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It is quite hard these days to find seclusion. Always online, wired up, connected, networking, twitting, blogging, facebooking, surrounded by family, friends, co-workers, available on the phone, on the computer, at work, at home, even on vacation. Even at home, resting, Xbox Live keeps you connected.

Most people can handle this. It’s no problem. Some turn themselves ‘off’ at times, keeping a balance between being on- and offline. Some indulge themselves in the ever-omni-presence, bathing in the limelight of being a hotshot on Twitter or YouTube. But something is missing.

And I’m not talking about the chance of not becoming truly stressed, when constantly being available to anybody at any time of the day. Believe me, this is stress-fuel in it’s purest form, if not handled with care. It’s something else that is missing, namely immersion, or even contemplation.

I mean, let’s face it. In our Western society, refinement and quality is dead, replaced by short-term [insert anything here]. Everything is fast-paced, the attention span of most people is equal to nil, hence the absence of ambitions regarding delivering something thought-through and error-free. Example: I’ve seen a mass-produced T-shirt from one of the largest sports manufacturers on the planet, where there were a misspelling in its slogan (and yes, I double-checked).

Contemplation is amiss. And I miss it. And I do believe that I’m not the only one. I miss getting bored, the moments where you are nowhere else but right here, right now. Yes, perhaps we should all meditate, I don’t know, but the quiet moments where time does not exist are almost extinct. It’s a luxury only the richest can afford, and my belief is that they won’t come up with the next big thing all by themselves. I’m not going into some conspiracy issue here, nor politics (hey, money is just what makes the World go around until we find another way to make it spin), I’m just saying, that we all need some ‘mental air’ now and then.

What could possibly go bad, if we just stopped for a moment and allowed ourselves a break? And I’m not talking about solitude; collective efforts in this matter also do work. And forget about procrastination, which is just another symptom of not being where you want to be, in the moment you set aside your chores and replace them with some other (often) totally unfulfilling act. I know it is extremely hard to do this, but deep down, I think it is what we all need and the effects hereof will be widespread.

We have already established the fact that we can’t consume or produce more than we do. Our planet will be killed if we try. And in this mass-hysteria of fast profit gain, we all forgot the some aspects of the good old fashioned way of life, that actually got us here where we are today, especially the balance between mind and matter. I’m getting slightly back to my point about refinement and quality from earlier here. Back somewhere around the Renaissance of the 12th century, all areas of political, scientific, philosophical, cultural and economic thinking got a boost and developed into becoming a great new era. Let me just repeat this list: politics, science, philosophy, culture and economics. How often do you hear about cultural or philosophical advancements today? Turn on your TV: Do you see much about the cultural state of you country (and I’m not talking about fashion shows here)? Seen any programmes regarding Jazz or experimental theatre lately? Anything else but sports, soaps, reality-shows and local news coverage on the telly tonight? When was the last time you discussed climate changes, philosophies or the state of Africa, together with your colleagues during lunch? With your friends at your previous gathering? With your spouse? Your children?

Do you see where I’m getting? Now, I am aware that we all can’t run around, talking about Aristotle or Spinoza all the time, but perhaps, if we didn’t cram that much pointless information into our heads all the time, constantly twittering of our whereabouts, stuffing the calendar with things we think we need to do before we’re getting too old to do it, constantly pressing our workforce to cram yet another hour into the already overburdened schedule, we would actually be able to stop up for a moment and draw a line, connecting the dots: getting some perspective on things.

This might lead to nowhere, but at least it could help ease the enormous burdens of everyday life, if we just gave ourselves the opportunity to relax. Be calm. And then we would have more time and energy to contemplate. We could turn our attention to other things, see other ways of living or begin to be interested in something regarding more long-term results, perhaps demand some more quality from the media, because we actually would begin to care about other things than what’s up with [insert any celebrity here]. Heck, we might even begin to feel more connected; not only between ourselves but also with ourselves.

What could possibly go wrong? This could be widespread. Society might even begin to accept cultural diversity as a force, giving us all some art and music we could believe in, see ourselves in, giving us even more perspective. We might be smarter, or we might be dumber, but I believe we would become much more smarter and smarter dumber. Arts, philosophy, science is all R&D for culture. It’s long-termed, it’s important. Hugely important. Why do you think that Novo Nordisk spends $1.6bn a year on R&D? Because they know in the long term they can get 7 back. We should think about arts and crafts in the same way. Question: Why should it be much more beneficial, both economically and image-wise to be a lawyer than to be a musician? Let me quote John F Kennedy here:

“I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilisation as well.”

Anyway, I digress.

Mental solace = contemplation = perspective = creativity = personal/cultural progress.

Utopia? Perhaps. Wishful thinking? Highly! Thought through? Absolutely not. All I do know, is that we’ve already begun to think differently about our climate and the way things have to be in the future, and hey, if they could do it in the 12th century, why shouldn’t we be able to in the 21st? Let the new renaissance begin!

I think I need a break…

The Conservapedia “Masterpiece of the week”. Strangely enough, painted by Maximilien Luce, a French painter, that was active with anarchist groups in Paris in the 1890s.

Warning: Old news ahead! You’ve been warned.

I won’t pretend that I know a whole lot about American politics, but what I have learned is that certain right-wing movements seem to be constantly afraid of the influence of left-wing politics in the public media. Today I realised (thanks Giovanni) that some people in fact are so afraid, that they have created their own encyclopaedia, called “Conservapedia“. Now, good conservatives and like minded can read about ‘the truth’ as told by… other conservatives. This is almost the equivalent of using the Encyclopædia Dramatica for serious reference.
Now, Wikipedia is not perfect, that I admit, but it is darn close to, and by keeping out of the debate there, this branch of conservatives won’t stand a chance of participating and sharing their beliefs together with the rest of us. That leaves a gap to be filled. On the other hand, this goes well with the ‘them versus us’ and ‘politics through imposed fear’-policies that the current U.S. government has been utilising the past few years, and which media such as Fox News also heftily has been inspired by. What will be the next? A separate internet protocol, where only conservative web sites are to be placed and found? How about a “MassiPedia”? I will declare that the Earth is flat!

One of Conservapedia’s commandments states that “Everything you post must be true and verifiable.” As opposed to… Wikipedia, as you can read further down the page (and on their separate ‘them vs. us’-page):

These guidelines are kept simple in order to avoid the arbitrary and biased enforcement that is rampant on Wikipedia.

Furthermore, one of the commandments also states that

When referencing dates based on the approximate birth of Jesus, give appropriate credit for the basis of the date (B.C. or A.D.). “BCE” and “CE” are unacceptable substitutes because they deny the historical basis.

A biblical reference in an otherwise unbiased list of guidelines. Hmm… I wonder who gets to decide what is “true and verifiable”. The Bible? God?
We get more answers in the guidelines:

We should not allow any and all citations to newspaper stories. Journalistic opinions are not authorities, and journalists are not authorities on scientific issues. It is better to cite the scientific article directly.

And further reading on Wikipedia reveals that

“Conservapedia’s article on the kangaroo states that all kangaroos descend from a single pair that were taken aboard Noah’s Ark. Schlafly [Conservapedia founder] had defended the statement as presenting a valid alternative to evolution.”

True and verifiable? Unbiased? Hmmmm…

Come on! Get into the game! Difference in opinions and discussions are the core of humanity. A printed encyclopaedia is by definition biased whether it comes from China, Denmark or the U.S. But Wikipedia is a hotchpotch of opinions and can never, ever become 100% reliable, because the truthfulness of the entries there depends on the eyes that see and the hands that write. But by allowing debate on entries and issues – debates from all corners of the Earth makes this an indispensable tool, because you get to see the world as it is – diverse, chaotic and not black and white, as some people tend to believe.

Take a look at these films. They are each just one minute long. They feature a choir in one country singing another country’s national anthem: a simple idea that packs surprising emotional power.

France sings for USA
Kenya sings for India
Japan sings for Turkey
My favourite so far: Australia sings for Lebanon

Part of the Pangea Day project. Marvellous!

Photo by Chris Patriarca (cc)

Denmark, or rather our capital, has now given name to a most un-flattering definition, called the Copenhagen Syndrome. An article from openDemocracy defines it like this:

They [the Danes] give away one of the largest percentages of their gross national income in foreign aid and their government has the most restrictive immigration policies in the European Union. Danes are very generous to the poor and needy, the “other”, but they do not want to look at them.

The article goes on debating how far a nation’s radius of empathy extend, and how “post-modern bourgeois liberals do not like to have their space violated by poverty”. Furthermore, we get a huge slap in the face towards the end of the article:

We often hate most what we dislike in ourselves which may be why it seems so appropriate to give this syndrome a name that evokes the Danes and their unapologetic “hunkering” (as [Robert] Putnam calls the retreat to the comfort of one’s equals, or, rather the people we assume to be our equals because they have like morals, points of reference, purchasing-power)

Great.

What a historic reputation to be given! Unfortunately I can concur with the definition, although it hurts me deeply to having it become a “golden standard”, when the talk is on the moral and ethical issues inherited in this debate about the Global Village. It is hard to explain why I concur, but as the Norwegian social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen says, “we have everything, but that’s all we have”¹, I feel the same when looking upon my fellow Danes in general. This stems from several points of personal views (and I’m talking in very broad terms here): How the media and the politicians treats subjects such as poverty and immigration, how this influences the views on the population, how these things generally are totally neglected when people are having social conversations (this along subjects such as politics, where topics then mostly revolve around jobs, kids, social status, consumerism), etc., etc. Hard to pinpoint exactly, and by all means most Danes should not be looked upon as well-fed racist egomaniacs, but I have this feeling that the view is appropriate as looked upon from “the outside”, also seen in the light of the bad reputation the current government and the ultra-nationalistic coalition party “Dansk Folkeparti” have given Denmark in the past few years, ranging from the extreme restrictive immigration policies (as mentioned) to the Muhammad Drawings.

And the Swedes have such a much cooler definition named the Stockholm Syndrome… Egad.

I don’t quite know where I was going with this, but frankly, I feel a bit ashamed.

¹ This is, in my limited knowledge, a re-write of the Machiavellian saying: ‘There are people who know everything, but that is all they know.’

Photo by Capitu. (cc)

Now why on Earth have I not heard about this before?? Here I am, reading my girlfriend’s Adbusters Magazines, cooking up dumb ideas on how to pay for $1.000.000 worth of street advertising, just to fill it with either empty spaces or ads for a healthier living, then this comes along. And it sneaked past me totally unnoticed.

São Paulo has banned public advertising from the beginning of this year. That’s it. No more advertising in the public space. As told by Campfire Media:

The law doesn’t stop at billboards, either. Provisions also ban all other forms of publicity in public spaces, including handling out fliers, ads on busses and taxis, even banners pulled by airplanes and ads on blimps are all outlawed.

My oh my. I can’t even imagine how that would feel like. A city, populated with 11 million human beings, and no ads. As this article from International Herald Tribune (which also is quoted in the aforementioned article which also links to this Flickr set) states, this has caused an uproar from the advertising industry, and frankly, I can’t really foresee how this will affect jobs, sales etc. Time will tell. But let’s face it; the future of advertising lies on the Internet anyway – provided everyone gets access to it of course. Which again might seem a tad hard to realise in São Paulo somewhere in the near future, I know. But looking at it from this perspective, why not get rid of all public nuisances and bring back the beauty of murals, good graffiti and aesthetic architecture?

A promising prospect, I think. Remind me to visit São Paulo one day…

Since Bush now are sending more troops to Iraq, we might as well also celebrate the recent birthday of David Bowie by playing “I’m afraid of Americans”…