To set oneself on fire: Emotions in making revolution. Why do we cry?

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.

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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This is war. Essay.

THE TRIGGER WIRE FOR THE BOMB THAT HAD EXPLODED EARLIER IN THE DAY IN A PLACE LIKE N

series of drones on watercolour, Observation point, 2016-17

5.1 Emotional mapping and finding the ways of existing: war against nature and what is human nature. An effort trying to understand human nature in relationship to nature and growing from the natural.
5.2 Who is saving what? What is there left to be saved? What is worth saving? The constant worry of survival and for the future.
5.3 Mass destruction: warring and whoring. What is it all about?
5.4 Face of war

 

5.1 Emotional mapping and finding ways of existing: what is human nature? An effort trying to understand humans in relationship to others, us and nature and growing from the natural, evolving and superficial.

THE KILLER ELITE and Many of the men who disappeared, fingerprints of the men. They never saw them again. It was as if the men had vanished.

Bullet riddled body, his family searched for
his body to no avail
demolished the orchard’s walls with explosives; the trigger wire for the bomb that had exploded earlier in the day in a place like Nerkh, the shooting of a child is unremarkable for everyone but the family.

he would recite verses from the Quran and think of his children.
the Americans had arrested him, they sent a delegation of elders to the police chief venomously anti-American

poem after article https://www.rollingstone.com/interactive/feature-a-team-killings-afghanistan-special-forces/  by Matthieu Aikins November 6th 2013 in detail story what has been going on in Afghanistan after US attack and war 2001.

(Of course, they knew what was happening in repeat.) [10.]

Why does it, what we do, what happens in the world by us, depend on how we see ourselves? It is how we see ourselves is what we are? Our perception is vital for us, we are trapped by visuals. We are the centres, shells, attention seekers and we have a need to be seen and recognised. We must see with our own eyes to witness and believe (does seeing mean understanding? We understand individually from our own perspectives, how correct any perspective is and how blurry and mixed with assumptions and bias.). I ask knowing our perception and comprehension are distorted and guided, also how we see ourselves is and what we demand for and of ourselves. Our perception of the world is made through our senses and understanding of what our senses and experiences tell us, also by what we are being told. Many look but do not see; we do not have the time, we are not interested, we search for something special without finding it etc. How perception of ourselves is made in the end is a lot of factors, as is what we should be. We like looking at ourselves, but do we see the person how layered we are, we want to be and others to see, want to see in us value, what we are is what we should be or not at all usually. What do we understand and don’t is a matter of understanding that we are flawed and our perception is filtered, as this concerns everything we do and how we evolve as persons and build up, it is important to acknowledge weaknesses in our vision, perception, understanding, knowing, learning.

Being easily guided or being a person of your own have a lot to do with what do we dare to think, say and do. How we see and observe ourselves and others is curious in terms of understanding and learning, thinking we know what is possible to make happen and what happens in the world by us and others, what happens in relation to the learned, known, new and old. We act and behave the way we understand we can, should and/or must, ourselves being what is true to us. Of course this can be falsely said as many are not true to themselves, do not know themselves, which as weird as it sounds happens to larger extent than we like to admit. We are a mass and very preferably stay in the safety of that crowd. The world is therefore now our image and object, a lie or plain factual reality, the truth. Our psyches, fears, emotions and expectations reflected and put in practice, understanding being our quest as individuals, a community in a place trembling. Bodies and desires lay out in the open to those who can read such signs, in display for us to do something about and use, abuse, construct anew, go after, if we wish (what do we wish other than safety?), but being incapable and somehow lost at the same time. This incapability is what strikes out as important, what is it we cannot do and learn?

Dystopia for the future is waiting to happen since we are abusing and destroying the earth, ourselves and other beings over and over again until nothing else is left but dirt and wrecks of people trying to survive. Image is cinematic and somehow constantly present (not so far-in-the-future science-fiction?). Tortured minds, sand, machinery and mutilated bodies, death and drought but innovations of men, a constant state of battle and survival in brutally new circumstances (I don’t think it is the good-looking people in LA who will survive or is it so they have all the money?) Although we are aware of doing differently now might have a beneficial impact, many choose not to. It is our decision and path to not profit all; throw-away culture is a party. It is always the next thing that is interesting, still be safe and feel good, know yourself. Risking these might make you lose. So we will perish by our own doing at large-scale and cleaning up is not something many consider a good job. It is again something out of sight. It is conscious decision-making and choosing, knowing our destiny which is our destruction, to be destroyed en-masse which can happen because of war, poor economic choices, illnesses, running out of food and clean drinking water: safety will be gone or very pricey. To profit from this is what evil men do, right? Expensive medical costs, privatisation of water supplies and housing, polluting natural resources etc. Happens all the time. To think further is to see what is there for us, for us is what always is there to be considered primarily. We act upon what is our interest. Who is this us? We become from having, we need a lot and we like to form groups in terms of wealth and benefits. It is our worth how much we have and we are measured by this trait. Who are successful and greedy for it are seen as winners. We make from what we have got and also from what we do not have. Such division does not end at ground school, but do we have different dreams? Of course. To be able to profit the most is a skill seen valuable and clever. To live is to win, know what is there to win and feel powerful about, who can be powerful and how power functions, power being practiced by becoming the what we value the most, how we structure societies is about power, markets and whom they serve. It can be said it is our nature to be violent, selfish and via that be powerful. When looking at the evidence, the history of man, capabilities of fists, schemes and innovations, taking over by force is what we do well, invading. Evidence is there, we know what comes of being violent, but how does it influence decision-making today? Wise on the most part, strict, calculating, manipulating, knowing of the results when making decisions and options which multiply as we make complexity although we love simplicity and easiness obviously? Thinking for yourself is a drag and takes a muscle.

Using the known the somehow understood power position is to share power, but how sharing happens and what does it contribute to: how do we want to benefit from sharing or not sharing power and how monitor the power usage and its effects? One can radiate power (one can be a sunny smiling dictator), it is curious how a person takes up one’s personal power, understands it and uses it, how it happens the power of one. To absorb power, used and learned, feel the power that there is around, make it, maintain and keep it. Power is violence and it is care. To think it as energy that needs to be controlled, preserved and which is a necessity. How to share power to preserve and multiply its potential?

To be violent, disciplined and orthodox is to know how, what can and must be demanded in order to show wanted results for organising society to work long in to the future. It is a very direct and straightforward close-up needed in order to be militant, precise and the whole society to function as an army, morally weight choice to erase originality and creativity can make a mass a power house. To bring light to the darkest corners is to appreciate power as an equalizer. Those who object can be put to danger or opposition can bring the wanted push for progress spreading empowerment across the society in the name of freedom of speech. So, why does brutality repeat although we know the wrong and the right, I assume we do. It is a decision of whether the one person is granted his or her right to choose a life, life which originates from individuality or do all people serve the nation and live for the nation. Because we are liking the violent nature of ours and the results of this part we see in the world or is it the wrong kind of people who seek power and the power they use is the most effective kind, we tend to live for the system because it is an easy choice? Human nature and mind is glorious, godly, innovative, dark and violent, to suppress this makes us more human?

Human mind is many things, uncontrollable, when people feel free to choose and use their power, for many dangers lie just there, the power is what people individually choose. We enjoy it so much, the results of shared power, that there are decisions made for us for our protection, that we like too much of this comfort. God’s part in using violence sounds ancient in this world, God which we should fear is far away. Watching dying and death feels bad, we feel guilty of not doing enough to stop the killing in the world, powerless in front of death, suffering of others and being afraid of it, of ourselves for not doing anything about it. It is a luxury to be able to do and think freely, it is divine. To see the world in need of saving and of course it is in need, we are being ourselves, in need, and we create by living freely the need for nature and human nature to be healed: we end up going in circles very much all the time. It is a pattern of going under and rising up emotionally. Be left alone and uncivilised, marginalised, is to be saved and destroyed at the same time. It may be the inevitable outcome, strangest progress in radicalization, turning process of balance to imbalance, there is that we possibly become more aware of the consequences of our actions, or we should be and we learn when we must. Knowing makes destruction more effective, but also possible reconstruction. Maybe we are understanding progress wrong at the moment and the future is more and more in the dark which causes fears.

Question is what do we see worth saving, worth our effort, how do we define the valuable, worth knowing and learning about, worth leaving untouched and unspoiled as we calculate what is worthless we like leaving behind, defining what is garbage, what is worth our attention and learning about. We must be having things that are of value and that is our worth, to know and have, this is what I have understood. How long can we abstain from loving the feeling of owning and what is the worthless we discard? Why there is desire to use all there is to use and rush to another place and do the same? Everything and all what one can grab is part of human nature or is it the nature in us for us to find balance via hierarchy, spreading like cancer to the extent of intolerable and unjust and collapsing? Is it a basic need, greed of man, fulfilling what we are and lacking instantly, fulfilling instantly giving pleasure, a rush of being able to have and be somebody, taking all the chances and space there possibly is? Who stand accused of and in line, because we like to practice violence towards every living thing and call it justified because we can? Traditions and needs of becoming a success story show on images online: posing in front of killed wildlife like a noble man, posing like a true beauty lies in a hunt and being able to shoot, manifesting happiness and luck, wealth, adventurous character and mind. That lifestyle is for the rich. The poor kill to survive. To bring honor is to become rich in experiences and be admired as such keep us as species thriving on one way lane, as posers. The world is here to be saved, owned, had and ruined by us for us and there is heroism there. State of the world is the state of ours, to save ourselves from ourselves may be impossible. To save or ruin and a possession of ours to use as we wish, life, to have a life and live it. We doing what we wish with it when all we want is freedom, livelihood and opportunities. Idea of a free man is to be a conqueror, an emperor. Native tribes originally thought/think the earth does not belong to humans, but we grow from it as parts of nature as natural and profoundly insignificant, which to the first world humans can be and is an intolerable thought. As natural as we can be and is what we should understand what it means in everyday life, we defy this, but desire the natural as strength and vitality which we have lost and found again and again. What is taken from the earth must be returned, but is not. We may lose sight of what we take as it is ours in our minds, we do not know nature anymore and what can be returned is not natural anymore but toxic, inorganic and harmful and this progress is difficult to change, still we talk about and demand change. It happens all the time. It happens when forced for the good, when faced the destruction. Earth has balance of its own which we

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should follow and respect, that is the wisdom. Is protecting the environment and human rights hindering our freedom to explore, profit and innovate? Yes, regulations and laws are supposed to bring obstacles that bring corporations to think how ethical business can be profitable, how sustainable products sell. Who has time to be wise these days, who is the guru of the today’s world? Wisdom is slow, progress/change/evolution today in part is fast and also partial. Business world has taken up position of the gurus, wisdom in life and the quotes, narratives, success stories, miracles. Surely wisdom and the market are not opposite to each other, we seek wisdom via products, we find salvation through this religion we have found. What we can understand as valuable progress must be visible for the consumers to understand it as progress and get excited about it to buy it. What happens to progress of man-made structures that keep societies moving, growing and living, what is that progress all about that is quite short-sighted?

Nature takes care of us, we should take care of it, the nature, the ultimate power, is the wisdom we constantly leave behind, forget and ignore. There is beautiful complexity in the organic world. Nature and tragedy of abuse is we cannot repeat complexity of nature, of ours and do not understand complexity to appreciate the infinity of nature, layered human mind. Truth in traditions of aboriginals and natives remind us, we are small parts of the whole, dangerous, but nature is more dangerous when we don’t know it. To learn to trust, respect and read nature, live with it and learn from it, is something we begin to forget since we do not hunt our food and do not spend most of our days looking for something to eat and place stay at. Just because we don’t live in nature, from it directly and we do not have the time, but yet we are dependent on it. Why has western civilization come to think easiness is the best thing and travelling to Mars is a brilliant idea? Again looking somewhere else, the further the better. To think everything is for sale, a trip is something to have, to have it all where we should aim at and see running forward full speed admirable? By inventing money-making tactics, mathematics and trade, methods of conquering and creating of the unstoppable machine which is us, civilizations have become booming and crashing; we go up fast and come down as fast, or faster, the easier exploitation and lying is the more difficult changing the whole society for better is. We wish to expand and grow, search for opportunities, which is good, that makes us opportunists. It is somehow a naturalist way of living, kill or be killed, win or lose, taking risks keeps us alive mentally and physically. So in a way we are practicing our nature. If you do not move ahead and win in this game, someone else will. Today what does it means to act out (as we are performers) in civilized manner in civilized world, in a world of excessive need to produce new, cultivate the culture of easiness and seemingly high performance: exploit, mal use, discard to get a new one, because we can and are unable to repair, unable to make another one for ourselves, can make our world malfunctioning at one point. Something about the easiness and effortlessness we like and complexity we do not control is where we stumble. To observe the day now, nature is outside of us as hostile and dirty. We like naturalness as a copy, to wear and something made for us, shaped for us, but we are disgusted and fearsome when nature comes too close in form of insects, menstruation, nipples and weather. As we ‘evolve’, nature becomes unfamiliar to us, it attacks us with force. Is nature at war with us since we have been warring against nature all along as it seems or is it just a natural state of being, a cycle where destruction is inevitable to renewing?

We need to stay healthy, living in clean environment is a right and nature is in this sense a friend of ours as it is the healer, calming our minds, busy bodies and repairing itself after us (just like in Chernobyl). In nature and with help of nature we can find ourselves and become whole again is the mantra. Nature is the sellable product we must find, from where we find the cure, which we come close to like a product to smell and apply on skin. We are scared of the beast, the amount of abuse is we see it our right  to harness the dragon, don’t see it as abuse and we fail to understand how far we can go and what is this trip about. We miss what it is to go far as we call life a journey, spiritual travelling, a trophy of having a life in luxury, a deed of travelling to clear ocean. Oneself can be too far from oneself, it scares to be close.

It is a very emotional issue to think about nature since it brings us joy, memories, emotions, pleasure, honor, food, spirituality, experiences and winnings: our winnings are all from nature. We want it badly as a possession, it brings us pride, is our extension. We don’t want it to be what it really is and be close to us naturally on skin because we may not know what it does. It is beauty, incredible work of creation and the opposite of control and strict purity we like. Nature is surprising to the extent it is too much of excitement. What we want to see in nature is what it represents to us and gives us, cuteness and waterfalls, what we constantly find in nature is a mystery and awe. Awe I feel while watching the ‘uncivilized’ nature, full-blown without human set limits, the uncontrolled infinite one making itself over and over again with and without people. As much as we know of our planet, it is divine and a mystery, sacred and unknown. To be lost there and here is the horror image, disaster movie in a dark wet forest.

Despair, the negative, leading to finding paths, solutions. Emotions to be avoided like being lost and being totally alone, something felt strongly of wanting, a hand is not reaching far enough. Like admitting failure is to be desperate, of not being good enough, not fulfilling expectations. We are controlled by feelings more than is good for us, we have emotional necessities and constraints. We are in our believed wit and reason firstly emotional and chemical beings, which is reason enough to know and believe nature’s work in us. Instincts, intuition, sensing and feeling, chemistry of our hormones make us what we are, part of nature. What makes us humans is this complexity which we like to simplify as it is too much to take and tolerate. A blocking dead-end feeling of no other choice but to accept our ‘animal’, the nature within our human frame. To deal with it, the ways are and have been many, matters of life and death, who is human enough. There are constant surprises and they are the normal or should be. The tragedy of norms is we must fit into them. We make and invent

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solutions and means somewhat hopeful but narrow, because we must (that is the human nature restrained into proper), when there is no other choice than do what one feels, practice civil disobedience, trust the power of one’s own, the power within, the better judgment of one’s own and knowledge of one’s own possibilities and options there are for anyone to go against.

5.2 Who is saving what? What is there left to be saved? What is worth saving? The constant worry of survival and for the future.

Despair, the extremely negative emotion, unbearable hopelessness, emerges when a nation starts a war. When attacked and when going after against another nation, defending something or for whatever reasons, conquering a piece of land, having the right to revenge there, defend what one has. Moving ahead as world police saying God is on our side and approving of war for this reason and we are mighty because of God’s approval, empowered by the divine. Desperate sounding as there is little left to hope for those under attack or for those who hesitate to the part of God in warring. An attack against is the only option to preserve national pride at cost of lives and mayhem. We must do something risking everything we have for our future and for what we believe in, that is what we are and stand for as People. Despair of people who seek for the better life, who are not satisfied for what they have got, where they are to or what they have become may be a war-like situation, such as in many countries ravaged by gangs and drug lords. Despair of people who seek for empowerment, safety and success no matter what. Despair of those who try to put the world on a right track to save it and us. Despair of the selfish, and despair of the selfless under circumstances and coincidences and as a basic feeling motivating us, contradicting. To save the world for a flourishing paradise, for it to remain a paradise, which it still is without fear of death and misery which could be a lot for many. Despair being the leading emotion mixed with anger, hate, envy, greed and rage in doing, at the moment, at least when one follows the news, emotions are at display and used to describe situations of people, justifying actions for the viewer to feel for those who suffer and we pay attention to feelings of others, what they make us feel. Are their feelings justified or their actions? Sounding so cynical, but what else can we do?

I’m not sure if people recognize their emotions, why wouldn’t they is the first thought. How much hate dictates people, disgust is used as a shield and a divider. How people have the inside to feel, give and contemplate why they feel they do, how irrational it is; what is this feeling for and what to do with it. It is an absurd thought why wouldn’t we know what we feel, but often true. But it is one cornerstone of psychotherapy to learn to articulate and address especially to oneself how one feels, why and what do feelings mean, what triggered the feelings and thoughts and what these do to oneself, feelings arising because of what happens, how one has felt because of how someone spoke, why one feels the way one did when someone ignored one and how one feels about people and oneself now about what has happened, what one has experienced in life by people, by oneself and how does one perceive one’s part, a victim or a violator, a bystander, an average consumer, a rightful citizen, an underdog. How could one know someone else if one does not know oneself? That is many times why despair and fear take place when we do not know what is going to happen to us, everything is lost in a moment and why bad things happen to good people. Knowing too much can be a desperate and agonising place as is not knowing, knowing emotions and how they rule us is useful in terms of living healthy balanced lives and what we pass of ourselves forward. What there is to know, what is good to know and how to place these pieces rationally in everyday life is wisdom.

Fright won’t do when one needs to get something done properly, move ahead and in a new way. One can either succeed beautifully or lose miserably, but you tried, promised by Satan lurking. Risks we take and have taken have shaped our world. Try again. We are active by nature which we tend to forget. Our moods depend on activating the body. We are doers, makers, achievers, masterminds and ancestors of those who have taken steps, moved around and taken leaps looking ahead not knowing what might happen. Without something we see worthwhile doing and have a burning interest, without desire to evolve, without curiosity, our investigating nature, we would not be where we are now. To learn to use curiosity for our benefit not just to find out but become. Saving dignity, preserving a legacy, achieving those is to be heroic, staying put is for those who are satisfied with what they have got. Something indestructible and sacred like a blessing is still within the explorer and conqueror. It is to say I want to do good, be good in the eyes of others as well as in mine and doing good makes me feel good about myself. I want my life to be part of doing good for humanity. Find norms of doing good is probably the common path to choose from. Good is a

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human thing to do most might say. What is bad then? Is it animal behaviour as we like to think? Animal instincts make us do cruel things? How does punishment fall upon us, fear of being punished and abandoned for immorality? To keep us in place is to wage fear and shame. It is easy to find and know what the good things are, worth preserving and use of propaganda is to create division and illusions of good and bad. Still those good things aren’t self-­evidently saved and prized. Rescuing is a well-meaning term and act of a kind heart as is to save a life a heroic deed. With heroism we can go on thinking wholehearted patriotism of the good people, who have chosen to do good and be good, call themselves good because they stand on the good side. They have it and easily continue warring against bad people, against something truly evil. Is it a very Christian thing to do? Pride or hurt happens to patriots and religious people so easily, defence and attack are there as tools, opposites fighting to win who is the most. Opposites disliking each other as they are in each other’s eyes the evil-doers and spreading ill. Do we ultimately save bodies when we save lives or do we save souls and persons, to whom these tasks of saving fall on in the end? Do we save and preserve because it is a good thing, socially acknowledged, because we are bound to take care of each other or because role of a savior brings glory or all of those things? Am I again being cynical here or are social media and double standards having the best of me? What does human life consist of is a complex web of sides of having life and living. Preserving life, the organic, bloody and then facing death evidently. To be given life, be thankful for it and which no one should take away or end. We act for the good of all by saving someone from suffering. To do good may help that other to continue do good.

Emotional in the news by the news made dramatic watched by, responded only when disaster hits close. The viewers to either respond or ignore, have rapports as background noise: they are all the same. We are spectators and documentators of what happens, of disasters we cannot do anything about, but feel guilty about, we must know of them and think how fragile life is, how horrible things people can do. What a viewer feels while watching the news, what is the stand of a spectator or a documenting bystander? How important it is to know how feelings dictate us, witnessing the massive hit against a mass of people, how are we manipulated by the media and what are respectable feelings before the commercial break. Why does it look like it is very often irrationality and cynicism manifesting itself, presenting itself perfectly as the rational? How something very rational as Western modern straight monoculture can turn into being irrational and disastrous, or has it been like that all along all the time. Something we have been afraid to acknowledge and see, the lunacy of ours in disguise. Modern mixed with Christianity tightly like the Middle Ages mixed with superstition and living along with cyber space technology makes progress look shallow. Denying our mental illness-like faith in God’s word, which illness is something out from demons that normal good people do like to worship? Mental illness is something to be hidden as dangerous, normally, something to be hushed and killed away, saying that we all are a bit crazy in a funny way, which on other hand means something liberating.

Crusades ongoing today in our world appear crazy on any scale, crazy being a word in normal use just as OMG. There are quite a number of people who have a very good and high opinion of themselves, but they do hateful acts in repeat just by talking and consuming. Rightfully in their eyes for some reason they fail to see hate in their actions or see hate as justifiable because they have been wronged or hating feels good: I love to hate.

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We as humans are in a situation where we have no other choice than to discard ways that are corrupting, destroying the earth and ourselves. That is not a little tiny thing to do, because admit doing wrong is extremely difficult firstly. And to do this globally, understanding the importance of acknowledging, engaging in collectively without wanting something out of it financially. Meaning and happening of change globally will be the biggest event in history of mankind and how to change when we talk about it constantly is the big question mark. Who wants to change, what is to change and what kind of change are we making all the time? I say this because there is not much time. In fact, we do not have time, but we love to be in a hurry, don’t we? To be in a hurry is a luxury and a marker of status. You are needed and important, you are making something, you are visible. Western way of living has come to an end of one kind. It sounds sad in a way and  it is very, because it will be extremely difficult to change our habits, strategies, beliefs, desires and ways of thinking. Way of thinking of knowing the absolute right has come to an end, ways of closed circles that cannot be entered. Change is think anew what we need. If you are not able and willing to rethink you are doomed. We are at that end which is a train. What saving operations am I talking about and which ones will count?

Why would I help anyone and how do I help myself are some key questions in today’s world. Western consuming and living in luxury is an ideal, has been and still is seen as something to reach out for and dream about. We do not have much hope unless we do radical altering in thinking of value, worth and price, price of living, value of life and culture of aiding, sharing and gaining. This is my realistic view to it and it demands a drastic amount of work because in our interest is what do we benefit from doing anything. Our contribution now being an endless production of human waste filling earth and we must invent ways of what to do with it. The shit we make and why we make it, what is it with excess that is so alluring. This goes for everyone, this I hope, weighing in the options and how we want to look like in other people’s eyes. There is continuing false thinking that one person does not count or matter, what do my doings make in a big world. Him and her do matter, everyone. To change what we practice now, overproduction of junk does not mean just recycling and cycling. It means stopping altogether of overusing. Halting under growth demands and never stopping comparison to each other is impossible. What does it take to change an intolerable way of living and thinking? Probably a disaster.

First it takes seeing what are the things that are in mass use doing the most harm. Then we observe how many willingly would give up for example eating meat, which is a major question in food production what comes to people’s health and preserving the environment. Meat production’s need for energy, water and field space to produce food for us, food we don’t need, is intolerable. Meat is a very expensive source of protein and nutrition. Meat production is in many ways wasting of resources, not to mention cruelty done towards animals, which are often treated as emotionless objects without consciousness. Objects to fulfill our needs for leather and steaks. The amount of feed given to animals would feed a substantial amount of hungry people. Again, it is a question of habits and traditions. What we eat and how we eat, as is where do we eat. Is it a treat to go to McDonald’s and is it seen as fun luxury to be part of a culture that is for maximum fun and consuming? How valuable do

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we perceive meat to vegetables and what does meat-eater think of him/herself. Accommodation and food production are the most important necessities we need to keep up to keep on living. To not have those every day is a personal disaster. For millions not having those every day is a disaster that is not done enough to. There are several reasons leading to not having these basic needs fulfilled. Mostly due to unemployment, homelessness, war, corruption, poor social structures, indifference and inadequate health care. The United States is an interesting example what comes to poverty, food supply, traditions, habits, wasting resources, making war and global politics combined with religious and patriotic beliefs. The US has a tremendous impact on all of the world politically, entertainment industry included (I see it as politic making machine and part of the national propaganda machinery of the US). So far, the nation has been a leading force and molder of finance markets as any other markets there are globally. If there is talk people not liking Americans, there probably is a good reason. American policies have been (mildly put) arrogant and totalitarian despite hegemony of loving democracy and freedom. American way of life is alluring and tempting for many as it seems what it says to be: free. The American Dream on screens and images is everywhere. how do we find freedom there? According to statistics American Dream is out of reach for millions of Americans themselves. On Feeding America website there are stats showing one face of America, which is devastating to read. Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, there are 49.7 million people living in poverty. 3.1 million more than is represented by the official poverty measure (46.6 million) 2011 [1.] Figures are enormous even in a country of 300 million people. How well do these people living in poverty find their way out of their situation depends on how they find work, place to study and live, how bad is their situation to begin with and what kind of networks do they have to help them cope. If every diploma has a substantial price tag, poverty continues to flourish as ever. There are different states of poverty which vary around the globe and for which reasons are harsh. There is a definition of absolute poverty or destitution, which refers to deprivation of basic human needs. Lack of clean water, lack of food, shelter, health care and sanitation. Relative poverty is defined contextually as economic inequality in society. Societies led by the few wealthy and with corporal dictatorship economic inequality tends to be substantial. Poverty can be profitable and serve interests of the wealthy. [2.] Absolute poverty is a problem which seems to stay in the certain areas of the world. This is basic knowledge to most people, problem areas have continuous problems growing worse, knowledge of where poverty exists and why and who should feel guilty of the situation, what could and should be done, how much aid is helpful, what is the help needed and when people should learn to help themselves. Major question is why nonstop problems keep on existing and growing to the extent and devastation they do? Why people stay poor, hungry and desperate and what is the role of bad leadership in this. It is huge. Lack of education, gender inequality, corruption, lack of democratic politic making, extreme weather conditions, poor health care, poor housing and no work are signs of dead-end places. All in all, lack of future prospects, opportunities and

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sustainable welfare keep on existing.

A girl born in brothel in India or in Bangladesh will most likely become a prostitute. In documentary Whores’ glory (2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhgpTrgLYt4 directed by Michael Glawogger a brothel owner (woman) states this as a clear future prospect, also to a child of hers and there is nothing to it, there aren’t any other choices. Prostitution is likely to be a future profession of many boys and girls born in extreme poverty without chances getting out of being poor. Without care, education, functioning inexpensive health care and support from the government situation remains. Charity is not enough and it is not lasting or a constructive method to remove poverty. How a nation deals with social issues and looks after its people plays a big role in dealing with poverty and other problems following. Support can mean a community that helps every individual in that community on their feet and is open to people wanting to join that community. A functioning community is open to learning, facts, opinions, ideas, change and difference.

Community of a brothel is based on caring of women of whom nobody cares for. An equal and evolving nation does not resist change on any level, does not abandon anyone, works together for everyone’s well­being, also it does not lean on brothels to take care of people in their basic needs. In poor countries there may be a thriving middle ­class and advanced technology in use, but wealth achieved does not trickle down to all parts of the society. In this way middle ­class abuses poor by neglecting the mass of ‘hopeless cases’ who are miserably left aside and felt disgusted by. Stigmatizing the poor, the working poor, is an everyday practice and creating a level of look-alike glory and class is a way of using power where just anybody does not enter. One way of doing this is to keep power in the hands of the rich only telling it is justified and right and they earned their place. People having parliamentary office are often the rich pushing causes of their own and their ‘friends’. In this picture politics sucks big time and corruption flourishes. If corruption is seen as a good way to move ahead why change the situation. To seek equality and peaceful action between people and nature could be the best way, but it seems to be the most difficult and less lucrative. There are some radical contradictions in the picture to salvation and glory. First what is salvation, how we pursue it, how we select which ones are worthy of rescuing and how we place grounds for saving. In order to be saved something has to be gone wrong. Our inhabiting the world the ways we do being one major threat and a violent act against nature, against ourselves. What is what and being rightfully ours should be argued. Us is against us, we are against other beings, it is a constant battle. Genius is the most cunning one. It is a place of excellence to put oneself above, to the place of righteousness, of knowing and having force and might over. People who have placed themselves on pedestals to have leadership have fought for it, have wanted it badly. It is one way of evolving and building cultures, to follow something, someone who knows where to go and how to do it fast. How long does the master last on that mastering spot?

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Our animal instincts show best in a life-threatening situation, us panicking, nurturing our babies, wanting to survive, fighting. Our bodies and minds function accordingly with what we have learned. There is the thought that being led by emotions is animal-like behavior. Oddly according to the idea of world owned by man, animal-like instincts are the ones that keep us alive. We live in a world of separation, world which is divided into the first and the third world. Stages, progress and order of white man, order of privileges and most of all order of power and wealth. The privileged people and the unfortunate ones living in an impossible world where injustice is more a rule and we think we are very human in our reasoning, winning, beating and conquering. Which ones of us are the first in line of needing to be saved and being rescued and from what? How do we save ourselves from ourselves?

We are obligated to help to a certain extent. We offer what we have and do what we can. What else there is to life than assistance since we live with each other and are dependent on. Decisions to make how to aid, what is necessary and a human responsibility to give aid when you can are constantly figured out. How much do we let our pride dictate our capabilities to aid, how our self-worth and position is in comparison to others and how much there is division between people in helping and caring? Can you help someone who is at the bottom of a gutter or are you disgusted? How much do you think it is your duty to help? Where does the limit go and at what point it does not concern you? In welfare the state has a role of a saver of those who are unable to save themselves. It also is problematic in the sense that the role of helping is tossed to the state so much so that people begin to think helping others does not concern me. To think that there have been more or less desperate attempts in the name of saving the world is again image from movies. We are swamped with problems and pleas for help, all under constant threat. Amount of issues that have gone horribly wrong is immense.

It is one of the strengths of biblical message that God and good is and lives in every one of us and by saving one you save the sacred. Attempting to help someone in need is saving the holy. Interesting question is how much religion has got to do with our savior position and need for salvation and glorifying ourselves. How much Holiness and idea of the sacred direct us to do things for others. What comes to religion it is a collective binding thing and bringing people together, on the other hand religions have torn the world apart. Separation and bringing people together the non believers, believers of different religious faiths has bloody history. In the name of God, God is on our side, by right of God, God saves, God justifies killing, God above, in God we trust. These are phrases used to let us bear in mind reasons to do things, how they should be done, why

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do anything, they justify our existence and makings. We have God’s word and blessings on our side. Still in use in most of the world, in the US as well as in the Muslim world the sword of God, justice and judgment of God. True believers like to build barriers between different kinds of people of faith, abolish difference, which is a threat to the community and what is acceptable, barriers against those without faith and so on.

West is driven by interests of finance, to prosper in the eyes of God, God of war, vengeful God, our God is a jealous God, he is on our side whatever we do as long as it is his will. Word of God is a powerful tool in the process of justifying deeds of the chosen people.

It is clear people acknowledge we need saving because life is problematic as it is, due to human psyche and needs and whatever circumstances we might have. Randomness of life can be unacceptable. We need to continue living, struggle is for learning, becoming and be forgiven hopefully. I can’t help of being cynical when thinking about good promises of saving the word and the act of giving. We, humans are the ones who need constant saving because we are sinners. We are forgiven by God, so what is hell for? We are desperate for being saved, being told we are good as we are and blessed. It is hardcore rescuing of souls and minds needed to mend our bad doings, to save something that is good and figure out what the good is. The world and its saving operation as it is in us and outside us, becomes sensible, possible and actually realistic in religious context. It is sorrowful, desperate and in the same time joyful situation to witness hopeful collective understanding arise which has got to do with faith and mystery of life. But does religion change ethics, attitudes and perspective of man when in the end man wants to save himself only hanging by and on to that faith in God and the good of his?

5.3 Mass destruction (warring and whoring. What is it all about?).

We are warriors. Soldiers, fighters, people battling, having daily combats: who is the victim here if not the one who fights constantly? How do we victimize ourselves and do we since it is a cultural norm not to place oneself on stage as weak and show one’s hurt? We must suffer alone. Hurt is to be hidden and be the burden for oneself only. By victimizing ourselves we put us in the position of needing help, here comes psychotherapy again in aid for us which we clearly are in need of. Maybe we are victimized by the war of existence, burned and marked, owned by our pain. We are victims, knowingly, but not showing. Sacrificed and slaughtered at the altar of war daily, the daily battle of existence in pictures and anywhere. We must

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in order to feel empathy towards anyone first allow ourselves be empathetic towards ourselves. With this thought admitting hurt is healing. It requires a permission to be a victim to feel empathy. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and weak in need of help. It does not mean a constant going in circles and crying out loud, ending wounded and nowhere, nor weeping about misfortunes of life, because misfortunes are there. What else would it mean? No one avoids those pitiful moments of self loath, hate and feeling sorry for oneself. To be merciful towards oneself would be the key to finding happiness everyone longs for, that it is in the moment and achievement. Release of guilt and sadness in a way of letting one feel every emotion there is, emotions as they are, can be helpful. To tolerate and recognize the emotional self is about accepting emotions as they are and learning them, what they do to you and make you do. What control has to do with our emotions, is a lot and what kind of control is needed, the meaning of self-discipline and order in life.

5.4 Face of war

War has multiple faces which turn into one twisted one in horror. Heads roll, many fronts are build and fall down, ways of realizing oneself in relation to wars happening in the world is that one cannot be shutting it all out, the images, refugees, suffering, a war with no end is a feeling of not being able to breathe. War is manifestation, propaganda and a statement, but I always wonder of what exactly. We manifest and propagate by making war and fight, manifest after a manifest our points of view and force, right of being absolutely right. For some it is a right to have and make. A manifest of power, of existence, rightfulness, of being right on the right side, of having right to judgment and punishment, wipe wrong from face of earth.

At war there is a constant threat of being killed, seeing, smelling and hearing death. Meaning of war is to kill or get killed. To win at war is an illusion. War is performative audio­visual act of violence in which there are only victims and losers. Winner is the arms dealer whose winnings go beyond comprehension, for whom war is a jackpot. Killer is a victim as is the killed. Situation where there is no alternative is victimizing, when there is an obligation to go to war when young. Before the act of killing the killing has already happened. Who feel obligated, is obligation born out of patriotism, which rose to new high after 2001 attacks in New York. The victims in rich countries are displayed truly vulnerable and hurting like no one else. Victim of war propaganda, victim of brainwash, of being on the side of something against something, of circumstances of politics and circumstances of reality made by businessmen, journalism and politicians. Victim of political games and schemes, where very often the biggest criminals deciding for wars go free and prosperously retire. At war people are forced to make murder, which is not considered normal behavior for a person with morals, dignity and appreciation for human life. Defending values and ways of life by killing is a way to make the world. In this light we can ask for whom is this world made? Operations to save face, to preserve honor, of way of life are operations of manically selfish lovers of power, glory, position and wealth. Some calling such attempts justified rational acts of politics, righteous and that something had to be

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done to find those weapons of mass destruction. Much that I have followed politics, since the eighties, to make war is seen a global necessity to act, to make a point, to show off as world police, gain power and to have a say over. The amount of warfare and man­made catastrophes is appalling. It is startling to think that during the 1900s there have been four wars on Finnish soil only.

In the aftermath of the First World War and Russia falling apart for it to become Soviet Union, civil war broke loose in Finland in January 27th 1918 continuing bloody to end in May 15th 1918. In November 30th 1939 Soviet Union attacked Finland determined to invade the country in couple of weeks, which attempt failed and war ended in March 13th at eleven o’clock 1940. It is important to notice the imbalance of forces between the two countries in this war. Finland had only 32 tanks in use. Soviet Union started the war with 2514 tanks and had at the end of the war 6541 tanks in use. It really was a miraculous survival battle by Finns. A war when Russia did not invade the country felt victorious for Finns. [5.] Continuation War raged during 1941-­44 after Finland started claiming parts of land it had lost in Winter war to Russia. The fourth and so far, final war was the Lapland War 1944-­45 between Finland and Nazi Germany. Looking further than that in history the list is long of battles in the area of Finland. These four closest wars fought are still vivid in our minds. Memory is kept alive to feed our national pride and our deep respect and oath to those who fought in these wars with their wits. Seventy years are not far away, there are people who are alive and remember the time. Soviet Union/Russia is a one nation that has made serious contribution in making war also elsewhere all the time. Since it is one of the largest countries by area in the world it has probably felt warring is its contribution and right to master. Somehow it seems it does not know any other way of ruling than by violence and invading. Russia battled on several fronts simultaneously which it did for example fighting the Winter War and the World War 2. Macho culture and aims to keep a large nation together take a toll. Russia still is far from being a democracy and as a huge nation impact of its doings is major to its neighbours. Russia tends to be partner with other dictatorships and in this way of thinking it is stopping equality and peace from evolving globally. It does not want equality, freedom of speech nor democracy.

Soviet Union and now again Russia both have been invading areas, putting down rebellions and stopping attempts of different parts of the country to gain sovereignty. Some uprisings succeeded in gaining independence like Estonia which declared independence 1991 after it turning into battle of course. Russian despot ruling has had horrible consequences to ordinary people. Latest in my mind are the wars in Chechnya where

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Russia has had two wars during 1994-­2000. To take a closer look at war history makes it clearer how ruthless and merciless its politic making has been and continues to be. One reason over any other is money and image. Financial interests of power nations like Russia, who conquer by size and because of their size it is like a rule to rule violently. Sizeable nations the US, China and Russia have a lot to say on political field. They have large economical influence and created dependence of energy and goods for Europe. China also acts as a waste manager for many western countries which depend on China’s willingness to dispose recycled garbage. They all have strong ideological background to persecute dissidents, which dictates their politic making even today and radiates around the globe. There is tradition and cult of violence in macho cultures, which makes it hard to learn to act and think otherwise, that it would be wrong. Machoism is an ‘easy’ way for a boy to become a man and become a ruler or at least respected member of society. Initiation rites which make boys men are actively in use especially in gang cultures which flourish in South America and Russia. Rite can be to kill someone, beat or be beaten up. To rule with fear is an efficient way to keep power and learn to control with fear. To keep people in belief that those in power do good for people, because of having gained power position. Wanting to run for office is proof itself of good will. Do good because they are good men and have gained position for being, doing and looking good.

To have a look at the political map globally during one hundred years the result is that every political plot and game end up to the US or Russia and those schemes don’t stand the light of day and come little by little to public knowledge. The US likes to pull the strings and stir the soup well, once a friend can become an enemy. Sharing the good in soup made not too well as messy as the world politically looks today. Soup in question and made is poured all over in bad. (How generous of you.) Is it tasty for the rest of us? During one hundred years there has been nothing but political plotting to get the most profit in to the hands of the few in continuum, the exploitation done during centuries makes it normal. There have been extremely lucky people, well-connected who have ended up filthy rich, who have decided it is their time to do politics to get even richer, which continues even more so. How much the politics of the US is actually made by corporations and owners of the super rich enterprises running and lobbying, one can only guess. It appears the most of the world is owned by corporations and politicians merely have the position to execute wishes of the money men and often enough politicians themselves are very rich money men. Warring requires equipment, preparing, planning, strategy, focus, patriotism, loyalty, money and it makes good profit for those who manufacture arms, astronomical. The US still has an agreement with Egypt for example according to which US grants Egypt financial aid to buy American arms. The amount of money is substantial which goes straight to arms manufactures in the US. Money flow does not leave the country. ”Despite the highly secretive military budget, which the law protects from scrutiny, there are a few cases in which the public can glimpse the vast economic power contained by

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the Egyptian military. One such case is the economic military agreement between the United States and Egypt. Between 1948 and 2011, the United States has provided Egypt with 71.6 billion received approximately 1.3 dollars annually in military aid from the United States. The Obama Administration requested another 1.3 billion dollars for the 2012 fiscal year.” [6.]

Morals seem to be strict where there is no moral. Interests of nations and people are usually more financial and economics is the ruling force of all in the world. Wars that were fought show on every graveyard in Finland. On every Independence Day we are shown the movie The Unknown Soldier on TV. We watch it or not. Knowing reasons leading to wars I still am puzzled by the extent of them. Knowing what triggers warring it is not comprehensible nor justified on any scale to reason and make war anymore as we should be wiser than before. How could a macho culture be changed which warring clearly reflect and be altered to be less hostile? Number of ongoing wars and wars fought is scary and mind-blowing in lack of a better word. The amount of money spent to kill seems to be secondary issue. For warring the money is found, billions of it. Effects of battles to those who have battled and to those who live in battle fields are no doubt crucial, devastating and long-lasting. It probably can be said no one leaves a war zone unhurt. Those effects last decades and do not remain within one generation. In the US scars of the World War 2 and Vietnam War are still in the process of healing. Many veterans of war have ended homeless being unable to work and support themselves. Side effects like alcoholism, depression, suicides, post­traumatic stress disorder do not heal themselves in time or never. Symptoms affect not only the individual but the whole community and families especially. War does not end to declaration of peace. It continues in the minds of people, in movies, stories, cities, landscapes and in history books. Desperate acts and useless in every way, not to mention far from peaceful life on Earth.

Ways of facing problems, problems which make politics seem messy and criminal. Benefiting from politics to make war and profit, dynamics of everyday life, diplomacy, hierarchy and protocol, means how to build an equal society are always beyond sufficient and quick to be done. There are always ways to do things better. Then we have to choose by whose better we want to live, for whom we live and work. Who would want to compromise, who decides peace is a better option? Who should are the leaders. Wrong doings and hurting to solve something have taken larger than life proportions and scale in a way that has done quite the opposite than solved anything. Latest atrocities would be wars in Afghanistan and Iraq both of which have gone bonkers, lamely put, and measured by

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any scale and seen on any graph and dimension. Both wars have been horrible disasters for both Afghanistan and Iraq, but also for the US. What are the worldwide effects of such large-scale attacks? Despair is raising its head in front of these never-ending situations all over the world. The war crimes done for which no one is charged with. War crimes firstly the US having attacked an independent country to find terrorists and weapons, which were not found and evidence that allegedly was, wasn’t there. The biggest terrorist so far and by far is the United States of America itself. Especially during the last decades of the twentieth century and beginning of this twenty-first. Bill fallen on the lap of citizens of America is estimated to rise up till 6 trillion dollars and lives lost hundreds of thousands mostly civilians (this number includes casualties also in Pakistan). [7.]

Conclusion of everybody is that warring against terrorists in this way has not been worth it. War to avenge dead Americans is an act of pride. Sadly those situations are ongoing even though the US is not bombing anymore but trying to preserve livable circumstances for civilians as they have also been saving lives of citizens of other nations in their own opinion. All this because the US was attack 2001 in New York. Quest for weapons of mass destruction failed. Two bad guys Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were caught and executed. One of them was not even put to trial, which making democratic justice happen would be demanded. That much for democracy and peacemaking. Revenge, brutality and paranoia being leading political agendas and ideologies. How to even calculate losses of these wars or make Afghanistan and Iraq peaceful societies again. Losses go over any estimations. Cost of war is always far-reaching; emotional and mental hurt is difficult to cure. Not to mention need to avenge, bitterness and hate which remain. War is not a cure.

Who becomes a victim? Is there pattern in dynamics of behavior and what is qualified as weakness? People kill and slaughter each other at war repeatedly.

It is bold to say a killer is a victim, but this is the case. Bullies and killers are the most hurt people, power and aggression working as shields replacing empathy lacking. Driven by their hurt, trauma, history and lack. Mostly lack of love and caring (this my theory). Desires which drive for warring. When facing people who have done bad things to other people, how these people are faced and what is bad enough? How does one look at someone who has killed? Have they done something you would not do? Who judges the bad and wrong? Do we pretend we are not affected by hurt, hurt against us and others? Do we laugh at hurt? To harden ourselves to manage as it seems many do, is a survival shield. It is humiliating to admit hurt and pain, but when you do

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does it open up a new person, a freed one, relieved? If I say we are all victims of mass manipulation of what is right and wrong by what is taught to us, told to us repeatedly, I’m not hugely mistaken. Gender is manipulation, power is manipulation and truth should be found, truths, lies and multiple realities. It can be difficult to walk one’s own path. Group pressure is a strong manipulator and guide of people. It is not easy to dare to do differently and follow truth of one’s own. Responses can be immediate and very often negative. In society where I have grown memory of war has always been there and I was to fight like a soldier to survive which has a lot to do with my sex. [8.][9.][10.]

1. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/facts.html 18.11.2013
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty 18.11.2013 3.https://shadowsoftenderfury.wordpress.com/s=there+is+something+about+the+nineteenth+century interview by Alf Gunwald Nielsen with Gurminder K. Bhambra “There was a concerted attempt to begin to demarcate Europe from the rest of the world.” What Bhambra has in mind is the emergence at this point in time of a way of writing history, in which Europe was posited as superior to the rest of the world.”
4.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/01/how­economic­growth­has­become­anti­life?CMP=twt_gu 
Guardian Nov 1st 2013 by Vandana Shiva “An obsession with growth has eclipsed our concern for sustainability, justice and human dignity. But people are not disposable – the value of life lies outside economic development”

5.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War 19.11.2013 6.http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14063/the­moral­ambiguity­of­united­states­aid­to­egypt  by Frida Alim dynamics and schemes of the US and Egypt dealing with arms deals and contracts, concerns and debate over development of democracy in light of unjust spending on arms by military and US meddling internal affairs in Egypt. 29.11.2013
7.http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/4/5/report_cost_of_war/weiss.net/2013/04/democracy­afghanistan­pakistan.htmlhttp://mondoweiss.net/2013/04/democracy­ Moral ambiguity of United States aid to Egypt by Frida Alim Sept 9th 2013, 29.11.2013 8.http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/energy/2013/10/24/Iraq-sees-hefty-return-to-oil-growth-in-2014.html Reuters, BaghdadThursday, 24 October 2013, 29.11.2013
9.https://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2013/oct/24/canadian-social-stock-exchange
by David Floyd  Oct 24th 2013, 29.11.2013
10.https://www.rollingstone.com/interactive/feature-a-team-killings-afghanistan-special-forces/  by Matthieu Aikins November 6th 2013 story telling in detail what goes on in Afghanistan after US attack and war, 29.11.2013

Descent into hell. Second half of the 14th century. Collection of the state Russian museum.

Tarkovsky drowning burning

It is a strange feeling a movie being an organism that becomes part of you when you watch it and it remains with you afterwards. You are familiar with it but there is an element of unexplainable and the issue is of something that is not emptied. It is not just series of breathtaking images put on screen to take the viewer to another place. There are movies to entertain and bring instant pleasure, this is something else which is extremely difficult to point out without sounding an ecstatic fool stating the obvious, the brilliance and beauty there is, divine and timeless, but still rooted in time and place, to us. It is not extraordinary to hear male voice of critics, those who watch and love movies and so often disregard the feminine side there is clear and strong but somehow invisible for the male. To me it is loud as is the dogs barking in the fog and the sound of heels in a church where woman of the film is slowly walking like moving in a mystery and learning to know it. It also is not unusual to hear male directors say they did not realise how powerful the female protagonist really is for the female viewers. What is this woman doing she who walks like a queen into something ancient like a tourist, in to the old refusing to kneel down and pray and refusing to want the same which she should be wanting naturally. A surprise for her is how she is not able to perform the same rituals as those to whom it comes naturally, how out of touch she is. In the face of what kind of movies get made nowadays it is ironical to state harsh critique for Nostalghia. In many cases of movie critique subjectivity is speaking. Art is sensitive to the word of experts who give their final say and I have found the official standings on films often biased and unfair. Being judgmental towards something so delicate and precious is almost blasphemy as it is easy not to look. Is there same disinterest as there is disinterest and underestimation towards the feminine altogether I wonder. The public believes the experts. Experts know best. They have authority. To have faith in experts is one kind of religion we should learn to be more critical about. Pay attention the woman is driving and stops because she chooses to have a walk.

My attempt is to be as analytical as possible. What it is I am watching. As much as there is room for objective analysis in art and for Tarkovsky, there is emotion and devotion to his art and much of art analysis and critique have personal liking and opinions weighing in on the whole of what is being said about a piece of art and the artist. Nostalghia (1983) and Sacrifice (1986) are often said of being less good and artistically not as high in artistic quality, innovation and expression as Stalker (1979), Mirror (1975) and Andrej Rublev (1966) which all bring in front intensity of faith and religion in Russian culture and thinking, which was at Tarkovsky’s time an atheist country. Russia being an intensely macho country where worshipping the Mother of God hasn’t faded. The nurturing mother has important task and nurture especially which is part of the sacred. Highlighting the female for Tarkovsky functions as Ellen Ripley in the Alien movies. Her power is under serious doubt and seen as fragile, but she has it anyway and she uses her power to save the world.

Nostalghia struck me as it highlights the feminine, how faith is part of our bodies and what we see, how we look, the divine is in the feminine and there is the unbreakable link to nature, women’s desire to be mothers and have faith to the unknown, or not. To my mind the film is an exemplary exploration to how much one is master of one’s destiny and how the modern brings in and strengthens the conflict between nature and man, conflict between the sexes is a constant battle. For women to have a mind of their own is the modern and natural, they do their thing, the question is what is the thing of women, with women, what is theirs to have, for them. With the modern something happens to the collective, ideals and to the common good towards which to be nostalgic about is fair. Something happens to the individual in this process, the estrangement, loss and loneliness, an inner and outer conflict, a disaster. Question is what do we become? To be an organic part of nature bearing children, being a child and finding harmony there in simple things may be too simple there where there now is very little space for the harmonious and simple things. Choosing to be a traditional mother, a figure part of the sacred or a modern independent woman who has a say over her body and what she does, whether she believes or not, is liberty woman is not willing to back away from.

How much my admiration does justice to his art or does it cloud my judgment is probably a footnote. What is there on film that one senses, sees, feels, smells, hears, thinks, imagines via Andrey Tarkovsky’s movies as they are so packed but delicate, light, fragile and alive. Maybe that is it the moving part, essential aspect in his films how alive they are, how much emotion there is without frivolous nonsense as people in his films are sick of nonsense, sick of grandiose and sentimentality. There is sincere interest in human existence and how we experience, why feel the way we do and be trapped by feelings, how these personal experiences can be shown and be understood by others as the same. That is the true strength there, will to understand and look what is so felt, what is subjective and universal, the universal emotional to be understood which today is one difficulty we face as we are like images not revealing multiple dimensions on screen. How and why we can try to understand the other and be compassionate. Interesting is what makes a movie scene and an image sincere is the flaw, mess, ruin of ours. So much so that we believe in it and identify with it, absorb the view as if it was something to breath.

Fragility in a scene where a man holding a short white candle protecting its flame begins a task that seems irrelevant and pointless but is far-reaching. He has stepped inside an empty pool and begins to walk with a candle from one side to the other. Bottom of the pool is rocky, he takes careful steps. He touches the edge of the pool with his hand like it was a game as he begins and walks to the other edge trying to keep the flame burning. He fails a couple of times as the candle goes out, his frustration shows, he is seemingly tired and exhausted but he must hold on because he is determined and must keep the candle burning as he walks to the other side of the pool. He finally manages at his task gently holding the candle as it was his child, protecting it with his hand and coat as if he grew old while completing his task and died after having placed the candle on the edge of the pool and left it burning. It is an emotional scene, exhaustively beautiful, slow, painful for the viewer, grounded, vividly depicting a state of mind, an any man’s effort which is so packed and painful viewer feels the torture of failing and trying again and relief of succeeding finally as if it was a physical sports exercise. Close-up to the hands and the candle, heavy breathing.

I experienced Nostalghia as something which very few have been able to achieve on film for me. A personal astounding voyage into details which speak via femininity and a child, there is no one like Tarkovsky and his vision and it makes me wonder why so. Is it the extreme conditions of banning and spying on citizens, a doctrine of political that has no place for mystery and belief to the invisible, something hovering in the air is an escape from Social Realism and banning God. Tarkovsky’s movies speak the spiritual, spirit rains down and over endlessly or burns violently which happening is viewed on film by actors and me outside, what is there to see is a miracle of nature, to get soaked in rain is a spiritual happening like being baptised again and again and denying the divine is the ultimate crime against people and the spirit. The power of his films and this particular film is something of rare kind but still very everyday and everywhere, suffering and beauty of suffering, what becomes of suffering, what is to suffer, how to overcome this conflict and what does it make of us. Nostalgia is what all feel when looking back, the subjective view and what we remember is only for us. To share that personal view can be impossible, the subjective experience in time. Viewing breathtaking images of landscapes and historical buildings longing for release from the modern machine and finding momentary joy has such heaviness and weight it is unbearable as is the beauty in Tarkovsky’s movies. All is beautiful because all comes from God, all is light as all is heavy. How can we show our respect towards what we have and what is?

You can watch the film without knowing what the story is. That it was made over 20 years ago is almost irrelevant, but telling. There is something to the point that the woman is an interpreter and the male protagonist is a writer doing research. We are drowning and burning in the very same way as tragically, suddenly and sadly, watching people go by, who are they the couple asks. To be in search of and inquisitive has a purpose. Things happening around must have a reason. Times are in contrast to the slowness and pace, massiveness and weight of nature feels like a landslide taking us by our feet and pulling us down with the freezing stream. We are still protesting as we were then and remain completely dissatisfied with the ways we are managed, screwed and administrated, expected to accomplish, make, go by the book and be going somewhere as the taxi is waiting, luggage is packed and we are moving ahead somewhere forward not back in time but into the future. Not staying put, refusing to rot but still rotting as the houses and ruins in the film do. Rain comes through the roof, puddles become ponds on the floor and man wades and paddles in clear water inside ruins where there are landscapes, rivers and hills, bottles collecting the rainwater and a dog looking at the camera. Sounds and images are of beauty that is constantly being made by nature, humans wetting their shoes and clothes as they do not have any choice but go in and get wet. In Nostalgia there is fog and rain throughout all of the movie, sudden blink of sunlight lasts only a few seconds and it rains again. People don’t complain about the weather but they are in pain and in inescapable situation brought by their bodies, nature and other people, unbearable. Some go crazy which seems to be the sanest and most obvious thing to do. Don’t go with the flow, follow your own nature, if it is yours, if you understand what it is, if you know how to look and what really is beautiful, what is beauty of yours.

https://youtu.be/84RmIVl3Qas

To be surrounded by water, be in water, face the inescapable flooding, wetness of clothes and hair. Woman sitting on a bed drying out her hair with blow dryer at a comfortable hotel among other guests who wander around bumping into each other at the corridor just as you, but not as poor as you, not as lost as you, not as wet as you, not as tired, not as out of their minds. There is no union, no true meeting, no coming together, people go their separate ways asking what is happening, not knowing is one cause of suffering. To dry out and never get dry is what tires people out to the limit of setting oneself on fire standing on a statue. Warmth comes from a bottle. Hotel guests are free to take refreshing and rejuvenating baths while a crazy homeless man goes around the pool in wet shoes. He is a poet, listen to what the poet says. Water is safety and saviour. It is about birth, divinity, life on earth, a cold shiver, death, drowning, drinking, listen to it. This is not a desert as it is not dry, maybe dry of joy. Life lies in the water with divinity which becomes at birth in opening the dress of the sacred mother from which birds fly out after a prayer is spoken to become a mother, please bless me. Candles are still the warmest of all to be protected at the altar melting bringing in light lighting up the place and prayers of women who wish to become mothers and those who are graciously blessed are with those who await. We are in water also at birth, our reflection is in the water, our becoming happens because of water.

To embody beauty and the divine, the sacred and the spiritual is what Tarkovsky’s movie Nostalghia does. It is the main theme for him which enlarges itself as his movies are few and monumental pieces of art finding out spirituality and the killing of it. Significance to a movie fan is as massive as historical paintings and buildings have, what are we without knowledge of history. Hair on a woman is the same as vegetation moving along with the stream of water in which there is a fallen statue of an angel. It makes one think every breath taken and held, hold breath and breath out, think about breathing, how the water feels on one’s skin and how that statue does not feel a thing, it does not know where it is. Russia is always there even though the movie happens in Italy. Italy seems the same as Russia, people are the same, beauty, meaning and purpose of religion, ruins, history, sentiments, sentimentality, there is something so similar that it is all one. Fight is the same, poverty is the same, suffering and relationships, problems do not differ. What is the desert here and why? The crazy man in the movie shuts off himself with his family in their home for seven years in isolation. They were rescued as if they had wrecked a boat at sea and been saved in the last minute, a mega spectacle of saving a family. With such small size Tarkovsky paints a profound image where Beethoven is only too pompous and royal, imperial and full of himself, played when something important happens and must be paraded. Beethoven and the equestrian statue on which to climb and set oneself on fire alone with a canister of gasoline while other protesters watch, the burning man falls to the ground. He was the crazy man and now he is dead. Statue remains.

Andrei meets and befriends a strange man named Domenico (Erland Josephson), who is famous in the village for trying to cross through the waters of a mineral pool with a lit candle. He claims that when finally achieving it, he will save the world. They both share a feeling of alienation from their surroundings. Andrei later learns that Domenico used to live in a lunatic asylum until the post-fascistic state closed them and now lives in the street. He also learns that Domenico had a family and was obsessed in keeping them inside his house in order to save them from the end of the world, until they were freed by the local police after seven years. Before leaving, Domenico gives Andrei his candle and asks him if he will cross the waters for him with the flame.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalghia

Every Finn has a relationship to Russia. (Sadist at work. What’s not to love.)

All the things that Russia is inspire me. To understand this is probably difficult but I guess my feelings and thoughts are normal considering in part I am from Russia and anything Russian was present in Finland in my childhood. As Russia was in the News all the time, an influence via the media given for us. It is of course like all big nations are a constant puzzle and cause of chaos, all the time. I am almost obsessed partly because we are neighbors, because the country is dangerous and the influence we have had from Russia is mighty huge in many ways. Partly because the amount of grandiose, contradictions, sheer lunacy and wildness are beyond anything else. Dark mystery of Russian mind or mysticism, an abysmal depth, and violence that scare both the shit out of me, a history to sink into, a turmoil that is a nonstop mess politically, socially and culturally, painful and bloody for the most part and to follow the soap opera is to realize that this all is happening. The whole of Russia is an explosive entity that excites me as a place and state of mind and has done so always. The question is why the threat Russia likes to embody and keep alive? Russia, the scare and secrets it holds, which mystery it still is for Finland as we wonder what will Russia do next, a criminal for the rest of the world but something we are related to. Criminal is what it politically enjoys being. Such monstrous fear justifies warring just to keep fear alive and well, justifies inequality and bullying because big guys do so, not mentally mature though. Russia enjoys it grandiose and megalomaniac attacks. Its war history is such a big part of the image and character of Russia that warring is something it seems to do naturally. Amount of veterans and problems caused by wars inside the country are also gigantic. It is at constant war also with its own people. Therefore to be peaceful and start building an equal and peaceful country that does not threat its neighbors and the US is a faraway dream country, unthinkable almost to achieve but lovely to hate. How to change something that is historically and organically a law and a habit, violent macho culture? The way things are, ways people think and what things are unthinkable, unimaginable, out of reach. To keep decades long feuds going deserves a prize.

Russia could, if it was in its interest, change Russia completely for the better, meaning better for all Russians and its neighbors. Nevertheless violence and the attraction to deadly games and sadism is unescapable. I adore Russia for its culture and because it is so different to Finland, the sterile cubical Finland. I adore beauty of Russia, naturally, which beauty makes me melancholic and blue, which wildness/ melancholy/wilderness/unexpectedness is in its people, literature, vodka, food, cities, in its size and in its history. Savages, I love your beauty! Russia is an endless game, un suspicion, that does not change all the time to be a contemporary country among others as history is always present as is the suspicion. The way of thinking is a monolith. Nothing is erased, corrected, hidden or something to be ashamed of, other than the assassinations and hazy businesses might be something to rethink. But Russia is moving ahead in someways, rolling ahead and changing maybe visually, how about culturally? Trying to be cool and being definitely scary is a very special feature.

I cannot erase the image of Brezhnev’s funeral from my mind as the occasion was shown on Finnish TV in the 80’s or the nuclear threat or the possibility that Russia any day might do the same as it did 1939 attacking Finland. Somehow possibility of revolution seems impossible, that Russian people would or could overthrow Putin, never. So far we are friends. It is a strange friendship, honest and dishonest at the same time. Something that one can only have with Russians.

Here are some of photographs I took in Kronstadt 2001. Haven’t Photoshopped them, so there is dust.

Touching performance of Olympic Gold Medalist* Yulia Lipnitskaya at 2014…

Winnie Pooh, p.1 (rus. eng. subs)

Case of propaganda, case of Russia.

Yes warring is bad, but it seems to be even more bad when someone else than the US does it. The US has a mandate of the good guys, whatever is good from time to time. Good enough or never enough. Good is a measurement that equals wealth possessed, connections made, business flow, business done, future prospects, media coverage, media controlled. Progress is good but nothing changes. Progress statues in high buildings. The more there are houses reaching the heights the more money flows, sights grow and development happens in concrete. That is the message of high architecture, efficiency of business, power of men standing. Advertising makes it so that the image we get of the American spirit, which is the never-ending growth, the dream is peace-loving, prosperous family focused on each other and having fun. Smiling success, it is the good times. What is life about than that.

Especially damaging is when Russia makes war. That threatens the whole world. The image we as western people under American propaganda make, European propaganda influencing us, we depending on the news, image we have of Russia and countries of the Eastern block is somewhat strange. How about Russian propaganda? It is mostly aimed at Russians themselves. They have to keep Russia together as one. What Russia does is always suspicious to us and against interests of the West. The whole world is setting bans and barriers when Russia makes wars for the reasons we can imagine only. Maybe to conquer areas and countries to grow and expand. To be Soviet Union again?. When the US makes war it is to save somebody, to set those disadvantaged slaves free, salvage the poor people under threat and defend western values, democracy and freedom. We are naive and we are so naive. We are mostly unaware and misinformed, forgetful and as before there is not much we can do. It is true Russian policy has been the same as it ever has and true intentions remain unclear for the rest of us. It is impossible to know what is going on in Ukraine and what is going to happen. What is good to do and what is bad continues to have an ongoing media battle. Evil against good make headlines. Media likes to paint the canvas of world politics with colors that are not without bias and ringtones of the old sounds are there clear as ever. What has changed eventually since the Cold War is not much.

Completely pointless wars take place. What a horrible waste they have been. War is in media open wide and one wonders the meaning of threat placed for our eyes and ears.

What is the case of Russia? A country that got its wealth stolen by the oligarchs in the nineties. That has an extensive macho culture, culture of silencing anyone who talks against the government and Putin. Privatization of state corporations and wealth, mafia and billionaires are the real threat to any nation and peace. Russia is a good example. Concentrating on the evil person Putin is a manhunt and completely useless journalism.

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2668097/war_by_media_and_the_triumph_of_propaganda.html

“We live in an age of propaganda by the ‘mainstream’ media, writes John Pilger. Inconvenient stories, truths and even entire countries are airbrushed away, while dominant narratives are parroted incessantly to bludgeon our minds in acceptance of war, injustice, austerity, all to serve the interests of our ruling classes.”