Mina reflektioner om samhälle, kultur och livsfrågor

I admire anyone who has a moral compass that always, automatically, swings in the direction of defending democratic values and humanism. Whose decisions, opinions and statements are always right in this regard without them having to think, who have these values, so to speak, inherent and who therefore never really need to reflect on what they should think, nor care what others think about their positions. Those who always defend their principles with no other purpose or goal than that they see the alternatives as unthinkable. 

These people are few and you never really know who they are, but I think me see this ability in some people. The test for me is that the person dares to talk a lot and spontaneously and has doing this for a long time but always ends up right according to their principles. I see, for example, Hans Alfredson, Tage Danielsson and Sven Melander in this category. Unfortunately, all of them are now deceased.

One international person I’ve seen fall into this category was actor Will Smith. Unfortunately, he has now become an example to me of how difficult it is to judge other people. By responding to a verbal statement with violence at the 2022 Oscars in front of a seated audience and an entire world of television audience, he clearly showed an inner moral compass that he had been able to hide from the world around him for years. The incident perhaps illustrates that we should never trust someone fully, that we always must be prepared for that what we see is just a façade that hides something that we may not really want to see. 

This formula is probably the world’s most famous formula that few really understand the meaning of. Few understand that it actually says that we all are literally huge atomic bombs. 

Matter is “frozen” energy and E=MC² describes the “exchange rate”. This exchange rate shows that matter is worth huge amounts of energy. Fortunately for us, there are very few “exchange offices” around us. The most important for us, and which is the basis of our entire existence, is the sun. On Earth, we switch matter to energy in our nuclear power plants and in nuclear explosions. The exchange rate can best be illustrated by that in the nuclear weapons detonated over Japan during World War II, less than a gram of matter was converted into energy… How much energy is not contained in my 87 kilos?

War between countries in Europe, with physical soldiers killing both each other and civilians, I have thought was somewhat unlikely. The next conflict I have assumed would be taken place in other arenas and be about other values than physical land. Countries in Europe I have assumed are too intertwined and interdependent economically to start wars against each other. I have also seen the extensive travel between countries as a good vaccine against conflicts and history also shows that whoever starts a war usually becomes the big loser in the end. Another argument against war, I have thought, was that no leader of a European country today would sacrifice the lives of its own citizens for some diffuse and uncertain goal.

On this basis, I believed we were protected against another great war in Europe. But how wrong I was. The explanation for my miscalculation, I think, lies mainly in the fact that I have started from a Western individual-centered democratic perspective and assumed that Russia also basically are governed by this perspective.

We, in the Western, world put the value of the individual first. Everyone has only a short life to live and the purpose of creating a society is to enable the best possible life for every individual.  The collective are these individuals, together, trying to achieve this. Since the value of the individual is highest, it must also be the individuals themselves who determine the content and rules of the game for this cooperation. Only they know what they want. There is no obvious goal to strive for. The goals are set on the way and constantly changing as there is no real purpose or meaning to life and thus no goal with the cooperation itself , except for the benefit this can create for the individuals.

Against this stands a system in which the collective itself is the goal. This is based on the idea that the collective is more important than the individuals and that the individuals have only a value in relation to this collective and are therefore replaceable and can easily be sacrificed. This makes only sense if you see people as ants in an anthill where every individual’s goal only is related to the preservation of the anthill. In the human world, however, this perspective becomes problematic as each “ant” has a consciousness and a will and basically only can live for their own sake. The system must therefore be able to always produce some benefit to the individual so that they are satisfied, otherwise it is based solely on coercion and submission. In a dictatorship, however, it is not a question of preserving the “stack” itself, but of preserving the individuals who have power over the stack, but that Is something they must hide for the citizens.

This leads to a situation where the leadership always will be afraid of the citizens. They will always be alone and never have friends and defenders. The “friends” they have exist only if they can gain something to their “friends”. The leaders must therefore always convince the rest of the “stack” that they are more dangerous than they really are because they know that they have no chance if the “stack” turns against them. No one will come to their rescue if the “stack” decides to eat them. 

Putin have now put himself in a very precarious position after many years in power. Basically, he is a criminal, a very successful one. He has stolen an enormous amount of money from his compatriots by creating and maintaining an advanced crime syndicate together with his companions. The closest we can get in the world of fiction is Ernst Stavros Blofeld, leader of the crime organization S.P.E.C.T.R.E in the James Bond world, although Blofeltd must be seen as a petty trader by comparison. Putin’s crime over the past 20 years can probably be described as the “crime of the history”, but in the end he has taken “water over his head”, just as all Bond villains always do when they get hubris.  

The consequences of Putin’s crime, however, may paradoxically have laid the groundwork for his downfall. The society that Putin’s criminal activities have created is a society marked by corruption and, as a result, incompetent leadership, and an inherent fear. This have been financing with money which should have gone, for example, to defenses, which instead ending up in someone’s pocket, including Putin’s own. This has probably led to Putin starting a war based on a flawed and fundamentally inaccurate intelligence analysis and to a lack of war success. 

So, what conclusions does this lead to? I believe the Russians will lose the war. The army is unmotivated and poorly trained and suffers from incompetent leadership.  Later, corruption will manifest itself in both material shortages and quality problems. This will not stand up against an army of individuals who defend themselves, their families, and their country with the support from a large part of the rest of the world. But losing the war, unfortunately, I do not think is a possible option for Putin as this would put an end of his personal life.

Putin has probably already concluded that his position of power soon will be ended. He has burned all the bridges.  His ability to serve as the leader of a state is no longer possible and the people in Russia will sooner or later turn against him. The question is, how will he end up his life? Dead and humiliated, brought before the courts or let the world blow up with him?  If he decides the latter, our hope will be set to a possible self-preservation drive of his surroundings or a revolution or that his nuclear weapons, because of corruption, not will be working.

Beautiful poetry and deep insights about life are all around us and can never be defined, categorized, or taught, only found or discovery by each of us. We all have a monopoly on defining beauty, but only for ourselves. This is everyone’s rights and duty.    

I found beauty today in a ”simple” music lyric to a song that I have listened to hundreds of times, but without really understanding the meaning of. The song is “Caught In A Dream” by the rock group Alice Cooper and is written by one of the band’s guitarists, Michael Bruce, and can be find on the album “Love It to Death”, from 1971. 

Today, as I listened to this song, I focused on the lyric, which I may never really done before, and discovered how these lines capture a deeper insight and feeling about my life. It probably describes a feeling that we all carry but that we usually do not put into words, something Michael Bruce now helped me to.       

For me, the text is about our alienation and the dream world we all create and live in with the purpose to try to suppress the realization of our own mortality by seeking a meaning of life that does not exist. We try to understand and get to know each other’s worlds but we are all existentially alone, trapped in our own dream, fighting our own destiny.

“Caught In A Dream” by Michael Bruce

Well I’m runnin’ through the world with a gun in my back

tryin’ to catch a ride in a cadillac

Thought that I was livin’ but you can’t really tell

been tryin’ to get away from that success smell

You know I need a houseboat and I need a plane

I need a butler and a trip to Spain

I need everything the world owes me

I tell that to myself and I agree

I’m caught in a dream so what

you don’t know what I’m goin’ through

I’m right in between so I’ll

I’ll just play along with you

Well I’m runnin’ through the world with a gun in my back

tryin’ to catch a ride in that cadillac

Thought I was livin’ but you can’t never tell

what I thought was heaven turned out to be hell

Whoa whoa when you see me with a smile on my face

Whoa whoa then you’ll know I’m a mental case

whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa

I’m caught in a dream so what

I don’t know what I’m going through

I’m right in between so I’ll

I’ll just play along with you

Whoa whoa ooh ooh ooh

aah aah aah aah

oo oro oo oo oo oo

In the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes or accidents, terrorist acts or other crimes, we all come together to try to save human lives and minimize material damage. This is usually self-evident.  

But now to be forced to witness an ongoing mass murder in Europe is horrible and at the same time surrealistic. It is incomprehensible that the one who started this does not finally wake up and understand the seriousness of his actions. But unfortunately, this is just another reminder that the varnish of humanity and culture that we all try to cover ourselves with to enclose the beast we all carry, is very thin and can easily be wiped away with a dirty cloth. But I don’t think all the beasts that unveils are murderers and sadists. The beasts are affected and changed by a humane society, but the varnish will always be needed to maintain such a society and hold back the beasts.    

Dagny Carlsson have now died at an age of 109 years, and she did not allow the last years to be the worst years of her life but made them perhaps to the best. The last 10 years seem to have been characterized by both joy and curiosity. Perhaps she came to the realization that there was no longer anything to lose, the worst thing that could happen was that she died and that she would certainly do anyway soon. 

Dagny Carlsson been almost 50 years older than I am today. But I already feel old and that it’s too late to try to do something “meaningful” with my life. Instead of thinking ahead, I often fall back thinking about crucial factors and the moments in my childhood that shaped me into who I am and what my life might have looked like if things had been different. What if I had a belief in myself from the beginning and that I could choose my own path through life instead of just gratefully receiving what has been offered with a feeling that I am not worth this.

But maybe I have 50 years to live, 50 years left to choose my own path. 50 exciting and interesting years, meaningless overall, but still… I can’t allow it to be 50 years of just waiting for the end. Or maybe not… Today, the media reported that the rock band FOO Fighters drummer, Taylor Hawkins, has died. He was only 50 years old. There is no room to wait to start living. The perspective must be that I will live for another 50 years but that I can die tomorrow. A very difficult balancing act.

On Christmas Day last year (2021), I sat in front of my computer and watched the Ariane-5 rocket lift the new space telescope, James Webb, up into the sky. My biggest concern at the time was that something would happen to the rocket that would destroy this, perhaps the most exciting, journey for humanity. But everything went well, and the James Webb telescope will start delivering a new image of the universe in the summer of 2022, when it is cooled and pre-calibrated. Perhaps we will understand how the universe was created? Perhaps we will be able to observe traces of life out in the universe? Perhaps we will be able to see planets around other stars? Perhaps we will see something completely unexpected, something we not have even been able to imagine so far?

The summer of 2022 could be one of the great moments in human history. But what happened? A murderer and successful thief, with nuclear weapons in his hand, decides to invade his neighboring country with disastrous consequences as a result, both from a human point of view for the population of the attacked country but also maybe from a more existential perspective. We may never be able to see the answers of the mysteries of the universe that now soon are within our reach. Perhaps the answers will remain out there, far beyond the moon’s orbit around the Earth, inaccessible to humanity.    

What if the answers remain out there just because of that a coward dictator would rather sacrifice humanity than be deposed, exposed as a criminal and humiliated, or maybe executed? What if we end up being “almost there” and, at the height of human civilization, being replaced by another species, maybe the octopuses, just as the mammals once replaced the dinosaurs?              

There cannot be a meaning of life, there cannot be a goal in existence, there cannot be a purpose to the world. No fantasy or dream can create a meaning, a goal, or a purpose, but we never stop searching because the search keeps us alive. 

How can anyone see meaning in atrocities and wars, how can anyone see meaning in cruelty? How can anyone see the meaning in eternal life when eternal life should become an eternal punishment?

The fact is, the earth and even the universe will perish, no trace will consist of us, our existence or a good.  

A person’s life is unpredictably short. Without us noticing, it’s over, I can only see the end of others. Every second is one second closer to the end, every second is a lost second. But what I do with my seconds doesn’t matter as every second is just as meaningless or meaningful no matter what I fill it with.

But this annoys me because I am curious about the future, what will happen to humanity, what will happen to my children and perhaps subsequent generations, what will mankind come to know about the universe. I want to know! but this will be a secret to me.