What the hell is wrong with organized religions?

I have been thinking of religions lately. Partly because of this entry (I was linked by my friend Vlad, who apparently has rather good grasp on things I like), partly because couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came to visit the Residence the other day. I was not around, but apparently they knocked on each flat door and asked from which countries the inhabitants are from. They then gave Watchtowers and Awake!-magazines in the languages of the countries mentioned. So now I have religious magazines in Finnish and English on the kitchen table.

I don't much base for organized religion. I trust the scientific approach as far as our normal life goes, and I quite agree with the idea of evolution and Newtonian physics (yes, I know they only apply as long as the objects travel slower than 10% of speed of light). When we step outside the area that can be observed and verified directly by our senses, I get a bit unsure. They say that it all started with a Big Bang, which seems like a sensible conclusion from the known facts. The same goes for post-Einstein physics. They say it allows pretty much everything from time travel to reaching distant stars in days. This may very well be so, and I do know that CD-players would be impossible to manufacture without Einstein's theories.

But when you start to think about it, REALLY think about it; the universe is so huge and big and infinite. There are no borders but it expands all the time. And every material is coming from the same spot and has just spread around. There may be evidence to support it - and I do want to believe - but it's too big. And the same goes for the religious alternatives.

But to be honest, I'm not very concerned. Some days I feel that there might be something out there, and on some days I don't. In general, I feel that it's more important to know what's inside than outside. And whatever you believe, they are your beliefs and don't really belong to anyone else. If I discover something that works to me, the last thing I want to hear is that I'm wrong. Incidentally, Lutheran church (at least in Finland) is pretty cool with the subject. Apparently they (we?) have priests who don't believe in Hell. And priests that only believe in God as a symbol for human goodness. And priests that don't believe that women can be priests, which pretty well shows the other side of the tolerance-argument, but I digress.

I do read about other religions; believes often tell something important about the culture and the person itself. And so I was reading Finnish Awake! at the kitchen table, while I was eating my breakfast müsli. I admit that I dont know much about Jehovahs Witnesses, other than they go from door to door and nobody seems to like them. It's all very vague.

There was a longish article in Young people ask-series titled Why is it wrong to date in secret?. It was basically the moral story of Jessica, with additional quotes and explanations from the Bible. Jessica's story goes as follows;

Jessica had to do a choice. Everything started when one of her classmates, Jeremy, told he was interested in her. Jessica says: "He was very good looking, and my friends said that you will never find a guy as honourable as him. Many girls were interested in him, but he only had eyes for me".

After a time, Jeremy asked Jessica out. She tells: "I explained to him that I am a Jehovah's Witness, and that I could not date anyone who was not a Witness. But then Jeremy got an idea; we could date without telling my parents.

[...] Surprisingly, Jessica accepts Jeremy's idea. "I was sure that if I dated him, I could make him love Jehovah", she says. [Then] Jessica [...] heard about another Christian girl in the same situation. "When I found out that she had ended her relationship, I knew what I had to do", Jessica says. Was ending the relationship easy? No! "He was the only boy who I had ever truly cared about", Jessica says. "I cried every day for weeks."

Jessica also knew something else: she loved Jehovah, and even if she had gotten sidetracked, she genuinely wanted to do what was right. In time, the pain went away. Jessica tells; "my relationship with Jehovah is now better than ever. I am really thankful that he gives to us at the right time the kind of guidance we need."

(From Herätkää!, June 2007)

The girl cried for weeks and imagine what the boy felt like. I don't really know what the teaching of the story was - other than "cults are bad for you, mmkay?" - But I'd like you to imagine what it would be like if there is no Witness community on the area. The article also mentions that dating is forbidden altogether if the people aren't old enough to marry and prepared to do so after relatively short dating.

Religion is what you make of it, what you believe in. You can try to convince others to believe in the same way, but it's rather inhuman to make people live in a way that makes them unhappy. Denying something purely because somebody says you should does sound a bit perverse for me, just because somebody may have probably said something against it, possibly, 3 000 years ago. As such I really like the relaxed attitude of the ground-level Lutheran church; the higher ups are not as much fun (few years ago they fired an employee for being gay).

I am, of course, a product of my society, and of my generation. People talk about traditions, values and history. Personally I think that for them to carry on, they should have some other things for going for them than just age. And not everything old is bad, but that story sends chills down my spine. Actually, I felt pretty bad for few days. The worst thing is that they didn't even think Jeremy's feelings were worth exploring. The only important thing is that Jessica had gotten closer to God!

Diary

Memory is a terrible thing. It alters and simplifies our recollection, making us heroes of our own lives. We forget our failures. Different occasions merge together and sometimes the timeline of events goes all topsy-turvy as our brain tries to make stories out of singular events.

My first venture into keeping journal wasn't voluntary. I was seven years old and I had problems with learning to write Finnish. I had been out of the country for two years, studying and reading in English (as well as one aged six can). Coming back to homeland and learning to write in language with different grammar proved to be problematic. My mother bought me a calendar book and forced me to write an entry for every day, even though I had very little interest in doing so.

First time I tried writing one voluntarily was when I was ten. I was spending my summer in Nicaragua, and thought that it might be a good idea to record events from a time that would surely be unlike any other in my life. After the first two weeks, the entries started to get shorter. After three weeks, they were just a list of verbs. Soon I stopped completely.
I tried again four years later, for the same reasons as above. The entries were longer, but during the two and half months I only got twenty pages into A5-notebook. I spent weeks without writing anything - though to be fair, the summer was pretty uneventful.

During this time in my life, I was sure that I was already emotionally as adult as I would ever be, and that the memories of those days would never fade. Thus I didn’t keep a diary, a thing I can’t deem as good or bad. The memories did fade, but I suspect that they were nothing in particular I would want to remember. On the other hand, this was the time of my life when I created many of the quirks I now have. Would be nice to know why I originally avowed not to use alcohol or why I disliked a person whose company I three years later looked quite forward to.

I wrote my first long, emotional text when my first relationship crashed. I was feeling awful. For reasons I don’t remember I opened Notepad and started writing. I must have filled two or three pages, and I remember how it surprised me that I couldn’t lie to myself as I did in my head. Half-truths that made sense in my mind looked so thin on paper. I had to tell my feelings and situation as a story, which forced me to question things you normally brush over in your head, as you are more occupied with the present state of affairs.
I wrote for two hours, after which I password-protected the file. I probably have the file still somewhere on my hard drive, but I have not taken a look. While I was more truthful, I have no illusions that I would have been any less naïve.
Reading the file again would also surely hurt, if for different reasons than then. Written word always reflects the ways we think – never more than when we write about our personal problems. I am not sure I want to face the person I was then – even if it would be a moment of growth as a human being.

Last summer I got a book from my mother with hard red covers and full of blank A4-pages. Mum meant me to use it for drawing – I was just finishing my fourth book – but I found the paper was too glossy for that. The ink didn’t stick to the paper needing up to five minutes to dry.
The book rested on my shelf for few months till I found myself depressed by worries of the future, family and matters of heart. I could not separate the feelings in my head, leaving me unable to function. I was in sorry state for few weeks till it occurred for me to take the book down from the shelf and start writing.
This was over half a year ago, and to date I have finished 107 entries. Some of the entries are written very carefully, with every alphabet carefully placed precisely where intended. Some are written hurriedly, with big and half-formed words scrawling over the pages like fat snails. But I kept writing about my experiences, thoughts, worries and hopes, even when I was tired, sick, angry or feeling my heart would burst from grief.

It helps to write things down when you have a problem; just having it on paper changes it to something more akin to to-do list. Matters of heart become solid, making them easy to touch. Often writing it down even offered solutions that were earlier nowhere to be seen.
It helps to write things down even on a normal day; you never know when you want to know of some detail that would otherwise escape your memory, or remind yourself how you felt about different people.
And finally, it stops you from making stories out of your life. Going trough the pages you can see what was important to you then, and how you felt about different subjects. Seeing how things unfolded gives you a change to learn of them more effectively than by just recalling.
Alas, it also offers exellent list of mistakes you make. Where you trusted the wrong people and where you made a mistake that only manifested months later.

But, all in all, I love my diary with red covers. It has probably improved my life more than any other singular item ever in my possession.

What did I want to be when I grew up?

This is a looking-back post. In a way, it's a decade report about where I was ten years ago and where I am now. I think it's very personal text about, basically, how I became me. You might wonder why I write it here, on a public blog (ha ha) where anybody (hah) might see it instead to the privacy of my own diary journal. I leave you with that question for now, and give answer at the end; after reading these things about me, it might make more sense.

I imagine all of you have seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The film has a part where, with flashbacks, we learn how Jones became archaeologist, how he started to fear snakes, how he got named Indiana and where he got his style.
And you could see all this from following him on one important day of his life. Somehow it was so easy. You are a kid with no plans of future, and then you experience something important and suddenly you know who you want to be in twenty years.
In real life, it all happens gradually and is - at least it was for me - full of pain.

Ten years ago I was doing my last days at lower compulsory school. Back home the summer between lower and upper compulsory school is pretty much the difference between child (12) and a teenager (13).

I was not well liked. My family had moved to the town a year earlier, and I only had two friends in the school; I suspect they might not have liked me very deeply, and only were in my company because you have to have something to do during the breaks. After the summer, I did not see them again.
There were over 38 people in our class; our home class was an old (and small) gymnasium, built in the fifties, which had fallen in disuse after they had built another school building next to ours to accommodate the growing student body. I could not name half the people in my class.

Imagine me then, in the early summer of 1997. I was often ridiculed for my choices in clothing (dictated by comfort), when the "cool guys" wore hip-hop jeans with wide enough trouser legs to get the whole waist in.

Upper compulsory school was not nice either. Around me everyone was reinventing themselves, becoming hiphoppers, beauty queens, rockers, jocks.
And I was lonely. The people I knew earlier had gone to other schools. I wasn't able to make any connections to new people during the first two years, and so I sat next to classroom door waiting for the teacher arrive. Sometimes I read novels, sometimes history or geography.
The lack of social contact had left me awkward and shy, and the fear that somebody would stop me in the middle of too long explanation had gotten me to the habit of talking fast.

Because I was not "in" in the popular culture of the time, I hated it. Backstreet Boys, radio hosts, programs in television. Media in general. If somebody asked, I was more than happy to share my feelings. I hated being me; disliked kid who was nervous of doing the wrong things in case it would be noticed and somebody would make jokes, or hit me on the back.

I got friends, and I got to upper secondary school. Most of the more brainless people were filtered to the ranks of the unemployed and the student body of vocational school. Life was better, but I was still very tightly wounded. I had started to define myself by what I was NOT, leaving me a bit hollow. I didn't drink, and I didn't smoke. I didn't go outside on Friday-evenings but stayed home. Perfect wallflower.
I got few friends, the first that I actually retained after I got out of school. Some of them smoked, some of them drunk heavily, one had interesting ideas about relationships.. But most of all they were happy to listen to me even if I didn't make much sense, and introduced me to things that they thought I would enjoy. I got much more relaxed and happy, and started thinking that maybe it wasn't important to be like everyone else or blend to the background. I started imaging what kind of person I would like to be.

Four years later I think I'm nearly there. I have forced myself into situations that I have wanted to do, but earlier felt were too rowdy, unfamiliar or just afraid of. I'm more open about things I like and seldom bother to hide my interest in things that take my fancy, were they cartoon shows for kids, graveyards or human body shapes. And I stopped making excuses to cover myself.

Maybe all this is a small thing for someone else.. maybe to others deciding these things is easy. It wasn't for me. I started thinking how much I had changed, and I wanted to have it on black and white. Words and printed text have more power than thoughts, even if you are only speaking to yourself. That's why diaries are such a powerful tools.

I always thought that when speakers came to the school talking about things being easier when you are older, that they were lying. That the feeling on the background would never change. I am happy to notice I was wrong.

The one with tech-porn

Good day again, my friends!
Yes, it has been a while, and I'm fairly certain I don't have any readers - at least I don't get any comments. Some tech-things related to my life;

#1. GAIM is now Pidgin. Apparently AOL didn't like the fact that GAIM and AIM sound the same (even if GAIM predated AIM), so with the final of version 2.0 out, they changed the name. I think it works rather well, and I like the fact that they have hidden protocols out-of-view in the GUI. It looks pretty, slim and efficient. This is pretty much what I would hope ICQ or MSN would look like. My only problems with the program (apart of the fact that Skype and Google Talk isn't supported) is that there is no VoIP, meaning I still have to have MSN Live Messenger (that overbloated piece of shit... pardon my French) on my computer.
For those who it may concern; yes, I find the program stable. Meaning that the crashes are way less regular than those of MSN LM and that it handles net outages in very courteous manner, unlike it's predecessor GAIM 1.5

#2. I found Google Reader. Everybody else might have gotten on with the program months ago, but this was a new find for me. I haven't really gotten used to RSS/Atom-feed - I found the notification systems of tried programs very clunky (I might have done something wrong) - but this changed everything. Basically it treats blog posts in a similar manner than Google Mail treats email, giving the impression that the posts are sent to YOU, instead of YOU going to THEM. Of course, this is the whole basis of the RSS-feed, but it only today clicked for me. Removing ten bookmarks from the side panel (which I always keep open) meant that I don't have to scroll anymore. And I don't have to obsessively go through the links when I'm bored and can't motivate myself to go outside. So it's great.

#3. I heavily stripped down my account at IRC-Galleria. Mainly because it had changed from it's original function (user database of Finnish IRC-users) to MySpace Finland. Again, the customer profile has changed; from Internet-savvy 20something to trendy 12-16 year old. The site has also changed from group hobby to serious enterprise. Of course, I think it's great that the people get money from their hobby-turned-work, but the increase in ads, competitions and change in userbase made it rather embarrassing to log in at public places - or ,indeed, to even have an account.
The name of the site also has caused some problems as regular users think they are "ircing" when they are using the service. When corrected, they emphatically admit that there is this thing called "irc" but that these days the word mostly refers to the site. Sometimes they suggest that old-fashioned ircing should in fact be called "mircing". The new usage of the word is even spreading to newspapers (who are unaware of the history) and common consciousness trough the interviews done with site users. But I digress. Let us just say that the greatest monument of the change is that they now have an information sheet for concerned parents, who come to the site while researching the activities of their children.

#4. I installed Picasa, mainly because of my leave from Finland destroyed my FTP-account (that was part of the Internet-subscription) and the computer magazine (named MikroBitti) that gave me another one merged with audio/picture elitist mag named Hifi, changing the reader focus outside my area. You can probably gather that I no longer have subscription.
I'm sure that the company thought it was sensible move, but I'm understanding that many of the readers feel differently. So, put together with #3 I had no place where to put my photos and pictures for show. Basically it's a (very good) photo organizer that you install to your hard drive, and from where you can upload stuff to your Google account on Internet. You have one gigabyte for pictures and ability to create infinite amount of photo albums, which you can choose to keep private or "half-public", for your friends. I suppose you can use the service without installing anything, but don't quote me on that. Anyway, my account can be found here.

#5. Greasemonkey. I have been aware of this few weeks. The idea of Firefox ad-on which modifies the way individual sites look like with scripts didn't really speak to me, until I heard of few very good examples.
It is excellent on occasions when the site-developer won't for monetary reasons (removing ads), user-reasons (script does something not in the interest of mainstream user, like removing comments from YouTube) or legal reasons (like Google Image linking to pages and not individual pictures). Sometimes the problem is purely mistake on the site's part; Google Mail has incorporated several features first brought up in the scripts.
The scripts also work in Opera, and some in Internet Explorer 7 (God have mercy on the idiot who actually uses it from free will).

So, what have you been up to? Want to link me to something cool?