Mina tankar om värden, kultur och livet

Kategori: In English

  • Human’s equal rights in practice

    (Previously in Swedish on this webbsite 2017)

    Most people in Sweden, and all political parties in the Swedish government, describe themselves as supporting all humans’ equal rights. No human on earth is considered worth more or less than anyone else. But this is mostly empty words. For starters, most people think that their own lives have a greater value than others. Most people believe that they have the right to kill someone who threatens them to life in self-defense. We place greater value on our own lives than in others. We also believe that our children have a higher value than other people’s. We would even rather pay a holiday to our children than save several people from dying of starvation. We invite our friends to dinner and not the beggar who really would need the food. Most people in Sweden were also behind the government’s decision to limit refugee immigration in 2015, which means that we prevent fellow human from living a decent life. We in Europe also allow thousands of refugees to drown in small boats in the Mediterranean as they try to get to Europe.

    In other words, in practice, we act like people have different values. To still try to maintain our notion that we are good, we find excuses and explanations to treat people differently. For example, it is the refugee smugglers that make people drowning in the Mediterranean, the beggars on our streets are organized and not really as poor as they claim to be and since we cannot take in refugees in a good way, it is better to not let them come here at all,  we are effectively doing them a favor by not letting them in or by throwing them out of the country.

    If we were living by the fact that all people have equal rights, it would upset us as much when a child in Somalia gets hurt as if our own children get hurt, we will obviously help the beggar and so on. Everyone would do everything they can and share everything to help their fellow human beings based on the reasoning that no one can help everyone, but everyone can help someone…

    I believe that the Swedish Nazi organization Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) plays an important role in maintaining our self-esteem of being and acting in a good way. Today, this party is getting a lot of attention. In connection with Almedalsveckan on Gotland (a big annual political meeting), all the established parties and the media relate to this small group. They receive disproportionate attention given that they are a total of about 500 people. They must be extremely pleased to have been put in the media’s spotlight in this way. They would need a lot of resources to buy their way to this attention.

    I think that the other parties and the media give the NMR attention because this party, in contrast to the rest, is open about the fact that they do not stand for the equal value of all people. But in this respect, they are not different from the other parties in practice. However, the NMR is open about this, the other parties say one thing and advocate something else in practical action. NMR fulfils a function of being what everyone else can agree is evil. Thus, this serves as a departure from the attention of the other parties’ views and policies that they do not want to become too obvious.

  • The murder of Olof Palme, Krister Petersson and the Swedish official

    (Previously in Swedish on this webbsite 2020)

    My view of Sweden as a legally secure and non-corrupt society is based on my faith in the Swedish official as a safe and reliable bureaucrat. An official who has nothing to gain from pursuing short-term popularity among citizens. This is, as I see it, a fantastic model, even if there is no guarantee against incompetence and corruption. However, my view is that most of officials see themselves as having more to lose by exploiting their position for their own gain and therefore avoid committing irregularities. This has led to Sweden’s very low level of corruption.

    This has given us officials of the kind exemplified by those who have represented the Public Health Agency of Sweden in the Corona pandemic, people who do not act in their own cause. People who dare to follow a strategy they believe in but are also unpretentiously prepared to change this strategy based on new knowledge. People who do not allow themselves to be attracted to the security of acting like everyone else and who do not try to collect short-term popularity. Officials who may appear boring, but who appear in such a way because they put the ”issue” at the center and do not need to shine for their own sake.

    However, at the press conference on 10 June 2020 regarding the murder of Olof Palme, I was very surprised by the actions of a Swedish official, a person who fits all the criteria of a reliable official and who has previously demonstrated both competence and good judgment. This is about Chief Prosecutor Krister Petersson.

    Krister Petersson was Chief Prosecutor in the investigation of the murder of Olof Palme. At the press conference, Petersson announced that he was closing the investigation and that there was a suspect to the murder. However, Petersson said at the press conference that there is no evidence against the person in question but that he is a possible perpetrator. The person in question is deceased. The person is named but I call him here ”Skandiamannen” as he is associated with his workplace that was close to the murder scene.

    The most important question about Peterssons actions at the press conference is whether he as a prosecutor should identify an offender if this one can’t respond to and explain what the prosecutor is putting on him. This is not just about the rights of the individual, but above all, about the legal certainty aspect. A prosecutor’s must be seen as just one part in the case, consisting also a defense and a judge. If you remove one of these, the case will fall. A statement on guilt must be seen as a party submission and therefore must the accused have the possibility to present his version to give the independent court a solid basis for making decision.

    Petersson takes over the entire legal process and judges Skandiamannen, based only on his own claims, no matter that he saying that it is only about suspicion. By presenting skandiamannen as Palme’s killer as a prosecutor, without the other two parts of the legal process, the prosecutor will be the last and final stage in the legal chain. The accused is also deprived of his right to appeal because there is no real judgment to appeal.

    I believe that Petersson has violated his power when, dressed in his office, as any private investigator, speculatively and vaguely, singles out a person guilty of murder and then exercises the authority of his office by closing the investigation.

    There is also a plethora of remarkable reasoning that Petersson builds his circumstantial chain around. The most remarkable is his reasoning about the murder weapon. Here he is carrying out an argument that is suspiciously similar to a circular argument. Petersson says that since it is’t possible to tie a weapon to Skandiamannen, you can still assume that he had access to one. In other words, the proof that he had a gun is the murder itself. He wouldn’t have been able to kill Palme if he didn’t have a gun. In this case this is further more complicated by the fact that Skandiamannen is dead.

    Other serious problems in Petersson’s case are the clothing issue. Here it is almost painful to see how Petersson picks out an outfit based on different witness statements so that it is consistent with how Skandiamannen was dressed this evening. Add to that, it is Skandiamannen’s own testimony about his own clothing that is the basis for how the police assume he was dressed at the time of the murder… When a part can be suspected to selecting pieces from different testimonials to make a match with his hypothesis, it is important that there is a counterpart that can review this.

    The heaviest part of the circumstantial building seems to be the notion that Skandiamannen lied about his movement during the minutes surrounding the murder. But Skandiamannen may have lied for many different reasons except that he tried to hide that he was the one who murdered Palme. For example, he might have wanted to highlight himself because he felt coward because he did not dare to come forward and intervene in the murder. This could be why he then continued to assert his ”heroic role”, perhaps mainly to try to convince himself… Skandiamannen may have lied to hide that he was drunk at work and was afraid of losing his job. He may even have remembered wrongly on the basis that he was very stressed (and perhaps drunk). What he says can also be true and that it is other witnesses who remember wrongly on the basis that they perceived and remembered selectively due to very high stress. I could list at least five more alternative, more likely explanations…

    There seems also be at least two central witnesses, the so-called ”Cheva man” Leif Ljungqvist and Inge Mårelius, who provided witness statements that contradict that it can be  Skandiamannen who murdered Palme. This should have been mentioned and addressed at the press conference. Unfortunately, this now opens the door to the suspicion that these witnesses have been put away on the basis of a similar reasoning to that made on the issue of weapons; Since Skandiamannen is the killer, these witnesses must be wrong. How many more data that contradicts the hypothesis may have been sifted away in a similar way?

    Another important point is the question why Lisbeth Palme and witness Jeppson, who have seen the killer relatively clearly, did not recognize Skandiamannen afterwards. He was relatively exposed in the media and sat on the trial of Christer Pettersson. On some of these occasions, they should have seen and recognized him.

    To this added, Petersson could not describe at the press conference how Skandiamannen carried out the murder, how he could know where Palme would be, what path he took after the murder or anything about the motive. Petersson described only very vague circumstantial evidence and speculation.

    My conclusion is that Krister Petersson made a very serious mistake when he singled out a person as a murderer of sweden’s prime minister based on the extremely weak and speculative circumstantial evidence he presented. But above all, he should have thought about whether this conduct was compatible with his role as a prosecutor and the ethically problematic fact that the accused is deceased and thus unable to respond to the charges. For my personal part my faith in the Swedish competent official took a big hit.

  • The importance of a positive view of life

    I belive we all should feel better if we try to see the positive in life, even when life consists of adversity and trouble. I do not mean that we should all go around missionaryizing the messages of joy and love, those who missionaryizing are often both self-absorbed and unhappy. To see positive, even in what may seem negative, is just for our own sake.

    The Sisifys legend, I think, illustrates this wisely; you are a loser when you feel like a loser and consequently, you are a winner when you feel like one. You can influence your attitude to things even if you cannot influence the actual conditions you live under. It is yourself who feels bad over burying in your problems all the time.

    Seeing something positive in something that can be perceived as negative does not necessarily mean that you like the actual situation you are in. However, if you cannot influence the actual situation, you can always find something interesting or positive in the inevitable. You can also learn about yourself by analyzing and thinking about how to react in different situations.

    A positive attitude of life can also spill over onto the surroundings. If you come home after work and say ”what a terrible day it have been” or ”what a bad weather it is” to my family, you send out a negative atmosphere that risks affecting them for the rest of the evening. If I you on the contrary start by saying “how nice to come to your” or “I’m glad that it is raining, now the vegetables are growing’, then I am spreading a positive atmosphere that will spread like rings on the water. But here, of course, you must mean what you are saying, and you can always find something positive just about all situations if you try. If you try long enough, you will automatically see the positive before all the black.

    Similarly, children are being positively affected when the parents are showing that they think it is funny and exciting to watch their children participate in theatre performances, concerts or sporting events, compared to if the children is told that they find it awkward with all these events that they feel compelled to participate in when they have so much else important to do.

    But as I said, the person who benefits from seeing the positive and bright in life is primarily oneself, the one who suffers from burying himself in trouble is also oneself. Secondarily, the environment is also on the winning side.

  • Waiting for the life to begin

    (Previously in Swedish on this webbsite 2014)

    The older I get; the more important cemeteries have become to me. I was recently at one and visited a close relative’s gravesite. Ideally, I want to walk around the graves, alone, and think about life and death. All my little everyday worries are diminished when I realize that I too will be buried there soon. What I have done and not have done in my life will then be completely irrelevant. I’ll be one of those people who finished their life. I´ll to become a name on a tombstone. A former living man who was the center of the universe, just like any other ex-living person buried in the graveyard and I realize that it doesn’t really matter what I do with the rest of my life, it’s going to end sooner or later.

    But this existential feeling I get when I am reading on the tombstones and thinking about how these former living people have lived their life, fades away when I leave the cemetery and is replaced with a frustrating feeling that I am not using my time optimally. I don’t feel dissatisfied with my life so far, but I should make use of the rest of it better. But I can’t think of what I want to do, and this is the frustrating part. As the days go by, the seasons changes, and the time is running out; all I do is to think and waiting. What I think keeps me from really try to find what I want to do is that I deep down don’t believe in my own mortality. And I don’t think any of us really do. We believe that we have all the time in the world and therefore also have all the time in the world to think and waiting.

  • Three articles on the climate issue

    The major climate summit in Glasgow has ended today (November 2021). As expected, the result was very weak. The conditions for politicians to be able to implement the measures that would need to be taken do not exist because there is no genuine will on the part of us citizens to make the sacrifices that would be needed. We revert to the fact that it is someone else’s fault and someone else who is going to fix the problems. Below I have added three articles I have previously written on this topic and which try to explain why we do not do what almost everyone agrees should be done. The articles have previously been published in Swedish on this webbsite (2017, 2018, 2019).

    Climate and fear

    (13 Dec, 2017)

    In today’s Aftonbladet (a Swedish news magazine) can we read that almost nine out of ten Swedes think climate change is serious problem and that 59 percent are concerned about how climate change will affect us in Sweden. The fact that we’re so worried is seen as a positive. We’re beginning to understand the threat and we’re taking it seriously. But what does this really mean? It is easy to say in a study that we are concerned about the consequences of climate change, and we may be are, but we are hardly so worried that we have actually changed our behaviour in a way that leads to an improvement in the climate. The concern must lead to change, which in this case means sacrifices things we value highly today, which means drastic changes in the way we live. We need to drastically reduce our car travel and no more holidays to Thailand, for example. We must also drastically reduce our consumption of goods and products. In order to influence the climate, we have to live in a completely different way. It is not enough to sort garbage or to buy an environmentally friendly car. Until the day we have found a completely non-environmental impact type of energy, we, especially those of the Western world, must change the way we live. However, this is basically not what anyone wants. For most people, environmental impact is something that lies in the future and will probably be solved by the scientists. We as individual individuals can then always find ways to ignore our own influence – “my small emissions do not matter”, “we have to get to the big environmental villains”, “the plane to Thailand would have left regardless of whether I had gone with or not” and “I do my part by sorting and driving an environmentally friendly car, using environmentally friendly detergent” and so on.

    I think we as individuals will only consider changing our behaviour if something happens personally in the present. For example, we or our children get sick from emissions, as in China. Then maybe we can imagine changing our lives. But just maybe. If we have money, I think we will continue to excuse ourselves by saying that our part in it is so small that we may as well continue to live as before. I think it must go a long way before the 90 percent of the people of Sweden who are worried about climate change will actually change their lives in accordance with this said fear.

    The climate threat and the individual

    (22 Dec, 2018)

    The major climate summit in Katowice, Poland, is now over (december 2018). With some success according to some, wasted time according to others. My question is whether this type of climate meeting with its watered-down agreements on something diffuse that should be achieved well into the future matters to the climate. Almost everyone agrees that action needs to be taken to reduce our climate impact and that if we do nothing, the consequences will be great and serious for virtually all people on earth in the future, that is to say for our children, grandchildren, etc. Nevertheless, the actual incentive to act in a way that really affects the problem is very small. I believe that depends on two things; it is about a distant future and that the impact cannot be directly linked to our personal actions. The environmental impact of each individual is negligible. This should be weighed against the fact that we all live here and now. It is now me and my children need food, it is now I want to enjoy life and maybe go to Thailand when I have the money to do this.

    It is about us as individuals wanting to maximise our ’benefit’ with the money we have and this trumps environmental considerations. If environmental considerations and economics go hand in hand or if sacrifice is small, it is not difficult to be environmentally conscious. Sorting garbage, pawning bottles, driving the car on a more environmentally friendly option when this is even cheaper than petrol is not so difficult, but as soon as it starts to cost something or affect our lives in some significant way, our environmental awareness tends to disappear. And we often get away with this in front of ourselves and others by putting our individual share of environmental impact in relation to a larger whole. My share is vanishingly small, it does not matter if I contribute to a negative environmental impact through my behaviour, this in itself affects the environment so marginally that it is not even noticeable and vice versa, if I make a great sacrifice, this will not be noticed either. We can then also rationalise our environmentally damaging behaviour on a more aggregated level through various reasoning, such as that Sweden’s share of the emissions is marginal in relation to, for example, China and the US, or that the costs of fixing our emissions become unreasonably expensive in relation to the benefits this results in or that the competitiveness of Swedish companies would be affected because other countries do not implement equivalent environmental measures which would eventually be unreasonably expensive in relation to the benefits this results in or that the competitiveness of Swedish companies would be affected because other countries do not implement equivalent environmental measures which would eventually be  negatively impact the Swedish economy and unemployment.

    This way of looking at emissions and environmental impacts, that we and everyone else on earth puts our individual share of impact in relation to a much larger whole makes me pessimistic that it is possible to do something that drastically reduces the environmental impact. Any attempt to implement political changes that could have a radical effect but which have a dramatic and negative impact on the individual’s life will lead to that politicians representing this type of policy quickly are voted out in countries with democratic systems or cause riots and revolts. Such measures are therefore unlikely to be proposed.

    The only way to save the world, temporarily, I think is if we can develop technology that allows us to continue our lives as today with consumption, travel and more but with drastically reduced environmental impact. Then I think we can postpone the disaster. It will probably come anyway, sooner or later, because we are consuming the earth’s resources at an ever-increasing rate. We will drive the world to the bottom end sooner or later, and from this humanity will then have to build a new world out of the ashes.

    Environmental policy

    (13 Oct, 2019)

    In the debate on what measures should be taken to reduce the climate impact of man and who is responsible for taking these measures, we individuals often shift responsibility to politicians, states, authorities and companies.

    We do this because we as individuals do not want to change the way we live. We do not want to take the measures that would drastically affect our lives in a negative way, according to most people. Instead, to deafen a nagging conscience, we take a number of pseudo-measures such as sorting rubbish, eating a little less meat, riding a little less with the car, buying an environmentally friendly car if we can afford it, perhaps flying a little less, etc. What is common to these measures is that they do not really cost us anything but can give us a good conscience so that we can continue to live our lives basically unchanged. Instead, these measures cement our way of life and therefore our emissions. Even if we reduce our flying, we still keep flying when we think we need it, we keep driving and complain about petrol prices, we continue to eat ourselves stuffed – often with meat and vegetables from other countries.

    We citizens have no desire to change and therefore we vote for the parties that represent a moderately restrictive environmental policy and who have priority on issues that are seen more  important and is about our welfare today – the economy and the labour market. The party in Sweden that wants to change this order of priority – the Green Party –got few votes.

    But we still blame politicians. They’re the ones who are going to solve the problem. This is a convenient setting. But the politicians in a democracy represent their citizens and cannot and should not have a policy that does not represent the will of the citizens. If they come up with something else, they will also be voted out at the next election or otherwise deposed.

    It is about us individual citizens and changes in our lives it´s all about. It´s through being prepared to sacrifice something for us valuablely and by instructing our politicians to make extremely uncomfortable decisions for us that will affect the climate change in afundamental way.

  • About animal right activism

    This text was written as a part of a debate in 2001 when animal rights activists were at their worst, threatening individual breeders and fur retailers as well as sabotaging for the breeders by releasing their animals. The text is available in Swedish on my website. The translation into English is new.

    ———–

    Animal rights activism and the democracy in a postmodern perspective (2001)

    Breaking into a fur farm and releasing animals or terrorising fur shop owners is a form of criminality  that has a relatively high acceptance in society. ”Rescuing animals” from captivity and suffering is seen as a higher goal, justifying these actions. Those who commit these crimes usually belong to different networks of animal rights activists and justify their actions with ideological and humanistic arguments.

    The largest of these networks in Sweden, the Animal Liberation Front (DBF), describe on its website their actions as: ”broadening democracy to include animals other than humans.” In essence, according to animal rights activists, it is a question of democracy when they, with criminal means, seek to persuade actors in the fur industry and others to cease their business through harassment and vandalism. And certainly it can be tempting to agree with the activists in their fight for the animals. We humans do not always treat animals humanely, but the question is what a society based on the ideology of animal rights activists would look like. Would we like to live in such a society? The following article shall discuss this issue.

    Animal rights activists are often seen as representatives of good as opposed to the evil animal breeders, fur retailers and scientists. However, ”goodness” has a less pleasant side as it is based on a vision of a society in which a small ”enlightened” elite is allowed to stand above democracy. Animal rights activists believe there are higher values that justify non-democratic and criminal means.

    In society, there will always be individuals or groups who, in some respects, consider themselves to be more ’enlightened’ on moral or etic grounds and who, through this, consider themselves entitled or even have an obligation to act by any means at their disposal in order to achieve something for them perceived important. Examples of other such groups are anti-immigrant and Nazi organisations, anti-globalisation groups and left-wing autonomous groups. In this respect, there is no difference between a Nazi group that, with criminal acts, seeks to protect the country from unwanted elements that are considered in various ways degenerate the white race, left-wing autothonous groups that aim to save the country from globalisation by smashing shop windows or the animal rights activists releasing minks. What unites these groups is that they feel they have a mandate to define which objectives should be considered justifiable criminal acts. However, none of these objectives can give the right to stand over democracy because in a democracy, there is nothing above a democratic decision. When the special interests of a minority are allowed to take precedence, we approach a type of social system that few of us want to live in.

    But the motives of animal rights activists have even some more interesting additional dimensions. They are  considered, for example, to be taking the case of animals. However, only some of the animal species. Very few of the activists, for example, seriously believe that the right of perch not to get caught on the hook or the right of mosquitoes not to be beaten to death, should be defended. The activists therefore believe that they have a mandate to determine the value for  different kind of animals and decide which living beings should have the right to live. Only some species are worth defending and the limit is most often set at mammals and animals that are ”cute”. The question here will be whether we should accept that self-proclaimed small groups of ”experts”, with the help of violence and threats, should be allowed to decide where this limit should go. The fundamental question here is who should decide where the line between life worth defending and life that can be sacrificed should go. Animal rights activists also believe they have a mandate to decide who should be born. Most animals born in captivity would not have been born if man had not considered himself in need of them. In other words, these animals would not have had a life if it had not been for man. The question of whether life is better than non-life and the question of what should be considered a dignified life are issues that cannot be determined objectively. However, the ’enlightened’ animal rights activists believe they have answers to these questions. Their position is that in some cases non-life is better than life. The Animal Liberation Front writes about this on its website: ”It should also not be forgotten that sometimes future generations are saved as farmers have sometimes been forced to close down after actions against them.” What they’re saved from is being born. If living conditions do not match the way activists value what a dignified life is, then it is better not to be born. Applied to humans (according to animal rights activists, humans are an animal among other animals), this reasoning could be interpreted as, for example, that children in developing countries who grow up under starvation and all kinds of oppression should not be born. But animal rights activists can   hardly experience a mink’s life from a mink’s perspective.

    What they do (but also most of us other) is to humanize the animals and interpret their behavior from a human point of view. It is tempting, for example, to assume that a life of freedom, based on what we humans perceive as freedom, is also important for animals. Animals, however, certainly have completely different perspectives. Their existence is about trying to escape starvation and being killed and eaten by other animals. Maybe a good life for an animal is freedom from starvation? A protected life in a cage may be preferable to an uncertain and painful life in freedom, from the perspective of a animal. The romantic image of the free animals happily running across the open fields may have more to do with ourselves than with the animals that the activists (and the rest of us) want to defend.

    The reasoning that man is an animal among other animals also becomes problematic in further ways. Cruelty in animal species and between different animal species are very common. As an example, our usual house cat which, in a seemingly cruel way, catches and ”plays” with the mouse before it kills and eats it. When we talk about the cruelty of other animals, we interpret that this is in their nature and that they cannot therefore be blamed for their actions. Evolution has chiseled out certain behaviors favorable for the survival of the species. If man is an animal among other animals, then our cruelty should also be interpreted in these terms. What we perceive as free will and consciousness then becomes just an illusion and we are guided by much more basic urges. Man then acts, like other animals, by its nature and thus cannot be accused of being cruel. Culture becomes an illusion here; it’s all nature.

    Another issue here is the utilitarian positions of animal rights activists; that it may be right to sacrifice a few to save several. For example, minks are released from mink farms even though you know that many will quickly die in their new freedom. One reason is that if you release the animals, you cause the owner of the business so much financial damage that he eventually ceases the activity. This saves other minks from being kept in captivity (and from being born). Representing such a utilitarian approach while claiming that animals and humans have the same value would lead animal rights activists to advocate death sentences (among humans) if it can be demonstrated that this can save human lives. A classic example where the death penalty would probably have a good general prevention effect and save hundreds of lives a year is if it were applied in traffic to speed infringements. Under the threat of execution, most would law-abidingly stay within speed limits. Those who are not deterred would sooner or later be ”taken out of traffic” permanently. Sacrificing a few could ultimately save many lives.

    In other words, it could be argued that animal rights activists who engage in illegal methods to achieve their aims are not only anti-democratic and advocates of a fascist society, they also believe that they have an almost divine mandate to govern and control life and death. The consequences of drawing their reasoning to the fore are that they are both in favour of the death penalty and that some people should not be allowed to be born. What at first glance looks like laudable goals and ambitions, on closer examination, proves to be the risk of leading towards a society in which few of us want to live.

  • Mark Selby winning UK Championship 2016

    Mark Selby really go from strength to strength in my
    eyes. After winning the International Championship in October he went
    on and won the UK Championship (2016), one of the three big tournaments
    during the year, in a very convincing way. He won over Ronnie
    O’Sullivan in the final with 10-7 without having been directly
    threatened, although Ronnie at the end played up. Selyb is a good
    snooker player, there is hardly any doubt, he has now been ranked
    number one in the world for quite some time, and he won the World Cup
    last spring. What I think is that he now also plays an attraction
    Snooker. In the World Cup he played dull and sometimes really bad
    snooker, but still won in the end. In the fall, he play very good and
    also a much more attacking snooker. He is a great champion and could
    probably come to join with the really big snooker players in history,
    perhaps on par with Ronnie O’Sullivan and Steven Henry.

  • Me, the church and religion

    (Previously in Swedish on this webbsite 2016)

    In
    recent years, I have frequently attended church. Both the church
    services and concerts. This is because I have two children who sing
    in church choirs. Sometimes is also one of the children involved as
    musician on services. The last six months beat all records. But I
    actually think it’s quite relaxing and nice to go to church. It is
    often good music and I get myself sing, which I think is nice. In
    addition, frequently involves the content in the service interesting
    aspect of the life for me to reflect on. Often it is just to remove
    God from the content. The paradox that I start to see the
    congregation that something nice is that I do not believe in God. I’m
    not even an agnostic, I’m an atheist. This I believe is the very
    foundation that I do not feel upset that the church is spreading
    fallacies and lies. I see instead the church as a provider of a
    declaration that gives hope for the life built trauma, life’s
    finiteness, death. To be surrounded by a belief of eternal life, and
    this belief is confirmed every Sunday as part of a standardized
    ritual along with a, mostly by the state (in principle), sanctioned
    authority, together with other like-minded people is a very powerful
    defense against death anxiety. Then the story limps questionable is
    the worship and the priest’s task to conform to its own logic.

    But
    we do use strategies to repress death. The most common way is to
    occupy our time with the actions and thoughts that allow thoughts of
    death does not come up to the surface (also faith in God and worship
    services can work in this way). We fantasize, we listen to music, we
    plan, we consume, we compete, we read, we learn, we seek the
    attention of love partners, we are abusing drugs or gambling. Most of
    what we do in our lives do we do to keep the knowledge of our own
    death at a distance. Another type of strategy is to worship someone
    or some more concrete. A kind of religion one can say where the
    metaphysical element is not as apparent. Everyone has their own
    strategy. Without an effective strategy, we can not live. If you
    remove a strategy, it must be replaced by a new, otherwise revert to
    the old ingrained strategy or you become crazy.

    Think about what
    your strategy is, often this is what you focus on or do when you do
    not have anything special to focus on.