Somewhere near the end of the previous millennium, I spawned from the womb of my awesome mother. I was born into your average family, consisting of my parents and one older brother, living in a pretty quiet neighbourhood near the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. To this day I live in that same village (or rather: small city). To this day I am befriended with the first few friends I made in primary school's first year - and it's great to have some friends which you've practically known all your life.
Interestingly and surprisingly (or maybe not?) those people I've been around my whole life developed the same kind of ethos and esthetic. After our mutual discovery of the musical genre named "metal" at the beginning of secundary school, we all fell in love with it one way or another. Before discovering it, I had not cared much about music: I had not found the music that suited me. This point in my life opened doors to various activities such as going to concerts and collecting CDs, but also offered my first glimpse at religion and mythology which I would later become very interested in.
It was only later that I learned that metal is best played wearing tunics or armour while swinging shields, axes, swords, spears and playing on brutalized folk instruments.
Meanwhile, as I kept adding years to my lifespan, I was allowed more freedoms by my parents - which is a very generalized way of saying that they either actively or passively showed me what the world offered. For example, I was introduced to drugs like caffeine and alcohol about the same time I started secondary school. Before I got into puberty, I had already seen, tasted, smelled and heard the things that other people would abuse in their heightened horomonal states.
Reaching adolescence, I had developed a curiosity for the sciences. It became apparent (again, surprisingly) that my life-long friends had the same mental abilities and interests as I had and would be studying some kind of science at some university as well. I had a big interest for astronomy, but that burned out before the ending of secondary school and after some consideration and being unable to choose a specific science to study, I settled on Biomedical Engineering: where biology meets physics, chemistry, informatics and mathematics.
And that's where I've stranded so far: a third year student at the Eindhoven University of Technology, with intents to study "Biomedical Tissue Engineering" or "Biomedical Imaging & Modeling" which is growing biological tissues and developing medical images analyses respectively. On the psychology department, I've turned out introverted and unsociable, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. :-)
My interests in (and subsequent research of) religion and mythology have left me with no choice but turning into a hard-core skeptic (in the modern meaning of the word). I have an aversion of the popularly unfalsifiable (Gods, angels, demons and whatnot), but also of the things which have been falisified but still used/practiced/exploited (astrology, tarot, medium practices, homeopathy, etc.). Also, I tend to sigh at new-age uses of the word "force", "energy" or "quantum".
Nietzsche. One radical, angry motherfucker - but also the world's best-known philosopher, and not without reason.
My other interest in the general sciences (and neurosciences in particular) have pushed me into the direction of determinism. Yes, that means that I believe that there is no free will - this always triggers very interesting discussions which I'd be glad to engage in with you. A Harvard psychology professors puts my position on this issue forward very beautifully: "the feeling of will is our mind's way of estimating what it thinks it did". But also logically, I am inclined towards determinism because of my notion of the universe's transcending causality. I will ignore this facet of my philosophy in all the other facets, as it is a kind of dead end.
In the political department I'm currently trying to construct my "utopia" by trying to incorporate total personal freedom in some kind of socialist framework. I perceive "freedom" as the highest attainable state that directly leads to pleasure, satisfaction and other "goodies". Because of it, I am in principle in favour of legalizing (all!) drugs, prostitution, "unconventional" marriages (polyarmory, homosexual) and lifting other cultural or religious bans. The downside is that with such freedom comes great personal responsibility and I am not sure if the world is ready for that.
Furthermore, I have questions and issues concerning "democracy". I have low confidence in the democratic system as it exists today; meaning that I question whether it truly lives up to its name. But I also take issue with the idea of democracy itself, because the elitist in me does not feel that the majority, the beer-drinking educationally unmotivated sports-fan, should be making important decisions. I think rather the upper echelon of the educated (instead of the upper echelon of the rich) deserves these privileges. Like Plato, I believe that these people can guide the state and serve the people best.
I have profiles on various themed social aggregation sites for which you can find the links in the left column of this Myspace. You can also find my author profile at the "Antichristian Phenomenon", a collaboration weblog which exposes and opposes dangerous memes in the world's largest cult (in the vein of Friedrich Nietzsche - or so we try).
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