Kuukausi: marraskuu 2014

But oh I love a good party!

| Henna Timanttimetsä

But oh I love a good party!

We have an idea what equality is.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
But we are not equal. There is not enough will to make the world’s population equal. There are people, mostly men, who say feminists do not seek equality. What an odd idea for a feminist. What an absurd thing to say in the light of history of feminism. Surely there are all kinds of feminists, but feminism as an ideology is to better lives of women and children. It is to the core about finding the closest kind of state of equal rights and finding life worth living without oppression. It is about what is right and just, about making human rights in general happen for all humans, for men and women, gay and straight, black and white, disabled and those without disabilities. Feminism is to bring the very differences there may be among us on the same line, everybody to have the same opportunities in life regardless of our differences. Could it be more clear. If there is a feminist who likes to put interests of her own in front and put somebody down because she is a feminist and a woman, I am sorry. To me that is not the message of feminism.

Sen sijaan, että meillä olisi puutarha, meillä on nurmikko.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Kerrostalokomplekseja asumiskäyttöön, joka on tarkoittanut tähän tiettyyn tarkoitukseen tarkasti suunniteltuja kokonaisuuksia ihmisille, perheille ja heidän kulkuvälineilleen. Pelkästään rationaalisia käytäntöläheisiä ja nopeasti valmistuvia ratkaisuja bulkkina. Suomessa lähestymistapa rakentamiseen suosii samankaltaisuutta, poikkeamattomuutta, persoonattomuutta, siistiä ja kolhoa ulkonäköä, josta kenelläkään ei pitäisi olla valittamista tai ehkä parikymmentävuotta sitten. Useampikerroksinen betoninen elementtitalo, asfalttiparkkipaikka ja autotalli, koristepuskia, koristepuita, roskapiste ja nurmikkoa, lastenleikkipaikka, puita ja kenties lähiön liikekeskus. Arjen pyörittämisen peruselementit paikoillaan, aina samoilla paikollaan. Variaation mahdollisuus on hyvin eliminoitu ja säännöstelty.

Suomalaisissa kerrostalolähiöissä on paljon hyvää, mutta on asioita joita jää kaipaamaan ja ihmettelemään niiden puuttumista. Ihmettelemään jää myös kaiken samankaltaisuuden toistoa. Onko saavuttamamme kerrostalorakentaminen niin hyvää, että siinä on peruste samankaltaisuudelle ja toisenlaisen kaipaus jää pois koska emme tarvitse enää muuta? Se, kuinka asumme, vaikuttaa siihen kuinka elämme kokonaisvaltaisesti. Kuinka kuljemme, missä käymme kaupassa, koulussa, millaisia kohtaamisia meille tapahtuu ja tapahtuuko niitä. Kerrostalolähiö on paikka, jossa vieraan kohtaamista vältellään ja naapurin rauha on pyhä kuten on omakin rauha. Lähiöasumisen paradoksi on kaikessa massaominaisuudessaan eristys, eristäminen, sulkeutuminen ja omastaan huolehtiminen. Näin olen tämän itse kokenut aina lähiöissä asuneena. Epäluuloisuus samassa talossa asuvia kohtaan on aikamoista. Sitä on välillä vaikea uskoa todeksi, mutta on se uskottava.

Mutta perimmäinen aiheeni, johon halusin päätyä on se mitä meille todella rakennetaan kun rakennetaan lähiötä ja mitä sieltä jätetään pois. Miksi valitaan hyötykasvien sijaan koristekasveja? Miksi saamme valtavia alueita yhdentekevää nurmikkoa, jota hoidetaan tunnon tarkasti aivan kuten asfaltti, jota pidetään lehtipuhaltimin puhtaana neuroottisesti ja valtavasti melua aiheuttaen. Miksi halutaan saada aikaan hygieeninen ja tunnesteriili maisema, jossa olla kuin säiliössä? Mitä haluamme säilöä ja mitä rauhaa varjella? Miksi säilömme itsemme sen sijaan, että säilöisimme kasviksia? Itsemme säilöminen on ilmeisesti helpompaa ja käytännönläheisesti mukavan teknistä. Ketään muuta on vaikea kohtata säiliönkaltaisissa oloissa, kuten on varmaan itseään.

Miksi jalkapallokentän kokoinen nurmikkopläntti voi loistaa vihreänä auringossa kuin voittopokaali ja kuin statementti vaalimisesta? Miksi se pääasiassa on tyhjä? Miksi siinä ei kasva kymmeniä omenapuita, kirsikkapuita, luumupuita, ja herukkapensaita? Ne vaativat huomattavasti vähemmän huolenpitoa kuin nurmikko ja tuottavat ravinnollisesti arvokasta ruokaa. Nurmikko ei tuota yhtään mitään. Se on pelkkä menoerä. Kaiken lisäksi hyötykasvit ovat huomattavan kauniita. Miksi haluamme välttämättä sen, mikä ei tuota mitään sen sijaan, että lähiön asukkailla olisi mahdollisuus tutustua jopa toisiinsa marjan poiminnan yhteydessä? Kysymys tietenkin nousee, kuinka sato jaetaan ja kenelle se on tarkoitettu.

Activity versus passivity

| Henna Timanttimetsä
It is the question of to be or not to be in a way. We are when we are seen and we become more when we are acknowledged and appreciate the one who acknowledges us. We may become valued, evaluated and noticed or do the opposite go unnoticed in our active lives like ghosts no matter what we do. We feel bad if we do not get any good word for what we have done. So even we can be very active and we may in the same time not exist to the busy active world, because we are not equals. There are different ways and levels of existing. To be alive is not enough. Someone else’s activity and creativity is more important than some other person’s. How people happen to be discarded or valued within a society is a science itself and dynamics of order of human relations, which is often there to be learned and matter of acting out. It is there to be changed. To change something is the most active thing. Knowing what you want and getting it plays a part. We have to know quite much to succeed within the calculating abusive order. Interesting is how the order keeps its tactics ruthless and how we like to keep the position gained: those who do not play ’well’ are kept out. We can keep talking about those poor outsiders and feel sorry for them or not. Hypocrisy is there, because it keeps the good vibes inside and group together and solid as it is good.

Still I claim the active vs. passive is an illusion. Doing something or not doing as we measure ourselves by things done, making something out of what we are doing. Passive being the negative when mostly not much is achieved. Passive of not knowing what to do. As little and not that much gained are measures that do not do much to anybody. We enjoy big. Is it because our emotions are big we need to find the equal existing spectacular reality to match. How we come to know the amount of what is good to have and what is good at all and what is good for us? How we become to value and understand an achievement of any kind? Is it because of gender (again), origin, connections, occupation, body image or all that, all the qualities that we have are to make something, of course, but what if we do not get that impressed easily. Most importantly there is the guilt of not achieving as much as one could and that other one is making more than me.

”“Viral” occupies a site of discursive centrality — but how do we reconcile its conflicting usages? On the one hand, contagion is a source of dread, and our fixation on viral outbreak, both real and fictional, discloses anxieties about modern society — about our urbanized, overpopulated, interconnected, and highly mobile world. Much of this is what we love about the 21st century; we love our globalized networks, international travel, the wildfire spread of information.” http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/viral-imagination

Living in fear, living under threat. How long will we take it, because we must? I have considered the US a huge threat on many levels for a long time.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

How long can we continue living in a state of some kind of fear? In fear that is a stressful state, so everyday. For our minds and bodies to be in constant fear is very tiring. We become fatigued, ill and burned out. How are we able to protect ourselves and will we eventually? We should be able to protect ourselves, but do we need weapons to do so? What do we need? What is necessary in order to protect what there is to protect? Things one holds dear like life, home and one’s sanity. Fear has become perhaps a familiar companion due to our living in constant existence of internet exposure and the news. Fear as an everyday emotion that keeps one alert in a good way would be a weird idea. If one learns to accept that scare is there for a good reason and not only an uncomfortable state of mind would we be less afraid of the things we fear. Threats we face can be quite massive. Is defense via massive army and war-making a sensible way to avoid and make threats vanish? Logic is very strange nowadays and yes it is a difficult field of thought.

To raise fear is a useful tool of oppression, so it is good to know what to fear and why. To fear the right things is to suspect notorious thoughts behind a smile of a salesman, see behind a glittering image. If we analyse the level of fear society is at it seems as neurotic and paranoid. The more paranoid society gets the more guards and surveillance there is. How mental state of a nation affects minds of its citizens can be said to be quite clear. Correlation is there depending on the authoritarian rule nation in question uses. The more surveillance the more we fear. Fear of losing our privacy, reputation, possibilities in life. Social death, to become an outcast and hated in front of all of society is feared position. Situation of no escape. Environmental and human rights issues begin to make us wonder when the crash is coming closer and more inevitable. Isn’t it rather stupid to act when it is too late?

” It is not a major threat to the residents of the United States and certainly not anything like the existential threats Americans faced in the last century. We, however, have applied the transitive property of terrorism to elevate its status: We have come to see the Islamic State as the new al Qaeda, and al Qaeda, despite being a relatively small organization with limited capabilities, had previously been elevated to the role of America’s new Enemy No. 1, occupying a position once held by a real existential threat, the Soviet Union, which had inherited its root-of-all-evil mantle from the Nazis.” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/13/the_biggest_threat_islamic_state_inequality_age_of_fear?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Flashpoints&utm_campaign=2014_FlashPoints11%2F13RS

”I do not mean to imply that a traumatized nation should forgo a strict accounting of the crimes of the past. One source of deep anger for many Cambodians is that the Khmer Rouge regime ended inconclusively. Only this autumn, nearly 40 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, did a United Nations–backed tribunal open hearings on whether its top officials committed genocide;”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120144/trauma-genetic-scientists-say-parents-are-passing-ptsd-kids?utm_content=buffer8fce8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Jalkaväki

| Henna Timanttimetsä

En voi olla hämmästelemättä sitä tahtoa, jolla ihmiset ajattelevat oman uskonsa johonkin olevan ainoa oikea uskottava totuus ja muuttumaton, suorastaan pyhä. Tämä tapahtuu täysin arkitasolla joka päivä ostoksilla, töissä, koulussa ja kotona. Oli kyseessä ajatus siitä kuinka elää, uskonto, poliittinen ideologia, elämänasenne, asenne toisia ihmisiä kohtaan luutuneita käsityksiä on lähes mahdotonta muuttaa. Halu uskoa olevansa täydellisen oikeassa on hyväksyttävämpää kuin etsiä oikeita vastauksia, epäillä omaa kantaansa ja ajatusmaailmaansa. Vihainen, kaunainen itsepuolustus ja itsepetos jossa elämme, ilman ajatustakaan siitä, että se mitä tekee voisi olla väärin, ilman halua tehdä toisin, koska helpomminkin pääsee. Toinen vaihtoehto on, että olemme niin itserakkaita ja mukavuudenhaluisia ettemme pysty emmekä halua kieltää itseltämme kidutuksen ja pahanteon tuomaa iloa. Usko omaan edistyksellisyyteen ja kykyihin voi olla sokeuttava. Usko omaan itseen ja omiin päätelmiin suorastaan sokea, myöntää väärässä oloaan, kun ei voi tehdä menettämättä modernia identiteettiään, kasvojaan, kokoan, joka on kasvanut roskan päälle.

Odd everyday logic of humans. Odd in the sense of no logic in the assumed logic in use. What reason, what sense.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Laughter as a stating gesture of approving and belonging, making a character, a persona who knows fun, who is fun. Sounds of laughter are very typically human. Why we laugh varies from feeling extremely happy to feeling insecure. Sometimes posing position of having the last laugh, ridiculing for being superior over someone, knowing something of someone, something secretive and having contempt for that person who has done something shameful, something you would not dare or would not be stupid enough to do. We laugh because of stupidity, to stupidity, to clever and witty jokes and tales. We laugh if there is nothing to laugh about, but because we feel like it. To laugh too much is kind of stupid. It is more clever to be serious and have a straight face without much expression on. To show emotions on your face is to be vulnerable, to care, to connect. To be vulnerable under attacks of those who see vulnerability as an opportunity to attack and state their clever seriousness, their chance of showing what they are made of. To laugh with a crowd at someone in a mass, because it is good fun. To be different from that crowd endangers any one who does any different gesture from the crowd. What happens to those who step aside, who speak against the cheering crowd? That someone can make a crowd laugh, because she is a comedian or because she is a laughable tart, who deserves to be subjected to hate, ridicule and contempt. There is nothing new in this dynamics of people making a difference. What kind of difference do we want to make and is a mechanical predictable crowd and common mind we want to be?

It is so easy to make fun of other people, to point a finger. How far laughter takes us is important to notice, because it is probably the most important emotional and intellectual expression we make. Power of laughter changes an atmosphere, mindsets and thoughts. Where do we draw the line of ridiculing, bullying and comedy that is there to entertain in the good sense, because life is ridiculous, horrible, unjust, violent, cruel, boring and the same unchanging shit forever? Laughter can be extremely sad. It can be there to hide the sadness. Laughter is more valuable, a gesture of a good guy and characteristics of an acceptable good woman, who is so good and nice company. The difficulty of knowing what is the right reaction and action and what to feel, what to do with sorrow, what to do with joy.

Justification to abuse because of what one is.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

The self-evidence of power of gender, sex, appearance, origin, occupation, abilities, knowledge etc. whatever the reason is that we without hesitation use to benefit ourselves and over and over think is our right to use against someone else, assets and qualities as tools of oppression and hierarchy. To gain and show power being the reasons to act. How sex is the obvious strong or weak, because we learn to think so. Women are like that and do things like that, think in a certain way. Obviously we are not very open in our thinking what a human can be. We get stuck with our genitals, which are huge obstacles in doing whatever. To the question of how much we actually use of our brains, we like to follow familiar and traditional paths instead of finding new ones just like that.

In search of the postmodern triangle.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

That this what is is Mathematics or can be understood via Mathematics, but still I am not sure if Mathematics can explain birth of life, give the ultimate formula of life. We are in love of mathematical and logical decision-making, designing and making via technical advancements, praise technological progress. That our lives and bodies are Mathematical is a difficult matter to understand and see, because so much is at chance. Much of what we consist of we do not see, do not understand nor don’t have to pay attention to for it to work. Life happens as a surprise uncontrollably in control of certain physical and biological laws. It is a strange idea that we consist of geometrical facts and is how I see it. Purity of form is what we like to seek in design, purity as absolutely direct and exact is difficult to find by eye in nature, but it is there, almost sterile. Purity of form, construction, concrete and plastic elements manufactured in large-scale. We need chain reactions and evolution, variety to exist and truly make progress. I have come to think of this because of my curiosity towards architecture and how it evolves or how it has stopped evolving. Also how we as biological beings, thinking neurological brains begin to think and evolve in the middle and inside the designs made, in those boxes we must live.

I’m trying to understand the artificial nature of designing buildings. Artificial reasons why they are as they are and the nature of our biology against man-made constructions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle