6.1 Fury and rage
6.2 It’s a crazy world we live in.
6.3 Headache.
6.4 Change is the only absolute.
Introduction: With their prizes and demonstrations of power, to whom should these odd chemical reactions be given.
The notorious one, a man with a gun, is celebrated. Firearms make one look powerful, fierce, in control, man or woman with stamina, muscles and credibility in a certain world which in part is a fantasy world and power in question a fabrication, a matter of violent competition. Do we believe in that power which killing machines bring because we have to? Is the power lure of money which is tightly entwined with the world of firearms? We should be scared (even though a politician can say there is nothing to be scared of, which was some years back an election slogan of a Finnish politician. Maybe inside the bubble of his there are no threats.) and we are scared of losing everything which is happening to millions of people. When we grab a weapon we are less scared making some other people scared of us? Fear, greed and pride cloud our judgment pretty effectively. Many are in part rightly thinking the only protection in brutal world is an attack and that is why we buy guns, admire them for their capabilities and effectiveness. Firearms are phallic just like architecture can be. To own weapons has been a right as we must be able to defend ourselves. It is him or me, kill or be killed.
We are emotional beings and terrified of losing, failure, being shamed, emotionally tied to protecting what we appreciate and love. We can hope emotions and pride don’t cloud our judgment in making calls for war, but that is a mere hope. All the time people kill people and wage war, all kinds. Rhetorics of war is in use in sports and I have come to think fighting and battling are the very human ways of survival and necessary to prove our worth. We can’t live in peace even with ourselves as there are things we like to have, things we do not have enough and to get something we need to compete, power being one big thing to have excessively. The intoxicating effect of power even little of it is clear. One has to be wise to understand how to use correctly the power position one has. It takes a lot of energy to be constantly afraid and distrustful, be scared, in state of alert, suspicious in a world where nobody can be trusted and somebody else wants what you have got. To be in a state of constant scare and worry takes a toll on us which affects the ways we do politics, interact, know and treat people, isolate ourselves and others into camps and behind walls.
Which brings me to the topic of entertainment where power and money play an important role: how emotional gansta rappers are, what are the emotions there if there are any to admit to? To show emotions is a sign of weakness still? What are black entertainers passionate about? Police violence is bad, violence by black people is necessary and a reaction to police violence? Brutality, retaliation, racism, gun violence and making that money are in the lyrics and imagery of many. For some reason in those things lie the key to success, owning those issues. Do rappers solve anything bringing light to the condition of grassroot America or is it a loop of anger? What kind of messages and emotions do rappers pass on? Real niggers don’t die, Dr.Dre for example who is the man with a master plan, nigger with a gun, with women, money and attitude to kill. Appreciating his music, still, it is a frightening image of someone with a gun making music, an everyday image for very many who watch movies, music videos and pay attention. He raps about AK-47 ready to pop. Dr.Dre with Snoop Dogg go and get their money flow with the recipe of being bad boys. Maybe it is irony, the topics of rappers or maybe it is realism/illusions/dreams made into art/reality as black people do end up killing each other in America and are often poor with no opportunity to rise above, more so when clashing with the police odds are weak. To get rich or die trying is a monotonous driving force escaping a dead-end where wealth is all that matters. Ways to get respect, make way ahead and get admiration are simplistic patterns from playground for kids. It is a political and humanistic wake up call for help. It is a daily routine to live with arms in a country where weapons secure freedom and safety and are easily accessible. When society does not provide for you, then it is with guns and crime you get what you think you need.
There is serious demand for justice and solving social issues as crime, poverty, lack of education, healthcare, feelings of powerlessness, hate, misogyny, racism and all in all lack of future prospects in numerous countries not just in the US. Ways to get rich or die trying is a heroic one man one force idea in a certain kind of world, just another phrase from a rapper who is a real man whose line became a true need, or need became a line. Crime and rap music mix reality wrapped in golden chains, guns and cars, chasing women like cattle and women seem to like it sucking that dick. Women placed in to the position of stuffed animals and objects with body parts and women also like to place themselves into that pornographic narrow inferior position continuously. Why? Are options so scarce, unattractive or the fast culture to consume all makes you feel like a winner? Is it the easiest option to make it with one’s body? What is the need and meaning there other than money and sex dictating what is what, who is who or anybody? Reality in full in this picture in the US and all around as the message spreads: this is how you become visible, powerful, admired and free. It is an image where people are gunned down like society was a war zone, that is how it looks like here and there and is also entertainment.
America is at war constantly in and outside with each other and the world. The world is at war since wars don’t end to declaration of peace, to halting the killing call. The scene of war changes. As it has turned out world is a lot more complicated than what is expected and out of control state can be released by attacking cultures and people you do not understand. Freedom can be chaotic and dangerous more than the blissful state of mind where everything good is possible in loving harmony. The bad is as well, very much so about freedom. Paradox of the extreme power and naivety is what strikes. Wars tend to continue in people’s minds as long as soldiers and their children live and history is there. Isn’t it quite the picture of the modern world and America, needs and hunger are immense for retaliation but also for reconstruction. Scared and more scared people exist all over. Russia is a perfect example how a regime intimidates its citizens from criticizing Putin and warring. Declarations in the news look as if something had been saved and solved and we can sigh of relief, but what are we really being told?
It is a daily repertoire, a way to rule and make justice of some kind legitimized with God-given right to arms, wealth and power. God is in the warring and traditional understanding of masculinity. Is God in education, healthcare, being kind and merciful to the poor? It used to be as the church provided for those things. It is a world of nations, rulers and slaves, rhetorics and desires make weird images. What the world of rulers want to do with the rest of us is to enslave, misguide and make us blindly follow. US and Russia are mass murderers, terrorist states carrying God’s weapons used with God’s permission protecting a way of life that needs constant protection because they are products of a dying age, tyranny and structure of policing, knowingly like bodily functions they are failing in an aging body, definitely knowingly, rationally and consciously not giving away an inch. There is a need to be good via being bad which is expression of freedom. There is no other alternative to make selfish good happen than the bad. It is good to be able to dictate the rules of how to be good, so they (Americans) don’t have to use force in a bad way because they are always good even when they are bad. Russians are just bad doing bad because God is on their side despite their communist past and they know what is good for everybody: strict order and rule. Democracy and freedom which Americans themselves have: what an illusion and a flat image. Anybody criticising is a hater.
Bearing it as a warning that there are enemies self-evidently, but who are the enemy and why? World is being warned and under threats of all kinds. The dichotomy of you are not on our side then you are against us is prevailing. Russia attacks mercilessly and violently against those who dare say a word against its policies. This is clear when debating issues like invading sovereign countries, refugees, trans and gay rights, feminism etc. Is it the way to live nowadays being defensive and simplistic in a chaotic world? We have been constructed from fear especially living next to Russia, and continuously remain so as disagreeing and opposing is very dangerous. Conservative forces are not just protecting the old traditional way of living, understanding that it needs to be protected with arms should be a wake up call. Honor and continuity of good old values, nothing must change in what we do and think is the mentality. Idea today is to change but don’t change anything.
198
It is entertainment: pretend and fake.
”YOU CRAZY SON OF A BITCH! FUCKIN’ SON OF A BITCH, YOU! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!, CRAZY SON OF A BITCH, I’LL KILL YOU! … (BANG!) AHHH! AAAHHHH!… ” a line from TAXI DRIVER 1976 BY MARTIN SCORCESE QUOTED IN A SONG CALLED the BADGE 1994 from album Far beyond driven BY PANTERA.
It is one kind of revolution to personally try to achieve, make a difference on one’s own, have power over one’s own message, as that is the only option how power is had, it is taken and shared. Finding the power of one’s own that there lies within in the night, in the day, in solitude, with a gun and a car which represent freedom, are tools to grab and are there like everyday objects in the movie. Man in the film Taxi driver sees things are not right in his life and around, riding around the city is what makes him observe, the customers he meets and connects with he makes conclusions what people are and are doing, what side are they on, what kind of exploitation happens there and why, who exploits who. Something has to be done and he takes his gun, he is powerless otherwise but he sees some people are even more powerless. Deciding there are things that should be changed, knowing which are the things that are wrong, why they are wrong, know how they can be changed and acts upon them. To make a personal crusade, personal vendetta, a killing after many wrongs done by other people. Does his ‘victory’ happen as he thought, a retaliation, defending of what is good? Do things change for better or go on as before?
They tend to end up hurting more than doing any good to anybody, crusades, leading to destruction and chaos. Movie where hero thinks he is a hero by committing his power act, a journey with his car, accomplishing his task in the way he has chosen and seen best: to a pimp played by Harvey Keitel he says suck on this and shoots the pimp in the stomach on the street. What makes him think violence is the answer, a solution, there is always a new pimp, a new young girl to be saved from the streets. What makes a person want to own a gun in a city? Hostility is clear and everyone is on their toes, vulnerable, at risk of being attacked and violated. Is making things right his calling, is he under threat because he is good? There is constant wrong to be made right, abandonment and loss is frequent, abuse is a deep wound and the bone is showing. Gun is there to make a cleansing in constant dirt people wade. Bad shape of people and what do we make of that. For many it is a place to strike and exploit, make it even worse. We pass the hurt forward, let others feel what we are feeling. Inside people’s heads form noisy ache. It is strange how lost people are with their emotions, with their ache, with other people. What I make of this is we are dictated by our pain.
8.1 Fury and rage
Frantic is a good word to use in context of revolution. To believe in possibility of change to the extent of no alternatives than to find something other and revolution becomes a religion-like obsession, a career and a way out. Religion is an emotional institution, having faith in the unseen, in new future, brave new world is more powerful as it is owned and made visible. It is to breathe revolution also to understand power within. It is the intoxicating youthfulness and brave imagining of something new and innovative. Faith is there for hope taking the pain away as a possibility for good and something good is coming, must be. A raging emotional desire is to act on behalf of oneself and others, for the future and for better living. Faith sounding maybe a bit weird on any scene of revolution when despair is dense, faith in oneself and in one’s own doings. Revolution somehow is seen as antireligious as religion has had power over people crushingly long period of time. In revolution people become the religion, not God though? Overturning oppressive power is a very religious movement having faith in one’s chosen leaders and doctrines, in institution of liberation and the monument to look upon, and it is
199
important to know whom and what to worship in this process, what is the structure of revolution. To understand that naive worshipping is out-of-order altogether, to know how, why and whom to critique and what does freedom mean for freed people. Spontaneous expressions of anger can be explosive and the most honest responses to a never ending kind situation where reason seems to have gone missing. Nothing is changing or if there is a change it is for the worse. Anger, hate and rage show their faces and prove to be needed in a healing process and justified.
Emotions go up and down daily and we learn to control our emotions from early on. We are told what not to do in public, how not to act when angry or why be angry at all when being likeable is preferred almost violently. It is an essential part of growing up into civilized society, to become member of it, is to learn how to deal with emotions in a certain proper way. Unlearned channeled creative human forces make things happen in good and bad. When enraged hands begin to shake, to sit still is difficult, pulse takes a rapid speed up, blood pressure rises, body sweats and heavy breathing makes one feel like an animal on the run, things look confusing and being rational becomes more difficult, one becomes impulsive. What kind of part do hate and rage play in the games of finding place, making groups of people, molding our social structures and places of belonging and living and being who we are and how we are. Negative emotions make us build walls and gaps. Why are negative feelings the most powerful forces causing society to act, get alarmed, making people act against structures of society or themselves. Hurt motivates, piles up, triggers violence, blinds. Hurt and trauma cannot be avoided, they cannot be not talked about. We need hurt and trauma to learn to survive and learn again. Violence is a daily act, mental and physical, verbal and pictorial aggression. To be fragile in a hostile world means you are threatened all the time. What makes those emotions in us so powerful is the extent how much we are about chemistry. It is as if we are nothing but chemistry and nerves and we many times are unaware of this part in us we have little control over. Why is pain important in this picture again and again? Negative feelings are with us for a reason. They are not to be suppressed but faced, felt and learned from. Garbage piles up when not let out and dealt with. To deal with emotions means feelings have to be talked about either with the person who causes those emotions or with someone who can listen, interpret, understand and respond. It is a pattern that repeats, again, is misunderstood, we not knowing ourselves.
We feel and think about those inner turmoils which we all have and we connect with by talking about them, learn that other people have the similar. This is an important phase how we consider our feelings as collective and universal, not only on individual level: what do we think/make of them and of this realisation that other people are not objects? Appreciation for feelings is to study them. To measure the amount of feelings is difficult, comparing them as well, guessing what others are feeling or should be feeling is impossible to know and dictate exactly. Although in North Korea everybody feels the same when their leader passes away, collective weeping is compulsory. The amount of suppressed individuality and human experience there is, is unimaginable and to think how is it possible to be this scared and dehumanized.
Then we talk about our feelings to someone whom we can trust and who is interested in how one feels and thinks, it is a relief to be able to speak of emotions, of personal experience which is invisible, which is not a simple issue. Emotions and personal view on oneself begin to evolve, emotions have a heavy meaning. Human layers, experiences and thoughts make progress in that process of becoming being alive and becoming a human being: why I feel the way I do, what that other person is feeling and why is she/he doing what she/he is doing. Life is a constant process, us hopefully evolving and changing on emotional level, on idea level and in action. It is learning process about the idea of me, what is me. Learning about nature in us, chemistry working in us making us live in a manner that can be tolerable or intolerable. What makes crying intolerable and a sign of weakness for example?
200
What would you cry for? Sometimes we cry for nothing, sometimes for mental hurt, injustice, for beauty, sometimes just because we feel horribly sad over things we cannot do anything about, because of feeling helpless. Global hurt makes me weep, also the need people have to escape mental and physical pain, which both are necessary for our growth and progress. Pain has a purpose. How much pain is necessary then, can we take, does weeping help? To a point. It is to let out pain in shape of tears and making sounds of sorrow. But to cry and sob is something to do privately. To sob in my solitude and shine in public is a heroic strong way.
6.2 It’s a crazy world we live in.
To stand accused is what happens to us daily. We are blamed to have caused global warming, having fallen into apathy, joblessness, indifference and all is fault of our own. To lose taste of what you are eating, watching, drinking, touching, breathing and thinking is a symptom. Why think when someone does it for you? What does it matter what one thinks, what does one person matter? How do you know what to think exactly when everything is so complex? How to tell, articulate well what one is thinking when all is a mess and pointless. I must be able to present myself, present myself over and over and be present. When life is a mess and a blur, a depressed mode and illness, frustration, fog make one disabled, isolated unable to focus. Lose interest in doing anything, in voting, acting out, standing up, working out. And they ask why! Is society to prohibit personality, deny identity, forget where one comes from, to have contempt against origin, hide colour, hide in colour, hide in fashion, or just hide, because to be different can be a reason to become isolated and hated. What about gender and sex. Am I of gender, typical, agreeable enough, nice enough to be liked? Do I belong? And is there class to belong to which accepts me?
It is a kind of trial since I am put in one kind of box for what I am not, accused and tested. How can one not become disoriented? Explosions happen when there is too much injustice which cannot be escaped and cultural oppression, restrictions, absolute rules for which one has no control over, individual bans and guides on how to live, subordination. Whenever there is a change there is a reaction to the change. There is nothing but change but is it progress? Get used to it and don’t, change yourselves, your life because if you don’t you are fucked. You can still decide, you are free is a weird idea. You are the boss of your life. We sell, you buy your personality, individuality, your data. How is that freedom? You name it we have got it. Why live a lie? Throwing it in, sentences, ideas, thoughts, anything, towel, sweat, is there blood in you or are you a robot, is it personal to speak the truth? Absolutely.
Hegemony, creativity there, complexity of some kind, power in unity holding us together or become divided. We live to be together or apart, is there something in the middle, what is the middle? Indifference is to separate, have just as much part as is necessary. We live in concepts of post-modernism, ideals are concretely too far to grab, unreachable or just efforts to understand how mass of people function and form units, societies and structures supposedly together. Pattern is a good word here, a security pattern which constantly must be enforced and changed, life pattern, in search of safe havens, networks, nests, restricted areas, protection. How do we
201
form ourselves with others in doing and making is something we should concern ourselves more. Do our collective movements and moments function well, does our collective mind have the mutual understanding of well, do we have empathy for others only in virtual reality? Does kindness make society work, is kindness our ruling force? It has to be. Emotions having leading part in sculpting society by the minute, by every person, by every act which is felt and pushed forward. Emotions having strong part when access is restricted, thinking is forbidden, which is all the time depending on current culture. We like to prize the idea of freedom, but we hold together in captivity, because we are afraid of losing the earned status and being abandoned. Holding oneself in one piece in this complex unity of pieces of many.
A culture of almost complete restriction of feelings sounds unrealistic. It is difficult to imagine us without emotions. They are on our faces, movements, clothes, shopping, behaviour, ways of walking. In there, in us, within whatever we do there are piles and forms of feelings, layers of them, like vegetation, but there is an illness like inability to give them to do good, of wanting to express them to that person near, how could it happen? A compassionate closeness can spook people away like touching. One must be careful. Don’t get too close, don’t hug a stranger, don’t stare too long. Yes, to be touched by a stranger in anywhere can be irritating. An unknown man comes and rubs your back in a bar while talking and staring at your breasts is more than unpleasant. I so felt it.
It is what we should be able to do if there is a normal thinking caring person in question, give emotions, share them and restrict ourselves from giving them in a hateful, diminishing way. So how to show interest and caring and how to be angry is a question of how to know our boundaries. Depends on what one is interested in and how one sees other people, what are they to you. Interest in a person is different from interest only in having sex with that person.
Sexism is always present. Some people notice it because they face sexism often. It is some kind of a norm and to a point accepted. Silence is accepting. When no one acts against sexist behavior nothing happens to the problem. For some people sexism is a way to show feelings. They probably don’t know any other way to show feelings they have. They are afraid or incapable to act in different way, it would require actually wanting to know the other person, admitting value of that other person. Is there change emerging what comes to sexism? Incapability of showing emotions especially negative ones in a right way make us ill in the end. I conclude negativity and conflict are important as well. Clever ways to emotions is understanding the reactions and what dictates us emotionally. Awkward emotionally empty environment of people struggling to survive with their lack and incapabilities leave people around
202
struggling with incapability, loss and thinking it is my fault or there is something wrong with me. Why we place blame so eagerly? It sounds good for someone else to have the blame, no negativity there, no irony. Negativity and horrible sadness, comparison, competition, attack and defence. Hurt can be drunken down and laughed over, it does not go away. Alcohol makes it worse. It is about one not wanting to face one’s bullshit since everything is fine. Escapism nowadays is so easy.
Effective is an act which is about shame. Shaming is to show how putting someone down in humiliating fashion is amusing and fun for some. The talk people share behind each other’s backs and reasons for it, patterns in relations because of what has been said make deep gaps and cuts. To show contradictions and paradoxes in people’s actions and the hollow ground beneath all beautiful and well-meaning people is also effective. Hypocrisy seems to prevail too easily. What kind of emotional and intellectual order of desires is at hand? Delicious. Problems begin with something to gain and with the ways of wanting stardom and success badly are happening via hurt. Choosing one’s path is to know why one is doing what one is doing and to whom. Interesting is the extent of passion of doing when you begin and what happens to it, how it evolves, your passion. Can you hold on to the thrill and charm of naive enthusiasm?
All of us and what do we do under monitoring eyes, under suspicion. Do we ask why there is so much suspicion? Looking up to parents, teachers, journalists, leaders who talk to us and pass us by, controlled decisions, carefully chosen words and smiles, because all cannot be said out loud. Censorship which happens because we need to hide, we cannot stay bare, we cannot be honest because we may seem inadequate, but we cannot show weakness. What is declared in good stays that way? Maybe slowly changing to something else. Decisions must be made to move forward, decisions on how to live. Then it can be seen what a decision was or was not. To make humanity is to act upon and take risks. We are not us if we are not active and creative. It should be clear that to be born human one has rights as human should. We manifest humanity and we make it in error and in perfection. Criteria and important characteristics of activities, qualities and possibilities to evolve through making. Learning from doing, seeing, hearing, via mistakes, stories, teachings, burning a finger, telling that sexist to go fuck himself and get a good look in the mirror. Basic attributes to thrive is learning through curiosity, encouraged to be curious and bold. It can be interest in other people’s businesses, it can be innocent interest in the world, to the worlds outside and inside, interest that can be a selfless need to find out and understand how the world works. Through this finding out how we work and how I work, how are we part of and have come to be inventive complex humans. There is always something to say, when there is nothing there is inability to see what one can do
203
with little one has for example how small is the insignificant and why it is insignificant? When we look at Physics such as the insignificant does not exist. How does my consciousness construct me and is it a self-driving force? What is my consciousness, my brain, my thoughts, my ideas, my nerves, what begins to puzzle me and why? What makes a self and how to know it? What is mine, what is common and how do they mix and get to create new?
Abolishing blind spots, those which are there but we do not register, which is the place in the eye one cannot see with. How do you abolish something you cannot see? How do you wipe it away which is the invisible? When it could be your whole world, or half of it or the most important thing you fail to see and acknowledge? Abolishing skin, sex, gender, age, appearance, what things there are to demolish and why? Things unwanted to be demolished and how? How do you become to value something? How do you find value of your own? Abolishing the multitude of races means there is only one human race with numerous ethnical backgrounds and with billions of differences. Human being is made of differences and mutation. So, what there is to abolish is the very issue, walls inside your mind.
6.3 Headache.
Denying and hiding won’t make what we feel go away. Appreciation of life consists of constant learning, change, dealing with emotions. It is the truth, appreciation and life, wisdom of life often made flat. To trivialize wisdom has its reasons, business leaders have made themselves into gurus. But we have different views on what is wise.
To turn down aims for equal opportunity is to keep up dude philosophy or dude principles, tough guy ideology, where women have to be dudes, culture women should live by is to behave masculine which equals strong. Women are being nostrified as women, meaning adopted perfectly as objects and tools where feminism is a shield on surface, a rash like #metoo. Harshness as shield and open rejection towards empathy and what is the feminine, hostility towards femininity is obvious. To be a man is a guide for everyone. Don’t cry in a bus, don’t carry you emotional gun, everyone can see your twisted red face. Kindness is girls’ stuff and boys don’t cry. It is good to survive on your own, call it making it, minding your own business, supporting oneself, standing like a soldier. Better if nobody cries, so we don’t have to go through difficult negative emotions, fall apart in front of someone. We don’t have to face difficult issues mostly concerning human relations and misery which equal mess, pathetic wrong doings and chaos, shame, ever continuing
204
emotional and physical unbearable chaos. What is sickness in this picture? What is a sick society, a society made by sick people?
Process of trying to change the unchangeable, an entity unwilling to change is a violent situation. Perfection thinks there is nothing to change in it, in me. For those in the middle it is a perfect place, for them there is nothing to be changed. Measures and means to put down those who dare vary from humiliation to silence. It is a pattern of those who have something to gain in a system they are in and it is serving them. Closed systems are very sensitive and touchy. They get contaminated with aggression and protectionism. Taking care of the image and walls around is more important than what is actually being said and done morally. It is like floating on waves of acceptance of friends that share your world and views in thinking what is the ultimate right and wrong. It is a strange way of living which to my understanding secures comfortable pleasurable tower for the few with means.
In this kind of small talk anything that is somehow out of the ordinary is a bullet, uncomfortable. In this kind of world making a controversy is fairly easy, but how to make it last as scandals last for a week? The disastrous effect of shredding something comfortable to pieces, pushing buttons, the right and wrong ones, fears of people in such a world and what is expected of people entering that world is healthy to test.
Is it too obvious what is the mainstream? It is popular, popularity, liked, listened, watched, enjoyed, consumed, used, available, everywhere, inescapable, in your face. Is the marginal opposite to most of that or all of that, and what kind of people follow the likeable mainstream? What kind of talk is made of it, inspirational perhaps. Labelling, putting people into groups and against each other, it has a role. In entertainment such controversy sells. Distinct part in illusion of individualizing us, to be one but not, identities of ours fight against collectiveness and not, we wanting to be part of the fun active buzz as strong individuals as parts of community, but in the shadows? Quite a contradiction, to be one but a mass. Are categories of taste so obvious that they exist no matter what? They exist because people like different things, or do we categorize to understand, taste, to make the distinction more obvious, to tell what we are and what we are not, gaps and barriers to block unwanted out, what do these strategies open? Borders are there between professions, origins, classes, genders, generations, nationalities, clothes. There is nothing but definitions and groups of people, lines in between them in order
205
to be safe, accepted and be part of to have an identity, avoiding loneliness and boredom. You have to belong. We are herds of people suspicious of each other, sniffing the air and feeling the atmosphere where to go from here to make it. What is going to happen in the cynical world? How much does class dictate taste and thinking? How much does it rule what people find interesting and why and what people begin to do in their lives? It takes determination like no other. Yes, there are walls to go through. Generations pouring prejudices and beliefs onto the next ones, to their kids, but of course they do. Working class and low self-esteem are familiarly close and alive together, feeding tradition and roles of people. Everyone does what they think is the right thing to do, right? How do people at the lower end find the right thing/things to do and say and why stick to that negative idea of class? How do people become to think like they do? Where is the change in this loop?
6.4 Change is the only absolute.
Is there new, new in what way or change for that matter? Power of a protest singer, rapper when he/she is telling a story from real life. Misery and injustice told in forms of tales for listener to either sympathize, know that they are not alone. It is a long tradition of passing information on of what happens in the world. Folksingers, troubadours tell stories and entertain, what happens when political message enters that stage? How political can a singer get? Living the internet time messages spread fast and net is full of phenomena of entertainment, people who seek fame. Same channel work well in spreading political points of views and music still works wonders when a good beat, interesting lyrics and stories make a match. Could it be that political music as idea everything is political makes the best effects what comes to making social change, reaching and waking people? I do not think it is just idealism, it is power. Music is for all to listen and make. It takes an idealist to make politics, to begin with politics, still you don’t have to be politician to do politics. Every personal act becomes to have an impact on the environment and people in it. To act requires decision-making, making a choice, witnessing, telling, understanding, being open. It requires an idea, plan, means to do it, will to do it, imagining, looking ahead, conversation, debating, asking, questioning, evaluating, belief and feeling. Politics is people deciding, compromising, dealing with the common and mutual issues that concern everyday life of every person. Politicians make the laws which citizens obey. Citizens choose politicians by voting. These simple sounding tasks and basic functions of a state are results of battles and
206
numerous wars.
Democracy and respect for human rights still is not self-evident and in some countries change for better is tiresomely slow, agonizingly and horribly. Therefore, it is important to understand the meaning, purpose and significance of politics and one’s own actions. Now situation is rather worrying on many levels. It seems to be a fact that power corrupts and for some people politics is a competitive game, feather in a hat. For one politicians are players or seen as players who make tactical politics to benefit causes of their own. Lack of trust is a major problem. Hasn’t it always been so power over people is always violently used. Politics should be to correct unsatisfying situation, given promises, knowing your place, knowing your rights, demanding your rights, fighting for them. There is something to gain and something to lose. What are the things worth gaining? This is one issue to the point when looking at respecting and how respect is gained, certain kind of respect which serves many. You can get respect by scaring people. That is an old-fashioned model of gaining admiration by violence, scaring and diminishing and silencing the other. It has got to do with physical power and size more than anything else. It could be called education if there was a lesson.[1.][2.]
Emotional reactions can be surprising. If they don’t hit us, surprise and put us out of balance what else is there. What is it we need our emotions for if we become machines? They are to guide us. It is a task for emotions to shake us. How do we know to which things we can laugh at and to which not or why laugh at all? How do we get to be compassionate? Ultimate question is, how are we doing?
Emotional is the female, emotional is forbidden, there is no honor in emotion, it is a burst beneath until you cannot hide anymore, emotions can turn against you. Whom are you against? Is someone faceless inside you? Narcissism, egotism, self-loath, self-destruction, fetishism, masochism, pleasing until you cannot anymore hide and take it until you cannot stand it anymore. It is interesting how revolutions start, how they are followed all over the world. They bring empathy for the oppressed. How will it end up and when will it end and does the revolutionist movement trigger a snowball like movement around, a cumulative effect of one nation rising up.
To set oneself on fire says revolution is about death. About dying for a cause. Revolution is about sacrifice. Of having been afraid so long one begins to be fearless. Death is whether there is a revolution or not, so the choice is clear.
207
If I die it’s for my country, for a good cause? A revolution can be that immense a thing, definite, fanatic and determined. It can be worth more to you than your life. As in his article Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash writes about the situation in Egypt in 2011 which has been boiling for years. Oppression, hatred, torture, unemployment, poverty, corruption, military having much to say in politics of the country. It is again a long list of utter horridness brought onto the ordinary people and they not tolerating it anymore. Mubarak stealing wealth of the state, billions of money, which should have been used for the welfare of the people. Army buying artillery with billions from the US. It is angering even for me even as I am following what happens from far away. The injustice done daily year after year and reported in the news year after year is incredibly frustrating to witness. Millions of people see this crookedness of politicians and businessmen without able to do much about it. I am outraged, I pour it on social media, on my website, in my art, in this thesis. Moral outrage, discussion and following of what happens in the world. It is the least I can do to write about it.
To understand morals of people and why they act the way they do means finding evil motives and roots which seem inescapable. Motives behind one person and behind millions can they be the same? Can revolution unite millions of people to have the same motive: to make society better? Could millions of people be together compassionate and selfless to the extent of giving that much of themselves to make such worldwide revolution happen, a conscious revolution of kindness? When it seems impossible for reasonable people anywhere for whom facts are clear of how to make a nation and its people prosperous? It is almost impossible to have a country which would be dedicated in serving its people and their welfare. To have a country which would dedicate its existence in removing poverty, be dedicated to educate people and make peace. [3.][4.]
According to study by Jonathan Mercer of University of Washington concepts nationalism, trust, justice and credibility when stripped out of emotion appear unrecognizable. This is very clear. Concepts such as trust and justice work in building nations self-evidently and become parts of our identities more or less for us to form groups of power and trust. To have trust is to build a nation and make justice. Politics is where people should be trusted, but over and over this trust is failing. In keeping nations together there is a certain amount of pride, patriotism, nationalism, love for the country and its people. Mere emotion and illusion. Nationalism nor patriotism do not tend to show as the
208
most rational of tactics and ideologies. They follow feeling. We are like this and we like us as we are, we follow the collective emotion and believe in it which appears strongly in sports. We want to protect ourselves to stay as we are. We can continue being afraid of change, immigrants, strangers, oddities, settling for traditions and wanting to stick with people of our kind. Reason does not have much to do with all this. Most sensible thing for people to do in order to evolve is to expose oneself to new things, new ideas, all kinds of people and situations. Surprise is of course how people who think are very clever can be so narrowminded and biased. This happens in universities as in working class circles. Isolation and separation is not out-of-order. It is a norm.
How to appeal to emotions of the public is to talk about welfare of children, elderly, sons and daughters who work and suffer to make a living. We must fight for them, for all of us, for better world. We hear this. Everyone is important. How much such talk appeals I’m not quite sure but somehow jargon is obvious. There has to be something personally experienced, personally felt to connect with. Revolution rises from the very negative to find the positive in people as a group, a union. Revolutions are mass events which usually need and require leading. Mastering masses is tricky, masses are emotionally uncontrollable.
1.https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/jean-h-quataert/making-womens-rights-human-rights by JEAN H. QUATAERT 31.10.2013
How women’s rights became part of the international human rights movement 2.http://sur.conectas.org/en/can-economic-growth-translate-access-rights/ 31.10.2013 Challenges faced by Institutions in South Africa in Ensuring that Growth Leads to Better Living Standards, questions on how financial growth benefits all and does it by SERGES ALAIN DJOYOU KAMGA and SIYAMBONGA HELEBA 3.https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/02/the-six-emotions-of-revolution-what-egyptians-are-feeling-now.html 31.10.2013 by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash The six emotions of revolution; what Egyptians are feeling right now (2011) 4.https://unu.edu/publications/articles/the-role-of-emotions-in-politics.html 31.10.2013 (published 2011•04•12 ) written by Ainius Lašas to United Nations University, Bringing emotions into understanding revolutions.
209