Before you take on the World

Before you decide to take on the world..

That jungle ut there is for you to pass lightly, if you decide to cut down all the tangles stronger weeds will grow in places you least expected. If you can transcend these paths..

The Jungle is your challenge, it is there until you are certain that your actions lead to positive thinking. All change bears at least two reactions - for instance positive and negative reactions. Apart from that you’ll have a great spectrum of reactions. Make thus sure, that most of these reactions have positive influence.

To deem every opinion as false only denies the possibility to see the face of truth behind these opinions. Truths can sometimes be interwoven in lies, but if you keep your heart sincere you’ll be able to see through the false entanglements.

If you want to get through this jungle, I suggest you even try to seek the abyss of knowledge before you decide to take on the world - who knows, you might realize your true will was aiming at something different?

True revolution that leads to a harmonious society will first be realized when we choose to embrace life to the fullest, and question ourselves and the outer world. To live side by side with death is necessary, since it reminds us of what is important in life.

the inhibitory effect of representative democracy

Leaders as scape-goats

The desire to be lead, to have a leader governing a populus, has striking similarities with the phenomena of scape-goating. In a sense leaders become scapegoats. Scapegoating has a ritualistic significance in ancient Hebrew tradition. I am referring to the Goat of Azazel. The goat was dragged away from a village and tossed into a ravine. That's the short version of it all. The ritual was part of a more elaborate ritual, where a goat was sacrificed to God, and another was killed denoting the symbolic expulsion of sin in the community. The entire ritual in itself mimics the myth of the demon Azazel and his insurrection against God, but that is a completely different story. An anthropologist would claim that the sins of the village's populus were ritually cleansed during the sacrifice to Azazel, human “error” is thus sublimated. When voting for a person that is to represent our needs and make decisions for us, we actually are in a sense re-enacting this ritual. For we are actually aware of the fact that “politicians” will make promises, and not be able to live up to all of them. It is quite often that people vote tactically; I.e choosing the party that they find to be less bad than the other, even though somewhere there is still The ritual enactment of this follows: We choose someone else to make decisions we find hard to make. Would this same person make the wrong decisions we take the opportunity of putting blame on this person. That's right, blaming authorities is an act of scape-goating, but normally when we hear this word “scapegoat” we think of people blaming a specific person, or perhaps a group of people that are in no greater position of formal power; immigrants, the rich, the poor, the criminal – or perhaps we put the blame on something less material like; “Our culture denies us from talking about this issue” or “In our society we are so stressed that we fail to handle certain problems in society”. Sure, sometimes the blame might be legitimate to certain extents, but we rarely think of the instant that we are choosing scape-goats to represent us in government. On an individual basis psychologists would say that putting the blame on someone else is a form of defence mechanism. Often do we hear that “that which dislike in others, reflect something in you”. And the psychologist would say that the day a realises this, he or she actually can develop as human being. It's a matter of recognizing one's own short-comings. In essence, realising one's own flaws, one grows as a human being. Growth is there for derived from misstake, and from fixing the problem. If we decide to have other people making decisions over us and govern the structure of our society we giving away our own possibility to grow us human beings, and in effect, as a society as whole. This mechanism is quite simple really; There are problems I as a member of society cannot take care of, nor might I actually care about them, I choose someone to make decisions regarding the problem, and if he1 fails to solve the problem, and the problem starts to annoy us we normally resort to a few set of choices: doing nothing, saying oh well, society is fucked up and there's nothing I can do about it get really annoyed and decide to vote for another party trying to encounter the problem from a civic/activist angle ventilate all that frustration through some other channel, or maybe even avoid the problem. Some of these alternatives can be combined of course, but I dare say that most people resort to alternatives 1,2 and four. The learning cycle of all of this is quite simple; We have a problem we choose someone else to deal with the problem this someone else fails to do so(or maybe solves the problem, but creates a new one in the process) the problem remains, or is maybe even worse after the change of government we realize that we made the wrong choice when voting and choose some else to solve the problem.... again. Since we as voters are at such a participatory distance from the problem-solving, we also fail to understand the complete complexity of what is needed to be done. In other cases we will talk about how the problem is to be solved, but we talk about it maybe during a coffee-break at work, or maybe when we are at the pub. But since we are not participatory in the process of dealing with the problems, we ourselves are not in the possibility to even make errors in our problem-solving. And since we are not in the position to even make misstakes, we will not learn from our misstakes. We will not have the direct experience of our misstakes and errors. And since we don't have this experience in us, we will also not work better to find a solution. And in the long run, society's problem solving takes on a really really sloooooow pace. If society would be a psychologists patient, the psychologist would basically think; “this one is really attacking the problem from a really narrow angle, and is really making slow progress”. So in order to grow, these leaders might not always be the answer.

About Pralaja - Premisses and Views

About Pralaja -Views and Goals

The purpose of this magazine is to break limits and destroy worldviews. It will try to counterfeit simplified writings and give the reader a chance to re-evaluate her/his fixed perception. The point is to provide the reader with so many different views of perception that will in turn show that things aren't that black and white that media in general try to convey to us. So a general purpose is to dissolve foregone conclusions and paradigms.

A problem that can be found in both academia or various cultural groups, is that quite often do we use several common concepts, but ascribe different meaning to these concepts. So practically speaking, a meeting between two groups of people can involve two different discussions, even though both groups believe that they are talking about the same thing.

Quite often do I hear that one is to have ”simple texts” so that ”people can understand”.. but I am getting fed up with indirectly being told that ”people” are to be seen as stupid that can't think for themselves, and that they are afraid of new thoughts. I want to make a mag that gives people the opportunity to constantly learn a new perspective,
”What do the liberals want?” ”why do people engage in civilian disobediance?” ”What does cognitive theory say about consciousness?” ”How does a hindu view the human psyche”?
The point is to give a broad array of perspective on a common theme;

Allow me to demonstrate:

Imagine the theme is ”the individual”. On one page you'll find a liberalistic view of the individual, with its pertainiting perspectives and values. The next page will give a anarchistic view on individualism. After that you'll find a page where anthropologists will explain how the concept of the ”individual” is a social construct. After that you'll read about how a buddhist describes the ego, and that the ego and the individual in itself is an illusion!
This sort of flow in the reading will provide the reader a constantly new perspective and somewhat of a mental bitchslap, and hopefully an Aha!-experience. The perspectives that will be presented are thus not limited to politics, but can just as well range from scientific, psychological, spiritual or cultures models.

Possible writers could be anyone who wants to practise their own article-writing, students, and/or free-lancers, etc. People with artistic talents are also welcome to show their own artistic talents, be it photography, poems, novels etc.

Apart from the paper format the texts are to be discussed on forums. This would enable discussions between people with different points of views and values, and hopefully a new understanding will grow for these various perspectives. From this perhaps a seed for yet another perspecitve can be sown. If you are interested in participating? Get in touch.