Happy New Year, from east with love!

Allright, final words this year!

On a personal note, this year has been rather good to me, done some projects, met new people, though not everything turned out as I planed or wished, fortunately I have good people around me that helped me to stay on my feet and supported me when some of these projects did't turn out as I planned, and I learned a lot from the experience.

Regarding the blog, well perhaps I got more sloppy, wrote less insightful posts, less well written, still I am rather happy with it, because this is mostly for my own sake, kind of public notebook, and if anyone does find something they consider interesting that's just a bonus, but I really do hope that there are at least some people that got some thoughts of their own like: is that true?, why is it so?, is it then also true that...? or something of that sort, and if so then this blog has accomplished its purpose. I also noticed in the stats that the very few posts I have written in russian are read more often than posts written in english, perhaps I will write more in russian in the future, because it's always fun when people read what I have written, but also is a good exercise for me.

On that note I can say that I had a interesting observation, lately I have met some people from easter europe, and I had question posed to me by my friend, why they have such disregard for time and authority, and I could't give him a satisfying (for me) answer. Though now I think I could give him one which would be:

People from eastern europe do assume the best, but expect the worst, and nothing is impossible. That is have a tendency of failing forward, with immense energy which is rarely observed over here.

That I think does explain the mentality. I hate to make such statements without backing them up with some examples or some logical explanation, but I thought that I would't elaborate any further at this time, perhaps I will do it in the future, but right now I can't do it without being too personal.

I will certainly be back 2011 with more thoughts and I can say it with certainty, because this year started of rather slow, but at the moment I have several thoughts written down as kind of statements, and I will share them as soon as I find time to write them in an human friendly form, that is not just as statements but as an well formed, logically structured thought.

But for now I wish you all an Happy New Year, and wish you all to find happiness in the coming year if you haven't done so already!

Bloodhound Gang - The Bad Touch

When searching for lyrics, that is researching the topic, I always got this in the beginning:

Ha-Ha! Well now we call this the act of mating
But there are several other very important differences
Between human beings and animals that you should know about

Though in every version i'v herd thus far the song begins with:

I'd appreciate your input

And this is my input:

Even without the first quote, but especially with it, I can't interpret the song, and especially with the music video for the song, in any other way then sarcasm and social criticism. I like the raw and brutal way they demonstrate how wrong this view is. I have only one problem with it:

Peoples world view today is bent backwards to such extent, that they actually interpret the song literally and think that's right and dig it not for the sarcasm, but for how things are or ought to be, and that is just sick.

Why is it sick? Because it validates the claim religious people make, namely that there is no morality without God, and especially without their particular religious text, and it also undermines all arguments by atheists such as Richard Dawkins, that being atheist does not mean one acts like an animal, because let's face it, why stop at sex? Why not kill some guy to get his girlfriend (no the girlfriend has no right to decide, males are stronger), form groups and go around fighting and killing other groups for territorial control and resources, hierarchy within the group e.t.c; just mammals.

And that's the horrible part, too many young (and not so young) understand song like this one, and similar things not as sarcasm but as things are or should be, because they are intelligent, they know about evolution, hence it must be so, nothing but mammals. And until those "intelligent" people understand that being ape descendant does not mean that it is normal to act like an ape, they should at least stop bitching about religion, because they themselves only give reasons for it.

And what makes me really scared, is that I look around me, and I see people listening to this song, I see how they act, what they say, how they react to the song, and I am sure they do not think bout this song as social criticism and sarcasm, and looking at all this I myself can not even be sure the song was intended as such, or if it just was intended to appeal to wide audience.

Don't try to kill religion, it will die of by itself when there is no longer need for it, but for now it is here to stay, and rightfully so because the country is turning into a god damn zoo. Don't like it? Then teach your children something more than how to work and consume!

And this is the most Christmas spirit I could squeeze out of me this year.

Happy birthday Jesus, there is still room for you in this world!

And Marry Christmas to all readers!

Can you be free and good?

The saying

Freedom implies responsibility!

has lost all meaning today, if it even had one to begin with. You are always responsible for your actions, weather you are free or not.

The difference is in who is holding you responsible, when you are free to do as you wish, the way you act determines who you are, when you are not, the force outside you, state, religion, parents, whatever that prevents you from doing as you wish, determines who you are.

You are not free when you can't act your worst because somebody watches over you, and hence you are not good when somebody forces you to be, but you are free and good, when you can act your worst but don't because it isn't right, and no further reason is needed to be given.

That is, being good because you have to doesn't say anything about you, doing good without reason does.

Hence you can never know wether a person is god when that person always obeys the law, bible, or any other authority.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Every day are new laws and regulations created, so that there is order in this chaotic world. The idea is to create the best possible situation for the majority of citizens, though this principle is certainly hard to see in some of the laws introduced lately. Nevertheless some kind of utopia is what the politician aim for, or at least that is what they promise on the election day. And they do work, how hard their work may vary, but if they want to get reelected they do have to do something, introduce some law, change a law, do something. Hence as time goes by the bolt is tightening, more an more gets regulated trying to achieve utopia.

But overly tight society, where everything is regulated will stagnate, because doing something new or different, if not illegal, will become difficult, by definition, because the point of regulating everything is that it should be in a certain way.

The increasing desire to do something different will only grow over time as the bolts are tightening, when it eventually will reach a tipping point and breaking the law or doing something not according to regulations will be views by the population as an heroic act.

The government will try to control the situation as it has done thus far, creating new laws and regulations, and try harder to enforce these by increasing the penalty. Hence only adding oil to the fire. The situation will escalate until the will for change will eventually lash out in the form of revolution, plunging the country back to chaos, just so that the whole process can begin again, building another Utopia not like the previous one.

Chaos to order, never ending process as long as the order is achieved by enforcement of limitations.

An obvious objection is that: everything above is not true since every rather functional country has huge amount of regulations and laws limiting all kind of things, and thereby removing the chaos for example by speed limits the chaos on the roads decreased, but too many people drove too fast anyway so higher fees, bumps on the road, speed cameras and traffic police were introduced, but it more or less works.

And sure, it does work, a machine with no bolts will fall apart, but if you keep tightening them they will snap. And today we can already observe the early signs, the dissatisfaction towards the increasingly intrusive and extensive surveillance of the general public, and the fact that we live in a free and open society is being questioned more and more, and the demands for change are getting louder.

What is needed are politicians with common since, able to find the middle way between chaos and stagnation, and if that is too much to ask maybe we need a more scientific approach to the politics which goes beyond the science of how to emotionally affect people with speeches in order to get more votes.

A group of scientists dedicated to examine the impact of existing and new laws on the society, acceptance in the population, analyze the benefit and harm, which also has the power to publicly demand change from the politicians, might be necessary in order to make it work in the long run.