Have you ever been surprised by words - the different combinations of them?
Today I was listening to one of my top-class mentors on a cd. He said that this particular business suits perfectly to people who are ´ambitiously lazy´. Never before had I seen any positive connection between lazyness, ambition and successful business.
My mentor speaks English. Pero ahora cuando trato de explicártelo me encuentro en el centro de un lío linguistico en el nivel más alto - en el nivel de las lenguas, no solo en el del las palabras de una lengua. Now that I´m trying to explain to you what the odd-word-combination surprise feels like - do all surprises feel the same anyway? - I find myself in an upper level conflict, in a conflict between two languages, not only in one of the words of one language. Additionally none of those languages is my native tongue.
So far, two surprises on two levels.
For me English is for working and for various matter-of-facts of life. In that respect I have been very priviledged in life. Had I been born a year before, I would have learnt German at school. That was normal in those days. Among later generations knowing English has become self-evident, because our television programmes are subtitled.
One of the values of subtitles becomes visible when your pre-school children run out into the garden to you to ask what this or that means in their native tongue and then repeat something they have heard on tv in English. Another value of the subtitles is that children learn to read their own native tongue immediately when there is nobody to read the subtitles for them.
Summa summarum - subtitled tv has a solid positive impact on the national economy of a nation, especially when the two laguages are as far apart from each other as Finnish and English are. What I mean by this is that English will not be able to eat up Finnish without us being able to see what is happening. Finnish well never become a dialect of English. It will exist as an independet language as far as there are people who want to speak it, in other words until the year 3702 (cf. my text 11th of April).
Speaking English is more or less normal now. Very many Finns have the irritating habit of dropping in English words and idioms no matter with whom and about what they are speaking. There is a social pressure to know English much enough, on one hand to do dropping in, and on the other hand not to feel anyhow disturbed by the feelings of social isolation, if you do not know enough English to understand other people´s drop-ins.
Having reached something you might have lost something else. The knowledge of German has now become rare.
Approaching a third suprise on the third level.
We were sitting in a café in Helsinki. It was Christmas time. I felt content and relaxed after all driving and shopping. It was as if I had been wrapped in the lively talk around the table, not paying any attention to what was actually said. We Finns have a special talent of feeling happy, although keeping silent and socially unreachable when in company.
When you are among other Finns nobody pays any attention to your silence, provided there are at least two people in the group voluntarily taking the responsibility of uttering something insignificant every now and then.
But it was not a group of Finns now. It was a group of active and intelligent Spanish speaking young adults. All of a sudden I was woken up. The wrapping was opened. Lorena asked me in her beautifully rational and enthusiastic way: "What do you think about this?"
It was as if she had put a beautiful, fresh-baked and nicely smelling ham in the middle of the table. I had the smell. I saw that everybody around me admired what they saw, but I myself could not see anything. I had no idea what I was supposed to take part in. - My daughter did her best to save the situation.
Just at present I have a surprise ham on the table. A business opportunity in Spain. Por eso me estoy cambiando la cabeza. Para poder actuar en español necesito una identidad apropiada en español. Después de un rato en vez de meter palabras sueltas del inglés a la habla normal, voy a drop in castellano.
It is highly probable that various third level surprises will not only change your own life, but also the life of some other people. The prerequisite for major changes in life is called identity work. It is work, but finding out about the surprise is also fun. It makes you feel curious about your long and short-term future. They also say that people who do not have alternatives change quickly.
Have you ever coldly calculated how many options you have in your life?
By what means do you make them feasible?
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Sunshine and Stomach Ulcers
"The first sentence of a novel needs to construct a picture." (Leo Tolstoy)
I have a book consisting of the first sentences in 200 novels. Those books have been published in 1954-1986. When I got the book I thought it would be a treasure. It hasn´t been. I find it very irritating to be able to read the first five lines of a world-famous book and ...
All of a sudden there is nothing more.
The opposite page repeats the same drop out.
And the following.
When now telling you about this I realise that practically all of those 200 books have been written by men: Alberto, Amos, Kurt, John, Ernest, Yashar, Graham, Aleksander, Günter, William, Niko, Jevgeni, Wolfgang, Italo, Saul, Zharia, Ladislav, Yasunari, Wole etc.
When really searching I find three women Alice, Toni and Francoise. Maybe there are more of them, but anyhow it seems that 95 per cent of the influential authors of those days were men. Men must have a special talent for literary expression.
In my childhood men had several gene-bound talents that women did not have. Men composed music, played in symphony orchestras, made laws, run organizations and they even knew how to operate the clutch pedal of the car.
During my life time some of these genes have undergone mutations. We have important female composers. One of the most famous Finnish female composers is Kaija Saariaho. She is not the only one. Women play in symphony orchestras. They also conduct them. Susanna Mälkki, is one example of those ladies. Women are active in Finnish and European politics as well as in international conflict resolution.
Maybe the genes started changing when the women in my mother´s generation learned to drive car and used the clutch pedal, too.
I just wonder if the number of women authors has increased since 1986.
It´s now the evening of the fifth sunny and warm day of this summer. The sun is setting. The night will be short, but it is now dark. Maybe you wonder if it is normal in Finland to continuously refer to the ratio daylight and darkness in the way I do. You may even think it to be as embarassing as being able to read just the first five lines of a novel. Perhaps I had better add a few lines more.
I have told you about Midsummer and what it means to be going towards it, the days getting longer and longer. Now we are going towards the shorter and shorter days. I need not tell you anything more about that because somebody else has already done it. It is a pitty the following text has not been published in English. The name of the book in Spanish is Delicioso suicidio en grupo (ISBN: 978-84-339-7120-3, Finnish original Suloinen joukkoitsemurha). The author is Arto Paasilinna. He is a man, which does not make the text bad at all. If you might ever get interested in Finnish men, Paasilinna might give you an idea what is to be expected in the long run, when you start hearing the other one snoring at night...
"El enemigo más poderoso de los finlandeses es la oscuridad, la apatia sin fin. La melancolía flota sobre el desgraciado pueblo y durante miles de años lo ha mantenido bajo su yugo con tal fuerza, que el alma de éste ha terminado por volverse tenebrosa y grave. Tal es el peso de la gongoja, que muchos finlandeses ven la muerte como única salida a su angustia. Una mente taciturna es un enemigo aún más encarnizado y temible que la propia Union Sovietica.
Sin embargo, el finlandés es un pueblo de guerreros. Todo, menos rendirse. Una y otra vez se alza en rebelión contra el tirano
La Noche de San Juan, la fiesta de la luz y la alegría que marca el solsticio de verano, es para los finlandeses una descomunal batalla en la que, de común acuerdo y uniendo sus fuerzas, intentan derrotar a la melancolía que los corroe. Todo el pueblo se pone en pie de guerra: /.../"
Si te interesa saber más de lo que es normal en Finlandia y que no, vale la pena buscar éste libro por Arto Paasilinna. Leyéndolo vas a participar en un seminario de suicidiología en Helsinki, vas a conocer al criador de renos Uula Lismanki, al aguatragedias Seppo Sorjonen, al capitán en dique seco Mikko Heikkinen etc. Tambíen vas a viajar por todo Finlandia y al extranjero. Y sobre todo, vas a aprender dónde ponemos los limites de la normalidad en éste país.
It is a pitty this book has not been translated into English. You can easily find Arto Paasilinna in Spanish, French, German and Italian, in Swedish of course, but not in English. Maybe the sense of humour in Britain and the rest of the Anglo-American world is too sofisticated to cover the new-potatoes-dill-and-herring attitude towards life typical to Arto Paasilinna and the picaresque novel.
If you read in English, you may test your sense of humour reading The Year of the Hare (ISBN: 0-7206-1017-6, Finnish original Jäniksen vuosi) by the same author. The publisher has considered it important to add an explanative title on its cover: A picaresque novel with an ecological theme.
This is how it starts:
"Two harassed men were driving down a lane. The setting sun was paining their eyes through the dusty windscreen. It was midsummer, but the landscape on this sandy road was slipping past their weary eyes unnoticed; the beauty of the Finnish evening was lost on them both.
They were a journalist and a photographer, out on an assignment: two dissatisfied, cynical men, getting on for middle age. The hopes of their youth had not been realized, far from it. They were husbands, deceiving and deceived; stomach ulcers were on the way for both of them; and many other worries filled their days.
They´d just been wrangling. Should they drive back to Helsinki or spend the night in Heinola? Now they weren´t speaking.
They drove through the lovely summer evening hunched, self-absorbed as two mindless crustaceans, not even noticing how wrethced their cantankerousness was. /.../"
Sometimes we need courage to see the life as it is - full of choices. Paasilinna makes you see choices which normally remain undetected.
"La Finlandia intera entrava nella stagione estiva. La acque si erano liberate, gli umani risvegliati. Il sole splendeva raggiante, una brezza leggera turbinava nell´aria. Dalle parti di Lestijärvi, in campagna, una madre di familia sfornava brioche alla canella, a Kokkola, sulla costa, un automobilista ubriaco provocava un incidente mortale. Insomma, era cominciata l´estate." (Lo smemorato di Tapiola (ISBN: 88-7091-098-9, Finnish original Elämä lyhyt, Rytkönen pitkä).
The first sentence needs to make a picture. If there are just five lines of the text available, we have all reason to feel disappointed. How the story will continue is very much up to you. It depends more on the courage you have than on anything else. If there was a dream in the in the beginning, it was a lively and tempting picture. What was it like? What would be the first step to make your dream become true?
Long ago I got a dream - or the dream got me. I wanted to have some business in Spain. Now it seems that this dream will become true. To be able to share the dream with my friends there I need to brush up my Spanish. Just at present this is the first step.
It is funny, but Juan José Millás has a vocabulary I need not stumble with. When reading Paasilinna I have to use a dictionary. Obviously the world he describes is not reachable by academic concepts, which might be one more recommendation to read him.
I have a book consisting of the first sentences in 200 novels. Those books have been published in 1954-1986. When I got the book I thought it would be a treasure. It hasn´t been. I find it very irritating to be able to read the first five lines of a world-famous book and ...
All of a sudden there is nothing more.
The opposite page repeats the same drop out.
And the following.
When now telling you about this I realise that practically all of those 200 books have been written by men: Alberto, Amos, Kurt, John, Ernest, Yashar, Graham, Aleksander, Günter, William, Niko, Jevgeni, Wolfgang, Italo, Saul, Zharia, Ladislav, Yasunari, Wole etc.
When really searching I find three women Alice, Toni and Francoise. Maybe there are more of them, but anyhow it seems that 95 per cent of the influential authors of those days were men. Men must have a special talent for literary expression.
In my childhood men had several gene-bound talents that women did not have. Men composed music, played in symphony orchestras, made laws, run organizations and they even knew how to operate the clutch pedal of the car.
During my life time some of these genes have undergone mutations. We have important female composers. One of the most famous Finnish female composers is Kaija Saariaho. She is not the only one. Women play in symphony orchestras. They also conduct them. Susanna Mälkki, is one example of those ladies. Women are active in Finnish and European politics as well as in international conflict resolution.
Maybe the genes started changing when the women in my mother´s generation learned to drive car and used the clutch pedal, too.
I just wonder if the number of women authors has increased since 1986.
It´s now the evening of the fifth sunny and warm day of this summer. The sun is setting. The night will be short, but it is now dark. Maybe you wonder if it is normal in Finland to continuously refer to the ratio daylight and darkness in the way I do. You may even think it to be as embarassing as being able to read just the first five lines of a novel. Perhaps I had better add a few lines more.
I have told you about Midsummer and what it means to be going towards it, the days getting longer and longer. Now we are going towards the shorter and shorter days. I need not tell you anything more about that because somebody else has already done it. It is a pitty the following text has not been published in English. The name of the book in Spanish is Delicioso suicidio en grupo (ISBN: 978-84-339-7120-3, Finnish original Suloinen joukkoitsemurha). The author is Arto Paasilinna. He is a man, which does not make the text bad at all. If you might ever get interested in Finnish men, Paasilinna might give you an idea what is to be expected in the long run, when you start hearing the other one snoring at night...
"El enemigo más poderoso de los finlandeses es la oscuridad, la apatia sin fin. La melancolía flota sobre el desgraciado pueblo y durante miles de años lo ha mantenido bajo su yugo con tal fuerza, que el alma de éste ha terminado por volverse tenebrosa y grave. Tal es el peso de la gongoja, que muchos finlandeses ven la muerte como única salida a su angustia. Una mente taciturna es un enemigo aún más encarnizado y temible que la propia Union Sovietica.
Sin embargo, el finlandés es un pueblo de guerreros. Todo, menos rendirse. Una y otra vez se alza en rebelión contra el tirano
La Noche de San Juan, la fiesta de la luz y la alegría que marca el solsticio de verano, es para los finlandeses una descomunal batalla en la que, de común acuerdo y uniendo sus fuerzas, intentan derrotar a la melancolía que los corroe. Todo el pueblo se pone en pie de guerra: /.../"
Si te interesa saber más de lo que es normal en Finlandia y que no, vale la pena buscar éste libro por Arto Paasilinna. Leyéndolo vas a participar en un seminario de suicidiología en Helsinki, vas a conocer al criador de renos Uula Lismanki, al aguatragedias Seppo Sorjonen, al capitán en dique seco Mikko Heikkinen etc. Tambíen vas a viajar por todo Finlandia y al extranjero. Y sobre todo, vas a aprender dónde ponemos los limites de la normalidad en éste país.
It is a pitty this book has not been translated into English. You can easily find Arto Paasilinna in Spanish, French, German and Italian, in Swedish of course, but not in English. Maybe the sense of humour in Britain and the rest of the Anglo-American world is too sofisticated to cover the new-potatoes-dill-and-herring attitude towards life typical to Arto Paasilinna and the picaresque novel.
If you read in English, you may test your sense of humour reading The Year of the Hare (ISBN: 0-7206-1017-6, Finnish original Jäniksen vuosi) by the same author. The publisher has considered it important to add an explanative title on its cover: A picaresque novel with an ecological theme.
This is how it starts:
"Two harassed men were driving down a lane. The setting sun was paining their eyes through the dusty windscreen. It was midsummer, but the landscape on this sandy road was slipping past their weary eyes unnoticed; the beauty of the Finnish evening was lost on them both.
They were a journalist and a photographer, out on an assignment: two dissatisfied, cynical men, getting on for middle age. The hopes of their youth had not been realized, far from it. They were husbands, deceiving and deceived; stomach ulcers were on the way for both of them; and many other worries filled their days.
They´d just been wrangling. Should they drive back to Helsinki or spend the night in Heinola? Now they weren´t speaking.
They drove through the lovely summer evening hunched, self-absorbed as two mindless crustaceans, not even noticing how wrethced their cantankerousness was. /.../"
Sometimes we need courage to see the life as it is - full of choices. Paasilinna makes you see choices which normally remain undetected.
"La Finlandia intera entrava nella stagione estiva. La acque si erano liberate, gli umani risvegliati. Il sole splendeva raggiante, una brezza leggera turbinava nell´aria. Dalle parti di Lestijärvi, in campagna, una madre di familia sfornava brioche alla canella, a Kokkola, sulla costa, un automobilista ubriaco provocava un incidente mortale. Insomma, era cominciata l´estate." (Lo smemorato di Tapiola (ISBN: 88-7091-098-9, Finnish original Elämä lyhyt, Rytkönen pitkä).
The first sentence needs to make a picture. If there are just five lines of the text available, we have all reason to feel disappointed. How the story will continue is very much up to you. It depends more on the courage you have than on anything else. If there was a dream in the in the beginning, it was a lively and tempting picture. What was it like? What would be the first step to make your dream become true?
Long ago I got a dream - or the dream got me. I wanted to have some business in Spain. Now it seems that this dream will become true. To be able to share the dream with my friends there I need to brush up my Spanish. Just at present this is the first step.
It is funny, but Juan José Millás has a vocabulary I need not stumble with. When reading Paasilinna I have to use a dictionary. Obviously the world he describes is not reachable by academic concepts, which might be one more recommendation to read him.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Janus-faced Imaginations
"How many words are there?" my son asks when we are driving to the kindergarten.
It is a French kidergarten, free of charge, because the French government pays for the teacher and the city of Tampere for the rent. Pascal and Nady, the teachers, are specialised in Montessory pedagogy. In other words, we have luxury in our life.
Anybody can get their children in there. Anyway, they don´t. The simple reason is that luxury does not look like luxury when it is too near and too easy to reach. It is normal and normality can make things invisible and difficult to detect.
When a child starts wondering how many words there are, it is likely that he is learning to identify differences that make a difference as Gregory Bateson says.
"Imagination is strange. Think of Bill Watterson (the creator of Calvin and Hobbes), for instance. He must have Bill Watterson´s imagination and he must also have the imagination Calvin has." my son says in the car another day.
Obviously the car was an ideal place for deep thinking and sharing ideas. At least it was a place where the next occurence did not immediately wipe out the ideas talked about. They had time to become registered and remembered.
Once more we were on our 15-minute drive to the French kindergarten. My son asks:
"Mother, do you know what you should do when you feel really bad?"
"No."
"You should spread it as wide as possible."
"That sounds interesting."
"Yes, that is what Calvin says we should do."
If you ever have children buy them Legos and read them Calvin and Hobbes. Intelligent children are fun when they are small and a challenge when they grow up. When grown-up they make choices that inevitably make you wonder if they use their intelligence reasonably.
I do not mean that we should be overly rational all the time. I mean that it is extremely easy to seriously mess up one´s life for short-term benefits. Life will offer much more than we first believe possible. Being intelligent, obstinate and in a hurry can result in an accumulation of unnecessary life burden.
Little children think clearly. I do not know what my children were doing. I just overheard them: "There you have a problem." my son states in amatter-of-fact way.
"How are you going to solve it?" he asks.
"With rhetoric and reason." my daughter says without the slightest hesitation.
Her method is perfect. The only problem is that there are people who are not reachable either by means of rhetoric or by reason. God save us from them. May he keep them just rare anomalies that do not disturb what is normal.
Bill Watterson´s imagination came to my mind when I read Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
(Finnish edition Murha laitumella). Maybe you should not read how the book has been presented. I knew practically nothing about it beforehand. It had never occured to me that the sheep really must have an eye on us human beings. If they didn´t, they would not get along in life.
In Spain my friends have sheep that are taken care of by a couple of shepherds. In Scotland I have seen sheep taken care of by dogs only. I know a sheep shearer from New Zealand. So far we are not personal friends, but maybe one day. He is a very entertaining and highly appreciated organisational trainer. Perhaps, his skill to share information and experience with his audience has its origins in the intelligence and imagination of the sheep he has shorn.
As sheep seem to smuggle their way into this text it is well worth mentioning a book I read in winter. It is Bulibasha King of the Gypsies by Witi Ihimaera (ISBN: 0-14-025432-3). It is an introduction to a world you may never have known to exist.
Life is more or less the same anywhere where people live - and anyhow - there are differences that make a difference. And there are people who are able to describe those differences to us. It is luxury, especially if you think what ambitious writing means in practice. I just finished reading El mundo by Juan José Millas (ISBN:978-84-08-07596-7).
He says "... escritura abre y cauteriza al mismo tiempo las heridas." Writing simultaneuously opens and heals wounds.
Millas also describes how he as a child, by chance, found out what happens to people when they have died:
"Los muertos vivían en otro barrio, pues. Había un barrio ocupado por ellos." ... "Las calles, en aquel lugar, estaban empedradas (en mi barrio, la mayoría eran de tierra) y los edificios, altos y distinguidos, tenían en sus bajos tiendas cuyos escaparates no podías dejar de mirar." There was a district in his town - Madrid - where the dead people lived. It was almost like the district where Millás himself lived, but not exactly.
The secret of rich and luxurious life is hidden into the concept "exactly alike, just a little different."
The origin of the differences that make a difference lies somewhere outside ´you´. You need somebody else to mark out the differences that make a difference. Having been marked, we tend to think that it was me who found it. It is just that shared experiences become our personal experiences and what are you able to own if not your experiences...
Writing is solitary work. People who read lead a priviledged life. They are never lonely, for instance.
We all are lucky to have so many words that can be combined in so many ways to point out so many slight differences that may construct new experiences.
At eleven-thirty I had to put on the lights. Nights are getting dark again. So far the summer has been cold, but beautiful. This is quite normal, athough we would prefer having some hot weather sometime, too. Not for too long, just the normal 11 days a year. So far we have had just two of them.
If you live in Madrid, just look around to see whether your barrio es un barrio de los vivos o de los muertos. The difference might be a bit difficult to detect at the first sight, but I´m sure you´ll learn to pick up the real differences that make a difference.
It is a French kidergarten, free of charge, because the French government pays for the teacher and the city of Tampere for the rent. Pascal and Nady, the teachers, are specialised in Montessory pedagogy. In other words, we have luxury in our life.
Anybody can get their children in there. Anyway, they don´t. The simple reason is that luxury does not look like luxury when it is too near and too easy to reach. It is normal and normality can make things invisible and difficult to detect.
When a child starts wondering how many words there are, it is likely that he is learning to identify differences that make a difference as Gregory Bateson says.
"Imagination is strange. Think of Bill Watterson (the creator of Calvin and Hobbes), for instance. He must have Bill Watterson´s imagination and he must also have the imagination Calvin has." my son says in the car another day.
Obviously the car was an ideal place for deep thinking and sharing ideas. At least it was a place where the next occurence did not immediately wipe out the ideas talked about. They had time to become registered and remembered.
Once more we were on our 15-minute drive to the French kindergarten. My son asks:
"Mother, do you know what you should do when you feel really bad?"
"No."
"You should spread it as wide as possible."
"That sounds interesting."
"Yes, that is what Calvin says we should do."
If you ever have children buy them Legos and read them Calvin and Hobbes. Intelligent children are fun when they are small and a challenge when they grow up. When grown-up they make choices that inevitably make you wonder if they use their intelligence reasonably.
I do not mean that we should be overly rational all the time. I mean that it is extremely easy to seriously mess up one´s life for short-term benefits. Life will offer much more than we first believe possible. Being intelligent, obstinate and in a hurry can result in an accumulation of unnecessary life burden.
Little children think clearly. I do not know what my children were doing. I just overheard them: "There you have a problem." my son states in amatter-of-fact way.
"How are you going to solve it?" he asks.
"With rhetoric and reason." my daughter says without the slightest hesitation.
Her method is perfect. The only problem is that there are people who are not reachable either by means of rhetoric or by reason. God save us from them. May he keep them just rare anomalies that do not disturb what is normal.
Bill Watterson´s imagination came to my mind when I read Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
(Finnish edition Murha laitumella). Maybe you should not read how the book has been presented. I knew practically nothing about it beforehand. It had never occured to me that the sheep really must have an eye on us human beings. If they didn´t, they would not get along in life.
In Spain my friends have sheep that are taken care of by a couple of shepherds. In Scotland I have seen sheep taken care of by dogs only. I know a sheep shearer from New Zealand. So far we are not personal friends, but maybe one day. He is a very entertaining and highly appreciated organisational trainer. Perhaps, his skill to share information and experience with his audience has its origins in the intelligence and imagination of the sheep he has shorn.
As sheep seem to smuggle their way into this text it is well worth mentioning a book I read in winter. It is Bulibasha King of the Gypsies by Witi Ihimaera (ISBN: 0-14-025432-3). It is an introduction to a world you may never have known to exist.
Life is more or less the same anywhere where people live - and anyhow - there are differences that make a difference. And there are people who are able to describe those differences to us. It is luxury, especially if you think what ambitious writing means in practice. I just finished reading El mundo by Juan José Millas (ISBN:978-84-08-07596-7).
He says "... escritura abre y cauteriza al mismo tiempo las heridas." Writing simultaneuously opens and heals wounds.
Millas also describes how he as a child, by chance, found out what happens to people when they have died:
"Los muertos vivían en otro barrio, pues. Había un barrio ocupado por ellos." ... "Las calles, en aquel lugar, estaban empedradas (en mi barrio, la mayoría eran de tierra) y los edificios, altos y distinguidos, tenían en sus bajos tiendas cuyos escaparates no podías dejar de mirar." There was a district in his town - Madrid - where the dead people lived. It was almost like the district where Millás himself lived, but not exactly.
The secret of rich and luxurious life is hidden into the concept "exactly alike, just a little different."
The origin of the differences that make a difference lies somewhere outside ´you´. You need somebody else to mark out the differences that make a difference. Having been marked, we tend to think that it was me who found it. It is just that shared experiences become our personal experiences and what are you able to own if not your experiences...
Writing is solitary work. People who read lead a priviledged life. They are never lonely, for instance.
We all are lucky to have so many words that can be combined in so many ways to point out so many slight differences that may construct new experiences.
At eleven-thirty I had to put on the lights. Nights are getting dark again. So far the summer has been cold, but beautiful. This is quite normal, athough we would prefer having some hot weather sometime, too. Not for too long, just the normal 11 days a year. So far we have had just two of them.
If you live in Madrid, just look around to see whether your barrio es un barrio de los vivos o de los muertos. The difference might be a bit difficult to detect at the first sight, but I´m sure you´ll learn to pick up the real differences that make a difference.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Where does God´s Home End?
"World never comes to an end - if it comes, it will end on the very point where God´s home starts, just exactly at the fence."
World has not come to an end. In the forests blue flowers (hepatica triloba) came out first, after them the white ones (wood sorrel, oxalis acetocella and may lily, mianthemum bifolium) and then the yellow ones (buttercup, ranunculaceae). They went quickly by, as they usually do. If you do not go into forests a couple of times weekly, the next opportunity to see them will be next year.
I told my daughter that the apple trees will soon have blossomed. "Why didn´t you tell me before. I would have liked to see them."
The Finnish spring-summer goes rushing by. To me it is the most enjoyable time of the year. You know that every tomorrow will be longer than today - until Midsummer.
Days, nights, apple trees and Midsummer roses have followed their yearly routines. Bees haven´t. It was strange not to hear them humming in the blossoming apple trees. It was cold, but the Midsummer roses which come out a couple of weeks later were equally quiet. I thought it was warm enough for bees to be seen and heard then. I was worried.
Being in a hurry it is easy to forget that Nature is not just stimuli to our eyes. It is something that smells, tastes, bites, tickles and makes noises. If any one of those chracteristics is missing, we need to stop to think. Somebody has said that if bees disappear, human beings will follow in four years´time.
Bees have built a hive somewhere inside the wall above my front door. Going out I stop listening if they send any messages. Today nothing was to be heard. It is evening, about nine o´clock. My kitchen faces to the north. Just now it is sunlit, which only happens around Midsummer. Bees are still working busily in the garden. It is their normal life at this time of the year.
Swedish historian Peter Englund has written essays The History of Silence (original title Tystnadens historia och andra assäer, Finnish translation Hiljaisuuden historia, ISBN: 951-0-29417-9). I wish I could more often find books like that.
I remembered the book while mowing the lawn and taking up the wildest weeds. Some time ago I heard that the gardens around the typical Finnish 1950´s-houses need not be overly decorated. That was not done in the fifties. The after-war generation worked hard to get the country properly going on. They had no extra time to spend in the garden. Neither could they afford buying all possible plants that we now get from Holland and elsewhere. Apples, currants, raspberies and gooseberrie grew in their gardens without needing any special attention. Potatoes, carrots, dill and radish were grown and they had to be properly taken care of.
Now people can choose between ambitious gardening or just having a lawn. My choice is just the lawn - and I know the British would not call it any proper lawn. It is just a wild, green collection of grass, clover and dandelions.
Rain was starting to fall. First came the individual drops. I could hear how they met the foliage of the old apple trees. It was as if they had been whispering some secrets to them.
Peter Englund starts his book: "I have heard it snowing." "Olen kuullut lumen satavan."
I heard one rain drop, then another one, and that one followed by a couple of more...
Peter Englund reminds us that in the old days wind, rain and birds singing were not just insignificant background noises. They carried messages that needed interpretation. Southern winds brought illness; northern winds intensified depression and made people feel hungry; heavy, icy winds after the 6th of December promised good harvest; if the heavy, icy winds started blowing on a Christmas Eve, the king was going to die.
In those days wind was not listened to because of the noise it made. It was listened to because it had something to say. The same applies to the bees and Midsummer roses today. If you do not hear bees and other insects in and among their flowers, the silence has something to say.
I have been writing about expertise, knowledge and power lately. The topic needs to be crumbled. Otherwise it is too heavy. It needs to be decorated with stories and anecdotes. Often the stories about power are stories about force and cruelty. I have read some history.
Jaan Kross a remarkable Estonian writer. He writes about Estonia during and after the second world war, as well as about his own experiences in the Russian concentration camps in Siberia. The texts have been published between 1984 - 1998. If you ever get hold of them, you have seen a jaguar in the jungle. In other words, having read them your world will have changed. The name of the Finnish collection is Halleluja (ISBN: 951-0-25615-3). I sincerely hope that the collection has been translated into English as well.
Sometimes we go on asking though the answers have already been given. Guido Knopp has written a book called Hitlers Kinder (Hitlerin lapset ISBN: 951-20-7013-8). We often emphasize that everyone has a choice. Having read Hitlers Kinder you might feel tempted to reconsider what you think of the choices in Germany in the 1930´s.
One more deep dive into the history has been King Leopold´s Ghost by Adam Hochschildt (Kuningas Leopoldin haamu, ISBN: 951-31-2850-4). Visiting the Heart of Darkness is more than unpleasant. The only thing giving us some hope is that among us there are always one or two individuals who are brave enough to find out what is really taking place. In the very beginning there may be only one person who is ready to fight to find out the truth.
Peter Englund writes about heroism. Real heroes face death and they risk their own life for others. However, our willingness to find heroes makes the majority of us blind and lazy. History proves that many heroes have been authentic rascals and evildoers.
Why do we learn that just afterwards? It is because of power. Real power is the power to define where God´s home is and what its fence is made of.
Post script If you have read The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, you know what ´the fence´ refers to. The reference to the end of the world and God´s home I owe to seven-year-old Rasmus.
World has not come to an end. In the forests blue flowers (hepatica triloba) came out first, after them the white ones (wood sorrel, oxalis acetocella and may lily, mianthemum bifolium) and then the yellow ones (buttercup, ranunculaceae). They went quickly by, as they usually do. If you do not go into forests a couple of times weekly, the next opportunity to see them will be next year.
I told my daughter that the apple trees will soon have blossomed. "Why didn´t you tell me before. I would have liked to see them."
The Finnish spring-summer goes rushing by. To me it is the most enjoyable time of the year. You know that every tomorrow will be longer than today - until Midsummer.
Days, nights, apple trees and Midsummer roses have followed their yearly routines. Bees haven´t. It was strange not to hear them humming in the blossoming apple trees. It was cold, but the Midsummer roses which come out a couple of weeks later were equally quiet. I thought it was warm enough for bees to be seen and heard then. I was worried.
Being in a hurry it is easy to forget that Nature is not just stimuli to our eyes. It is something that smells, tastes, bites, tickles and makes noises. If any one of those chracteristics is missing, we need to stop to think. Somebody has said that if bees disappear, human beings will follow in four years´time.
Bees have built a hive somewhere inside the wall above my front door. Going out I stop listening if they send any messages. Today nothing was to be heard. It is evening, about nine o´clock. My kitchen faces to the north. Just now it is sunlit, which only happens around Midsummer. Bees are still working busily in the garden. It is their normal life at this time of the year.
Swedish historian Peter Englund has written essays The History of Silence (original title Tystnadens historia och andra assäer, Finnish translation Hiljaisuuden historia, ISBN: 951-0-29417-9). I wish I could more often find books like that.
I remembered the book while mowing the lawn and taking up the wildest weeds. Some time ago I heard that the gardens around the typical Finnish 1950´s-houses need not be overly decorated. That was not done in the fifties. The after-war generation worked hard to get the country properly going on. They had no extra time to spend in the garden. Neither could they afford buying all possible plants that we now get from Holland and elsewhere. Apples, currants, raspberies and gooseberrie grew in their gardens without needing any special attention. Potatoes, carrots, dill and radish were grown and they had to be properly taken care of.
Now people can choose between ambitious gardening or just having a lawn. My choice is just the lawn - and I know the British would not call it any proper lawn. It is just a wild, green collection of grass, clover and dandelions.
Rain was starting to fall. First came the individual drops. I could hear how they met the foliage of the old apple trees. It was as if they had been whispering some secrets to them.
Peter Englund starts his book: "I have heard it snowing." "Olen kuullut lumen satavan."
I heard one rain drop, then another one, and that one followed by a couple of more...
Peter Englund reminds us that in the old days wind, rain and birds singing were not just insignificant background noises. They carried messages that needed interpretation. Southern winds brought illness; northern winds intensified depression and made people feel hungry; heavy, icy winds after the 6th of December promised good harvest; if the heavy, icy winds started blowing on a Christmas Eve, the king was going to die.
In those days wind was not listened to because of the noise it made. It was listened to because it had something to say. The same applies to the bees and Midsummer roses today. If you do not hear bees and other insects in and among their flowers, the silence has something to say.
I have been writing about expertise, knowledge and power lately. The topic needs to be crumbled. Otherwise it is too heavy. It needs to be decorated with stories and anecdotes. Often the stories about power are stories about force and cruelty. I have read some history.
Jaan Kross a remarkable Estonian writer. He writes about Estonia during and after the second world war, as well as about his own experiences in the Russian concentration camps in Siberia. The texts have been published between 1984 - 1998. If you ever get hold of them, you have seen a jaguar in the jungle. In other words, having read them your world will have changed. The name of the Finnish collection is Halleluja (ISBN: 951-0-25615-3). I sincerely hope that the collection has been translated into English as well.
Sometimes we go on asking though the answers have already been given. Guido Knopp has written a book called Hitlers Kinder (Hitlerin lapset ISBN: 951-20-7013-8). We often emphasize that everyone has a choice. Having read Hitlers Kinder you might feel tempted to reconsider what you think of the choices in Germany in the 1930´s.
One more deep dive into the history has been King Leopold´s Ghost by Adam Hochschildt (Kuningas Leopoldin haamu, ISBN: 951-31-2850-4). Visiting the Heart of Darkness is more than unpleasant. The only thing giving us some hope is that among us there are always one or two individuals who are brave enough to find out what is really taking place. In the very beginning there may be only one person who is ready to fight to find out the truth.
Peter Englund writes about heroism. Real heroes face death and they risk their own life for others. However, our willingness to find heroes makes the majority of us blind and lazy. History proves that many heroes have been authentic rascals and evildoers.
Why do we learn that just afterwards? It is because of power. Real power is the power to define where God´s home is and what its fence is made of.
Post script If you have read The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, you know what ´the fence´ refers to. The reference to the end of the world and God´s home I owe to seven-year-old Rasmus.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Human Mind and Sumerian Gods
Sumerians thought that the world is governed by the council of seven gods: Sun, Moon, Sky, Fresh water, Salty water and Storm. The mightiest of them was Storm. This council gathered the first day of every year to decide what the new year will be like, what will be possible and what not.
Some time ago I had a nightmare that woke me up. I was at school, happy and content. Doing the things that I enjoyed doing and simultaneously pushing aside getting prepaired for the maths finals.
When I went to school we had a matriculation exam. It was a real once-in-a-lifetime event that affected your coming seventy, eighty years of life. The exam could not be repeated nor the results made any better.
Every now and then this nightmare repeats itself. I´m totally happy, but every now and then I remember that the exam is approaching. Anyhow I do nothing. Then all of a sudden I realise that it is too late. I do not have the slightest possibility to get prepaired. If there´s no maths, there will be nothing else either. The only thing that I have left is to tell my maths teacher that I have to give up. There will be no matriculation exam nor any graduating for me. - This is when I wake up. I realise that there is no more need for any matriculation exam. I have passed it long since. Life is all right. What a relief!
It is interesting how our mind works. At least to me it seems that there are two alternative interpretations for this dream. One is that I´m badly neglecting to see that there is a real danger approaching. The other one is to realize that... I have difficulties in constructing this second alternative. Sometimes it flashes in my mind, but when I try to catch a hold of it to write it down, it disappears. Maybe, there´s just the first alternative, the danger.
It is now eleven o´clock p.m. I can still see that the sun is setting slowly. The last rays are reflected on sky which will be lit by the moon in awhile. Long, sunny, fresh and beautiful spring days are here. Leaves grow rapidly. Narcissi and tulips are blossoming.
This is the best time to visit Finland. Even the most pessimistic people won´t say yet that the autumn will start approaching soon, meaning that after Midsummer the days won´t get any longer. So far every day is longer than the previous one.
They say that thinking about time equals thinking about death. The days being exceptionally short or unusually long makes you think about time. In winter it is cold and dark at four-five. You need a some self-discipline and social pressure to feel enthusiastic about taking any initiative. In summer you can do things without inner or outer obligations, voluntarily and enjoyably.
I recently read Songs of the Gorilla Nation. My Journey through Autism by Dawn Prince-Hughes ( Finnish edition ISBN: 952-5534-20-0). I knew practically nothing about autism and the Asperger syndrome before that. The book is worth reading.
What you might gain in reading the book is that you learn to see normal human behaviour as one version of gorilla behaviour. I do not mean gorilla behaviour in the aggressive and stereo type sense, but in the sense of really caring and minding of each other.
Somebody thas said that caring is waiting rather than effort or tension or mobilisation of knowledge. Caring is a time-related concept. It means waiting. As a gorilla expert Prince-Hughes points out that as well.
People can have different versions of Asperger syndrome which means that they have the need to develop their own coping strategies to get on in life. Prince-Hughes describes hers. She ends up becoming a university professor.
She worked methodologically to reach her goal. One third of her time at the university she talked about her personal skills and abilities. The second third she talked about the work of her colleagues and their shared interests. The rest of the time she talked about current events and her own softened opinions about them. She also made it a rule for herself to remember to ask about other people´s interests.
Due to her special Asperger behaviour it was easy and automatic for her to control that all those topics really received their due time.
If we add to this knowledge what Guy Kawasaki tells about his communication habits, we have a special success formula. Kawasaki lists eight passions that make it possible for him to connect with anybody in the business world. The topics are Audi cars, Breitling watches, tinnitus/Ménièr´s disease, boxers (the dog breed), adopting children, London, digital photography, and Macintosh (text 29.6.2007) .
It´s obvious that you need to develop your own list of eight passions, but that should not be too demanding. You have tested them several times.
Now that we have tested experience of both the topics and the time required, we have at our disposal a recipe showing how normal life can be made even better. If the recipe does not work, we had perhaps better turn to the Sumerian gods.
Or what do you think - are your personal restrictions determined rather by your nightmares and fear for success, plus the fear for the work required, or are they determined by the Sumerian gods deciding what will be possible and what not?
If life is normal, is there any real need to make it even better?
Some time ago I had a nightmare that woke me up. I was at school, happy and content. Doing the things that I enjoyed doing and simultaneously pushing aside getting prepaired for the maths finals.
When I went to school we had a matriculation exam. It was a real once-in-a-lifetime event that affected your coming seventy, eighty years of life. The exam could not be repeated nor the results made any better.
Every now and then this nightmare repeats itself. I´m totally happy, but every now and then I remember that the exam is approaching. Anyhow I do nothing. Then all of a sudden I realise that it is too late. I do not have the slightest possibility to get prepaired. If there´s no maths, there will be nothing else either. The only thing that I have left is to tell my maths teacher that I have to give up. There will be no matriculation exam nor any graduating for me. - This is when I wake up. I realise that there is no more need for any matriculation exam. I have passed it long since. Life is all right. What a relief!
It is interesting how our mind works. At least to me it seems that there are two alternative interpretations for this dream. One is that I´m badly neglecting to see that there is a real danger approaching. The other one is to realize that... I have difficulties in constructing this second alternative. Sometimes it flashes in my mind, but when I try to catch a hold of it to write it down, it disappears. Maybe, there´s just the first alternative, the danger.
It is now eleven o´clock p.m. I can still see that the sun is setting slowly. The last rays are reflected on sky which will be lit by the moon in awhile. Long, sunny, fresh and beautiful spring days are here. Leaves grow rapidly. Narcissi and tulips are blossoming.
This is the best time to visit Finland. Even the most pessimistic people won´t say yet that the autumn will start approaching soon, meaning that after Midsummer the days won´t get any longer. So far every day is longer than the previous one.
They say that thinking about time equals thinking about death. The days being exceptionally short or unusually long makes you think about time. In winter it is cold and dark at four-five. You need a some self-discipline and social pressure to feel enthusiastic about taking any initiative. In summer you can do things without inner or outer obligations, voluntarily and enjoyably.
I recently read Songs of the Gorilla Nation. My Journey through Autism by Dawn Prince-Hughes ( Finnish edition ISBN: 952-5534-20-0). I knew practically nothing about autism and the Asperger syndrome before that. The book is worth reading.
What you might gain in reading the book is that you learn to see normal human behaviour as one version of gorilla behaviour. I do not mean gorilla behaviour in the aggressive and stereo type sense, but in the sense of really caring and minding of each other.
Somebody thas said that caring is waiting rather than effort or tension or mobilisation of knowledge. Caring is a time-related concept. It means waiting. As a gorilla expert Prince-Hughes points out that as well.
People can have different versions of Asperger syndrome which means that they have the need to develop their own coping strategies to get on in life. Prince-Hughes describes hers. She ends up becoming a university professor.
She worked methodologically to reach her goal. One third of her time at the university she talked about her personal skills and abilities. The second third she talked about the work of her colleagues and their shared interests. The rest of the time she talked about current events and her own softened opinions about them. She also made it a rule for herself to remember to ask about other people´s interests.
Due to her special Asperger behaviour it was easy and automatic for her to control that all those topics really received their due time.
If we add to this knowledge what Guy Kawasaki tells about his communication habits, we have a special success formula. Kawasaki lists eight passions that make it possible for him to connect with anybody in the business world. The topics are Audi cars, Breitling watches, tinnitus/Ménièr´s disease, boxers (the dog breed), adopting children, London, digital photography, and Macintosh (text 29.6.2007) .
It´s obvious that you need to develop your own list of eight passions, but that should not be too demanding. You have tested them several times.
Now that we have tested experience of both the topics and the time required, we have at our disposal a recipe showing how normal life can be made even better. If the recipe does not work, we had perhaps better turn to the Sumerian gods.
Or what do you think - are your personal restrictions determined rather by your nightmares and fear for success, plus the fear for the work required, or are they determined by the Sumerian gods deciding what will be possible and what not?
If life is normal, is there any real need to make it even better?
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Weight of Your Brain?
When the Russian author Turgenejev died in 1883 his brain was weighed and found to be exceptionally heavy - heavier than any other brain by that time. When the French author Anatole France died in 1924 his brain was weighed as well. It was found to be the lightest of all brains by then.
The brain of both of these two authors was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records and both of the records have been beaten since then.
Among the normal tinnitus there is a rhyme going on in my head: "If you always do what you´ve always done, you´ll always get what you´ve always gotten."
You need not be exceptionally intelligent to understand the logic of that rhyme. But understanding does not mean that you would change the situation accordingly. Changing one´s own habits must be one of the most challenging things in life. You might have set a goal, but anyhow you go on your normal daily life in the way you have always done.
In a seminar I met a couple who had built a solid, highly profitable business. The process from the decision to the end result had taken them five years. "In fact we did it in three years, but we needed two years to get ready for the activity." they explained.
Maybe it was the other way round - two years of doing and three years of active work - but it does not matter. The basic idea is still the same - you might have decided to reach something important and anyhow the concrete activities tend to somehow remain on the side-track. It is as if there were a threshold in front of the conscious changes in life. Why does this happen?
No doubt the goal itself needs to be clear. All goals have consequences. We may need time and energy to check them out. It is not enough for the goal to be morally and ethically correct. It must be ecologically correct as well, which means that it must not mess your own or anybody else´s life.
There must also be a clear connection between the goal and the activities leading to it. They are the daily activities that beat the path and make the goal become true. And it is exactly here that we have the continuous competition between the old habits and new activities. Normally the old routines win and the goal is in danger of becoming unreachable.
Some time ago I read the biography of Evita Peron (Barnes, J.: Evita, La biografía, ISBN: 84-473-1214-3). I know that there are different opinions about her, but nobody can deny that having made a decision, she did not need any threshold-time to start the action proper.
She quickly became the only person who, by then, had paid any attention to improving the living conditions of the poor people in Argentina. A clear indication of the impact of her work would be the number of hospitals before her and when she died. Sorry, I do not remember those figures just now. Just wait until I have read the book again...
Another interesting fact in Evita Peron´s life was that she never reached her primary goal. She wanted to be recognized and appreciated by the high society in her country. She never was. From the goal setting point of view this is due to the basic fact that we cannot set goals for other people. I cannot stop smoking for you and you cannot go jogging for me.
To gain somebody´s appreciation or love is not under your control. They also say that life would be easier if we could decide who we fall in love with. Well, as far as we know, Evita Peron made a very conscious decision to fall in love with Juan Peron and immediately informed him about her intention to marry him. She was an exceptional person in that respect as well. Burning goals really push obstacles by side.
Among all the goals you have set yourself, there are some that have the status qualification 1 A, which means that they get absolute preference among all possible choices you make daily. Do you recognize the specific features that make these goals so compelling for your brain? We continuously make choices of what to do next. Some things get preference, others drop out. How does your brain know what to prefer? How do you mark the steps leading to your goal 1 A so that the new routines get in and the old ones are pushed onto the side-track - and not vice versa?
Our preferences become our ambitions and passions. We want to do something in order to reach something else. Doing is under our control. At the beginning of the 15th century Cosimo de Medici wanted to have 200 books in his library. We do not know why he wanted to have them, but we know that he took the list to a bookshop in Florence and the bookshopper employed 45 scribes to copy them for him.
Ivan Sergejevitsh Turgenejev and Anatoli France wanted to write books. When you read them you will get an approximate idea why they wanted to do that. One of them had an exceptionally heavy brain while the brain of the other was exceptionally light. Obviously the size of the brain is not decisive. Decisive is how you use your brain in your normal life.
What will you do next? How does that help you reach your goal marked with the status qualification A1?
The brain of both of these two authors was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records and both of the records have been beaten since then.
Among the normal tinnitus there is a rhyme going on in my head: "If you always do what you´ve always done, you´ll always get what you´ve always gotten."
You need not be exceptionally intelligent to understand the logic of that rhyme. But understanding does not mean that you would change the situation accordingly. Changing one´s own habits must be one of the most challenging things in life. You might have set a goal, but anyhow you go on your normal daily life in the way you have always done.
In a seminar I met a couple who had built a solid, highly profitable business. The process from the decision to the end result had taken them five years. "In fact we did it in three years, but we needed two years to get ready for the activity." they explained.
Maybe it was the other way round - two years of doing and three years of active work - but it does not matter. The basic idea is still the same - you might have decided to reach something important and anyhow the concrete activities tend to somehow remain on the side-track. It is as if there were a threshold in front of the conscious changes in life. Why does this happen?
No doubt the goal itself needs to be clear. All goals have consequences. We may need time and energy to check them out. It is not enough for the goal to be morally and ethically correct. It must be ecologically correct as well, which means that it must not mess your own or anybody else´s life.
There must also be a clear connection between the goal and the activities leading to it. They are the daily activities that beat the path and make the goal become true. And it is exactly here that we have the continuous competition between the old habits and new activities. Normally the old routines win and the goal is in danger of becoming unreachable.
Some time ago I read the biography of Evita Peron (Barnes, J.: Evita, La biografía, ISBN: 84-473-1214-3). I know that there are different opinions about her, but nobody can deny that having made a decision, she did not need any threshold-time to start the action proper.
She quickly became the only person who, by then, had paid any attention to improving the living conditions of the poor people in Argentina. A clear indication of the impact of her work would be the number of hospitals before her and when she died. Sorry, I do not remember those figures just now. Just wait until I have read the book again...
Another interesting fact in Evita Peron´s life was that she never reached her primary goal. She wanted to be recognized and appreciated by the high society in her country. She never was. From the goal setting point of view this is due to the basic fact that we cannot set goals for other people. I cannot stop smoking for you and you cannot go jogging for me.
To gain somebody´s appreciation or love is not under your control. They also say that life would be easier if we could decide who we fall in love with. Well, as far as we know, Evita Peron made a very conscious decision to fall in love with Juan Peron and immediately informed him about her intention to marry him. She was an exceptional person in that respect as well. Burning goals really push obstacles by side.
Among all the goals you have set yourself, there are some that have the status qualification 1 A, which means that they get absolute preference among all possible choices you make daily. Do you recognize the specific features that make these goals so compelling for your brain? We continuously make choices of what to do next. Some things get preference, others drop out. How does your brain know what to prefer? How do you mark the steps leading to your goal 1 A so that the new routines get in and the old ones are pushed onto the side-track - and not vice versa?
Our preferences become our ambitions and passions. We want to do something in order to reach something else. Doing is under our control. At the beginning of the 15th century Cosimo de Medici wanted to have 200 books in his library. We do not know why he wanted to have them, but we know that he took the list to a bookshop in Florence and the bookshopper employed 45 scribes to copy them for him.
Ivan Sergejevitsh Turgenejev and Anatoli France wanted to write books. When you read them you will get an approximate idea why they wanted to do that. One of them had an exceptionally heavy brain while the brain of the other was exceptionally light. Obviously the size of the brain is not decisive. Decisive is how you use your brain in your normal life.
What will you do next? How does that help you reach your goal marked with the status qualification A1?
Friday, April 11, 2008
The Last Finn Eats Fish and Tomatoes
I have been writing short articles about time lately. So far their number is 24. I´m aiming at 40 and the goal looks totally possible. At least I want to believe so.
In this time-article process I have learned that the Mayas had a calendar that repeated itself every 260 years. All good and bad that happened 260 years ago would repeat itself now. If a calamity is to come it is waste of time (!) to try to stop it.
I also learned that the City of Assisi in Italy published their strategy on November 9th in 1210 and any Finnish city could copy that today in their effort to increase their prosperity.
However, from today´s perspective we can see one obvious mistake in the Assisi strategy. The City Fathers did not include caring for people in their concept of ´work´. They defined ´work´ as something that brings economic benefit to the town.
Just imagine what our present day would look like if caring for people had been included among the prosperity-bringing acitivities. The Assisi City Fathers left caring for the Church to do - and there it has remained. Just think what it would mean to appreciate caring for people as much as we appreciate producing paper making machines, for instance.
I also learned that the last Finn will die in the year 3702. It is a widowed old lady living in the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia. She has eaten a lot of fish and tomatoes and sung in a choir.
All Finnish-speaking Finns have died long ago, because we are gloomy, we avoid meeting people, we only sing when drunk, we try to avoid speaking Swedish, and we are pessimistic.
I personally like eating tomatoes and fish, but when writing those articles I often get caught by the dark and pessimistic idea that they will never be published, I´ll be bankrupt, and die before having learned Swedish well enough to speak it publicly.
Time is a social construction. I do not stop admiring us human beings - we are able to construct anything we need as a collective. As long as the Nature, heavenly bodies and gods controlled our time system, we were unable to organise our activities to produce anything systematic and precisely defined. But as soon as we changed the concept of time so that it became a neutral, evenly distributed, predictable and countable concept with a price tag on it, we were able to organise our activities to produce steam engines, locomotives, diesel cars, space travel, mobile phones, global banking, and 24-hour on-line currency speculation.
Having changed the concept of time, we can earnestly claim that time is money. Time has a price tag on it. You know the worth of your working hour as well as that of your neighbour´s. You also know that it is exactly the price of the individual hour that moves big factories from one continent to another. The price tag has a magnetic effect. It either pulls or pushes organisational activities world-wide. We also know that big enough magnets tend to be out of any human control.
But if you had a lot of money, what would you do with your time? I mean really much money.
I suppose that you lead normal life and that supposition leads to another - having enormous amounts of money you would be in a totally new and unfamiliar situation. In new, unfamilar situations people seldom know what to do. To be able to do anything we need role models. Luckily we know one really rich person - Bill Gates. What does he do?
Imagine Bill Gates walking in the street and seeing or dropping a piece of paper money on the ground. Of which value would the bill have to be so that it would be worth his time to stop and pick it up? We can count his average earning rate in dollars per second and we assume that it would take him four seconds to pick it up. In 1986 a five dollar bill would have been too small for him to bother with. Ten years ago, by 1998, a 10 000 dollar bill wasn´t worth trouble.
So the Bill Gates Wealth Index by Richard Florida reveals that being really rich you would not be picking up paper money from the streets.
What would you do instead? Eat tomatoes and sing in a choir? That is what the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnians here in Finland do. And that is why they feel happy and outlive us others...
In this time-article process I have learned that the Mayas had a calendar that repeated itself every 260 years. All good and bad that happened 260 years ago would repeat itself now. If a calamity is to come it is waste of time (!) to try to stop it.
I also learned that the City of Assisi in Italy published their strategy on November 9th in 1210 and any Finnish city could copy that today in their effort to increase their prosperity.
However, from today´s perspective we can see one obvious mistake in the Assisi strategy. The City Fathers did not include caring for people in their concept of ´work´. They defined ´work´ as something that brings economic benefit to the town.
Just imagine what our present day would look like if caring for people had been included among the prosperity-bringing acitivities. The Assisi City Fathers left caring for the Church to do - and there it has remained. Just think what it would mean to appreciate caring for people as much as we appreciate producing paper making machines, for instance.
I also learned that the last Finn will die in the year 3702. It is a widowed old lady living in the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia. She has eaten a lot of fish and tomatoes and sung in a choir.
All Finnish-speaking Finns have died long ago, because we are gloomy, we avoid meeting people, we only sing when drunk, we try to avoid speaking Swedish, and we are pessimistic.
I personally like eating tomatoes and fish, but when writing those articles I often get caught by the dark and pessimistic idea that they will never be published, I´ll be bankrupt, and die before having learned Swedish well enough to speak it publicly.
Time is a social construction. I do not stop admiring us human beings - we are able to construct anything we need as a collective. As long as the Nature, heavenly bodies and gods controlled our time system, we were unable to organise our activities to produce anything systematic and precisely defined. But as soon as we changed the concept of time so that it became a neutral, evenly distributed, predictable and countable concept with a price tag on it, we were able to organise our activities to produce steam engines, locomotives, diesel cars, space travel, mobile phones, global banking, and 24-hour on-line currency speculation.
Having changed the concept of time, we can earnestly claim that time is money. Time has a price tag on it. You know the worth of your working hour as well as that of your neighbour´s. You also know that it is exactly the price of the individual hour that moves big factories from one continent to another. The price tag has a magnetic effect. It either pulls or pushes organisational activities world-wide. We also know that big enough magnets tend to be out of any human control.
But if you had a lot of money, what would you do with your time? I mean really much money.
I suppose that you lead normal life and that supposition leads to another - having enormous amounts of money you would be in a totally new and unfamiliar situation. In new, unfamilar situations people seldom know what to do. To be able to do anything we need role models. Luckily we know one really rich person - Bill Gates. What does he do?
Imagine Bill Gates walking in the street and seeing or dropping a piece of paper money on the ground. Of which value would the bill have to be so that it would be worth his time to stop and pick it up? We can count his average earning rate in dollars per second and we assume that it would take him four seconds to pick it up. In 1986 a five dollar bill would have been too small for him to bother with. Ten years ago, by 1998, a 10 000 dollar bill wasn´t worth trouble.
So the Bill Gates Wealth Index by Richard Florida reveals that being really rich you would not be picking up paper money from the streets.
What would you do instead? Eat tomatoes and sing in a choir? That is what the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnians here in Finland do. And that is why they feel happy and outlive us others...
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