Around the time I was born, my 25-year-old father was most likely already addicted to alcohol, and I’ve spent a big part of my life taking care of him until he died at age 58. He was my best friend. He had the strongest will to live. He had the strongest will to quit drinking. But he couldn’t quit. In Dutch, ‘addiction’ means ‘verslaving’, ‘enslavement’.… Read the rest
… Read the rest“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble.
What can we know? Perhaps not an uncontroversial question nowadays, yet an important one. Right after his speech at the Heritage Foundation Tucker Carlson said that, in today’s world, we should only cling to what we can smell. Hold on to printed books, he said, implying that it’s wise to approach anything digital with relative emotional detachment.
Aside from our senses, which are obviously important in acquiring knowledge, there are two specific prerequisites to learning that are urgently lacking in Western societies: humility and coherent emotionality.… Read the rest
Back in 2007, Argentinian native Máxima Zorreguieta, who married Dutch crown-prince Willem-Alexander in 2002, angered many Dutch people by saying she ‘searched for the Dutch identity’ for several years but had not found it, and that ‘the Dutchman does not exist’.
This display of moral nihilism can be seen as an attempt to push so-called ‘progress’ past moral boundaries and cultural principles, to tease people into questioning the existence of their very identity.… Read the rest
Het was nog erg vroeg, maar zoals altijd en overal in New York was het leven op straat in volle gang. Ik liep vlak bij het metrostation Brooklyn Borough Hall op deze bewuste koude, maar zonnige doordeweekse ochtend in november 2008. Als student journalistiek was ik onderweg naar een interview. Ik kletste tegen iemand door mijn roze Motorola flip-phone en at tegelijkertijd een broodje. Een tas die ik enkele weken ervoor op de markt had gekocht hing over mijn rechterschouder.… Read the rest
