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.