⛧ Random Thoughts ⛧
27th of November, LV A.S.
I was wondering earlier today
(while trying to avoid my school work)
about the corruption of media.
Media's job in the democratic countries is to keep the powerful in line
and informing the people if they go against their wishes,
right?
At least this is what we were taught in school.
But isn't this a terribly idealistic view on the media?
I'll write more about this subject in a seperate post later on.
This post will explain some of my previous thoughts leading up to the corruption.
In democracies,
the people are deciding about the important matters that affect their lives,
at least in theory.
So who holds the power?
One might be eager to say it's the people,
it does sound obvious at first after all.
However, think for a little bit.
How much do you really know about politics and events that are happening in the world?
How rooted in reality are your opinions and views,
what do you base your decisions on?
If you do think you know a lot,
then congratulations!
You are, or at least think you are,
part of the very small minority of the humanity.
A fact that probably most people can admit,
is that the people know very little.
Who has time to follow every politician's and goverment's tricks and conflicts,
when they need to get some food on the table and maybe even
actually enjoy their short lives on Earth every now and then?
So the citizens are generally quite badly informed on matters they're
supposed to vote and make decisions on.
Perhaps they understand the matters in their immediate surroundings,
but anything even little more complex or on larger scale is beyond their grasp.
The ignorant voters are making their decisions based on the little knowledge that they do have.
Votes are cast based on a 15-minute interview on TV.
The power isn't wielded by the people,
but by those who control the information and with it the people's opinions.
Politicians and the like can of course do this to some degree,
but even they are largely at the mercy of the media.
Media decides who gets interviewed.
Who is portrayed as a serious person and who isn't.
Who is the good guy and who is the devil.
Media decides who and what the people are supposed to support,
and what they're supposed to oppose.
Perhaps the (mainstream) media truly is one of the greatest wielders of power
in modern democratic societies.
If this is indeed the case,
then we are more than justified to say that the idea of the media
as a protector of the people against misuse of power,
is one of the greatest lies told to us
by our school system and society.
Listening to people talk about this subject,
one often hears them sorting the media organizations to the good and bad ones.
The talk is about how media is corrupted and isn't fulfilling its purpose.
Perhaps the problem isn't that the media is corrupt and not doing its job,
but that we've simply misunderstood what that job is.
2nd of November, LV A.S.
During the Halloween that just passed,
I started thinking about dimensions again.
Just by accident, as one does.
Inspired by the theme of the season,
I started thinking about werewolves and how
the werewolf-effect could be achieved with additional dimensions.
So, I decided to write about it here to confuse the future me
as well as anyone else who somehow ends up reading this.
The easiest way to approach this idea is perhaps by simplifying it a little.
Four-dimensional objects and spaces aren't perhaps the most intuitive
or easy to understand, after all.
So let us forget werewolves for a little while and instead familiarize
ourselves with another myth: pacman.
That horrifying creature that the good circle-people of the two-dimensional
world only dare to speak of in whispers.
Creature, which every full moon transforms from a circle into a pacman.
Their bodies tear apart, revealing a huge mouth...
Even the best circle scientists haven't managed to figure out how the transformation works.
Circles that transform into pacmen have no physical signs of this terrifying ability.
Sometimes the fully transformed pacmen are even physically larger than the circles
they were just moments ago,
as if these creatures were able to somehow create mass and matter from nothing.
The mystery baffles the circle scientists...
We however, are not creatures of this two-dimensional world
and thus get an opportunity to view the situation from a completely different perspective.
Their whole 2D world only exists on the water surface of a pool.
They can only perceive things in the surface and have no idea that
worlds above and below the surface even exist.
We can see that the people of that world are mostly just circles in the water's surface.
But pacmen on the other hand are something else entirely...
We see that the pacmen are three-dimensional beings, just like us!
Their bodies are shaped like strange pipes:
one end of the pipe shaped like a circle while the other end is shaped like a pacman.
The circle-end resides in the water's surface,
while rest of the pipe is hovering above the water.
It's like a tower, a pile of layers.
Each layer a different point of the transformation.
When the transformation occurs,
we see the pipe sinking into the water.
The little part of the pipe seen by the circles in the water's surface keeps changing,
until they see the other end of the pipe, the pacman.
No new matter is created,
there is simply more of it in the third dimension.
A possibility their circle scientists hadn't even considered.
What if our world also resides in higher dimensions than we realise?
Werewolves could simply be 4D beings, floating through our 3D world.
What other creatures might the fourth dimension conceal?
Who might be watching us from there?
Perhaps the stories telling us about horrors deep beneath our world
aren't referring to places under ground or water,
but the places below the very reality we inhabit...
What might happen if fish jumps to the surface?
The creatures that swim in the deep, dark dimensions below our world...
15th of July, 2020
The Devil's Notebook, written by Anton Szandor LaVey
is a book I actually managed to finish a few days back.
(I start reading many books but keep getting distracted!)
It's not ruined with length since it's only 147 pages in its entirety.
I have no complaining about the contents of it
but rather it managed to surprise me pleasantly.
This actually says a lot since I had previously read
The Satanic Bible from the same author and expections were set high!
In practise the book is a collection of essays,
only connected by themes of Satanic philosophy and LaVey's personal interests.
Essays are about various topics:
occultism, magic, television (the new god of men!),
Christianity, different types of humans,
justice, what it's like being a satanist, androids,
humand behaviour as well as human nature
and so on and so on and so on.
My favourite essays were the ones written about LaVey's observations
on human nature and habits.
One of the essays which made an impression in particular,
was one called The Goodguy Badge.
It tells about people's compulsive need of finding ways
to justify their view of themselves as the good and righteous.
To themselves and to others.
As some examples LaVey presents attending church every single week
or being a good believer in other ways,
opposing some generally hated subject or person
or donating a few pennies to charity.
None of these actually really matter in any substancial way.
Being a good church-goer does nothing.
It's easy to say one hates Hitler,
he's been dead for decades and everyone agrees.
However, it does nothing.
Donating a few pennies to charity might make one feel good about themselves,
feel like they're doing something great!
Yet, that also really does not do much.
These are simply ways for people to make themselves feel like
they're on the right side, morally or otherwise.
As well as justify their deeds that could otherwise be seen as 'evil'...
The book doesn't really require any previous reading...
However, I do recommend reading The Satanic Bible first,
as otherwise some references might seem nonsense.
Not only that but when LaVey talks about magic,
it might seem like a lot of nonsense superstition
unless one has already grasped his idea of what magic is.
To better show why this is important,
here's a brief explanation...
According to the Church of Satan,
magic isn't a way of influencing people's psychology.
Manipulating those around you is called lesser magic, charm.
Whereas attempting to influence one's own psychology
is called greater magic.
LaVey and other satanists like to use magical terminology
for describing psychological methods and phenomenons.
(for many reasons to which I won't go into here)
Understanding this shows the essays not as mystical mumbo jumbo,
but as analysis of people's psychology and ways of influencing it.
Back to the book.
Especially nice surprise was the humour.
Based on previous experience from reading The Satanic Bible,
I wasn't really expecting that.
The humour is at times a bit dark and LaVey does not sway away from
making fun of idiots with his excellent wit.
However, the book managed to make me laugh more
than any other I've read in years.
LaVey is great at writing,
while simultaneously keeping that little twinkle in his eye.
All in all,
I warmly recommend the book for those,
who are interested in human nature and raw realities of the world we live in.
Those with no tolerance for the bizarre
might want to consider twice before picking this book.
The structure of the book also makes it an excellent read on trips,
as the short essays are quickly read on the fly.
And as the essays aren't particularly interconnected,
continueing where you left off is no trouble at all.
LaVey has achieved a form of life-after-death...
entertaining and teaching us beyond the grave.
20th of June, 2020
What happened to boredom?
Usually I get bored very quickly whenever I'm not doing anything.
However, I now notice I can sit for over an hour without really doing anything.
Boredom is quite a big factor in my life and I can't say I'm happy about the lack of it.
At least in my own case,
boredom is one of the forces which drives me forwards.
It especially helps me to do the so called 'important' things.
If I get bored with even entertainment,
I tend to start cleaning or doing something else useful.
Perhaps I go out for a walk or do some studying.
I might even study some mathematics or read Marx and Lenin.
When boredom strikes,
I do things I wouldn't otherwise necessarily feel like doing.
Now I haven't been cleaning or going for walks.
For the whole week,
I've more or less been just sitting in living room,
not really doing anything.
Not that there aren't things that I should be doing.
I should clean, do some math exercises about matrices,
finally finish that last damn physics laboratory work
I've for some reason kept pushing for later and later...
but I just don't feel like it.
I'm not bored enough to feel like it.
Perhaps here at home town (I'm on vacation) I do more
fun or exciting things than usually,
which in turn keeps boredom away?
Perhaps I'm simply expecting to have fun later
so I don't get bored now.
Whatever the reason, I do hope I'll get bored soon.
24th of July, 2019
To begin with, let me state that I am not a security expert by any stretch of imagination. Quite the opposite, really. Therefore everything here is my own thinking, not based so much on knowledge but common sense. There is now much talk about cyber security on television. That's fine and all, but they tend to leave something important out. I can only guess their reasons for that but I'd still assume it's a big threat to the Finnish society. I'm of course speaking about proprietary, closed source, programs which are being used in Finnish homes and institution.
Let us first look at it at the level of an individual. An average Finn probably has at their home a computer that runs the Windows operating system. They use Google's Gmail or Microsoft's Outlook as their email provider and use a phone with Android or iOS daily. These are all programs and services provided by huge supranational companies. Most of these companies are also especially American (the USA). So where's the problem?
Let us imagine a situation in which Google wishes to persuade Finland to do something. For instance, to stop goverment's hypothetical proposal to better its citizens' privacy online. Google could, among other things, just stop providing services in Finland completely. The people would most likely quickly turn against the proposal if it meant losing Youtube, their email, cloud services, phone's operating system and its apps, etc. In this way the American companies have a great capability to affect Finnish decision making if they so wish. Not to speak of the less obvious ways to influence decision making: For example, by controlling what users of their programs can see on social media. Just by showing mostly negative articles and posts about the thing they oppose, they can turn people against it. Because we do still live in some sort of a democracy, companies can, by influencing people's opinions with tricks, have plenty of power even on the level of society.
Windows operating system is malware. It has known backdoors which American intelligence agencies are known to have used in the past. Microsoft also has full access to the device with capability to change anything, add and remove software as they wish. For this reason the fact that Finns use this program is a huge security threat! The information collected could obviously be used for controlling the masses and blackmailing individuals. It most certainly doesn't take an expert to see how this is a threat to the society. Is it not included in the duties of the Finnish goverment to make sure its citizens rights are respected, including the right for privacy? (in Finnish constitution) Of course, the goverment isn't doing that but instead making us more and more dependent on American services.
The same problems can be seen at the level of organizations. Finnish companies, schools, libraries, hospitals, etc. are using proprietary programs provided by American companies. There was just a news story that broke out about Apotti system that is being implemented in Southern Finland. It's (among other things) a program for handling patient information and the article was about problems with privacy. The program is provided by American Epic Systems company. Who's the idiot whose idea this was? And what were the motivations behind this decision? Lets go ahead and tie the information of Finnish patients to a system controlled by an American company! A huge risk to privacy and security and while at it, we're making ourselves dependent on outside factors. What could possibly be a better idea?
Let us now, for fun, imagine another scenario in which this cyber threat I've been speaking of shows itself. Let us imagine that for one reason or another, the USA starts aggression towards Finland. Militarily or otherwise. (let us also pretend they don't have the military power to crush us right away, just for the sake of argument) By making ourselves so dependent on the American companies, which in time of war would surely quickly give in to the US goverment and its demands, we've made ourselves very vulnerable. How large part of the Finnish society could they disable? The systems in hospitals could stop working. Schools would more or less be paralyzed and same goes for libraries. How much are our shops relying on similar software provided by similar companies? I don't know. What if every Android phone and Windows computer stopped working? Banking services are more and more online, as is everything else. How would we then be able to access these? Many young people don't even own a television or a radio but use computer to reach those services instead. How would we then communicate messages to people easily? (which can be useful in time of war) How would this affect post and logistics in general? Busses and trains? Planes?
Wouldn't it already be time to stop this ridiculousness and really invest to free software that all municipalities could freely use, apply and improve? Perhaps the decision makers should finally defend Finland's independence not only in their speeches but also with actions.
