Abandoned places, abandoned people

There's a certain allure in walking away and leaving things the way they were. Leaving people the way you remember them to hold on to the idea that you can one day return and pick it up, just the way that it was. A life you could possibly continue even though you would right now want something else. You're not quite ready to let go, but you're ready to move on to something different. It doesn't even have to be that you're ready, it's just that you need to. The age old thing of having the cake and eating it too (she said as she broke the head of a chocolate Easter bunny and immediately mourned for the death of the adorable shape of its well thought out and cute design).

It also holds an element of nostalgia. The older I get my perception of the past seems to change into something more positive. Not necessarily that I forget about negativity, but it's the devil I know. It's the devil you, know. It's the devil, you know, because no matter how much you'd love for the places and people you leave behind to hibernate, sit in wait, for you to return, they won't. Places change, people change, and the only way they will possibly change in a direction you can keep track of is to be with them. It's difficult to influence from afar.

Change is rarely dramatic, much more often subtle, and it takes some effort to see it. Just like spring takes its time (Visst gör det ont när knoppar brister / Varför skulle våren annars tveka) the nuances that make up people grind their way through to conciousness. A small change in the way they speak, an ever so slight alternation to their gait, are you there to witness them blossom or do you prefer to ignore their transformations because it's easier to keep them the way they've survived in your mind?

Time never comes to halt. We see this phenomena in popculture, you know the type of films where the nerd comes back for a revenge on its bullies. Rushing towards them with their success, ready to show off how much better they've become from moving away and making something of themselves. This only works if the bullies have remained static. Doesn't then the nerd do exactly the same thing they hated the bullies doing, limiting someone, putting them into a box of what someone else thinks a person should be? We all change, some for the better and some for the worse. I'm not going to deny the fact that some change more than others, but change is necessary, without it we can't live. Noone can be completely stagnant. Experiences can be humbling, both for bully and nerd.

I'd like to think that everyone's lives hold the same amount of grief and happiness, it just differs in which order we live through them, and naturally, what happens first is what'll affect us the most. Some simply need more time to reach the same point of maturity. That is why you should never consider yourself to be more than anyone else if you look at it from the bigger perspective. Upon the point of old age, or death, we should all be  somewhat equal. We will all have experienced love, loss of the same, hardship and success, dreams and their realisation.

So, when you come back, don't fear nature having reclaimed the streets of your childhood, don't fear the cracked paving, the new buildings, the new pulse of life, the unfamiliar scents mixed with the ones you used to know. Embrace the wonder of them, just like you should the people you left behind. Perhaps you can find something new in them, something you knew was there but you were busy disliking other aspects to see.

Truth be told

The other night I watched a TV show about body language. Towards the end of it a woman demonstrated her company's new software, one which detects lies in the voice. She said something down the lines of that "now you can tell if someone isn't being truthful, their voice will always give them away."

Question is, do we always want to be told the truth or are there times where lies are necessary and the preferred option? The mere fact that I'm asking that question should imply the answer. We need lies, they're social lubrication. We simply wouldn't function without lies. Naturally it'd be slightly mean to tell big lies and deceive but the same goes for telling the truth too much. It can be quite hurtful on an unnecessary level.

The classic example is being asked "how are you?", we know better than to always be truthful, and reply with the nonanswer of "fine, thanks". There is a time and place to tell the truth, and lies fill the void. Now if everyone walked around with a computer equipped with that software and it constantly told us when someone's lying we'd waste so much time. I know I would refuse to speak at all. I don't want anyone to know everything about me, and everytime that screen'd say "plausible lie" a doubt would begin to grow. Not so much about what the truth actually is, but why I lied.

Always expecting others to tell the truth is also mighty selfish. What right do you have to pry? If something's kept from you it's for a reason. Is it really desirable to draw something out that's obviously not intended for you? It has to do with respect and trust. Trust the liar. Those little lies are told because the liar feels the need to lie, could be for privacy reasons, or in order to protect you from something, or they simply might not want to divulge in the matter any further, for interest reasons.

Using the social context we can notice other things, just as we don't act the same around family as we do as friends we modify our stories to be appropriate, and in saying modify I mean we lie. When you haven't called someone back, do you say "I didn't feel like it" or do you say "I've been a bit busy"? When a meal you're served tastes bad, and you can't finish it, do you say "Oh god, this is disgusting, I can't eat this", or do you say "I had  a big lunch"?

Taking away our lies, completely, is taking away our ability to interact with each other on a civilised basis, one of the things that separates us from animals. One could simply claim that it's human to lie, and that lying defines us as human beings.

I can't remember the details, but I have read articles about lies, that we tell a surprising  amount of lies every day. Then I try to think about what I've lied about, because surely it must have been something. Maybe it's as simple as not knowing and then answering anyway can count as a lie. It borders on the question of what a lie is. When does bending the truth become a lie, and when does not telling become keeping secrets? I suppose keeping secrets falls into that category of social lubrication as well. It goes with being selfish. Our secrets are really only interesting to ourselves, everyone else is too busy with their own.

Personally I'd like to say that if you're asked a direct question and instead of saying "I don't know", or "I'd rather not tell you" that should be something. That kind of integrity deserves respect, not suspicion. Naturally, if there's a matter that directly concerns your wellbeing you should be told the truth and be trusted enough for the other person to know that you can handle the information, but sometimes we should just be grateful that we're important enough to be lied to.

It’s only wrong when it’s done to you, not by you

I had the pleasure of watching the traffic going by, and I couldn’t help by re-noticing the amount of honking horns. Cars getting honked at for being too slow, or taking a shot at the car going straight wouldn’t make it to the crossing before they turned themselves. Then I thought, my goodness isn’t it self-righteous to get annoyed by that? It’s hardly like you’ve never done it yourself! I suppose we all do it when we drive, those little things we’re not really supposed to do, just because we don’t want to wait, and that other car seems to be slowing down so gogogogo. Occasionally there’s some poutyhead that’ll honk about it, but meh. Also, I noticed that cars tended to speed up only so that the car in the wrong would notice it fully, then of course the sound of that horn. The likelihood of the one in the right having at some point doing exactly the same is pretty high. I know I've been on both sides. But I can guarantee you, I have never honked just because someone wanted out of the street in order to not have to wait for the next green light. So, why is it that something’s only wrong when it’s done to us, not by us?

It’s fine when you don’t call your friends, you’re busy after all, but if your friends don’t call you they’re being selfish. It’s fine when you go on vacation and leave your workload to your co-workers, but you whine when you have to do theirs when they’re away. It’s unfair when the store won’t take your expired coupon, but it serves anyone else right, they should have checked the date better. It’s horrible to have your own heart broken, but breaking someone else’s is just part of life, you didn’t intend to be mean did you? Of course the clerk should stay at work for an extra 10 minutes so that you can get your stuff, but you’re out the door a minute before your shift ends.

In a way I suppose that’s the core of things again, how selfish we are. We want it simple and beneficial. Perhaps we could be as generous as we are selfish and let others get those things we want for ourselves. What does it really matter if you show up a minute later because someone was driving too slowly, or what does it matter if you have to wait ‘til the next day to shop for the things you don’t really need in the first place? Those things with strangers surely even out in the long run. Sometimes you’re the one in the wrong, sometimes you’re the one in the right. Sometimes you’re the one that gets the benefit, sometimes you’re not. Plain and simple.

When it comes to people you know, you just have to make sure you like them enough to give something up for them and allow them the time to be a bit odd and forgive them for their shortcomings. Noone’s perfect, not even you. Again, it’s all in being considerate, not even if our behaviour towards others is flawless can we expect the same in return. Not even if there are proper rules to follow can we expect everyone to follow them. Think of it as a game where your kindness should always have more boxes checked than when you were given the benefit.

So, dear drivers I watched, those who honked, please untwist your knickers and smile, it’ll all come out fine in the end.

God isn't real.

I accidently proved that God doesn't exist by using math the other day. If good gives +1 point and punishing/judging gives -1 point and God is both good and punishing/judging the calculation goes +1-1=0. Zero is nothing. There is no God.

Beauty and nationality

I just read the silliest article about which country is the most beautiful. If you wish to read it for yourself, do so here, you won't get any wiser. However, while Sweden slipped to a 6th place and the examples given for what Swedish beauty is I noticed something else. It's the idea of beauty that must have changed while the classic blond hair and blue eyes isn't valued as highly. Countries such as Spain, Italy and Brazil have better positions. (As far as I could tell Norway wasn't on the list at all) Other classically blond countries like Holland and Germany finished last and second to last.

Why is this? There must have been a shift in the concept between the blonde and the brunette. Does it have to do with that the natural blond comes from a recessive gene that'll die out, and is ment to do so due to what we're attracted to? Something else it makes me wonder about is how much nationality we can read into someone's apperance. Do I look like the typical Swede? I know I don't fit the stereotype of it. I'm not overly tall, my eyes aren't blue, I'm not blond and my bosom should be left out of this. Does this lessen my swedishness or does it instead enhance the new type of Swede? The one that will come about with new generations while our immigrants become just as Swedish as us due to having their children here and them growing up here. I have generally said that if your parents were born in Sweden and you were as well, you're just as Swedish as I am. Even though I have more generations born here it doesn't make this country any more mine than anyone else's.

Another aspect is the internationalization process. Sweden's always been on top of technology, for instance we're the country with the most computers per capita in Europe, we also have something like 11 million mobile phone users, but only a 9 million people population. There is a simple explation to that, can you figure it out? What I was getting at was that we're now exposed to so many different looks, it's not all what's around us. And with Sweden being so accepting of imported music, movies, tv-shows and gossip we've just as accustomed to the darker hair and complexion.

This is something that has happened in my lifetime, or even during the years I've been an adult. Maybe I do owe the emo kids with dyed black hair some credit. I don't really believe we're attracted to the exotic per se, sure, part new mixed with something familiar, or attraction becomes too animalistic. Something I'm personally fine with, but is the average levelheaded Swede ok with that, apart from when they go on holiday and hook up with some monkey looking man they can't communicate with. Yes, that's right, the study verymuchalmostcompletelyIhadtolookseveraltimestoseeamalenamefocused on the beauty of women. At least the world of beauty hasn't changed that much, it's still women who are judged on their apperance.

And, oh yeah, Greta Garbo wasn't blond, neither was Ingrid Bergman. Even Sweden has blond in a bottle.

Battle of the cynics, again on the topic of love.

It's summer and hot outside. I say I'm hot. It's true when I say it. It won't be true in the snowstorms that come in January. If I've just eaten I'm full. It's true when I say it, it won't be true the next day. I'm tired when I've been up for twenty four hours. It won't be true after I've slept. I loved someone, it was true when I said it. Time went by and it wasn't anymore. It didn't make the times when I said it lies.

Another aspect of oneself in relation to other people is that we're all selfish. There's no getting around it. We do what makes us feel good. We simply do not do things we get nothing out of, not even self punishment. Why does the anorexic starve herself? Because hungerpains are better than the anxiety of eating. Why does the runner run until he's sick? Because giving it all that you've got is a great feeling. It's fairly simple, really. As complicated as people are, we're not really as complex as we think, nor as special in the sense that we have new things to offer every person we come across. We love the same way which is why we say similar things. Again, it doesn't make me a liar if I tell more than one person how I enjoy that particular touch. I'm selfish. I want what makes me feel good.

Admitting to be selfish is a relief, as then you know what to expect from others as well. You make them feel good and they want you around. If you don't, well then rejection is on the horizon. Naturally there are more things to take into consideration, it can also be a nice feeling to think "I knew it" once that rejection comes. Being right feels good as well.

I suppose the cynical part of it is to remain level headed. There are very few people we can expect everything from. Noone's perfect and everyone will in some detail fail us, but as usual, if the positive bits outweigh that it shouldn't even be an issue. We have to look at everything realistically, we owe it to ourselves to do so, as after all we're the one that matters to ourselves the most.

Does this make me emotionally stunted? I don't think so. I think it makes me honest and easy to deal with. People are a bit like bank accounts, while they keep making deposits of positive they're good to have around, and if they have over time made a lot of positive deposits they can make bigger withdrawls at their lower points in life, it's up to you to decide how much they can though, as you're the director of that bank. But at the same time you have to make sure you are the type of bank others want to open accounts in. It goes hand in hand with trust, trust is earned, not bought. This is where the parts about other partners come in. No matter what kind of relationship you have there will always be potential others, for both of you. There's really nothing you can do about that apart from being and remaining the better option. If you're left behind it should be for someone greater than you. See it as inspiration to becoming even greater than you already are and know that your next partner should match that. If you're left behind for someone lesser than you, well then your partner didn't deserve you in the first place.

To put it plainly. Be the master of your own world.

People as lexical categories

Noun: any abstract or concrete entity
Or thing. Easy to identify. Point at them and that's what they are. A what you see is what you get category of people.

Pronoun: any substitute for a noun or noun phrase
Not that many, but very meaningfull. Used often. Carries a lot on their shoulders. Things would be hard to understand and/or meaningless without them.

Adjective: any qualifier of a noun
Identifying. Points out things. Makes the world more nuanced.

Verb: any action or state of being
Those who do, but don't know how. Occationally those of less intelligence.

The basics. I'm certain you know at least one person in each category.

The pen is mighter than the sword - an example.

Hello. I am writing this, but not using a pen. Tip tap on keys and instant results in perfectly shaped letters in an order Gutenberg could only have hoped for. Zoom, zoom. Either way, I'll tell you about the first time I heard the expression of that the pen is mighter than the sword. I was just a child and totally misunderstood it. I looked at my pen and noting how small it must be compared to a sword. How could it be mighter than hard clinging steel? Needless to say someone kindly explained it to me to mean that words can be more powerful than violence. Thank you! This post will have several layers to it, I actually considered putting a label on it to be Watch out for subtext, but I figured that clearly signal for subtext would give the ironic result of there not really being any subtext. Sidenote. Always with the sidenotes.

Now, this expression is actually kind of, sort of in a way the perfect example of that we don't always say what we mean and that language isn't as logical as we'd like it to be (what on earth was that flying past my window I wonder if it'll rain today I really wish it'd rain and scare everyone inside but it'd be sad for those getting married today why's today supposed to be so romantic anyway funny how I pick the words I know how to spell like back in the day where I only used really short words because I was afraid of misspelling still kind of am I suppose yeah those bushes are really growing wild I need to do something about that it'll be later though I have to finish what I started here why am I not writing that guy on tv really needs a haircut not that longer hair is bad but that just looks uncomfortable I have to add conditioner to the shoppinglist by the way I forgot last time good God I hate this commercial) We don't actually mean that that little pen can beat a sword, what we mean is that worlds will live on and can argue better. Just as you say you're starving when you have skipped lunch.

Language is all about uncertainties, and we're reminded of it often. All those vague expressions we toss out there "I'll be there in a little bit", "that's beautiful", "it's late". They don't really mean anything do they, but at the same time they mean pretty much everything. If you have at one point put your heart in the hands of someone else you have also let yourself succumb to it. An often tossed around phase is "I love you", but we never really know what others mean by love. It's impossible to feel what others feel. So maybe it'd be more honest to say "I feel something for you that I personally identify as love." The more generic the phrase the more we're expected to take it at face value and expected to know what it means.

Over time I've also learned that not everyone has the same perception of words at all. Not all weigh them back and forth to at least attempt to find the perfect mix, the same tint to match the blue moods, the red and the green. What do you mean when you say "It's green"?

Another level of it is, just that, what I said in the beginning. We don't really use pens anymore to write something and when's the last time you saw someone walking around with a sword. Those expressions remain while the world changes. It must be impossible to learn it all, all those things we intend to say when we say everything else.

View of a woman

I'm a big believer that every thought of the present has been thought in the past, sometimes it just takes time to develop the ideas and make them mainstream. A very easy example of this is how women are viewed. I'm a bit conflicted, all great philosophers, from Aristotele, Plato, Darwin and Martin Luther all thought that women weren't quite people at all. How did that idea even come about? Western history is written by straight, white males from higher classes. We know that much and there's really no point in discussing the structures behind it, even if it'd be a giving discussion indeed.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the thinking. Did they think a dog could give birth to a cat? Or a lion to a donkey? Could a woman, if not human, give birth to a human that later turned into a man? If a woman was an animal what does that make the man that desires her? Maybe children weren't human either, perhaps one became a person only when he became physically a man. But still, how did that come about? Magic? Also, did the men love women? Or did they love them in the way I love my cats? That's kind of strange too, I have no lustful feelings for them at all.

It's fairly easy to point out how the opinions were, but those opinions must have been part of a larger system of thoughts. You can't know anything without context. We need context to have things make sense. And this part I simply don't understand.

Or maybe, love is a modern feeling. But I doubt that too, Sappho wrote about love. But she was a woman after all. Was the idea that women are capable of feelings of love and men of lust? Did noone love their women?

Or maybe we're just kidding ourselves, perhaps there is no love at all. Maybe we look for other things. Maybe a relationship is a physical convinience, as dull as that sounds. Someone to feed and be fed by, to please and be pleased by. You catch my drift, I'm sure. Perhaps love is just the extention of ourselves. I really don't think so, although the idea of a woman not being a person does lead to a series of other questions.

I'm not going to get all feminist here. There's no point at all. Only when we no longer have a use for the word feminist will this be an equal world, and I doubt that'll ever happen

The historical disasters

History holds quite a few disasters. Wars, plauges, earthquakes, revolutions, tsunamies and social outcastness. Not forgetting something like the Titanic. To stick to that for an example for a bit. How long does the disasterness last? It's really sad all those people died, but by now they would all have been dead anyway. World war 2 is heading the same way, I suppose. Can it only remain a disaster while people are still around to carry on the legacy of it's horrors? In a way I think so. We can read about the black death wiping out a big part of the population, but without eyewitnesses it's kind of a dead story. A bit almost like a fairytale. Only to be remembered by words. Also the world was a very different place back then. That makes it even harder for us to relate to them. I have no direct relationship with any of these things. My life has been pretty safe when it comes to historical disasters, they haven't bothered me.

How does this relate to personal matters. Perhaps I let strange things bother me because I always get stuck in my own perspective. I haven't experianced wars. Not even any really nature disasters. Just a few storms with power black outs for a couple of weeks. Really no biggie if you compare. To me the personal disasters are the disasters. In a way I don't think it differs that much from the bigger picture. Even world war 2 was such a historical disaster because it consisted of a lot of personal ones. Every loved one taken away. That's something we can all relate to. It's only the way they went that differs really. The uncertainty of where life is heading might have been a bit overwhelming at times, but then again, there's safety in numbers right? Maybe it felt a bit better if you knew millions of other people were in the same shitsituation as you, you wouldn't feel so lonley.

It kind of reminds me of that book by Camus, The Plauge where one of the characters is concidering suicide before the town gets sick, and well, when they're all sick he finds some kind of peace of mind. Like they're all sharing his misery and that makes it easier to bear. I think that's why humanity keeps coming back and surviving these things. We do it together, we share the misery and we fight together to find a way forward how much we hurt individually.

In that context it's easier to understand the peaks of depression in a general population. When a society is doing well and things are good it's a double curse to be sad and empty. You don't have a place in that and you stick out even more. Karin Johannisson writes in her book Melakoliska rum that melancholy is a lack. Perhaps in a healthy society the lack that causes melancholy is a sense of belonging and being made abundant by the world you live in. Not saying that's the whole cause of it, and it also raises the question of what came first the melancholy or the sense of not belonging. I'm hardly qualified to answer that question! Though I think it's safe to say that there is a connection between mental unhealth and a lower position in society, shown for example as unemployment and/or lack of funds.

Will we look at the starvation in Africa the same way? A chance for the planet to get caught up and a new level to exist on. I doubt people 500 years from now will have a problem with that, no more than I have with villages being taken over by nature because all the inhabitants died in a disease I'll never risk contracting.

Perhaps it's a simple human need to have disasters. If they don't happen to us on a grander scale we create our own. Yeah, I really think so

Labeling with some help from Foucault

First off, I'd like to add a disclaimer - I might have misunderstood Michel Foucault completely to make it suit my own ideas better. Live with it. Secondly I'd like it noted that a blog isn't a paper, it's simply a rest from my academic life where I can freely associate my own mind with things I've read. Now. Let's get started (watch this post not being as long as I had intended it to be...)

Basically, things aren't anything until we label them and how we choose to label might have dire consequenses. Take mental illness as an example. What is a mental illness? Personally I'd like to say it's something that makes a person unable to participate in, and be satisfied with the society we live in. It's fairly general. We can all see the lalaing fool punching at imaginary elephants as being mentally ill. But what if we take a bigger perspective, if we were to take Sokrates out of his time and put him in modern day Göteborg for instance, would he be able to function? I doubt it. Does it prove that Sokrates was mentally ill? No it doesn't. Is a woman mentally ill for wanting to live a life without men? Is homosexuality a disease? It all seems to depend on context.

Mental unhealth is also a product of the time, place and ideas we live in and with. There are no bulletproof waters here. In my opinion it also has a lot to do with values. A sick person has just as much value as a healthy one simply for being human. Though we're limited, no matter how open and understanding we'd like to be we can't absorb everything and be accepting and happy with it. It seems to be a human need to seperate people into two groups - we and them.

Which group we see ourselves as belonging to differs from time to time and even from situation to sitauation. It's all in the comparison. With that I come to the conclusion that there is no truth. There is no independent yardstick which we can use to measure life with. People consist of life, without that we're just matter similar to a plant. In comparison I can be old, young, big, small, happy, miserable, tall, short, intelligent, stupid, charming or a downer. So, which adjectives are actually me? The labels I claim for myself and use in my mind when I picture a "me"? Still that'd take a fair amount of confidence. There's only one of me telling myself something while as the world is full of other people that might be telling me I'm something else. This raises a whole other series of ideas and questions.

But if we are to stick for the labeling for a while, let's assume that in the beginning of time where didn't have contact in the manner we do now and we lived in isolated villages or tribes or whatever the window of what's normal could have gone two different ways, either everything was normal or nothing was normal. In connection to the previous idea of comparison it seems to me that city people think that small villages are accepting because everyone knows each other while as villagers seem to think that they can be accepted in a city because of the bigger diversity. Perhaps there's no real getting around the aspect of comparison after all, even if I'd like to leave that to the side. So, what I'd like to know is if there was a way of feeling normal, did they set the standard for normal by who they cared for? Was the king's son normal because he was the next in line for the throne even though he was that lalaing fool?

Which authorites do we have in what a good person is? Religion perhaps. But what if one bishop had a different idea than the one in the area next to his? Would he have labeled all other people but his "bad" just because he could? It seems difficult to reclaim a sense of being an acceptable person if you fall into a category which traditionally is seen as bad.

Another thing, this whole tradition bit. It can't be the absolute truth, after all. Society consists of people and it must have come with someone. A charming loudmouth more than likely. Seems the louder and more convincingly someone speaks the more followers succumb to the teachings. They don't even have to be rational and satisfying, a loud voice seems to keep the voice of reason quiet in all of us.

Foucault does the same with sex. Our modern idea of sex is something than the act itself. I read something by his about it a while ago. I wish I could remember exactly how it went. But the way I remember it now when it's been scrambled about my head along with my own understandings for a while is that gender is a construction of history, not a given fact. Of course I agree with that. Just look at the formation of the middle class. Given tasks for everyone, a wife to be a mother and the caregiver for a household, not necessarily a person. She was there to please her husband and make people out of their offspring.

More information isn't always the answer to a bigger understanding. Sometimes the understanding alone should be enough. When you get that sting in your gut and you feel like you're about to say something stupid and stereotypical you should probably listen to it. There is no truth in genders either, just tradition, and like I said before it's made by us. We're really the only ones that can change it by not using expressions like "It's always been like that" or "It's supposed to be like that". What is, has been and will be is under constant reevaluation.

Let's use Christmas for an example. It might seem that we have a set way of doing it, but it really evolves, constantly. Although we eat particular christmasfood, preform certain rituals, such as giftgiving or seeing relatives it's never quite the same. We can't recreate a certain event at a different point in time. It's impossible! Christmas in Sweden in the 21st century is different from Christmas in Sweden in the 19th century even though not that many generations have passed Every little shift creates a different outcome, similar to a branch which grows in different directions.

With this being said, we should use utter care when we label something, even though we might need them to make sense of the world and to remember who our true friends and values are we can't be stale and unwilling to change our minds.

Time changes and time changes us

Potential space

2002 was the first time I heard of potential space. The definition was, well still is I suppose, a place where people don't know how to act and the social rules we obey on a daily basis don't exist yet. We know how to act in a store, at a party, at work, in traffic or at a trainstation. In a potential space we don't. We sort of wander aimlessly and try to figure it out, and usually have a pretty good time doing so. A bit like in a warzone when the people came back to find their home to be something completely different. Perhaps that's a bad example but it's the one I have at hand at the present.

What if we were to thow out the past. Completely. All of it. As if the whole population suffered memory loss. There's be no memories and we wouldn't know each other. The whole universe would be potential space. There'd be no history. I haven't decided on the exact details I would like, but I'm assuming we can't speak or read either. We'd be corrupted by that.

If the whole human race would have to reinvent itself, how would the world be, with that second chance to set everything straight. I'm pretty sure we'd grunt a lot, communication is a human need. Perhaps we'd all starve to death. At least here in the dark north we would. There'd be no food in the winter so we'd lack the nessecary skills to feed ourselves. In the long run perhaps that wouldn't be that much of a loss. All the knowledge would be gone.

Would we go through the same growing pains as humans already have? Would the same areas be the dominant ones? Would religion even exist?

Or! Something that would be easier to use for an example to get my point across. What if all the books disappeared, except the ones dealing with science. there'd be no Poe, no Shakespeare, no Almqvist, no Dostovkeskij, no Dante, no Marklund, no anything. And first and foremost, there'd be no Bible, no Koran, no Torah. All the imaginative stories would be gone and we'd have to start from scratch in that department. Yes, I think I like this example better, in the first one we'd all probably just die. How depressing.

So, if we had no concept of religion whatsoever, would we invent it or would we just carry on our merry way dropping different sized balls from a tower to see if they fell at the same speed? Perhaps we'd all just be really coldhearted if we only had science.

But what I really wonder about are the concepts of things like common sense and beauty. They seem to rest firmly on something we call tradition, something I've touched in a previous post. Tradition, and values are created by people but if we had to recreate those, out of nothing, how would they be. How would we decide what's polite and what's rude and well, would we ever agree on it? Would we even have them?

Actually the whole idea makes me a bit uneasy as I pride myself in being polite, friendly and nice. I don't always succeed, but I try. Sometimes I tie myself in a knot and develop a terrible migraine and throw up a couple of times because it feels like I have some kind of devilish creature stuck half digested in my midregion, but that's besides the point. I still try to obey by the rules, the unspoken rules of society.

I figure it'd go something like this, first off we'd all be really selfish and take what we need, as a law isn't sience. Then some brainiac would say "hey chum, this isn't working" and we'd have laws. Someone would take a stick or something and start beating people up who didn't agree and to avoid pain we'd obey. Most of us anyway.

Then there'd be riots, because we'd all get to talking you see, noticing not everyone agrees. That would in extention lead to nations. By then everyone would be rather comfortable and feeling a little bit easier, they would have found people that were similar to them and that they could grunt with, hm, or maybe the would have developed speeach. Wait, did we speak in this example. If I didn't say so we would by now.

Then it's the whole aspect of love and such activities. I'm sure that in the beginning, where we enjoyed anarchy we would have gone where our whim was taking us but that doesn't work in a longliving society does it? We have to be able to trust people, depend on others to help us out. So for the sake of that let's say we hook up all couple like, but without the tradition of who we're supposed to be with. We would at least get to keep that freedom, for a while, surely it'd change over time when some smartass gets the idea to decide who we can love, how much and why, and let's not forget, in which manner.

By then it'd pretty much be like now. Perhaps we simply need these rules to not have anarchy. We need to feel opressed and shameful for everyone to get a piece of the action. But at the same time I doubt that the areas we concider successful would be the one that did the best, nor the people who did the best. Remember, we had no memory of feminism, racism, colonialism or any other -ism, those are all inventions of the human mind.

Hopefully we'd start creating stories anyway, maybe Borges was on to something about rewriting Don Quixote. Ok, time for me to confess my colour, what I really want said is that I think that somewhere in our windling brains there's an absolute idea, and the world around us is just a result of the electric sparks over time, so with the potential of potential space worldwide, seems I'm cynical enough to think we'd end up pretty much where we are. Just with a lot of unemployed priests.

The boy that didn't want to grow up

When I was a child with only two TV channels there used to be a cartoon about a man who didn't want to grow up. I think it was called Mannen som inte ville vara stor (The man that didn't want to be an adult) I tried googling it but didn't find anything about it. Instead I ended up on a bunch of crap blogs written by men who don't want to grow up. Amusing in itself I suppose. But anyway, they kind of illustrate what I'm about to illuminate, or well, comment on at least.

At the time I watched that cartoon I didn't understand it at all. Why wouldn't anyone want to grow up? Being an adult seemed great! You'd always get your way and you could buy what you wanted, decide what you'd eat and watch and when to be home and all that good stuff. Needless to say now I know better.

It's a sign of the time, being stuck in the middle generation. I do believe it's hard for a geneneration to claim their adulthood when the parentgeneration still conciders themselves to be somewhat young. They're most definatly overlapping now. My favorite example, Amelia Adamo thinks that the 60s is the new 30s. How can someone in their late 20's have anything to say about that? You can't rebel against something when they're basically trying to be you.

We can all individually rebel against our parents but we can't rebel against a part of the population. Anyway, this argument isn't leading anywhere, really, it's just facts. There are not as many little old ladies anymore, they're still buying expensive jeans and tanning in their 50s, so maybe I should just focus on why and perhaps even find something to blame.

Though I feel I should add that I don't blame them, if I had a chance to turn back time and remain myself at my best moments even when my body tells me those times are gone I would. Though that option is now being taken away from me. More power to those who claim the space that isn't theirs!

So, basically it must have something to do with health and for how long we can remain independent and the top generation. Even though the age for retiremnt here is 65 people live 30 or so years after that. That is a long time. Retirement doesn't mean you're going to sit in your chair and wait for death anymore. We're having kids at 45! The whole spectra of age has shifted due to the longlivity of the people in the rich west. Good healthcare, lack of disasters and wars make us safe and healthy.

Also it adds pressure. It's not ok to look and act your age. This goes with the post about beauty, really. If you look "old" it's your own fault as there's help out there to purchase. I silently wonder how many would have the old-lady-hairstyle and be happy with it if they weren't constantly fed the fountain of youth myth. So instead of sighing when I see them I should pity them for not being allowed to age gracefully.

I have a personal relationship with it, I feel harsh at times, but what am I to do when it's so ridicilous. Women in their 60's aren't as strong as those in their 20's and I had to point that out to someone in her late 50's about a week ago. The other side of the phone got quiet when I said "Well think about how the age 61 seemed to you when you were 28, the body breaks down eventually". I felt mean and coldhearted. But at the same time it's something I can say when it hasn't happened to me yet. Let me keep my youth and don't feed me your decay as I try really hard to not rub my unwrinkled hands in your face. I will get old myself, unless I get hit by a bus before that, but give me the chance to enjoy (as if I've ever enjoyed anything) every age I'm at without the double standard of being loyal to your body not bouncing as it once did.

Honestly I feel judged, belittled and headpetted by my parentgeneration. You're old, accept it. (When you start calling your own age the new XX's you're just in denial) Bones are going to break, hair is going to change colour, you're going to be tired, angry, worn out. It's perfectly normal. Don't make the mistake of worrying about the wrong things, and don't plan funerals just yet. There has to be a middle way.

Remember, as long as you keep the younger adults children in your eyes you can't expect us to carry your burdens and clean up after your childish mistakes.

Anyway to go back to the 60's being the new 30's. You can't take one age out of the whole spectra. See if that was to be true I'd be a toddler. So be careful, you don't want to incapacitate everyone that happens to be born after you because of your own fear of death. Every generation makes its own mistakes. Just like mother cat walks away from her litter we need a bigger gap between generations. Only now it seems that the children need to walk away from their parents because we share too much space.

An example of that is how the younger are beginning to leave Facebook now when their parents are finding their way there. We need privacy, some things shouldn't be shared between parents and children while in some aspects we should share everything with those who love us the most.

I don't even want to find my brother online which is why I blog in English under a penname and remain quiet when he talks about the communites he's a member of when I realize we go the same places. Hopefully I'll never run into my mother online, even now when she's finally coming to the conclusion there are still things out there she needs to learn, and I know she'll get all excited and make the mistake of joining them all.

Either way, that cartoon was made by people from my parentgeneration. That should have been my first clue to that I'll be kept a child forever so that they can still feel young. I'm not making an apology, the king is dead long live the king!

Whose misery can we laugh at?

Sometimes the only option we have is to laugh at things no matter how tragic they are. But who can we safely laugh at? Perhaps the model of news can be useful. The more likely we are to read an article has to do with ho close the event is how close in time, how close phusically and how close to intrest. The relation should be opposite. We can laugh at things far away in time place and so on and so forth.

This isn't entiely true though, right after 9/11 there were jokes circling around the Internet, within days, perhaps even hours. Defensive sarcasm. The best humor is a bit evil. But do we say mean things in jokes just because we really think it's true? Stand up comedy is based on generalizations. We laugh even though we know it isn't exactly like that, but it's so great when someone's on a stage being judgemental and mean. It makes us feel better for laughing at "them".

Naturally "they" are so much less complex than "we" are. They're homogen, we're all different. The further away they are the larger these groups get. All the people from Huddinge are the same, all the people from Stockholm are the same, all the people from the coast are the same, all the people from Sweden are the same, all the people from Scandinavia are the same, all the people from Europe are the same. Again, it all depends on your perspective. I'm not denying that there are similarites, but at the same time I think we're more united in our differences than the things we have in common.

To get back to the original question, who is it ok to make jokes about. I tend to say "enough food to feed a small African village", and people laugh! Every time I do my stomach turns a little. I know it's wrong but I want those points of approval. You can't really have in depth conversations with someone when you don't know their values, can you? Is it ok to make jokes about Indians when you're in your safe house in Sweden? Is it ok to joke about judgemental Americans when you're really just being as judgemental yourself for joking about it?

Naturally, it's always ok to joke about the stupidity of Norwegians. They must deserve it, I can't think of any other reason why there'd be so many jokes to tell about them

The hidden track

Remember, back in the day when we bought CDs and sometimes they had hidden tracks which you only found when you left the album playing without paying proper attention so that it ended without you really noticing and enjoyed the silence. Then out of the blue there were new sounds and you weren't quite sure of where it came from. I'm assuming you do.

What if life has a hidden track and we'll only find it if we stop paying attention and that hidden track is the best song you've ever heard, and by that I mean the best place and time of your life. I hope so. I'd put it on repeat and stay in it forever.

Unfortunatly there is no freezespray of reality. You can't spray something on your life and make it stay the same until you wash it the way you do with hairspray. It would be handy sometimes though. Someone should invent it. It should also work on those moments where you're speechless, and then put them in a folder somewhere so that you can go back when you have that snassy reply. Then you can let the scenario disappear into a past and a memory of how quick of the mind you are.

Or, what if life was handed out to us on the day we were born with all our days on little cards so we could freely arrange them as we pleased, and trade cards with others if we weren't happy with the ones we got, or maybe you could just play the same card over and over. It'd be comforting to know how many cards one had though, and knowing that this too shall pass.

But as there are no such cards I'm still waiting for my hidden track so that I can freeze time.

Wordchoke

I rarely have the problem of not having anything to say, instead, I often find myself stumbling over words because so many of them want to come out at once and they end up in a mess and without any sense. This happens when I take notes as well. I want to take notes of singificance, but they get twirled into my own ideas and the questions raised. Even though I don't concidider "I feel" a point in an argument I'm sure there are times where I want to resort to it. Not because I'm actually out of arguments, but because the whole concept is pissing me off and I feel unheard and belittled. See, there I went! But there has to be something behind that. Why do certain opinions raise feelings and others don't?

I can feel strongly for some things, but they basically boil down to one thing - injustice. The hate flares up in me and I become spiteful and pitiful. I can apply this to a lot of areas, but I have the core opinion that things should be somewhat fair and if we all tried to make things a bit more even the world would be a better place. What we concider right and wrong isn't as much our opinion as we'd like to think, it often has more to do with social structures and the ever feared tradition. I might not hate violence and war with such a passion had I ever faced it and felt my survival depended on my ability to defend myself. It's fairly easy being a pacifist in Sweden. There's so much pride and identity involved in military services and I do understand it's not as easy as saying "Lay down your weapons and embrace" as it's all part of a bigger system.

But isn't it true, at some level at least, that if no country had an army it would be harder to justify the building of one? If we were to just stop there'd naturally be economic consequences as those in the business of strategically killing others for their own benefit would be unemployed, but maybe a better world would emerge. I've been called naive, and yes I can see the point, but giving up the security blanket or violence would also include a reevaluation of possessions, freedom of belief and speech.

As I stated before I understand that what be believe is a product of factors surrounding us at the point in time where we formed our opinions, so what I'd like to happen is for those factors to be positive. I'm not naive enough (sorry) to think this would happen overnight, nor am I proclaiming a complete union of the world, what I'm simply asking for is an open mind and a basic respect for others.

We can't undo the mistakes of the past generations so it'd be a hard task to let go of a lot of the anger, but little by little as the injustices fade into a historic past we could begin to bridge the gaps. People should be about the same no matter where they are, we all have the basic needs, as explained by Abraham Maslow and that stairthing. Though, I don't agree completely (do I ever) as I wouldn't put safety as being more basic than love and belonging. But then again, that might be easy for me to say. Perhaps I should conduct a survey among homeless people and ask them what they'd rather want, a place to live or to be loved.

But it is in the second step we run into problems, especially if it clatches with the very top of beliefs, and we go completely off track if we forget the part of respect. I personally think that respect should be included in love. We can't love everyone, but we should strive to respect all. It's hard to deliberatly injure someone you respect. Respect needs to be earned however, and part of that is taking responsibility, so as long as we try to shift blame there can be no proper respect. Take reponsibility for your own actions and apologize when and apology is needed and your counterpart won't feel as unheard and belittled and can grow into a confident and secure person/nation/area/group, without the need to hurt someone physically.

Perhaps I'm just kidding myself. Maybe the human race doesn't deserve what's best for them and maybe we don't really want to listen to be others to be heard ourselves, at the same time as we have two ears and only one mouth. "I hear what you're saying, but I don't agree and I have no intrest in discussing it any further".

An ever shifting world

There's a running campain here for a travel agency with the stereotypical slogan of "Life isn't the days that pass but the moments we remember". Of course they're suggesting that every moment spent with what they're selling is worth remembering. Sounds fair I suppose. But it's not true! I'll leave their prepackaged non-thinking get skincancer on a beach type holidays to the side.

Life is those moments we don't remember. Stating otherwise would be saying that the lightbulb is the room, as it brings light to the space and makes it visible. But staring at the lighbulb itself just makes your eyes hurt. It's all the same idea as wanting something is usually a lot more satisfying than actually having it.

It comes with being human to be limited, we can't experiance everything there is at once so our world is very small in comparison to how big the world is in all



Kind of like this, I suppose. You're the center of your own world and you're surrounded by familiarity and in that context it's easy to overestimate just how important we are. Please misunderstand me correctly, of course you're important, and of course you matter, but you matter mainly to yourself, just like I matter mainly to myself. If I'm taken out of this place it will continue without me. It's a humbling realization. Some get it early on, some later, and it seems that some never quite get it.

Occationally I wish I was one of those people who seemingly can only see the world from their own perspective, a smaller piece of the world must, after all, be easier to overlook and control. But with that comes that it's so much easier to rumble. A storm in a waterglass. Yes, the storm in the waterglass analogy works pretty good. Every small disturbance becomes a big deal. I'm not saying my world is bigger than anyone elses, I'm just stating that I've worked rather hard on being able to understand the worlds of others, and I'm growing less and less patient with those who can't shift perspective.

It has nothing to do with intelligence, it has oh so much more to do with understanding. I'm quite willing to start marking words. Sometimes it's enough to understand that there's a difference than understanding what the difference consists of.

We only have the luxury of worrying about what to wear when we're wealthy enough to own more than one garment.

Change your life

When it comes to make over shows, no matter if it has to do with your finances, your looks your home or any other bad habit you might have the key is to have a bad starting product or else it won't get any effect when it's changed.

Is this becoming an issue? Do people think that it's all good, I'll make over my life later. I don't know. But I'm beginning to think so. Where else would all these people on tv come from? I never even knew people could collect (literally!) 10 tons of garbage in their house and maybe not that much excess weight, but still. It scares me a bit.

Take this reasoning and apply it to the current world economy. Seems the same thinking is behind it. "We all know this is going down the crapper, but we'll fix it later". If this is called fixing it, I don't think so.

But the truth is that it's easier to blitz through your house for 6 hours every three months or so than it is to clean a little bit every day. The problem is to do those things every day, we crash diet instead of eating healthy every day. We chop all our hair off because we haven't used conditioner.

Perhaps it's becoming a need to see that utter change, we're not happy with the flow of every day life anymore. I know myself well enough to admit I do it too. I won't tell you which things I fail to do, and then try to cover up by looking for easy fixes.

Also it has to do with responsibility. Always looking for something or someone to blame for your problems. An easy way to get out of responsibility is to pay someone else to do it for you. But the truth is we're all responsible for ourselves and our own actions and what our life boils down to. Don't make yourself a victim, make yourself satisfied.

You set yourself up for disappointment

High hopes is the work of the devil. Perhaps it's better if we never expect anything good, nice, beautiful and sweet, but instead are ready for the worst things at all times. It seems rather tedious to me, but at least that way one never gets disappointed.

Similar values are very important in any kind of relationship, professional or personal. It gives us an understand of what motivates others and it makes it easier to see where they're coming from and easier to follow their moods and actions. But what if you find you rarely share these values?

As I've said plenty of times I pride myself on my ability to read people and see what makes them tick or tock. But the downside is that I expect others to do the same. To put it plain and simple - they don't.

It's a shame when the world becomes so small that you can never take a bigger perspective and you fail to see all possible angles, seems some confuse being able to see it differently means to change your mind. It doesn't. It simply means you're aware of other possibilities. If life consisted of only one angle we wouldn't get very far.

But it's also a double edged sword. Knowing that your angle is just as valuable as anyone else’s might make you a bit flimsy to others, they can't seem to grasp you. And, yes, they do have a tendency to confuse flexibility with weakness. Please don't make that mistake.

What snaps first when bent, the twig or the rubber band?

The secrets we keep

I think secrets add depth to a person, we don't need to know everything. And the thing also is that our personalities aren't static, we change a little bit with the events we're part of and the experiences we gather.

But there are several layers to this (just like with everything else). Sharing a secret with someone creates a bond. Normal people don't want to break trusts, at least not if they care for the person who shared the secret with them.

This bond also creates issues. Too many secrets shared in a too tight of a relationship also creates a shut door syndrome. You feel trapped and limited. You might even feel as if you're betraying someone who doesn't share the same secrets, or you betray the person you share them with. Either way you're pretty much fucked.

It might feel good to get something off your chest. But what are the drawbacks? You become dependent on someone to protect the things you protect yourself. Sometimes we should ask ourselves what motivates us to share this particular piece with this particular person. Is it a way to come closer or is it just to ease yourself.

If you're telling me a secret to ease your own mind. Please don't. If you just want my views on something that's been on your mind, please tell me. I don't talk next to my mouth, but don't ask me to carry your burdens or protect you from yourself