Thoughts

Thoughts.

If you work in a place, where there is some personal problem. There are subgroups and shit talk about each other and people are envious. The best thing to do is to hire a new bad boss. It unites.

The employee has something in common and the same enemy.

Now we have had covid as the enemy.

It has united many people and we something to talk about with strangers and people we don't know so much about.

We have had a subject.

Now when covid has become not so dangerous enemies, will we keep united.

I don't think so.

To unite we have to have something to be united around.

A football team. A political party. A neighborhood.

Something outside your sphere has to be the enemy.

I have always been fascinated by football hooligans who go to a football game to fight.

It is not the football that unites them, it is the enemy.

I mean football is a game, it isn't really important. We can live without it and survive.

But for hooligans, it is about life and death.

Why?

I think it is a way for some people to feel strong if you belong to a group you belong to something. You are not alone.

I think it is the same with patriotism and nationalism. You become stronger in the group.

And I think it is sad.

Rather than trying to be that strong person and work on that, you search for people like you.

You take the easy way.

I think the world would be a better place if we didn't. Me included.

We talk about an nation, but that is an illusion, it is something we created. It is not there in front of you. It is only in our minds. We have created the thinking of a nation. From our family and friends has it grown to something real, something with a meaning. But it is still only in our mind it exists.

Borders aren't there, we have put them there. Our childhood, the people we were raised by, have made those borders stronger. In our mind.

We and they.

My parents weren't immigrants when I grow up, they didn't know so many if any. And they had a picture in their head of how immigrants were. A picture. They planted that in my mind, they just did.

It took me a while to realize that people from another country were different from me. I had to know some immigrants, to cross that border in my mind. And the border was, yes, only in my mind.

It wasn't there.

Some say, but we lose our nationality. But our nationality hasn't been there always. Time has created it. Most of our traditions are imported for a long time and have slowly become a tradition. It wasn't there from the beginning. It didn't pop up from anywhere it has got influenced by someone.

That's why it is so important to open our borders, both in our minds and in our nations.

But terrorism, you say, terrorism is football hooligans at a higher level. They must unite around something or someone, a strong leader for example. A strong leader unites them.

I have always been skeptical about strong religious people. I understand the willingness to believe in something. And I can sometimes envy them. So easy to follow something and have rules about your life. And have someone to tell me what is true or not.

There is no struggling. The truth is written and someone has interpreted the meaning. The strange is that it differs from group to group. In the same book, the same text is used differently by whom has read it.

Wonder if the Earth ever would be united, fighting for the same goal. For the same truth. Or is that human nature. To have an enemy, to be strong against.

When I was a child, I thought that every generation had stepped up one stage in development.

But I don't think that is true, we are all an unwritten book when we are born. We have another technology and environment than the generation before us. But the story has to be written, again and again, influenced by our family and neighborhood. Our mind builds borders we have to break through, all the time. Some have the strength, more than others.

And, education, education, education by reading, by a good school, by trying to meet others with an open mind. Trying to understand. And never, NEVER, think you know the truth.

The truth is never solid, it is changing as we are. And your truth isn't the same for everyone.

So what is the point of this text?

I don't know, do you?