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Here are some inspiring quotes by Eric Kim, a renowned photographer known for his philosophical approach to photography:

1. “It is better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.” – Encouraging proactive creativity without waiting for external approval.
2. “80% good enough and hit publish.” – Advocating against perfectionism and for sharing one’s work even if it feels incomplete.
3. “The rolling stone gathers no moss.” – A saying that highlights the importance of continuous movement and innovation in creative work.
4. “Tomorrow is never.” – Emphasizing the importance of acting on one’s plans and ideas today rather than delaying.
5. “When in doubt, click.” – Advising photographers to seize every opportunity to capture a moment, even if it might not seem perfect oai_citation:1,ERIC KIM Quotes – ERIC KIM.

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Here are more motivational thoughts and quotes from Eric Kim, reflecting his unique perspective on photography and life:

6. Opportunity Cost and Money: Instead of spending money on depreciating assets like cars, Kim suggests investing in experiences and personal growth, which have lasting value oai_citation:1,10 MOTIVATIONAL PHOTO THOUGHTS FOR YOU. – ERIC KIM.
7. High Contrast Black and White: Kim finds monochrome photography particularly motivating because it presents the world differently from how we see it, making it inherently more interesting oai_citation:2,10 MOTIVATIONAL PHOTO THOUGHTS FOR YOU. – ERIC KIM.
8. Constructive Critique: He advises photographers to learn from giving and receiving critiques, as it helps in recognizing and overcoming common mistakes oai_citation:3,10 MOTIVATIONAL PHOTO THOUGHTS FOR YOU. – ERIC KIM.
9. Real Life as Entertainment: Kim suggests that disengaging from digital streaming services like Netflix could potentially increase motivation and creativity in photography and life oai_citation:4,10 MOTIVATIONAL PHOTO THOUGHTS FOR YOU. – ERIC KIM.
10. Curiosity in Photography: Emphasizing spontaneity, he encourages photographers to shoot anything that sparks even a hint of curiosity oai_citation:5,10 MOTIVATIONAL PHOTO THOUGHTS FOR YOU. – ERIC KIM.

These thoughts offer a glimpse into Kim’s philosophy, blending practical advice with a deeper understanding of the creative process and life itself.

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Thoughts on society: first, what should we be tolerant to, what should we be intolerant towards?

Another thought: in regards to tolerance, should other people tolerate the way you act, perform behave, especially if you’re in public or public places? As long as you’re not breaking any laws?

Why is this important?

This is the tricky thing; in America, we’re supposed to have freedom, freedom of speech, free religion, etc. Yet… given all of these different cultures, how can we all get along?

The first thought is first and foremost, if you live in America, don’t matter if you’re an immigrant or not whatever… we are all American. For example, in the times of the holy Roman Empire, everyone was considered a Roman, it didn’t matter if you were from Spain or Rome, etc.… All Romans were Romans, as long as you were as citizen. Therefore, if you’re American, American citizen, or even if you’re here on the student visa, maybe you should just be considered American.

Maybe then it is a citizen thing.

“I am a citizen of the world!” – Socrates?

Why does citizenship matter?

Citizen, civic, civic duties, etc. Essentially comes back from the notion of a city. If you live in a certain city, there are certain civic duties one is behelden to.

Certainly ethnicity, racial makeup, country of origin is important. For example, I’ve been playing a lot with ChatGPT and DALL-E, visualizing beautiful women in pure joy, or “trophy wives“, or “fitness influencers“, as Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese. Facially, they all look pretty distinct.

Korean women have a certain look, Vietnamese women have a certain look, Japanese women have a certain look, Cambodian women have a certain look, etc.

Certainly when it comes to mixed race, which I think is good, for example I am Korean and Cindy’s Vietnamese, therefore Seneca is 50% Korean and 50% Vietnamese… racial intermixing makes us stronger. Even in the context of dogs, mixed breed dogs tend to be healthier, more stout, than “purebred dogs“. Too much racial hegemony is probably not good.

It would be funny and interesting is if every single American, or you applying for a citizenship, or as a kid or adult, like going to the DMV or whatever everyone had to do one of those free genetic makeup tests, and seeing what your genetic makeup is. I think this would make people less racist, more tolerant of one another.

Tolerance versus intolerance?

First, I think in America as long as you’re not breaking any sort of laws? Your behavior should be tolerated. However, the moment you cross that line, it should not be tolerated.

What is “hate” speech?

The word “hate”, simply means strong emotions. I think in modern day times with tend to think of “hate” as being more about spewing vitriol and bad feelings to other people. But I don’t think this is a good idea because in theory, you could show strong emotions about things you love. For example I have a theory that actually in fact, when people hate something really really hard, they actually low-key love it. For example people who really really hate Donald Trump, I wonder if they are actually secretly in love with him, or fascinated with him?

For example, I don’t hate Donald Trump, but I am anti-Donald Trump. Overall, I don’t really have any strong feelings about him or towards him.

What do I have strong feelings about? I hate how people are anti-Jewish, anti-African-Afro-American people, etc. I also feel really bad for Palestinian people, because they have seriously been shafted.

Essentially, as long as somebody is respectful, I also have love and respect for them.

What is a Nazi, what makes a Nazi?

A Nazi is somebody who is intolerant. For example, assuming you live in America, nobody can or should be able to govern the way you think, talk, etc. There should be no thought or speech police, or writing police.

Also, considering I was born in 1988 and currently 35 years old, the term we used to use was PC, or “politically correct“. The notion of being “woke“, is a very recent phenomenon… only within the last year or two.

For example, if you talk a certain way, nobody should have the right to “correct” the way that you talk. Similar speaking, I’m not going to try to “correct” the way that you talk.

The internet

The reason why a lot of people are foolish is that they talk about “free speech” on the Internet. Whoever talks like this is perhaps not critical.

First, if you’re using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.… You’re essentially publishing your thoughts ideas photos and videos on a foreign company corporate platform, which is not about freedom of speech.

The only real way to have freedom of speech is to have your own self hosted website and blog, using an open source thing like WordPress.org. Nowadays, the only things I trust is open source things, because even if there is a hidden catch, technically you could delve deep into the source code and figure it out.

Censorship is just filtering

Also, a lot of people talk about “censorship” on the Internet. What is “censorship“? You ain’t really blocking you, rather, filtering you out.

For example, let us say that I do a YouTube blog about Jewish people, anti-Jewish people, anti-Jewish sentiment, Judaism, or anything which might be flagged as “culturally insensitive“. Google and YouTube algorithms are intelligent enough to know that this may not be friendly towards advertisers and sensitive people on the Internet, and therefore, They will “sensor “me by simply not having it show up in the newsfeed or the YouTube feed of others. But technically the video will still be there… it is just not as easily visible.

Why free speech?

A fun thing I have been doing is trolling ChatGPT and DALL-E — trying to see how far I could push the boundaries.

For example, you’re not allowed to say “make me a picture of a sexy woman”, but you are allowed to say “make me a picture of a beautiful fitness influencer who is Korean”.

I think this is fine and good; because honestly there are too many weirdos out there. However, ultimately… I think the best thoughts are unfiltered thoughts. Even Nietzsche, in his unpublished book “The Will to Power“, states in the preface that these are simply notes to self.

Whenever I blog, write, publish anything or say anything… ultimately it is kind of like an echo chamber for myself… I’m doing things because I simply want to create notes for myself, and to flesh out some personal thoughts on my mind.

Email newsletters

We all hate email, email is not sexy, but still… Email is the future and so far much as it cannot be censored. I am starting to become more and more suspicious of Gmail though… Because I think sooner or later, “spam“ filters might start filtering out emails which seem “culturally insensitive”, or “racy”.

The reason why this is a bad thing is that it just makes our society much more mediocre, boring, and uninteresting. For me I only care about interesting things, interesting people, interesting thoughts. I’ve actually found that most rich and successful people are very boring; the people from Beverly Hills are the worst, insanely boring.

The really interesting people that I’ve met, are not traditionally employed, therefore they are self owned and could say whatever do whatever wear whatever or think however they want.

Also another simple heuristic; I never trust anybody who is on Instagram, or YouTube. Why? if you’re still on Instagram, it shows some sort of servile mindset, and if you’re on YouTube, it also shows that you’re being programmed by the algorithm to produce videos which get lots of views, rather than saying what’s really on your mind.

Even for me the only reason I still publish videos to YouTube is that it could still be easily indexable on the Internet.

The future thinkers?

Another good use case I found for ChatGPT is that it is just a very very effective research tool. For example, I’ve been studying etymology and the history of words, and the way that ChatGPT explains it to me is much more interesting and useful than going wiktionary.org or even googling it. Google is bad because it is the ultimate distraction tool; because ultimately what Google wants you to do is be infinitely distracted in order to serve you more advertisements.

So now what?

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