People From Amsterdam

"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."

"Viewing the brain from the outside, Libet has shown that the experienced intention to perform an act is preceded by cerebral initiation. Why should the experienced decision to veto that intention, or to actively or passively promote its completion, be any different?"

"Thus, to understand what consciousness is, we need to understand what causes it, what its function(s) may be, how it relates to nonconscious processing in the brain and so on."

"All arguments based on the unequal status of texts are questionable. In principle, all ancient readings have an equal status, without relation to the text or translation in which they are found."

"To a large extent textual evaluation cannot be bound by any fixed rules. It is an art in the full sense of the word, a faculty which can be developed, guided by intuition based on wide experience."

"In their enmity to the truth, they set up another religion, an idol-worship, wherein the creature, with its works and its fleshly righteousness, has something to boast of. This they do in order to render vain the work of Christ, and to destroy the work of the Spirit. They do it also that they may have a wide mantle under which to cloak their crimes."

"Every thing that is around us strives to draw us away from the true faith."

"This, then, is the obedience of faith, whereunto the Holy Ghost sanctifies us, that we should not give ear to the doctrine taught by the world, which is a doctrine of self-righteousness, and that we should keep ourselves altogether “unspotted from the world,” in our daily walk and conversation, and that we join not with the world in any thing that denies God and Christ, be it what it may."

"The world and the devil fight against us believers, because we will not wear their mask of hypocrisy, under which gross wickedness may be committed."

"We are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,-through sanctification of the Spirit;” and this sanctification, it is a comfort to know, is a sanctification we may safely confide in; because it is widely different from the self-sanctification, the fleshly holiness, or wilful separation, to which “he that runneth,” and “he that willeth,” addicts himself, in order that the idol self may be magnified and worshipped."

"We reject the pharisaical sanctity, which is but a covering of shame, under which sin has free play."

"Let each of us hear this letter with the conviction that it is addressed especially to him; let him say in his heart, All this is for me."

"Compared with the rest of mankind, these believers were small in number and in power; here, might be but a single individual, there, two or three; here, might be found ten persons, and there some seventy or a hundred. In their manner of life and of thought, as well as in their worship, they were too different from other men to admit of their uniting with them, or walking after their ways. And because they could not walk as others walked, they were constantly misunderstood, and were exposed to all manner of suffering."

"His walk and conversation will then be very different from his former course of life, when he willingly served sin and Satan, indulged his evil desires, and walked after the course of this world."

"They are separated from the mass, set apart that they may be a peculiar people to the Lord."

"It may seem strange that on the 70th birthday of a philosopher of such pronounced religious and political persuasion as Dooyeweerd, tribute is paid by a jurist with an entirely different world-view and political persuasion. However, there is every reason to put the question what the significance of this philosopher is for Dutch philosophy of whatever persuasion, or even for philosophy in general, without any restriction of nationality. For without any exaggeration Dooyeweerd can be called the most original philosopher Holland has ever produced, Spinoza himself not excepted."

"This universal character of referring and expressing, which is proper to our entire created cosmos, stamps created reality as meaning, in accordance with its dependent non-self-sufficient nature. Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood. It has a religious root and a divine origin."

"To be sure, Dooyeweerd’s A New Critique of Theoretical Thought was translated into English in the fifties. But did the availability of that major work contribute significantly to an appreciation and understanding of Dooyeweerd’s christian philosophical endeavors? I doubt it. For one thing, it was poorly translated, both in terms of language and ideas. But the point I wish to make concerns something else. A New Critique give plenty of text, two thousand pages of it, but it does not give the context of this undertaking. And an understanding of the context is required for an understanding of the text. This big book by itself is like an oak tree in a desert, uprooted from its natural surroundings and transplanted in an environment that is foreign and at times hostile to it. This book is the top of an iceberg, one of the major intellectual achievements – alongside those of Kuyper, Bavinck, Schilder, Berkouwer and Vollenhoven – of a christian community which at least until recently found its cohesion in a common christian calling and a concomitant walk of life. Anyone who wants to see what that christian calling, that walk of life, and its philosophical outgrowth are all about will have to learn the language and the ways of the people that responded to that calling and walked that path of life. anyone who wants to understand a philosophical movement will have to learn the language of that movement, to recognize both its contributions and its failures. This is true of Husserl’s phenomenology, of the Frankfurter school; it is also true of the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea."

"Polak (1973) notes that when the dominant images of a culture are anticipated, they "head" social change"

"My first acquaintance with the work of Dr. Fred Polak came in the year 1954—5, when we were both fellows at the new Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Dr. and Mrs. Polak lived in a little house at the back of the garden of the house that the Bouldings rented and participated very cheerfully in the life of the Bouldings and their four young children. Many exciting things came out of that year at Stanford, such as the Society for General Systems Research and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. But looking back on the expérience after nearly twenty years, I think the most important impact on the thought of both Elise Boulding and myself were the many conversations that we had with the Polaks around the dining table and in the garden."

"During the mid-20th century the Dutch Futurist Fred Polak despaired of the loss of the cultural ability to retain sustaining images of futures. In his view, viable images of futures were the key to real progress. And, it is true, that the latter half of that century was dominated by Dystopian views. Many of Polak’s detailed observations remain pertinent. But it is not the case that the ability to envisage different and better futures has vanished forever. Rather, the powers involved have been malnourished over recent decades. They have slipped from sight, as it were, but have most certainly not been lost."

"The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. The image of the future can act not only as a barometer, but as a regulative mechanism which alternately opens and shuts the dampers on the mighty blast-furnace of culture. It not only indicates alternative choices and possibilities, but actively promotes certain choices and in effect puts them to work in determining the future. A close examination of prevailing images, then, puts us in a position to forecast the probable future. Any culture which finds itself in the condition of our present culture, turning aside from its own heritage of positive visions of the future, or actively at work in changing these positive visions into negative ones, has no future..."

"Utopism is the forerunner of all modem conceptions concerning social policy, social organization, and social peace. All the art of social engineering could not place one stone upon another in the social edifice if the broad outlines of the system as an idea had not been projected long before, and if the seeds of the motivating ideals had not early been sowed in the hearts of men."

"The brain attempts to recognize this odor image by scanning and resolving it into previously stored patterns"

"Polak (1973) has argued that yesterday's utopia often becomes today's social philosophy."

"Awareness of ideal values is the first step in the conscious creation of images of the future and therefore the creation of culture, for a value is by definition that which guides toward a 'valued' future.....Any student of the rise and fall of cultures cannot fail to be impressed by the role in this historical succession by the image of the future. The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures....In the end, the future may well be decided by the image which carries the greatest spiritual power."

"Values, means and ends... [that drive this process in current societies; mean that we now] stagger under the double load of not only having to construct (his) own future but having to create the values that will determine its design."

"The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive."

"Social change will be viewed as a push-pull process in which a Society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind by its realized past."

"Every great thinker who has concerned himself with the historical process has speculated about the meaning of time and its flow in history. Marx, Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin, each with his own variation on the theme of time-flow as mechanically patterned fluctuation, predict the future but ignore its dynamic interaction with the past and the present."

"Once he (man) became conscious of creating images of the future, he became a participant in the process of creating this future."

"The trends in modem technology reveal most clearly the contrasting modes of development in thinking about the future. Technology offers an unprecedented confirmation of the possibilities of the utopia, often far exceeding the utopian fantasies in its concrete achievements. Through technology, Homo sapiens can transform ail things; at last man appears to be master of his own fate."

"Among the founders of the futures studies field, the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak is one of the least known. Although he is still mentioned by several renowned futurists, very little has been written about the evolution of Polak’s ideas and as far as we have been able to trace back, no retrospective work has been published. Today, Polak is mostly known for his opus magnum The Image of the Future, an impressive cultural-historic study of the relation between imagined futures and the dynamics of culture. He was an original thinker, but his work was remarkably uneven: his encyclopaedic and erudite style has led to both very deep and very shallow analyses. Especially his earlier contributions in the 1950s and 1960s still prove a very valuable resource, although many of his ideas should be handled with care. However, his later works in the 1970s are out of tune with the rise of a more critical approach to the study of the future."

":(7) Thought models, or models of the future, are useful insofar as they can reasonably contribute towards the optimum realization of man’s future-directed wishes and actions in a given situation or period;"

":(2) The future is partly knowable for man: thinking back = thinking forward;"

":(8) Optimum realization aims at a harmonious synthesis of effectiveness and justice in the furthest possible surveyable part of future time;"

":(1) I think about the future, therefore I am and can be a human being;"

"My own philosophical position, if I may put it that way, is very briefly as follows:"

":(3) Anyone who ponders the future will learn that this is still open to a considerable extent that can be further determined from case to case..."

":(9) The effectiveness to be aimed at calls for the application and refinement of all conceivable prognostic techniques for adding to knowledge of the future, including those which can be effectively developed over an ever-wider time scale..."

"Modern technology could advance to the point at which social engineers would be true masters of a complete conformist society which could no longer distinguished from a mass concentration camp. We might ultimately be directed by a superstructure of intelligent machines... Revolutionary changes in the next 30 years would be farther-reaching that many over the past 3.000 years."

":(4) Determining one’s own destiny implies two things: ready acceptance of a stewardship for the future and of the duty to make a choice;"

"As the reader is aware, at the cradle of our learning stood the philosophy of Asia Minor and Greece, itself influenced in turn by Indian and Oriental philosophical and religious conceptions. It is the tragedy of this philosophy that, although it was traditionally directed towards the undogmatic acquisition of wisdom and virtue, always regarding the freedom of human rational thought in visionary fashion as the highest good, it nevertheless inevitably led to a mental hardening of the arteries into coercive thought models."

":(10) All objectives meet in the endlessly continued approach to and progress towards the ideal “summum bonum”, though this, the most valuable humanistic good of a full human society, may perhaps never be capable of realization in total perfection."

":(6) For this purpose everyone, choosing in complete freedom and on his own responsibility, must be able and permitted to utilize all the philosophical and scientific thought models useful for this vital choice;"

":(5) Everyone must therefore be able to have access, as soon and as completely as possible, to all available data for, and possible consequences of, this choice to be made..."

"All kinds of separate, fragmented portions of the jigsaw puzzle are of little avail, unless they are fitted together in the best possible way, to form an image of the future depicting a number of main areas of development."

"I haven't always been understood. As a footballer, as coach and also for what I did after all that. But OK, Rembrandt and Van Gogh weren't understood either. That's what you learn: people go on bothering you until you're a genius."

"Barça wanted to get rid of him [Guardiola]. They considered him scrawny, bad defensively and ineffective in the air. What nobody saw was that he had the basic qualities to go far: he had game intelligence, speed in his execution, technique. If I hadn't been at Barcelona, for sure he would have been sold to a Segunda Division club."

"That December [1992], we [Barça] lost the Intercontinental Cup match against São Paulo 2–1. It was one of the few times that I had no problems with a defeat. I've always admired the Brazilian coach Telê Santana for his vision, because it always displayed a genuine love of football."