Today I want to write a little it about some of Sweden's recipes for success regarding the creation of a well-functioning state: a state that is encountered as people who one can talk to as people
Hilarious sketch of one of the many encounters one can have with the state, and a slightly dysfunctioning person representing it
When travelling in the world, one is often struck by the impression that many people have of Sweden as a well-functioning country. "You guys seem to have understood something about how to build a well-functioning society", is a saying I have heard quite a few times from people I have met all around the world. I think that the main reason for this is that we have a well-functioning state, which really delivers results, and which is perceived as being "on our side". In other words, we have had people -
human beings acting as human beings - that meet us when we for some reason interact with the state (regarding
taxes, courts, police, healthcare, etc). The main importance of having people out in the leaves of the compex tree that makes out the state is that human beings can see through detailed descriptions of
laws and regulations, down to the essense of those regulations. See to it that the spirit of them is fulfilled and not the letter. In many cases
these two things (spirit and letter) are not equivalent, and often they are
even contradictory (see for instance this example of a well-functioning highly specialized programmer who might be deported from Sweden to Pakistan, because his previous employer did a technical error regarding an insurance policy). In such cases, it is only humans that have the
ability to see through to what is right, if the rules should be followed or somehow circumvened - and in all such cases it is
absolutely essential that human beings are allowed, empowered, and encouraged to act upon that. The people who make the day-to-day decisions
must feel empowered and competent enough to act according to what they feel
is right, according to the given essense of what the state (or
organisation) is trying to do.
I really believe
that each time such "seeing through" successfully happens, the
relationship between the state/leadership and the people/staff/citizen
is strengthened, not weakened. Therefore, such behaviour must be
promoted and not punished. We must have a humane society, and part of
that process is to leave the power to the administration to be able to
make their own sensible decisions, and to use their judgement and
finger-tip feeling to see the difference between following a rule while
upholding its intention, and upholding a rule while opposing its
intention.
Barry Schwartz in his excellent TED talk, on precisely this topic - how to empower people to act responsibly, and to go beyond rules and regulations However, at the same time as it is important to have freedom of the implementers to have flexibility in their implementations, this must of course not be biased in unfair ways, such as corruption. Also here, Sweden has historically managed to find a good balance. We are one of the least corrupt countries in the world, and we have relatively little problem with racial discriminations or gender inequality. How, then, has this come about? It has of course been development in stages over many centuries. But in some sense, these ideals can be traced back to one of the founding fathers behind the Swedish administration: Axel Oxenstierna. He was the de facto ruler during Sweden's most expansive area: when the kings and queens of the time of the 30 year war were out in Europe to try to expand our borders all the way to southern Germany, he remained at home to try to build up a well-functioning state. It is back to him that many of the ideals stem that we still cherrish today, including a low level of corruption, an independence between the administration and the politicians, and a strong sense of responsibility of the people sitting in the lowest levels of these administrations. For those of you who want to know more about this man, there is an interesting SR debate on him here, and an upcoming novel about him here.
Picture of Axel Oxenstierna, the father of the Swedish administrational system (from Wikipedia) Finally, I want to emphasize that even though we have an internationally speaking good level in all of these areas, there are many things that still do not function good enough, and there are always tendencies and examples (such as the immigration example above) of how we sometimes move away from these ideals in other directions, where e.g. rules are followed at the expense of their intended idea. It is for this reason, I think that it is important to identify and remind ourselves of the principles that have made Sweden great in the past, and thus use these ideals as a guiding beacon when contemplating whether new suggested changes should be implemented tomorrow. I also think that the identification of such national successful principles is something that can help with our joint evolution of all countries across the world as a whole.
You know that feeling of having somebody scratching your back, and finding that spot that you can't really reach yourself, and to which you need to guide them a little while until they find it - but then when they do, you just go "ahhhh". On a deeper level, that's what yoga can do to you, and it can reach to places where virtually no other things can reach.
The yoga technique of neti - something that often really feels like it reaches that spot you cannot get to in any other way - and softly caresses away the irritation that has bothered you. Picture from here.
My father was, just like me when I was younger, sometimes having problems with allergy, and a running nose. He used to carry a handkerchief around, and was blowing in it like crazy. But then, one day, he discovered something that changed that around to some degree: a salt-water mini-injection up into the nose. And then, when we one day talked about why he liked it so much, he said something like: "when I blow my nose, I feel like I am trying to affect a target that is really not where I am working, but when I do this, it feels like I am much closer to hitting the target - to applying the technique to where the problem actually is".
I knew exactly what he was talking about, of course, having discovered the yoga nose-clensing technique neti many years before that - and realized that the pharmacy-driven "nose drops" of which he was taking, was just a sort of primitive precursor to this more comprehensive, and quite wonderful, yoga technique.
However, that story is actually just an example of a more general phenomenon, of which I was reminded today. How yoga - in so many ways - has a wonderful ability to provide techniques that really get to the essense of the problem. Techniques that are not just applying a lot of force (like blowing your nose really forcefully) and applying that force quite far from the actual source of uncomfort (the place in the nose that you would like to clense). Instead, yoga has techniques that are just like the running salt water from the neti pot: they are extremely comfortable, very soft and gentle, and gently just caress, clean, and open up the tensions and "dirt" that you feel disturbing you. And after you are done, you feel a wonderful sense of openness, an ability to breath, and how new energy has come into your system (to be frank, this happens already from such a simple thing as a neti, but yoga's techniques of course also go much deeper than nose-cleansing).
In a way, this is a little bit comparative to the difference between the traditional medicine approach of looking at symptoms - and bringing them back to normal levels at the expense of you losing your balance even more - and yoga's philosphy of dealing with the underlying imbalances and disturbances that have hindered the body from feeling truly good and balanced. Say for instance that you feel stressed, and are having trouble sleeping. Then you might take some chemical compound to artificially make you less stressed and tensed. However, no matter if that chemical is alcohol or a drug, that compound will make you less stressed at the expense of also making you move away from your true balance. Both alcohol and medical drugs will not directly make you less stressed, they will make you numb, and at the same injure your brain and liver - and thus produce the sensation of less stress. In contrast, if you use yoga techniques, you will target the physical, mental, breathing patterns that both represent the manifestation constitute the cause of the problem, and thus really make a difference that is truly positive. In short, yoga has the ability to scratch you where you really itch, and not just make you so numb so you no longer feel the itching.
Under this tree, in a nice little park in London, I have spent a couple of really useful hours this afternoon doing yoga.
The reason why this analogy came to me today, was that I today have had a day off in my travel period. So far, I have been to London, Paris, Barcelona, Eindhoven, Oxford, and now London again - where I at last have a much needed day off. Therefore, I today took the opportunity to visit a park that lies nearby to where I am living, and then spent some 2-3 hours doing yoga under a tree in that park. And during this yoga session, I could feel so many of those itching spots - first in my body, and then in my breathing, and then in my mind - that I have been longing to scratch for days now, and that I at last managed to reach.
So, in some ways you should be careful with trying out yoga - you might just get used to being scratched at places that noone else can reach for you. However, the benefit is of course also that you, yourself, always will be able to scratch yourself at these places. That you will raise your bar for what feeling good really should feel like. And if you do things soundly and harmoniously, there are in reality no negative side-effects to this type of yoga-scratching.
The first signs of Hamburg, as seen through the window of a train going from Copenhagen. This is the train that takes me from Scandinavia to virtually all places elsewhere in Europe
The landscapes are flowing by outside the window, my internet connection comes and goes, and I have hours upon hours with myself in front of me, to use to my own ends with myself. Those are sure signs that tells me that I have started a new travelling period. As I explained in a few blog posts on my old blog (e.g. this and this), I am living in a carefully designed yearly pattern, that balances and optimizes many of my needs, wishes, and desires. To balance my alchemist and native american visions of digging-where-I-stand with the equally strong vision and ideal of living like a wonderering monk, I have 2-3 intensive travel and vagabonde periods each year, but stay the rest of the year in the same place as I always have lived, and see what I can do with what I am given. Likewise, I balance my desire of travelling with my desire to live in a way so that everybody can live like me, by only flying once a year - all my other travels are normally done by train. By going by train, I can also combine my desire to live in an improvised way, while still granting my other desire of visiting many places, groups, and sceneries, in a relatively short period of time (by being on a train tour, you can easily visit 10 cities in 3 weeks, and still spend sufficient quality time in all of them). And finally, I balance my desire of living in wonderful and beautiful Sweden with my desire to have long summers and short autumns, winters, and springs, by positioning one of my travel periods in mid-september to mid-october in e.g. sunny southern Europe, and another travel period in late-february throughout March period located in even sunnier South America or California.
With this as a background, it is therefore completely expected that I right now am on a train that takes me down to the south of Europe. This night, I slept in Denmark (Nykoebing Falster), and now I am going to Brussels, and London, where I will be on a conference for a few days. After that, I go down to Barcelona for another conference, and then some 5-6 days of group visitations in France and the Netherlands before a third conference in Amsterdam. The last part of my travel period will take me down to the south of Germany and to beautiful Austria.
Some more details on the scientific part of this trip, inluding links to the conference places, and a listing of all the oral presentations that me and my group will give, is found on my scientific blog. That blog ends with an outreach to my scientific colleagues, to let me know if they want to catch me on the trip, for interesting discussions, something to eat, or some other joint activity. I therefore want to end this more personal and non-professional blog post in the same way: if you are somewhere in the regions of Europe that I will visit, and want to meet me - do let me know, and I will do my best to see if we can hook up!
I just read the following interesting article (in Swedish) featuring an analysis of the reasons for the success of the Finnish school system. The thing that stood out the most to me was the following quote:
"Medan Sverige sliter för att fylla platserna på landets många lärarutbildningar, är det vid universitetet i Helsingfors större söktryck på lärarutbildningen än jurist- eller läkarprogrammen. Av 3 000 sökande i höstas, togs 120 in."
Loosely translated, the quote says that the Finnish school teacher education is one of the most - perhaps the most - prestigeous education you can take in Finland, and that it is harder to get accepted to that education, than to ones to become a lawyer or a medical doctor.
Now that is b-i-i-i-g difference compared to the situation in Sweden (and, I guess, compared to most other places in the world as well). A stark difference. A key difference - which simply cannot be ignored or downplayed. As the article ends, the biggest strength of the teacher education in Finland is not the way it is done (from what they write, it seems very similar to that in Sweden), but it is simply this: they get the best students.
The article also points out that the reason for this high status is not a high salary: it is only marginally higher than in Sweden. It is instead something else: something more related to a sense of calling, that teaching in Finland seems like something many people really would like to do with their lives. That teaching seems like the most meaningful thing many people could imagine doing, and that it to many people would feel like a privilege to be able to do it.
I can only agree with this. Teaching is the greatest gift, and the greatest joy, and I love that I have teaching possibilities to such a great degree in my own life. I am also hoping that my life will feature a little bit more teaching in younger ages as well, further down the road. That is actually a long-held dream of mine.
All in all, I think that one of the most important thing we can do in Sweden is to raise the status of the teacher job. Now, how do we do that? It is not that easy, it won't go quickly, but it certainly can be done. I don't have all the answers, but a few simple yet crucial details that come to my mind right away are the following:
* remove most or at least much of the high administrative burdens on the teachers
* trust the teachers to do their best, and give them the chance to prepare properly, by not only removing administration, but also decreasing their number of teaching hours per week
* have smaller classes, and allow for more extra teachers and volunteers to come in and take of the load of teachers. Have more presence of adults, which by their presence calms unrest and emphasises the importance of the teaching situation.
* do not focus too much on the bad examples, but try to highlight the examples that do work. Focus on the teachers that are happy in their work, that are succesful. On the schools that are successful. How have they done? We create the image of a thing by the way we talk about it. Let's talk about a teaching career as a gift and as a privilege. As the privilege that it is!
The above clip is one of the most amazing clips I know. For several reasons. One reason is that the second half of the middle, slow, movement (from 6:19) is amazing and magic as hell. The main reason, however, is that the people who play in the ensemble are all enormeously successful, world-famous soloists, who usually play as soloists in front of big orchestras all over the world - but who here play together in a small little ensemble. Some of the ultra-famous artists include e.g. Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, James Levine, Sarah Chang, Mischa Maisky, Vadim Repin - but there are also many others. There are not many times in musical history that such a collection of geniuses can be seen playing together - having fun together - in such a manner. One such occasion was undoubtedly in the household and church of the composer - Johann Sebastian Bach - who apart from being one of the most important composers to date also is the father of many super-famous composers (who actually were more famous than their father at the time). After Bach's time, I can imagine that Vienna had quite a few such roundups in its prime (1770-1830) as most likely Paris a little bit later (1830-1850). Today, I know only one place where an event like this can occur: Verbier.
Verbier is the only place I know where the world elite in classical music goes each year, and where they apart from giving amazing solo concerts also do events like this: having fun and doing informal chamber music together. What I like about this is that they are doing chamber music to a large extent in the manner that it was intended: in a more informal and smaller setting. I have always liked this setting the most, and it is one we have always strived towards when arranging my own family's signature soirees.
Roland Pöntinen, the link between our local chamber music festival and Verbier.
When it comes to the festival in Verbier, they feature mostly international and non-Swedish artists, but now and again there are also some Swedes who make it to the concert programme. I think that the most frequent such guest is our excellent pianist Roland Pöntinen, who played also this year. And, the programme that he played this year in Verbier, he actually repeated again yesterday - in my home city, Linköping! After that concert, I talked to him a little bit, and he confirmed my impression: Verbier is a place where the world elite comes to have fun. He also told me that he actually also has completed my current main project as a pianist: to play through all of Beethoven's piano sonatas. So now I know three Swedish pianists who have done this: Pöntinen, Tengstrand, and Påhlsson. I plan to become number 4! :)
The reason why Pöntinen came to Linköping is that he was invited to play in Linköping's own little music festival, the Linköping chamber music festival. This festival is of course much smaller than that in Verbier, but there is also here a mix of different types of events, and an attempt to only have artists on a really high level - and to also have more informal concert forms. Right now I just got back from one of the most informal such events: an evening concert in the hotel lobby. At this event, the artists sit down and play a more or less completely improvised programme, and before and after they hang around and drink beer with each other and with whomever wants to hang around with them. I love that! And via the connection with Pöntinen, I really feel that this connects with and manifests the motto of my blog and yoga school: music and yoga in Linköping - linked up with the world!
Two of the artists performing at this evening's informal hotel lobby concert. Standing up in the background, you see the artistic director, clarinetist and conductor Staffan Mårtensson. In the foreground you see my knee - and as you can see, I sat less than 2 meters away from the soloist.
Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a facebook-version of the above video on facebook. It depicts a young boy, probably around 10 years old, who memorizes and solves - blindfolded - Rubik's cube in less than 2 and a half minute. My friend - as seemingly most of the millions of viewers of the video - was completely taken aback by this feat, and comments included that it "made them sleepless", or "I would never be able to compete with a brain like that". And while I can understand those sentiments, I don't agree with them.
I see a video like that, and I get inspired by seeing somebody living up to their potential. Our brains and bodies are capable of extraordinary feats, and I love each time I am reminded of that. And, to manifest this potential, we just need to work with our bodies and do all the incremental steps that it takes, and you will get there - no matter who you are! More importantly, I realize that this thing that this young boy can do feels to him like the next logical step. He has gotten there through a series of many many small steps - practicing memorization, practicing hand-movements, practicing algorithms, watching others who are better than him solve the cube, etc etc - and through each of those steps he has evolved a little tiny bit. However, put sufficiently many of those steps after each other, and with so little space in between them that memory diffusion doesn't cancel out the steps forward, and you can get anywhere. In fact, many of the commenters of the video also point out that the people around the boy seem so non-impressed. And that is most likely because they are - this is probably in a competition, where many people do quite similar feats, and there are many of them performing one after another in a big succession. To each of them, they would not be even remotely as impressed as we are by this performance, because they do and see similar things all the time. To them it is more a matter of small variations up-and-down - having a good day or a bad day.
Look at interviews with athletes after a competition and you will see the same thing. They have just done what to normal human beings would be extraordinary feats of strength, precision, and/or agility. But if you ask them to comment on what they did, they will usually say (and think) something like "well, my technique was a little bit off in the second heat, but in the third heat it got better". I.e., to them it will be minor variations around what was to be expected. To them, as it is to all, what you get in life is most often just the next logical step.
In the same spirit, I can think of so many times that I have come up to a performer of classical music just after a concert they have given (or when people have come up to me after one of my concerts). I know then that there is very little correlation between my experience of their technical performance (especially if it is of another instrument than my own) and their own experience of their technical performance. I might have been blown away by the seeming difficulty of it, but they might mostly remember that they missed a trill on the second bar of the third page, which annoyed them. To them - like to all - what you get in life is most often just the next logical step.
Yuja Wang, one of my favorite pianists alive today, plays an utterly difficult piece: an octave version of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee. It is indeed a crazy difficult piece, but although most people in the comment section (as in the audience) are blown away by this performance, if you would ask her about the performance, she would probably say something like: "I was a bit blurry on that note in the end, but the octaves in the beginning were sharp and nice". To her, this performance is just the next logical step.
Having said all of this, there is one thing that must enter into this series of observations - and that is the magic that appears in wonderful performances. The magic that makes the technique fall away in the background, and the feeling of wonder come up to the forefront. It is the feeling of a sudden lift above the normal state-of-affairs. As Jan-Ove Waldner (my old table tennis hero) said about his performance in the semi-final and first half of the final of the world cup in 1987: "I was so much in the zone, that I had the feeling that I could go up against 20 chinese players in a row, and beat every one of them without loosing a single set." I can remember another occasion, one of the encores to a generally very impressive concert by Sokolov that stood out far beyond the others - it was such magic that I could feel how the entire audience was completely transfixed on every note that he played. While applauding afterwards, I stood and talked with a fellow piano friend of mine, and we both laughed and said: "this is why we came, this short 5 minute piece alone made the whole trip here from Linköping worth the while, many times around". I have also felt such a degree of inspiration myself on a couple of occassions, and in each of those times, I have noticed how big of an effect it has had on the audience.
Sokolov in one of his magic performances - here playing Rameau's Les Sauvages.
This magic that happens is thus something very tangiable, and even though you cannot command it to happen, you can make it much more likely. In other words, I am sure that even though Sokolov himself felt the same magic as we did on that particular piece, and was totally in love with the moment when it happened, it had happened to him many times before during his concert series. He plays on such a high level, that this degree of magic is something that happens to him fairly regularly. I would, however, be surprised if he would say that he can command it to happen. But it sure as hell happens to him much more often than it happens to more mediocre pianists. Also if I look to the main occasions where this magic has happened in my own concerts: In virtually all of them, it has been when I have been really really well-prepared. When I have played the pieces many times, both on my own, and in many previous concerts, and where I have really dived deep into the pieces, felt glimpses of the magic in these pieces before. Where I know each and every occasion where the magic can happen, where it has happened before, and where I feel so confident that I know the piece that memory lapses is a thought that doesn't even occur to me. Then, when I feel the feeling of magic approach me, I can think/feel, "yeah, let's go. Get ready for it audience - now comes the feelings!" In the same way, Waldner's in-the-zone playing around with the previously unbeatable Chinese opponents was not something that just happened, it was the result of many years of mental and physical preparations, that finally had bared fruit in a confluence of nerves turning to inspiration.
Documentary of the years leading up to 1989, when Sweden at last beat the unbeatable China with 5-0 in the team competition in the world cup. As you can see, this was a breakthrough, and just as Jan-Ove's in-the-zone playing in 1987, they were all then playing at the top of their game, producing table tennis magic that will live on for decades and decades to come. However, what you see very clearly from the documentary is that this did not happen by chance - it happened when it felt like the next logical step.
In other words, what all this means is that what happens almost always feels like the next logical step. Even when the magic breaks through and lifts you off, if it holds for more than a few seconds, if it is something that you can sustain, then it is because you have been there before, and you now are carrying it just a little bit further - you are carrying it to the next logical step.
Finally, as an after-thought and teaser for future blog posts: all of this is completely parallel to how you go deep in meditation. In many of the techniques that takes you to the deepest states, you cannot exactly control when it will happen, or where it will take you - especially in the beginning it will feel like some deeper part of you will be deciding that for you. But what you can do is that you can create the perfect circumstances where it is almost inevitable that the deepening shift will happen sooner or later. When you have let go of any specific expectations, when you have stopped wanting to create it with your will-power, when your thoughts are completely transfixed on the current moment: then the deepening is the next logical step.
I have done many things in my life that astonish people, and I am in the middle of even grander projects that once combined will make all current projects seem puny. However, the secret to all of this is to always do small changes. Small improvements. To do the next logical step. In this blog post I am shortly outlining this in relationship to a relatively small, but still highly inspiring goal: to become an Ironman.
In May 2015, i.e. a little bit more than a year ago, I did something I hadn't done in 15 years: enter a race. The task was to run 5km as fast as you can, and the race was a part of a recreational activity sponsored by my workplace (Blodomloppet). Since I have a background of intense training from my youth (I was one of the best table tennis players in my age in Sweden, and trained 2-4h per day), I had a certain speed in my normal running step, and - inspired by the runners around me - I started out in this "normal" pace. However, already after a few hundred meters, I started to get seriously out of breath, and after 1km, I had to stop, and rest for a little while. For this reason, after having dragged myself to the finish line, I decided that this cannot do, and that I want to devote some of my ambitions to getting back into shape. To lose some weight, and get back into a fit body that represents who I more truly want to be!
Figure 1: In this picture from some 10 days ago, I have just completed a training round of 60km biking and 20km running.
Shortly after this race, I talked to a few members of my research group, and they told me about a race that they were to enter in August 2015, i.e. a few months later: the Stockholm Triathlon competition. This race was the Olympic version of the triathlon race, i.e. 1500m swimming, 40km biking and 10km running in one go. This seemed like a good first goal, and reasonable to accomplish within two months, with my strong but ancient background in training. And surely enough, despite some initial problems with my foot (due to me initially wanting to run in FiveFingers), I got myself up into shape enough to do a perfectly reasonable performance in the race. In the biking part of the race, I was even among the top 25% of the competitors, despite having no previous biking training.
However, at the same time as I decided to do the Stockholm competition, I also made the thing that is quintessential for me to get truly excited about something: I identified a cool and more long-term goal for which the first goal can be a stepping stone. In this case, I decided that I wanted to become an Ironman.
Figure 2: Me about a week later, i.e. 2 days ago. This time, I had scaled up the biking to reach the full 90km distance. Here you see me at the furthest point. In the background you see some 20-30 utterly beautiful deers roaming. One of the many perks of both biking and incremental movement towards long-term goals: you get to see so much beautiful things along the way.
The Ironman is the original and full version of the triathlon, and there you swim 3.8km, bike 180km, and run 42km (i.e. you end with a marathon). This is a quite typical kind of goal for me, since it fulfills all of their key characteristics: its obtainment would require me to grow quite a lot and in several steps; it really gets me going - I am really super-enthusiastic about being able to write "Iron Man" to the list of titles on my CV; it is something that would put me in a club of a select few people, in whos company I would love to be; it would do me good - I need the exercise; I can see myself getting there in a sequence of steps taking a number of years - i.e. despite its vastness, it should still be obtainable. In short, one could say that I am looking for goals that are on the border between "crazy impossible" and "crazy, but possible". After having the goal, the timing also needs to fit. I need to be in a position where I don't have too many other similar time-consuming goals, since then, I will have to wait to another time point to start up my plan, although it may fulfill all other requirements. In this case, the timing was perfect: I was already looking for a way to start to get back into shape, and my previous dancing goals were accomplished or put on the back-burner since quite some time back.
My initial long-term plans were as follows: Olympic distance in 2015, half Ironman in 2016, and full Ironman in 2017. After that, things are more undecided, but I will most likely want to improve my times as well, to put myself in an even cooler family of peers (e.g. to run the marathon part below 4 min/km would be cool!). So far these plans have held, and I therefore want to write a little bit on my main principles for obtaining them.
Incremental additions: I always do small steps forward. Steps that feel like the natural next step. Like something that - given what I did in a meaningfully recent past - seems like something I should be able to do, by just stretching a little bit higher than last time. Example: 10 days ago, I biked 60km and ran 20km (Figure 1). A week after (during my next long-distance run, after some intermittent short-distance heats), i.e. two days ago, I scaled the biking up to the full distance for this year's goal: 90km (Figure 2). Having now accomplished a heat of 90km biking and ~21km running, I have already accomplished the two main hurdles for this year's goal: the half Ironman. The final remainder, which I will add in the next two events where I go long is to also add 1900m swimming. Since I didn't have any problems with the swimming, but felt it quite relaxing last year - and since that distance (1500m) was almost the same as this year's distance (1900m) - I don't foresee any major complications from the swimming. In other words, reaching this year's goal in two weeks from now feels like the next logical step.
Continuity: The main thing that needs to go along with the "Incremental addition" principle is the continuity principle. For the first principle to work, one needs to stay put, and come back again soon after any shorter lapses in training appears. Here, I could instead exemplify with my piano training. I am soon half-way through a project that - once accomplished - will make me the third Swedish pianist in the history of Swedish pianists to have accomplished: playing all of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Through this quite extraordinary feat, I have gotten this far by playing around 30-90 min per day, which is not very long time. However, that time would mean nothing if I didn't do it regularly, i.e. almost every day (say, at least 3-4 days/week). By playing regularly, I always add on to what I already learnt, and can build upon the tiny incremental improvement I did last evening (I learn perhaps 5-10 seconds of music each night).
Keep the fire going, by returning to and evolving your Visions and Dreams. To be able to keep doing the incremental additions with continuity, I need to have the Vision clear in front of me, and it needs to be alive and beating, calling forth enthusiasm within me. This I can do in several ways, but there is one way I would like to mention here: to watch and be inspired by masters in the field. For this principle, I could return to my original and in some ways first passion: table tennis. Every day when I came home from school, and before going to table tennis practice, I always sat for some 15-60 minutes in front of the TV, watching clips of some of my heroes back then: world-champions Jan-Ove Waldner, Jörgen Persson, and Mikael Appelgren (good documentary with sub-titles here). Watching their successes made my desire to become as good as them grow stronger each time, and watching their way of playing activated my mirror neurons, who allowed me to improve my body movement patterns without even moving. I have done in similar ways in all my other goals, e.g. piano (watching Horowitz, Ashkenazy, etc), dancing (watching Jordan and Tatiana, Johnny Vasquez, etc), in meditation (reading books by yogis Yogananda, Paul Brunton, etc), etc etc.
Be willing to improvise, listen, and to attract people and circumstances that move you forward. Be always open and listen: listen to your body, listen to opportunities that come and go. Be willing to find people that know things that you don't (in all of the things I have gotten really good at I have had excellent teachers with deep knowledge about what they are doing), seek to find other people who have a similar passion as you, and who are on a similar or perhaps even higher level than you, and find places of thought and practice where you can immerse yourself in the vibration of these peers and idols. Talk to them. Allow your inspiration to be lifted by them. See how you can make use of each other. Can you completement each other? Can you help each other? Can you help bring each other forward? Be open for the continuous creation of the circumstances, places and events that synchronistically can form themselves around you as you incrementally move forward towards your goals.
Believe that you can. None of the above will help you, unless you believe that you can do it. Then you will only prove to yourself that you cannot. Again, I could take table tennis as an example. When I played table tennis, I was quite young, and even though I knew yoga, I didn't know very much about how I create my own reality. Therefore, I didn't know how to mentally prepare myself for matches, and especially important matches. Therefore, I could beat almost anybody in practice matches, during summer camps etc, but during the most important competitions, I felt too small, and played thereafter: in an insecure way, that manifested my insecureness, loosing against players that were many levels below my own. Since then, I have learned how to work with my thoughts - to mentally prepare myself to be in the state where I am already mentally doing whatever it is I want to accomplish - and therefore am usually performing at my best during today's "most important matches". If I give a science lecture, if a give a piano recital - as long as I am properly prepared, I will almost always perform much better with the audience in front of me, compared to during my practice rounds. That is because I then can let go, and let my inner inspiration talk through me. Because I can allow myself to drift off to super-inspired gamma states, and not be afraid that things will go wrong. And that is only possible if all thoughts of inabilities have been washed away from my mental patterns: it is only possible if I believe that I can.
So, that was it for this time. I know that I will return to this topic many times in the future. So look at the list above as a first set of principles, as a first stab at creating a good list. As the first step in a continuously improving set of steps towards one of my new long-term goals: to be able to really help others in obtaining their goals!
As everybody not living under a rock has noticed by now, there is currently an incredible media attention around Donald Trump, the now official Republican nominee. I, like many others, have struggled to understand him, and the phenomenon that he embodies. The video above has really made this understanding click in on a new level - and thereby allowed me to at least relax much of my fear of this phenomenon.
The candidacy of Donald Trump has been like no other, and it has filled the entire world with a constant and ever-renewing horror, shock, anger, and fascination over his seemingly never-ending stream of outrageous statements. "Does he really believe these outrageous things that he is saying?", "What will happen to the world if he becomes president?", "How can people vote for this guy?", "How do we stop him?", are some of the questions that people worryingly keep asking themselves.
I myself have also been caught up in this circus, and have pendled between all these emotions - which have led me to seek to understand this whole phenomenon. There have been many important pieces to this puzzle of understanding. The first piece just established how incredible outlandish his statements are, how embarassing they are for the reputation of the US democracy, and how big of a threat this - already now! - they pose to global stability and our preservation of world piece. The second piece has been to see the success of his candidacy as an expression for a strong desire among the general public for change, to vote against the establishment, to express its distrust in the public mainstream media worldview. These desires are overlapping with the desires behind the Sanders campaign, and seen from this perspective, the Trump candidacy is a hope-inspiring reflection of the fact that our society seems to be on the verge of major changes, since media and the establishment no longer can control our worldview. We, the alternative media, we in the bloggosphere et al, are now such an important factor that 2 out of the 3 most prominent candidates, Trump and Sanders, can be outsiders, financed in a non-standard way, and actively fought by the mainstream establishment. It is also important to realize that the Trump campaign is revealing pre-existing views and beliefs that many people have had for a long time, and that now at last have become widely known and now can be dealt with and evolved, i.e. cleansed out of our society (as pointed out by by e.g. Will Smith). However, my most recent - and in some ways also most important - such piece of insight came with the video above.
The old ascetic principle of nailmats also applies to understanding Donald Trump: stand on one (or say one outlandish statement) and you are screwed, stand on thousands (or say thousands of outlandish statements) and it becomes a cleansing experience. (picture from here)
The story in the clip above - as so many other stories I like - starts with a historical perspective. In this case, they have a look at the campaign of John Kerry, who made a statement that in context made perfect sense (to most people), but which out of context could be twisted to something that was a central component in making Kerry lose the election. This example illustrates how careful a politician normally has to be in how he/she expresses himself/herself, so that these kind of misconstrued quotes and clips cannot be made. The story then contrasts this with Donald Trump, who has gone to the other extreme: he has made it a thing to several times a week come with extremely outlandish statements that individually normally would sink any other presidential candidate, but in his case just builds the hype around him. (to understand how this can be possible, I really like the analogy of John Oliver, who compares it to standing on nails: stand on one and you are screwed, but stand on thousands closely adjacent nails and you are fine) In the story, they illustrate this by his latest (at the time of writing) outlandish statement: that Obama literary founded ISIS, and that Clinton was the co-founder. They move to a clip where he says this for the first time, and then to a clip where he is forced to defend his statement in an interview. It is in that interview that the revealing statement comes: he sort of acknowledges that the statement can only be argued to be true figuratively, and that there are other versions of the statement that would serve as more accurate versions (a few days later he even said that he was sarcastic, another of his tactics). To this viewpoint he says:
"But, nobody is talking about your version of the statement, they are talking about mine"
In other words, to Trump it is more important that they are talking about him, than that they are agreeing with his statements. To him it is more important to be seen and heard, to be a celebrity so to say, than to be right. It has often been said that he is our first reality TV politician, and I see now more than ever how this certainly is true: he is more similar to a star in the scandal-ridden Big Brother, than he is similar to a Kennedy. Both a soap opera star and Trump survive in their competitions by creating scandals that puts them among the headlines, and to both of them it is more important to be in the headlines than to provide an accurate depiction of themselves and their actual views. What we are seeing is therefore in many ways the biggest reality show ever seen. I therefore think that the ending to the video is so accurate: Trump has indeed become a master in creating headlines and media attention to himselves; the main question is therefore if he will be able to harness this media attention to achieve the political ambitions that he has got.
Why was this insight, this new piece of understanding clicking into place, such a relief for me? Well, it is primarily because it means that I feel that I at last have a grasp on how to understand the man! What drives him, why is he acting the way he is acting? Things you don't understand how they work, and that for one reason or another are powerful enough to affect things that you care about, are things that easily get your attention. But now I know that it is because he is primarily seeking attention. I know now that it is his outspoken strategy to make overly exaggerated statements to reach the headlines, and make them so often that no single one of them stands out and hurts him, and then after the attention is obtained, soften the statement, so one can believe what one wants about his actual views. (this strategy is also evident in his campaign funding: he spends only a tiny fraction of the amount of money that Hillary Clinton spends on TV-ads - he gets much more in the news than she does anyway!). I know now that this attention in many ways is the end goal for him. And I know now that the question for the rest of us is"how do we want to relate to his strategy, and are we going to let him use this reality TV strategy to win true political power?". This question is a question I very much can live with, and look forward to contributing with an answer to. Now that I understand that that this is what is going on here.
Today, I want to talk to you about cleaning, and about the resistance that is felt in certain yoga processes. In the end, this will lead me to a closer look at the relationship between the yoga principle of following through rituals and processes to the end vs the newer principle of follow your passion and the path of least resistance. I will also outline my current experiment of combining the yoga technique called Shankprakshalana with the modern 30 day detox process by Dr Schultze.
Figure 1: Pippi Longstocking, one of the more famous Swedish fictional characters (here in an English version) has her own particular version of a cleaning period. Imaginative and a re-exploration of an older way of doing the same thing.
Cleaning period
The reason why now is a good time to dive in to this topic, is that I myself am in the middle of an extensive cleaning period. More specifically, I am just back again from a vacation in Amsterdam, and still have a couple of weeks of vacation, which I essentially will spend at home. This is therefore a perfect time for me to do my yearly cleaning period. As usual, this cleaning period involves all aspects of my life: my apartment, my body, my mind, and my habits and visions.
While I could write a lot about all of these things, now I will only talk about one of them: cleaning of the body, and a specific aspect of yoga that this particular cleaning reveals. As per usual, I am doing my body cleaning using something called Shankprakshalana, which is a sanskrit word for a yoga ritual, which means approximately "intestinal cleansing". Intenstinal cleansing means precisely this, one cleans all the inner intestines, and actually even all organs, in the body. How is this done? Using salt water!
Figure 2: The principle of Shankprakshalana: to use physiological salt water to completely empty the whole gastrointestinal tract.
What is Shankprakshalana, and why can it imply resistance?
I will give a more detailed description and tutorial of how to do Shankprakshalana later, but here is a short overview, so that you can understand my main points. The first and main aspect of Shankprakshalana is to drink physiological salt water, which has the same concentration of salt as the body itself has, implying that the body cannot take up the water. In other words, this water just goes through the entire gastrointestinal tract in a short period of time (with the help of some yoga exercises), and is thereafter excreted as feces. After around 4 liters of such water has been drunk and excreted, the gastrointestinal tract is more or less completely clean: no particles are visible in the feces, and it looks like green water. One then goes on to cleaning other aspects of the body, such as the stomach (by drinking about 1 liter of water which one then trows up), the nose (using a neti pot) and the teeth (using an ordinary tooth brush). All in all, this process takes some 3-6h, and is then followed by some additional excercises, and a strict diet, for ideally 4 weeks thereafter. During this diet, the cleansing of the body also progresses to the rest of the organs, and especially the liver and the kidneys, who can secrete their accumulated toxins, since there are no toxins remaining in the gastrointestinal tract.
Now, the thing that I want to talk to you about is the resistance that many people feel to this exercise. Even if you haven't done this yourself, I guess that you can imagine this: in the beginning of the process one drinks much more water in a short period of time than one has ever done before, and it feels like an unpleasent build-up. This build-up is then released, when the flow out through the rear end has started, but before that - especially the first time - this build up is often felt as a weird and unpleasent feeling. "Do you really want to drink even more water?", you can hear the body saying to you. This feeling is even stronger in the cleaning of the stomach, since one then drinks even more water in a very short period of time (about 1 liter in 2-3 minutes), to fill the stomach up completely, before one throws up. I think that most people can imagine that this process has a psychological unpleasentness to it, especially the first time one does it.
Figure 3: The experience landscape in many tantric rituals as it is before any progress or training has been made. One starts out at a relatively high degree of uncomfort and stress (from the life up until this point), but has to go through an increased feeling of unpleasantness (blue arrow) before the ritual has broken through, and the positive effects are felt (green arrow).
Breaking through resistance is central in tantra, and always worth it
Moving on now to the analysis in this blog post, the first thing I want to say that this unpleasantness is only temporary, and worth it. In other words, although it feels like a weird thing to do, and although it might trigger all sorts of psychological barriers (like a resistance to throwing up), this unpleasant feeling partially goes away after the process has reached its next breakthrough. For instance, once the water has been excreted out of the body for the first time, an immediate release is felt, and one can sense that the body feels a little bit more sure that you know what you are doing, and that the build-up of the water won't go on for ever. More importantly, once the entire process is completed, the resulting final feeling is much much better than it was before the whole thing started, and is - in fact - a quite uniquely wonderful feeling: the after-effects of Shankprakshalana are absolutely amazing, one feels incredibly light, and over the coming days the body becomes increasingly more flexible, food tastes more, one has more energy, etc etc.
The second point I want to raise in this analysis is that this feature - initial resistance leading to a breakthrough and eventually to a better feeling than one has ever felt before - is something that is very central to how yoga and tantra works. In other words, many techniques in tantra follow the general principle of Figure 3, and although it might sound strange to some, Shankprakshalana is still a relatively beginner's exercise. In many of the more advanced techniques, much more deep and profound resistances are triggered, awakening deep unconscious fears and mental patterns. In all of these cases, the best attitude after you have decided that you want to do this ritual is the following: let go and follow the laid-out and carefully tested ritual - which has been tested and refined over millenia - i.e.just follow the instructions and just focus on what you are doing right now, this very second. Minor modifications can of course be done, but one achieves the best experience by letting go of the fear-projecting mind: this just increases the resistance. In this laid back experiencing-whatever-comes-feeling, one just lets resistances come and go, and trusts that the reason why one feels this resistance is that the body and mind is not used to going to this particular place. In fact, these resistances are often there actively to prevent you from going to these wonderful places. Therefore, once a tantric ritual has been completed a few times, it is almost always the case that this resistance disappears, and that one immediately recognizes the wonderful place that awaits in the end. So for instance now, already when I taste my first sip of salt-water, my body immediately revels in the recognition and expectation of what is to come, and the intestinal tract quickly and effortlessly switches to flushing-through mode, without first resisting the switch to this mode during an unpleasent build-up time (Figure 4).
Figure 4: In response to a deep examination of the mind, or just be doing the ritual a few times, the unpleasant bump that needs to pass becomes significantly less, and may even disappear altogether. In this way, the tantric ritual-based principles can be merged and understood in a common framework together with the now so common principle of "follow the past of least resistance".
Resistance-breakthrough vs the highest excitement principle
Now we are at last ready for the main thing I wanted to take up in this blog-post: how this ancient tantric principle "breaking through resistance" relates to the today much more commonly heard principles such as "follow your excitement", "follow the path of least resistance", "never follow somebody blindly", etc.
The first thing I want to say to this is that yoga was developed in a very different time than we live in now, and in a very different mindset. Historically, tantric yoga - especially in traditions like the one I have been trained in - have been taught in a rather strict guru-disciple relationship. These teachings have therefore not been anything that has been mass-produced, and the large yoga classes that we see today are very different compared to the more or less one-on-one teachings of old. Because of this exclusivity, the main focus of the teaching has been to not dilute the depth of the knowledge, and to find only those select few (sometimes only one student in a lifetime) that is ready to carry the knowledge onwards. In other words, there has often been a highly strict "screening process", where the guru first wants to see if the potential student really is ready and willing to do what it takes to internalize and discover and cherish all of the knowledge he/she has to offer, and not just a watered-down, quick-and-dirty version of it. Because of this feature, the presence of a resistance in the middle of a process is not something that has been considered a problem in traditional yoga teaching - on the contrary, it can more or less be considered as a central part of the "screening process". However, the tight guru-disciple setting also implies other central things relating to this issue. For instance, the fact that the teacher is so focused on his one or very few students implies that he also is there to monitor all processes, and to ensure that nothing really has gone wrong - even though the student might experience the current situation as extremely troublesome. Another aspect of this is that the disciple usually considers himself/herself in the hands of the guru, i.e. he/she completely trusts the way that the guru is leading him/her on. All of these are key reasons why it has been completely natural to have intermittent phases of build-up of unpleasantness during a process in the original way of teaching yoga.
Figure 5: Sri Yukteswar (left) and Paramhansa Yogananda (right) provide a good example of the traditional way of teaching yoga. Yogananda lived for many years in the house of Sri Yukteswar, and Sri Yukteswar therefore had full control and oversight of all the phases that Yogananda went through in his yoga development. Yogananda was one of the very few disciples that Sri Yukteswar had, and the only one who is known to have stayed with him for any extended period of time. In contrast, Yogananda himself is an example of a modern-day teacher: he went to the US and started many schools and ashrams and he trained thousands upon thousands of students. Now, let's put these perspectives in contrast to the current way of teaching, and the common spiritual paths of today. As already mentioned, most yoga teaching today has done the transition from one-on-one, guru-disciple, many-years, 24/7 relationships to yoga teaching in big classes, ranging from 30 minutes to retreats of up to 30 days. The number of people doing yoga has also grown exponentially, perhaps even super-exponentially: when I started doing yoga in the late 80s, yoga was still a quite suspicious thing to do (almost equivalent to being a member of a cult) but now yoga is something that almost everybody at least has tried a little, and generally has a positive attitude towards. This transition was done in just around a decade, say between 98 and 08. Because of this, much of the original depth has been watered down, and today's yoga teachers can have any degree of shallowness of knowledge one can imagine. In parallell to this growth, there has also been a corresponding growth of yoga-independent spiritual teachers, with a new line of teaching. These new teachers range from very down-to-earth self-help coaches and mindfulness teachers to more exotic and imaginative healers and channeled teachings - and everything in between. I am myself highly interested also in these new line of teachers, who - in my view - has helped to bring down and discover new and more up-to-date types of knowledge, that are more appropriate and easy-to-digest for us in our lives today. A very central theme among these new teachings have been to "follow your excitement", "follow your bliss", "follow the path of least resistance", etc. I generally think that these principles - if corrently understood - are utterly important and sound, and that they also bring us insights that I believe have been lost from the yoga traditions. Let us therefore have a closer look at how these principles relate to the ancient yoga principles, and how they can be merged.
Differences and mergings of the two approaches
First, let us just point out three of the most central apparent differences. (1) it might seem that there is a contrast between the principle of "going through initial resistance and unpleasantness to reach a better place" and "follow the path of least resistance". In other words, it might seem like a person who follows the path of least resistance never would choose to go upstream, as is required in Figure 3. (2) Another important difference is the degree of depth that these different paths go to. The new way of teaching is meant for the masses, and is therefore easy to digest, and applicable for everybody. The old way of teaching has one primary purpose: to not lose the depth of knowledge when moving from one generation to the next. Therefore, the yoga methods go much deeper into its understandings, especially of the human body and what it is capable of, and into the inner realms explored through meditation. To be frank, even though I have a very high degree of respect for several of the new teachers of today and think that they bring invaluable new knowledge to us, their teaching of meditation is extremely shallow in comparison to what I myself have gotten from my yoga training. (3) Another difference concerns the speed of development: yoga rituals can be highly powerful and bring you very far into the depths of your being in a short period of time, whereas "follow your passion" principles are more gradual improvements of your daily life. However, because of this, "follow your passion" and "path of least resistance" developments are - if done correctly - easier to sustain. In a way one can say that yoga-techniques move you to a drastically different place, they through you into the deep water immediately so to say. In that way you can feel what it is like there and see if you can sustain it, by rapidly learning to swim. In most cases one fails, and therefore gradually regresses back to high resistance again, whereafter one needs to do more yoga rituals. Using the same image, the path of least resistance is more like a slow lowering of your body into highly pleasant and perfectly warm water, where you gradually can get used to being there, learning to float and swim in the shallow waters, and then in your own pace move out to the deep waters. This last differences is not so much a matter of right and wrong, but a matter of taste: some people like to go into strong experiences, and feel that they really evolve (at least for a while), and some people like the more soft approach of "go with the flow". However, the best approach - in my view - is to explore how these two approaches can complement each other, and even be merged. There are many aspects of such a merging - and in a way, this merging is really to the heart of what my new yoga school is all about - but let us, for now at least, consider this merging in the case of an initial resistance that builds up in a yoga ritual, such as Shankprakshalana. There are a few ways in which such a ritual can be followed, while still working within the principle of following the path of least resistance. The perhaps most central insight in understanding how this can be possible is to realize that the path of least resistance is about doing the thing that feels like the most natural thing to do in the current moment, like the thing you really want to do - like the thing that calls to you the strongest. In other words, to do the thing that - if you would not do it - it would feel like resistance, like holding back. The first question to ask yourself in this situation is therefore if this yoga ritual is something you want to do? A key aspect of this is of course if the end goal of the process - a cleansed body - is a goal that calls to you? If that goals seems appealing, if that feels like the thing you most of all would like to achieve, then you can start to find out about the ritual, and the teacher. How does it work? Is the teacher somebody you feel confidence for? If you feel confident that the ritual and the teacher both seem sound, if they sound like somebody you would like to interact with in this way, then you are already in a good place to be able to do this ritual using the principle of least resistance. Apart from this, there are many other things one can do as well. One of them is to realize that there is a difference between a physical sensation and the thought about that sensation. A physical sensation is what it is - and it in itself is not a determiner of whether you follow the path of least resistance or not. It is the thought about the sensation that determines that. Therefore, if you can change from a thought like "urgh, this feels really weird", to e.g. "this weird feeling is fascinating, I would normally not continue in this direction, but now I am excited to find out what happens if I do - since I believe that it will bring me to a place I really want to be". This separation between impression and thought about impression is also something that is really to the heart of both yoga and new spiritual teachings - it is one of their most obvious meeting places. I therefore want to point out that there are many yoga techniques that allow you to work the changing of perspective in very powerful ways. In other words, ancient yoga techniques can really strengthen and potentiate your ability to walk down the paths outlined by current teachers. In future blog posts, I will write much more about that.
Figure 6: I have now started the second phase of my body's cleansing process, and this year I have replaced the normal yoga diet with Dr Schulze's herbal cleansing of the liver and kidney's. As you can see, this involves quite a number of supplements, and a crazy amount of oranges and other fruits and vegetables that goes into juices. Fortunately, I am a big fan of freshly squeezed orange juice, so that part suits me just fine! :)
A combination of Shankprakshalana and a modern herbal detox
Here in the end, I just want to give a short outline of how I explore another combination of ancient yoga techniques and new modern techniques: the merging of Shankprakshalana and the 30 day detox by Dr Schulze. Dr Schulze's 30 day detox is in many ways similar to a yoga ritual: it contains a series of instructions that one should follow over an extended period of time. Similarly, in Dr Schulze's technique, which also cleanses the entire intestinal system and several key organs, it is common to percieve some resistance. When his herbal detox-fluids (which only consists of natural organic herbs and vegetables) cause toxins to flow out of the liver, they enter into the blood stream, before they are excreted. Therefore, one can also here percieve an initial sense of resistance, before the ultimate goal of a vital and enjoyable body is obtained.
Moving more into detail, Dr Schulze's 30 day detox programme has 4 phases. The first cleans the intestines, the second the liver, the third the kidneys, and in the end one again flushes out the intestines again. Each of these phases take approximately 5-7 days. The new merged version of his detox that I am doing now is to let Shankprakshalana replace the first of these phases. In that way, one gets an even more potent flushing out of all the content present in the intestines than in his original version, and in this way one also gets an even more potent flushing out of the liver and the kidney's compared to when using the normal yoga diet in Shankprakshalana. In phase 4, I will this year try the intestinal cleansing by Dr Schulze, instead of doing (the short version of) Shankprakshalana again, which would be another option.
This particular combination of yoga and modern techniques is an experiment that I am trying this year for the first time, and I will let you know some more details of how it goes along the way, or at least after it all is finished. So stay tuned for that too! :)
Those of you who have followed me for some time will know that I am a big and growing fan of political satire. Somehow I find it so soothing to hear somebody else say what I myself feel
(sometimes scream) inside, and not only say it, but say it with a joke,
which doubly relieves the tension. There really is something to the
saying: "Laughter is the best medicine". In any case, one of my
favourite comedians nowadays has undoubtedly become Seth Meyers. A
little while ago, he started with a segment of his daily talk show called
"A closer look", and in there he does really old school Jon
Stewart-like commenting on world events. The first time I saw him was a
few months ago, and I liked it already from the start. But he has truly
improved a lot since then, and this last segment below is just on such a
high level: both regarding the analysis and the humour. It really takes
a sharp mind to find a way to twist horrible events so that the issue
becomes crystal clear, but where you at the same time find it
hilariously funny.
I have
really started to appreciate comedy and satire for the highly developed
art form that it is! Hats off from a classical pianist!
I love this: in response to an act of violence - claimed by ISIS - pope Francis made clear in a Q&A session that violence appears in all religions, and that one cannot equate Islam with violence. Violence is violence, and it is perpetrated every day also by baptised Catholics. In response to that, hundreds of Muslims attended mass in several churches and countries the following Sunday, to show their solidarity and brotherhood and sisterhood with their Christian friends on a deep level.
This is the formula:
One act of violence affecting a few => many many more people respond by coming closer together, and share this with the world => we up-humanize (instead of de-humanize) each other, and future acts of violence become less likely, and we feel more at home in the world.
That's the way to respond! Then we are moving our society in a good direction! Then we are using whatever happens in our world to a good end!
(note that I am of course in no way arguing against that the police should keep doing their job to prevent and catch violent people as well - I am just arguing that the above formula is the way to help them a long way in the prevention step)
The first episode of Bassem Youssef's 10-episode series called "Democracy handbook"
As many of
you probably know already, I am a big fan of Jon Stewart, and the whole family
of satirical news that has come out of his series of correspondents: John
Oliver, Stephen Colbert, etc etc. Now, I just discovered a new addition
to this family: Bassem Yousef. Bassim has often been described as the Jon Stewart of
Egypt, where he ran a similar comedy show as a response to the media
malfunctioning in the wake of the Arab Spring. Originally, Bassem was a heart
surgeon, and just like Stewart he has an uncanny combination of being highly
intelligent, really quick at providing comebacks in conversations (an ability I
have always admired with comedians), a good eye for important issues
that are key problems in a society, and just like all of the correspondents in
the Daily Show, Bassem has a wonderful way of using satire and irony to say
what he wants to say, without actually saying it.
Although most people presumably know of Bassem from his appearences on the Daily show, he did in fact not come to the US to become a correspondent in the Jon Stewart
team, but only much more recently. He came as a consequence of his highly popular show in Egypt
being cancelled (by the third rulers in Egypt in recent years, the military, who have turned out to be the most authoritarian of them all...). Because of this cancellation of his show in Egypt, he got an offer to do a new show
on the online channel Fusion. I watched a few episodes of this already, and an
interview with him and Larry King, and I am already convinced that he has brought an
important new voice into the existing satirical arena: one that has first-hand experience of living in a true dictotorship, and of being an arab (and thus a muslim-looking guy) in the West.
In other
words, yet another comedian focusing on politics and current events has entered
into the big family of American satire. This is great – but it also makes me
long even more for a first such top-notch comedian to enter the Swedish (or European) arena.
