I be a two euros, because I have a heart of gold? Would I be a one euro cent because I’m invisible and worth nothing? Would I be a twenty cents because I look unique? Would I be a ten cents because I am a ten? Or just five cents, because I’m just not enough? Would I be a one euro piece because I always present myself beautifully on the outside, but often feel gray inside? Or would I be a fifty cents, used for anything and everything?

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Could you help me? I’m on a quest. For years, by the way. You know, such an everlasting quest where you eventually don’t find what you’re looking for. But because you don’t find it, you do find something in yourself. I’m looking for a button. Or rather, a switch. An on/off switch. A switch for my emotions. Too many feelings. Too many thoughts. It can be compared to the amount of waste in the world; it’s too much, you don’t know where to put it, so just dump it somewhere where it’ll destroy everything. An endless waterfall, a flood, permanently drowning, but living on. And such a switch would be oh so nice at such a that. However, there’s a downside to using this switch; I also lose my humanity with it.

Lees verder “Quest for a Switch” →