Content Matters…

…

at least it should.

But in a world where people are exposed to thousands of commercials daily, it somehow dosn’t seem to work according to the headline. Content does not matter. But status does, clothes do, labels and appearance and all too often the words you say, instead of the deeds you perform.

It is somehow part of the system we live in – it is so fast that you have to convince in the first chance you get; it is so short living that today is forgotten in an instant; tomorrow has become the ever promising horizon. But if today no longer matters, if every moment is overtaken by the next one, faster, higher, better, more, more, more, we loose the ability to be, just be in the now. It is only in the now where we can find out about ourselves, where we can find out about our relations to others and the things of the world around us. But the now is destroyed by rining mobile phones, blackberrys, portable computers – the next e-mail has replaced the thought of the self and its relation to the world. In the absence of the now, there has been established a dictatorship of the surface, the first impression. There is no time anymore for the second impression.

What does that do to us? Is it a problem?

It is because we are drowning our awareness – the most precious ability evolution gave us – in the quantity of possibilities, desires, needs, noises. Restlessness is the result. Restlessness without peace makes sick – or in the least, unhappy. And this is what every society all across the industrialized countries is experiencing. People are not happy.

Content matters?

We all have a feeling for this; that there should be witnesses to our life, someone who cares – longer than the first impression. There is a feeling inside all of us, I think, telling of the wish that content should matter more. It is the stomach ache that we feel after a delicious meal in a fancy restaurant; the headache we have a nice talk on the mobile phone; the aching back after an hour in the world wide web of distance. Physical pain tells about soul ache. And it is there in those feelings that we can find understanding: this world has become too restless. There is only time for a first impression and thus we feel that the moment in the nice restaurant has vanished even before we have eaten our plate empty; the words from the phonecall have lost the meaning right after we have hung up.

In the dictatorship of the first impression we have forgotten to feed our souls.

It is content that matters. It matters what you invest into your soul – and sometimes this might be an hour of waiting, just sitting at the train station listening to the sound of your thoughts. Sometimes the best music comes from inside the head – if you let content matter.

to you…

…

there’s always been you

…

there’ll always be you

TaTaTaraNKa

You fly with your own wings,

you prophet of a better time.

And no phoenix who flies with her own wings,

can ever soar too high…

tataranka

Human Rights Day…

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10/12!

www.activeeurope.org

Check the press release!

And participate in the campaign!

Human Rights for ALL! Alcohol for NOBODY!

Human Rights Day…

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tomorrow.

Are you ready?

Human Rights… it will be 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When it was created and signed by the international community in 1948, short after WW2, it meant a revolution.

Where is the revolution today?

For me it is time again to dwell a moment or two on: Human Rights…

…

They are, above all (philosophical debate item, political propaganda object, content of modern constitutions, the demand – put into a document – for a better life for all, the assurance that we are – despite all differences – equal before the law) a promis to me, a hope.

A hope because they are a symbol for that a time of great evil can bear a great fruit – if we get together, if we open our minds and hearts a little.

A promis because Human Rights is what I HAVE. In our world, they have to be protected and it is the state who is supposed to do so. But besides all that, I have that – dignity because I am a being; freedom because at one point I was created;

When the egg and the same merge, life is created and with it a Human’s rights. That is the promis to me. It is the promis that we are all the same, biologically. Apes are the same, and so are birds and reptiles – to us. But among us we draw those lines…

A Human’s rights – that is the promis to be able at one point in future to obtain the meta level and see that we ARE one; one people. We stand on the same soil, breath the same air, drink the same water. From that meta level we have the same skills and we have ALL the same fate.

Human Rights are the promis that we can create this world – one of these days.

November, 9th…

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in Germany a historical date, a date with significance for the world…

Today 70 years ago, on November 9th 1938, the Nationalsocialists  set synagogues all over Germany on fire. The catastrophe before the catastrophe.

More than 1,400 houses of God were burning. And also shops and stores owned by Jewish citizens were destroyed. The night from 9th to 10th of November 1938 marks the beginning of the systematic terror against Jews in Europe.

The night of broken glass – it is called. After which no Jew could feels safe any longer in the streets.

70 years later: How far have we come?

hope… it’s all about hope (#2)…

…

connecting to an earlier entry with the same title and to the comments written to this entry, I am publishing this quotation, originally by Marianne Williamsson. But I have it from the movie Coach Carter:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequat.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were all meant to shine as children do! It is not just in some of us. It is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear,

our presence automatically liberates others.”

Each person is a visionary. Can be. It is just to choose to be.

If you chose not to be – don’t stop others.

There is no shadow around dreams and hope. So if you don’t choose to dream and hope yourself, enjoy the light of other dreams. Do not diminish it.

We are all meant to shine. And once, before the world grabbed us, we all did.

MTV…

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Music Television in Sweden keeps me wondering.

Today I saw a commercial for a new serie: “Celebrity Rehab”

Waiting for football matches to start, or even trying to hear a good song, I occassionally zapped to Music Television and found myself looking at shows like:

“Tela Tequila – a shot at love”  – where men and women are competing for one woman; given this one could even start thinking that this serie promotes understanding for homosexuality/ bisexuality and has some benefit for youth culture; but watching just one minute, you have to face so many perpetuated stereotypes and alcohol; in every activity there is alcohol; people are having a date in a giant glass filled with champagne, for example. After all the serie is called “a shot a love” – who drinks the most gets love…

There is also “Made” where unpopular highschool kids meet a famous person who choaches them for a few weeks and helps them to change their lives for the better – also a promising sounding concept at first sight, if it would not end up every time in dogmatic sentences like “you can do it” and a make-over by fashion stylists and make-up artists. Music Television can obviously make dreams come true real fast…

Another serie is “X-Factor” were an ex-couple “Mysteriously” ends up together in an expensive hotel for a wellness weekend. The catch: the current partners are at the hotel, too, equipped with spying material, so that they can witness how the two Ex are cheating on them now (or not…). Also here an awful amount of expensive alcohol means to play a major role. Which suits well, since one can blame the cheating on the alcohol later…

I wonder, seriously, why MTV is still calling itself Music Television.

Thinking about the target group of Alcohol & Sex Television, I just wonder what values are promoted to the youth? It seems like Alcohol & Sex Television is creating its own audience for “Celebrity Rehab” – first promoting “Sex, Drugs and Rock’n'Roll” – and then letting people watch how the consequences are treated;

No wonder girls stop eating when they weigh 40 kilos. No wonder gender equality is still a theoretic rather than a realistic notion. No wonder we think that drinking is the way of living, that appearence matters – not performence.

I want to hear music again – Bob Dylan and Freundeskreis; Sister Keepers and Melissa Etheridge;

I choose a better world!

hope… it is all about hope…

…

I wonder why the weak people always make themselves feel strong on the costs of the strong. Why do the weak appear in groups against the singled out strong ones?

Why is idealism called naivity?

Why is enthusiasm diminished to actionism?

Why is inspiration stigmatized as empty words?

Why do people do that?

You know, if you are really good at something – playing basketball for instance – why do you have to feel sorry, why are you even made to be afraid of showing it? Afraid of the other players, who would tease you, exclude you and mob you – just because you are good?

Why do we identify a smile as weakness and a fist as strength? It happens everywhere, all the time. There are few of those brilliant people on this planet, who are further than their time – people who smile when being lied to, when being insulted, when being manipulated; people who are able to find understanding for failures and shortcomings of the others deep in their hearts;

people who simply lack any black spot in their souls and

therefore naturally believe in the good; to talk with mildness, when all the others would sream; to react with patience when all the others would get angry; to give yet another chance, when all the others would have given up hope in a person;

In movies and in novels, in songs and in poems we are able to admire such characters. But in reality we abuse them. In reality we fight against them. We do everything to make them feel inferior – like they are the problem, with their kindness and boundless understanding; too soft to FIGHT for themselves; Why do we make them cry on the way to a job they truely burn for? Why do we make them afraid of a talent that is paramount?

Why are the normal people doing this?

Maybe because they become well aware of their normality. And I can understand that this hurts. Normality hurts. Average hurts. It seems to me that the main occupation of human life is to reassure that one is different, extraordinary, special.

But why do we have to pass pain on? Why do we have to give fear further?

It does not get into my head.

I hope that people realize that they do not have to be leaders. They do not have to be inspired.

It is okay. But do not pass pain on to your children, your school mates, your collegues, your friends, relatives, neighbours.

It is okay. You do not have to be a charismatic world improver. You don’t have to have shining ideas to save the world. You don’t have to be the one carrying your basketball team to the next glorious victory.

It’s okay.

But you really should not stop those who are inspired; those who live to mainfest the purity of their souls. Because then this purity will return to all.

That’s the hope.

visionary…

…

among us, there are some visionaries;

and some of them are even capable of putting their vision into a creative form, so that the others can hear, see, feel it…

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,

The population of Kathmandu has swelled from 200,000 at the time this photograph was taken to over one million now. For the first time in human history, as many people live in an urban as in a rural environment.

I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

From the High Andes to the plains of India, from southern Europe to northern China, rainfall is increasingly unpredictable.

 

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’,
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’,
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’,
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,

There is now a widespread acknowledgement that human beings are changing the climate, But we are still in denial. The implications of global warming hover just outside the grasp of our imaginations.

Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’,
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York.

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’,
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,

A pregnant woman has on average eight kinds of pesticide in her placenta

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,

“These children suddenly appeared and flitted past me like butterflies. To see those kids in their clean dresses on their way to school in the middle of this dangerous slum is a simple but astonishing affirmation of our human potential.

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

 

 lyrics: Bob Dylan

photos: Mark Edwards

Do you see their visions? Do you hear them? Do we feel them?

war…

…

in south ossetia, georgia, abkhasia

war.

You know, states are made FOR the people and BY the people. And they are supposed to ensure the safety, security, physical well-being.

States are not a project of Mr. Putin, Mr. Bush, Mr. Mugabe or Mr. Saakashvili…

Do you think those people chose this war?