Presents

Christmas is coming up. I am going home to celebrate this lovely holiday. This tradition entails good food, lots of sweets singing, dancing and not to forget presents. It is a very special time for me. I love the food in the Christmas dinner takes hours. To me this time of the year i so happy, and one of the main reasons that i am going home. Why is it so special though? I would like to think it because the whole family is gathered, having a good time and all the traditions. In fact my best memory from Christmas is when we go to church on Christmas day, or when we dance around the tree. But maybe it is just because right after dancing around the tree, the presents will come. In Denmark we call Christmas the holiday of consumption and with good reason. Everyone gives each other presents and a lot of them. So I begin to wonder if it is only because of all this materialism that I find Christmas so magical. I have tried to distance myself from the whole present thing and with age(yes my old age) it is not the most important thing to me anymore. But why do I still give present? What is my motivation other than the fact that it is expected of me?

My initial belief is that is do it to make other people happy. And i do, but why do i want to make other people happy? Because I am a loving person that cares about other people or because i want other people to like me? I keep telling myself that is the first option, but even if it is so, i still do it for my own gain i belief. That is why i want to see people when they open my present, so i can see their reaction and feel good about myself. I was looking for a time where we give presents without this expectation of getting some emotion or liking in return. Our Christmas Buddy tradition might be an example, but then again we still check with friends of your buddy to see how good a buddy you are being and you do expect a hug from the person in the end. Even if you didn’t reveal yourself in the end, your motivation would still be your own pursuance of self-satisfaction, not satisfying the buddy. Is see this as the same reason that people like their CI’s. We believe that we are saving the world and helping the villagers which I am not questioning in this piece, but we are not doing it for them. We are doing it for us.

The Cold War MUWCI edition.

I had a weird experience the other day in Global Affairs the other day. The session was about fire arms. And it seems that the majority of people here was for having an army to protect the country. It makes them feel safer knowing that the country can protect you if someone will attack. Opinions like “they” have weapons so we need to have them as well were voiced. It was concerning to me so I raised the point that these opinions will just create another Cold Was, whereto the response was, “What was so bad about the Cold War? It is not like anyone were killed and it was a time of economic development.”

A few things that was wrong with the Cold War. The fear, my mother told me that she feared this even though Denmark in no way was a player in this game. I have heard sources saying that it was only, because the game was played well that the Cuba crisis didn’t set everything on fire. And then just the minor thing that so many arms were created, that even today we can blow up earth multiple times.

The justification for having weapons that the others have them, raised especially of a lot of Indians is absurd. Not to be cliché, but as Jesus said turn the other cheek. In the school yard if a dispute develops it only escalates, because if the fact that there is two parties. If you don’t fight back it wont develop. It is amazing in a country like India that is founded on Gandhi’s principals of non-violence that opinions are so evident.

And what makes you safer with your country having weapons, I mean there is not a smaller chance of you getting shot just because you have a gun.

I am scared if we are the future leaders of the world, because I see small things happening all the time here that just escalates the unfairness. Like a certain roommate of mine’s juice was stolen from the fridge, which is unfair of course, but what he did was even more unfair, he just went and stole some else’s. Ihhh ihhh ihhh.

Isn’t it a bit too progressive for a UWC student? Shouldn’t we be a bit more ideological? How the fuck do we sustain peace in an arms race?

My Life is Average

My life is average is the name of a website that that runs short anecdotes about normal average occurrences and normal average non-occurrences. Small stories are admitted by the users themselves. The users have a little dispute going with similar websites like FML (Fuck my life) and it seems that it becomes a way of life. After starting to use this site I have caught myself thinking when experiencing something that this would be great to publish on MLIA. The stories often begin with yesterday I read an MLIA (my life is average) it kind of becomes a way of life to many. You find stories from children and adults alike, all sharing little joys of life or just funny stories about how normal everything is. There is something fascinating about this movement i wouldn’t say celebrating, because that would make it something out of the ordinary, but acknowledging their normalness cultivating their mediocrity, recognizing that they are nothing special. It is interesting that an urge to become the most average then arises. The number one ranked story is, “Today i realized that the word bed looks like a bed.” It is nothing special at all it is actually quite stupid, but i think MLIA offers an outlet, where you can admit that your life is kind of boring and that you do sometimes get these funny thoughts in boredom.

People post obituaries saying that so and so biggest wish was to get a story posted. Many would say that it is kind of sad that people’s biggest wish is to be average. However I would rather look at it as being honest and realizing that you are good enough even though you are not the best. The other week I read a response to all the obituaries that said, I’m not dead, but my LIFE is average. Pocket psychologist would call this an effort to protect yourself from your own failure and that making fun of it would make you feel better, MLIA’ers would sayi don’t feel crap about myself, my life is just average might as well look at it with some humour. But it is funny though how there even is a ranking system for the best stories. Or more correctly most average stories, it is a competition on who can be most average.

I think a lot of people here would like to believe that they are a bit more than average, hell i would like to think that, but when I read this website I feel I would like this to happen to me. At once reiterating how average my life actually is.

Public's censorship

Relating to the discussion we had in class about censorship. I feel that today’s class proved my point very well. My point was that the public’s censorship of certain material is more efficient and makes the person being censored more settled with the fact that he is being censored. My argument is that if it a government or a despot choosing what is being censored, it is going to be one absolute truth whereas if it the public opinion doing the censuring it will be more fair and less absolute, because the public consists of multiple opinions. To dispute Mill’s point about tyranny of the majority when no legislation is made there is no absolute and the “majority” will be a fluid one as opposed to a fixed one. The majority is a multitude, and its opinion will change from issue to issue.

Today we started talking about how the denial of historical events should be censured, in this case Holocaust. I do agree that the Holocaust happen and I to some extent agree that denying should be censured. However the method of censuring should not be legislation. Legislation is to me the worst tyranny. It is like when your parents tell you that you can’t smoke. You ask them why and instead of bringing a reasonable argument they say, because we say so. Laws are like these rules that have to be obeyed and there is not much room for questioning them. What does the child do when confronted with such a tautology? He revolts, he begins to think that he knows better. And in this way get pushed towards what his parents didn’t want him to do, he starts smoking. Making a very bold statement for the sake of my argument, people who are leaning towards nazism, are people who feel that they have been cheated, treated in an un-just way. They turn to a place where they can have some support where they can feel needed, and where they can’t get their aggression released. When these people who may or may not have been treated un-just is then told that he can’t say what he wants, he is polarized even more. If instead it is the people who say this is not right, you shouldn’t say that, the violator feel doesn’t feel coerced with, in the same way.

Coming back to my point about how the class today summed up my argument. I went away from class today, being scared that is said something that I shouldn’t have, because someone might have been offended by it. I am going to think twice before I say it again. In fright of hurting someone, where as if Mark would have said, “You shouldn’t say that” I would be more inclined to repeat it just in spite.

Hey Mark.
I managed to make eight. I hope the latter is not to influenced by the time pressure.

Democracy and Denmark

Going along the discussion we had in class today about democracy, i wanted to do a little write-up on what is wrong with Danish democracy. I found out the the judges are selected by a board consisting of six members, it consists of a supreme, a high and a “town” court judge, a lawyer and two people from the public. They are all finally selected by the minister of justice. It is a democratical process, but the minister of justice can use this for her own benefit. It is very easy for her to select judges that she knows will help her political career. I think it interferes with the ground pillar in Danish democracy, the split of the power into, legislative, executive and the judicial segment. Because in this way the executive and judicial are mixed. Problematic i would say.

Another problem is the monarchy, or at least some people think that it goes against democracy. Even though they don’t have any power except from a symbollic one. A common opinion is that poeple will never be equal in a country where royalty is just born “with a golden spoon in their mouth”( Danish expression meaning that you are born with special advantages) than the public. However i would say it is quite opposite. The royalty are born into a life of slavery, they have some duties which they have to fulfill and everything they do in the public eye has to be approved by the country, otherwise it would be a great scandal.

To be continued.

Cleaning

After endless remarks from people coming to our room, Amit and I cleaned up this weekend. Or actually we had help, but it sounds better to say that we did it. It is a bit easier to live without all the mess, but not that much. Perhaps Amit and I are just messy people, why fight it. I do agree that we can’t just let the room be, we don’t want a mouldy fermented rat and ant infested house, that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of our room either, I guess.

We are both not that found of cleaning so how do we come out spending as little time cleaning as possible? My thesis is that if we just clean up, let’s say once a month. We can spend a day or even half a day once a month will actually be less than the time we would spend cleaning up after ourselves. It is a waste of time going outside to the trash can all the time, sweeping up if you drop some cereal. I think quite a few people do live like this here. Just look at a thing like personal hygiene, i know numerous people, who shall remain anonymous, who does not shower as often as they would if they were back home. There can be many reasons for this, one is that we live so close together and we see each other so much that there is no reason to keep trying to uphold this “perfect” shell. Another reason can be that we found out since coming here that there are just more important stuff in the world than appearance. The third and to me most likely is that we live in India, there are a lot of smells, it is messy and it is hot as hell so you take a shower and you are still sweating when you come out. I actually do think that the most rational thing to do is just let the mess be and clean up when you’ve had enough. After all laws of nature, the second law of thermodynamics i think, goes something like this, that the entropy in a system tend to increase over time. In other words it is natural that your room is messy. We had help to clean our room, and that was great, but now we can’t find half our stuff. Before we knew exactly where everything was hiding in the mess. I think that brilliancy thrives in chaos, when you can see the order in the mess. It is a skill you need in life i think, especially in India. But everywhere i think the world is messy and our mind finds patterns and symmetry in it.

What is wrong with school!

Since this year, the second year, now when it becomes serious, I have felt a decline in my spirit towards school related stuff. The decline hit an all time low when I came back from project week, and I was so negative about all the school work we had. I would say I was considering dropping out of school, but the thought came to mind once or twice. There is theatre presentation and performance, EE, World Lit and last but not least philosophy IA and blogs. On top of all that triveni, socializing and keeping in contact with friends at home is equally important. You have to think of a million things at once. When you are done with one thing the next thing is there. There is something all the time. My problem is not that it is interdisciplinary, just that you can't take you mind off school work, there is no relaxing, even when you are watching a movie, you keep thinking about the work you should be doing. It is probably also the reason that Project Week was so liberating, and the reason why it was so much harder to return into this routine. You don't have time to sit down and focus on one thing. Now I am working on my EE, I took a break to write a philo blog and rehearse my lines. Of course of this could be avoided had I been better at planning my time and more foreseeing. I want to be able to do stuff when I captures me, when I am excited by it, not sitting here a day before just writing because I have to. But I guess that just how the world functions. That is also why I am taking a gap year, I want to do stuff that excites me, I want to be incalculable, I want to be able to do what I want when I want. I want to see what it is like to be driven by nothing else than your emotions, not to be disturbed by deadlines and carrier dreams. I used to go to school because I liked it, now I go to school because I need to get a high school diploma. Not that school is not interesting, it is just too much. I want to be able to go to philosophy have a discussion or a lecture and then have time to let the thought sink in and create my own. Instead of having to run to theatre class and work on something completely different which I would also like to give it the time that it deserves. I think we could learn so much more, be so much more constructive if we worked in periods of weeks or even a day at the time so you have time to really get into things and spend time thinking about it.

Religion in MUWCI

Before Project Week we had Religious Discussion. It was about religion and spirituality in MUWCI. The talk was going and people were talking about why religion is not something we see in everyday life here. I found out that it wasn't because people weren't religious, but because it is something personal, something that you don't share with others. It made me think. Are we really brought together, as it says in the mission statement across religions. Obviously we are here, and people belong to different religions, but are we really challenged on this area if we don't share our religion with others and if different religions aren't questioned? You can very easily dismiss this question by saying religion isn't that important to the MUWCI student, who believes more in empirical evidence than the supernatural or whatever you can call without offending anyone.

That I am scared of offending someone is exactly the core of my argument. MUWCI students seem to have a tendency to not be too extreme. Or at least not extreme when it comes to sharing opinions that are not UWC. We need to question more, and not be afraid of stepping on each others toes.

This doesn't come from a point of view that wants to convert the believers into the true belief of science, but more from a view that I wont learn more. I want to learn about stuff that is foreign to me. And if I don't question, if just say, no religion is something private something that is rude to question I will not learn. I think this fear of offending someone or not being the ideal UWC student is something that is holding back on our learning, and perhaps even the creation of us as UWC and IB students.

Before coming here I was an idealist. I bended the world, in my mind into fitting my ideal. Back home I didn't experience anyone questioning my ideals, because I seemed to now what I was talking about. After coming here I found a lot of people who seemed to know what they were talking about. And also some that questioned me. That made me actually think about why I believed the way I did. Until then that I just believed the way I did because of my parents believed that way. Not that I want to portray UWC as being my revelation, but it did teach me something. I think many times, when we have a discussion in Global Affairs, we hold back from airing extreme opinions, because we are afraid of what people might say about us. We keep saying on campus that tolerance is so important, but why then this fear of what people will think.

Apart from the fact that I wont learn as mush if I don't question is also think that the absence of extreme totalitarian opinions will make me less tolerant. If I don't provoked by well founded opinions I wont create this understanding for different opinions. If we on a UWC just all try to be this ideal UWC students I think we will actually become less UWC, less tolerant and more arrogant.

Are we really being brought together across religions?

Environmental or not

Reading the news from other UWC's that the linking group put up in the AQ made me think; Other UWC's have environmental campaigns, and participate way more than us in the 350 campaign than us. I felt that we weren't “UWC” enough and that we should do more. On the other hand, when you think about it, we might be the most environmentally friendly UWC. We have a biodiversity reserve, we harvest water, we recycle, create our own compost, have solar panels and we are now working on making a natural water cleaning reed bed plant that will make us even more sustainable however I don't know to what extent the awareness of the environment is a part of our daily lives. Just take a walk around your own wada after people have gone to bed and see how many outside lights are on or count in a day how many times you walk into an empty room which has its lights and on,. This little thing to turn the light off at night or when you leave a room might not make that big of a difference, but it is what it symbolizes that counts. You are showing everyone that you care. The same thing comes into play when EPA wants to introduce lights out on Saturdays, it might not be the most pragmatic thing to do but it is showing everyone that we want to do something.
This actually extents to what Dr. Wilkinson said about the UWC experience not starting until you leave this place. It is important to be pragmatic, but it is worth nothing without the symbolism that creates awareness. We might be the most environmentally friendly campus, but it is worth nothing if we are not educated about it. A campus that has awareness, but perhaps doesn't have that much sustainability can still create a whole badge every year, of environmental warriors. What do we create here? We live on a more and more sustainable campus, but it is not of that much interest to us. So perhaps we should be do it for its symbolic value and the awareness it creates, not for its pragmatism because we know that it doesn't make that much of a difference Perhaps it would be a better idea to do it less often, make it more symbolic by making it an occasion. It is not that it is going to save the world, but it will make us aware that there is a world to be saved. My conclusion is, I guess, that we should be the change, but we should also not forget to talk about it.

Does it need a title?

This is leading on from Ursula's question in class. What is philosophical? I am having problems writing this philosophy blog entry. My first problem is that it is hard to be “philoosophical” when you have to. I find that my philosophical nature is something that comes to me, when I don't think about it. My next problem is to figure out what is actually philosophical and what are just random thoughts. What is required for something to be philosophical I am wondering. Does it have to say something bigger about life? And humanity? I have a lot of good ideas! Writing about cleaning up, today's college meeting about forced cultural sharing, about small talk, but it doesn't seem to have enough depth, it doesn't seem important enough. My life doesn't seem to be that important enough to be out there, on the big net.
And would you look at that, philosophy came to be in the shape of existentialist thoughts when I wasn't even trying.

Baldness

Why do people go bald? Some might say it is a fashion statement, they are doing it to create a spectacle or just to look tough. But is it something more. I myself have had long hair for several years before coming to MUWCI after being here a year I cut it of. I actually waited till I got home, but that was more because I didn't want my friends at home to think, “ohh you changed so much after going to India”. I cut my hair of for more practical reasons. I had lice, so that was the easiest thing to do. I liked my image of being a bit different, looking hippie-ish and it also worked quite well with the girls with the long hair. However since coming here I have gone into a state of there is no reason to try and hide all my bad sides, because they will shine through anyway. Another reason that I liked the long messy hair of mine, was because it gave me a look of not trying too hard. Even though I would try hard to look good, I would always have the look that said I don't care about what others think, even though I did care a lot. The baldness is here in many ways liberating, because you can't make the hair look better or worse by adding gel or whatever. So you just look as you look. I think this is a reason that many of the MUWCI girls also do this. To be liberated from having to look good all the time, because you just don't. There are of course people that would argue that girls look as good without their hair, but the general consensus is the opposite.
Baldness is a very independent look. It says, I don't care how other people think I look, especially for girls. Strong independent women do not need their feminine long hair to look good. However ironically enough you often see these strong independent women, not girls, where scarfs and bigger earrings tan they ever did before.
I was thinking if I started a trend, but no MUWCI has a tradition of girls going bald. And what better place to do it than in India on the top of a mountain where we live side by side and there is a limit of 200 different people, so everyone is forced to speak to each other. I myself loves this fact that I can be ugly and not care, but my question arises am I strong enough to do it back home.

The cycle

The cycle.
Here in MUWCI a theory says that every alternate year, the 2nd years are mean to their 1st years, and every alternate year very good to them. The idea to write about this sprung from our conversation about silly games today. I learned today in class that it actually is an experience that to some people can be rather traumatizing for some people. Traumatizing is a word far to strong. However I think the concept is right. Maria Ché mentioned that it was something that had effected her a lot last year and that it had intimidated her from speaking to some 2nd years. And I know some of my 2nd years felt very strongly about stopping the cycle, so they talked a lot about that. However it feels like it might be continuing. We are the batch that are “supposed” to be mean to their 1st years. We had a student meeting related to this topic, where people at least said that we were going to be nice. However we must ask ourselves are we really?
I heard a lot of people talking about how 1st and 2nd years sit separated in the caf, the 1st years go to bed early and so on. Even the people who are trying to break the cycle by speaking to the 1st years a lot seem to be making this divide between us bigger. This comes out in the discourse, by the fact that 2nd years where are you, why are you sleeping, and are you working already you are just a 1st year.
Why do we do this? Why do we act superior to the 1st years? I don't know why people act superior, nut in some ways I remember how lost I was myself last year, and I do feel somehow much more experienced than most of the 1st years. Superior is not the right word to use though. I think however that the people who needs to emphasize this difference, is also the people who themselves feels intimidated by the 1st years. The cyclical nature of this seems to be repeated, because we as a batch never felt our 2nd years being mean to us. So therefore we do not have the drive to change it, even though we did have a student meeting about this particular subject.

By talking about it, we might actually be creating the problem. The memories we 2nd have from last year are the ones from the end of the year the happy ones about our 2nd years, from the end of the year, where the scary 1st impressions was gone. So by mentioning the cycle over again we might actually be keeping it alive.
is this intimidation necessarily a bad thing. In the community agreement it says that you are not allowed to intimidate other people of the community. But maybe this intimidation that comes out of silly games for example is a good thing it might help some people to break out of their shell. But the action of breaking your shell is something that should be done by yourself not by some intimidating 2nd year.
I don not know how to stop this cycle, if it is the people that experience the cycle in the year they are not "supposed" to, we should just stop talking about it or if we should sit more in circles. Or if it even should be stopped.