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.