Confucius 孔夫子, one of the great Chinese thinkers, was known to always carefully straighten his mat before he sat down. Why? Virtue — from inside to outside Living in a time of political turmoil Confucius wondered how to create a better society. His answer was that we do not need an elaborate system of rules. What…

Navigate life with this ancient Chinese book — How can we live in a world that is constantly changing? The Yijing 易經 or “Book of Change” is one of China’s oldest books and a corner stone of Chinese philosophy. It tells us how to understand change, how to find out what kind of change we are in right now, and how to deal with it. It is also very strange. Let’s see how it works! What is change? The underlying principle of the Yijing is that there is order in change — not just senseless movement. In its purest form change is the alternation between two extremes.

Ludwig Wittgenstein on language — How can we tell what is real and what isn’t? Ludwig Wittgenstein said that it was all about language. If we want to understand what we can know, then we must look at how language works. So he wrote two very different books on how we use language to think. 1. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus …

How images support your text — Why do some images support a text better than others? Let’s start with a quick example: Illustration of an idea Creativity is the ability to imagine something that isn’t there — yet. Its core ingredient are ideas. An idea is a new thought that springs up from existing knowledge. …

fixing a long-distance relationship — Let’s not sugarcoat this: diseases, hunger, and our inevitable death have been a strain on our relationship with nature. We needed some distance. We built houses, retreated to cities, turned wild animals into livestock, and forests into fields. …

on the difference between seeing and knowing — The following exercises are a bit more advanced than the ones in the “Quick beginner’s guide to drawing”, and I hope you find them equally fun! We are going to focus on different aspects of observation to strengthen our visual thinking. Exercise 1: Negative Space — see what is NOT there Draw the spaces in between things!

the key to creativity — An ancient feud rages at the very core of your creative endeavour: The rational logical you and its fuzzy intuitive rival are in constant dispute. Imagine yourself coming across an old tree. Baffled by the spectacle of its twigs and branches you could reach out to feel its bark. You observe how the sunlight falls through the countless leaves orchestrating a spectacular pattern of shadows before your feet.