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Hashishim

Sticky sweet idology

One night at the end of April 2000, I was lying, sweaty and alone, in a bungalow in Bali, listening to Sting. The album I listened to was Brand New Day , which was released the year before. Perhaps the most famous single from the album is "Desert Rose" which Sting performs in a duet with the Algerian-French Raï artist Cheb Mami. "Desert Rose" is a musical milestone in that it was one of the first collaborations between a Western world artist and an Arab artist. The song, which against a background of a suggestive mystical melody mixes western song with the distinct tones from Raï: pain, searching, longing and loss is in a way both a dithyramb and an elegy; a simultaneous praise to and a lament for both a bygone era and lost love.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union it was not only politics that was facing a time of great upheaval. Religion was also affected by the fundamentally changed world. Institutions that were previously considered stable, such as the Catholic Church, came to be seen not as much as a pillar of a stable world, but rather as a conservative and restraining force in an increasingly changing world. Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture live of Pope John Paul II when she appeared on Saturday Night Live, and a few years later Madonna would both criticize, and distance herself from, the Catholic Church. The protests against the church were, of course, more extensive than these two examples, and were also directed at institutions other than the Catholic Church. But here it will be Sinead O'Connor and Madonna who will represent not only the individual's break with "their" religion, but also as examples of how musicians came to be paragons of the new spirituality that moved through popular music in the 1990’s. A spirituality aiming waguely eastwards, with hints of both incense and all-spice. Sinead O'Connor would later convert to Islam and Madonna embraced the modern form of Kabbalah that swept through the American celebrity fauna in the mid-90s. 

I ran from my house that can not contain me From the man that I can not keep From my mother who haunts me, even though she's gone From my daughter that never sleeps I ran from the noise and the silence From the traffic on the streets

—Madonna, Mer Girl

If "Desert Rose" was the pinnacle of new spirituality in popular music, its origins can be found a number of decades earlier. In the early 1970s, a modern folk music movement begun, originating in Ireland and on the British Isles. In Ireland, folk music has long had a strong folk and political significance - folk music was synonymous with the opposition to the English and in the 1970’s we also saw how a folk music tradition began to flourish in Brittany and the Basque Country both as part of a resistance to ”the Government", but also as an expression of both culture and linguistic identity. The Irish band Clannad, who from its formation in 1970 primarily sang traditional Irish folk songs, went through a metamorphosis in the 1980’s to become a leading voice in shaping what would become ”New Age” music. With dreamy tunes performed in Irish Gaelic, they came to paint the sound image sound for several TV-series in the 1980s, not least Harry's Game - set in Belfast during the troubles - and Robin of Sherwood , who took the story of Robin Hood and placed it firmly in both the legend of King Arthur and wider Celtic mythology. Clannad counted as a member in the early 1980's one Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, better known under her stage name: Enya.

Enya definitely established herself as a solo artist with the single "Orinoco Flow" from the album Watermark (1988), and with the album Shepherd Moons (1991) and the songs "Caribbean Blue" and "Book of Days" confirmed her dominance over the growing field New Age music. Enya's popular cultural impact was manifested most clearly in music that Karl Jenkins wrote for a commercial for Delta Airlines in 1994. The song, and later the album Adiemus (1995) took the dreamy music from Enya and combined it with an artificial language, created with clear African elements. The result is an equally strange and wonderful mishmash of influences. In 1990, Enigma released their first album MCMXC aD, an album that took the spiritual New Wave quest in a different direction. The theme of the album explores the inherent tension between sexuality and religion. In “Principles of Lust: Sadeness / Find Love / Sadeness” we are exposed to, against a backdrop of Gregorian chanting, topics such as the Marquis de Sade, love and its different forms of expression, and in "Mea Culpa" religion's placing guilt on imagination by the sin of impure thoughts. But, at the same time highlighting the fact that even despite this guilt – these thoughts are something that we engage in daily, if not constantly – implying that the imagination is a human constant, more powerful than any religion.

Where Enya remained fairly consistent in her musical world consisting of equal parts Celtic tones, Vangelis and fairy tales; Enigma moved more freely between different musical themes and influences. On the band's second album, The Cross of changes (1993), they shift back to nature with  samples from indigenous people in the USA on "Return to Innocence", whilst on Le Roi Es Mort, Vive Le Roi! (1996) we’re met by a soundscape that combines Gregorian changing with Arabic influences in "The Child In Us". When Madonna released Ray of Light (1998), the spiritual search has found its way into broader popular music as well. ”Shanti/Asthangi” is a direct result of Madonna's personal journey in search of another belief system after the break with Catholicism with the lyrics of the song are inspired by her personal mantra. In the two big hit singles from the album, "Ray of Light" and "Frozen", the Eastern influences are more subtle, but they are there embedded in both text and production. But perhaps the most important song on the album Ray of Light is hidden in plain sight at the end of the album - "More Girl" is a deeply personal song where Madonna describes both the broader existential as well as her personal crisis to which Ray of Light can be seen as a catharsis.

I ran to the treetops, I ran to the sky Out to the lake, into the rain that matted my hair And soaked my shoes and skin Hid my tears, hid my fears —Madonna, Mer Girl

In Sweden in the last years of the 90s, the debate about the position of the Swedish state church increased, and art projects such as Elisabeth Olsson Wallin's Ecce Homo criticized and provoked. And even if it was with a certain delay, the change also came to Sweden when church and state were finally separated in 2000. In Swedish pop music, the spiritually searching tones were masked with a return to saga, folk beliefs and nature. One of the first examples of this was Sofia Källgren's “Längtans vind” [The Wind of Longing] (1989) [a song which is one of this writer's "guilty pleasures”]. And bands like One More Time and Nordman, and artists like Roger Pontare would follow. For those with a little more cultural capital, the 1990s also saw a boom for folk music in a more modern version with the band Hedningarna as a leading example. In a more international style, the music collective Lucky People Center's spiritual and musical documentary Lucky People Center International. The film is a journey around the world and explores different belief systems from Europe to Africa, to India, to Japan, to the United States. Throughout the film, there is a sample of a heartbeat that signify our common humanity and the basic desire to search for something Greater than ourselves. 

Hand in hand with the search for a new spirituality went the search for a new existential threat. If we through religion seek meaning in life and hope in the face of the fact of an unwelcome but certain death; politically we need something external towards which to project an existential threat. In the time after the collapse of the Soviet Union the atomic bomb, the treat of a nuclear war, was no longer the absolute constant it once was. Doubt had been inserted into the equation. An example of the manifestation of the decline of nuclear weapons as a constant can be seen today when Russia threat to use nuclear weapons in a response to the ”western” support of Ukraine is met with a global shrug. Nuclear power, and nuclear weapons, are old and dated technology: we know it, and it is all but impossible to fear that which you know. Instead we had to shift the search for something else and more sinister. Anyone who is old enough to remember the prelude to the turn of the millennium will surely remember the worries that existed before the millennium bug. The Millennium Bug - or the Y2K problem as it came to be called internationally - was the concern that computers would not be able to handle the transition from the 20th century to the 21st century and that vital computer systems and social functions would collapse around the world at twelve o'clock on New Year's Eve 1999. The problem received enormous attention in the media and companies all over the world spent huge sums of money on "millennial securing" their systems and production lines around the world. Of course, the world did not go under and the only global backlash was the universal hangover of January 1, 2000. 

The 1990s can be defined as the decade or searching. I have touched on the political vacuum in relation to the fall of the Soviet Union in a previous blog post, and it is easy to see that the rootlessness this caused found its way into the popular music of the 1990’s. This was, after all, natural – nowhere is the emotions of a society as visible as in the expressions of popular culture: film, music, television, computer games – they all reflect society, its culture and, more recently,  the world order. With the internet, this reflection would become even more immediate and even more malleable. The 90s may be the last decade when it is possible to discern a clear, albeit fragmented, direction in the collective search. There was an openness, and a concern, that came to be felt all over the world. While the alternative to controlling and conservative religion was sought in mysterious and hedonistic new age and natural religions, alternatives to the world's total doom through the nuclear war were sought in the total threat to society's downfall in the millennium bug.

I ran to the forest, I ran to the trees I ran and ran, I was looking for me —Madonna, Mer Girl

In a sense, Sting's "Desert Rose" would become both the culmination of popular music's spiritual flirtation with Middle Eastern mysticism and a form of swan song for the naïveity of the searching 1990’s as both came to an abrupt end on September 11, 2001. However, it is important to note that the fragmentation of the relationship between the individual and the institutions – be they religious, political or societal was such a strong force that not even an attack on the heart ”free democracy” the United States of America was enough to give humanity a new and unifying focal point. In the choice between human violence and ideological violence the human violence is now by far the worst. Before 1992 we stood and died together, after 1992 we stand and die alone (or with a small group of selected friends and family) as individuality has become the norm in western thought. That not meaning that we lack the capacity for communal action, what I am saying is that a collective threat is no longer as efficient at raising emotions such as fear or existential dread – the level of abstraction has shifted with the rise of the internet and the wider world that it has opened for us. The wold has become, in a very real sense, more global for individuals while nations still play the old game of power and geopolitics. And that is the reason why the nuclear threat, as Russia recently learned, is no longer a thing. What causes us grief and existential angst today is on a much more individual and personal level: we are constantly on the look out for new potential threats to our existence as Humans. If before the year 2000 it was the millennium bug that was the threat, then in 2008 it was CERN and the experiments at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) to prove the Higgs boson that would create microscopic black holes that threatened to destroy the planet. In the 2010s, it was instead AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the thought of cloning humans. The destructive power of nuclear weapons is a remnant from a bygone era. For the seeker, a child of the new world, the threat lies in the ever-changing future. A future where everything is potentially a threat, not to the existence of humanity but to something infinitely worse: what it means to be human.

What it means to be I.

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The New Prometheus

What is your first thought when you hear the word cloning? For many of us it is a concept right out of a dystopic science fiction novel or movie, set in a future where humans are grown in laboratories rather than born, a world in which the natural has been replaced with the manufactured. Often these thoughts walk hand in hand with those of genetic modification – like the replicants in Blade Runner, or bodies that are nothing but empty husks waiting to be downloaded with a mind – not different from when you move the contents of your old phone to the new. But at the same time that the word cloning causes a sense of intense displeasure with many people we live in a world where clones are an absolutely necessary part of our everyday life. The food we eat is both the result of careful genetic modification by breeding and crossbreeding plants for their desired traits, and when those traits are perfected they are ”coded in” by cloning the plant. Let us use apples as an example: different individuals of apple trees are cross bred with each other. When the traits the breeder are looking for, resistans to disease, hardiness against low temperatures and a high yield, for instance, cuttings are taken from the tree to provide more apple trees with the same exact characteristics. These are the clones clones are then sold to growers and the public. We have since developed the techniques to lock in a set genetical structure into a seed, but before this the only way to make sure that the apple tree that you planted in your yard was, in fact, a Granny Smith was to take a cutting from another Granny Smith tree, as a tree that grows from a pip from a Granny Smith apple will not be a Granny Smith apple. Apples, potatoes, wheat, barley, vines, cotton they have all been both genetically modified and cloned and have been for decades, if not hundreds or thousands of years. And yet we don’t think of it as troublesome or morally reprehensible. When Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal cloned from a somatic (body) cell was revealed to the world on February 22, 1997 she caused panic and controversy practically immediately. One of the major questions came to be: if it is possible to clone sheep, will science start to clone humans next? And, if so, is that right, wrong or just plain not-very-thought-through? For some Dolly came across as a wolf in sheep's’ clothing, and came to represent the first – and very unwelcome – first step on the path towards human reproductive cloning. Something that, according to many, should never be allowed to happen. In the scientific world there was a minority that thought that not only was human reproductive cloning acceptable, but also that it was morally necessary to continue the research around the subject. Others had no strong feelings regarding the topic, but couldn’t really a point in encouraging any further research into the subject. What is it, then, that make the thought of cloning humans to something terrifying and dystopic? Because are not all already the products of and advanced genetic selection program? Humanity are, just like all other living things on this planet a result of the process of natural selection. But simultaneously modern humans have, in a sense, placed herself outside what is natural – which focuses primarily on physical characteristics – and instead created a selection based on societal norms. A male of the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens may very well look like a bag of half rotten apples* but can overcome this physical characteristic by living up to certain societal norms that satisfies the females criteria of what constitutes a suitable partner. We have, in a sense, already started to genetically modify ourselves, and this is not a modern thing. Long before the nazis experiments into genetics European nobility intermarried to the n-th degree, partly to secure the purity of the bloodline – but also to secure political and financial power. If you are interested in the evidence for this can do a simple google search on how the royal houses in Europe are related to each other. And if you want to see the dramatic result of this practice drawn to its extreme you can google ”Habsburg jaw”. Human manipulation of its own DNA is therefore not the problem. However, humanity’s conscious manipulation of its own DNA is. When the discussion started in proper in Europe during the decade following Dolly the sheep there was primarily two arguments that constituted the argument against the medical applications of human cloning, particularly in the case of stem cell research, a process that require the destruction of an embryo in order to gather the stem cells needed. The two lines of arguments agains human cloning can be said to represented by the European nations of Germany and Italy respectively. Germany was, and is, against human cloning on reasons of principle dating back to the nazi experiments conducted during the Second world war, and on the very real possibility of profiling bases on genetics. Italy, on the other hand, can be said to represent the stance of the Catholic church who are dogmatically firm on that all life is sacred and inviolate at the moment of conception. When we add the topic of human reproductive cloning to the mix we have to add another aspect of resistance: humans should not play God. In the western tradition of though human both is of the nature and separated from it. In the Abrahamitic myth of creation Adam and Eve were created from the earth and granted life by God the creator who them placed them to rule all life on earth. In the norse myth myths of creation Ask and Embla were created from pieces of driftwood that the gods Odin, Vile and Ve found whilst out walking. They were granted life, thought and emotion by the three gods and set to live in Midgård. But myths of creation implies that humanity was both created and chosen – and that humanity thus holds a special place in creation. We are set to rule the world and all things in it, but we are also held accountable to a higher power. Our hubris is checked in the relation between created and the higher creating power – organized religion was the first means greater societal control. As religion lost its influence the power balance shifted into political theology; the ideologies that define the political systems that we live in today and drive the political parties. Humanity has always measured itself not against nature from which once it came, but rather by the metaphysical God(s) that created us. The eternal being(s) that have the power to create life. If humanity was to embark on human reproductive cloning the power of creating life would be shifted from God to humanity. And this must never be allowed to happen. Because if humanity in itself is the one that create life, then what need do we have of God(s), or political ideologies for that matter? The same force lays behind the current US debate on abortion. All human life, either when it comes to its creation or destruction, should be left to God to decide. It is not something in which humanity should dabble. Or so goes the reasoning. What is at stake here is nothing short of the foundation on which western civilization rest. Many countries and international jurisdictions have prohibited human cloning by law. In certain countries, among them France and Singapore, human reproductive cloning is a criminal offense, and in 2005 UNESCO adopted the Declaration on Human Cloning that demand a universal ban on all human cloning. However, where the world seems to agree to a surprising degree that the cloning of humans is a despicable practice, we do find an interesting line of demarcation when it comes to the cloning of animals. In the United States of America the economic potential in agricultural cloning was recognized early. “Although the farmer may have this cow’s daughters to carry on the line, he also has another alternative: copying her. Biological copying is referred to as cloning. By cloning his prize cow, breeding the clones, and keeping their offspring, the farmer can introduce the natural positive characteristics into the herd quickly. It would take several more years to achieve these same improvements by conventional breeding.” —U.S Food & Drug Administration

Since the year 2001 it has beed legal to clone livestock to preserve and spread beneficial characteristics that benefit milk production, the quality of the meat, resistance to disease and fertility. In a report from 2008 the US FDA state that there is no potential harm in consuming the milk and meats of cloned animals or their offspring. In certain sports the inherent potential in cloning was also recognized early, particularly in Argentina, where polo has a strong following, and in Dubai where camels are cloned both to better the quality of the meat and for racing. In the European Union, however, the winds blew in another direction and the EU decided to permanently ban not only the cloning of animals, but also the sale and import and sales of both embryos and meat from cloned animals. But why, I hear you wonder, have the EU and the USA reached such different conclusions regarding agricultural cloning? One of the answers can likely be found in the intense and occasionally aggressive discussion concerning GMO’s (Geneticaly Modified Organisms) that took place in Europe at the time. Another potential answer can be found in the difference in mentality between Europe and the US in regards to technological progress and its applications. The modern USA is shaped to its core by an optimistic view of technological progress – a concept that is linked to the progress of humankind itself. Europe on the other hand stands firmly in the continental mud of historicism – we like to move at a measured pace, if at all. Here, also, there are differences on a theological plane as the Lutheranism and Catholicism takes a more conservative stance on progression than does Calvinism with its constant movement. But if we lift our gaze slightly from the political, theological and legislative aspect f the debate about cloning we can see an interesting shift with regards to the concept – and yet again it is the USA that lead the change, together with South Korea. 25 odd years after Dolly the sheep first saw the light of day there is now a small but growing commercial cloning of household pets, primarily dogs and cats. The company ViaGen was founded in Texas, USA in 2002 to capitalize on the growing market for agricultural cloning – primarily bovines, pigs and sheep. The same year they started to offer the possibility to the general public to preserve DNA samples from loved pets for the future and, when the time was right, to clone the animals. It was to take until 2015 before ViaGen cloned its first pet, following the example of a South Korean company that conducted the first commercial cloning of a household pet earlier the same year. In an article in the Washington Post (11/4–22) a representative for the company claim that about 10 % of the clients that preserved their pet’s DNA go forth with the cloning process, and also that there is no shelf life for how long the genetical material can be kept in storage. As an example is mentioned that there are clients that stored material 25 years ago that are just now going through with the process. “[So] you’ve got a puppy now that was from a dog that was alive 25 years ago, which is a really incredible thing to think about.” —Washington Post, 11/4-22

ViaGen doesn’t mention any exact numbers on how many animals they have cloned, but they claim it to be in ”the hundreds”, and that there are more added every year. The costs mentioned in the article is $50 000 for dogs and $30 000 for cats. And, knowing how the market works the prices will go down as demand goes up. Unless, naturally, Apple decides to launch an iClone – then it will probably stay pricey.   Today, in the year 2022, the debate about human reproductive cloning shines with its absense. But considering that reproductive cloning of animals is now routine in several countries around the word it is reasonable to assume a future where there will be human reproductive cloning. Even if that is not in the close future, it is also reasonable to assume that the general attitude to cloning for research and medicinal purposes will see an increase, especially as the practice of cloning pets will firmly entrench itself in the general population. Fifteen years ago the thought of a world without fossil fuels were a non-thought, today the USA have left the middle east because the strategic importance of oil is no more. Ten years ago there was still a violent war fought on drugs, today there is a universal movement to decriminalize the use of marijuana, and there is extensive research conducted on the therapeutic properties of psychedelic substances. The thought, then, that cloning – including human reproductive cloning – will wander the same path is therefore not unreasonable. And, at the end, a musical reward for making it this far. *The author of this text identifies as a sack of rutabaga. Fairly firm, however round and almost provocatively hard to stomach.

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It's the end of the world as we know it

Over the last couple of days I’ver read a couple of different text that have looked at the theological aspects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In one of them, Russia’s war on Ukraine has some Christians wondering: Is this the end of the word? (Washington Post, 10/3-22) Sarah Pullia Bailey investigates the underlying reasons why conservative Evangelicals in the US, and particularly the charismatic-christian pastors that pitch an apocalyptic narrative, speak so favorably of the Russian invasion. Greg Laurie, for instance, one of Donald Trumps most vocal spiritual advisors, spoke to his congregation about the ”prophetic implications” of the war in Ukraine. And Pat Robinson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, claimed that Vladimir Putin’s invasion was ”compelled by God”. Significant world events have always been a focal point for American Evangelicals. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Michail Gorbachev, by the grace of his famous birth mark – at the time described as the ”mark of the beast” from the Book of Revelations, came to represent the Antichrist for a great number of evangelicals. However, in the recent light of the the Russian invasion in Ukraine, the narrative have shifted. Michael Brown, the host of the christian radio program The Line of Fire said, after an Ukrainian bishop had been quotes as saying that Vladimir Putin is the Antichrist, said that Putin could, in fact, not be the Antichrist because ”most of the world appears hostile to Putin while the Antichrist as described in the Bible will bring the whole world under his sway”. By the collective sanctions against Russia, and by the help from so many western towards Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is seen by some US Evangelicals as being on a mission from God.

On the other end of the Christian spectrum the head of the Russian-Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, commented the Russian invasion by saying ”We have initiated a struggle of metaphysical rather than physical importance” [My translation from Swedish]. In an essay published in the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (Svd) the professor of Russian studies at the University of Uppsala, Maria Engström, comments on the ties between the Russian-Orthodox church and the close ties between the new imperialist doctrine of Russia and the the churches desire to reunite the traditionally orthodox countries Ukraine and Belarus back into the fold of mother Russia. The Essay, which is a great read (if one reads Swedish) is called För Putin har kriget bibliska proportioner (Svd 20/3-22) or, in my rough translation, The war have biblical proportions for Putin. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Engström writes, two parallell tracks started pretty much simultaneously in the Russian society. One being a financially and socially progressive market economy which led to an increase in living standards, but also a great concentration of capital to a small number of oligarks with close ties to the new Russian leadership; and, at the same time, a cultural movement emerged; a movement fueled by dreams of the lost empire and driven by a strong desire to make what was torn asunder whole again. This dream about the rebirth of the empire was however not born in the Russian-Orthodox church. Instead it was created in a number of conservative think tanks tied to the regime in the Kremlin, where the idea of tying the unifying power of the Russian-Orthodox Creed to the plan to assimilate the escaped republics back into warm embrace of Mother Russia. By drumming out the message in literature, in movies, in music and in fashion the the unifying core of the church was spread throughout the entire society. This new Russian imperialism, says Engström, have strong influences of the Apocalypse in its retoric. The phrase she uses to describe the new political dogma is ”eschatological imperialism” – Imperialism of the end times. In the story spun by the think tanks the invasion of Ukraine is truly a holy war, and its goal is to place greater Russia (the unified Russia, Belarus, Ukraine) as the shield between the forces of darkness and the forces of light.

For anyone following the the Russian invasion of Ukraine in any media there has been the strange, almost impossible to understand, position taken by right wing US news outlets. Tucker Carlson on Fox News is extremely loud in his support for the Russian ”special operation”. This ties, partly, into the ”prophetic implications” mentioned earlier. When it comes to the theological study of eschatology there are three main approaches to the end times, all related to the ”thousand years” leading up to the Judgement day. The three views are amillennialism, premillennialism and postmillennialism. To keep it short and to the point: amillennialism is the view that is shared by the major christian denominations: Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Lutherianism and their derivations. In this view the ”thousand year reign” is synonymous with spiritual kingdom of God as present in the Church, the community and the worshiper. It started with when the church was established and is ongoing. Premillennialism, on the other hand (and as the name implies) require that Jesus return to take his place on the throne, converting the Jews, places an almighty smackdown on Satan and then reigns for a thousand years before judgement. And finally the postmillennialism where the thousand years are a time of peace, knowledge, worship and harmony that begins when the world is sufficiently converted through the Gospel of Christ. Jesus will return after the thousand years and his coming will be synonymous with the judgement and the end of days.

The Russian-orthodox church ascribe to the amillennial view and the American evangelicals hot on prophecy and the end of the world ascribe to the premillennial view of the world. And in a world that is increasingly more atheistic, where ”traditional moral values” (according to Russia) are under constant attack from the decadent West it stands to Russia to be the shield between Good and Evil in the world. According to the Russian mindset we are now in the end times. Engström calls this particular mindset archeo-futuristic as it combines the pre-modern and mystic aspects of orthodoxy with a fascination for high tech, especially military hardware. We’ve all seen the photos of orthodox priests blessing everything from handguns to fighter jets. However, and this is important to remember says Engström, that it isn’t the Church that has formulated or spread the doctrine, even if that has changed slightly after the invasion. The idea has never been to build a religious presence in private or societal life. Instead the goal has been to create an orthodox elite that understand the absolute necessity of Russias mission to act as a counterweight, or shield, against the dark forces of the world. And just the world ”shield” has gotten a dual meaning in the Russian discourse where both President Putin and Patriarch Kirill have, says Engström, drawn parallells between the shields that will help Russia remain a super power and also to protect it from the inevitable attack. It was God’s will that the Soviet nuclear weapons program took place at the Sarov monastery, and as such it is the nuclear weapons that will preserve both Russia and the humanity.

As for the Evangelicals times of great turmoil has always been intimately connected to the thought of the end of days. After the Second world war and foundation of the state of Israel the evangelicals have been grossly invested in helping jews emigrate to Israel. After the collaps of the Soviet union several churches opened missionaries and aid agencies that helped people from eastern Europe and Russia emigrate. The same will without a doubt happen now. I am sure it is already happening. A key part of the return of Christ, and thus for the end of days and judgement and the eternal life of the chosen is that the jews accept Christ as the Messiah. In the olden days the evangelical theologist Johnathan Edwards calculated that ”a type of millenium” would occur 1260 years after A.D 606 (the year that Catholic church was granted universality). 1866 came and went and nothing particular happened, so he decided to establish a few set rules regarding the end of days. 1. The thousand apocalyptic years has not been but are in the future. 2. The coming of Christ, which will awaken the dead and lay judgement on the earth will arrive ”within a much shorter time than a thousand years”. 3. The Jews won’t be converted until it is very close to the end of the world. 4. After all jews have been converted there will be ”a glorious day for the elect upon earth, and that this day shall be a very long continuance”. In short: Putin invading Ukraine, and threatening to use nuclear weapons are both prophecy and a promise of the end of times, and a call to fight the ultimate battle between good and evil regarding which dogma you want to follow.

We are broken.

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Forgiveness.

I've been thinking about the concept of forgiveness quite a lot over the last couple of days for a few different reasons. Firstly in a more abstract way with regards to Russias' war in the Ukraine. But also on a more personal level due to some things that have recently happened in my own family.

By invading Ukraine Russia brought war back to Europe for the first time since the war in former Yugoslavia. And absolutely atrocious as the events in the Balkans were the occurred within a specific context that placed it outside "Europe" proper, even though Yugoslavia was not a part of the Warsaw Pact it functioned as a de facto buffer zone between the Warsaw pact and the "West", in general opinion more aligned towards the WP. This meaning that the general public consensus came to be that it was a continuation of Eastern European freedom movement that started with the fall of the Berlin wall, and as such outside of Europe proper. It is fucking horrid to write this, but hey. The world was a very, very different place prior to 1989. Today, in a post-Soviet world and after the rapid integration of former "Eastern" European nations into both the EU and NATO, and the general shrinkage the new global world, Russias’ invasion of the Ukraine is the first de facto war on the shared European soil since World War II. Naturally this will lead to comparisons, some fair – others not, as is the function of war time propaganda. But, as usual, I digress. Back to the question of guilt.

After World War II there was a discussion within Germany about the question of guilt. In the discussion at the time Karl Jaspers held a lecture at the University in Heidelberg where the core sentiment was that there must be a way to prevent that an ”eternal” guilt was ascribed to the German people, and also to give Germans, and Germany, a way to process what had taken place – by their own hand and in their name. To do this Jaspers proposed four categories of guilt: criminal guilt (committing overt acts), political guilt (the degree of political acquiescence in the Nazi regime), moral guilt (basically a private sort of guilt amongst one’s peers) and metaphysical guilt (amongst those that survived, both amongst those that fought in the war and did not die as their friends and amongst those that did not willingly sacrificed their lives against Nazi atrocities). Each of these types of guild were to be redeemed in different kinds of ”courts”. The criminal guilt in the courts of the legal system, the political guilt was shared by all Germans regardless of political affiliation and was regulated in the terms of the armistice, the private guilt in society and amongst ones peers and the metaphysical guilt was to be handled by each individual in their relationship with themself and/or/whatevs a higher power/the own consciousness. It was important, thought Jaspers, that all the different aspects of guilt where fully processed and accepted in order for both the world and for Germans and Germany to heal. If this didn’t happen, if not every aspect of guilt was handled, processed and duly admitted and then forgiven, Jaspers thought, we would be doomed to repeat the same mistakes again down the line. Now, how did that work out for everyone involved?

I would like to argue that the final restitution of Germanys’ in relation to the guilt from World War II came as a result of the Russian attack on the Ukraine. Not only in the fairly swift and unprecedented response in sending weapons and support to a nation engaged in active warfare – equally unprecedented were that Sweden and Finland did the same – but also in the fact that suddenly history did, in fact, repeat itself. Another totalitarian regime, which one must – unfortunately – call the the modern state of Russia, driven by imperialistic ambitions moved into another sovereign country and instantly picked up Germanys’ sheared glove of Guilt.

This is the legacy that Russia’s war on the Ukraine will linger long past the dead are mourned and the cities of Ukraine rebuilt. The collective guilt and shame of another crushed ”world power”. The question must be: what can we do to make sure that history won’t repeat itself yet another again? One aspect must be to acribe the proper cause of the war: This is Vladimir Putins war. It is not the war of the Russian people, even if many of its citizens are pro the war, sorry – ”special operation” – they must be loved into submission once this is over. They have been the victims of a state machine fully dedicated to controlling the narrative. We, the collective west, made a huge mistake when first the wall and then the Soviet Union fell. We assumed that everything would be immediately allright. That liberal politics and a functioning capitalist market system would rise magically, like fog from the Moskva river, and cover all that were with the damp blanket of progress. Naturally it wasn’t that easy. Unfortunately we will be presented with the opportunity to remedy our mistakes in the future.

Let us hope that we are up to the challenge.

Naturally, this opens up to a wider discussion of forgiveness. What is forgiveness? What does it mean to forgive? Is it even possible? Especially in a world that is increasingly more secular? And is there a relationship between forgiving and forgetting – Is it really possible to offer forgiveness whilst still remembering the injustice? Or are they two separate things? Do we forgive based on the sincerity of the object asking for forgiveness? But if so, does that mean that the memory of the act is then changed into an internal process of the forgiver to handle and accept? Is this even possible? Jaspers is regarded as one of the founding fathers of existentialism. In his way of looking at things life, by the fact that all life is dependent on choice, exists in a constant state of guilt. By making a decision as simple as turing left or right at an intersection you have effectively prevented the possibilities inherent in the road not taken to come to fruition. I guess that is one of the reasons we alway second guess ourselves, but we also have the ability to live with our mistakes. Until we don't. We have to live with our actions and their consequences – but in regards to Russia at least we will all have the rare opportunity to make right our mistakes.

I am sorry for the ramblings. I just needed to get shit of my chest I guess. I’d love to hear any comments on the concepts of guilt and forgiveness. I think it is something that we need to discuss more, as individuals, communities and as societies.

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I went out for a little photo-walk with an old friend today. We went to an old mall that is basically closed down and just strolled around, shooting the odd nooks and crannies. This Was taken at a basement floor, the light and electricity was turned off, but there was a sky light above shining down. This is growing on me. I think this qualifies as my favorite pic so far this year. It works in both color and b/w, but I am leaning towards the color one as a personal favorite. I think that must be printed and added to a wall near me.

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If you drop a rose in the Hudson River at its mysterious source in the Adirondacks, think of all the places it journeys by as it goes out to sea forever...

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

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A lullaby.

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Ample tones. It is Christmas, after all. 

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Growing old

In some summers there is so much fruit, the peasants decide not to reap any more. Not having reaped you, oh my days, my nights, have I let the slow flames of your lovely produce fall into ashes?

My nights, my days, you have borne so much! All your branches have retained the gesture of that long labor you are rising from: my days, my nights. Oh my rustic friends!

I look for what was so good for you. Oh my lovely, half-dead trees, could some equal sweetness still stroke your leaves, open your calyx?

Ah, no more fruit! But one last time bloom in fruitless blossoming without planning, without reckoning, as useless as the powers of millenia.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

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The only Christmas song worth its salt.  Tyskarna från Lund, “the Germans from Lund”, is/was a side project of the comedy group “Varanteatern” from the city of Lund in the south of Sweden. Inspired by, predominantly, older Kraftwerk and the general style of west German 70′s and 80′s synth music, they did some of the most inspiring music/musical satire in Sweden in the early 2000′s. They sing in a mongrel mix of Swedish, German and English with bastardizations in either direction. And it is pure brilliance. 

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Philosophy, to my meager understanding, is just word porn for coprophiles. 

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This is about as much Christmas as I think I can handle this year. 

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Sometimes it is nice to remember that we today have the technology to create diamonds – and we in huge numbers – that are indistinguishable from the ones dug up from mines operated in horrid, hellish conditions used to fuel war, and to boost suffering across an entire continent. Oddly enough it is the latter that cost lots of money. The former is used as a surface coating for industrial cutting tools. 

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I snapped this when I stumbled through MoMA a bundle of years back not for any particular artistic ambitions of my own, but rather that anything can be art. It is all in the eye of the beholder, which should be made abundantly clear by 1) the fact that there are people contemplating a wall with Big Fucking Text and a tiny little air gun pebble, and 2) the fact that I took the picture of them contemplating the wall with the Big Fucking Text and a tiny air gun pebble.

Absolutely, there are people that are insanely talented at creating amazing art, geniuses in the proper sense of the word, people with an innate ability to express their talent. And then there is the rest of us, the ones that keep harping on with out cameras, brushes, paper and glue or whatever medium takes you fancy – we might not have access to the full potential like the true savants, but we can develop and hone our skills by practice, practice, practice.

One of these days I too might be able to hit a wall with an air rifle. 

But to tie back in with the “anything can be art” statement above. It is all internalized. Art is in the mind of the beholder. Be it my mind as the “artist” (I don’t see myself as such, photography for me is at the very most a hobby, an excuse to take walks where sane people seldom go), trying to find the best angle to tease something out of a plain and ordinary object; or in the mind of the person watching the photo that I took, edited and posted. We can see the same picture, but we can never know if we read the same thing into it. 

Where I see a “wall with Big Fucking Text and a tiny little air gun pebble”, I am sure that there are tons of people that see a towering critique of the military-industrial complex and the shrouds of the late-capitalist system trembling the the dynamic winds of industrialized  society. Or some other unintelligible fuckwittery.

To each his own. 

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Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych “Garden of Earthly Delights” feature a piece of ass music. Litteral ass music. On the right panel, center left there is a man hidden by a lute, with his ass uncovered and used as parchment by some kind of lizard that licks the notes on the bared ass cheeks. Naturally someone has decided to interpret and record that ass music. Because: ass music.