Tuesday 4 January 2000

Pic of the day: The mythical "Diary Farm" as seen from the roof of one of the barns. The morning fog has not yet lifted. (Screenshot from the RPG Daggerfall.) In real life the densest morning fog is in my mind...

The clock radio kept yapping for an hour and a half before I woke up. I guess I must have been tired. I vaguely remembered dreams of fighting, and of nearly killing someone who was trying to help me. Once awake, I got dressed and read Nova Notes before hurrying off to work. I don't want once again to write the same things as Al by accident. Of course, I thought as I hurried to the bus, I'll probably end up writing the same as Nancy Birnes of Perforated Lines instead. Sometimes we do that a lot.

'Perhaps the Internet is the physical manifestation of the collective subconsious' I thought as I left the house. 'Or perhaps it is just as the old saying goes: Great minds think alike.' 'Actually, small minds think even more alike' intruded a thought. I smiled at it: 'Well put.' 'It is true, though' the thought insisted: 'Look at how they drink of the same tabloid culture, uncritically. Great minds question what they hear. That is the thing with great minds: They always ask questions.'

A small mind does not always dwell in a stupid brain, though it helps. But any mind that is closed early enough will remain small, stunted in its growth. And that is just too bad, because there is so much to take in.

Occasionally the local neo-nazists will put up posters in town. They use cheap paper and strong glue, so the small black-and-white posters must virtually be scrubbed off. I've seen a few of them. These people are worried. They fear that our country is drowning in crime and confusion, as the norms of the old society are dissolving under the onslaught of cultures very different from our own. Their solution is to restore our culture to its ancient roots, and expel those people who break with our expectations of what it means to be Norwegian: Muslims, blacks, homosexuals, mafia.

If the neo-nazists had been more intelligent, they would have seen that this solution sets us on a wrong path: The path of isolation, which has not been much of a success anywhere it has been used. Not recently, in countries like North Korea. Not in the past, where glorious empires fell because they stagnated while the world moved on. There is no returning to the Viking age: As the saying goes, those who live by the sword are shot by those who don't.

This is certainly not to say that there is nothing worth preserving in any of our traditions. Take for instance the so-called "Protestant work ethics". It is actually somewhat uncertain whether this is connected to Protestantism the religion, or just to the same area, northern Europe including the northern parts of Germany. Basically, people here take some pride in work. They see it as an honor and an obligation, and feel somewhat ashamed of getting money for nothing. This view is not shared by all of the immigrants from other cultures, to the dismay of the natives here.

As I walked past a partly erased nazist poster, I reflected on the sincerity and stupidity of these people. Their reasonable concern deflected by their small, closed minds into a grim parody of the utopia they long for. It is sad, indeed.

The same thing happened to the communists, you know. They wanted to create a heaven here, after their own form. Not content to let clerics entertain them with hopes of a reward somewhere in the great beyond, they wanted righteousness to be done here and now. Yet, I think it can now be agreed that the experiments of communism failed in every instance where it was tried. Dreams are not enough. Activism is not enough. There must also be humility, and lots of it.

You see how my mind works now, don't you? I do have a body and it does move about and live its daily life. But the small things that I experience set my mind racing. They are stepping stones, or rather they are the ground I kick off against as my mind soars up, up and away. Yes, I do live my own life, but at the same time I live the life of the world. I'm worried about getting the flu but also about the economy overheating. Not that I'm panicking on any of these, mind you. I try to fix in my mind a positive outcome and steer towards it cautiously, trusting the invisible hand to back me up.

Today I was out for lunch as usual. As I was returning up the main street, rain started to fall through the sunshine. I looked up, and there it was: The single largest rainbow I've seen in my life, or so it seemed. It was quite slim, but it rose almost to the heights of the sky, and its span was so wide I could not take in both of its legs at the same time. I stopped and stared. Irrationally I remembered the childish notion that there is a pot of gold to be found at the foot of the rainbow. I looked, and its left foot was squarely planted in the office building where I work. In fact, it looked like it may be going straight down into my own office ...
I nearly laughed out loud in the street, standing there in the rain and the sun, staring up at the sky. Then I looked around, and no one else was even slowing down.

A final word about minds great and small. Size is not the only quality. I have met minds that I would say were small, but pure. It is possible for a mind to be closed like a room that is not aired. But it can also be closed like a garden, carefully protected, set aside, cultivated, open upwards rather than sideways. Certainly this is rare, but yes it seems to happen.

I may be shockingly innocent in some ways myself. (You may have guessed that already, so I think I need not go into full details or lack thereof.) Yet even so, there are people who would feel contaminated by the way I merge with the world, the way I seek to understand even that which is less pleasant. I guess there is a price paid to open up in such a way. Is it worth it? I cannot say. By the time you know for sure, there is no way back into the garden. And slowly even memories fade.