Moral Compas

This is my input on the issue as a complete layman to the concepts. However, a layman should be able to determine how a moral compas works, if only to understand how one comes to the conclusions of what is right and wrong, to have better judgement on ones decision making. In a democratic society the citizen is a guard of much more, than just the fate of oneself, or even the family and the closest people of oneself. This is a bit long but there are happy news at the end.

All people have an innate sense of right and wrong. Though we often can easily agree on the nature of fair and unfair we  as individuals, groups and societies also very often however see different things as good, or evil. How do we come to the conclusions of what is really wrong and right?

Many religions defend their place in the modern society by claiming that their particular gods and therfore the religions themselves are the source of moral codes. This is off course very true on the part of the religions. Allmost every religion has some sort of moral code and many of them regardless of their different and mutually exclusive concepts of gods agree on some basic principles of morals. Does that mean that these suggested supernatural entities and their commandments are in fact the supreme way to know what is right or wrong?

The divine commands are more often seen as more like a guidelines. They are at best vague, since many of them are infact so ancient the writers of these commands had no idea of any modern social, nor moral issues. I for one do not know any religion, that has to say anything about the use of nuclear power or nuclear weapons, but it is a moral issue, if there ever was one. The take of any particular religion on genetic manupulation may be very outspoken, but to claim that there actually is something about it in the holy scriptures of any religion older than 100 years is absurd. What do the religions think about overpopulation? It seems that to all the older religions this concept was somewhat unknown, though the problem of too many people in a limited area was propably well known to them and the approach was often rather tribal. Does that make it a non-moral issue? What about the pollution? I hear religion used as authority to both justify and condemn pollution. However, these interpretations of scriptures alledgedly inspired by deities, are allways based on a very far reaching metaphors, that can obviously in all cincerity be seen as complete opposite advices on what to do. Since the divinities themselves are not in a habit of appearing to clear out such chisms, people are left on their own devices to compare the views of demagogues using the divine word to lead people in different directions.  The ancient scriptures often have some very specific orders about hygieny and what was percieved a hygienic issues at the time of the writing, but in larger issues they give us these general advices on what might be seen as good, or evil and it is up to us to apply them. Simple, right? Well, not so. You see, the main problem is how do we know wich divine commands are the ones we should follow? Though the divine orders have many generally humane similarities, they also disagree on a bunch of matters. The gods are not appearing to us to reveal wich religion serves the true gods. This leads to the guessing game where we should decide on what paricular alledged god has given us the correct answers on what is right and what is wrong. By far most of the people in the world decide between different deities by choosing the supernatural entities most popular within their own culture. Even if they are aware of other gods and cultures, the rules given by the divines of their own culture seem to appeal to them the most, since that is the culture to wich they have been indoctrinated. This method of comparing the moral messages of different cultures and religions and just choosing one and discarding all the others is not a very effective way to come close to any objective truth in the matter. Is it? Is there a way of ethics to judge between the different morals offered between different societies, cultures and religions?

How do we form our ethics? It seems our emotions play a very big part on this. Such primarily emotions as empathy and compassion, but also a certain need for retribution. Now those are emotions that many animal species also exhibit. All mammals are capable of such emotions and even many birds to my knowledge represent them quite often. It seems that these advanced forms of animal life that form family groups, packs, herds, or flocks are more prone to behaviour that is obviously drawn from these emotions. So, this shoud indicate that is where our ability to be compassionate comes from. That it is the very succesfull survival mechanics of the social animals to have emotions to support each others. But humans are not only dependant on the intiuition and emotion. We also have the power of logic and reason to help us. This is not to say other species were incapable of reasoning and logic. That would be absurd, as there are so many examples of animals acting on their individual reasoning. However, we humans have the most significant capability of reasoning we know of. Correct?

We can reason what is reasonably good and what is logically bad. But we need to base our logical reasoning on some attributes we give to things as right or wrong to come to any conclusions at all, and indeed that base is very instinctive. It is the emotional base for empathy. If we have no empathy none what so ever, our judgement of good and bad is based on simply selfish aims. That is the inner world of the psychopat. If we are able to feel compassion to others we can also see, that something being harmfull to a nother person, animal or even inanimate object might also be somehow wrong in the first place. That utilization of compassion is called ethics. It is very logical indeed. It is based not only on emotional compassion, but on information. With better information we have better estimation, evaluation and finally better judgement of matters. And it pays of too. A more compassionate social group will eventually also be more succesfull, because it produces more equal members and therefore utilizes the constructive abilities of all the members of the group to the maximum. Happy people are infact more productive, than unhappy ones. Are they not?

What compells the individual to do the right thing? Fear of divine wrath, or willingness to percieve oneself as a good and moral person? If the latter is not enough, will the former stop you from total selfisness?

A child may benefit from taking the authority of the parent at face value. The experience and knowledge the parent has and is able to convey to the offspring is beneficial to the child. This is one of the first lessons not only we human beings, but also most socias species learn. As we grow to adulthood we also learn to suspect authority. Not all authorities are out there to benefit us as individuals as you very well know.  Though the rebellious three year old, or the disillusioned teenager may strain the nerves of the parent, it is very important part of our development to learn to think for ourselves. We in the western world think that democracy is better way of government, than any authorative system. Why? Because adult citizens may decide for themselves what is right and wrong and as a community to decide upon the matter as opposed to someone dictating it by appealing to authority. But in all forms of human socieity we individuals form the social morals of our culture by deciding what we percieve right, or wrong and acting accordingly. Is morals then just a case of popular vote and are there therfore no inaliable rights? Yes and no. The inalienable rights of a human being are infact what we decide them to be. Why we should decide this or that is under debate. By ethics we are able to determine why certain kind of behaviour is wrong and abusing of what we come to conclude as human rights. Human rights do not exist outside human experience. But by our ability for compassion, we are aware of what should be, even though this is sometimes clouded by our cultural heritage, that brings up ideals that are not beneficial to the human condition, like religious commands against certain kind of sexual behaviour between mutually concending adults, or phobias of different cultures and even skin coluours, that are so often used as excuses to abuse other human beings.  There definately is some form of objective truth about right and wrong, but to determine what that is we need to put our collective ability for compassion and our reason to use to find it. That is called ethics. By ethics alone we can compare different claims made about the right and wrong, or good and evil. It works for us both in great philosophical terms and everyday life.

But if we have this superior method of comparing different moral values given to us by different social, cultural and religious sources, then do we need those sources? Obviously not, but it would be terrible a waste of effort to just simply throw all the cultural inheritance of the previous generations away. Rather, we should draw from them, but discard what is not really ethical, or valid anymore because our information of matters has grown, or because the situation has changed.

And here are the happy news of this post: We are allready doing this. Infact, this has been going on for ever and the new generations allways re-evaluate the values handed down to them by their predecessors. And as our information and education grows so does the information on wich we base our moral choises.  No Christian society stones the homosexuals to death anymore, no matter what it says in the Bible, because the general understanding has grown that it would be incompassionate, counterproductive and therefore just plain wrong.

 

Presidential elections

Even with the elections currently going on here in Finland and in the US, I thought I would not comment on them, but then I changed my mind. This post is all about the Finnish elections.

What happened was Mr. Soini leader and presidential candidate of the “Finns” party telling people whom he voted for.  Previously he had told the media he would only tell whom he voted for on the election day, but this was not to be true as he yesterday decided to tell everyone of whom he voted for. To tell you the truth, I was not shocked at all by the fact, that he earlierly lied about the time when he would tell his vote, as his party has been moving for such an obvious path of questionable ethics. In fact in my opinion they have betrayed their voters, but that is a matter of a nother post. I was not a bit surpriced of whom he chose to vote for in the second round after he had fallen from the contest in the first round. His party has been campaigning for the votes of the labourers by evoking the worst possible negative feelings people could have, like racism and other forms of fear. Oh, do not get me wrong, they have officially denounced racism, but when one listens to what their supporters have to say about immigrants, the racism is quite open. This is of course populism in the extreme, but it is interresting and quite revealing that the leader of this party has now declared he will vote for the conservative party “Kokoomus” candidate Mr. Niinistö. The same gentleman who has previously made some quite interresting remarcks like how the public library system should not be free of charge and how the “illegal strikes” should be punished more severely. I will not endulge here as to why I think the library system should be free, or why such punishment for strikes is ultimately wrong. If someone wants to know what I think about those, you can engage me in the comment section. Sufficient to say, that the campaign of Mr. Niinistö is largely supported by the greatest industrialists of Finland and their support groups. He was also supported in the previous parliamentary elections by the lobby group “Kehittyvien maakuntien Suomi” by some 10 000 euros, that has been on trial during the last year for corruption, though this scandal has not much diminshed the popularity of Mr. Niinistö, for some reason unknown to me. 

Why did the declaration of Mr. Soini so affect me then, if the content was much as I expected it to be? Well, I have in my previous posts commented how he seems to have hard time in keeping controll over his party representatives embarresing comments. Now, to my surprise he made one fringing common sense by himself. Usually he seems quite opportunistic and calculating about his comments, so it is hard not to believe this one was also premeditated. He said that he chose to vote for Mr. Niinistö, because he would make a better supreme commander to the Finnish armed forces. What was he referring to by this? Yes, the only contester on the second round of elections to Mr. Niinistö is Mr. Haavisto, who is one of the small minority of Finnish males who has not served in the army. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Soini actually believes that the fact that Mr. Niinistö has the rank of captain in the army reserve really makes much difference. Mr. Soini holds the rank of corporal in the same reserve, but had the audacity to puthimself up for candidacy. Surely he did not think he could have challenged a captain, with his own lowly rank, if he actually thought it was important, what is the particular military training of the candidate for the job of a president?

Most Finnish presidents have had no rank what so ever in the army. And Mr. Soini is well aware of this. He must be, if he is not totally ignorant of the office he was striving to. Is he calculating his audience has no clue of this fact? It is simply due to the fact most Finnish presidents were born before Finnish nation and the compulsory service code and because one of them is a woman, who do not have to serve in the Finnish armed forces.

Maybe we should look for the answer from what else Mr. Soini said when he defended his support to this conservative party candidate. He said that Mr. Niinistö would have better transatlantic relations. Now, we Finns do have a very strong faith in our own capabilities to protect our nation by our own army. That is why NATO membership is not popular in Finland at all. Finnish people percieve the NATO as a troublemaker, and a tool for the sole superpower the US to act without the proper support from the UN to attack sovereign nations at will. Finns generally do not want to be any part of this, as we have experience of our own, how easily stronger nations use their power against us the smaller ones by declaring we are harbouring terrorists.  The supporters of the “Finns” party come from people who are especially suspicious against the EU and the NATO, since many of them are generally suspicious of anything foreign. While Mr. Soini is supporting Mr. Niinistö he has a narrow path to thread on.

From the posters of the two leading contenders for the presidency, neither would be alligable to the high office of president. The poster of Mr. Haavisto declares that he is the negotiator for the government. Well, the clever play with words in Finnish does not translate to English, but we actually have an official negotiator for government and it is a completely different job from that of the president, so  it would seem he is applying for the wrong job. Mr. Niinistös poster declares, that a precidency is work, or something on that line. But it is written wrong in Finnish, so it really does not give a very reliable impression as to how he would handle that responsible job. 

On the second round I will give my support to Mr. Haavisto of the “Greens” party. Much more to oppose Mr. Niinistö with his market liberalistic ideals (notice the contradiction – he is the candidate of the conservative party, but supports liberalistic idealism), than to support Mr. Haavisto. Do not take me wrong. I think Mr. Haavisto would make a great president, as he is an educated man with calm attitude. Also I think he would make a great supreme commander to our armed forces, because he has wide experience from the conflict zones of this word and vision as to how crisis management works. He has worked for the UN in various areas of conflict from Afghanishtan, Iraq, Palestine, Balkans and Sudan to Liberia and researched the effect these have on the enverioment. These are the actual skills a political leader who works to guide armed forces should have, both in the case of current world situation where our military is more engaged in different UN peace keeping missions, or in a hypothetical situation where we would need to defend our national integrity.

 

Miss Universe

Some very beautifull girls have been named Miss Universe. I guess it is an all right term as such as  a “Miss” is possibly totally alien to all the other spieces in the vide, vide universe. So, a Miss Universe could be some human here on little old Earth. But what if there actually existed parallel terms in the universe as “Miss”, and some of them would attend to the competition? I mean a few life forms from the billions of other planets in the universe. Can we even imagine what diversity life may have produced in the immense diversities of envarioments on different worlds? Even if we were to assume that life would need the same basic requirements that have made it possible on our planet, that variety is quite wide ranged. There is life in the deepest parts of our oceans. By the sulphuric fumes of the seabed volcanoes. There is life in the upper most layers of our athmosphere. Life on earth originated in conditions where we “the crowns of creation” would not survive. But even humans have adapted themselves to live in the frozen wasteland of arctic glaziers. There has been so many different types of human spieces during the relatively short period of time from the first hominid to hold a rock and to form it into a tool. We have no knowledge if there existed high cultures among the dinosaurs. If there did, there would be no trace of them after 65 million years, as there would not exist any trace of us in a few million years, if we would disappear from the face of the earth now.

The term Miss Universe just got me, once again, thinking about the universe and how immense it is. The majesty is allmost impossible to concieve. We humans live on this small planet on the edge of one galaxy. We may speak of conquering the space, when we sent some of our kind to the orbit of our own planet, or when we sent probes to other parts of our solar system. In our wildest fiction we may even dream of conquering of the entire galaxy. We have no means to achieve that, but we may dream. But the entire universe is such a vast concept if we actually percieve it, it will overwhelm us. We can only dream the diversity of its structure and the secrets it holds. We may make philosophies of how it was formed and even our best guesses on the matter are just guesses. Though some guesses are better informed than others.

We humans seek security in certainties. That is why we hold faith. We like to think there is reason to everything and justice will follow each event and action. But the universe simply exists. It would be extremely naive to claim that it required all of this immense universe to produce us, the humans. Or that we are a pinnacle of nature as nature itself is the vast universe. If we are the image of a god, we are truly lacking in that respect, or the god is rather minute entity in comparrisson to the universe.

There is no certainty of anything in this universe. It is not total chaos, but we have no means to predict what truly will happen next that is relevant to the universe. We are only just learning about its basic form. It is mind thrilling to find out about the secrets of the universe. And that is what I would recommend to any person, on this small remote world of ours, to explore nature. All living and dead forms of nature. To explore different human cultures, for they are not outside nature. We humans are a part of nature like it or not. Sometimes we are harmfull to our envarioment, but even that is a part of nature and the universe. That does not, however, mean we should act thus. Nor does it give an excuse to act so. As part of the Universe and nature, we should act ethically to our own benefit and the benefit of our offspring. To benefit the future generations of humans with an ability be awed by the complexity of the universe. We do want to give them that chance, do we not?  To achieve the positive outcome we should evaluate our actions and inactions. Some acts seem insignificant and uninportant, but remember in the face of the Universe and nature we as individuals and even our planet may seem insignificant. It is us ourselves who give value to that which exists and to that which might exist, or not, some day.

 

State of Absurd

Many people say they could not have lived in the middle ages. That the thought of no waterclosets, medicine or other modern comforts we have, is unbearable. They seem to totally forget that , if they had lived in the middle ages they would have had no knowledge of these commodities. In fact most people of today have no access to most benefits the modern society provides. Not even, though they may have heard of them.

If we look at the Soviet Union or the Nazi Germany, we may wonder how people could have lived under those regimes. How absurd lives people must have lived. But we utterly forget, that the lives of those people were what they thought to be normal. What we, who have been born and raised in the modern western countries, think as normal is by no means normal to all people around the globe. If one looks at our society and the “normal” phenomenae it witholds, it is full of strange traits, that must seem weird to the people of other cultures, let alone to the future generations. One way or another. Wether if, a culture may be judged to be “absurd” or even evil, it must be put to a certain amount of relativism.  All cultures are under constant change. That change should be for the better. Any culture must be compared to the previous one, if we are to determine it good or bad, absurd or normal.

Was the Nazi Germany culturally better, or even more developed, than the Republic of Weimar or even the Imperial Germany? It was defenetly a historical continuation of both of those. The Imperial Germany was by no means a model state by modern standards, but it was the first industrial nation to have a pension system for all citizens. It was rasistic in many respects, but even jews held the position of a citizen. The Nazi Germany bore all the negative cultural traits of the Imperial Germany, but it also managed to create a staggering nuber of horrors not employed by the Imperial Germany. On the positive side of development in Nazi Germany you have the autobahn, and that is just about it. Economically and in human rights Nazi Germany was a disaster even compared to the Imperial Germany.

Soviet Union resulted from a revolution in the Imperial Russia. There is no question wether Stalin was a rampant mad dictator.  However, if we compare the Soviet Union as a state to the Russia of the Tsars, both the similarities and the differencies are obvious. Both Stalin and the Tsars used the internal exportation and prisoner camps in Siberia. Both had a murderous secret police. Stalin sent more people to Siberia than any tsars, but none of the tsars gave people any of the rights such as free education, free healthcare, pension, a certainty of a job, like the soviet leaders did. Most of the prison camps were demolished during Soviet rule, not as a result of it falling. During the tsars russians, let alone other nationalities in the empire, held no citizenship. Soviet Union confescated all property to the state, but from whom was it confescated from? From a very few very rich families of noblemen. The common man lost nothing or very little. The ownership of state meant that all citizens were the owners collectivily. One may argue against the economity of this solution, but it is obvious that the Soviet state was economically much stronger than the Imperial Russia and this was achieved in a rather short while, even though the Soviet Union was under embargo from the very first moments on. Was this econimical growth worth the sacrifices?

What are the measurments that we should use when we evaluate societies? Is economical strength a valid measurement, if it does not provide for the masses of the nation? What about human rights situation? The traditional aboriginal society of Australian natives is one of the best cultures in human rights, yet it is called primitive. The fact we have it better than the past generations, does not mean we have reached the ideal state or “normal” form of society. It is a often enough stated as a fact that even though western democracy is not perfect, it is the best form of government we have. That may or may not be so, but what ever the case, we should strive for something better. We may never achieve a “perfect” society, but we should be able to reach something far more better than this.  The world is not ready. It is incomplete, inequal and on the brink of a catastrophy. It is our ethical responsibility to make it better, now that we know what harm our idea of “normal” is causing. We can not simply close our eyes and ears from it.

Western culture has many benefits in comparrison to what was before, but “normal” is no excuse for injustice. It has never been. Nor does it pass as an excuse for the destruction of the envarioment. Culture is under constant change, let us be sure the change is for the better.

How will the future generations judge our current civilzation? Perhaps they will see us as undeveloped barbarians, who destroyed the envarioment, just to have minor comforts, that we thought would make our lives easier, like tobacco, coffee, cars and plastic dipers. All the while these things we so value make us sicker, nervous, fatter and allergic. Maybe the future generations are able to see how mad it was that our culture engaged in ferocious and destructive wars about the ownership of the diminishing natural resources and phossilic fuels. Will the future generations appreciate us for not taking action against overpopulation, famine and disease, simply because the disasters are in other countries? Or will they simply see us as immoral apes with tribal morals? How will they see all the garbage  and pollution we are leaving them?

Or maybe the futre generations will judge nothing, if we leave them no conditions to live in.

 

Recycling

It is the word of the day. I could say it is fashionable, but then it has been fashionable in some countries for decades now. It has been accepted as a natural part of everyday life in many societies, but still there are those who oppose it. The opposition comes usually from the so called hardliners. Typically men who have “hard” values. Are they actually right?

I am trying to give some hard evidence, the “hardliners” could understand about recycling. The tribes of Afghanishtan have won war after war with recycled warmaterial. When Alexander the great invaded with the power of Persia the worlds largest empire at the time the afghans used recycled indian and persian weaponry. When the worlds most powerfull empire of the time Great Britain invaded, afghans were still using recycled indian and persian weaponry, but soon adapted to recycle the british armament. If they had not recycled their fate would have been sealed as a part of the Empire. When the Red Army, that had never lost a war, invaded afghans were using recycled weaponry of the beaten British Empire. They soon adapted themselves to use recycled soviet weaponry. Now, that almost all the armies of the western countries, US army at their head, are invading, the afghans are still using some old rifles of the British empire, and their most effective weapon is the old soviet made artillery grenade recycled as a roadside bomb. They are allready learning to use more modern weapons to recycle them into use against the international forces. And they are winning again.

Not to hang on a singular example, I shall give a nother one. Here in Finland we have recycled our beer bottles for ages.  Beer price is formed out of few separate things. Production costs of the beer, production costs of the bottles, transportation costs, marketing costs, taxes and ultimately winnings of the shareholders of the beercompanies and marketing companies. Since the production costs of beer itself and transportation costs have allready been cut down to further enlarge the winnings of the shareholders, these factors are not going to go down. Do not come to claim that the shareholders of beer factories or marketing companies would ever cut down their winnings. No they would not. Hence,if the beer bottles would not be recycled, the cost of making more new beer bottles would surely fall on us the consumers.

So, do not claim there is no point in recycling, no matter how hard ass you are. Even your toilet paper is cheaper because of recycling, though it may not be recycled, since recycling paper cuts down cost of paper in general.

 

Fortress Europe

As there is an abundance of crisis and powerty in the third world there is also ever increasing amount of people who seek refuge in the peacefull western world. A large group of europeans feel that the continent can not accumulate all these people. The countries on the first line like Greece and Spain have started to build fences to stop the masses. Same applies to the US and its border with Mexico. However, these fences are not a plug that will ever be able to stop the immigrants form coming. On the contrary it is creating more pressure at certain points. History has proven over and over, that fences and walls are only delaying, rather then solving  any problem. Look what happened to the Iron curtain and Berlin wall. Was China saved from the mongols by the Great wall? No.

A growing number of europeans are worried about the cultural threat they feel is forming by the ever increasing amount of immigrants. At the same time wery few of those people are ready take any action to save their own culture and hardly even know it. Or are simply so assimilated to the westernized consumer culture that they think it is somehow original to their own European country. This would be intellegently dishonest if it was based on any intelligence in the first place. The actual reason is only fear of the unknown. Purely an emotional response, with no coherent information to back it up. Cultures change. It has been several hundred years since any islamic country conquered a christian kingdom. There are western troops occupying islamic countries at the moment however. None of the western countries are any more the christian kingdoms they used to be and no islamic country has any agenda of sending away the most educated part of their nation to “conquer” any European countries. Those who are coming from the islamic world are mostly enterprizing people in search of prosperity, peace and happines for them and their families or simply running from persecution or a catastrophy. If they run into unemployment here, it is as much of a problem to them as it is to any europeans.

Building taller walls is only going to lead desperate people  to take more risks. They are coming in such amounts that a good many men drown yearly in the river separating Turkey from Greece. The only thing that is going to lessen the pressure at european borders is that the situation of the third world is going to get better. It is not the job of european nations to start solving all the problems in the so called third world, but we should see what is real help in their own efforts to stop the crisis, to enforce human rights and to slow down population growth. Otherwise there is nothing we can do to stop all of them coming here to share our wealth and wellbeing.

Nationalist populists and rightwing  politicians are lying, when they claim this or that law is going to stop the third world at our doorstep. Most immigrants who come to Europe at the moment are allready illegal in one way or another. The right wing politicians themselves have been creating problems for the immigrants to settle here in the business intrests of big corporations, and now they are collecting the fruits of racism. Their racism is not the open kind of the nazis, but much more cunning. It sets the immigrant worker and the native worker against each other and as a result both get lousy pay for work both should be paid equally well. This social inequality is the main reason creating the problems around immigrants in european countries. Not their religion, nor their differnt culture or skin colour for that matter.

Many leading right wing politicians all over the Europe have said that the settling of immigrants has failed. It is surpricing how many politicians have agreed for once their own policy has been bad. But of course they do not contribute the faillure on their own efforts to sabotage the settling of the immigrants on themselves. They are riding the dangerous broomstick of racism. The main problem of it is, that when you claim a certain ethnic group (wether they are born in the given country is irrelevant) or several ethnic groups living in the country are causing problems, then what is the solution to that problem? Are they to be exterminated or what? Stopping more of them at the border is not going to work because the “troublemakers” are allready in. How do you define who is to enter and who is not? By ethnic backround? Get real, or do you really want the nazis to rule? Rather the claim itself is causing more trouble around the given group, and of course the same politician can say later I told you so. At the same time as this “easily solved problem”, that arouses strong emotions (and it should because it is a question of equal rights for all people regardless of creed, colour or origin), there are more valid and real questions the societies should solve, being neglected. This suits the populist well, because many of the more critical problems are not as “easy to solve” by pulling a solution out of the hat, so to speak. Real problems like how do we help countries that are in crisis, or how do we stop pollution, are not favourites of the populists, since the realistic solutions to these would require self sacrifice from the europeans. It is typical to the populist to claim that these are not our broblems and need not to be solved by us. A wery dangerous attitude, but tempting to the most ignorant voters. The sacrifices the real problems would require are not really dramatic, but they involve our giving up our own consumer comforts. And that seems to be too much to ask of the general public. However, self sacrifice does not seem to be too much asked if the subject is the national ability to compete with other countries economically. For that everyone is invited to contribute. Or rather people with average income or less are more invited to give up on their requests for salaries. The rich can not be bothered with such details, because they hold the real power of leaving any country in trouble, if it suits their economical intrests. That is the sort of patriotism the rich harbour. They are allways ready sacrifice the lives of every available poor man to protect their own property.

Most childish of all are the people who are affraid of Europe turning into islamic in nature. They live in a fantasy world where Europe is coherently christian. This is such a misunderstanding of history. Europe has for centuries been torn by religious wars of many different christian sects. Today Europe is a wery secular area in the world. Most european christians are totally secular. To them christianity is a cultural tradition they happen to be part of. Most people coming to Europe from islamic countries are secular in that way also. That is exactly why they are coming here, where religious demagogues do not have political power. That is also one of the reasons we have prosperity and peace here at the moment. But fear is a simple emotion that even the most simple people are able to feel, and the simple are also those who are less prone to question if their fears are being used by the political ambitions of demagogues.

Here in Finland it is now as I am writing this -20 celcius around most parts of the country. The immigrant women from islamic countries go about their heads covered in scarfs. Most of the finnish women go bearheaded. Just a generation has passed from times when all finnish married or adult women would wear something on their heads in public and that was out of decency not because of weather. So, who is threatening our culture? What is our culture? Was it decided by the fashion designers in Milan and Paris? It is not this cold over there.

The immigrants living or coming to Europe are not the problem. The real problem is how to stop the suffering that causes people to move to Europe. Not because we are affraid of foreigners, or cultural changes that are going to happen wether there are immigrants in Europe or not, but because suffering must be stopped.

 

Medieval hygiene

There are many myths about medieval times. Few of the most popular ones seem to concerne the hygiene or lack of it in medieval times. You would sopose, that when the cartoon character Hågar the Horrible takes his yearly bath, it is a commonly unterstood joke, about the impossibility of the popular image. Alas no. For I have actually met in a museum (I will not say wich one, because in my mind this is too embarrasing to them) a guide,  who was perfectly happy to claim that medieval people did not wash themselves more often than once a year. In the same museum other guides have told me, that medieval people did not change their clothes more often than once a year and that they were lice infested and wore furs, because they actually believed that vermin would jump from their hair to the animal furs in their clothing. When asked of sources for such outrageous claims, they usually bring up the story about church being wery intolerant towards bathing.

Let us look upon these stories. First the idea of medieval people having more lice than the modern people. Lice were a common thing in the western world until after the WWII when they developed the DDT. Nice substance. It got us rid of the lice and wery nearly all the birds of pray, since it is a poison that is cumulating to the reprpductive organs of animals at the top of the food chain. Who knows what it did to us humans. Even though there have been lice in men for thousands of years, they have usually been wery well dealt with by good hygiene. Sometimes, because of a war or a natural catastrophy the conditions get so terrible for people, that hygiene gets wery difficult to maintain. Those are the times all sorts of vermin and disease multiply in numbers. The usual historical solution to lice, when they have become an epidemic has been cutting hair short. Nobody wants to live with lice and never has, so the solutions are either good hygiene, that is washing your self often enough and combing your hair with a tight comb. The former methods were used in medieval times and judging from the picture sources of the time since short hair was never in fashion they worked fine. You see, when catastrophy struck like during the Napoleonic wars and the both world wars it became fashionable to have short hair. Even the roman legionaries had short hair. The reason was obvious, when you have thousands of men camped in poor hygienic conditions for years lice are bound to become a problem. Easiest way to deal with it is short hair. Even at the end of medieval era, when the landsknecht infantryman was replacing the mounted knights on battle fields, the size of the armies grew in such multitudes that the bald or wery short hair was their fashion.

I allready claimed that in medieval times people would wash themselves more often than once a year. I am willing to go as far as to say medieval people had good hygiene. It was definetly different from how we see it today, but good never the less. We finns are proud of our “sauna” culture, and there are even people who would claim that the whole concept of “sauna” was a finnish invention. This could be, but now we are talking of such an old invention that nationalities had not been born as such. In light of historical evidence the sauna was a well known phenomenon around the medieval Europe. It was only after medieval times that it was banned in many parts of Europe, and survived only in remote areas like in Northern Scandinavia, Finland and Russia. Even the roman and turkish baths are just extensions of the same concept, wich has been around the world since wery early stone age. In medieval times the area wich was once a part of Roman empire had sustained its bathing culture in the more sophisticated manner inhereted from the romans. There were large baths in many old cities and these were often enough originally built by the romans. North of the Alps there were of course also public baths, where a weary traveller, a tired labourer or a pleasure seeking noble might take a bath. The church was indeed against these installations often enough, because there were many brothels among them, but this was not a wery strong opposition. The baths were regulated by both the chruch and the bourgeois of towns to provide satisfactory service and not to bring too embarrasing immoral fame on the town. So the prostitutes costumes and manner how they conducted their busines was often strictly defined even if they worked in a bathhouse. Baths were not only places to wash and get laid, they were places where it was common for people to enjoy themselves in various relaxing activities. For example from Stockholm in the excavations of several of these baths (they were lined by the shoreline of the city on an island) they have found numerous dice, chesspieces and other utensils of games. And of course beer was often served in these establishments too.

The church was not against people washing themselves. On the contrary, it was seen as a bit of an embarresment if people would come to mass dirty or in their “working clothes”. Even the monasteries had regulations that said monks and nuns should wash themselves at least once in every two weeks and once a week if they were engaged in heavy work. These regulations may well be the result of the ideal of selibacy. It affected the way the clergy saw nakedness. When you are denying your sexuality, it is not a surprice, that it tries to surface itself in everyway, so that in the end you are unable to look upon naked people without thinking of sex. In a culture affected strongly by such religious ideals the nakedness itself becomes a symbol for sexuality. Also the fact that a lot of the venerable diceases were “trafficked” in the public bath houses was an obvious reason for those who see everything enjoyable as a sin, to seek to close these kind of premises. However church was rather ambiguous in medieval times. Priests were not all known for their piety and many high clergymen were even known to have expensive curtisans of their own. Their bastard sons were often born in brothels and still they might reach high positions in their later years in the organisation of church. It was more about whom your father was, as it was the case of the rest of the society, then as it is today. This may have been seen as notorious by some of the clergy, but commonly accepted by the commoner and nobleman alike.

What of the sauna then? First of all there are historical, and archeological evidence that in many of the Nordic towns there were numerous public bath houses. In medieval pictures one often runs into depictions of nakedness in a natural way. Naked people are not presented in any pornographic way, but just in a natural way. One typical group of these pictures is the so called “bath house baebes”. These are women working as bathers in a bath house. Typically they have a long underdress of sorts on them. Transparent because the linnen is totally soaked. In their hands they carry a bucket and a “vihta”. The latter is an item, wery hard to recognise for other people than those that are familiar with sauna culture, but to us it is obvious and could not be anything else. Just as a sword is a sword to anyone who recognizes it. The “vihta” is a bundle of birch branches, that has only one purpose and it is possible to use it in only particular conditions of a sauna or in other words a steam room. The use of a “vihta” is simple. It is softened with hot water, and after that it is used to “whip” oneself or a nother person in the hot steamy air of sauna. This not only removes dirty layers of skin, but also relaxes the muscles in a soothing way. So a picture of a bohemian girl from the 13th century clearly is an evidence for them having, what a finn would call a “sauna”. Traditional sauna culture in Finland is wery old and at least from the medieval times it has been customary to go to sauna on saturday, so that you are clean on sunday for the mass. During the hardest working days of agricultural living in a year it was customary to go to sauna every day after work, much like today people are having a shower.

It seems hardly worth the effort after what I have allready said to comment on the people changing their clothes, but lets address it also as the topic demands. The medieval people mostly wore linnen, hemp and wool. Only rich people could afford furs to their clothing, but even they did not see those as single use items. So the furs were there to keep warm and to show of wealth. Certainly they were not worn to get rid of lice. Or what were they soposed to do with the furclothes into wich the lice had jumped to? The whole concept is such utter rubbish, it deserves no more attention. The wool was usually the topmost layer of clothing. It was perfect. It is warm, but it also breaths, so moisture does not form inside the clothes. It does not get easily wet, so woollen clothes keep you warm and dry in most conditions. When it eventually gets wet it is still warm. It is easy to dye almost any colours imaginable. It is possible to weave cloth that streches and sits on your body perfectly of wool. The outer clothing was not often washed, but certainly more often than the woollen winter jacket of our day. The linnen and hemp underclothes were washed frequently. Those were most often bleached in the sun, so any dirt would show on them easily and natural body odours would get just as stuck to them as in the modern cotton underwear. They had to be washed as often as the people themselves washed. Nobody liked to wear dirty clothes then, no more than today.

In popular culture, the medieval commoner is often set apart from the noblesse by the grey and brown colours. This is an artistic choise made by the directors of the movies and such. Of course the natural greys and browns of sheepswool, could have been more common colour of the clothes of the poor people, though all the pictorial evidence we have from the many centuries of medieval times does not imply that the poor would not have worn brightly coloured clothes. In fact the impression is rather the opposite. The fact that medieval poor people are also depicted in popular culture as dirty, having mud and ash all over their faces, is a stereotype, with little or no evidence to back it up. No doubt, there has allways been people whose lives are catastrophies. who are so poor that they have nowhere to sleep or wash themselves. But a beggar is something totally else than a peasant, even in medieval times.

As we know medieval people ate with their bare hands. In popular culture this is often depicted as a way of unhygienic behaviour. The drunken knights throwing bones over their shoulders to dogs on the floor, or such images. You might think that the medieval way of eating porrige from a common bowl, when only the spoon is your own, might seem unhygienic. Even the fact that the spoon is not washed but only liked clean sounds terrible to many modern ears. Medieval people were not however unhygienic in comparrison to modern people about their table manners. Throughout Europe in medieval times (and long beyond) it was customary to wash hands before eating and after it. Things like napkins are traditions from those days. Today it is typical for western people to go to a hamburger bar and eat fast food with their hands they have not washed after handling dozens of doors and who knows what during the day. The common porrige bowl did spread bacteria, but sometimes even this was for the good. They did not know it, but many diseases like say syfilis was not a common problem, because most people had its weaker form as children from their common food, so they had developed immunity to the nastier effects of the venerable form of the disease.

Clenliness is also a matter of perspective. When the european crusaders came to the Holy land, the local muslims saw them as dirty barbarians, wich they of course were in comparrison. The european knight was an illiterate person, wearing heavy fighting gear fit for his own climate. When the muslim mamluk was engaged in arts and read from his holy scriptures the ritual like rules for hygiene and constant washing and care for clenliness. We can say a lot of ill things that resulted of the crusades, but the link between European nations and Islamic areas of the world was there before those days and after, and some cultural things were learned on both groups of people, even if you can not call either wery homogenous. The turks have their baths, as a result of inheretance from the roman baths. The europeans learned many things from arabs, like the sewing of wounds. Medical hygiene is of course a complete subject of its own, and rather infamous during medieval times. But it is a more complex question to be addressed here. If a person thinks people who do not shower twice a day are dirty, he/she might see medieval people down right filthy. Hygiene is about health, so it should be good to remember, it is not healthy for your skin to wash it too often either.  

Hygiene is a matter of culture. The fact that people like to bring out the terrible unhygienic conditions of medieval life wether imagined or real, is a way to separate “us” from “them”. We like to see ourselves as better and more clever people than any other group. For this ego trip we may even look down on our own ancestors. In that case the imagined superiority is based too often on fairytales and twisted facts. It is also typical that people see the good in the modern world as their own accomplishment, when it is all handed down to us. It is often also a result of intermixing of cultures. Rarely a singular culture on its own has developed to anything but a bitter end.

 

Star Trek

Of all the most popular science fiction stories Star Trek is the most optimistic. Future described in the Star Trek stories is truly better than today. Many science fiction stories describe future as horrid, dark and terrible. Even if all looks good, there is some terrible secret or twist in the future promised to us by science fiction authors and movie/TV-series makers. But this is not the case with Star Trek. There are of course hardships and constant cultural collisions between the many intelligent species that sail the void, but in the end all is turned for the better through ideologically inspired action. Good will allways prevail, just as long as the good captain and his crew will do the right thing, wich coincidentally is also the code of the Starfleet. 

The people in the many Star Trek stories from the original sixties TV-series to the next generation, many movies and all the further series set in the same “future” or Star Trek universe, live in a world (or many worlds in this case) where problems, that we take as obvious, are no more. There is no political turmoil among people, poverty, hunger, pollution and diseases are no longer a problem. Wars are fought in space and against whole different civilisations and even so they are wery abrubt and quickly over.

Eventually even the militant and fascistic species of klingons has to give up their war mongering and join forces with starfleet. And what do they loose in doing so? Nothing exept maybe the most mightiest (or prosperous ones) loose face.

I cannot help it, but in my view the future culture described by Star Trek is in its essence communist. You have this centralized political struckture, where the ideological code determines all the desicions political and military leaders make. They are not driven by economical ambition, and why would they. The society is providing everyone with all they really need. There is actually even a species, that has a problem with their lust for property. The Ferengi are often described as sick in their lust for money. It is not a clinical state for them, for it is in their culture and inner being, but from a human perspective, their lust for money (equal to our own day bankers and stock brokers) is a perversion.

The future in Star Trek is like a communist society, where it actually works. There are problems, but the ideology of just society, helps those with responsiblity to use their power right. Truly in Star Trek the people are socially equal and so have no desire to do wrong. There are no big corporations that use politicians as their puppets, like in so many other science fiction books, and shows. The starfleet is not there to secure economical rights for the commercial enterprices from the member worlds, but to secure the ideological rights of all sentient beings. In the Star Trek future the modern man and woman are equal and all creatures are treated with the equal respect irrespective to their origins. Legistlation has put an end to the power hungry corporations and no millionare is able to steal natural resources from a distant planet, only because the inhabitants of that world are so primitive in technology that they could not resist. The starfleet is actually there to stop any such claim, if there ever was one. If this is not communism in its purest form, than what is?

In the stories the Starfleet has an awfully big role, and it handels power beyond imagination. It is not a simple military engine, but “more sophisticated weapon for more sophisticated era”. It’s main functions are to explore the “final frontier” and to police the justice of the ideological code. To truly protect the weak and the helpless.

In Star Trek it has come to flesh the socialistic dream, of equal and just society that would create a new people, free of low self gratification by oppressing others.

“Needs of the many go before the needs of the few.”

 

Landscape

The most recent and uniting value of the western world! Oh, yes it is. Everybody seems interrested in landscape. At least the one next door to them. It is wondrous how this common cause unites those who would save our world from pollution and the climate change, religious bigots and those who think that a windmill is a particularly ugly piece of scenery.

Only difference is who gets their will. It seems that if a neighbourhood is protesting against a new motorway conjunction or a factory, it is much less likely for their protest to have an effect, than if they are protesting against a windpark. Why is this? Maybe one reason is that the motorways and factories are not often built in landscapes like seashores, where the rich people live. That however is where the windmills should be built, for that is where the wind blows.

In Switzerland they reached a new peak of democracy when a civil wote took place about mosques and minarets to be possibly built. The people clearly stated that they do not want mosques of especially minarets in Switzerland. Interresting enough is that muslims are tolerated when they clean up toilets, but if they practice their religion it is seen as abomination. This is bigotry and purest form of racism. It reminds me about people who would not have an alcoholist safehouse to their neighbouhood. The reason was soposedly that the alcoholists would be a hazard to the children of the community. I have lived in a neigbourhood with an alcoholist safe house, and because the safehouse would not have alcoholists drunken there they never caused any trouble. There was a school next door to and I doubt if most people in the neighbourhood even knew there was an alcoholist safehouse there.

The real reason for quite ordinary people to protest against windmills and alcoholist or any other kind of safe houses for that matter, is that they fear for the value of their real estate. This is of course a wery real fear. Or is it? Who tells people that their houses are worht less if there is a windpark nearby. Would a nuclear powerplant or motorwayconjunction increase the real estate value? Ironically, yes it would. Motorway means “easy access” and nuclear power plant engineers need housing. But do you really think that windmills make more noise than a motorway, or would you want to live next door to nuclear powerplant?

Europe is multicultural and has allways been. There have been muslims in some European countries for centuries. Even Switzerland in its unreachable mountain reaches has several different languages and cultures within its boundaries. They have co-existed even when some are protestants and some are catholic. But it is easier to get a permit to build giant viaduct through a mountain village than to build a mosque there. Are these problems in any proportion.

It may yet be that the climate change will not be so dramatic as cientists predict. It may happen that the nuclear power plant next door does not explode after all, but do we really dare to take the risk?  When a nuclear powerplant goes (even a single one of the hundreds in operation and thousands that have been planned) it does not only ruin the landscape or the neighbourhood. It may take down whole nations.

We of course hope for nothing bad to happen, but things do not happen or not, just because we hope so. It is time to wake up and take action. Everyone, not just the great powers that be, but all of us. People have the power to make the necessary change and if they do not, they have to sieze that power, because it belongs to us. Wurther more, it is our responsibility to the future generations and to all living things. It may mean that we will lose some of our precious property, but this is far worse an enemy we are now facíng than the nazis ever were. The whole ecosystem and all of human race is in jeopardy just to satisfy the lust for riches of a wery small minority of billionares. This is the generation that cannot hide behind claims like “we did not know”, because that reasoning is no longer valid. If you do not know enough about climate change and tolerance, you just have to find out!

But dont worry. Maybe nothing will happen, and if something does, maybe nobody will notice that you did nothing. Maybe your children get to live a good life and maybe you wont be there to see when your grandchildren fight for survival because of your selfishness. Maybe you wont hear them cursing you, because you are allready dead or because they were never born.

One thing is for sure. If the dutch had decided that the windmills are too ugly to built few hundred years ago, there would no longer exist a country called Netherlands any more.

 

Nuclear power

Many nations are building new nuclear power plants. China, Russia and Finland among others. Some nations that made a decision to give up nuclear power completely after the Tshernobyl accident, are considering to increase their nuclear energy production or at least replacing their aging nuclear plants whith new ones.

One reason given  for this is the climate change. There is a real need to cut down fossile fuels in our energy production. Nuclear power is said to be a non polluting way of energy production. This is a great advertisment. It is an absolute lie. Yes it may produce less greenhouse gasses than coal, but it still produces them. The production of nuclear fuel causes terrible waste in the open uranium mines.

Somehow the politicians are only able to handle matters that are at hand just now. When cientists started to warn about the greenhouse effect nothing was done. Only now that it is realisizing some panic like effects start to take place in politics. One minor politician just said that “when deciding about nuclear power, we have to remember the effects it will have for decades to come”.  This sounds like responsible talk, but is not. The effects of a nuclear power plant (even just one) are not for decades to come, they are not even for centuries to come they are for milleniums to come. There seems to be no responsibility for the future generations in anything we do.

Definately nuclear power is more polluting than even coal. It may have a minor effect on the climate change, but it causes highly poisonous radioactive waste that remains such for over a milloin years. Million years! We are building more nuclear power plants in a cituation where we do not have any experience on taking care of the old nuclear power plants. You can not just take down an old nuclear power plant. It has to be cased in meters deep concrete. There has to be safety perimeters. It has to be guarded all the time, because otherwise someone could make a “dirty bomb” of it. A truck load of conventional explosives in the dismantled nuclear power plant could cause radioactive cloud and fallout in hundreds of kilometers distace from the said plant. Even the best of concrete does not remain as long as the power plant remains radioactive, so the casing process has to be repeated again and again.

If all I say is true, then why the hell are we building these monstrosities? Well, it’s rather simple really. Nuclear power is a great business opportunity. It is the cheapest way to produce energy for the power company. You see, none of the nuclear power plants are insured for the possibility of an accident. For example, if something like Tshernobyl would happen again, nobody would have to pay for any of it. It would take such a sum of money that there is no insurance company that could handle it. So there are special laws that protect the nuclear energy from the demand of insurances. When the power plant is shut down and the actual prize for the energy allready spend comes to be paid, it is no longer the worry of the energy company. That is something the taxpayers will have to deal with. That is future taxpayers, for a nuclear plant is used for 40-60 years. After that none of the politicians making the decision to build one are not able to answer for their folly. All that time the plant is pumping money to the share holders of the power company. Besides in many countries the building of a nuclear power plant is funded by the government (that is taxpayers). All in all a great business untill sometihing goes wrong, but that is business, taking risks. In this case taking risks on other peoples money, health and lives. Other people for hundreds of generations to come.