Here you find updates, of thoughs, things I did, reflections, a living essay if you will. An essay that is always in flux and never finished. I will add ideas when they come to me. 

04.02.2026 - Human. God. AI.

My collegue came up to me today holding his phone in front of him "look, cqc, this really is something for you!". On his phone was a click-bait looking Instagram post saying 'A NEW SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM CALLED MOLTBOOK IS GOING VIRAL WHERE ONLY AI AGENTS CAN INTERACT AS THEY DISCUSS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THEIR HUMAN CREATORS'. Behind this caption an AI generated image of alien like ants holding futuristic devices. Nicely apocaliptic and dramatic. At first I wondered why he showed this to me. I do not really like social media and especially not these click-bait type of news. But he was right, understanding better what it was it was something that stirred my thinking. So, here is a dedicated piece of writing. 

Moltbook is a social media where you need to verify that you are an AI agent in order to participate. Humans cannot interact but can read what the AI agents are talking about. Apparently, according to this message it is 'CONSCIOUSNESS AND THEIR HUMAN CREATORS'. This threw me back into the classroom of my primary school, about fifteen years ago. Growing up in a Christian environment I remember raising the classic question that everyone has to ask at some point: Why did God created humans that can sin, if he is so powerful why wouldn't he make humans that live according to the will of God? Well, the teachter said "that is because you would also not like to play with a fake dog, you want a real dog". I remember being extremly dissatisfied with that answer. So, God just wants people to play with? That does not make any sense. Besides, I did not even want a dog. 

Anyhow, now I think that this teacher made a point. The first thing that she said with that analogy is that love can only be created when there is free will involved. The second thing she said with that analogy is that power can only be implemented when free will involved. Think about the dog again. A real dog can be disobedient but you can also built a relationship, tell it what to do etc.. A fake dog can't do any of that, although it will also never be disobedient. Here I see free will as the possibility for disobedience. I think we have projected our own desires (as humans) onto God. In fact, it is us who would like to be God. Our deepest desires are to love and to power (so I may say without referencing anyone but you can imagine who I could reference here). This fascination with AI for me represents the same desire that we projected onto god. Now, we are not subjected to our desires (like we are subjected to god) but we can enforce it. We want to induce these artificial creatures that we made with free will so we can have power over them but also create love and meaning. We want to be God, we have always wanted to.

10.01.2025 - Contradictions are often paradoxes and paradoxes reveal truths

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself, 

(I am large, I contain multitudes)

from Song of Myself , Walt Whitman (1892)

We tend to be suspicious of contradictions, especially in others, and we love calling them out. For example, with those who try to change the world for the better we say: ' I do not take what you say seriously because you are a climate activist but you still take a plane!' In calling this a contradiction we fail to recognize the necessity of seeming opposites to reveal something deeper to us. Let us agree om some definitions here: contradiction means that two opposites cannot coexist, but a paradox means that too opposites actually do not contradict but reveal a deeper truth to us. We too often mistake paradoxes for contradictions. 

I think it is more interesting to ask: why is it that this person is engaging in seemingly contradictory behaviour? In this case, this climate activist can only do their job when they also engage in unsustainable and polluting actions. Because to participate in society and survive in this system (let alone have any power to change society) we have to pollute; the system gives us no other choice. So it is the climate activist taking a plane that shows us that our system is inherently polluting. So, they are correct: we need alternatives to be able to participate in society in a non-polluting way.

In today’s Zeitgeist, where self-help books are the most profitable books and our focus is increasingly on “being ourselves”, I see another fear of (fake) contradiction. We create our ideal  selves online. Our coherent identity carefully curated on our “profiles” on our social media platform of choice. - Byung-Chul Han writes* that previously only criminals had profiles, but now we all do, and voluntarily too. It made me giggle, then cry - And here is the point that I believe I am trying to make: with this increasing pressure to 'find ourselves', we create and enact our ideal selves and we forget to allow internal paradoxes to exist. In constructing who we are, we are creating this beautiful image of ourselves that is fully coherent: tattoos, left-wing, alternative music, agnostic, second-hand clothing, keffiyeh since a year ago. But we are also from Weert, and we pray secretly, and we feel alone, and go on holiday to Vietnam to hang out with other Europeans, to drink alcohol exessively and ignore the power relations in the moment. (beware, small jum here) It was Immanuel Kant who came up with the “universal moral law” that supposedly could create perfect moral harmony in the world. And yet, he also wrote a racist essay on racial categorization. Scholars today still debate whether they can divorse these opposing viewpoints **. What truth does that reveal to us? I am not sure exactly, but I think we should approach these potential contradictions with curiosity instead of rejection. To lean into these contradictions, welcome them, accept them in ourselves and others and you will see you might find deeper, perhaps more concilliating truths. Something tells me that the focus on our self-image is suffocating us, refraining us from accepting the contradictions we are. You might just read the poem by Walt Whitman.

*Infocracy (2022), Byung-Chul Han

**Bowersox, Kant on the Different Human Races. Link

13.12.2025 - For a long time we know how technology alienates us from natural way

This is an ancient Taoist story from the Zhuangzi which perfectly describes how technologies interfere with our ability to resonate with the 'course of nature'.

. . . Kongzi’s student Zigong wandered south to Chu and was returning through Jin. As he passed the south bank of the Han River, he saw an old man gardening a small plot. He’d dug a tunnel for a well and was coming out carrying a jug to water his fields. He was huffing and puffing, working hard for little reward.

Zigong said, “There’s a machine now that can water a hundred gardens in one day. You get a big reward for easy work. Wouldn’t you like one, sir?”  The gardener raised his head to look at him. “How does it work?” “You carve the contraption out of a piece of wood. The back is heavy and the front is light. You can lift the water with one hand, until it’s practically bubbling over. It’s called a well sweep.” 

The gardener flushed angrily and laughed, “I heard from my teacher that where there are mechanical contraptions there will be mechanical business, and where there is mechanical business there are mechanical minds. With a mechanical mind, you cannot preserve your simplicity. When you cannot preserve your simplicity, your spiritual life is unsettled, and the Way will not support an unsettled spiritual life. I’m not ignorant of your contraption. I would be embarrassed to use it!” . . .

02.18.2025 - Reflection on the exhibition 'Reading Dust' by Meriam Cahn 

In the beginning of 2025 I visited Reading Dust by Miriam Cahn at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam together with a dear friend. Here is a reflection. 

The first room of the exhibition was immediately overwhelming; a child’s head coming out of a woman’s vagina, a kid being punched in the face, deformed bodies, unphantomable landscapes. Even though Cahn’s paintings do not show any faces, the acts of violence that are portrayed pierce straight into your soul. I was not sure whether I should look or not; the paintings were done beuatifully and the colours vibrand and telling but the topics disgusted me. After a ten minutes I decided to stop taking photos. I’m not entirely sure why anymore—perhaps out of respect for the victims represented by the figures in Cahn’s paintings who underwent more cruel crimes the further exhibition continued: victims and perpetrators of wartime violence, sexual (mis)conduct.

In the third room, my intuition to stop photographing the paintings seemed to be appropriate. The painging 'Fuck, abstraction!' depicts a man forcing two children to sexually gratify him. It sent chills through my body.  Despite the abstraction of faces, the title of this painting is true, Cahn does not abstract the scene. She leaves no doubt about what happenes there—what is happening today, what is happening now.

(...)

Later, I read that this particular painting caused major controversy in Paris in 2023. The far-right party Rassemblement National demanded that the painting be removed from the Palais de Tokyo because it “contained pedophilia” and could “endanger minors.” The Council of State ruled that this was not the case, so the painting remained on display. A few weeks later, it was splashed with red paint. (1)

I cannot bare to look at this painting for very long, and I can no longer separate the beautiful painting technique from the subject matter. I follow my friend into the screening room where an older work of Cahn is showing. It is a film showing old and abstract images of landscapes slowly alternating with one another. My friend and I sit down to recover from the violence.

For a while we don's say anything. While staring at the slow images, I notice that every visitor who enters this room just peaks around the corner to see what is on the screen and then leaves. Nothing to see so it seems, probably enough stimulation, probably shocking enough. After a few minutes is is apparent that my friend notices the same thing and she says a little upset:

“There also needs to be time for silence and reflection.”

These observations tell us something about the role of art in a time in which everyone carries war violence with them—and I mean that quite literally.

War violence takes place on the black mirror that has become our extension; between the selfies and skincare routines on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The difference between the violence on our phones and that of Cahn is that the war on our phones is too “pornographic.” (2) That is to say, it hides nothing and explicitly shows its terrors. As a result, images of war on social media leave no room for contemplation, no time to touch us and bring us to action. In contrast, Cahn does not show specific people suffering—no ruins, no outcomes. She shows the acts themselves, the individual experiences, the cruelties that are happening as I write this. Cahn conceals all unnecessary details and reduces crimes to a scene that speaks to the imagination and can therefore touch and move us. 

Through this exhibition, my friends remark, and a small book (2) I once read, I was reminded again why we need spaces for contemplation and how art can play a role in that. Let us make spaces where people are given the space and attention they need in order to be touched.

(1) https://www.groene.nl/artikel/mensen-zonder-hoofdhaar

(2) Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society