Black and white on moral [painted in irony]

My latest thoughts have been on how easy it is to paint the picture in the colors of preference. Maybe I am just tired, I don't know..... 

I see a drug problem, the police say it has reached a limit and will chase the addicts away. I am happy with them supplying me a solution. I feel the drug problem will soon be solved.....

I see prostitutes in the streets, the state puts out laws to make it illegal to both sell and buy, I am happy because of this immoral way of living is being put down. I am happy there will no longer be whores wandering the streets.....

I read about all the violence late at night, knives and people being killed. The police have a raid and searches a lot of people, I feel protected, the police are doing their job. I am happy this is being dealt with in a way that will keep people from carrying weapons when going out on the town.....

etc...etc.....

I am happy one of the biggest issues in this country is how to get rid of all the criminal immigrants living here. They are probably the root of all the crime being done in our country, the people that smuggles all the drugs (and the users!!) and they are the master minds behind the trafficking (witch BTW is no longer a problem, past tense..) we used to see in our beautiful city. Nailing the priorities, finding the root.... I am so happy. 

There is no use in talking about problems with integration either, and living a couple of years in a asylum center does not hurt anyone. Anyone wanting to assimilate to our culture is welcomed, why they all want to live in the same place beats me. Hardly anyone living in my neighborhood. Guess it's only us honest working people living here.

In black and white - the good guys and the bad. The addicts, the criminals and the whores.. Not to mention the beggars! Why do we keep them around, why don't they just get a job or move back to their own countries (as most criminals have their roots elsewhere). Can't they keep to themselves at least, we just don't want to see them (here)!!

Solution: More jails, longer sentences, stricter immigration policy and a no tolerance policy - You fail once you go!! .....Or, we just hide our problems under various rugs... That certainly works for a few years, until someone else can figure out what to do.

The place where optimism flourishes the most is the lunatic asylum. 
Havelock Ellis (1859 - 1939)

Easter came and went

Total confusion - another identity crisis(!?!)

What is this creepy spring feeling that makes me want to share more than looks with someone of the opposite sex. I am so proud of my - self-confident, don't really care, like me the way I am, I deserve something great - attitude. Yupp, that is who I am (at least in theory). This works out fine for me and I don't feel I have to do any double somersaults or flip over backwards to find someone when that time comes... 
Lately this theory thing is becoming hard to live up to, I feel an identity crisis coming on! I have become a bit to fixated on looks, and I pretend that I have not passed 30 (those who know that story know what I am talking about ;) One day I want to wear pig-tails or dress like a hippie, next day a blouse and black skirt is fit. I feel that I am well into adulthood, but I feel my child (youth??) screaming out not to be forgotten (or have I turned this equation up side down??). The problem is that I just can't manage to find the balance between the two. Have you found it? Is it included in the pot at the end of the rainbow? I feel a bit like the ten small raindrops that just got stuck on my window... luckily some more rain fell, and I do not any longer feel like doing that metaphor - the raindrops got company, and is no longer fading away =)

They say people are strongest in a crisis, I think that excludes an identity crisis!

Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz

From the hen

... and not from the little wise one, ah why not

From the wise little hen - from me =)

I have been thinking a lot lately. Every morning I turn on the news, and as I enjoy having a long morning with time rather then the rush hour many prefer - I get the news run over and over a few times. Plus the occasional political discussion and opinions. Yes, I have chosen this before music and happy breakfast listening. Why am I preparing to complain... Hmm, I am wondering if I should jump to the conclusion of being contempt... It is hell for my blogg me being contempt (almost happy... shhh!) To little to write about, and since I have to big papers to write in one month (and two exams) I do not feel like writing about my usual social ponders.

But.. The news... should finish what I started. I have started being so critical to every little opinion, feeling no one ever manages to give a good story. It feels like everyone is saying "no comment", at least that could leave me speculating about what that means. Making any sense? But then again I suddenly go ahead being totally naive in some questions, dahh... Just when I need my critical thinking I fail myself. Something that comes with time, but with this speed I will be the biggest skeptic ever (believing in God and alternative medicine... hehe)
...and there goes all my arguments as usual. I must like discussing with myself, and in the end pointing out that I failed to actually make a point!

By now my hair removal cream has stayed on waaaay to long, and maybe the itchy feeling from that is making my blogg a tad incoherent (a good psychological protection when I publish a post I just should have deleted)

Looks like the wise little hen remained just a hen today, might as well be just that.. without feeling the wrath of my own judgment of mediocrity. (That ended up being a strange sentence that I am not sure I made understandable... hmm)

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. 
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), De Profundis, 1905

My shame

I get so sad.
I feel like I shouldn't in some way, and in the same way I should! While hundreds of kids get killed or abandoned or neglected every day, I cry over the one I am able to capture glimpse of. I want to see the world, but if I want to do that I can't feel sad for every soul. But isn't that just what everyone should. God, do I make any sense??

I know people whom choose to censure what they read on the base that the world is just to cruel, I can understand that.
I know people who try to see it all, know it all, and that can talk about the war and epidemics as something far away - mainly unaffected (it seams) by what happens. I can understand that.
..and of course all the people in between, were I probably will land somewhere.

One baby gets abandoned, she died (or was already dead) in a bag from a cloth store. I read the story and I start feeling so sad, like wanting to cry for that poor baby never getting a chance.
For days I have read news from Gaza, I am disturbed and I want to scream out the unfairness for the kids dying in every war or conflict. But I don't sit down and want to cry in the same way as for this baby, why?

This I ponder, and I also got some possible answers.
I think we all have to try to censure in a way so we can handle what we absorb of the world around us. Not something we do conscious, but more a habit in how and what we chose to read further.
About the poor baby here in Norway - this I read on nett and I listened to the radio - this is were I get my news mostly. From the radio the news is uncensored by me, unless Emily is close and I turn it off in cases with men killing kids in the kindergarten, not all news are necessary for a six year old. So, I listen to the news and I get informed. I later read news online.
I think back to what kind of stories and headlines I "clicked" to read more about in the Gaza conflict. Were did my interest lye, what did I look for. Mostly politics (though that is not my main area of interest!), less about whom and how people were killed. This is of course a case were politics is heavy, but there has been lots of focus on the casualties. There was also a debate here in Norway on if it was wrong to show a kid dead in the ruins, on the cover of newspapers. I followed that debate, but didn't look at the pictures, didn't attach to the case as such.
(Ouch, I read what I write and wonder if I sound cold or without feelings. This is not the case, even though it might come out that way....The perceived coldness continues--)
When I now sit and read - again - about the baby. I realize one big difference (in relevance to what I'm trying to conclude to here). This story has a limited amount of tragedy in a way. If I look at this story I can find a few related stories to other babies abandoned earlier, it counted eight since -82 here in Norway. I read about the bag and people that discovered that baby, about the police investigating. Then I can't read anything more, I can digest and my feelings can absorb what and how(during and after).

For the other stories, the stories of tragedies never ending, families reduced to one member, or extinguished. For every soul dying there are hundreds of stories connected, other experiences. I could read for ever, I could go every day feeling sad and sorry. (Maybe we all should, but not all the time (!?!))
I don't know, I think I automatically censure some stories because I know how hard it will be to read this story. I can read everything around it, I can know the story is there. But I just can't bear to read it as a whole. Maybe if I did... then maybe I couldn't any longer be able to not do anything... then maybe I also had to do something... and maybe I am just to absorbed in my happy, comfortable life here in little Norway. Maybe I should care a little bit more about the world. Maybe my life would feel a little bit better if I cared a little bit more. Then I think - would it matter.... and then I am back to my mode and excuses for not doing anything yet again! It just isn't enough writing this down, but this is what I do. It is at least something, isn't it?

It is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.

Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, 1993

For my blog

Yet again I feel like writing without any idea about what.
Every other day I see something/someone, I here about something new - exiting -, I see people around me acting in a wonderful or terrible ways... etc. I observe, oh God I am a curious person, and I wonder. In my head I start writing a small blog post, and I am always very proud of my ways to put it all together =) I even produce it in English, as this is the language I use for writing my blog (I do ponder on that to time and again) From that proud moment (feeling good about my production - walking home from the university, taking the tube from work or just fading out buying groceries)
Then I come home, play and eat.. By night all my brilliance is gone, non existing. And I do start to wonder if it was ever there! Hehe... By this time all I can do is to drink tea, edit my facebook status(hehe), watch a series and to read non-challenging litterature or internet (tabloid)news. Once in a while I am listening to the radio(the talking kind). The sad thing is that no matter how exiting the book is, or how much I want to listen to a show... I start getting sleepy.... and I WANT TO STAY UP A WHILE LONGER!!!! Hmmm... this sounds like a boring existence. Luckily we do get out once in a while, both together and separated. But I guess it is more nights like this then being out dancing the mamba =D
Well I guess I do need to fall back a bit also... working, studying, being an attentive mum(reminds me that I have this friend group I have to invite. This is a thing that rotates, everyone in the group(the parents of course) has to host.. Now it is my turn... Five kids!! How to squeeze that in here - ideas??) and then there is everything to prepare for the trip... Yes, we are going to Thailand =) Mum is having her 60th birthday, and she wants company on the trip(I do hope that when she turns 70 i will be able to treat her, hehe) For now I am still the "kid" in perspective of having her pay for my vacation. Emily is of course also coming.
Ok, this was just for getting a few words out in the world... I feel better now =)

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

John Lennon (1940 - 1980), "Beautiful Boy"

To focus

It is hard at half past one in the night, what I should be doing is getting to bed! So, I will!!!
Haha, and I did =)
Thought to delete the post, but I might just as well continue writing gibberish. Maybe it will make sense... lets see.
The winter has finally come, it feels so much better when the snow brings some light and in a way makes it warmer. Hmm, overlooking the times when wind and snow combined makes life a living hell! Today at least I love winter and I feel ok. I think autumn has an ungrateful task - to prepare for a dark crappy time must be so hard. The only way to do that is to be more crappy then the winter itself.. so, when winter finally come ungrateful people like me will almost accept it and start smiling again =)
This might not come as a surprise right now, but I am more of a summer person.....

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind,
As man's ingratitude.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Mini-comment on class and politics (wonders never cease)

Reading for my exams I stumble upon something said by the American journalist and sociologist, Thomas Frank.
It is in an article by Olav Krange published in "Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift" 3/2007. The article is on and about class in Norway.
One of the comments made by a working class hunter in the inland of Norway was that he could sit down and drink coffee with the forest owner, claiming there were actually no difference in class in that part of the country. But, the academics that would move there - then he would really feel a difference in class. This postulates that class is somehow no longer differed in economics, but in culture (lifestyle). The difference between the forest owner and the hunter is enormous seen financially, but they smoke and drink and enjoy the same greasy food; thus they chose their way of life; autonomy. The difference is felt to carrot eating academics or elite who is spewing out what and how you should do and live, it would be loosing autonomy to i.e stop smoking. Though there is no distrust in the research concerning the health risks. (this is so short of what the article say, but I hope I got some of the point out as I need to get back to reading, hehe).... To the gold I wanted to publish....
In this article he refers to Frank:
What the republicans have succeeded in, according to Frank, is to part politics from economics and to make it look like it is the cultural elite and academics that are the "power class". Why this gets to be such a great success (or at least used to!?!) is the resonance it creates in the culture of the working class, overshadowing the economic consequences of a republican rule.
In Norway Magnus Marsdal have continued on a similar position concerning a different political party. He claims that economics and working life is almost non-existing in the public debate.
In this way a political party like FrP (far right winged party) can get votes by placing themselves in the same cultural group as the working class and dismiss the elite as snobs who think they know everything. This group of people would, objectively speaking, lose on privatization and individualization which is part of the party-politics. They claim there is no contrast between worker and capitalist anymore. Capital and market do have an enormous influence on our lives, but obviously not so intrusive as different "lifestyles" seems to be...
It would be an interesting discussion on why what we all know is there, though hidden (and I would claim is more influencial), is less a threat then culture and knowledge. Ofcourse keeping in mind it is ofcourse in close relation to politics this is a threat.... or is it?
Arghhh!!! Hope I made sense... back to books!!!

In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

Prosocial behavior

In my modest opinion of myself, I have a completely objective example of prosocial behavior and its repercussion (I call it prosocial in that the consious act was done without an intention of getting something back). The general point to this text is the tendency others have to copy prosocial behavior, and when this was so obviously put infront of me I can not help but to write a short post =)

At the University I attend a processoriented seminar for one of the courses. We have to write an assignment and do a oral presentation of a subject during the semester, both of wich are devided between us so that we can get through the main subjects of syllabus.
I was fairly late (in the semester) doing my presentation, but I had (in comparison to the terrible subject I had in my written assignment) a subject I thought as fun and very interesting. I went through all parts of the syllabus and think I got a fairly good outline of it all. I didn't get to rehears to much, so the sheet were people usually just have cues - I had written more complete enteries of what I was going to say. It was pritty coherent, and I thought it could be nice for the rest of the group to get a copy.

We are two people at a time to do this, and when I handed out the copies after my presentation the other guy told the group he was going to upload his oral presentation to a common place we have online. I can see that I did something, he wanted to do the same.. nice =)
But the fun thing was; now that this had been astablished people started uploading there old assignments and even summaries of various books. (there is a seminar leader that is supposed to be our guide to all "right and wrong", he reads and comfirms that what is uploaded is of good quality)
So what turned out being a "prosocial act" on my part turned out to be a great gift for all =)

I have one more point to make at this being a good act; not so much thinking about oneself (for everyone involved). Grades on the exam are given in a context to the entirety; if the general standard of the group is good it will be harder to get an 'A'. My point being that it is only people in need of more information - that will gain the most grom this. But the repercussion hit everyone, and even went "back in time".

From some students experiment (some vague memory of something like this), students followed the repercussion of holding the door open for people behind them. I don't remember the numbers, but it was a number, X- times, after the student held the door the link kept going. (Why it at all ended from this argument beats me, hehe... ) So, speculating--> I guess it was done in a very obvious way the first time, making it more of a point. Then the first does more or less the same, the next etc.. with maybe less enthusiasm as it grows further from the stem - untill it finaly fades away... (!?!)

So, maybe it was a good thing I had my assignment late in the semester when people have read a lot and will keep the string going with fairly good knowledge (instead of more speculative knowledge earlier in semester, hehe)

Hmmm... that brings me to being an idealist =) If we all would remember to keep the door open for the one behind, wouldn't the world be a better place to be! No, I'm not stupid or naiv... I don't expect it to be a happy solution to all the world sufferings!
I guess it is just a statment, maybe I should call it a wish? Could we not treat our fellow man and woman just a little bit better? Couldn't we smile just once a day to someone we didn't know? Isn't it possible to pick up that piece of trash instead of cursing the person who threw it?
Now I start mixing in more subjects and that tells me to stop writing =)

So, if my prosocial plea don't appeal to you(or you doubt the possibility in it self), you just might go for the good old Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

So many changes, but it all stays the same

Isn't it remarkable how we can think of our lives as so huge while we are so incredible small! Today I feel small, not for any particular reason, just a feeling of being dust =) It is easy to think of this as related to something, maybe I have been feeling down or blue. That might be, but I have also at the same time had some very great loving days.. It is not that!

I hope I am not alone thinking that life is something grand given to us in some way (won't take that discussion further), and it is nothing less then remarkable, at this day in age impossible to understand in full and something to value in it's fullest. Every day I do some act or speak words throwing that value out the door. This will hardly change the way I am, but I ask myself by what right do I put myself down, do I doubt my own believes and convictions? Not saying that I have the right or wrong believes and/or convictions. I am saying something about when I doubt them or push them away I do this on the wrong foundation. The thing I so strongly believe in; to believe and be your own person- it is having a hard time surviving this world. There is of course always a limit to everything, I do not believe to give others grief because I chose differently. What I do believe is to have the courage to live the life that has been given, and to live this the best way you can.
Is it to be able to by all the things you want? Maybe to eat the correct food, wallow in food? Is it to be the perfect parent, to bring all the cute little princesses home for dinner? It could be academic greatness or achievements at work? What about seeing the world or experiencing the big high in the Hawaiian waves? I do not know what I am asking of me, but by this time I start to know what others are expecting. In many ways I live up to that. So be it, I can compromise some parts of me without breaking down to dust... But I do feel I am loosing a bit to much. This year I am not sure who has been running, but I sure have missed that fast lane. In retrospect I meet my self and greet myself: ¿qué pasa?
I have no idea... Well without bringing up more of my bad Spanish (this was probably it, hehe) I will give the confession to my blogg that I am totaly lost at this moment!
The good thing is that, if I were to put the one; there is only one - sad moment away from my mind. Then, then I certainly can say I am happy... just not sure if it is of my own doing or someone elses?
Hehe... Now I am confusing myself even =)
And ending it by those words, I will, as always, try to find someone elses words as the last (just proves my point, doesn't it!?!)

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)