Afstand

De hoogste niveaus van kennis zijn een beetje zoals de 100 meter zwemmen. Het lukt je eens in je leven om een wereldrecord te zwemmen, maar daarna niet meer.

Ik snap nu dus dingen niet meer die ik een paar jaar geleden wel snapte. Ik snapte toen dat we in vrijheid leven. Nu snap ik het niet meer. Ik kan dus geen wereldrecord meer zwemmen. Ik tik dat niveau niet meer aan.

Ik vind dat ook de schoonheid. Zo hoort het ook te zijn. Je denkt met weemoed terug: ‘’Ah, wat was ik toen scherp.’’ En dan kan de nieuwe generatie het proberen. Maar ik snap het niet meer zoals ik het vroeger snapte. Dat is heel raar: want je voelt dat, maar tegelijkertijd ben je ook wijzer geworden. Er ontstaat een soort afstand tussen jou en dat ding. Zo van: ik was daar, en het is goed zo. We hebben van elkaar genoten.

Religie is ook zoiets. Je tikt een bepaald niveau aan, wat heel extreem kan zijn, en dan is het zaak om terug te schakelen. Je kunt te diep in bepaalde opvattingen komen te zitten, en op dat moment lijkt dat waar, totdat je een paar jaar later terugkijkt en het net wat subtieler is dan je dacht. Op de een of andere manier is dit een fout die vooral mannen (ik ben een man) vaak maken. Je komt ergens te diep in te zitten, vaak kortstondig, en dat kan tot intense beslissingen leiden. Je gelooft dat echt voor 100 procent op dat moment.

Begrijp me niet verkeerd, om te leren moet je in bepaalde fases af en toe zitten. En daarna kijk je terug, en dan denk je: wauw, ik zat er diep in, maar wat heb ik veel geleerd. Ik had die extreme opvatting nodig om te worden getest.

Het geeft ook een soort nederigheid. Om iets op een bepaald niveau te begrijpen, moet je op je best zijn. Als je dat niet bent, snap je het niet meer. Dat is toch schitterend? Je leeft dus in een universum dat begrepen wil worden, maar waar we de moeilijkste dingen nog lang niet hebben ontcijferd.

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Tip
Vraag advies aan vrouwen. Vrouwen zijn van nature gelanceerder dan mannen, en zien beter of jij te diep in een bepaalde opavtting zit. Als een vrouw naar je kijkt met een blik ‘dit is niet goed’ of zoals de vrouwen in mijn omgeving, die dat tegen je zeggen,d an is het altijd waar.

Distance

The highest levels of knowledge are a bit like swimming the 100 meters. You manage to swim a world record once in your life, but then never again.

I don't understand things now that I did understand a few years ago. Back then, I understood that we live in freedom. Now I don't understand it anymore. So I can't swim a world record anymore. I don't reach that level anymore.

I actually find that beautiful too. That's how it is supposed to be. You look back with melancholy: “Ah, how sharp I was back then.” And then the next generation can try. But I don't understand it anymore like I did back then. That's very strange: because you feel that, but at the same time you have also become wiser. A kind of distance arises between you and that thing. Like: I was there, and it's okay. We enjoyed each other.

Religion is also something like that. You reach a certain level, which can be very extreme, and then the thing is to switch back. You can get too deep into certain beliefs, and at that moment they seem true, until a few years later you look back and realize it was a little more subtle than you thought. Somehow, this is a mistake that men in particular (I am a man) often make. You get too deep into something, often for a short period of time, and that can lead to intense decisions. You genuinely believe it 100 percent at that moment.

Don't get me wrong, in order to learn, you need to be in certain phases sometimes. And afterwards you look back and think, wow, I was really deep into that, but I learned so much. I needed that extreme belief to be tested.

It also gives you a kind of humility. To understand something at a certain level, you have to be at your best. If you're not, you don't understand it anymore. Isn't that beautiful? You live in a universe that wants to be understood, but where we still haven't decoded the hardest things by a long shot.

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Tips

Ask women for advice. Women are naturally more grounded than men, and they can see better whether you're getting too deep into a certain belief. If a woman looks at you with a look that says, “This is not good,” or, like the women around me, actually tells you that, then it's always true.

Shuffling in the Hallway

If we wouldn’t have normal interactions with coworkers, a laugh, a cry together, then we would all be depressed. We cure most depressions in day-to-day life. Therefore, things like isolation, not having a job, or spending all day behind a computer are actually infinitely more dangerous than whether your serotonin receptors are showing a slight imbalance, so to speak.

The rhetoric people always use against us is something like this: “You don’t get it. The depression is the reason people don’t go outside.”

I have been through this (I can only speak for my own specific depression, of course). It was a chicken-and-egg thing without a defined starting point. When you don’t go outside much, or you suppress too many feelings, you become depressed. It really works both ways.

I am sure there are exceptions. But for most people, we cure each other’s depression all day long. If we didn’t have each other, we would be wrecked.

I was in psychosis once. I spent a lot of time in mental institutions. After a while—it didn’t really do anything—I decided to just go do a 9–5 office job. Which, paradoxically, is a lot like a mental institution. We still had day starts, and we told each other how we felt. But by surrounding myself with people who don’t even know what a mental institution is, I slowly learned from them and saw the light once again.

You always pick up some small habits from others. I have coworkers with the same tendencies as people in mental institutions, with the difference being that they don’t give an F about them. Spending half of the time on my phone during the workday? Who cares. They are for sure not getting tested for ADD. They call it, “I can’t do anything for longer than five minutes, then I’m bored.” See the difference? It’s those small shifts in perspective that actually matter a lot.

I have colleagues who are on the verge of crying when somebody steals the specific desk they always sit at. Do they have OCD suddenly? Nope. They are just very mad that somebody stole their office—in a flex-work office.

FFS, we even have people who mumble to themselves all day long. In the ward, they were shuffling in the hallway. Here, they are sitting behind a computer, making 120k a year.

Why There Are More and More Theories About Consciousness

Because consciousness is multiple things at the same time. That is why it makes sense that there are multiple theories, each highlighting a different piece of it.

Scientists often look for consensus. As if you eventually reach a point where everyone can agree that something is what it is. That is not how reality works. Reality is multiple things at the same time.

It is the same reason why reality is both scientific and religious: they exist alongside each other. In fact, there are many more things like that.

If we had one Theory of Everything, or one theory of what consciousness is, then something would be wrong.

You can also look at it this way: the remarkable thing about this universe is that everyone sees it so differently. It really is not the case that the “other side,” the party you disagree with, is stupid. Together, all perspectives form one Theory of Everything.

When it comes to consciousness, this means that there is probably a piece of truth in many theories. And even if there is no truth in one of them, would that really matter? What does that even mean? Do you know how many things you currently believe that aren't true? A lot.

Here is mine:

I think the brain and consciousness together have something to do with:

1. The relationship between things
2. The voltage your body runs on

Your brain exchanges a lot of information about the expected energy you have to spend on something. This is why people often think a lot about scenarios that might happen. It is the same reason why people with ADHD work at a high voltage for short periods of time (hyperfocus) and then are “bored” for a while (they are recharging). It is also the same reason why people with autism do many things at a high voltage, because they pay a lot of attention to details (and then get overstimulated). And why people who are manic have used too much energy for too long, and then crash. I am generalizing a bit, but it is something like that.

The other point is the relationship between things. I think many psychiatric conditions have to do with disrupted relationships between things. Someone with depression has a disrupted relationship with their environment, or with sadness. If you keep pretending that you don't find anything exciting, at some point you end up in a depression, because everything becomes grey. If you have a disrupted relationship between emotions and food, you develop anorexia. So many psychiatric conditions are complex because, in themselves, they are not diseases. They are learned, or otherwise developed, relationships between things. In my view, many psychiatric complaints are not illnesses; they are a logical consequence. So it is also important to look at them that way: it is exactly what it is supposed to be.

So, now you have my theory. The combination of energy/voltage and relationships makes it a difficult puzzle.