SOOOOOO I have returned once more to the keyboard. Well actually I'm quite often at the keyboard it's just I'm writing a blog this time not just typing swear words into Facebook about David Cameron.
So what marvelous thing do I have to talk about this time? Well I shall be talking about my recent discovery in a charity shop. Will that actually be interesting? You'll have to read on to find out.
I was casually perusing the bargain bin in Uff (attractive name right?), Finland's go-to second hand shop, when I came across something... out of place. Uff mostly deals in clothes but they do also have some bargain bins which contain all manner of crap and it was in one of these bargain bins that I found a wooden object that stood out from the plastic toys, old picture frames and assorted odds and ends. It was made from two thin pieces of wood attached together lengthways with various bindings around them. Red and yellow swirls and dots covered it but what really grabbed my attention was what was hanging from it. Teeth. Old, broken teeth were hung like beads from string tied around the wooden pieces. I turned the object in my hand and examined it but I couldn't find it's purpose. I looked at the teeth and couldn't be sure from what animal they had come from. They didn't appear to be human. At least most of them certainly weren't human. What was odd was that every one of them was broken or chipped. Whoever had been the original owner had obviously not thought to take much care of it.
I finally noticed (once I tore my attention away from the teeth) that one end of the object was open. The two pieces of wood were like the two pieces of bread of a sandwich. I could see through the open end that there was something between them. I tipped and jiggled the thing, free hanging teeth clacking against each other, until the object inside slid out halfway. It was a flat piece of metal. I was perplexed. I tipped it that bit further and pulled it free from the wood. It was long and slender and tapered to a vicious point. It appeared to be a 9-inch-long spear head. It was the only way to describe it. It seemed that the attachment point, the neck, for the blade had been snapped off leaving just the teardrop-shaped end. My earlier confusion had by now been mixed with a healthy dose of fear and concern. This spearhead (though rather blunted and without a handle) was a dangerous weapon. What could it possibly be doing in a charity shop bargain bin surrounded by various pieces of garish but harmless tat?
I felt I needed to bring this potentially lethal object to the attention of the staff. Perhaps they hadn't noticed the deadly blade hidden inside the odd but harmless sheath. I took it upstairs to the till and told the woman stood behind the register of my concerns.
"Do you know that there is THIS inside?"
"Yes. That is meant to be there."
"Right..."
"It is a very strange thing isn't it."
I could tell that the woman wasn't really getting my point. I wasn't questioning whether the blade belonged in the sheath. What I was concerned with was whether the blade in the sheath belonged in a charity shop bargain bin!
I went back downstairs and returned the sheath and blade to the bin. What else was I to do? I left the shop and returned home but trying to forget about it was impossible it was just such an odd object. Truly I tried to forget it but I couldn't help it. I had to have it.
I waited one whole day before I went back to it. Excitement rose up in me as I got closer to the shop, as I stepped through the door, as I went down the stairs. It was still there. I lifted it up and held it. Where I found it, it's poor, unloved condition, it's unknown original purpose all raised large, unanswerable questions. I felt drawn to it. I could feel a connection between us. Perhaps I could recognize myself in it. A stranger in a foreign land. A strange object in such an unnatural setting. I couldn't just leave it there... It only cost me 50 cents. I was in awe. I would have paid ten times that for this piece of art.
As soon as I got home I opened my bag and stared at it. I took it carefully out, making sure not to catch the dangling teeth on the bag's zip, and carefully placed it on the the table. It felt heavier now. I can't explain why but it did. I shook free the blade. I held it between my first finger and thumb, like a child holding a leaf. The metal was so thin yet so strong. What kind of a history did it have to tell? Was it a mere tourist item, brought back from a more exotic place by some red-faced tourist? Was it a spoil of conquest in some far off, ancient battle? An artifact taken for preservation destined for some museum or private collection but lost along the way? I had no way of knowing. I slipped the blade back into place and placed the wooden sheath on the shelf in my room.
That night I had a strange dream. It wasn't directly about the spearhead. Not exactly anyway. I dreamt I was standing and holding something in my hand but I couldn't see what it was. It was black, blacker than anything that could be imagined in the waking day, but somehow it still gave off light. I was illuminated by the blackness of it. I started to walk with the object held in front of me. It was like it was guiding me forwards but it became harder to hold. It felt heavy but not in the conventional way. It was using up my strength, siphoning it. I started to run. I was chasing something. The black thing got heavier and heavier. At this point I woke up. I guess my dream had incorporated my sleeping reality as I woke up with a dead arm and I was sweating. It was quite hot in my room and I guessed I must have slept on my arm funny but still...
I tried to concentrate on my courses for the rest of the week but the sheath and the blade kept coming to mind. I obsessed over it's details. Each crack in each tooth, the patina on the blade, the weathering of the wood filled my mind. I took them into college and showed my friends. They were just as bemused as I was. It felt strange giving my blade and sheath over for them to hold. I almost felt jealous and wanted them back as soon as possible. It was my sheath and my blade now and I didn't want them going too far out of sight.
The fact that it was such a bizarre object almost made me question it's reality. When I didn't have it with me I would rush home just to be sure that it definitely was sat, waiting for me on the shelf. I would take it in my hands and run my fingers over the designs. I would take the blade and hold it. It was such an exquisite tear-drop.
I had more strange dreams and as the week progressed they become stranger and more vivid. I dreamt again of the impossibly black heavy object but also of other figures along with me. They moved through forests made of shadow. We stalked strange animals I couldn't give names to. They felt entirely real yet were completely without substance. Each morning it would get harder to shake off the previous night's dream. I remembered their details better with each passing day.
People started noticing a change in me. I looked paler than usual and couldn't focus for very long on conversations. I drifted into day-dreams of running through forests, chasing something. I ran home everyday and held the sheath in my hands. The teeth rattled against the wood whenever I moved it. At night I collapsed into my bed, exhausted beyond measure but I was always sure I wasn't gong to be able to sleep. I could feel the forest closing in on me as my eyelids drooped.
The final, most distressing dream came exactly a week after I brought my artifact home. I was again carrying the heavy black thing. Again I was joined by other figures and again we stalked indescribable beasts but this time we got close enough to one of the monsters to strike it. We leapt forward and sank our black objects through it's skin into it's flesh. Horrific noises like nothing of this Earth welled up inside our victim. It writhed and screamed and thrashed around. It finally turned and faced me, stared deep into my soul, my very being with eyes that could melt through concrete. The way it looked at me spanned the void of sleep and I truly felt it physically, with every part of me. It pulled back it's lips in a snarl to reveal it's crooked, broken, familiar looking teeth.
The next morning I took my prized possession to the nearby river. I walked halfway across the bridge that spanned it and dropped the sheath and the blade into the swirling waters. It was gone in an instant. The waters swallowed it up hungrily. People walked past me as I continued to stand on the bridge looking into the river but I paid no attention to them. I stared and stared to be sure that it had gone to the bottom. I hoped that it would be taken by the currents to the ocean, that great abyssal dumping ground that was almost deep enough to hide all of man's sins. There it would remain.
------------
So you are probably all wondering "WHAT IN JESUS' NAME WAS THAT?" and my answer to you would be that that was a little bit of creative writing. Yes that was actually a fictional story and not the usual hack philosophy/condescending life advice/random opinions that you who are familiar with my blog are used to. Why did I write said piece? Well for a few reasons:
Reason 1. The real star of this story, the wooden sheath and spear head in said sheath, are actually real things that I found in a charity shop here in delightful Finland and this story is actually true up until the 6th paragraph (with some embellishment...) and then in a few of the later ones there are a few truth sprinkles. I did wake up with a weird feeling arm but that was actually before I found my treasure. It was such a weird feeling I felt I had to add it in somewhere. I did actually take it in to show my friends and they did think it was weird. The way I've described my strange find is as accurate as I can produce with my meagre words but hopefully you've got the picture of it. With such an incredible and weird pair of objects I felt that I had to do more for it than just trot out a run down of it's appearance. Such a unique object needed some atmosphere, some ambiance. I came to the conclusion this could only be achieved with some creativity.
Reason 2. The first thing I thought when I saw that sheath was "H.P. Lovecraft would love the shit out of this". What could be a more fitting starting point for some weird horror fiction than a strange blade found in such an unassuming, normal place?
Reason 3. I actually really like making up stories. I have had, over numerous years, had more ideas for novels and novellas than I care to write here. Almost none of them I have actually brought to completion and those that were finished have only been seen by a very select group of people (although if this story goes down well then perhaps I shall share some that I did finish with you, my delightful audience, in the near future). Why do I usually leave them unfinished? Well a mixture of good old fashioned laziness and, that eternal inspiration and creativity killer, the opinions of other people.
That last reason is actually the most important. I started this blog because I wanted to say things. I wanted to express my thoughts in a public way that would really get me to think about who I am and what I am thinking even if no-one else was interested. It has now morphed somewhat from this simple starting point to actually inspire me to do and express things I wouldn't usually be able to do and express in "real life". Everyone has had that awful feeling just before they show their creation to another person. That feeling you get just before the other person expresses their opinion on the product of your imagination and hard work. That moment is a chasm filled with all sorts of darkness and it's more than enough to snuff out creativity. I know for certain it's snuffed out mine.
But now I've thrown caution to the wind thanks to this blog. I posted (a while ago now) about minimalism and I actually shared the fact that I attempted some crude wooden sculptures of Lovecraft's most famous creation, the octopus headed dragon Cthulhu but really I was being rather safe. I was very vague about what I had done and didn't post any pictures (I didn't know how to post pictures to be fair but on the other hand I didn't try very hard and was somewhat relieved no-one called me out on it). Now though, I'm trying not to hide the fact that I can make stuff and that I like making stuff and that I'm not (very) afraid of showing that stuff to other people. I'm always saying (and trying to project the image) that I don't care about people's opinions but really it's kind of impossible to ignore them.
Hopefully from now on I will be more open with my creative side and if this post inspires you, dear reader, to be more open to other's criticisms and also their praise, then even better.
Oh yeah and Merry Christmas.
P.S. If my story gives you nightmares then that's fantastic.
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Saturday, 22 November 2014
Being An Englishman Abroad And At Home
Back to the old keyboard once more for a quick view into my brain.
Recently I've been stuck for ideas for this here blog and I had lots of suggestions as to what I should write about. Now, I'm going to completely ignore all those suggestions and go with this. Enjoy!
For the past week at Arcada (where I'm studying) we have been doing an International Week. Basically various lecturers have come and talked to us about various subjects all based around the overall theme "Ethics". Now that sounds like my cup of tea doesn't it? Well it's been an interesting mix. Some of the lectures have been really quite interesting and have really made me think. Others have made me sleep. Some lectures that particularly stood out for me were conducted by Mehrdad Davishpour. The titles of the lectures seemed at times completely impenetrable such as:
The Welfare State's "Stepchildren": An intersectional perspective on ethnic relations and discrimination in Sweden.
Huh?
However, the subjects they dealt with (discrimination, power relationships between groups, immigration and attitudes to it) were really fascinating particularly as I've been thinking about these sorts of subjects myself for the last year because I am now an immigrant.
One point that was made in one of Darvishpour's lectures was that if an immigrant or foreign person is subjected in their new society to discrimination or even simply a clash of cultures with the "native" people of that new country, it can lead to the foreign person retreating further back into their own culture. He used the example of some families from a very patriarchal cultural background becoming even more conservative in their beliefs as a reaction against the "opposing" culture and becoming even more controlling of their wives and daughters. Now I thought this was interesting to consider: Has my view on what my culture is changed since coming to Finland? Have I become "more English" to react against Finnish culture?
I think one interesting thing is that I have now become much more insistent on having a good cup of tea. The most quintessentially British thing (except for the Queen) is a nice cup of tea. Have I been trying to reassert my Britishness or Englishness by clinging ever tighter to a good cup of tea?
I don't know but I think it's something for me to think about, consider and be aware of. I don't want to find myself withdrawing back into my protective shell to try and hide from cultural conflicts and conflicts when thinking about other people's view points.
What you may have noticed in that above paragraph was that I jumped about from "British" to "English" and back again which is really what this post is about. Where am I from?
Last year I was asked by a (now very good) friend do I prefer being called English or British. In that moment I became very aware of the massive divides within the (supposedly) United Kingdom and how my experiences of patriotism and nationalism have shaped my idea of who I am.
I really should of considered writing this sooner, I guess, as on numerous occasions living in Finland I've had to describe where I'm from and I've floundered about as to whether I should say Britain or England. Those people reading this who are not themselves British or English might wonder why this is a problem but I cannot stress enough that the way you describe where you are from in this situation can really reveal a lot about you.
In Finland, very often, they celebrate Flag Days (liputuspäivät). A day of national importance such as the birth of the famous Finnish writer Aleksis Kivi or a particular day celebrating Finnish literature or (and perhaps especially) the day Finland gained independence all have their own day where government buildings and a large number of public places have the Finnish flag flying. Now in Finland this is normal and shows how proud people are to be Finnish and really celebrates Finnish culture.
Imagine the same scenario in England. The St. George's Cross flying on every government building. For me it sends a very different message. When I see the St. George's cross flying, I see racism. I see discrimination. I see oppression. I see hatred. Why is this?
Because of the UK's status as a country made up of countries, there has almost always been some form of infighting between them. Even if not infighting there has certainly been stereotypes and prejudices flying about ("There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman..."). What this means is that those that choose to pick out their individual flag (the Welsh dragon, the Scottish saltire or the St. George's cross) and fly their own colors are separating themselves as distinct from the UK. Now when I see the Scottish or Welsh flag flying I don't get the same tightness in my stomach, the same rising stress levels, the same fears that the English flag conjures up. This is because Wales, England and Scotland's (relating to what another of Darvishpour's lectures I saw this week was about) power relations are not equal even if they are supposed to be in practice.
I think this became quite apparent during this year's Scottish referendum. At times it did seem that Scotland weren't saying they wanted independence from Britain, what they were asking for was independence from England as it feels that England calls all the shots.
So when the Scottish or Welsh flag is waved I feel like it is more focussed around keeping an identity alive within a mixed group of countries. Each group of people have their own identities and it's good that people still feel strongly about who they are. So why is it so wrong for English people to start waving their flag around?
To understand this you have to look at how the St. George's cross has been used. Go watch the film This is England. Go on, I'll wait here. When you come back you'll get what I'm talking about. You don't have time to watch it? Ok fine.
This is England follows the story of a young kid called Shaun growing up in England in 1983. He makes friends with a group of skinheads who take him under their wing. Everything is going great until an old friend of their's comes out of prison and quickly reveals himself as a hardcore racist, member of the National Front and actively violent against what he thinks of as "the foreign invaders". Things quickly spiral out of control. What is shown again and again in the film is the use of the St. George's cross in negative connotations. It is used to represent the angry, racist, white working class; it is used as a banner to proclaim the superiority of white Englishmen. They quickly come to refer to themselves as warriors "fighting in the streets to take back their country". It finally ends with Shaun renouncing everything he had come to stood for. How was this rejection of racist, discriminatory beliefs symbolized? He throws his English flag into the sea.
Almost every right-wing or racist party or group that has existed in England has used the St. Georges cross in some shape or form. Racist skin heads during the 80s and 90s, the National Front, the English Defense League (EDL) and others. It is now tainted in my eyes.
Does the Union Jack have the same connotations? For me, not exactly. The Union Jack is used on national holidays and celebrations (particularly events to do with the Royal Family) and it does in essence represent the uniting of all the differing groups within the UK but that hasn't stopped it being used against those coming from outside the UK.
The British National Party (BNP) have the Union Jack on everything. If it's possible to put a flag on it they put one right on it. It's used to represent the superiority of Britain at the expense of all others. "Britannia rules the waves". So how has their racism not sullied the Union Jack? Well it has but not nearly to the extent that English flag has been sullied. The St. George's cross has come to represent everything I don't like about England in particular. Discrimination, hatred, imperialism and a superiority complex that could outshine the Sun.
So how do I see myself? Am I English? Am I British? I have a partial right to declare myself Scottish. Should I say I'm Scottish or just 1/8th Scottish?
Technically I can say all of them. I'm a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Britain, England, The Midlands, Worcestershire, Worcester. I think if you still live in the UK this description is a bit over the top. No-one really cares that much but I feel outside of the UK I have a duty to be accurate because a lot of people don't understand the distinctions and the implied meanings they have. If I say British it seems most people assume I mean English (and that I live in London) which I feel marginalizes Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (if you want to know why I have only mentioned Northern Ireland once in this post, look up "The Troubles". Yeah I'm not even going to try and talk about being English in regards to Ireland. Sorry but I just don't feel qualified).
For myself if I say "English" and say it in such a way that I sound too proud I start feeling weird and uncomfortable because being strongly proud of being English is so weighted down in meaning for me and for pretty much everyone in the UK. Which is sad. It's sad that I can't proudly wave an English flag in the same way a Finn can wave the Finnish flag. That's not to say that the Finnish flag hasn't been misused in it's time but in my understanding it hasn't been misused to quite the same extent. I think also the fact that Finland had to fight to be independent has in some ways allowed them to be proud of being who they are. England has throughout history been the oppressor. Other countries have independence days from us!
So how do I answer "who are you and where are you from?"
Hi, I'm Joe and I live in Helsinki.
Recently I've been stuck for ideas for this here blog and I had lots of suggestions as to what I should write about. Now, I'm going to completely ignore all those suggestions and go with this. Enjoy!
For the past week at Arcada (where I'm studying) we have been doing an International Week. Basically various lecturers have come and talked to us about various subjects all based around the overall theme "Ethics". Now that sounds like my cup of tea doesn't it? Well it's been an interesting mix. Some of the lectures have been really quite interesting and have really made me think. Others have made me sleep. Some lectures that particularly stood out for me were conducted by Mehrdad Davishpour. The titles of the lectures seemed at times completely impenetrable such as:
The Welfare State's "Stepchildren": An intersectional perspective on ethnic relations and discrimination in Sweden.
Huh?
However, the subjects they dealt with (discrimination, power relationships between groups, immigration and attitudes to it) were really fascinating particularly as I've been thinking about these sorts of subjects myself for the last year because I am now an immigrant.
One point that was made in one of Darvishpour's lectures was that if an immigrant or foreign person is subjected in their new society to discrimination or even simply a clash of cultures with the "native" people of that new country, it can lead to the foreign person retreating further back into their own culture. He used the example of some families from a very patriarchal cultural background becoming even more conservative in their beliefs as a reaction against the "opposing" culture and becoming even more controlling of their wives and daughters. Now I thought this was interesting to consider: Has my view on what my culture is changed since coming to Finland? Have I become "more English" to react against Finnish culture?
I think one interesting thing is that I have now become much more insistent on having a good cup of tea. The most quintessentially British thing (except for the Queen) is a nice cup of tea. Have I been trying to reassert my Britishness or Englishness by clinging ever tighter to a good cup of tea?
I don't know but I think it's something for me to think about, consider and be aware of. I don't want to find myself withdrawing back into my protective shell to try and hide from cultural conflicts and conflicts when thinking about other people's view points.
What you may have noticed in that above paragraph was that I jumped about from "British" to "English" and back again which is really what this post is about. Where am I from?
Last year I was asked by a (now very good) friend do I prefer being called English or British. In that moment I became very aware of the massive divides within the (supposedly) United Kingdom and how my experiences of patriotism and nationalism have shaped my idea of who I am.
I really should of considered writing this sooner, I guess, as on numerous occasions living in Finland I've had to describe where I'm from and I've floundered about as to whether I should say Britain or England. Those people reading this who are not themselves British or English might wonder why this is a problem but I cannot stress enough that the way you describe where you are from in this situation can really reveal a lot about you.
In Finland, very often, they celebrate Flag Days (liputuspäivät). A day of national importance such as the birth of the famous Finnish writer Aleksis Kivi or a particular day celebrating Finnish literature or (and perhaps especially) the day Finland gained independence all have their own day where government buildings and a large number of public places have the Finnish flag flying. Now in Finland this is normal and shows how proud people are to be Finnish and really celebrates Finnish culture.
Imagine the same scenario in England. The St. George's Cross flying on every government building. For me it sends a very different message. When I see the St. George's cross flying, I see racism. I see discrimination. I see oppression. I see hatred. Why is this?
Because of the UK's status as a country made up of countries, there has almost always been some form of infighting between them. Even if not infighting there has certainly been stereotypes and prejudices flying about ("There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman..."). What this means is that those that choose to pick out their individual flag (the Welsh dragon, the Scottish saltire or the St. George's cross) and fly their own colors are separating themselves as distinct from the UK. Now when I see the Scottish or Welsh flag flying I don't get the same tightness in my stomach, the same rising stress levels, the same fears that the English flag conjures up. This is because Wales, England and Scotland's (relating to what another of Darvishpour's lectures I saw this week was about) power relations are not equal even if they are supposed to be in practice.
I think this became quite apparent during this year's Scottish referendum. At times it did seem that Scotland weren't saying they wanted independence from Britain, what they were asking for was independence from England as it feels that England calls all the shots.
So when the Scottish or Welsh flag is waved I feel like it is more focussed around keeping an identity alive within a mixed group of countries. Each group of people have their own identities and it's good that people still feel strongly about who they are. So why is it so wrong for English people to start waving their flag around?
To understand this you have to look at how the St. George's cross has been used. Go watch the film This is England. Go on, I'll wait here. When you come back you'll get what I'm talking about. You don't have time to watch it? Ok fine.
This is England follows the story of a young kid called Shaun growing up in England in 1983. He makes friends with a group of skinheads who take him under their wing. Everything is going great until an old friend of their's comes out of prison and quickly reveals himself as a hardcore racist, member of the National Front and actively violent against what he thinks of as "the foreign invaders". Things quickly spiral out of control. What is shown again and again in the film is the use of the St. George's cross in negative connotations. It is used to represent the angry, racist, white working class; it is used as a banner to proclaim the superiority of white Englishmen. They quickly come to refer to themselves as warriors "fighting in the streets to take back their country". It finally ends with Shaun renouncing everything he had come to stood for. How was this rejection of racist, discriminatory beliefs symbolized? He throws his English flag into the sea.
Almost every right-wing or racist party or group that has existed in England has used the St. Georges cross in some shape or form. Racist skin heads during the 80s and 90s, the National Front, the English Defense League (EDL) and others. It is now tainted in my eyes.
Does the Union Jack have the same connotations? For me, not exactly. The Union Jack is used on national holidays and celebrations (particularly events to do with the Royal Family) and it does in essence represent the uniting of all the differing groups within the UK but that hasn't stopped it being used against those coming from outside the UK.
The British National Party (BNP) have the Union Jack on everything. If it's possible to put a flag on it they put one right on it. It's used to represent the superiority of Britain at the expense of all others. "Britannia rules the waves". So how has their racism not sullied the Union Jack? Well it has but not nearly to the extent that English flag has been sullied. The St. George's cross has come to represent everything I don't like about England in particular. Discrimination, hatred, imperialism and a superiority complex that could outshine the Sun.
So how do I see myself? Am I English? Am I British? I have a partial right to declare myself Scottish. Should I say I'm Scottish or just 1/8th Scottish?
Technically I can say all of them. I'm a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Britain, England, The Midlands, Worcestershire, Worcester. I think if you still live in the UK this description is a bit over the top. No-one really cares that much but I feel outside of the UK I have a duty to be accurate because a lot of people don't understand the distinctions and the implied meanings they have. If I say British it seems most people assume I mean English (and that I live in London) which I feel marginalizes Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (if you want to know why I have only mentioned Northern Ireland once in this post, look up "The Troubles". Yeah I'm not even going to try and talk about being English in regards to Ireland. Sorry but I just don't feel qualified).
For myself if I say "English" and say it in such a way that I sound too proud I start feeling weird and uncomfortable because being strongly proud of being English is so weighted down in meaning for me and for pretty much everyone in the UK. Which is sad. It's sad that I can't proudly wave an English flag in the same way a Finn can wave the Finnish flag. That's not to say that the Finnish flag hasn't been misused in it's time but in my understanding it hasn't been misused to quite the same extent. I think also the fact that Finland had to fight to be independent has in some ways allowed them to be proud of being who they are. England has throughout history been the oppressor. Other countries have independence days from us!
So how do I answer "who are you and where are you from?"
Hi, I'm Joe and I live in Helsinki.
Sunday, 2 November 2014
Herbivore Joe
As you may, or may not, have heard this last October I have been participating in LIHATON LOKAKUU! (For the non-Finnish speakers that means Meatless October. It doesn't sound as catchy in English...). This post is all about it. Enjoy!
(By the way don't you think Herbivore Joe should be the name of a new cartoon series about a wise-cracking dinosaur that gets up to all sorts of prehistoric mischief? I do.)
I was told about this meat-free month (saying it like that sounds a lot catchier) and I thought "That sounds like a great idea!" The main reason I thought it would be a great idea is that since I've come to Finland I've been eating meat pretty much every day. Well, actually yeah EVERY day. At least twice, every day. Three times a day. I've been eating a lot of meat. Now as I am interested in health (What with the whole NURSE thing going on...) I am very aware that too much meat means that you go to sleep in a hole in the ground forever a lot sooner than you should, it did help however that I saw a documentary (hosted by the ever entertaining Michael Mosley) that really spelled out the dangers of a diet high in meat, particularly processed meat like the delicious ham and salami I was having on my sandwich for breakfast. Every day. To save space (and save you lovely readers some time) I'll condense down what the documentary said:
If you like polyps on your colon and heart attacks, tuck into those sausages!
Now I'm not a fan of colon cancer (personally never had it but the reviews are terrible) so I thought I should probably cut back a bit and what better way to ease myself into this than to entirely cut out all forms of meat in one fell swoop? Now at this point I feel I should make a "Going cold turkey" joke but I only eat turkey at Christmas so the joke doesn't really seem valid...
The other reason that that joke doesn't seem valid is that this past month hasn't been like going cold turkey at all. It's frankly been a piece of vegetarian cake. The biggest change to my diet is that I've been eating a lot more cottage cheese than I used to, mostly because I didn't eat cottage cheese until this month. Really that's it. At restaurants I'm perhaps slightly slower at ordering due to the fact it can take a while to find the vegetarian dishes on a menu stocked entirely with meat. Apart from that basically no change.
The question I know everyone is asking is "Have you missed meat?"
No. At no point have I really truly craved any meat. It just hasn't happened and why should it? Whenever anyone talks about not eating as much meat or becoming vegetarian people turn around and say stuff like
"Oh no I couldn't do it, I love sausages too much!"
My answer to that would be: "No you don't." Meat is not an addictive substance and to suggest it is is just silly. Being vegetarian isn't like coming off crack. It's like not eating animals.
I'm sure you are all thinking now "Here comes the announcement that Joe is now a card-carrying veggie" but in a shocking twist I am not going to make this Lihaton Lokakuu permanent!
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!!!
Why? Well for a the same reason I'm not eating LOTS of meat, for my health.
There are lots of vegetarians that will say that it's perfectly possible to eat a diet that fulfills all the body's needs without eating meat but frankly that takes a lot of organisation. You have to be absolutely sure that you are getting enough protein, vitamins and particularly iron and quite frankly I cannot be bothered to work that out. Choosing between organising my diet around eating the right amount of beans and pulses and just having a steak, the steak will win every time.
Now you are all looking very confused and think this lack of meat has driven me insane but I'm not crazy yet. What this month has shown me is that I do not need to eat meat at every meal. I don't need to eat it every day. I don't actually have to eat it every single week.
The description of the Michael Mosley program above was perhaps a little too condensed. What the program really was saying is that eating too much processed meat will increase your chances of developing various cancers and other health problems. It never actually stated that vegetarianism is the way to go. What it did suggest though is limiting the amount of meat you eat and ensuring the meat you DO eat is of a good quality and has not been heavily processed.
To condense the expanded condensed summary of the program: Lots of sausages and ham = bad. Steaks and good quality cuts of meat = ok if not excessive.
So that is how I am planning to live my life. Eating the occasional steak will ensure my body is getting enough of the vital nutrients I need (most notably iron) and not eating ham every day will reduce my risk of cancer. Everybody wins. Except the animals...
Just when you thought I was wrapping up...
The other main reason I decided to do this Lihaton Lokakuu is because of ethics. We've all seen the videos of animals being horrifically treated and kept in horrible conditions and as soon as we've posted a comment about how terrible and cruel it all is we go to the kitchen and start making a bacon buttie. I admit I have done this too multiple times. It's very easy to forget that what we are eating is a dead animal when it doesn't have a cute little face staring back at you, but is animal welfare really a valid reason not to eat animals?
Personally I think it can be. It depends very much what is considered animal welfare. Some people might say the killing of an animal for consumption is ethically wrong but personally I don't believe this to be the case. Humans are designed to eat meat. Not just meat of course but our physiology is built in such a way that it can take in and process meat for energy, as stated above it can be very hard to find alternatives that fill the gaps that a vegetarian diet creates. We don't have canines and incisors for nothing. Now so far it's not possible to eat meat without killing an animal. So far. Scientists have managed to grow a steak from animal stem cells so it won't be too long until entirely bloodless meat will be a reality but it is still currently in the future so for now animals will still have to die if you insist on that bacon buttie.
Right now it's possible to buy meat that is grown and slaughtered ethically so in some ways as long as you are careful and informed in what you buy it's possible (in my opinion) to eat meat ethically.
I can't wait for lab-grown meat because not only will it side step the ethical issues (at least animal welfare ones) it will also remove the other downside of industrialized meat eating. The environmental impact. A vast amount of methane is produced getting a calf from womb to plate and the amount of space needed is simply incredible. By reducing the amount of meat I'm eating I can reduce my contribution to a global problem. Pretty neat. Especially as it's so easy.
Of course there is an alternative source of protein that uses very little space, and has a minimal effect on the environment... The meat that dare not be spoken of. In cultures around the world it's been eaten for thousands of years. In desperate situations people have been forced to it...
No not humans, insects. Insects are a great source of protein and can literally be grown at home. Before you say "Eeeeewww!" Please remember that people have and still do eat insects around the world and to say you won't eat an insect but are perfectly happy to stuff your face with mashed up pig-bits in intestine is a position that in my opinion is a tad untenable.
Take the humble Dubia cockroach. Blaptica dubia to give it it's fancy name. They are a species of cockroach from Central and South America. They grow 4-4.5 cm's long and are absolutely full of protein with very little hard exoskeleton which makes them a perfect feeder insect for reptiles, carnivorous insects and... humans? In my opinion why not. They can be grown in a plastic container you can get from a supermarket for a fiver. They can't climb out of said container or fly out. They require a temperature of between 25 and 30 degrees to breed so if they do escape they won't infest your house. All they need is some fruit and veg and some time. If the conditions are right they reproduce like rabbits and you can go from 50 to 1000 in no time at all.
So this perfect, ethical, low environmental impact, quick to breed food source is being ignored. Why? Everyone (well most people in the West) are too squeamish. Which is silly.
If I was allowed I would have boxes of cockroaches all over the place as well as boxes of mealworms, grubs and crickets. Sadly I can't... yet. As soon as I can I'll be frying them up in a tasty stir fry before you can say "EEEEEWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!".
Fight insect prejudice! Save the world! Make a tasty meal! Breed cockroaches!
Oh yeah and lay off the ham.
(Who here guessed this post would start of with "I didn't eat meat for a month!" and end with "Devour cockroaches!"? Anyone?)
(By the way don't you think Herbivore Joe should be the name of a new cartoon series about a wise-cracking dinosaur that gets up to all sorts of prehistoric mischief? I do.)
I was told about this meat-free month (saying it like that sounds a lot catchier) and I thought "That sounds like a great idea!" The main reason I thought it would be a great idea is that since I've come to Finland I've been eating meat pretty much every day. Well, actually yeah EVERY day. At least twice, every day. Three times a day. I've been eating a lot of meat. Now as I am interested in health (What with the whole NURSE thing going on...) I am very aware that too much meat means that you go to sleep in a hole in the ground forever a lot sooner than you should, it did help however that I saw a documentary (hosted by the ever entertaining Michael Mosley) that really spelled out the dangers of a diet high in meat, particularly processed meat like the delicious ham and salami I was having on my sandwich for breakfast. Every day. To save space (and save you lovely readers some time) I'll condense down what the documentary said:
If you like polyps on your colon and heart attacks, tuck into those sausages!
Now I'm not a fan of colon cancer (personally never had it but the reviews are terrible) so I thought I should probably cut back a bit and what better way to ease myself into this than to entirely cut out all forms of meat in one fell swoop? Now at this point I feel I should make a "Going cold turkey" joke but I only eat turkey at Christmas so the joke doesn't really seem valid...
The other reason that that joke doesn't seem valid is that this past month hasn't been like going cold turkey at all. It's frankly been a piece of vegetarian cake. The biggest change to my diet is that I've been eating a lot more cottage cheese than I used to, mostly because I didn't eat cottage cheese until this month. Really that's it. At restaurants I'm perhaps slightly slower at ordering due to the fact it can take a while to find the vegetarian dishes on a menu stocked entirely with meat. Apart from that basically no change.
The question I know everyone is asking is "Have you missed meat?"
No. At no point have I really truly craved any meat. It just hasn't happened and why should it? Whenever anyone talks about not eating as much meat or becoming vegetarian people turn around and say stuff like
"Oh no I couldn't do it, I love sausages too much!"
My answer to that would be: "No you don't." Meat is not an addictive substance and to suggest it is is just silly. Being vegetarian isn't like coming off crack. It's like not eating animals.
I'm sure you are all thinking now "Here comes the announcement that Joe is now a card-carrying veggie" but in a shocking twist I am not going to make this Lihaton Lokakuu permanent!
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNN!!!!!
Why? Well for a the same reason I'm not eating LOTS of meat, for my health.
There are lots of vegetarians that will say that it's perfectly possible to eat a diet that fulfills all the body's needs without eating meat but frankly that takes a lot of organisation. You have to be absolutely sure that you are getting enough protein, vitamins and particularly iron and quite frankly I cannot be bothered to work that out. Choosing between organising my diet around eating the right amount of beans and pulses and just having a steak, the steak will win every time.
Now you are all looking very confused and think this lack of meat has driven me insane but I'm not crazy yet. What this month has shown me is that I do not need to eat meat at every meal. I don't need to eat it every day. I don't actually have to eat it every single week.
The description of the Michael Mosley program above was perhaps a little too condensed. What the program really was saying is that eating too much processed meat will increase your chances of developing various cancers and other health problems. It never actually stated that vegetarianism is the way to go. What it did suggest though is limiting the amount of meat you eat and ensuring the meat you DO eat is of a good quality and has not been heavily processed.
To condense the expanded condensed summary of the program: Lots of sausages and ham = bad. Steaks and good quality cuts of meat = ok if not excessive.
So that is how I am planning to live my life. Eating the occasional steak will ensure my body is getting enough of the vital nutrients I need (most notably iron) and not eating ham every day will reduce my risk of cancer. Everybody wins. Except the animals...
Just when you thought I was wrapping up...
The other main reason I decided to do this Lihaton Lokakuu is because of ethics. We've all seen the videos of animals being horrifically treated and kept in horrible conditions and as soon as we've posted a comment about how terrible and cruel it all is we go to the kitchen and start making a bacon buttie. I admit I have done this too multiple times. It's very easy to forget that what we are eating is a dead animal when it doesn't have a cute little face staring back at you, but is animal welfare really a valid reason not to eat animals?
Personally I think it can be. It depends very much what is considered animal welfare. Some people might say the killing of an animal for consumption is ethically wrong but personally I don't believe this to be the case. Humans are designed to eat meat. Not just meat of course but our physiology is built in such a way that it can take in and process meat for energy, as stated above it can be very hard to find alternatives that fill the gaps that a vegetarian diet creates. We don't have canines and incisors for nothing. Now so far it's not possible to eat meat without killing an animal. So far. Scientists have managed to grow a steak from animal stem cells so it won't be too long until entirely bloodless meat will be a reality but it is still currently in the future so for now animals will still have to die if you insist on that bacon buttie.
Right now it's possible to buy meat that is grown and slaughtered ethically so in some ways as long as you are careful and informed in what you buy it's possible (in my opinion) to eat meat ethically.
I can't wait for lab-grown meat because not only will it side step the ethical issues (at least animal welfare ones) it will also remove the other downside of industrialized meat eating. The environmental impact. A vast amount of methane is produced getting a calf from womb to plate and the amount of space needed is simply incredible. By reducing the amount of meat I'm eating I can reduce my contribution to a global problem. Pretty neat. Especially as it's so easy.
Of course there is an alternative source of protein that uses very little space, and has a minimal effect on the environment... The meat that dare not be spoken of. In cultures around the world it's been eaten for thousands of years. In desperate situations people have been forced to it...
No not humans, insects. Insects are a great source of protein and can literally be grown at home. Before you say "Eeeeewww!" Please remember that people have and still do eat insects around the world and to say you won't eat an insect but are perfectly happy to stuff your face with mashed up pig-bits in intestine is a position that in my opinion is a tad untenable.
Take the humble Dubia cockroach. Blaptica dubia to give it it's fancy name. They are a species of cockroach from Central and South America. They grow 4-4.5 cm's long and are absolutely full of protein with very little hard exoskeleton which makes them a perfect feeder insect for reptiles, carnivorous insects and... humans? In my opinion why not. They can be grown in a plastic container you can get from a supermarket for a fiver. They can't climb out of said container or fly out. They require a temperature of between 25 and 30 degrees to breed so if they do escape they won't infest your house. All they need is some fruit and veg and some time. If the conditions are right they reproduce like rabbits and you can go from 50 to 1000 in no time at all.
So this perfect, ethical, low environmental impact, quick to breed food source is being ignored. Why? Everyone (well most people in the West) are too squeamish. Which is silly.
If I was allowed I would have boxes of cockroaches all over the place as well as boxes of mealworms, grubs and crickets. Sadly I can't... yet. As soon as I can I'll be frying them up in a tasty stir fry before you can say "EEEEEWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!".
Fight insect prejudice! Save the world! Make a tasty meal! Breed cockroaches!
Oh yeah and lay off the ham.
(Who here guessed this post would start of with "I didn't eat meat for a month!" and end with "Devour cockroaches!"? Anyone?)
Saturday, 11 October 2014
One Year and Counting...
So I have now lived in Finland for an entire year. Well when I say an entire year it's now a bit more than that. I've been a little slow writing this and I would apologise but I did warn everyone that this was going to happen so you only have your selves to blame if you're disappointed. But anyway...
It all feels rather momentous (an entire year!) and seeing as I've written posts about razor blades before, I thought something as interesting as my life might be worth writing down.
So what have I been doing with my time here? Well mostly learning Finnish. How well do I know Finnish? Well I certainly haven't FINNISHED (my punnery knows no bounds) but in all seriousness it is a complicated language. I have learnt an incredibly large amount in this past year but really I'm still at the bottom of the mountain. It will take a long time for me to become confident in Finnish but this doesn't worry me too much (as if anything worries me). I have time and some absolutely fantastic help that I can't thank enough.
If you are reading this and you haven't tried to learn a language (and I don't mean high school French, I mean actually STUDYING a language) then I have to say GO DO IT. It is the most amazing experience. Ever. You may be thinking "languages aren't my thing" or "I don't need to" and to that I say look at me as an example. I hated languages. I went through around 6 years of French lessons and all I know is "Bonjour" and "Comment t'appelle tu?" (I had to use Google Translate to help with the spelling). I hated it and I regret all that wasted time now because learning Finnish has truly expanded my mind. Studies have shown learning languages can help slow the onset of dementia and frankly, I'm not surprised. It's tough to learn Finnish. Your mind is constantly working especially living "in" the language so to speak. Every sign, advert, snatched piece of conversation, newspaper headline, announcement all works as your constant revision. Perfect example: varattu (which means reserved). You see it in restaurants, hotels all the sorts of places stuff gets reserved and when I see it I think to myself:
varattu
Verb: varata (to reserve)
Stem: vara-
-ttu ending: Past tense, Participle (word made from a verb that acts as an adjective), Passive (no defined subject - Who has reserved the table? We don't know we just know someone has.)
My mind is constantly working like this. It is tiring and it is hard and it can be frustrating but I can tell you, from personal experience, that there are few things in the world that feel as good as understanding something in a foreign language that you would never have understood before you picked up a text book and put the hours in. I get this feeling all the time now and it's incredible. I can look at a menu or an advert (nothing too complicated but still in Finnish) and understand it. I am literally gaining information that would have been inaccessible to me before this year! I think that is the science lover in me showing. I get stuff I didn't before! Huzzah!
Understanding spoken Finnish is still very difficult for me for a few reasons, mostly because Finns speak at around 20 billion words a minute. That's a rough estimate but I think it's accurate. There is also the slight hitch that I have been learning a language no-one actually speaks. I have primarily learnt written Finnish ("proper" Finnish) but no-one speaks it. If I speak written Finnish people think I'm talking like the Queen (if dear Queen Lizzy was Finnish). Everyone speaks puhekieli or spoken language which chops out a few letters as well as a myriad of variations in the words. For example:
Written Finnish: Voisitko...? (Could you...?)
Puhekieli: Voisit...?
Written Finnish: Onko? (Is it?)
Puhekieli: Onks? (Is it?)
Written Finnish: Menemme kauppaan. (We are going to the shops.)
Puhekieli: Menään kauppaan. (We are going to the shops.)
Doesn't look like much but I can tell you it gets confusing. Now these are examples of puhekieli in Helsinki. Just Helsinki. In other parts of Finland it's entirely different again. Around the Pori area in the West of Finland, "vetta" (partative case of vesi; water) can be shortened to "vet" along with a myriad of other changes. In the East, in the Savo region, they speak their own Savo dialect which Finnish people from other areas struggle to understand. In the North, there is the Sami language which is completely it's own language and around the coast a large percentage speak Swedish (with a sprinkling of Finnish in it) as their first language. So yeah it's not the easiest thing in the world to understand Finnish people but luckily they are some of the kindest and understanding people I've met and know full well that their language is not always the easiest.
Reflecting on these problems and hurdles has often demoralized me and made me consider just giving up (which is very easy to do in Finland as everyone speaks flawless English) but then I'll see an advert that I'll understand with almost no thought and that warm glowy feeling of accomplishment comes back.
For the past year I've been swinging back and forth from "I know nothing and I never will! This language is impossible!" to "Ymmärrän paljon ja puhun suomeksi vähän". I really have had some highs and lows but that is also what makes it exciting and interesting. Thanks also to a fantastic guide and companion, who has accompanied me on this rather epic journey, I have discovered a love for the Finnish language and of learning languages.
I've now painted a picture of myself as the devoted scholar, pouring over books and manuscripts, revising and redoing and learning constantly but I haven't had a complete character change in the last year. I am still perfectly and adeptly capable of being a lazy, feckless sod who constantly puts off homework and thinks "I'll just do it later" but I have also, to be fair to myself, done a lot of freakin' work.
So what else has this year taught me, apart from the difference between a verb and an adverb? Well it's really opened my eyes as to how different different people can be. I have met people from:
Italy, Turkey, Somalia, Russia, China, Ghana, Nepal, India, Australia, Nigeria, America, Norway, Lithuania, Germany, Tansania, Holland, Argentina, Israel, Sri Lanka, Iran, Bulgaria, Estonia, Spain, Egypt, Kenya, Ukraine, Slovakia, Sweden and many many more countries.
Every corner of the globe. Almost anyway.
I distinctly remember one point during my first Finnish course where I went with a few of my fellow students in a local park just to sit, enjoy the sunshine ("Finland is a cold Northern wasteland! It's always snowing there!" If that's true explain to me how exactly it got to be 28C in our bedroom at night during the Summer. I almost died) and get to know each other a bit better and I was suddenly struck by how bizarre the situation was. I, Joseph Hallam, from a little city famous for a condiment and a composer and that's it, was sat in a park in Helsinki, Finland, surrounded by people who were from countries from across the globe and the only real reason I was there was because I had fallen in love with the niece of a woman whom my dad had looked after when she was a child because he had chosen some random country that he knew next to nothing about 30 years ago. I probably looked like an idiot to everyone else in the park at the time because I couldn't help staring off into the distance and gurning like a drunken child but it really did bring a smile to my face. All these small decisions and actions, some of which had taken place decades before I was born, had led to me sitting in a park surrounded by these people that had completely different backgrounds, histories and futures to me. It was fantastic and I'm sure I will remember it for the rest of my life. It's not been the only time this year either. Something I'm truly loving about my nursing course at Arcada is that my classmates are from all over and I have the privilege of working with them for the next 3 and a half years. It's awesome.
I would never have had these experiences if I had stayed in England. I have gone over my decision to move to Finland over and over and not once have I come to the conclusion that I've made a mistake. Of course, as most people know, it wasn't just the language and the beautiful scenery that convinced me to stay in Finland.
Right now, if I had stayed in England, gone to Chester and started my course there, I would be counting down the days until I could come back to Finland and see her again. I would be miserable, exhausted and soul-crushingly lonely. I know it would be like that because it was like that before I moved here and we were living between countries and it's one of the reasons I made the decision to stay here. I could not spend one more day having to use Skype as the only form of interaction with the person that has made me happier than I even thought was possible. I could not spend any more time at airports, trying to keep it together, knowing I wasn't going to see her again for potentially months. It was physically painful.
Looking back now it was an obvious decision and to a few people not all that surprising. Now that I have stayed, I can't really imagine my life being any different (the recent imagining in the paragraph above excepted). I have already vaguely mentioned the many friends I have now made here and already they have become incredibly close to me and I am certainly a richer person for having met them. I think as well as them revealing to me the sheer scope of differences possible between people, they have also shown me how many things we have in common. It doesn't matter if they have a completely different culture, upbringing, that they are a completely different age and even generation, they are still relatable human beings that I can have decent, interesting conversions with, and I thank them for that.
Helsinki is not a big place (apparently some Russians refer to it as a small village) but it has shown me how small a place Britain, England and particularly Worcester is. Going back to Worcester for the Summer was, of course, fantastic and seeing all of my friends and family was incredible but it also felt... claustrophobic. Everything was so... small. Now I've seen some of the world I want to see and experience more of it. To go back to Worcester would feel like a step backwards.
The world is my oyster now that I really know and understand how vast, complicated and interesting it is. I better do something worthwhile. It would be terrible if I make the wrong choices and end up a regret-filled old man, sat in a rocking chair, cursing my youthful stupidity and ignorance. I would hate to see my life wasted. What if I do waste it!?
Terrifying really when you stop and think about it.
I think I've been thinking about this sort of stuff a lot this year for two reasons: I moved countries and I turned 20. Now I am aware 20 is not old, but it's also steadily becoming "not-young". I am no longer a teenager (was I ever really a stereotypical teenager?) and I am now basically a "proper adult". After getting over the mental anguish of this (and the anguish of realizing that "10 years ago" is 2004 not 1996) it really made me think about my life and my future. I do kind of feel that my life is essentially already planned out (1. Do nursing degree 2. Pass nursing degree 3. Work as a nurse 4. Die) and I have already met the person I want to spend the rest of my life with (first time as well!) that in some ways there isn't much to plan and anyway I've always been of the opinion that stuff happening tomorrow isn't that important because today is not tomorrow, but still I feel like I should be ready for... life. After lot's of thinking it over though I am coming to the conclusion that...
I should really stop worrying about this stuff.
It's only really been in this last year that I have really developed my ideas about what is important in life to me and what my personal beliefs are. It might seem, looking at my blog, that I have had my philosophy of life sorted for a long time but half the ideas on this blog were made up as I was writing the post. The pressure of having to write something actually really helped organise my thoughts and helped me to work out exactly who I am which is really good because that was basically the original point of this blog. That and everyone had got sick of me talking their ears off.
Talking of original points... The reason my conclusion is that I should stop worrying about beginning my life is because my life didn't ever actually start. It's always been. How many times have you heard people talk about their dreams and ambitions and placed all these plans in the future? "One day I'll go and visit *Insert dream destination here*". "When I'm older I'll be doing *Insert dream job here*". How many times have these same people actually tried to achieve these things?
Turning 20 has shown me that essentially I haven't changed that much from when I was 13 or 14 years old. I haven't just woken up and become an adult. I'm not all of sudden starting my life. I started my life 20 years ago. Yes, my life has had various stages and it wasn't possible for me to go globetrotting at the age of 2, but essentially I have been living my life. There is nothing else to wait for or expect. If I want to do something I should do it now because now is the only time there is.
But that's not all I've come to realise. I've also realised that worrying about using my time is just as useless as spending it frivolously. You can't feel bad about all the things you haven't done because you can't do everything. What you can do is do stuff you enjoy and enjoy the hell out of it. You also have time to do stuff you don't like and learn from it. Time is precious but it's not that precious that you can't waste it now and then or spend it doing something boring. Remember as well that every day doesn't have to be an unbelievable adventure. A day spent reading a book and eating some pasta is not necessarily a day wasted.
As is often the case with these blog posts (it would seem), I'm concluding with a grey area rather than black and white universal rules. Go and live your life because you are already living it, enjoy it but don't feel you have to enjoy everything, don't waste it unless you want to, do incredible things or don't!
The only real rule that I would suggest everyone should live by (and that I try to live by at all times) is don't worry about final outcomes and don't regret things. I took a pretty big risk and it paid off. Try it out some time.
Or don't bother and just read a book or something.
P.S. You should also learn Finnish.
It all feels rather momentous (an entire year!) and seeing as I've written posts about razor blades before, I thought something as interesting as my life might be worth writing down.
So what have I been doing with my time here? Well mostly learning Finnish. How well do I know Finnish? Well I certainly haven't FINNISHED (my punnery knows no bounds) but in all seriousness it is a complicated language. I have learnt an incredibly large amount in this past year but really I'm still at the bottom of the mountain. It will take a long time for me to become confident in Finnish but this doesn't worry me too much (as if anything worries me). I have time and some absolutely fantastic help that I can't thank enough.
If you are reading this and you haven't tried to learn a language (and I don't mean high school French, I mean actually STUDYING a language) then I have to say GO DO IT. It is the most amazing experience. Ever. You may be thinking "languages aren't my thing" or "I don't need to" and to that I say look at me as an example. I hated languages. I went through around 6 years of French lessons and all I know is "Bonjour" and "Comment t'appelle tu?" (I had to use Google Translate to help with the spelling). I hated it and I regret all that wasted time now because learning Finnish has truly expanded my mind. Studies have shown learning languages can help slow the onset of dementia and frankly, I'm not surprised. It's tough to learn Finnish. Your mind is constantly working especially living "in" the language so to speak. Every sign, advert, snatched piece of conversation, newspaper headline, announcement all works as your constant revision. Perfect example: varattu (which means reserved). You see it in restaurants, hotels all the sorts of places stuff gets reserved and when I see it I think to myself:
varattu
Verb: varata (to reserve)
Stem: vara-
-ttu ending: Past tense, Participle (word made from a verb that acts as an adjective), Passive (no defined subject - Who has reserved the table? We don't know we just know someone has.)
My mind is constantly working like this. It is tiring and it is hard and it can be frustrating but I can tell you, from personal experience, that there are few things in the world that feel as good as understanding something in a foreign language that you would never have understood before you picked up a text book and put the hours in. I get this feeling all the time now and it's incredible. I can look at a menu or an advert (nothing too complicated but still in Finnish) and understand it. I am literally gaining information that would have been inaccessible to me before this year! I think that is the science lover in me showing. I get stuff I didn't before! Huzzah!
Understanding spoken Finnish is still very difficult for me for a few reasons, mostly because Finns speak at around 20 billion words a minute. That's a rough estimate but I think it's accurate. There is also the slight hitch that I have been learning a language no-one actually speaks. I have primarily learnt written Finnish ("proper" Finnish) but no-one speaks it. If I speak written Finnish people think I'm talking like the Queen (if dear Queen Lizzy was Finnish). Everyone speaks puhekieli or spoken language which chops out a few letters as well as a myriad of variations in the words. For example:
Written Finnish: Voisitko...? (Could you...?)
Puhekieli: Voisit...?
Written Finnish: Onko? (Is it?)
Puhekieli: Onks? (Is it?)
Written Finnish: Menemme kauppaan. (We are going to the shops.)
Puhekieli: Menään kauppaan. (We are going to the shops.)
Doesn't look like much but I can tell you it gets confusing. Now these are examples of puhekieli in Helsinki. Just Helsinki. In other parts of Finland it's entirely different again. Around the Pori area in the West of Finland, "vetta" (partative case of vesi; water) can be shortened to "vet" along with a myriad of other changes. In the East, in the Savo region, they speak their own Savo dialect which Finnish people from other areas struggle to understand. In the North, there is the Sami language which is completely it's own language and around the coast a large percentage speak Swedish (with a sprinkling of Finnish in it) as their first language. So yeah it's not the easiest thing in the world to understand Finnish people but luckily they are some of the kindest and understanding people I've met and know full well that their language is not always the easiest.
Reflecting on these problems and hurdles has often demoralized me and made me consider just giving up (which is very easy to do in Finland as everyone speaks flawless English) but then I'll see an advert that I'll understand with almost no thought and that warm glowy feeling of accomplishment comes back.
For the past year I've been swinging back and forth from "I know nothing and I never will! This language is impossible!" to "Ymmärrän paljon ja puhun suomeksi vähän". I really have had some highs and lows but that is also what makes it exciting and interesting. Thanks also to a fantastic guide and companion, who has accompanied me on this rather epic journey, I have discovered a love for the Finnish language and of learning languages.
I've now painted a picture of myself as the devoted scholar, pouring over books and manuscripts, revising and redoing and learning constantly but I haven't had a complete character change in the last year. I am still perfectly and adeptly capable of being a lazy, feckless sod who constantly puts off homework and thinks "I'll just do it later" but I have also, to be fair to myself, done a lot of freakin' work.
So what else has this year taught me, apart from the difference between a verb and an adverb? Well it's really opened my eyes as to how different different people can be. I have met people from:
Italy, Turkey, Somalia, Russia, China, Ghana, Nepal, India, Australia, Nigeria, America, Norway, Lithuania, Germany, Tansania, Holland, Argentina, Israel, Sri Lanka, Iran, Bulgaria, Estonia, Spain, Egypt, Kenya, Ukraine, Slovakia, Sweden and many many more countries.
Every corner of the globe. Almost anyway.
I distinctly remember one point during my first Finnish course where I went with a few of my fellow students in a local park just to sit, enjoy the sunshine ("Finland is a cold Northern wasteland! It's always snowing there!" If that's true explain to me how exactly it got to be 28C in our bedroom at night during the Summer. I almost died) and get to know each other a bit better and I was suddenly struck by how bizarre the situation was. I, Joseph Hallam, from a little city famous for a condiment and a composer and that's it, was sat in a park in Helsinki, Finland, surrounded by people who were from countries from across the globe and the only real reason I was there was because I had fallen in love with the niece of a woman whom my dad had looked after when she was a child because he had chosen some random country that he knew next to nothing about 30 years ago. I probably looked like an idiot to everyone else in the park at the time because I couldn't help staring off into the distance and gurning like a drunken child but it really did bring a smile to my face. All these small decisions and actions, some of which had taken place decades before I was born, had led to me sitting in a park surrounded by these people that had completely different backgrounds, histories and futures to me. It was fantastic and I'm sure I will remember it for the rest of my life. It's not been the only time this year either. Something I'm truly loving about my nursing course at Arcada is that my classmates are from all over and I have the privilege of working with them for the next 3 and a half years. It's awesome.
I would never have had these experiences if I had stayed in England. I have gone over my decision to move to Finland over and over and not once have I come to the conclusion that I've made a mistake. Of course, as most people know, it wasn't just the language and the beautiful scenery that convinced me to stay in Finland.
Right now, if I had stayed in England, gone to Chester and started my course there, I would be counting down the days until I could come back to Finland and see her again. I would be miserable, exhausted and soul-crushingly lonely. I know it would be like that because it was like that before I moved here and we were living between countries and it's one of the reasons I made the decision to stay here. I could not spend one more day having to use Skype as the only form of interaction with the person that has made me happier than I even thought was possible. I could not spend any more time at airports, trying to keep it together, knowing I wasn't going to see her again for potentially months. It was physically painful.
Looking back now it was an obvious decision and to a few people not all that surprising. Now that I have stayed, I can't really imagine my life being any different (the recent imagining in the paragraph above excepted). I have already vaguely mentioned the many friends I have now made here and already they have become incredibly close to me and I am certainly a richer person for having met them. I think as well as them revealing to me the sheer scope of differences possible between people, they have also shown me how many things we have in common. It doesn't matter if they have a completely different culture, upbringing, that they are a completely different age and even generation, they are still relatable human beings that I can have decent, interesting conversions with, and I thank them for that.
Helsinki is not a big place (apparently some Russians refer to it as a small village) but it has shown me how small a place Britain, England and particularly Worcester is. Going back to Worcester for the Summer was, of course, fantastic and seeing all of my friends and family was incredible but it also felt... claustrophobic. Everything was so... small. Now I've seen some of the world I want to see and experience more of it. To go back to Worcester would feel like a step backwards.
The world is my oyster now that I really know and understand how vast, complicated and interesting it is. I better do something worthwhile. It would be terrible if I make the wrong choices and end up a regret-filled old man, sat in a rocking chair, cursing my youthful stupidity and ignorance. I would hate to see my life wasted. What if I do waste it!?
Terrifying really when you stop and think about it.
I think I've been thinking about this sort of stuff a lot this year for two reasons: I moved countries and I turned 20. Now I am aware 20 is not old, but it's also steadily becoming "not-young". I am no longer a teenager (was I ever really a stereotypical teenager?) and I am now basically a "proper adult". After getting over the mental anguish of this (and the anguish of realizing that "10 years ago" is 2004 not 1996) it really made me think about my life and my future. I do kind of feel that my life is essentially already planned out (1. Do nursing degree 2. Pass nursing degree 3. Work as a nurse 4. Die) and I have already met the person I want to spend the rest of my life with (first time as well!) that in some ways there isn't much to plan and anyway I've always been of the opinion that stuff happening tomorrow isn't that important because today is not tomorrow, but still I feel like I should be ready for... life. After lot's of thinking it over though I am coming to the conclusion that...
I should really stop worrying about this stuff.
It's only really been in this last year that I have really developed my ideas about what is important in life to me and what my personal beliefs are. It might seem, looking at my blog, that I have had my philosophy of life sorted for a long time but half the ideas on this blog were made up as I was writing the post. The pressure of having to write something actually really helped organise my thoughts and helped me to work out exactly who I am which is really good because that was basically the original point of this blog. That and everyone had got sick of me talking their ears off.
Talking of original points... The reason my conclusion is that I should stop worrying about beginning my life is because my life didn't ever actually start. It's always been. How many times have you heard people talk about their dreams and ambitions and placed all these plans in the future? "One day I'll go and visit *Insert dream destination here*". "When I'm older I'll be doing *Insert dream job here*". How many times have these same people actually tried to achieve these things?
Turning 20 has shown me that essentially I haven't changed that much from when I was 13 or 14 years old. I haven't just woken up and become an adult. I'm not all of sudden starting my life. I started my life 20 years ago. Yes, my life has had various stages and it wasn't possible for me to go globetrotting at the age of 2, but essentially I have been living my life. There is nothing else to wait for or expect. If I want to do something I should do it now because now is the only time there is.
But that's not all I've come to realise. I've also realised that worrying about using my time is just as useless as spending it frivolously. You can't feel bad about all the things you haven't done because you can't do everything. What you can do is do stuff you enjoy and enjoy the hell out of it. You also have time to do stuff you don't like and learn from it. Time is precious but it's not that precious that you can't waste it now and then or spend it doing something boring. Remember as well that every day doesn't have to be an unbelievable adventure. A day spent reading a book and eating some pasta is not necessarily a day wasted.
As is often the case with these blog posts (it would seem), I'm concluding with a grey area rather than black and white universal rules. Go and live your life because you are already living it, enjoy it but don't feel you have to enjoy everything, don't waste it unless you want to, do incredible things or don't!
The only real rule that I would suggest everyone should live by (and that I try to live by at all times) is don't worry about final outcomes and don't regret things. I took a pretty big risk and it paid off. Try it out some time.
Or don't bother and just read a book or something.
P.S. You should also learn Finnish.
Monday, 11 August 2014
2+2=5
I hate to disappoint everyone but this isn't actually a political post about tyrannical governments misinforming the masses (I do like Radiohead though...), this post is actually about how I can't do maths.
Well actually that is a lie. I can do maths. Slowly. Eventually. With a calculator to help. Now I'm sure everyone that hasn't heard me whining about this before is thinking "I'm no good at maths either mate! Algebra!? You're having a laugh!" but I'm not talking about complicated maths; I find really simple maths incredibly difficult. I do, of course, know that 2+2=4 and not 5 but pretty simple multiplication actually hurts my head. Truly physically hurts my head.
Example time! Just off the top of my head:
7x4= I don't know.
Not only do I not know straight away, I have no way of working this out. My brain doesn't like it. Right now it's just blank. Not a clue. Usually at this point someone tells me "It's easy! Just make the 4 a 5 and then work that out!" (I can do my 5 times table because the numbers are simple and always end in a 5 or a 0 and, for me at least, have a certain rhythm to them so are very easy to count up) but the problem is is that if I change that 4 to a 5 my brain now has to keep hold of the 7 the 4 and the 5 and then the answer and the only way for me to get to the answer now that's a 5 is to count up the 5 times table (When I said I can do the 5 times table I meant I can count up it. I can't just "jump" to a number e.g. 6x5= 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. I had to check that 30 was the 6th one on my fingers.) So now I have to keep hold of, in my brain, the 7, the 4, the 5, all the numbers in the 5 times table up to 7 and then I have to take 7 away from that answer and then I have to remember the final answer. My brain cannot do this. Because I'm writing this, I haven't actually been able to work out the answer. Leave a comment!
Now as you can imagine not being able to do simple multiplication, division, addition and subtraction was somewhat problematic during school particularly during (Surprise!) maths lessons. Maths homework was like torture for me. I would dread it. My mum, being the incredibly kind and wonderful person she is, would spend literally hours with me trying to help me to get through it and it would usually end with us both exhausted, my head would be ringing and I would want to lie down on my bed until I was swallowed by it. The real cruelty of my brain is that it actually, a lot of the time, understands the principles and rules that are being followed to get an answer, it just can't do it. This inability lead me to the verge (and over the verge occasionally) of tears. When my brain sees a maths equation it goes into panic mode. Not even joking. I go into fight or flight. My heart rate picks up, my breathing increases, my body prepares to run away. From maths.
So why does my brain do this? Well I don't know for certain but it could be that I have dyscalculia (it's maths dyslexia essentially). So what is that exactly? Good old Wikipedia to the rescue!
Dyscalculia is difficulty in learning or comprehending arithmetic, such as difficulty in understanding numbers, learning how to manipulate numbers, and learning math facts.
Hey that already sounds familiar! So what else do I struggle with that could be symptoms of dyscalculia?
-Difficulty reading analog clocks. CHECK. Still can't even after my mum spent (yet more) hours (over a number of years) trying to teach me how to read them. She used this cardboard clock where you can set the time and then she would test me, asking what time it was. I believe she got the clock from her work as she works with children. I was around 15 at the time. No not 7, 15.
-Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook. CHECK. I'm not entirely useless at this but I very rarely use change because I know it will take me half an hour to work out how much I need to hand over. My last wallet actually broke because of the sheer amount of change in it.
-Difficulty with multiplication-tables, and subtraction-tables, addition tables, division tables, mental arithmetic, etc. CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK. I once managed to learn my 12 times table in year 4 and passed the test I had but it took weeks of being tested by my mum on the way to school every day for me to learn it. Then by the next week I had forgotten it. Mental arithmetic is actually a very effective torture device against me. Those tests with the 20 questions which are read out on a tape and where you are timed? Pure anguish.
-Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time. May be chronically late or early. CHECK. Many a time I've arrived half an hour early when meeting my friends. I'm rarely late, mostly because I poorly estimate how long a journey is going to take me, overcompensate to prevent me being late and then end up half an hour early (Yay! Waiting!)
-Having particular difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance. CHECK. See above with my poor judgement of how long it takes to travel a certain distance.
-Inability to concentrate on mentally intensive tasks. I want to say "check" so I have a good excuse but to be honest I'm probably just lazy.
- Low latent inhibition, i.e. over-sensitivity to noise, smell, light and the inability to tune out, filtering unwanted information or impressions. Not sure about this one but then again I did do a post not that long ago about using ear defenders to escape background noise...
There are other symptoms listed on the page that I don't have, stuff like: "Difficulty stating which of two numbers is larger" which I am able to do, but I have a damn fair few of these symptoms. So do I have dyscalculia? I don't know for certain. I have never been formally tested. Why? Because it costs a butt-ton and my maths teacher never really tried to help me on that front. It doesn't help that dyscalculia is really not that well known about. It is becoming more recognised but is still somewhat overshadowed by it's cousin dyslexia. I'm starting my nursing degree here in Finland and my university does do tests for it so (hopefully) I will know for definite very soon whether I have it or whether I'm just crap at maths in which case this entire post can be ignored.
So what has it been like potentially having dyscalculia? Crappy. It's been crappy. Not being able to read analog clocks is probably the worst thing because they are everywhere and it may be that I will be asked to use one. So many times someone has asked what the time is just because they are busy doing something else or facing away from the clock and I've had to count around the minutes as quick as I can for fear of being revealed an idiot. I really envy people who can just look at the clock and just know straight off what time it is. Seriously that's like magic to me. I cannot comprehend that at all. My brain doesn't do that. It looks at the clock and goes "Right. The big hand is pointing at the 3. So thats 5, 10, 15. Ok 15 minutes. The little hand is pointing towards the 4, so it's 15 minutes past 4." If you read that out loud at a regular speed, that is about how long it takes me to work out the time. If it's something like 5:40, then it takes me even longer to say because it's "20 to 6". That requires me to work out 60-40=20 and then also remember to say it's "to 6" not "to 5". That's 5 numbers I have to juggle in my head and it can't take it.
I've managed to get on rather well without these basic maths and number skills mostly through the use of digital clocks (Thank Christ for digital clocks), calculators and stalling for time because like I said I understand the question, I just can't give you the answer straight away. Every single possible shortcut method, system and formula has been drilled into my head since forever and not one has stuck. I gave the example of changing a 4 into a 5 to make equations easier up above but things like that have never worked for me mostly because my brain goes into panic mode and doesn't think clearly about what I have to do and "methods" like that just increase the amount of thinking I have to do and my brain gets bogged down and feels like it's going to explode. Fun with maths yay...
Luckily for me I am actually kind of pretty good at other stuff. Reading. I can do that. That other one... writing that's it, I'm alright at that one too. I don't mind not being a "maths man" but I still do find it hard because I understand the importance of maths. The universe is made up of maths. Equations and formulas got people to the Moon. The reason I'm able to write this now on a computer is because of maths. That's annoying. But hey I've got this far without being able to do my 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 12 times tables (the other ones I'm alright with. Slow but alright.) Only a couple more decades to go...
Well actually that is a lie. I can do maths. Slowly. Eventually. With a calculator to help. Now I'm sure everyone that hasn't heard me whining about this before is thinking "I'm no good at maths either mate! Algebra!? You're having a laugh!" but I'm not talking about complicated maths; I find really simple maths incredibly difficult. I do, of course, know that 2+2=4 and not 5 but pretty simple multiplication actually hurts my head. Truly physically hurts my head.
Example time! Just off the top of my head:
7x4= I don't know.
Not only do I not know straight away, I have no way of working this out. My brain doesn't like it. Right now it's just blank. Not a clue. Usually at this point someone tells me "It's easy! Just make the 4 a 5 and then work that out!" (I can do my 5 times table because the numbers are simple and always end in a 5 or a 0 and, for me at least, have a certain rhythm to them so are very easy to count up) but the problem is is that if I change that 4 to a 5 my brain now has to keep hold of the 7 the 4 and the 5 and then the answer and the only way for me to get to the answer now that's a 5 is to count up the 5 times table (When I said I can do the 5 times table I meant I can count up it. I can't just "jump" to a number e.g. 6x5= 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. I had to check that 30 was the 6th one on my fingers.) So now I have to keep hold of, in my brain, the 7, the 4, the 5, all the numbers in the 5 times table up to 7 and then I have to take 7 away from that answer and then I have to remember the final answer. My brain cannot do this. Because I'm writing this, I haven't actually been able to work out the answer. Leave a comment!
Now as you can imagine not being able to do simple multiplication, division, addition and subtraction was somewhat problematic during school particularly during (Surprise!) maths lessons. Maths homework was like torture for me. I would dread it. My mum, being the incredibly kind and wonderful person she is, would spend literally hours with me trying to help me to get through it and it would usually end with us both exhausted, my head would be ringing and I would want to lie down on my bed until I was swallowed by it. The real cruelty of my brain is that it actually, a lot of the time, understands the principles and rules that are being followed to get an answer, it just can't do it. This inability lead me to the verge (and over the verge occasionally) of tears. When my brain sees a maths equation it goes into panic mode. Not even joking. I go into fight or flight. My heart rate picks up, my breathing increases, my body prepares to run away. From maths.
So why does my brain do this? Well I don't know for certain but it could be that I have dyscalculia (it's maths dyslexia essentially). So what is that exactly? Good old Wikipedia to the rescue!
Dyscalculia is difficulty in learning or comprehending arithmetic, such as difficulty in understanding numbers, learning how to manipulate numbers, and learning math facts.
Hey that already sounds familiar! So what else do I struggle with that could be symptoms of dyscalculia?
-Difficulty reading analog clocks. CHECK. Still can't even after my mum spent (yet more) hours (over a number of years) trying to teach me how to read them. She used this cardboard clock where you can set the time and then she would test me, asking what time it was. I believe she got the clock from her work as she works with children. I was around 15 at the time. No not 7, 15.
-Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook. CHECK. I'm not entirely useless at this but I very rarely use change because I know it will take me half an hour to work out how much I need to hand over. My last wallet actually broke because of the sheer amount of change in it.
-Difficulty with multiplication-tables, and subtraction-tables, addition tables, division tables, mental arithmetic, etc. CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK. I once managed to learn my 12 times table in year 4 and passed the test I had but it took weeks of being tested by my mum on the way to school every day for me to learn it. Then by the next week I had forgotten it. Mental arithmetic is actually a very effective torture device against me. Those tests with the 20 questions which are read out on a tape and where you are timed? Pure anguish.
-Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time. May be chronically late or early. CHECK. Many a time I've arrived half an hour early when meeting my friends. I'm rarely late, mostly because I poorly estimate how long a journey is going to take me, overcompensate to prevent me being late and then end up half an hour early (Yay! Waiting!)
-Having particular difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance. CHECK. See above with my poor judgement of how long it takes to travel a certain distance.
-Inability to concentrate on mentally intensive tasks. I want to say "check" so I have a good excuse but to be honest I'm probably just lazy.
- Low latent inhibition, i.e. over-sensitivity to noise, smell, light and the inability to tune out, filtering unwanted information or impressions. Not sure about this one but then again I did do a post not that long ago about using ear defenders to escape background noise...
There are other symptoms listed on the page that I don't have, stuff like: "Difficulty stating which of two numbers is larger" which I am able to do, but I have a damn fair few of these symptoms. So do I have dyscalculia? I don't know for certain. I have never been formally tested. Why? Because it costs a butt-ton and my maths teacher never really tried to help me on that front. It doesn't help that dyscalculia is really not that well known about. It is becoming more recognised but is still somewhat overshadowed by it's cousin dyslexia. I'm starting my nursing degree here in Finland and my university does do tests for it so (hopefully) I will know for definite very soon whether I have it or whether I'm just crap at maths in which case this entire post can be ignored.
So what has it been like potentially having dyscalculia? Crappy. It's been crappy. Not being able to read analog clocks is probably the worst thing because they are everywhere and it may be that I will be asked to use one. So many times someone has asked what the time is just because they are busy doing something else or facing away from the clock and I've had to count around the minutes as quick as I can for fear of being revealed an idiot. I really envy people who can just look at the clock and just know straight off what time it is. Seriously that's like magic to me. I cannot comprehend that at all. My brain doesn't do that. It looks at the clock and goes "Right. The big hand is pointing at the 3. So thats 5, 10, 15. Ok 15 minutes. The little hand is pointing towards the 4, so it's 15 minutes past 4." If you read that out loud at a regular speed, that is about how long it takes me to work out the time. If it's something like 5:40, then it takes me even longer to say because it's "20 to 6". That requires me to work out 60-40=20 and then also remember to say it's "to 6" not "to 5". That's 5 numbers I have to juggle in my head and it can't take it.
I've managed to get on rather well without these basic maths and number skills mostly through the use of digital clocks (Thank Christ for digital clocks), calculators and stalling for time because like I said I understand the question, I just can't give you the answer straight away. Every single possible shortcut method, system and formula has been drilled into my head since forever and not one has stuck. I gave the example of changing a 4 into a 5 to make equations easier up above but things like that have never worked for me mostly because my brain goes into panic mode and doesn't think clearly about what I have to do and "methods" like that just increase the amount of thinking I have to do and my brain gets bogged down and feels like it's going to explode. Fun with maths yay...
Luckily for me I am actually kind of pretty good at other stuff. Reading. I can do that. That other one... writing that's it, I'm alright at that one too. I don't mind not being a "maths man" but I still do find it hard because I understand the importance of maths. The universe is made up of maths. Equations and formulas got people to the Moon. The reason I'm able to write this now on a computer is because of maths. That's annoying. But hey I've got this far without being able to do my 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 12 times tables (the other ones I'm alright with. Slow but alright.) Only a couple more decades to go...
Friday, 27 June 2014
The Future of the Human Race
Don't worry I'm not going all Nostradamus on you. Recently I watched the film Transcendence, which has Johnny Depp playing a scientist who effectively gets uploaded to the internet and becomes the first truly artificial intelligence. It wasn't really that good. However, the story and main plot points I found very interesting and incidentally I have recently been considering the very ideas the film touches upon and so I thought I better write them down. You know for posterity or something. Please do read on.
The main point of the story emerges from the question of what exactly makes us human. Biologically our minds are just a series of complicated neural interactions. Our brain is an electrochemical soup and nothing more. What the film asks is, if you entirely copy the structure, interactions and connections of someone's brain, is that copy the same as the original person? Is something intangible, something more than just a chemical reaction, lost in between? Does the copy lack an all-important soul? To see my personal take on the arguments of the existence or not of the soul, you need only scroll down and find the post I have already written about it. I'm not sure exactly where I left it but it's somewhere down there. If you can't find it there, check behind the sofa. (If you can't be bothered to find it, basically, I think the whole idea of "souls" is tosh and yes we very much are just electrochemical soup.)
In the film, when Depp uploads his mind, he becomes incredibly powerful. He has the internet at his complete command, he can manipulate the stock market, he can literally do anything because everything is on the internet. Because the character is a scientist, he wants to expand his research and become as powerful and knowledgeable as possible. With his incredibly advanced intelligence and capabilities, he creates new technologies, develops nanobots that can cure any and every ailment, he can create things from effectively nothing. He becomes like a God (and the film doesn't hesitate to bash you around the head with the similarities between these advanced technologies and the divine).
The one advancement he makes (which got surprisingly little coverage in the film) is that the nanobots that he creates, which can literally cure the blind and heal the lame (*cough cough Jesus cough cough*) also connect the people they heal via wi-fi. This allows them to work both as individuals and as a collective unit all working towards the same goal. This idea of humanity being connected together, their brains literally on the internet, could I believe quite possibly humanity's salvation if it is ever developed and implemented.
The internet has connected people like nothing else in the history of the human race and is the greatest invention quite possibly in all of history. Well, fire and the wheel were big deals as well but the internet is right up there. I can, right now, at this very minute, contact someone thousands of miles away from me in real time. For the vast majority of human history this was an absolute impossibility and your best bet if you wanted to contact someone (in the next village let alone thousands of miles away) was a horse and a bit of paper. If you had paper. Or a horse. The internet has connected us as a species and yet...
Nigeria extremists abduct 91 people.
Gunmen fire on Pakistani flight.
Police seek man over Essex murder.
Ukraine army helicopter shot down.
Belfast killing spree revealed.
Libya in shock after activist's murder.
A handful of headlines from some news websites. How can this be? I can find out information instantaneously about things I don't understand, people I have never met. How can there still be so much violence in the world when knowledge and understanding are so readily available? Well the main reasons, I think, are that man may have this knowledge but whether we choose to access it and process it is entirely down to choice and it's still so much easier to hate, fear and destroy others than it is to empathize with them. But perhaps there is a way to bridge these problems.
Imagine a world where everyone's minds are connected to each other over the internet. You would be able to feel everything everyone else feels, hear the thoughts of everyone else and understand their feelings, motivations, desires, wants and needs. You would work as one piece in a collective whole. It would be absolute empathy. You would literally be stepping into every single living human beings shoes. How could you war with your neighbour if you understand all of their gripes, problems and also their hopes and fears. They would be your gripes, problems, hopes and fears just as much as they are theirs.
I personally believe that if this technology was developed (if it is possible) and implemented, including every human mind on the planet, war would be extinguished overnight forever. The human race would be of one mind. Think of all of human progress from fire to the internet. We have come this far whilst fractured and divided, our shared history marred by violence and hatred. Just imagine what could be achieved with every single person working towards the common goal of the preservation and continuation of the human race. Scientific advancements are accelerating at an unbelievable pace right now, united, humanity would develop technologies that would make the most advanced computers of 2014 look no better than an abacus.
7 billion minds all contributing to one great hive mind.
This idea I have actually kind of stolen...
Joe Halderman's book Forever Peace (sequel to the absolutely fantastic and biting satire of the Vietnam War, The Forever War) essentially has this idea as the major plot point. In the future, wars are fought by robot suits that are controlled hundreds of miles away from the battlefields (Remote controlled death machines? That's just crazy...) by soldiers that are all have their minds connected together. The soldiers experience everything their comrades experience, they share their memories and effectively work as a 7 brained organism (I don't know if Pacific Rim stole this idea but if you have seen that film it works in the same way as "drifting". If you haven't seen it, WATCH IT). It is revealed later in the book that there is actually a design flaw with this hooking up. If the soldiers stay connected for too long, they become super empathetic. They know what it is to be another person and so they become entirely unable to harm another living being. It's impossible for them. Now, soldiers that can't hurt people aren't very useful, so of course the military hush it up but anyway if you want to know what happens read the book.
The point is, I think that this could be a realistic outcome of the connecting together of people's brains. So, do I think that this could be a possibility for humanity's future? Yes. Why? Because it has to be.
Homo sapiens, as a species, could have quite easily come to an end during the Cold War. One cross word and the whole world could have turned into a ball of irradiated dust. As Electric Six sang in their song Dirty Looks, "Every nuclear war begins with two, Dirty looks". We are currently facing climate change which may well prove our undoing but if every mind was connected together...
No war.
7 billion minds working towards a common goal.
Infighting and partisanship a thing of the past.
I can't help but feel that we won't last long without this. Currently, we've been lucky, almost unbelievably so considering the near misses our species has had, but our luck may not last forever. If we are to survive into the future, the pooling of resources and ideas is essential but may never be achieved if we continue to be divided by borders, our differences, our cultures, our religions even the few centimeters of skin, bone and blood that separate our brains.
So when do I think this will happen? I have no idea. Possibly thousands of years. Quite possibly tens of thousands. Technology is moving, as I previously mentioned, at a simply phenomenal rate so perhaps it's closer than tens of thousands but it's still way, way off. I do hope I'm wrong and this technology is just around the corner but I somehow doubt it is. I also hope humans last long enough for this technology to become a reality. If they do, I can't even begin to imagine the wonders that this technology will give rise to. Our present would seem to our future descendants to be as barbarous, violent and backwards as parts of our not-so-distant past seem to us.
So if I don't think this will happen until years after my body has been reduced to dust and scattered across the Earth, what's the point in talking about it now? Well if you don't understand why I'm asking a philosophical question that currently has no impact on the world, you don't understand philosophy and you need to read my very first post on this page (Yeah that's right this whole post is actually just a big advert for all my previous posts. It's my blog and I do what I like with it!) but also you're wrong, asking this question can affect the here and now. Stopping to consider the potential, wide ranging effects of "super empathy" should (I hope) inspire you to try your best at every opportunity to empathize with your fellow human beings. We can't see into other people's minds but we can use our reasoning, intelligence, imagination and our imperfect existing empathy to try to understand. It's easy to categorize people as good and bad (For my analysis of why doing this is bad see... ah screw it you probably already read it anyway...) but no-one ever does something randomly. We all have our influences and reasons for our actions and the sooner we recognize that, the closer we get to a peaceful world where we work together to defeat our problems, problems that are universal. Next time you disagree with someone put yourself in their shoes. It's stuff we were told in school but it's something a lot of people forget. I know I forget it at times.
Christ, I sound like a right hippy don't I...
The main point of the story emerges from the question of what exactly makes us human. Biologically our minds are just a series of complicated neural interactions. Our brain is an electrochemical soup and nothing more. What the film asks is, if you entirely copy the structure, interactions and connections of someone's brain, is that copy the same as the original person? Is something intangible, something more than just a chemical reaction, lost in between? Does the copy lack an all-important soul? To see my personal take on the arguments of the existence or not of the soul, you need only scroll down and find the post I have already written about it. I'm not sure exactly where I left it but it's somewhere down there. If you can't find it there, check behind the sofa. (If you can't be bothered to find it, basically, I think the whole idea of "souls" is tosh and yes we very much are just electrochemical soup.)
In the film, when Depp uploads his mind, he becomes incredibly powerful. He has the internet at his complete command, he can manipulate the stock market, he can literally do anything because everything is on the internet. Because the character is a scientist, he wants to expand his research and become as powerful and knowledgeable as possible. With his incredibly advanced intelligence and capabilities, he creates new technologies, develops nanobots that can cure any and every ailment, he can create things from effectively nothing. He becomes like a God (and the film doesn't hesitate to bash you around the head with the similarities between these advanced technologies and the divine).
The one advancement he makes (which got surprisingly little coverage in the film) is that the nanobots that he creates, which can literally cure the blind and heal the lame (*cough cough Jesus cough cough*) also connect the people they heal via wi-fi. This allows them to work both as individuals and as a collective unit all working towards the same goal. This idea of humanity being connected together, their brains literally on the internet, could I believe quite possibly humanity's salvation if it is ever developed and implemented.
The internet has connected people like nothing else in the history of the human race and is the greatest invention quite possibly in all of history. Well, fire and the wheel were big deals as well but the internet is right up there. I can, right now, at this very minute, contact someone thousands of miles away from me in real time. For the vast majority of human history this was an absolute impossibility and your best bet if you wanted to contact someone (in the next village let alone thousands of miles away) was a horse and a bit of paper. If you had paper. Or a horse. The internet has connected us as a species and yet...
Nigeria extremists abduct 91 people.
Gunmen fire on Pakistani flight.
Police seek man over Essex murder.
Ukraine army helicopter shot down.
Belfast killing spree revealed.
Libya in shock after activist's murder.
A handful of headlines from some news websites. How can this be? I can find out information instantaneously about things I don't understand, people I have never met. How can there still be so much violence in the world when knowledge and understanding are so readily available? Well the main reasons, I think, are that man may have this knowledge but whether we choose to access it and process it is entirely down to choice and it's still so much easier to hate, fear and destroy others than it is to empathize with them. But perhaps there is a way to bridge these problems.
Imagine a world where everyone's minds are connected to each other over the internet. You would be able to feel everything everyone else feels, hear the thoughts of everyone else and understand their feelings, motivations, desires, wants and needs. You would work as one piece in a collective whole. It would be absolute empathy. You would literally be stepping into every single living human beings shoes. How could you war with your neighbour if you understand all of their gripes, problems and also their hopes and fears. They would be your gripes, problems, hopes and fears just as much as they are theirs.
I personally believe that if this technology was developed (if it is possible) and implemented, including every human mind on the planet, war would be extinguished overnight forever. The human race would be of one mind. Think of all of human progress from fire to the internet. We have come this far whilst fractured and divided, our shared history marred by violence and hatred. Just imagine what could be achieved with every single person working towards the common goal of the preservation and continuation of the human race. Scientific advancements are accelerating at an unbelievable pace right now, united, humanity would develop technologies that would make the most advanced computers of 2014 look no better than an abacus.
7 billion minds all contributing to one great hive mind.
This idea I have actually kind of stolen...
Joe Halderman's book Forever Peace (sequel to the absolutely fantastic and biting satire of the Vietnam War, The Forever War) essentially has this idea as the major plot point. In the future, wars are fought by robot suits that are controlled hundreds of miles away from the battlefields (Remote controlled death machines? That's just crazy...) by soldiers that are all have their minds connected together. The soldiers experience everything their comrades experience, they share their memories and effectively work as a 7 brained organism (I don't know if Pacific Rim stole this idea but if you have seen that film it works in the same way as "drifting". If you haven't seen it, WATCH IT). It is revealed later in the book that there is actually a design flaw with this hooking up. If the soldiers stay connected for too long, they become super empathetic. They know what it is to be another person and so they become entirely unable to harm another living being. It's impossible for them. Now, soldiers that can't hurt people aren't very useful, so of course the military hush it up but anyway if you want to know what happens read the book.
The point is, I think that this could be a realistic outcome of the connecting together of people's brains. So, do I think that this could be a possibility for humanity's future? Yes. Why? Because it has to be.
Homo sapiens, as a species, could have quite easily come to an end during the Cold War. One cross word and the whole world could have turned into a ball of irradiated dust. As Electric Six sang in their song Dirty Looks, "Every nuclear war begins with two, Dirty looks". We are currently facing climate change which may well prove our undoing but if every mind was connected together...
No war.
7 billion minds working towards a common goal.
Infighting and partisanship a thing of the past.
I can't help but feel that we won't last long without this. Currently, we've been lucky, almost unbelievably so considering the near misses our species has had, but our luck may not last forever. If we are to survive into the future, the pooling of resources and ideas is essential but may never be achieved if we continue to be divided by borders, our differences, our cultures, our religions even the few centimeters of skin, bone and blood that separate our brains.
So when do I think this will happen? I have no idea. Possibly thousands of years. Quite possibly tens of thousands. Technology is moving, as I previously mentioned, at a simply phenomenal rate so perhaps it's closer than tens of thousands but it's still way, way off. I do hope I'm wrong and this technology is just around the corner but I somehow doubt it is. I also hope humans last long enough for this technology to become a reality. If they do, I can't even begin to imagine the wonders that this technology will give rise to. Our present would seem to our future descendants to be as barbarous, violent and backwards as parts of our not-so-distant past seem to us.
So if I don't think this will happen until years after my body has been reduced to dust and scattered across the Earth, what's the point in talking about it now? Well if you don't understand why I'm asking a philosophical question that currently has no impact on the world, you don't understand philosophy and you need to read my very first post on this page (Yeah that's right this whole post is actually just a big advert for all my previous posts. It's my blog and I do what I like with it!) but also you're wrong, asking this question can affect the here and now. Stopping to consider the potential, wide ranging effects of "super empathy" should (I hope) inspire you to try your best at every opportunity to empathize with your fellow human beings. We can't see into other people's minds but we can use our reasoning, intelligence, imagination and our imperfect existing empathy to try to understand. It's easy to categorize people as good and bad (For my analysis of why doing this is bad see... ah screw it you probably already read it anyway...) but no-one ever does something randomly. We all have our influences and reasons for our actions and the sooner we recognize that, the closer we get to a peaceful world where we work together to defeat our problems, problems that are universal. Next time you disagree with someone put yourself in their shoes. It's stuff we were told in school but it's something a lot of people forget. I know I forget it at times.
Christ, I sound like a right hippy don't I...
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Is Less More?
A little behind-the-scenes peek at how I write these here posts here. I think of something then spend a few days thinking about it, then I write it down, usually in one fell swoop, late into the night. I then, in the morning, look with horror at the jumbled mess of letters and punctuation marks that last night I believed were coherent sentences, rewrite it and then post it. Well this time... It's going to be pretty similar except without the days of thinking about the subject. Yes that's right this is going to have even less thought put into it than usual. I'm sure it will be fine. I came up with the idea for this post around 10 minutes ago in the shower. My hair is still damp. So on with the show!
I just realized I have secretly been a minimalist for quite a while. Its been so secret I didn't even realize myself. Until now!
I believe the artist Ad Reinhardt (who I literally just found out about. I am making this up on the fly) said it best when he said of art:
The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. More is less. Less is more. The eye is a menace to clear sight. The laying bare of oneself is obscene. Art begins with the getting rid of nature.
This quote, quite nicely, sums up my rather newly apparent preference. I do like minimalism. I do think that less can be more. For me the most impressive art or music is the one that can do the most with the least, the fewer the number of words, the fewer colours. As is customary for this blog, I shall now poorly quote someone I can't remember the name of. A famous rock musician (I think) said (perhaps) that he thought it was a greater achievement to write a rock song with 4 chords on a guitar than it was for Beethoven to write a symphony with the many thousands of tones and sounds at his disposal and really I agree. Perhaps that is why my favourite band is Melvins. They don't always play around with complicated guitar solos or other "add ons" (although they can and have), they just play good solid music. One of my personal favourites is their song Night Goat (I have lovingly provided a link that I'm sure no-one will want to click):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwSOrd4E7yw
Look me in the eye and say that that opening bass line didn't send a chill up your spine. That bass line is a constant, like a drum beat on a distant hill. I love Night Goat. Another, more recently discovered, band that I think also have appealed to my love of simplicity is Evil Blizzard. Really it's ironic because they have 4 bassists. Their song Slimy Creatures I think could be said to have minimalist elements considering the full lyrics are "Slimy creatures / Ugly features" and the music itself doesn't deviate much throughout the song. Some might say this is a bad thing but to me it comes across as relentless (which is good). It's like a train being driven through your ear. That bass guitar (well all 4 of them) just keeps pounding along :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4OscceBWe0
Now of course I am aware that they are not strictly minimalist and actually are made up of more than one noise but it shows you don't need a million chord changes or a hundred different versions of the chorus to make a good song. The repetitive nature of both of these songs really appeals to me. I have no idea why. Maybe I'm a simpleton. But then again minimalism, as an idea, has been around a long time and there are interpretations of it in essentially every art style from music to literature to video games (Minecraft anyone?). So I am not alone in enjoying "pared-down design elements". But why did I have this sudden realization in the shower? Why have I, the least artistic person in the world, been thinking about minimalist art style? Well, recently, I went and tried to do some art...
Well when I say art...
When I say try...
I kind of became a bit obsessed by a certain blog called Propnomicon. Now, if you are a fan of the writing of H.P Lovecraft, you should also find this site pretty fascinating but you don't need to be a Lovecraft fanboy to think this stuff is legitimately awesome. Essentially it's what you get when you mix a load of artists, sculptors, prop makers and people with time on their hands and an extensive mythos based around eldritch horrors, unearthly beings and alien gods. And it's awesome. Seriously just look at some of the stuff people have made. I can and have spent hours looking at this stuff:
http://propnomicon.blogspot.fi/
Now my personal favourite objects exhibited on this website are the Cthulhu idols. Now if you don't know who Cthulhu is you need to:
1. Read The Call of Cthulhu by H.P Lovecraft.
2. Try to stop weeping in fear.
In the story, a statue of the octopus-headed, dragon-bodied being from beyond the stars, who lies dead in his house at R'yleh, is recovered from a cult gathering in the swamps of New Orleans and it's description and importance in the story, has captured the imaginations of many and so people have created their own versions of this disturbing sculpture, carved millennia ago, on some dark star.
(Just as an aside: This story and character are famous enough for Cthulhu not to be flagged as a spelling mistake but "favourite" and "colour" are. Americans...)
And by God, are these statues good. Browse through them and see the sheer love and craftsmanship put into these images. They are astounding. They are... inspiring....
Yeah, I had a go at making my own. Now my personal favourites of the statues shown are those that embrace a simple design (Surprise!). There are plenty that have exquisitely carved scales, tentacles that curl around, dripping slime, monstrous claws and look so incredibly life like that you almost recoil from them, but the ones that really hit home for me are the ones that are simplicity itself. They look like some ancient stone age man carved them with primitive tools in a dark cave, visions of the great beast torturing their mind. They are just a few lines and yet they are weighed down by the lore that surrounds this creature that is instantly recognizable. Stuff like this:
http://propnomicon.blogspot.fi/2013/10/cthulhu-fhtagn-gormly-edition.html
And especially this one (which incidentally was created by a Finnish artist!):
http://propnomicon.blogspot.fi/2013/06/cthulhu-fhtagn-jarvinen-edition.html
They are rough and worn and aged but essentially just clean lines and shapes and somehow all the better for it. They could be polished and detailed, every inch worked over, but the very fact they are simple adds volumes. It adds some mystery, which if you know Lovecraft, is the whole point of his stories. The terror of the unknown, the indefinable.
So I had a go at my own versions and they turned out pretty darn well if I say so myself. I currently have made 2 and a half wooden ones (the half didn't go so well and then went terribly when I managed to slash my finger open with the penknife I was using. Good thing that scars look cool) and one out of a cork. They all consist of 6 holes (the eyes) and some straight lines and that's it (except the half which was more complicated... and caused me to cut my finger. Minimalism is best). Anyone familiar with Cthulhu would (I hope) very easily see the resemblance and I achieved it with almost nothing. I think that's awesome.
(This is where I would add photos of my creations but I have no idea how to add photos to this blog and I feel it will be more effort than it's worth so sorry.)
But anyway enough backslapping of my own creative talent (they are so simple, I really did very little), this is what got me thinking about minimalism and for me it really is true that less is more. To strike fear and dread into people's hearts is easy with a ton of money, years of experience in the prop making world and professional materials but to do it in a simplified, stripped down form can be just as effective. Think about the current trend for über cheap, found footage films, but it's true for all the arts. I'm currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy which is also very minimalist and uses very few words to convey a lot of emotion about a man and his son (both of them never named) traveling through post-apocalyptic America and trying not to get eaten by cannibals.
The main point of this blog post (and all of those links I've put up for you) is that the flashiest, most over-the-top, the MOST isn't always the best or the most effective. Just a few lines in the right places can suggest otherworldly beings and conjure up a whole store of imagery.
You also don't need talent to do art stuff.
But you should be careful and wear gloves when working with knives.
I lied. Scars aren't cool.
I just realized I have secretly been a minimalist for quite a while. Its been so secret I didn't even realize myself. Until now!
I believe the artist Ad Reinhardt (who I literally just found out about. I am making this up on the fly) said it best when he said of art:
The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. More is less. Less is more. The eye is a menace to clear sight. The laying bare of oneself is obscene. Art begins with the getting rid of nature.
This quote, quite nicely, sums up my rather newly apparent preference. I do like minimalism. I do think that less can be more. For me the most impressive art or music is the one that can do the most with the least, the fewer the number of words, the fewer colours. As is customary for this blog, I shall now poorly quote someone I can't remember the name of. A famous rock musician (I think) said (perhaps) that he thought it was a greater achievement to write a rock song with 4 chords on a guitar than it was for Beethoven to write a symphony with the many thousands of tones and sounds at his disposal and really I agree. Perhaps that is why my favourite band is Melvins. They don't always play around with complicated guitar solos or other "add ons" (although they can and have), they just play good solid music. One of my personal favourites is their song Night Goat (I have lovingly provided a link that I'm sure no-one will want to click):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwSOrd4E7yw
Look me in the eye and say that that opening bass line didn't send a chill up your spine. That bass line is a constant, like a drum beat on a distant hill. I love Night Goat. Another, more recently discovered, band that I think also have appealed to my love of simplicity is Evil Blizzard. Really it's ironic because they have 4 bassists. Their song Slimy Creatures I think could be said to have minimalist elements considering the full lyrics are "Slimy creatures / Ugly features" and the music itself doesn't deviate much throughout the song. Some might say this is a bad thing but to me it comes across as relentless (which is good). It's like a train being driven through your ear. That bass guitar (well all 4 of them) just keeps pounding along :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4OscceBWe0
Now of course I am aware that they are not strictly minimalist and actually are made up of more than one noise but it shows you don't need a million chord changes or a hundred different versions of the chorus to make a good song. The repetitive nature of both of these songs really appeals to me. I have no idea why. Maybe I'm a simpleton. But then again minimalism, as an idea, has been around a long time and there are interpretations of it in essentially every art style from music to literature to video games (Minecraft anyone?). So I am not alone in enjoying "pared-down design elements". But why did I have this sudden realization in the shower? Why have I, the least artistic person in the world, been thinking about minimalist art style? Well, recently, I went and tried to do some art...
Well when I say art...
When I say try...
I kind of became a bit obsessed by a certain blog called Propnomicon. Now, if you are a fan of the writing of H.P Lovecraft, you should also find this site pretty fascinating but you don't need to be a Lovecraft fanboy to think this stuff is legitimately awesome. Essentially it's what you get when you mix a load of artists, sculptors, prop makers and people with time on their hands and an extensive mythos based around eldritch horrors, unearthly beings and alien gods. And it's awesome. Seriously just look at some of the stuff people have made. I can and have spent hours looking at this stuff:
http://propnomicon.blogspot.fi/
Now my personal favourite objects exhibited on this website are the Cthulhu idols. Now if you don't know who Cthulhu is you need to:
1. Read The Call of Cthulhu by H.P Lovecraft.
2. Try to stop weeping in fear.
In the story, a statue of the octopus-headed, dragon-bodied being from beyond the stars, who lies dead in his house at R'yleh, is recovered from a cult gathering in the swamps of New Orleans and it's description and importance in the story, has captured the imaginations of many and so people have created their own versions of this disturbing sculpture, carved millennia ago, on some dark star.
(Just as an aside: This story and character are famous enough for Cthulhu not to be flagged as a spelling mistake but "favourite" and "colour" are. Americans...)
And by God, are these statues good. Browse through them and see the sheer love and craftsmanship put into these images. They are astounding. They are... inspiring....
Yeah, I had a go at making my own. Now my personal favourites of the statues shown are those that embrace a simple design (Surprise!). There are plenty that have exquisitely carved scales, tentacles that curl around, dripping slime, monstrous claws and look so incredibly life like that you almost recoil from them, but the ones that really hit home for me are the ones that are simplicity itself. They look like some ancient stone age man carved them with primitive tools in a dark cave, visions of the great beast torturing their mind. They are just a few lines and yet they are weighed down by the lore that surrounds this creature that is instantly recognizable. Stuff like this:
http://propnomicon.blogspot.fi/2013/10/cthulhu-fhtagn-gormly-edition.html
And especially this one (which incidentally was created by a Finnish artist!):
http://propnomicon.blogspot.fi/2013/06/cthulhu-fhtagn-jarvinen-edition.html
They are rough and worn and aged but essentially just clean lines and shapes and somehow all the better for it. They could be polished and detailed, every inch worked over, but the very fact they are simple adds volumes. It adds some mystery, which if you know Lovecraft, is the whole point of his stories. The terror of the unknown, the indefinable.
So I had a go at my own versions and they turned out pretty darn well if I say so myself. I currently have made 2 and a half wooden ones (the half didn't go so well and then went terribly when I managed to slash my finger open with the penknife I was using. Good thing that scars look cool) and one out of a cork. They all consist of 6 holes (the eyes) and some straight lines and that's it (except the half which was more complicated... and caused me to cut my finger. Minimalism is best). Anyone familiar with Cthulhu would (I hope) very easily see the resemblance and I achieved it with almost nothing. I think that's awesome.
(This is where I would add photos of my creations but I have no idea how to add photos to this blog and I feel it will be more effort than it's worth so sorry.)
But anyway enough backslapping of my own creative talent (they are so simple, I really did very little), this is what got me thinking about minimalism and for me it really is true that less is more. To strike fear and dread into people's hearts is easy with a ton of money, years of experience in the prop making world and professional materials but to do it in a simplified, stripped down form can be just as effective. Think about the current trend for über cheap, found footage films, but it's true for all the arts. I'm currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy which is also very minimalist and uses very few words to convey a lot of emotion about a man and his son (both of them never named) traveling through post-apocalyptic America and trying not to get eaten by cannibals.
The main point of this blog post (and all of those links I've put up for you) is that the flashiest, most over-the-top, the MOST isn't always the best or the most effective. Just a few lines in the right places can suggest otherworldly beings and conjure up a whole store of imagery.
You also don't need talent to do art stuff.
But you should be careful and wear gloves when working with knives.
I lied. Scars aren't cool.
Saturday, 31 May 2014
Shhhh!
I have started an experiment. I recently have had moments where everything has just seemed too loud. Have you ever had these moments, dear reader? Just when you become really aware of all the noise around you. It doesn't even need to be loud noise but just SOME noise. The ticking of a clock, air conditioning, the wind, cars in the street outside, the hum of the TV. So much noise! It's constant. It's kind of a cliche but with our "busy" lives these days (I am surely not busy enough right now to justify me saying that but whatever) it's actually very hard to find silence. Some people might suggest going out into nature, which for me is actually very easy. There is literally a forest over the road. In Helsinki. I love Finland. But for me that's no good. There is still noise, especially with it being spring. Every bird and insect is screaming it's lungs out in a desperate bid to pass on it's genetic material. I don't want relaxing bird calls, I want silence.
So, as I said, I have started an experiment. It is HIGHLY unscientific and really has nothing at all to do with science. What I have done is to purchase a pair of ear defenders like what builders have. It is my intention to, in the next week, use them every now and then, I'll be going for at least once a day for... a period of time. Now whether this will actually achieve anything at all, whether I'll come out of this with the patience and temperament of a Buddhist monk, have auditory hallucinations or just simply get bored of it, I don't know but it might make a good blog post so let's do it. I'll speak to you again in a week, though of course the time elapsed for you will be the time it takes to scroll down. It's like time travel or something...
...
WELL... it's actually been 2 weeks... and 4 days. I didn't feel one week was sufficient time and I may have forgotten to write this but now is a perfectly good time to put down some stuff for your enjoyment and to ensure that I can still write long pieces of text and order them in such a way that they are legible and perhaps (if the planets are properly aligned) enjoyable. So anyway:
I did not, unfortunately, get the chance to use the ear defenders everyday which was my intention; it's surprisingly difficult to find time to lie down and not hear anything. However I have, I believe, used them now on enough occasions to talk about it. Which is nice.
There are (at least for me) a number of stages that you go through when you opt for silence, firstly everything goes quiet (Wow! Revolutionary!), then as your ears adjust something a bit weird happens and you hear your own heartbeat. Now I'm still not sure if the vibrations are coming from my heart or my arteries, if what I'm hearing is what I would hear in complete silence or if I'm only hearing it due to the pressure of the earphones on my ears. Does this matter? No. What I'm saying is that you hear your own blood. Which is nice. Second stage you seem to start filtering out the blood sound and then you hear the sound of all of the collective damage that you've inflicted upon your ears. The whine of every concert, every building site, every time you've played music too loud through your headphones on the bus, comes back to haunt you like a sonic ghost (great name for a band by the way Sonic Ghost...) which makes you feel very guilty. Soon this gets filtered out as well by your brain and what you are left with is... weird. It's not silence exactly it's just... nothing. But also not nothing. Have you ever been in a really quiet place and it feels like you kind of have to make a noise just to stop your head feeling all weird from all the silence? Well that's what it's like.
Now at this point you are probably thinking I've just described a hellish, nightmarish scenario and you are, as you read this, humming loudly and turning the radio up, but please understand although all these things are weird they are also so refreshing. It's really strange just how much background noise there is in a silent room. It's really quite deafening and such a relief to get away from it for a little while.
Now one thing that I'm sure you all already know about, if you actually read my posts, is that I like thinking. Can't get enough of it actually. Leave me in an empty room long enough and I'll be having an internal debate with myself within the hour. Now thinking is bloody hard if there is even the slightest distraction for me. I have been cursed with a desire to always be considering life, death the universe and everything but with an attention and concentration span about as long as... Hey look a pretty butterfly!
So how has complete silence helped in this regard? Well it actually makes it worse. At first. It's very hard to think when you can hear your own blood supply wooshing around and the background hum of your auditory sins is incredibly distracting but once past these first hurdles, into the realm of weird silence, then your mind feels weirdly open. My imagination felt a lot free-er without any sound to break my concentration. I've never had a lucid dream (I really want to lucid dream but it still hasn't happened. Some day...) but I would imagine that this came fairly close to it.
I was once taught by my psychology teacher at college a relaxation technique that I have never forgotten and I can tell you it has safely carried me to the Land of Nod on many a sleepless night and combined with this weird silence it was like relaxation on maximum setting and brought on my almost lucid dream-like feeling. The technique on it's own is incredibly effective (at least for me) and when my psychology teacher demonstrated it to the class I almost fell asleep at my desk. It's based around the idea of... well lets say it takes up all the bandwidth of your mind and prevents you from being able to worry or think about things that make you tensed up or stressed.
I wasn't planning on giving out this secret in this post (I was going to save it for a different post) but screw it, I might as well do it now:
First get into a comfortable position (lying down is probably best) and concentrate on your breathing. Slow and calm is the way to go.
Next imagine a red number 7 right in front of you. I usually imagine it on a whiteboard being drawn or painted onto a wall. Focus on the colour and shape of the 7 and nothing else. Fix it in your mind's eye.
Once you have it clear in front of you (It may take a few minutes. Be patient, no need to rush) watch as the red 7 fades away and is replaced with an orange 6. Again focus on the colour and the shape.
Once the orange 6 is clear in front of you watch it fade and be replaced with a yellow 5. Again same drill. Fix it, then fade it.
Next number is a green 4.
Then a blue 3.
After that a purple 2.
Last number is a white 1.
The 1 then turns into a light which moves around in front of you. You follow it and it leads you up 3 steps which you count as you step up them. 1, 2, 3. In front of you is a door. On the other side of the door is a place where you feel safe, secure, relaxed and free to do what you want. It can be a real or imagined place as long as it's relaxed and keeps you calm.
And that's it. Spend as long as you like in your new imagined calm place and forget all your troubles. If you want to come out of the calm place just retrace your steps back through the door, down the steps and count back through the numbers. I know it all sounds like hippy dippy crap but trust me it's so refreshing. Focussing on the colour and shape of the number takes up all the processing power of your mind and, if you are concentrating properly, it's very hard to think of other things because there is simply no room. Now this is most effective if you have someone else read out the steps to you as this then takes up the auditory part of your brain's processing power as well as the visual part. Of course if this isn't possible you could always go for complete silence...
Which is what I tried and I must say it works very well IF you choose the right moment to start at. Start too soon while you can still hear blood swooshing around in side of you and it's quite hard to concentrate but once you reach that point where the silence is just right your mind just get's carried away. Pretty soon I was walking around imaginary islands and seeing entirely make-believe vistas and quickly falling asleep incredibly peacefully.
So, just a relaxation technique and a bit of peace and I was exploring mental landscapes far removed from reality. What I found really strange was even without lying down and thinking about colourful numbers, just experiencing a much quieter world, I started feeling quite separate from what was going on around me.
It's really quite strange how detached you can feel from other people that may be sitting right next to you just by blocking out the sounds they are making. You have only your eyesight to confirm that they are there and it's suddenly very clear how even the sound of moving clothing or the other person's breathing or the other minute sounds they make, inform you, consciously or unconsciously, that you are not alone (I know you are thinking about farts. Well stop it. It's just childish. I'm trying to build up to a serious point here). Within only a few minutes of putting on the ear defenders, I start feeling a bit dissociated from everything around me. It starts off subtly but pretty soon you are wondering if you are doing that thing people do when they listen to music really loud through their headphones and just lose all sense of how loud they are. I swear one time during the last 2 weeks (I can't remember when. So scientific!) I started typing on the computer louder than usual. I only noticed when I saw how excessively hard I was tapping the keys. The sound of the keys had, it seemed, been helping to control how my fingers were moving. That's pretty cool. But then again also terrifying. What if I damaged my hearing? How long would it take for me to adjust? How would I cope? What impact would it have on my life? Would I become completely dissociated from reality unable to really connect with what is going on around me?
Now of course I am entirely aware that there are people in the world either born deaf or with some form of hearing difficulty or they have, later in their life, acquired damage to their hearing and they live perfectly happy and fulfilled lives. I have no idea what it would be like to have any of these conditions and I would have to be pretty ignorant to think I could get any inkling of what it would be like to live with them on a day-to-day basis from putting on some headphones a few times a week. It comes purely from myself and my own personal experiences when I say that it's kind of scary how dependent I am on my hearing, how easy it is to damage it and how terrifying it would be for me to lose my hearing. I, like pretty much everyone, like to think I can cope with bad things happening in my life. If I lost a leg in a car accident, I would find a way to cope. If I was paralyzed, I would work around it. Nothing is going to hold me back from my dreams! But how sure can I be? Would I really be able to cope with such a massive life change? Even the slightest hint of reduced hearing capability has got me losing touch with reality, what would permanent loss do?
This is all speculation and until (well hopefully I never will) experience it I will never know how I will react. It's not just hearing but all possible bad things. Who knows how you will cope with something or if you will cope at all. All I know is that I don't really want to find out how I would cope with it because that would mean experiencing it and so I have a new found respect for my hearing and have already taken steps to preserve it, my MP3 player is now at volume levels that my past self would be scoffing at but I have learnt a valuable lesson I won't soon forget.
Too Long/Didn't Read (TL/DR): Silence is golden but don't take your hearing for granted.
So, as I said, I have started an experiment. It is HIGHLY unscientific and really has nothing at all to do with science. What I have done is to purchase a pair of ear defenders like what builders have. It is my intention to, in the next week, use them every now and then, I'll be going for at least once a day for... a period of time. Now whether this will actually achieve anything at all, whether I'll come out of this with the patience and temperament of a Buddhist monk, have auditory hallucinations or just simply get bored of it, I don't know but it might make a good blog post so let's do it. I'll speak to you again in a week, though of course the time elapsed for you will be the time it takes to scroll down. It's like time travel or something...
...
WELL... it's actually been 2 weeks... and 4 days. I didn't feel one week was sufficient time and I may have forgotten to write this but now is a perfectly good time to put down some stuff for your enjoyment and to ensure that I can still write long pieces of text and order them in such a way that they are legible and perhaps (if the planets are properly aligned) enjoyable. So anyway:
I did not, unfortunately, get the chance to use the ear defenders everyday which was my intention; it's surprisingly difficult to find time to lie down and not hear anything. However I have, I believe, used them now on enough occasions to talk about it. Which is nice.
There are (at least for me) a number of stages that you go through when you opt for silence, firstly everything goes quiet (Wow! Revolutionary!), then as your ears adjust something a bit weird happens and you hear your own heartbeat. Now I'm still not sure if the vibrations are coming from my heart or my arteries, if what I'm hearing is what I would hear in complete silence or if I'm only hearing it due to the pressure of the earphones on my ears. Does this matter? No. What I'm saying is that you hear your own blood. Which is nice. Second stage you seem to start filtering out the blood sound and then you hear the sound of all of the collective damage that you've inflicted upon your ears. The whine of every concert, every building site, every time you've played music too loud through your headphones on the bus, comes back to haunt you like a sonic ghost (great name for a band by the way Sonic Ghost...) which makes you feel very guilty. Soon this gets filtered out as well by your brain and what you are left with is... weird. It's not silence exactly it's just... nothing. But also not nothing. Have you ever been in a really quiet place and it feels like you kind of have to make a noise just to stop your head feeling all weird from all the silence? Well that's what it's like.
Now at this point you are probably thinking I've just described a hellish, nightmarish scenario and you are, as you read this, humming loudly and turning the radio up, but please understand although all these things are weird they are also so refreshing. It's really strange just how much background noise there is in a silent room. It's really quite deafening and such a relief to get away from it for a little while.
Now one thing that I'm sure you all already know about, if you actually read my posts, is that I like thinking. Can't get enough of it actually. Leave me in an empty room long enough and I'll be having an internal debate with myself within the hour. Now thinking is bloody hard if there is even the slightest distraction for me. I have been cursed with a desire to always be considering life, death the universe and everything but with an attention and concentration span about as long as... Hey look a pretty butterfly!
So how has complete silence helped in this regard? Well it actually makes it worse. At first. It's very hard to think when you can hear your own blood supply wooshing around and the background hum of your auditory sins is incredibly distracting but once past these first hurdles, into the realm of weird silence, then your mind feels weirdly open. My imagination felt a lot free-er without any sound to break my concentration. I've never had a lucid dream (I really want to lucid dream but it still hasn't happened. Some day...) but I would imagine that this came fairly close to it.
I was once taught by my psychology teacher at college a relaxation technique that I have never forgotten and I can tell you it has safely carried me to the Land of Nod on many a sleepless night and combined with this weird silence it was like relaxation on maximum setting and brought on my almost lucid dream-like feeling. The technique on it's own is incredibly effective (at least for me) and when my psychology teacher demonstrated it to the class I almost fell asleep at my desk. It's based around the idea of... well lets say it takes up all the bandwidth of your mind and prevents you from being able to worry or think about things that make you tensed up or stressed.
I wasn't planning on giving out this secret in this post (I was going to save it for a different post) but screw it, I might as well do it now:
First get into a comfortable position (lying down is probably best) and concentrate on your breathing. Slow and calm is the way to go.
Next imagine a red number 7 right in front of you. I usually imagine it on a whiteboard being drawn or painted onto a wall. Focus on the colour and shape of the 7 and nothing else. Fix it in your mind's eye.
Once you have it clear in front of you (It may take a few minutes. Be patient, no need to rush) watch as the red 7 fades away and is replaced with an orange 6. Again focus on the colour and the shape.
Once the orange 6 is clear in front of you watch it fade and be replaced with a yellow 5. Again same drill. Fix it, then fade it.
Next number is a green 4.
Then a blue 3.
After that a purple 2.
Last number is a white 1.
The 1 then turns into a light which moves around in front of you. You follow it and it leads you up 3 steps which you count as you step up them. 1, 2, 3. In front of you is a door. On the other side of the door is a place where you feel safe, secure, relaxed and free to do what you want. It can be a real or imagined place as long as it's relaxed and keeps you calm.
And that's it. Spend as long as you like in your new imagined calm place and forget all your troubles. If you want to come out of the calm place just retrace your steps back through the door, down the steps and count back through the numbers. I know it all sounds like hippy dippy crap but trust me it's so refreshing. Focussing on the colour and shape of the number takes up all the processing power of your mind and, if you are concentrating properly, it's very hard to think of other things because there is simply no room. Now this is most effective if you have someone else read out the steps to you as this then takes up the auditory part of your brain's processing power as well as the visual part. Of course if this isn't possible you could always go for complete silence...
Which is what I tried and I must say it works very well IF you choose the right moment to start at. Start too soon while you can still hear blood swooshing around in side of you and it's quite hard to concentrate but once you reach that point where the silence is just right your mind just get's carried away. Pretty soon I was walking around imaginary islands and seeing entirely make-believe vistas and quickly falling asleep incredibly peacefully.
So, just a relaxation technique and a bit of peace and I was exploring mental landscapes far removed from reality. What I found really strange was even without lying down and thinking about colourful numbers, just experiencing a much quieter world, I started feeling quite separate from what was going on around me.
It's really quite strange how detached you can feel from other people that may be sitting right next to you just by blocking out the sounds they are making. You have only your eyesight to confirm that they are there and it's suddenly very clear how even the sound of moving clothing or the other person's breathing or the other minute sounds they make, inform you, consciously or unconsciously, that you are not alone (I know you are thinking about farts. Well stop it. It's just childish. I'm trying to build up to a serious point here). Within only a few minutes of putting on the ear defenders, I start feeling a bit dissociated from everything around me. It starts off subtly but pretty soon you are wondering if you are doing that thing people do when they listen to music really loud through their headphones and just lose all sense of how loud they are. I swear one time during the last 2 weeks (I can't remember when. So scientific!) I started typing on the computer louder than usual. I only noticed when I saw how excessively hard I was tapping the keys. The sound of the keys had, it seemed, been helping to control how my fingers were moving. That's pretty cool. But then again also terrifying. What if I damaged my hearing? How long would it take for me to adjust? How would I cope? What impact would it have on my life? Would I become completely dissociated from reality unable to really connect with what is going on around me?
Now of course I am entirely aware that there are people in the world either born deaf or with some form of hearing difficulty or they have, later in their life, acquired damage to their hearing and they live perfectly happy and fulfilled lives. I have no idea what it would be like to have any of these conditions and I would have to be pretty ignorant to think I could get any inkling of what it would be like to live with them on a day-to-day basis from putting on some headphones a few times a week. It comes purely from myself and my own personal experiences when I say that it's kind of scary how dependent I am on my hearing, how easy it is to damage it and how terrifying it would be for me to lose my hearing. I, like pretty much everyone, like to think I can cope with bad things happening in my life. If I lost a leg in a car accident, I would find a way to cope. If I was paralyzed, I would work around it. Nothing is going to hold me back from my dreams! But how sure can I be? Would I really be able to cope with such a massive life change? Even the slightest hint of reduced hearing capability has got me losing touch with reality, what would permanent loss do?
This is all speculation and until (well hopefully I never will) experience it I will never know how I will react. It's not just hearing but all possible bad things. Who knows how you will cope with something or if you will cope at all. All I know is that I don't really want to find out how I would cope with it because that would mean experiencing it and so I have a new found respect for my hearing and have already taken steps to preserve it, my MP3 player is now at volume levels that my past self would be scoffing at but I have learnt a valuable lesson I won't soon forget.
Too Long/Didn't Read (TL/DR): Silence is golden but don't take your hearing for granted.
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