I wanna be a model and be seen by many. I wanna be discovered, I wanna be found, I wanna be rich.

August 3, 2019October 15, 2019 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Hi, my name is, hi my name is, Hi, my name is, I would really like to be a model, I would really like to be a model, I would really like to be a model, a high fashion model, a high fashion model. I am sixteen years of age, I am fifteen, I am eighteen years of age. I come from Russia, I come from Latvia, I come from Poland. I have long blond hair and blue eyes, I weight fifty kilos and am 175 centimeters tall. I can walk and look the look. I love high heels and miniskirts and I turn the heads on the street when I walk. I have been told I could be a model, because I am beautiful and slank. That is what you want, isn’t it. Here is my picture. I also have a portfolio of poses taken by a professional photographer. To be in a magazine on front page is my dream and to be admired. True woman is feminine and takes care of her femininity.

Despair? What despair?

Sounds of Africa

February 18, 2018July 7, 2022 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Sounds of Africa

You hear insects all the time everywhere. You are scared of insects. They are violent in their multitude. Their amount is unexpectable, unknown small horror that creeps. Their force is their poison and need to go under your skin. To eat you to consume you and move on to the next body.

Africa is scary. It is enormous and endless and dark. Endless in its blackness, noise, violence, liveliness and uniqueness but we like to see it as one block because we must understand within our rational frame all, even the things which don’t fit the frame in any way. We need to force all into our frame to comprehend and control and use. All that we can’t control, what can we do with it?

Ethnic sounds, drums, stomping, whipping, singing. Animal sounds: roaring. Human sounds: shooting. Nature’s sounds: the wind, eruptions, the grass, the rain.

Cacophony distilled normal, a harmony, a naming. Making order, giving advice, giving comprehension and guidance, harmony like for a choir with a conductor. Do not make a mistake. You will be punished. Who are the people who punish? Who are the people who are punished?

Coffee cantata, tsinasil signifies the sounds of whipping of Jesus. Wondrous voices made with instruments invented. Giselle is losing her mind. Think that sound.

Begging is not a profession.

September 11, 2017January 25, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Beggars are an everyday sight in bigger cities. Feelings towards beggars are negative which I can understand as there is no pride left when you beg. You are on the street and are very vulnerable. Poverty is seen a fault of your own, not a virtue. It is a stench and a shame to not have money. Opinions range from disgust to pity. As an artist I can relate to this. A poor artist is a bad artist, which thought has as much sense as the art scene in general. But still I am rich. I look rich because I have my teeth left and my clothes are new and I have a home. I can relate as I do not come from money and I make art at shoestring budget. There is creativity in being poor and I can afford to think this way. Having no money makes you innovative. I do not consider wealth a measure of man and I do think we should start consuming less. To learn to think having less a virtue is what I’m hoping to see. Biggest wealth is what a nation can do to its citizens and help them think that there are options for them to try out, that they are not destined to be beggars or what someone else tells them to be. Our destiny is not set by other people and where we come from.

Merciful and allowing kindness, non judgmental attitudes towards beggars resonate with our overflowing concern over the third world countries. Their state is what we feel guilty for, it is our doing in part, but how long should this guilt go on? How responsible are Finns for example for what happens in the world now? Our consuming of goods and lifestyle is a constant threat which includes facts about slavery and child labor, how much do we contribute to and how well can we be aware of exploitation? To be able to get ahead in life is not luxury it is a human right, to evolve on your own. Not be the child to be abused but taken care of, our responsibility is grave and dark. Of course we must be concerned, but what kind of help is the best kind? Do we support corruption and oppressive traditions when we give monetary help? For those who are oppressed and poor begging must be allowed, but it cannot be a without an end kind of method of earning. How much mercy there is and what does it mean when you give money? Are you doing something good for that other person or for yourself, you save yourself and the other perhaps? In Finland there were not many if at all beggars on the streets ten years ago, living without a permanent home in the cold on the mercy of others is a short life to which in Scandinavia some party will intervene. To intervene to destructive ways of living is one aspect of welfare state. Abandonment can happen by families but not by state. The Roma people are tightly dependent on their family structures and hierarchy there which cannot be questioned as harmful. Beggars beg for reasons we can guess what goes behind there is a matter of knowing and suspicious, a well grounded question. Begging is especially cruel for children for which I am most concerned about. The most important duty of any nation is to provide a basic education for its children and get them out from the streets. This child labor, abuse and a human rights violation is very acute all over the world. Despite all the natural and other riches nations may have child poverty is on the rise and they are the ones who suffer most. I do not have any empathy for people who put their kids on the streets to work may the work be prostitution, begging, playing music, washing car windows etc. Child labor is one of our major problems still even though there is clear evidence that educating all children is the benefit of all society. To give education is the safest bet and an investment for the future. People who have been working on the street since childhood probably will continue to do so in adulthood.

Poverty is a though one to escape and to change destitute life is unbearably hard but not impossible. To think it is impossible is to think fight is only for survival and that options are for the rich. In Finland punks beg money for beer in the summer and I can laugh about it. The Roma people come here to beg throughout the year which gets very cold and is not a healthy way to make a living. When families with children occupy the streets at the centre of the city, the busy corners reflect ways of life and how distant people’s lives can be from each other as distant as understanding of life and its purpose are. One wonders is this really how the Roma want to live, shouldn’t their kids be at school, and there comes someone telling me they have no option. So I conclude they are refugees. Why do they not see themselves as refugees? To criticise their way of living is for them cruel and unjust because they escape from oppression, this a repetition and the story, but it is vital for their survival, is always the answer, the same unchangeable. What else could they do and it is easy for me to say what I think. You beg money from me I can have an opinion. They do not think and see other options for themselves and their kids as they are a different class as the Roma of Finland seem to think of themselves as well, a race, a tribe. They see it difficult to live as the majority of people do and mutual respect is scarce. The best help sometimes is the understanding of facts and rules, admit that the world changes around, but you do not. What are you going to do about it?

It’s true to my mind to give money for them is supporting oppression Roma themselves are guilty of, a culture that forces its members to live in a certain way. Handout is giving ground for begging. Begging is about serious destitution, a culture where humans live without tomorrow and as it is allowed to happen is as such difficult to approve of. People are free to beg and continue to beg but not change their predicament in any way, there is something wrong with that and I can say it. The Roma clearly do not think or do not find any other way to make a living. Destitution shrinks one’s thinking and views on oneself. Among the Roma there is a thought that their lifestyle is sacred and they involve religion to begging which there is no business others to intervene or judge, people must help those in desperate need if they are true Christians. Forcing is not a Christian thing to do as is not stealing, lying and being incapable of helping oneself. To force someone to beg is slavery. Those who do not contribute and show compassion are cold-hearted and cruel, the Roma say. Education, evolution and change demand a certain degree of cruelty and pain. Those who stubbornly want to stay the same blame other people for their situation. Such denial is common anywhere. Feminists are blamed for making men feel inadequate and destroying families. If you are so useless what is the use of you? What people should learn is to help themselves not depend on other people to make them happy and give money. That is the way to go. This idea of making a living doing what they have always been doing is very telling of how stuck people are in their old ways of living without education. People who are oppressed in their own countries can apply for asylum. Surely options seem few under oppression, but they are few partly because there is not a seed of hope or thought for anything else. Thinking destiny is set because of your sex, origin, colour, religion etc. is yesterday’s doctrine that must not be obeyed today by anyone.

Denmark already has a very strict law against begging which is seen as fascist by many. Beggars who go to jail may have a chance for change. To my mind tradition of begging which continues from generation to generation is fascist. It is forcing a whole of community under one truth and one kind of way of living where women and children must obey and do what they are told. The Roma people are oppressed and rejected and begging is not helping their case, nor is living in vans or stealing from shops. As shocked as I was when they entered Finland a couple of years ago, the shock may be due to me having enjoyed the welfare state and possibilities it has offered. To remind you state providing its citizens is the best way for poor people to get ahead in life, such as myself, I have never had money to call myself rich. I do not get used to the idea there are people who base their whole existence being beggars. Roma people who usually beg in Finland ground the whole of their identity via this act of asking for daily income from people who pass them by. Communities that stay the same are doomed. Resistance is the only way. It has been the way for the poor to change the world and themselves.

What does it mean to be leftist? Calling of names or values?

April 4, 2016February 28, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

What does it mean when somebody calls you a cultural Marxist in the meaning of you are an enemy of your people and common good? It is devastating and incorrect. To be leftist is never against people nor common good. If that is what leftists do, they are doing wrong. To be called an enemy is something communists, Marxists and all defined on the left more or less usually encounter. It is no surprise since deep division between political parties and views grows the more unstable world becomes, the more violent the world gets. To set an enemy for yourself, to those whom you represent with your world view and values in real life or only in your imagination seems to be a basic method of choosing sides which method is to create imbalance, argument, reality and more division there already is. Who is against you, against your political views, plans, what there is to get, your values, your safety and position is your enemy in this conversation and game, real and virtual, where winners are the most loudest bullies who have the nerve and attitude to crush anyone who is in their way. To be leftist artist can mean that to work in the industry successfully one has to bend one’s principles and values, professional field which is politically on the right which people working in arts do not like to admit, may even deny any political inclinations and sympathy. It is so that many philosophers discussed within arts heavily question fascist ideas and way of life, what is right and where to stand. You can be in the mist and not know what is what, think and say the other, do completely different. It is confusing, as it seems. Can business ever be leftist? If one is willing to compromise in a field where pretending is a rule and setting the mood and image right are more important than what lies behind, more important than standing behind values such as human rights, worker rights and intellectual progress, intellectual integrity, one can succeed especially financially. To be leftist who stands behind what is right it means one has to be vocal about issues, give straightforward criticism to those who may not want it but desperately need it and object to fascist progress of thinking and rock the fascist state of things which is manipulative, conservative, greedy, hindering progress rather than supporting it, exclusive, arrogant and hierarchical. Left means all what is said and done must stand the light of day and all things said and done are done within the frame of good for all, for all people. Everything is political whether you deny it or not, despite of you.

To me leftist is uncompromising when truth must be found. Left is against fascism. It is never fascist. It is against exploitation, abuse, manipulation, oppression and rule of money. It does not get intoxicated by power. Being visibly leftist on social media has appeared to be similar as being feminist. One is immediately labelled difficult and against something that left is not against in the first place. There are strict pools for right and left and far-right is a clear bully who likes to label those it calls enemies. To be leftist means sticking to one’s ideals and speaking out despite bullies, trolls, haters and gamers who throw dirt, threaten and shame without second thought because there is this enemy side to which all human right activists for some reason belong. There is strict division between those who seek common good and peace and those who look for causing harm and gaining benefit for themselves, self-interest and loathing belong together.

It is a strange battle in which knowing definitions most strongly defend radical change despite the thrashing of the name Marx and all of the left. From where things originate is essential to learn. Names and definitions are the ones that get thrown at you mostly by people who do not know better. Marxist is the swear word to many. Marxism an ideology a curse to be abolished. Maybe it is enough a reason to be a Marxist. Misunderstanding, that happened in the past, still defines Marxism which is as it happened more against the people and justice having created inequality that it was not to do. Was Marxism invented by Marx himself? By the outcome definitely not. What does Marxism mean, when it can be manipulated to be fascist? Merely that there are flaws in the philosophy or how it is understood poorly or not at all, definitely there have been and are flaws in the conventions of governing and implementing ideas as they are without manipulating them. Origins of hate, names, ideas and wars win and spin, what and who wins? When rulers get rich but people do not the state of things is not on the left, maybe looking in the direction of the left as it is deported to concentration camps and prisons silenced and bullied. To be leftist means knowing the roots and meanings of terms and ideas used. Terminology is a battle field, ammunition, accusation and fault as is history. History is a sledgehammer but we do not learn from it. To know who stands on the right and defends right causes one has to listen what people talk, also listen to those with whom you do not agree. Marxism and communism having had the heavy load of atrocities, misuse and abuse, massacres, lies, exploitation of philosophy and ideas invented to make revolution of labor, of working people and human rights does not mean the essential ideas are useless, they have been implemented in wrong ways. Why are thoughts that were made to give power to those who do not have power, to those who are powerless without means to rise up, deemed bad and corrupt?

Crowds will have power when they learn to know how to use power of theirs collectively and correctly for good building peaceful society. What are those teachings and how does learning happen collectively? What is the corrupt part, I wonder. Where does it, a movement, a revolution, go corrupt and why working class should not have similar rights as the bourgeoisie, depending what those rights are? Enemy today is the venomous history remembered as a heavy book, a burden which it is. History which easily repeats the fire and force of Marxism used poorly and violently against those whom it is supposed to help. The heavy book forgotten because it is too long to study. Socialism and communism do appeal to those who are the most oppressed and may look for vengeance seeking their power which has been lost. To be wise with the power of working class can be found, reason is there when one does not give power to hate. Change can be hopelessly total destruction even compared to reality experienced and escaped, complete turnover is lethal when there is lack of compassion and knowledge. Subtle voluntary change exercised by all willingly sounds like a dream. It means there shall not be any politicians who would seek absolute power. Social reform does not happen quickly in places where there is no history of power of the working people used for them and by them.

Where rulers slaughter people of their own and are intoxicated by power philosophers are merely hammers in use to justify deeds done in the name of working people and freedom. It is a complicated question what left is today because it is without teeth in front of unemployment, corruption, chaos in the Middle East and future looking somewhat threatening.

Political left is seeking profound change in Europe as it is broken and divided instead of being united. Prejudice and stigma that there hovers above seems propaganda and something people who still think like it is the 1990s like to keep alive. The very basis of left still remains for those who stand on the side of protecting instead of destroying: human value exists without ownership, without money, money is not the ultimate measure of life, possession does not tell of human value, people live and must be allowed to live free and in peace regardless of the circumstances they come from and their background, regardless of status, wealth, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political views and occupation. It is at its core an aim to provide good living for all, a political ideology about sharing wealth in a way that there would not be handful of people who are enormously rich and there would not be a mass of poor people who cannot rise up because they are so poor and would be slaves to those who own the most of wealth and means to produce basic products, means to provide work, means to influence in politics and have power in decision-making. That there would not be poverty where there are no means to help oneself to rise up the ladder. Society cannot be set sustainably in a way that those who are the most well-off will survive and flourish because of their gained wealth and only those would prosper. If to make it would be and is so difficult in most of the world leftism has got work to do. When the only way to get ahead is that one should be equipped to fit and have wealth world will not be stable, people will not have stable healthy views on society and what being a human today is. Society that expects certain things of success, those who succeed have succeeded in advance, loses something important something that we cannot anticipate but will regret. It is variety, surprise and innovation that does not appear because of wealth but despite it. For all there must be tools to reach out for their dreams and succeed in life.

The postmodern left and the success of neoliberalism

http://linkis.com/libcom.org/library/y9N9i

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/g2689/most-powerful-photos/?slide=50

Canadian university partners with foreign mining firm and its checkered, colonialist legacy

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/campus-notes/2016/03/canadian-university-partners-foreign-mining-firm-and-its-checker?utm_content=bufferca185&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Then the question of affording something. When do we think about not having afford and why is that idea about lacking and inadequacy? Depending on need, is it a question of demand?

June 3, 2015March 6, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Lack of finance is the obvious reason, but still we get loans when we need to buy something more expensive than our resources allow us do and we think about buying something probably daily. Money is an addiction causing addictive behavior from which we cannot escape because our thinking and way of life is based on consuming, exchange of capital, possessions, debt, wealth, acts of selling and buying. When we begin to learn a new language the first things that are taught in foreign language are how one speaks in a situation of asking how much something costs, situations of exchange of money, to say please, thank you and of course the weather and where to travel. It would be strange and freeing if the first words one would learn in foreign language were to think about why we do what we do. My point being that without giving it much thought we teach people accept things without criticism without questioning and those who make books for schooling do not ever question the way things are done and so everything moves on as it ever has because those are the things we have to learn. What can we afford and how to ask for the price.

Thought of not visiting any shops may sound odd for people who are grown into a culture where shopping is basic way of expressing oneself, spending time and wealth or dreaming about wealth and objects wandering around malls. Shopping is to know that what one can afford maybe without thinking if one can afford. Act of shopping can produce pleasant feelings of purchasing, owning something new and exciting making the owner somehow better. When we cannot afford feelings of inadequacy easily creep in. Buying is giving a power feeling, person is somehow in power, in control of his or her life making experience of life to expand via things and usage of money, a pleasant situation. To have money and more one has it is giving the person a position from where the person can view on others and those who do not have the same. Opportunities may become more variable. If one sees the world made only via money what does it do to the idea of the making man who can and will, is rich in ideas and opportunities? Evaluation can begin. What is possible? What what is worth, how much a person is worth when that person has what she or he has. What is there to have?

Poverty is not a virtue. It is a fault, flaw, disgusting and making people sub-human, not worthy of addressing to, taken care of, provided for, listened to. In a world of money masters are those who have the most. Poverty is not a virtue anymore as it means person is not able to take part in the party of consumerism to be something. Without what are we?

Moral disaster

September 19, 2014March 8, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

The unbelievably horrible state of mankind is what we are looking at daily. How to comprehend it without sinking into despair and hate, into a world without hope? What other to do than to look at it, this destruction of man straight in the eyes? The eyes of the destroyer. What else, other than to be appalled by what people are capable of? Why are some people capable of mass murder in a blink of an eye, just like that with no remorse? How are people in a world that puts few up and a mass in poverty? Is it just life?

Injustices happening all over all the time do not seem to lessen nor becoming less violent, quite on the contrary. Value of human life is a concept like sand, it itches, gets in your shoes, makes dunes and deserts. It is there, but what can you do with it? How do you understand it? That something, that someone whom you do not know, but who irritatingly exists. What do you do to that existence, that valuable and yet to that nothing that seems to multiply endlessly? That is what millions and millions of people are to authorities, to those who have power, who have money, arms, forces and contacts; slaves without any human rights, who can be mutilated, abandoned, killed and forgotten.

Part of the world today is such that people are executed in public and bodies left dead and displayed for people to see for days. That part of the world has a different meaning for life, why we are here and what is the meaning of human life. A life where each of us has a meaning to serve god. This is what I am told and evidence of this is clear. But to me only god visible is human. People serve people with so-called mandate from god. What is happening is very godless. People are evaluating what human life is worth and who serves who. People are brainwashed to believe god has something to do with mass slaughtering and that there are unfaithful infidels who deserve to die. This kind of insanity has no end. Absolute belief that knows no variety, no mercy, no other than redemption by death is a dead-end itself.

DIY

January 26, 2014February 27, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

How to end extreme poverty and why it has not ended already?
How to end poverty of mind and emotion?
How to give compassion room?
When is collective love going to happen? Why is it an illusion? Why is it naive?
What could collective love, caring and sharing be globally and locally? How could compassion be taught and kindness be appreciated?

When facing death it is difficult to dare.

To seek social change in the means of art, feminism and pacifism is demanding task to take up. It is a battle and the opposition is bigoted patriarchal power of money and circles of buddies. One is persistent to find nonviolent methods and understand meaning of nonviolence, difference between hurt and unhurt, what kind of behavior is hurting and try to avoid it. It takes creativity and character to fight nonviolently and believe it is effective. To act violently is very direct and simple. It requires psychological tools to evaluate violent behavior in oneself and others. It requires self-criticism, self-reflection and will to change. To change is hard work and it expects one to know what is wrong. Violence verbally, mentally, socially, physically, environmentally, culturally happens as a rule and is very much a learned behavior pattern. It is an everyday practice and very much approved survival game which we play. We are ruled with mental violence and constant threat. Modern threats displayed for us daily in media like unemployment, poverty, terrorism and immigration. In media future is made to look like an unknown scary place to which we go scared and probably unprepared. With this way of living it will be a scary place, no doubt. How do we confront the other and what is the difficulty in confronting oneself? What is the social platform we can interact with, what is the game we do, make and like to call ours, what is the life worth living. What is the violent deed there is, is the assumption how people should live, image given by media, movies, cultural heritage and celebrity culture. Nonviolence means prohibiting physical and mental hurt, torture and bullying. How can I make active living revolution? Write about it explosively, radically making inspirational working mental riot?

Poverty is wasting human resources.

November 15, 2013February 19, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

How does powerlessness manifest itself in everyday life and how does it become to show. To some extent and in some situations riots do have their place in making social change. They make dramatic visual material for the News and for social media. For some riots are fun, but firstly they are desperate situations where alternatives to act otherwise are few. Cases when obedience seizes to function we must disobey. To understand birth mechanisms of rioting we have to understand situations of individuals, emotions and options which anger that trigger to set a full-scale violent action. Question is can revolution and drastic social change be achieved without violence?