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Starting quotes:

"The banality of evil: failing to think

Some years ago, reporting the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, I spoke of "the banality of evil" and meant with this no theory or doctrine but something quite factual, the phenomenon of evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness. However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was routinely entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think." 

Hanna Arendt quoted from: "The many faces of evil", Ed. A. Oksenberg Rorty, p. 265)

 "If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."
  Voltaire

This is an extensive site about philosophy, logic, computing and M.E. a.k.a. CFS. 

This file gives a brief introduction to the contents and motivation of this site.

The structure, format and contents of this site:

This site exists since 1996, and has since its beginning moved through various simple html-formats. At present - writing in November 2005 - you'll find on many pages an initial and ending notification of where you are on my site and links Help + Map + Tour + Tips + Notes + News that collectively explain the structure and contents of this site (especially in Map + Tour).

The purpose of this site:

In Help I state the purpose of this site as follows:

This is an extensive site about philosophy, logic, computing and M.E. a.k.a. CFS. 

Let me shed a little light on these items, in the order in which they occur.

Philosophy: 

I am a philosopher - a logical, rational one, much inclined to mathematics and real science - from inclination, and due to much studying and reading. My own view of philosophy, which I style 'natural philosophy' is given in the philosophy section and my Philosophical Dictionary (in the process of being written, but in November 2005 with over 450 entries totalling nearly 7 MB).

Academically, I hold a (brilliant) M.A. in psychology (mostly achieved on mathematical, physical and computing subjects) and a B.A. in philosophy, essentially because I was removed from the University of Amsterdam shortly before taking my M.A. in philosophy "because of your outspoken opinions, in spite of your serious disease" as its Board of Directors put it, in writing.

What I protested against was the prevalent post-modernist relativism and nihilism; the decline of science, rationality, good education and standards; and the rise - at that time - of Marxism and feminism as the be-all and end-all of the University of Amsterdam. 

Logic: 

The basis of all rational argument is logic, that is: an attempt to explain why and how inferences are valid (and may appear valid while being invalid). 

Logic is these days mostly a mathematical subject, because this provides the best way to explain what it should explain, but there are also non-mathematical sides to it (vaguely indicated by the names 'rhetoric' and 'philosophical logic').

Those who are non-mathematical or look down upon logic, e.g. as an academic affair only fit for impractical people, should realize that computing is a direct offshoot of mathematical logic.

ME/CFS: 

I fell ill with what seemed to be a flue and was diagnosed as mono-nucleosis on January 1, 1979. The woman I was living with in a common law marriage fell ill of the same disease on January 10, 1979. We are still ill in 2004, but not living together anymore.

The disease we had was initially admitted as mono-nucleosis, but when it failed to disappear after half a year for both of us was medically redefined as "psycho-somatic" - until in 1989 it emerged what it really is.

I seem to be one of the few Dutchmen whose M.E. is officially admitted (in part because I am a psychologist, in part because I have good doctors, in part because in MY case - living in the dole, while having brilliant academic degrees - it is admitted I have no reason to fraudulently claim I am ill and receive health-benefits, to which indeed I am not entitled and which I don't receive, and in part because I am really ill, unlike, it seems, many Dutchmen with claimed M.E. and hefty health-benefits).

The having of such a disease, in a country like Holland, the inhabitants of which take great pride in their supposed 'well-fare state', their supposed 'tolerance', and their supposed support for the weak, the ill and the needy is an educative experience itself, of which the main moral may be indicated thus (and above by Arendt and Voltaire):

Even such a one as I am cannot get any help in Holland apart from a few extra-ordinary individuals who know me personally, and minimal dole. Over the past 26 years of my illness it has been my lot to see that every Dutch junk gets a hundred times the help and support I get, and not to do what I did - finish my studies brilliantly, make this site etc. - but to keep stealing and maintain their addiction. (If you shoot heroin in Amsterdam, the city government will give you free methadone, free heroin, and a personal social worker on the city government's cost, just to keep you stealing in the streets. If you are like me, and are intellectually brilliant and honest, you get 22 years of continuous discrimination and minimal dole in Amsterdam.)

Those who wish to disagree that I am a physically sick person living in a morally very sick society probably are not physically ill or are rich, or have positions of power in Holland, and are corrupt or incompetent - for in Holland over the last 10 years alone, with the connivance of all politicians, the whole judiciary, and most of the police, billions of guilders have been earned with ill-legal drugs-dealing protected and supported ("gedoogd" in euphemistic Dutch) by everyone in power in Holland, most probably either for a share of the profit or else because of utter incompetence and lack of morals. (See above quotes for the start of an explanation and also the - only slightly - satirical Book references below - and e.g. Map for the rest of this site, that's not all satirical, even if it is if I am writing about Holland, since the truth about modern Holland is bitter. For a series of published essays in Dutch about the decline of education, see "Spiegeloogcolumns".)

In any case, I am and have been risking my life, my health and my social prospects by speaking the truth in Holland, where doing so is almost as dangerous as everywhere else, and where this is rarely done, though it has happened before. 

Also, I have never met any Dutchman who is more like me and unlike other Dutchmen than I am: In my country - a nation of soccer-players, drugs dealers and of slave-traders in the past - and in my age, as far as I can see I am wholly unique, and belong to the endangered species of rational and thinking real human beings, of which so far there have been few in Holland and in history.