Been reading the Bible in religious studies today, very interesting. I had no idea it actually says in there not to eat pigs, they’re not “pure animals” apparently. You seen any christians avoiding pork around here? No? Me neither. Dunno why that hasn’t been edited out throughout the centuries if no one is gonna listen to what it says anyway.

Can not get over the way they talk about women in there, too. Like we’re pieces of crap, to be honest. I mean it’s no friggin wonder there’s been inequality in the world, looking at what it says in there. After a woman gives birth she in “unpure” for seven days (fourteen if the newborn was a girl), and the same goes for menstruation. Once them seven days are over, she needs to go through 33 days of purifying (66 if it was a girl), and once she is finally “pure” she must sacrifice a year old lamb to God and pretty much beg his forgiveness. What the fuck for, giving birth? I thought that was like, the most wonderful thing you can do as a human, no? Oh no, go to God and ask for forgiveness for your sin. Ehhh.

I’m glad I’m not raised strictly orthodox in the medieval times or something.

Oasis have split up. Arctic Monkeys are nowhere close to number one with their latest single. Kings of Leon, who some might call the most popular rock band right now, had a really lame show at Reading and even chose to stop airing before the end. The top lists are full of dance tracks and rap. What the hell happened to rock?

I dunno bout you guys, but I still love a good guitar solo. There’s a lot of really good music on the market but it gets no credit next to the dance crap. Who are these people who actually pay for all them singles? There must be quite a few and yet I know none.

Thanks to Allen for keeping me up to date with what’s going on in the world while I’m busy doing stuff in my own little universe.

Since I was about 12-13, I’ve stuck to a lacto-ovo-marine vegetarian diet (meaning I don’t eat red meat or chicken but do eat milk, eggs, fish and seafood). Over the years it always surprises me how many people ask me why?

The way I see it, for me it’s never been for the sake of saving the animals, protesting animal cruelty or anything of the sort. Trust me, nothing bothers me more than people forcing their beliefs on others, and I’m not one of them who’ll sit next to a meat-eater at lunch going “do you know what’s in that sausage? i can’t beliiieeeve anyone could eat that, pooor animaals”.

Everyone has a right to eat what they want, in my opinion. I’ve always felt like eating meat isn’t really quite right, but my mum wouldn’t let me be veggie when I was really young, which I can understand in a way. It’s hard to get enough proteins, especially when you’re a kid and need to grow and don’t like all kinds of foods etc. When I got older, however, giving it up wasn’t a very big deal for me and I didn’t get sick or anything, so why not.

Once mum asked me if I’d eat a deer my uncle had shot himself, with the argument that it’s “lived a happy life and didn’t feel anything”, but that’s not what it’s about, it’s still repulsive to me. It’s like, most people in the western world would eat a cow but not a dog, yes? If they were served dog they’d find it gross, even if it smelt nice, and even if it’d “lived a happy life”. That’s how I feel. I see a pork chop and I think, man, that’s been a pig.

Now, for some reason I don’t feel the same way about fish. I’m not quite sure why, recently I figured that it might have something to do with that at least I’ve actually killed one myself, when I was little and went fishing. I can kill a fish, but I could never ever kill a sheep or anything like that. Maybe that’s what my subconcious is telling me.

<go back to seminar introduction

We were presented with the following problem. You’re running a furniture store in Sweden and you’ve got a policy about social responsibility. You’re just about to seal a huge deal buying carpets from a middle-eastern country, and of course you’ve looked up the factory where your products are being produced and made sure the workers are under fair contracts, getting the salary, breaks and holidays that they are entitled too. No slavery, no underage workers, all seems well.

The first shipments are just about to begin when you find out the president of this country, who is infamous for disrespecting human rights and supports discrimination and slavery, owns major shares of the factory you’re buying from.

What do you do?

1. Immediately cut off the deal. A policy is a policy and must be followed, we can not be associated with this dictator. It doesn’t matter if a lot of money is lost cause of the lost deal.
2. Go ahead with the deal anyway. There’s too much to be lost in saying no now, and there’s nothing wrong with the actual factory really, who owns it has not a lot to do with it.
3. Demand change. For the deal to go through the president must be removed from the company.
4. Your own solution.

We were asked to pick one of the four alternatives and stand in the right corner of the room for our solution of choice, and then discuss within our groups. You’d expect most of the people would go to the same corner. We all want to do what’s best for everyone, yes? But, this is what makes politics so tricky - even if we all want to get to the same place in the end, we all have different roads to get there.

I ended up in group 3, and we all stood there looking at the surprisingly large group 2 and wondered what on earth they had to back up going ahead with the deal. Did they have no shame? We sympathized more with group 1, but didn’t think it was the right thing to cut off immediately without investigating. A man in my group said cutting off would achieve nothing except saving the reputation of the company. The president would remain, the factory would sell their carpets elsewhere. The only way to make a difference was to at least give them a chance to change, and therefore hopefully save the deal too. Yeah, I thought, makes sense. However it turned out the other groups had some other views.

Group number 1 meant that making a clean cut would be the only way to make an impression. A cold-blooded dictator would pay no heed to a carpet customer simply asking him to please sell his shares in his carpet factory. He would need a strong reaction, a complete boycott which hopefully others would follow and refuse to buy from a country that can not follow the international agreements about human rights. And I stop for a moment and think, yeah, that makes sense. Too.

Isn’t that just the worst thing ever? There’s no right or wrong in politics, that’s why it’s politics and not maths.

Today, I attended the seminar The global game of social responsibility with an open mind. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the subject when I got there (was it about global environmental questions? what in the world could social responsibility mean, really? sounded a lot like one of them empty-promises-kind-of-a-word) but was determined to listen carefully and make the best of it anyway.

The seminar was arranged by the Swedish Standards Institute, and they spoke about a written guideline which is currently in the making, a work in progress which now consists of 98 pages and aims to be a “Guidance on Social Responsibility” for all organizations of the world, commercial and non-profit, and to which 90 countries have already joined and contributed to. They called it the ISO 26000.

So what is this 98-page-guideline for? Apparently it defines what social responsibility really is, and helps organizations understand what they can do within themselves to make sure to take social responsibility for their decisions and actions. Anything a company or organization (or government for that matter) does and decides, should be in consideration of the effects this will have on general society, on human rights, on the environment and the economy.

A woman by the name of Elisabeth Ekener Petersen explained that the phrase “social responibility” may seem fuzzy, vague and confusing (she got me there) and that is why a clear guideline like this is needed, something that all countries have agreed about and tells us what it’s all about and what to actually do about it. Sandra Atler from ECPAT Sweden said it’s important not to confuse the phrase with only environmental questions (they are included in this, but they are not all), or only about donating money to charity. There is a lot more a company has to think about to take their social responsiblity, you can’t expect one charity donation to make all well with the world if your company is causing more harm than it helps without even knowing it.

It all kinda made sense, and I was enjoying a free sandwich and light beer, so I was glad I came at this point. Even so, the most interesting bit came with the last half, where we were presented with three concrete examples and asked to take a stand in the individual questions. It was amazing how easily it was, even for me as the easily youngest participant, to blend in and join the immediate discussions that blossomed up quickly following these three “dilemmas” about principle, conscience and responsibility.

I will separately post the subjects of the three dilemmas with my summary and own opinion of the discussions. Stay tuned!

See Swedish link about this seminar here.
Continue to dilemma #1 >

It didn’t take many hours after the first reports of Michael Jackson’s death before his record sales started peaking, by now 20 singles have re-entered the UK top 75 (see article here). YouTube hits were instantly rising, blogs and tweets went crazy, radio and tv rescheduled to fit in specials and documentaries.

Myself, I’ve only been a casual listener to his music since Allen introduced me to him, but today I’ve replaces the playlist on my iPod Shuffle with all 97 MJ songs I own. Why is that? Why do we crave to hear the work of the recently deceased when we didn’t yesterday? Why do I suddenly feel a deeper emotional connection to his songs?

Is it only after ones death that one can truly become a legend?

When me and Allen discussed who was “bigger” out of Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, I went into it thinking that obviously it had to be Elvis. But why? I soon realized it wasn’t because he’s sold more records (he hasn’t) or made a bigger difference (debatable) or was more talented (I dare say doubtful).

In the end the only reason I could think of is that Elvis feels bigger because he lived so long ago. I’ve never walked the same earth as Elvis, never breathed the same air, seeing as he died decades before I was born. He’s simply more distant, he’s more unreal to me than Michael. Should that really make him the bigger legend, just cause he happened to be born first?

Lots of question marks in this one, and I’m gonna leave them open. What do you think?

As I lay in the sun on the beach today, having just finished my book and decided to just lie and do nothing for a bit, there was some guy somewhere behind me talking to a friend. I don’t usually eavesdrop on strangers (coughliar) but I couldn’t help but notice that this guy seemed to actually have something to say worth listening to.

Most people who like complaining about things, me included, tend to complain about anything even though we don’t really have solutions to the problems ourselves. Late buses, cold weather, taxes, ignorant people, whatever it might be. This guy was on about the latter and expressed his concern about how many people there seemed to be that really did not care about anything, in their lives and in the world around them. The kind that goes out drinking like there’s no tomorrow and has absolutely no other plan for themselves than claiming job seekers allowance, the kind that don’t watch news because they really don’t care and and don’t vote in the elections cause they don’t care cause they don’t watch the news and then they complain about the politicians making stupid decisions giving them less job seeking allowance. You know.

That’s true, I thought. The world is fucked. But now here’s the kicker, this guy didn’t just call them stupid and then change the subject. This guy actually had some changes in mind.

He said, I don’t think it’s their fault. I don’t think they can help it much that they’re narrow-minded and indifferent to the world. He said it shouldn’t be so hard to get people to think for themselves, if we only gave them the chance to broaden their minds from an early age. He suggested the subject “Ethics and Morals” or similar being taught in schools, just a time where the teacher would ask the students questions and they had to think about what they really thought, what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s the best way to handle different situations, what’s your opinion. It doesn’t have to be much, he said.

And I lay there listening and thinking. And I’m thinking “hey someone should suggest that to somewhere”. And then I continued sun bathing and doing nothing. Ironic isn’t it.