In death we see ourselves

January 18th, 2010

TombstoneThe recent incident about the death of Tony Halme and the column written by Kaarina Hazard has caused quite a turmoil. When Halme died, Hazard wrote an article, which was quite rude in many ways about Halme. She broke the unwritten rule about beating a dead horse – and had a good point in doing so. Though the tone of the column was really bad, she brought about the good question of glorifying people post mortem. We tend to look dead people with more reverence than those that yet live. She wanted to break this illusion, but there was an important thing missing in her thought.

The Why behind.

Why do we glorify people after death? In death we always want to understand people. Our point of view changes from outside spectator to inside understander. What we used to see as a racist drug addict and a weapon misuser, we now see as a person with great hardships and tribulations. Why does this change occur? Why do we want to see dead people as good? It’s because we want to see ourselves as such.

We want to keep the illusion, that in the end, we are good as human beings. Sure, we have had our mishaps and wrong doings, but all accounted for, surely we stand in the positive side, don’t we? If it were to be, that someone could be judged as Bad after death, it would most likely mean, that we could be judged as such aswell. We can’t have that.

Death is the ultimate mirror.

If we see something we don’t like in that image, we smudge it and pretend it is not there. This is an uncomforting thought. The truth about ourselves is hard to handle – in the end, nobody stands on the positive side.

Socially selfish

December 9th, 2009

memeFor a decade or so we have been on a verge of a new social scheme. It’s not replacing the old ones, but rather it has added a whole new layer of interaction between people. In some ways, its also changing the other schemes. The internet is a game changer.

Though it comprises of many things like new additions to language and so on, the most striking thing about it is a new type of socially interacted individualism. Actually, the concept itself is not new, it has been talked for a while. There are many good papers on a framework called social individualism. But the internet has brought a new arena for it.

What it means is that people behave differently – more from an individual point of view – when their supposed interlocutors (or audience if you will) are not immediately present (yet still exist as a social interactive community). It is even more so, when their own identity is concealed, but it does happen with known identities nonetheless. We self-actualize our existence for others, in other words, we try to establish ourselves to others. People want to be heard and understood, and the web has brought a new way to do it.

Facebook or twitter would be the most obvious examples. We publish our thoughts and our goings as status updates and hope to get as broad audience as possible. While it’s social, as in there are multiple people involved and there is a possibility for feedback, the core is quite individualistic. We tout ourselves, our thoughts, things we bought, our children’s doings and things of that nature to others. Though there are sometimes conversations about our updates, the things mostly revolve around ourselves. The status update is indeed what it sounds: an update where we try to make our social status better. This is not to say every status update is of this nature, just that many of them are. Different forums on the net are even more like this, since in most cases we write there without our identities. The link between the communicator and the audience is even lighter then, thus making the interaction resemble more like a shout competition rather than a conversation. But it’s still social, as it has a way of feedback and it is thrown on a social arena unlike in the case of radio broadcast or a book. Many times the communication reduces to the level of toilet-writings, although luckily there has been considerable progress in this area. People are slowly starting to learn the proper conduct.

It is interesting to note, that whenever we are relatively free of social pressure, we easily tend to use that opportunity for our individual needs. Humans are of that nature.

On the road…

July 24th, 2009

matkaThis post is chilling here to just inform you, that this blog is quite inert while I’m on a vacation. So just sit back and relax, there’s plenty of time to ponder the great questions of life later – feel the summer breeze and live! I know I intend to. ;)

Knowledge and faith

July 17th, 2009

knowbelieveThis is a post I have thought of posting for quite a while now, but every time a more acute matter has come or like a week ago I just didn’t feel I was up for it then. But I don’t want to postpone it over my vacation, when I’m writing my travelblog and not updating this one. It’s a thought that I have pondered for a while in my mind – How much do you need to know to believe? How much knowledge is required, so that one can say he/she belongs to a certain faith?

Let me open this a bit. Let’s say theres a guy, who says he is a christian, but does not belive Jesus is God. Naturally he cannot be a christian, even though he would declare so himself. Or let’s say there is a fellow who thinks muslims share the same God with christians, because both believe in a supreme creator who is the fulcrum of love. Or we could go further and just declare that every religion that has god in there is basically the same stuff, since they all belive in a mythical creator. God would be the “dude who’se behind this all” and religion would be the “stuff of that creator dude”. But this is somewhat problematic, since not all religions think the same about God beyond these most simplistic facts. The further you go along this path, the more knowledge you have to give up. To be able to take the latter stand, you have to say, that all exclusive world religions are basically wrong and your enlightened view is the right religion.

Clearly there has to be some facts behind the faith – at least when talking about any major religion.

Many evangelicals and pentecostals would easily say, that faith is not about knowledge, it’s about knowing God – in a personal relationship kinda way. But what if the believer says, that he knows the christian God, but then attributes different things to that particular God what christian doctrines state? Does “I believe” suffice, if the doctrines are wrong? It’s a relevant question these days, when people tend to mix their own religions from their own preferences. It would seem, that we do need to know some things about our faith and God to actually believe, but how much is enough? I mean surely it doesn’t suffice to know Jesus is the answer when you don’t know the question – there simply is no one answer to life, the universe and everything.

This all twines with another question – what CAN we know? Now lets assume that whatever sources of knowledge a given religion has are legitimate sources of information (like Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon). But what about the stuff those sources do not talk about? For example, in the case of christianity this has not stopped the theologians. Naturally there are some things we can just logically conclude from the material we have. But then there is the nasty stuff doctrine wars are made of.

My “favorite” one of these is the doctines about the holy communion. Based on Bible we can know, that Jesus wanted us to excersise it and we roughly know how He wanted us to do it. But based on the christian sources other than some theological discussions, we do not know what really happens there. To me that would be enough and let it be a mystery. But no, different denominations have warred against each other on what mechanics actually are present in that action and what’s the role of God in all that. This has gone so far, that we cannot officially enjoy the holy communion together with different denominations – which is rediculous, since the whole problem underneath is an artificial construct. But at the same time, to fully appreciate the thing, we should agree on some points what we are doing. Just eating stuff n’ drinking yo doesn’t cut it. But how much is enough? Same problems arise when thinking the essence of God and many other things. How much we NEED to know, how much we CAN know?

knowledge

At least it is obvious, that when the knowledge is thin, all sorts of goofy misbeliefs run rampant. I have seen so many by-products of poor theology, that it’s not even funny. So I would say we need to strive for better knowledge if we are to stand firm in our faith. But there comes a point when all that stuff is not advancing our state anymore, and just reduces to plain scholastic bickering. At the very least we should stop building walls based on things we cannot know.

Sheer knowledge won’t make anyone a believer, and sheer believing is not possible without some knowledge. In the end the issue is probably not that there are the lines between different knowledge states in faith, but rather the discussion rages on where along the line to put those.

The universe, size and loneliness

July 6th, 2009

The Deep Field photo taken by the space telescope Hubble has always fascinated me, since it really helps to put things in perspective. It takes one tiny fraction of our sky and produces a picture made out of, not stars, but galaxies. Thinking, that one galaxy can hold from millions to a trillion stars, that makes quite a lot of stars – in one tiny part of our sky. They also took a newer version of it, which is a most astounding thing to look: Hubble Ultra Deep Field. At the moment, it is thought, that the universe consists of around 100 billion galaxies.

What’s interesting is, that when one does a google search on hubble deep field, there are many results, that connects the deep field images with a single sentence: “We are not alone.” The incomprehensible number of possible stars with possible planets that could harbour life makes one assume there has to be life somewhere there. We are looking for our brothers and sisters when we look up to the sky.

Even if we have a planet full of people, soon more than it can sustain, we still feel lonely in the universe.

Michael Jackson vs. Jesus

June 29th, 2009

jacksonEverybody is talking about it, it’s all over the news and many would rather already stop hearing about it. The whole net went ballistic, twitter went down for it, wikipedia had a bitter war about it and speculations about the conditions run rampant like no tomorrow. Yeah, the death of MJ. I’m not going to talk about the king of pop though, but rather the interesting phenomenon of fandom and idols.

It’s not unlike religion.

In both people are looking up for something bigger than themselves, something to believe in. In the religious form it’s usually something pure and spotless, but the rock-version can easily be tarnished and rotten as long as there is some suffering involved. Just today it read in the news that Michael Jackson had finally moved to the category of suffering idols. “He’s been through hell!” This could be said about Jesus or Michael Jackson. To us there seems to be something quite interesting and noble about the suffering of an idol.

The word idol originates not as a popstar, but as a substitute for God. In fact the second commandment in the Christian Bible says “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them…” Now ofc the word has a much lighter meaning today, but still if someone is an idol for someone else, the fan can be seen as a devout and a worshipper. The word “fan” on the other hand is derived from the word “fanatic”. That word has also suffered some inflation in the modern language, but the roots are interesting.

R&B star Akon said: “Just to be in the same room [with him], I felt everything I wanted to accomplish in life has been achieved….That aura … that’s how incredible that aura is….The way he thinks….some artists think regional, some think national, I was thinking international. He thinks planets! It’s on another level!” Some other random fan quotes: “He lives forever, he’s not dead”, “He brings meaning to my life”, “He is my everything”. These were said about MJ, but we could aswell replace the target as God. I bet if we were to do a brainscan, the same areas would show activity for both religious people and some other type of devotees.

Naturally there are many different levels of fandom, as there are many different levels of religious commitment aswell. Not all fans and religious devotees are fanatics. Still, the mechanic works just the same. We try to look up for something that is bigger than ourselves, larger than life, and mysterious. We need these higher beings or ideals as points, from where we hang on, to where we anchor ourselves. We cannot attach to something thats our size, or it wouldn’t hold us; the “ground” has to have enough mass. We must be unable to move it. Why that is, I don’t know, we just seem to be built in a way that we cannot exist alone by ourselves. We cannot be gods ourselves.

As for the idol itself, in the end, a human being cannot bear a god-status. He knows that he’s not perfect and the pressures from outside grows unbearable. The idols persona gets separated from the actual person, and ascends as a glorified, mystified and shining icon to heavens. An inner discrepancy forms between this icon and the real self and any number of conditions can follow. In many cases it leads to drugs, as we have seen. (Not to argue, that it’s the only reason for stars to take drugs, mind you)

This blog entry is not here to make any moral judgements about idolhood or fandom. Bible tells us we should not have substitute gods, but i think we all have common sense as to what that means. Most of the idols we have in this life are more like role models and not really competing against God. But interestingly, the mechanic is the same in both and that’s why I can easily understand why Bible tells us not to have these substitutes. We have it in us, that we seek a higher force and thus we should seek it in the right place.

Moderation and justice

June 22nd, 2009

riaaThis week in the federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that a Minnesota woman Jammie Thomas violated several music copyrights, and gave this poor mother of two children a “fine” of 1,92 million dollars – for sharing 24 songs in the net. That makes 80.000 dollars per song.

Idiots.

Many can probably agree, that the restitution sums in the States have been quite big, but this is just madness. Seems the sense of justice of that court has gone out to run a better business licking RIAA’s boots. The fine equals around 80.000 downloads per song from iTunes. Naturally if you share a song in the net, any number of people can download it from you, but fining someone 80.000 times of the worth of the item is just not in the galaxy of right proportions. Even big music makers and artists like Moby see this as a total lack of reason from the court and RIAA.

Moderation would be the key word here. I would argue, that it is the single most important virtue of a court. Without it, real justice isn’t being achieved. But the case shows, that the court in case has descended from the level of moderate justice to the level of lustful revenge. Being a small scale artist, that hopes to publish something in the future I’m all for the artist. But as Moby sees as well, this kinda greedy drysucking the record industry does by no means benefit the artist, but rather the company behind it.

Times have changed, and the industry needs to change with them. Hanging into these kind of judgements is grasping into straws when you’re drowning.

The “supporting thoughts” -category

June 14th, 2009

supportJust the other day I was traveling by train and happened to overhear a conversation this fancy finely dressed lady was having over the phone. She was  quite extensive in her defending of a position she had taken in an issue they talked about. One particular statement she said caught my interest: “It is like this ecology and recycling, they are kinda nice things as long as they don’t concern me.”

She was honest.

Obviously she was for something else than ecology. Some people are not interested in advocating anything, but most of us have at least one bigger thing we want to drive forward. However, one can be a real activist in his / her life in only one or two things. We really don’t have the power nor the interest to advocate many different things – not particularily passionately that is. Hence we have this other category I call the “supporting thoughts” category. It comprises of every cause we kinda like and kinda support, but don’t really have the power or interest to do anything about.

And its not like we lie or anything. We might really view ourselves as supporting some cause, somewhere in the background. Its a feeling we have, we kinda “take part” in a cause in a thoughty, smiley sorta way. The category adds to our self-image. Not only is it supporting because we support the causes, but also, because those things support our self-image and give it some structure and variance. Some might say that it’s like taking the “hot spicy” food in McDonalds, which ain’t that spicy at all and thinking that youre into spiced food, but its more than that. We do draw from that category from time to time in discussions and when provoked by others. However, It’s not pro-active. We fall back to these thoughts only when we get an outside motivation to do so.

I would hope that ecology would come away from the “causes list” completely and join some other lists we do normally without any second thought. But we are not there yet and I have to admit, it’s still more in my supporting category. What is your core cause and what items belong into your supporting thoughts -basket?

Can we be right?

June 8th, 2009

Just tonight I watched the euro-election results with my friends from the tv. There was this one populist guy, who got an enormous amount of votes. One striking thing about his performance in tv (and everywhere else for that matter, for he is a good speaker), is that he is very confident and he dares to be right. (whether or not that really is the case in truth) Altough i would never vote for him, he has this one thing many of us have lost – he dares to be right.

Seems our society and our beliefs have stumbled on a relativistic wave and cannot get out. Even the church is right along there, churning out statements, which end up moving nobody. We hear these speeches about soft values and all those nice things, but its really too nice to have any effect. To get soft values into people you need to press hard to be right.

And this is all quite understandable, since we don’t live in a well integrated standard culture anymore. We need to understand other cultures and values aswell, and in doing so we tend to put all those different cultures in the same category and study them. It affects our belief-systems too, as we begin to compare our thoughts with the other competing thoughts and end up having some sort of a “live and let live” attitude on every religious thought. Which is all fine and all, but as the end result, we tend to lose our right to be right somewhere along the lines.

But whoever said, that every culture, value or religion should be valued the same?

Those would be the ones, that extend “the humanity” to every value they we people spawn. Now I am not advocating any hostility nor any sort bad-whatever to any culture or people. I am merely stating, that our philosophical and our religious thoughts themselves do not have the same existential value than we do as people. Naturally we need to have the freedom of thought and speech, but that is a different issue. We should not think, that just because some thought or habit IS, it should be valued the same that everything else in the same category. Not every thought is as smart as the other, nor is every habit. I do not think, that a culture for example, is an absolute value in itself. They come and go. They are important, but not something we should never let go. Besides, cultures change all the time, so it would be a null point to actually try to pinpoint the actual point in time which should be preserved. (The Amish have tried that)

Obviously just mocking everything else is bad aswell, we cannot afford to stick our head to the sand and pretend everybody else with different thoughts are idiots (the religious right in the states have tried that) or not sincere enough. We should always try to understand other cultures and religions as well as we can – and honestly. But we should never lose our right to be right in the process. Christianity for example is an exlusive religion that holds some deep thoughts about what is the truth and what is right. It closes out other thoughts and religions and says people that think otherwise are wrong. Those truths are not there to be “maybe but maybe”. They are what they are, because God said so. The day we lose that thought, we lose the core of our belief. To someone, who do not belief the christian way that may sound harsh and blatant. But all the better, get your own beliefs ready and lets discuss them in an open way!

So whatever you believe, debate on what is right and dare to stand behind your beliefs. Do it open mindedly, but firmly.

Dare to be right.

FAIL

May 31st, 2009

There is this quite interesting internet meme called FAIL. It and its cousin (epic fail) first were used mainly in gaming, but these days they have reached a more universal status – to a point they are quite much used in live conversations aswell. What is quite interesting is, why we like to point out something is a failure. It sets the sayer to a higher position, from where that person can pass his/her judgement. Using the meme FAIL that person can thus sense self gratification and ownership of some information the other (whoever failed miserably) clearly didn’t have. Basicly it boils down to the fact we like to laugh at someone else’s stupidity. FAIL used to be the extreme case, but since the growing popularity of the meme, its power is inflating somewhat. There are even blogs for the meme and meme-videos in youtube about it.

FAIL is the real life counterpart to slapstick humor. Probably it works so well just because its real. The whole thing probably started, because nerds so much like to be right and show it. Since then its becoming a new word for social interaction, and something you should know to keep in touch with the times.

And it’s pretty self explanatory, what more needs to be said, than a single word?