Facebook Fading?

There is such a thing as a maximum, even for Facebook. Now, it seems to be declining in the parts of the world where it has the most subscribers. Internet users are an impatient lot – because they can be.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Facebook Fading?

Don't Wanna Stay Alive When You're 25

I was a huge fan of David Bowie in the 1970's, but gradually lost that fascination as the 80's approached. He seemed to lose his edge and that desperation contained within, just barely kept from erupting. I wonder if rock'n'roll is something reserved for the young.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Don't Wanna Stay Alive When You're 25

The Few Get More

The rich ones keep on grabbing more of the world's wealth. One percent of the world population owns 39% of its wealth. Greed is insatiable.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

The Few Get More

Shooting on My Street

Hollywood came to my street in Stockholm. For a day and a night, they were shooting scenes for the Stieg Larsson crime story The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The size of it! Hollywood is a flashmob Caesar.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Shooting on My Street

Religion Has Always Been Doubted

I've just published a new edition of my book about the Greek philosophers and what they thought about religion, their gods, and the myths about them: Cosmos of the Ancients. I was curious about how much they actually believed in their gods. Not much at all, I found.

Generally, we tend to take for granted that in ancient times, doubts about religious matters were almost unfathomable. We expect that the further back in time we go, the less people were able to see through the religious concepts or question them at all. The gods were as real to them as the sky, the sun, and the moon.

I was not so sure of it, considering the nature of the human mind, which has been about the same – as far as we know – for hundreds of thousands of years. That's how long the human brain size has been about the same. This big thing must have been put to use in all kinds of matters, especially those that appeared from inside of it.

We are unable to scrutinize human though in any detail, way back to the stone age, but there are lots of thoughts preserved from Ancient Greece. That's at least some 2,400 years back, in a time where gods were worshipped and myths about them were common knowledge. So, I decided to investigate what the Greek philosophers revealed about their thoughts on religious matters.

They were the finest minds of the time, no doubt, so what they concluded might not have been the views of the common man. But if they were at all able to question the existence of the gods and the accuracy of the myths about them, then all the people of that time would at least have had the ability to do the same. It could not have been beyond their mental capacity.

Indeed, most of the philosophers expressed some kind of disbelief regarding religious views. Several of them were outright atheists, others regarded the gods as symbols of sorts, or imagined supernatural powers of other kinds. Actually, philosophers with a belief in the common myhtology were hard to find.

This might very well be true for any time and any culture. The religious beliefs are not embraced by all, at least not entirely. There has always been doubt and alternative ideas about it all. This needs to be considered wherever religion is studied. We can't take blind belief for granted, even when we go far back or examine a culture where religion seemed to rule the world view. Its rule was probably never absolute.

People's minds wander. They've always done so. The one thing that is the hardest to find, upon closer examination, is consensus. That's probably how we progress at all.

Here's my book about the Greek philosophers and their religious views on Amazon.
It's also a Kindle ebook.
And here is more information about the book on my website.

The Anguish of a Writer

The last month or so, I've been struggling with an old novel of mine, editing it for a new release. The struggle has been one of extreme doubt – should I really publish this book again, or let it continue its merciful sleep in oblivion?

It's a stone age story I wrote already in the late 1970's, which was published in Sweden in 1982 as Evigheten väntar (Eternity Awaits). See the cover of the book above. Already the title reveals its weakness – a tendency towards the overly sentimental and melodramatic. The text is quite pretentious at times, with wordings that reek of poetic gluttony.

It was intentional, in a way, since my aim with the book was to explore what kind of meaning stone age people found for their life, and how their brains, already at least as big as ours, perceived their world. They did not just live their lives, but indulged in them, marveled at the wonders of the world around them, and meditated their own beings with amazement.

Still, that made the text heavy with exaggeration and sticky with ornamentation.

So, when starting to edit the novel, some 30 years after it was written, I went through quite a lot of anguish. Could this firework of a text at all be edited into something readable?

I did what I could, without changing the novel into some other story. It was an edit, not a rewrite, although the idea of the latter was sometimes tempting. I made a number of little changes on just about each and every page, and still it felt thick with the kind of sentiment that almost turns itself into parody.

Several times I considered giving it up, and turn my attention to another script instead. I have a few to choose from. But with a persistence that got its energy from frustration instead of any strength of my character, I carried on until the last page. The script had gotten quite messy from all the marks of my pen, and it took a while to type all the corrections into the Word file.

I made a PageMaker file of the text, still very unsure of its quality, and started sketching on a cover design. That was some kind of comfort. I always enjoy making the book design, deciding on typography, caring about page breaks, and so on. That can be more pleasing than writing the book. It was certainly the case with this one.

When I was ready with that, I printed the whole thing out on paper, to have one last editing session with it. This final reading I usually do on restaurants, coffee shops, train rides and such, just to get out of my home.

On a local restaurant that I frequent regularly, a friend got curious about the manuscript and asked if he could have a look at it. This friend is a priest, struggling with his daily professional duties, which can be grim at times, as well as with his own faith and its collisions with the flawed institution that is his church. I value his opinion, since he has put in a tremendous effort to reach it.

Now, he opened the script and read the first few lines out loud. They contain a very comprised creation myth of sorts, as told by the book's main character, and how it sort of leads to his own birth and emergence in the world. It plays on the word “föda”, which means both breed and feed. Here it is, in a rough translation from the Swedish original:

I am.
Now, I command my spirit.

Mountain breeds sand, breeds soil. Soil breeds the trees, which breed all the animals. The animals breed the people. People breed people and nothing more.

People bred me, Imri, the last. I remember how I slipped out of the embrace of my maternal flesh. It was cold, but light came and warmed by body. The sun dried my skin.

And so on.
The priest was pleased, and so was I. He said several kind words about the poetic expressions and found them delightful. To my surprise, so did I. For a few months, I had worked so hard on the editing that I had forgotten to taste the words and let them get to me. Now they did.

He read a few sentences here and there in the manuscript, and we both felt the pleasure remain. Not only did the decorated text make sense, but I found that it was enjoyable. It was not over the top, at least not more so than needed for the story it had to tell.

What I had not been able to discover by myself was obvious through the medium of my friend's reading. Actually, he could have done it in silence, and it would have worked the same. When I allowed him to read it and watched him doing so, I was suddenly aware of the text's qualities and my belief in it. My anguish disappeared and I thanked my frustrating persistence, which had all along known better than my mind did.

So, now I will hurry to get the book published. But I will change the title – and the cover.

Characters With Character

Now that Charlie Sheen is fired, I don't see how the sitcom Two and a Half Men can possibly continue. They'll probably try it, but the circle is broken. That perfect set of characteristic characters can't be rearranged.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Characters With Character

Skateboard Shadow

I had the idea of taking photos of shadows. I took some, but then other things got in between. But here is one of them – a skateboarder nice enough to jump for me. He had to do it over and over, before I got it right.

Sometimes I pull out my camera and stroll around town with a certain theme in mind. One was closeups, one was autumn leaves, a recurring theme has been water, and so on.

Shadows can be intriguing, so I decided to make a theme of it, a couple of years ago. I took a few photos, but then life got in the way. I have taken an occasional shot or two on that theme since, but I still don't have enough of them to make a gallery on my website.

So, here's a peak preview of what might become a gallery of shadow photos. On a local skateboard park, one of the young skaters was gracious enough to do his jumps until I got a photo I was pleased with. We had to do it twenty times or so. He had patience.

Here's the photo I like the most in that series. Click on it to see an enlarged version.

Bland Leads Dull Glee

The TV world has its own natural laws, some of them more difficult to understand than those of Einstein's relativity and string theory. I often wonder about casting. Especially those who get to play the lead roles are frequently chosen as if failure is the goal. Glee is a typical example of this.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Bland Leads Dull Glee

A Ratatouille of the Heart

Last night, I watched Ratatouille again. It's a charming animated film. For me, it's particularly amusing to see the devilish portrayal of Ego, the restaurant critic, since I was one for twelve years. Not like him, I hope, but that's for others to decide.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

A Ratatouille of the Heart

Olof Palme – the Swedish JFK

Today it's 25 years since the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot to death on a Stockholm street, leaving the country in a shock that we're still not completely over. There are many similarities to his fate and that of John F. Kennedy, as well as the traumatic effect these assassinations had on Swedish and US society.

The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Olof Palme - the Swedish JFK

It's All Real - the World According to the Tao Te Ching

I recently published my English version of the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching. As an appetizer, here's the start of the first chapter of the book. This is where Lao Tzu, the legendary writer of the book, sets out his cosmology and the basic principles behind his world view. It's not an easy text to interpret in its Chinese origin, nor to translate into another language with any confidence. Not to mention grasping its ideas. So, this is how I see it. Others may see it very differently.

1
The Way that can be walked is not the eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of all things.

Therefore:
Free from desire you see the mystery.
Full of desire you see the manifestations.
These two have the same origin but differ in name.
That is the secret,
The secret of secrets,
The gate to all mysteries.

It’s All Real
Lao Tzu begins his writing about Tao, the Way, by stating that the written word cannot fully encompass the real thing. The workings of the Way are hidden behind what we can observe. It was present at the dawn of time and the birth of the universe, but it’s visible only through what has been created out of it, in accordance with it: the whole world and all its creatures. Tao is the Way the universe works...

Here is my full commentary on this Tao Te Ching chapter:
Tao Te Ching Chapter 1 Translation and Commentary


(The image above is the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching in Chinese, the Wang Pi version.)

Here is more about my English version of the book:
Tao Te Ching – The Taoism of Lao Tzu Explained
Here is the book on Amazon:
Tao Te Ching on Amazon
It's also a Kindle ebook:
Tao Te Ching – Kindle ebook

If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

Was the Old Man a Woman?

Working on my English version of the Tao Te Ching, I speculated on the age old questions about the identity of the old man said to be the writer of the text. An intriguing possibility gnawed on my mind – what if the old man was in fact a woman?

Tao Te Ching, the classic on Taoism, repeatedly expresses preference of the traits traditionally linked to the female – such as humility, care, and yielding instead of struggling to take the lead. This was quite unusual in China at the time of the text's appearance, which would be somewhere during the 6th to the 4th century BC.

Legend has it that the writer was Lao Tzu, a man who had worked as a civil servant at the court of the emperor. When he got old, he left the court and the country, riding a water buffalo. A border guard convinced him to write down his wisdom, before leaving the country for good. This he did, and the result is the Tao Te Ching.

Nothing is known for sure about the man. Lao Tzu simply means Old Master, as if his own name didn't matter. Some annals claim that he was an older contemporary of Confucius, but that can be discussed. Many modern scholars doubt that he existed at all. They believe that the Tao Te Ching is just a collections of proverbs and such.

The title Lao Tzu, Old Master, might also be plural – the Old Masters. That would argue for the book being a collection of proverbs from here and there in Chinese tradition. The title also lacks gender specification. The Old Master might just as well be a woman.

Many historians and other experts on ancient China would object that a female author of this or any other classic is highly unlikely. Maybe so, but definitely not impossible. We probably have no way of knowing for sure, but I like the idea.

There is something about the mildness of the Taoist philosophy, the compassion of the Taoist ideals, and the soft words by which they are expressed in the Tao Te Ching, that suggest a female writer. Men in those days, mostly also today, have had a tendency to proclaim their wisdom much more firmly, announcing it proudly. They usually reason and argue quite categorically, without any hesitation.

Certainly, there's nothing ruling out a male writer of the Tao Te Ching, either. Most writers up until the last couple of centuries have been male, in every part of the world. But not all of them. This could be one exception.

In any case, the Tao Te Ching is surprisingly soft-spoken and pensive, for a classic that has become one of the most prominent texts of ancient wisdom. Whether male or female, we should all be more like Lao Tzu.

Here is more about my English version of the book:
Tao Te Ching – The Taoism of Lao Tzu Explained
Here is the book on Amazon:
Tao Te Ching on Amazon
It's also a Kindle ebook:
Tao Te Ching – Kindle ebook

If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

Tao Moving

Yesterday, I finally finished the work on my English version of the Tao Te Ching, and uploaded the files to the publisher. The book will be available on Internet bookstores in a few days - both as a Kindle ebook and in regular print.

If I may say so, myself, I am very pleased with the result. I managed to get the translations of the 81 Lao Tzu chapters as clear and simple as intended, which is how I perceive the Chinese original. Also, my comments on each chapter didn't feel out of place, when I was proof reading. Now, I am eager to see if future readers will agree or not.

So, if you come across the book and have a look at it, please let me know what you think about it. As soon as the book is out on Amazon, I'll put links to it on this blog.

The image above is the book's cover.

Added February 13:
Now, the book can be ordered at Amazon and other Internet bookstores. Here are links to it:
Tao Te Ching at Amazon US
Tao Te Ching as a Kindle ebook
More about the book

In the Stillness of Tao

My long silence on this blog is due to intense work on my English version of Tao Te Ching, the Chinese Taoist classic.

I'm almost ready with it, now, so I take a few minutes to write this message. I still have some editing to do, and the introduction is not completed. But I hope to have the book out in a few weeks.

I will let you know, here and elsewhere. In the meantime, you find more about Tao Te Ching and my version of it here:
Taoistic.com