No work at the office = Nietzsche philosophy time

Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there are an infinite number of processes which elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality.

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.112, Walter Kaufmann transl..

Leave it to Nietzsche to point out the hidden within the obvious. This passage strikes me particularly strongly, as the questions I ask myself about this strange country have mostly to do with what I deem to be incomprehensible. How can something be incomprehensible though, when approached form the right angle? I am constantly 'isolating a couple of pieces' of this life I live in Vietnam, I can never get a full picture of what I see... this is not due to my limited vision or closed mind, but rather I am limited by my humanity, by my inability to transcend the boundaries of my body and mind.

Everything has a beginning, but what began the beginning? Every row of dominoes must have a force that knocks over the first, be it a finger, a gust of wind, etc. The problem is that the row of dominoes is so long that we cannot see the beginning nor can we see the end. Each human being is limited to a momentary view of the bigger picture of life, and, as such, we cannot help but be stunned at all the falling dominoes.

I think what Nietzsche was trying to say is that because we clearly see or define the beginning or end of any series of events, that we are trapped into thinking that each moment we experience is independent of other moments. That's why, when we suddenly get caught in a freak rain-storm, that we are shocked by the sudden appearance of clouds on what had otherwise been a blue-sky day. Perhaps, if we could have seen the beginning of time, and if our senses allowed us to understand the seemingly infinite combinations of factors which would lead up to a storm cloud forming on a specific day at a specific time, we might have been able to predict it.

This is why being human is so wonderful. Even though being able to predict a rainy day would do wonders for picnickers around the world, it would mean that our sense of discovery and wonder would not exist.

It's great to know the cause of a certain effect, but to be unaware of the true effects of your actions allows for that dynamic aspect which adds to the unpredictability of life.

Nietzsche wants to point out that our vision of the world is limited by what we see of it. I want to point out that it seeing only moments and not always the big picture allows us to retain beautiful wonder about the world we live in.

I would like, however, to know what force in the infinite past triggered the moment in the hopefully near future that will see me buy my very own car...