A MESSAGE FOR ALL OF HUMANITY Inspirational speech by Charlie Chaplin

I'm sorry. But I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible - Jew, Gentile, Black Man, White.

We all want to help one another - human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone - the way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate. Has goosed us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.

More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life would be violent and all will be lost.

The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together - the very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world. Millions of despairing men, women and little children; victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

For those who can hear me I say - do not despair - the misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed. The bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictator's die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes! Men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives - tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel. Who drill you, dives you, treat you like cattle, use you as canon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men. Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate. Only the unloved hate. The unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty!

In the seventeenth chapter of St. Lucas it is written, the kingdom of God is within man - not one man, not a group of men, but in all men - in you! You the people have the power - the power to create machines, to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. And in the name of democracy, let us use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world; a decent world, that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.

By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise. They never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world. To do away with national barriers. To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason. A world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Where is Happiness these days?

Despite the fact that we are now healthier and grow to be older, despite the fact that even the least affluent among us are surrounded by material luxuries undreamed of even a few decades ago (there were few bathrooms in the palace of the Sun King, chairs were rare even in the richest medieval houses, and no Roman emperor could turn on a TV set when he was bored), and regardless of all the stupendous scietific knowledge we can summon at will, people often end up feeling that their lives have been wasted, that instead of being filled with happiness their years were spent in anxiety and boredom.

[...] Hapiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a conclusion that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

[...] One must particularly achieve control over instinctual drives to achieve a healthy independence of society, for as long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for - rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires. He may encounter thousands of potentially fulfilling experiences, but he fails to notice them because they are not the things he desires. [...] The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment. If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders. Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. It is no longer necessary to struggle for goals that always seem to recede into the future, to end each boring day with the hope for tomorrow [...]. We must also become independent from the dictates of the body, and learn to take charge of what happens in the mind. Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there. As long as we obey the socially conditioned stimulus-response patterns that exploit our biological inclinations, we are controlled from the outside.

"Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them". Epictetus.

"If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is your power to wipe out that judgment now". Marcus Aurelius.

[...] If we do actually success in becoming richer, or more powerful, we believe, at least for a time, that life as a whole has improved. But symbols can be deceptive: they have a tendency to distract from the reality they are supposed to represent. And the reality is that the quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own. The bottom like is, rather, how we feel about ourselves and about what happens to us. To improve life one must improve the quality of experience.



(From the book "Flow-Psycjology of optimal experience" by Michaly Csikszentmihalyi

Cultural insights into Scandinavia.

Many of my friends were puzzled when I have chosen a small town, up in the north of Denmark, Aalborg, over the ‘city of dreams’ and of great buzz, London. The answer was easy. I wanted to concentrate on my studies, and found it difficult to concentrate surrounded by London's noise, needed a break from the busyness, needed to sort out my thoughts, which I found difficult to do in London. I have made the most of London over the past twelve years and it was the time to move on, to search for a place where there was no buzz, but peace, time to reflect on my experiences, and simply some order to my life. London was great when I needed inspiration and life experience, it was a great platform for inspiration, for networking, and of course, career development. But there was no need for external world to inspire me anymore, my head craved more freedom and space instead and it was wild nature that I felt could bring me more inspiration then megapolis. I was not enjoying any of the city’s pleasures, I have been to many galleries, gigs, concerts, theatre performances and it was not something I was enjoying anymore. I was not enjoying acquiring new relationships every week without anyone wanting to keep their relationships going, I didn’t enjoy feeling that only reasons people would find me interesting and would invite me to their fancy parties only because they found me ‘useful’ in their career climbings. I wanted some more honesty and slower pace of life, where I would have time to work on my projects and concentrate on things that were more meaningful in life.

I was always fascinated by how different Scandinavia is from the rest of the world, colder temperatures also looked attractive to me, as I, being born in Russian Saint-Petersburg, represented a proper northerner. It was also my personal interest in a social political system that Scandinavian countries shared and I was hoping that coming to Denmark to study would help me understand its culture and its people better. I was lucky enough to meet a few Danes before coming to Denmark who were genuinely good people with characteristics I always respected in people, polite, rational, calm, honest and direct.

I have also heard about ‘Danish happiness’ which I thought was more about people themselves and how they saw things rather then about Danish greatness as a country. Danes just know how to appreciate what they have, accept things as they are and feel satisfied with them. My rather confused self craved that sense of order and peace they had in their communities.

They were educational statistics that I was very much impressed with and high rankings in students’ satisfaction. Programs were well designed and were very much personalized. It seemed Danish Universities were interested in educating its students to the highest level and cared about students do well in the future. I have never had this feeling in England, especially while studying in London. In London I thought it was much more materialized, it was more about appearances and self-marketing rather then real knowledge. English professors were very much preoccupied with their own research, they hardly had any time for their students, and of course not for any personal contact with them. Maybe it was just my personal unlucky experience with my particular degree, but that is how I saw things and that is why I did not want to carry on with my future development in England.  

And so the decision was made to come to Aalborg as they had a multi-disciplinary Masters degree that I thought could help me to narrow down my interests and help me choose my future path. It is a great experience I must say, I am learning new things every day, not just from my lectures, but from people around me, from Scandinavian culture, nature and air. I could not be any happier. Sometimes I wonder when I am going to start missing the buzz.. Can’t get enough of that peace, quietness and space.


Check Scandinavian Wanderings for more posts 

The power of communication

Communication can act as a process of free and equal exchange of meaning, development of epistemic communities, and advancement of social solidarity, and hence of peace and harmony among individuals and nations. Conversely, however, communication can also systematically distort perceptions by creating phantom enemies, manufacturing consent for wars of aggression while stereotyping and targeting particular ethnic groups or nations into subhuman categories. Communication empowers, but it empowers more those with greater competence and access to the means of communication. The ethical choice in communication is therefore focused on whether the communicator is aiming towards power-free understanding or systematic distortions and powerful manipulations (Habermans 1983)

: winter :

Plato on Internet and illusions

- Next then, I said… Picture people as dwelling in a cavernous underground chamber, with the entrance opening upward to the light, and a long passage-way running down the whole length of the cave. They have been there since childhood, legs and necks fettered so they cannot move: they see only what is in front of them, unable to turn their heads because of the bonds.

- A strange image, he said, and strange prisoners.

- Like ourselves, I replied.

Plato, The Republic, 514A

In plato’s cave, nobody sees what’s really happening. They think they do, but they don’t. Plato says we are like the cave dwellers. We think we see the Truth, but we don’t. The difference is that we can see the Truth is we know how. Plato knew how and wanted to show us. But Plato also knew that we – or at least most of us – are either incapable of or uninterested in coming to grips with the Truth. Philosophers have the way and the will, but the rest of humanity doesn’t. we are quite happy living in our pleasant illusions, far removed from the Truth. This is why we build the imaginary worlds – dramas – that Plato found so disturbing. For what are storytelling, literature, and theater but attempts to escape from reality into some fantasy? The storytellers, writers, and thespians all say we can learn something about ourselves from their productions. But what do we learn, really, if all that is depicted is fiction? Fiction cannot be the Truth, for it is the opposite of the Truth. And even those productions that claim to be something other than fiction – histories and the like – aren’t they simply poor reflections of a reality that is gone and cannot be revisited, and therefore really fictions themselves?

Perhaps they are, and perhaps they aren’t. In any case, Plato was on firm ground in asserting that we naturally see the comfort of illusions. 

The power of today's generation

As a follow up on my previous post on our generation (26.10.11) many coincidences occurred last week as if someone wanted to reassure me and show all the positives about today's world construction and its young generation. What happened had such a big impact on me that I have decided to dedicate more time for its research an write about it as part of my university project. 'Occupy' movement that is. These young boys and girls who went out on the streets on New York first, and then the movement spreading all across the globe makes me rethink about my previous rather spontaneous generalisations about 'hopeless' youth. I do not deny that we all build our assumptions and see the world based on personal experiences and occurrences but when surrounded by an uninspiring crowd it drags one down into pessimistic perspective. But to become overly pessimistic and sad is not a solution here and will not benefit anyone - we have to hold on and try see the best in this world. One has to be rather strong in order not to let the evil' win: ''For evil to flourish, all that is needed is for good people to do nothing'' (E.Burke).

For my future research I will be looking at some striking images and photography of 'Occupy" events and see how it affected media, people's perception of the problems and  most importantly, how it influenced the governmental actions. Will it influence future policies, will it influence the future of our societies? We all know that there is no perfect society, but we as the western humanity will always be reaching for perfection.

Here I would also like to highlight a theory that will probably be the basis of my project research. It reflects perfectly current 'Occupy' events and descibes its causes in a way. The theory of counter-productivity. From the book The Ecological Modernisation Reader (Mol, Sonnenfield, Spaargaren, 2009)

The theory of counter-productivity has many foundations and predecessors, and its central message is: stop growing, start shrinking. A scientific foundation for this was given by the 'thermo-dynamic school of economics' related to N.Georgescu-Roegen, with a transfer of the entropy paradigm from physics to society, which has become the eco-misers' most beloved reference. The idea is that whatever is done uses up energy and resources of a higher order, which unavoidably leads to increased entropy. Each unit of economic value added with each step in the human chain of production equals a step of ecological degradation and destruction of nature. The only conclusion can be : humanity must do away with the existing rationalist, materialist, and outer-wordily oriented pursuits of happiness. We would have to slow down, retire into more spiritual inner worlds, shrinking all the way.