Under the Autumn Trees

Man­dag var det pre­miere på Harald Eias nye serie «Hjerne­vask». Jeg fikk meg første epi­sode på Nett-Tv i går, og må si jeg synes serien var vel­dig inter­es­sant. Selve temaet var jo spen­nende i seg selv — skyl­des kjønns­for­skjel­ler når det kom­mer til valg av jobb og inter­es­ser arv eller miljø? Eller begge deler? Nå er ikke dette noen nye spørs­mål, og det kom vel hel­ler ikke frem så mye revo­lu­sjo­ne­rende nytt i serien av kunn­skap omkring dette. Men det jeg fant mest inter­es­sant, og tanke­vek­kende, var de ulike fors­ker­nes hold­ning til and­res fag­felt. Read the rest of this entry »

I går så jeg Ava­tar for andre gang. Jeg hadde først sett den på KINOKINO i Sand­nes, da med et fore­drag om begre­pet ava­tar først. I går så jeg den i Stav­an­ger i 3D. Dess­verre fikk jeg ikke noe ut av 3D-effekten. Anta­ge­lig fordi jeg har skeive horn­hin­ner, er nær­synt og har diverse andre feil og mang­ler med øynene. Bil­det ble vel­dig uskarpt med bril­lene på, og jeg synes fak­tisk det ble kla­rere og skar­pere uten. Det visu­elle og gra­fiske impo­nerte meg jo meget, jeg har aldri sett så vir­ke­lig­hets­nære vese­ner i en film før. Om man har kunn­skap om CGI, så kan nok mange lage et vak­kert land­skap. Pro­ble­met kom­mer når man skal lage liv og få det til å virke tro­ver­dig. Det syn­tes jeg abso­lutt de fikk til her. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeg har ikke skre­vet i denne blog­gen på en god stund, men har bestemt meg for å ta den opp igjen. Denne gan­gen på norsk.

I høst begyn­ner jeg på mas­ter i reli­gion på Uni­ver­si­te­tet i Agder. Da blir det pend­ling med tog to dager i uka. Jeg gruet meg først, men begyn­ner å glede meg nå. Jeg skal kjøpe meg en skik­ke­lig lunch­boks og lage meg gode sala­ter og andre ret­ter til å ha med på toget. Jeg skal ha med lap­to­pen og bruke tiden på soving, spil­ling, skrive på nett samt stu­dere. Blir kos!

Ellers har som­meren for det meste gått til avslap­ping, sosi­alt sam­vær og spil­ling. Jeg dri­ver for tiden og lager en mod — en modifikasjon/plug-in — til spil­let Mor­rowind. Jeg lager en egen «guild» som man kan bli med­lem av og få quests fra. Det er tid­kre­vende, men også vel­dig lære­rikt og gøy. Rett før hel­gen kjøpte vi det siste Harry Potter-spillet samt Sims 3. Så der gikk hel­gen.

Jeg er også med i valg­kam­pen til Miljø­par­tiet De Grønne Roga­land, og delte ut løpe­sed­ler på stand i Stav­an­ger for­rige lør­dag. Jeg skal anta­ge­lig også gjøre det neste helg.

Så, jepp, det blir geek­prat, stu­die­prat og mine tan­ker ellers om poli­tikk, sam­funns­kri­tikk, dyre­vel­ferd og miljø i denne blog­gen reg­ner jeg med. Kom­men­ta­rer er all­tid velkomne!

At 28^th of March, the glo­bal cam­paign Earth Hour 2009 takes place. It’s the lar­gest climate cam­paign ever done, where every one who joins turns off their lights for one hour to show their wil­ling­ness, com­mu­nity and spi­rit when it comes to do what it takes to deal with our climate change issue. It star­ted as a local arran­ge­ment in Syd­ney, but has now spread and become a world­wide phe­n­ome­non. So far 377 cities from 62 countries are par­ti­ci­pa­ting, and seve­ral of them will host events during this day.

This is a bril­li­ant way to be able to par­ti­ci­pate in somet­hing so grand, and I hope as many as pos­sible will join in this. I cer­tainly am.
Here is also a bril­li­ant video showing last years events and some large cities around the world tur­ning off their lights to show their sup­port for this glo­bal challenge.

So the war between Israel and Pale­stine has taken a turn to the worse. Per­so­nally, I don’t sup­port any of them, really, because I haven’t really taken the time to read up properly about it. In addition, I feel that eve­rything I read is coloured by the author’s view­point and thus I don’t trust any­thing I read about it eit­her. The only thing I am sure about, though, is the insane suf­fe­ring of the eve­ryday people living in those bom­bed out areas and I feel equally sorry for them no mat­ter if they are from Israel or from Palestine.

Tonight there was sup­po­sed to be a demon­stra­tion for peace and truce in Gaza in all the major cities in Nor­way. The big­gest irony I’ve seen in years is that the demon­stra­tion in Oslo — our capi­tal — have tur­ned into the most vio­lent mob reac­tions seen in Nor­way seen the early 80s! Pic­tu­res of the Nor­we­gian police force with battons, hel­mets and gas bombs — somet­hing I haven’t seen for as long as I can remember.

From what I under­stand, the vio­lence star­ted as a an anti­de­mon­stra­tion against those who were pro-Israel. So those who oppose Israsel’s vio­lence show it by being vio­lent them­sel­ves? How can anyone expect the Middle East to work this out when we can’t even hold a peace­ful demon­stra­tion about the issue in the safe and rich stre­ets of Norway?

This has made me even more con­vin­ced about one thing, though — it isn’t reli­gion that makes people vio­lent and angry. It isn’t neces­sa­rily poli­tics even. It’s the human nature. Human beings have vio­lence in them, and some things can trig­ger it, but it’s not the fault of any reli­gion, party, ideo­logy or belief. It’s the fault of being a human being.

Today was Buy Not­hing Day in Europe (or: all other parts of the world except North Ame­rica). So here are some of my thoughts and reflections that I had today.

I was on my way to work today, so I had bought myself lunch yester­day instead
of buy­ing somet­hing expen­sive and unhealthy at 7-eleven or a simi­lar place.  I usu­ally lis­ten to my mp3-player when I take the bus to work and lectu­res, but I had lost it at uni ear­lier this week, so I didn’t have that to occupy me on the one hour and for­ty­five min­utes long drive each way (two bus­ses + waiting).

So I spent the time thin­king about my con­sump­tion, which — after all — this day was meant for (at least that’s how I see it). It is not a big sacri­fice for me to wit­hold the malls­hop­ping; make-up, lotions, clot­hes, access­ories etc. I only rar­ely use make-up and lotion, and I only buy them once every other year or somet­hing similar. I buy clot­hes whe­ne­ver I really need them, maybe once or twice
a year, and I don’t really spend any­thing on access­ories either.

My big weak­ness is choco­late. I buy too much choco­late and soda. Espec­ially now around exams. That is con­sump­tion just as much as buy­ing make-up and lotion is con­sump­tion. Fun­nily enough, it’s the idea of the environ­ment and the con­sump­tion that makes me want to stay more away from choco­late, not the health risks.

So today I star­ted the process of redu­cing my choco­late con­sump­tion. I don’t need lotions, make-up and clot­hes to feel happy, so I gat­her I don’t need choco­late for that either.

I have just watched the movie «The Mis­sion» from 1986 with Jeremy Irons and
Robert de Niro. This post isn’t about the movie in par­ti­cu­lar, but about what
feelings and thoughts movies of that kind gives me.

I have - over the years - seen a couple of movies por­tray­ing the Euro­pean
imperalism, not to men­tion been to uni lectu­res regar­ding the sub­ject.
For some reason, there are few things that angers me as much as the
Euro­pean imperalism. I do not know why it is so, but the arro­gance
dis­played by the Western way of thin­king makes me sick to the bone.
I also feel almost the same when it comes to the capi­ta­li­s­tic thin­king
where pro­fit and eco­no­mic growth has tur­ned ani­mals into pro­ducts
and nature into an endless resource.

The capi­ta­li­s­tic and impe­ria­li­s­tic thoughts has given us loads of
luxury and profit. But what have we lost along the way? When I see
how we exploit earth, humans and ani­mals for an eter­nal search
after more and more growth, money and luxury, it makes me want
to step away from it all. I hone­stly don’t want to be a part of the
modern Western cul­ture, built upon greed, sel­fish­ness and arrogance.

See­ing those kind of movies makes me upset and angry. Yet it is a good
thing, because it takes me one step furt­her away from the things in our
culture I despise, and one step further on the path I want to go.

As we live in a com­plex and many-layered society, there are many people, the­mes and for­ces that affects us every day. Even if we don’t con­si­der it or want to believe it, we are affected con­stantly by our sur­round­ings. Of course, we do the same to those around us.

Now, what affects us partly deci­des our thin­king proces­ses. I.e., if we hang around with people which is very occu­pied with poli­tics and we are in an environ­ment where poli­tics are debated daily, there will pro­bably be a sig­ni­fi­cant  part of our brain acti­vity con­cer­ning poli­tics. Thoughts, philo­sphies, deba­tes etc. Simi­la­rily, if we are in an environ­ment where there is a lot of focus on fashion, for instance, we will spend quite a lot of time shop­ping for clot­hes, read­ing fashion magazi­nes, talk about shop­ping and fashion etc.

This all means that whate­ver environ­ment we choose to stay in will also affect much of our thoughts. So will our job situa­tion, and our freetime acti­vities (TV, news­pa­pers, games, books, fri­ends, walks etc etc). Spen­ding our day chitchat­ting with our colle­agues at work, before tal­king about fashion and the weather with a fri­end on the telep­hone before spen­ding our evening watch­ing game shows on TV will greatly affect what kind of thoughts occupy our mind.

If we fill our lives with chitchat and easy enter­tain­ment, there isn’t much room for philo­sphy, reli­gion or other kinds of more serious and heavy sub­jects. Simi­la­rily, if we fill our lives with poli­tics, world pro­blems and phi­lo­sophy, there won’t be much time or frame of mind to spend on enter­tain­ment and relaxa­tion. Our thoughts affects who we are as a person.

What I find impor­tant is rea­li­zing that we are shaped by our sur­round­ings, and I the­re­fore also find it impor­tant to fill my life with those things and people that will leads me towards that I find meaningful.

It’s inter­e­s­ting to note the dif­fe­rent kinds of replies I get from people when I men­tion the fact that I don’t eat meat. It is not somet­hing I blurt out after say­ing «Hi,» but when the sub­ject of food or din­ner habits are brought up, I men­tion it when it seems like a natu­ral thing to do.

Some people just nod and con­ti­nue the con­ver­sa­tion, like it’s the most natu­ral thing to hear, which makes me happy and com­for­table. Some people ask ques­tions, some people starts coming with expla­na­tions for why they them­sel­ves eat meat, and some people give me the phrase «Oh, I could never eat stop eating meat!» — it’s the lat­ter group I want to discuss in this blog post. Read the rest of this entry »

My thoughts on the pro­blem of over­po­pu­la­tion and how to solve the environ­me­nal cri­sis in the long run…

We are too many people on this pla­net. There isn’t enough resources on the Earth to feed eve­ryone — at least not at the level of luxury we indulge ours­el­ves with here in the West.

I per­so­nally do not believe that capi­ta­lism and libe­ra­lism is the key. As far as I see it, those two ideo­lo­gies are two of the rea­sons why we have this situa­tion with environ­men­tal and huma­ni­ta­rian cri­sis that we have today in the first place. Neit­her do I believe that socia­lism is the answer. It hasn’t wor­ked ear­lier, and I don’t see why it should work now.

So what alter­na­ti­ves do we have? Per­so­nally, I don’t think tech­no­logy is they key. Too many things can go wrong in a high-tech, sci-fi future. And I can’t see how that should bene­fit Earth and the human race eit­her. I believe the best solu­tion we have is eco-villages and other kinds of small com­mu­nities. I do not think large, urban cities are natu­ral and well-functioning con­ditions for the human being to thrive in. So both for the sake of the environ­ment, and for the human race, I believe we should live in smal­ler, largely self-sustained, communities.

This is where I am at so far. Maybe I will change my mind later, or maybe I will find this idea bet­ter and bet­ter along the way. Eit­her way, I will strive towards the goal of being self-sustained. I am not there yet, by far, and I am not even sure that is an obtai­nable goal. But it is my ideal way of life as I see it now.