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Mutewatch. Stockholm-based. Brilliant.
Post-iPhone; Touch screen. Vibration. Swipe.
Red, Grey and White.
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on creativity
However gaylord defining this thing called creativity might be, I do try. It’s not like nobody cares, most of us want to have it. Creativity, I mean.
On creativity: Creativity is being unstructured, chaotic and easily triggered in such amounts that you see the weirdest connexions between the most random and yet essential things. And then you say or paint or capture them out loud, on the risk of sounding pretty stupid. Which is what often happens. But sometimes you’re lucky, and the weird connexion makes sense to other people. And it makes the world a little more coherent and adds a little purpose for them. And they thank you for it. Or even pay you, so they can see it for themselves.
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France and Great Britain - the fading ex-colonial powers were both badly caught with their pants down in Tunisia and Egypt. Their leaders had, as individuals, been personally profiting from the two dictatorships. They not merely supported them against the uprising, but actively counselled them on how to repress.
Finally, and very late, they realised how big a political error this had been. They had to find a way to redeem themselves. They found it in Libya.
Muammar Gaddafi had also, just like the French and the British, fully supported Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. Indeed he went the furthest, deploring their resignations. He was obviously deeply frightened by what was happening in the two neighbouring countries. To be sure, there was not much of a true “1968 current” in Libya. But there were plenty of discontented groups. And when these groups began their revolt, he blustered about how hard he would repress them.
France and Great Britain saw their opportunity here.
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It is clear that two legitimacies are confronting each other today in Libya: armed struggle and liberation versus the de facto legitimacy of a self-appointed leadership derived from western support. The two are locked in a cold (and potentially hot) conflict over Libya’s future, the nature of its political order, and its foreign policy. It is a contest between a strategy directed by an internal agenda on the one hand; and one defined from the outside, by NATO and western powers, on the other.
These conflicts are part of the wider scene in the region, which is characterised by polarisation between the internal dynamics of the revolution and the foreign powers’ logic of containment and control, of calculated, limited, and monitored change. These foreign powers’ strategy is to swap the old players with new ones while keeping the rules of the game intact, using proxy wars manned via allied local elites, thus working to recycle the old regime into the new order in Libya, as they have been doing in Tunisia and Egypt.
Libya is set to be a scene of multiple battles: conflicts between NATO’s men and the fighters and their supporters on the ground, and conflicts between the foreign forces that have invested in the war on Gaddafi: the French, who are determined to have the upper hand politically and economically; the Italians, who regard Libya as their back garden; the British, who are determined to safeguard their contracts; and the Turks, keen to revive their influence in the old Ottoman hemisphere. Then there are the losing players in the new equation: the Chinese and the Russians.
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We pay a lot to know little
We want to know. Everything we do is about knowing more. Knowing what the things we’ve seen on pictures really look like, how it feels to get soaked in the rain, if making the best joke at the party makes us feel amazing, what’ll be left of us when nobody laughs. We eat and know what it’s like to be satisfied. We stop eating to discover that we can’t stop thinking about food when we can’t have any. We make friends and know about being safe. We look for the boundaries of friendship and learn how to loose a friend. We jog, bike, climb mountains and know what it feels like to be in control of our bodies. We get ill and know we’re not. We help people, text people, tell them they’re amazing and know what it’s like to be needed. We pay incredibly high prices to know everything. And knowledge can bring us two things: Power. And wisdom is to seek for truth. And power is to know how to cover up the truth.
We cheat, lie, ignore and hurt the same people. And know what it’s like to need them.
And wisdom.
And once we’ve paid with all we have and made others pay for us with what they have… And once we’re in dept so deep we feel like Alice falling, falling, falling on her way to wonderland, without ever actually landing, we’ll become truly wise. And we’ll know we don’t know. And we’ll know truth is to be found somewhere outside ourselves, outside our own perception. And outside our own ability to love, to despise. And truth is bigger than us. Bigger than what we know. Or what we mess up. Wisdom is to know what it’s like when truth has exceeded our power.
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on gods
For a long time I’ve worked hard to not seek significance in the gods of my culture. I diminished the importance of social approval, beauty, wealth and even intelligence and eloquence.
Until one day I realised that I had turned my life into an empty, hollow existence that lacked any form of meaning. And had not ended the act of worship. I was still striving, still pursuing an ideal greatly important to me. The ideal of poverty, the belief that reality and truth is to be fully found in painful, difficult situations and relationships. That the exhaustive character of life itself was to be embraced and lived by. I have worshipped meaningless. The absence of true happiness.
I have to worship, for I am human. To live in denial of this, requires worship. And if I really have to kneel for something, daily. Prioritize an ideal, a belief… I want to face one that is better than hollowness and heart ache. Instead of cutting off my feet to become smaller, become humble, I will say that I am not the kind of being that wants to be humble. Instead of willingly getting hurt to be reminded that I am not God, I will kneel for God himself, who agrees with me that life aches, betrays and laughs at you. But who is not struck down, ever. And shares with me His victory over all my former little gods. And asks me to need this, as a first act of worship.
Well okay then.
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