I’ve been thinking about our fearless leaders a lot today. As many others I’m worried that Sweden has begun it’s slippery descent into totalitarianism when our elected politicians voted through the FRA-law.

The thing though that worries me isn’t that it might be abused. My heart already knows that it’s a virtual fact, that such a leaky law with so many double-clauses and vague definitions will be abused. I’ve accepted that, and in time I will adapt my living-style to these new premises.

Neither am I worried or upset that everyone in favor of this law - all the way up to the head of state himself - is desperately trying to smooth things over and make people forget about all this. Whatever their motives were, they’re now acting in accordance with whatever motivated them to vote this bastard through. If their motives were sinister, then of course they will try to make people forget. If their motives were noble and they realized their mistake, then of course they’re trying to smooth things over in order to save face and hopefully some kind of political reputation. In short, they’re doing what humans have done for centuries - screw other lesser humans over and then try to justify it. Nothing new there.

No, what worries and upsets me is that our elected leaders have no faith in us, the people who voted them into office. We’re expected to behave like sheep and every four years dutifully vote the next bunch of fear-mongers into office. We’re not expected to actually have any opinion.

What upsets me is that our elected leaders are treating us like children. They don’t deign to explain why they claim that the law is good, they just stonewall us and say that we don’t understand it. Just like a bad parent who’d rather not try to explain something to an inquisitive child and instead gives some bullshit reason and then say “that’s the end of this discussion”.

I’ve long maintained that much of the democratic system in most western countries are carefully designed machineries that give us one single “power” and that’s it. Our only input into who runs the world is through the vote, and in every other effect we the people are simply uninteresting children. We’re supposed to sit quiet and not make a fuss, and when we make a fuss our inept parents simply tell us how they want things. They don’t give any reason, they don’t explain anything. They simply treat us like dumb children.

I’m certain that many politicians in their naivety actually believe they’re trying to protect us. That’s the really scary part. Sure, I’m certain as well that there’s way too many politicians whose only interest lies in acquiring power and money, and then keeping those at whatever costs. But I hope and think that most people who participate in the absurd race of politics do so with the intention to do good.

The sad thing though is that through their ineptitude, naivety and unwillingness to listen to the people who put them in power, they’re enabling the darker kind of politician to pursue the oppression of the people.

Sweden is becoming a nannystate. One where our leaders believe they’re protecting us from some imaginary threat, or from ourselves. What they’re really protecting us from is freedom and evolution.

(I’m not sure if I’m back to writing or not, but I just can’t hold my anger and frustration about the latest political madness that’s been approved here in Sweden. Beware that there will most likely be plenty of foul language ahead.)

As surely anyone in this country (and even outside of it) knows Sweden yesterday passed the so-called “Lex Orwell” law, aka the FRA-law.

To say that this is stupidity on such a grand scale we’ll need a new tool and unit to measure it is quite an understatement. Personally I feel like I want to go to the swedish parliament and bitch-slap the shit out of every single one of the morons who voted yes for it. I also want to smack the living jeezus out of the wankers who weren’t even there, in this case some 60+ people.

Every single politician except one lone hero followed the party-line of voting for it. This is to all of you who voted yes: YOU SUCK, you’re a bunch of goddamn cowards and are not worthy to smell my shit!

So, why is this law such a bad thing? Well, I’m just going to list the tip of the iceberg here.

* It’s incredibly vague. The law talks about “yttre hot” (Swedish for “outer threats”) but makes only half-assed attempts at defining them. The old boogeyman called terrorism is waved in the face of everyone who doesn’t immediately nod their head off, even though Sweden has never been a target of terrorism. For any swede to think Sweden is a target for terrorism is ridiculous hubris. Sweden is such a neutral country that in comparison Switzerland seem like an extremely opinionated nation.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Do they really think that there’s something like one huge cable going in and out of the country? Go to some lame website like myspace and I guarantee you that the traffic passes in and out of the country through at least seventeen different pipes.

* The naivety among politicians about how technology works is nothing short of astounding. Yes, I know I said it once already, but it’s such a big issue that it deserves to be mentioned twice. Provided this law will be used to track those vaguely defined “outer threats” then the assumption is that terrorists use standard email, never encrypt anything and don’t use any codes at all. Seriously, how much of a failure as a terrorist do you have to be to be dumb enough sending emails with things like “are you going to place the bomb at the presidents car today”? If you did, you wouldn’t last as a terrorist more than five seconds before you accidentally shoot yourself in the face.

Which leads me to…

* Since the threat of terrorism is purely symbolic the only purpose for this constant wiretapping will be to keep track of domestic threats. And since the law is so vaguely formulated you can bet your sweet patootie that everyone with money, power or a government job will want access to the logs and contents. The first ones will of course be the mediamaffia, who will happily corrupt anyone they can in order to keep fighting for their “rights” or some bullshit like that. Not to mention that the anonymity for whistleblowers or informants will be completely gone. No one will ever again question authority, because they can no longer be sure who reads the logs. Additionally, to even mention the phrase that “innocent people will have nothing to hide” is plain idiocy. Even if you’re “innocent” you will change your habits if you know that you’re being supervised. And innocence is highly flexible. Who knows what will be defined as innocent in ten years? What is a minor crime today might be punishable by death in a decade, thanks to the fact that the government can keep constant watch on everyone.

* The fact that this law even passed makes me think that the yes-voters can be classified as one of three kinds of politicians:

1) The coward who doesn’t dare to oppose the party-line.
2) The moron who doesn’t know better.
3) The dangerous one who actually wants to implement a totalitarian state where the citizens are under constant surveillance similar to the former East Germany (DDR). The one who welcomes it, since he or she is safe knowing they’ll be more equal than the rest of us.

So what are my thoughts on all this?

My emotions are quite clear. I think this law is a frontal assault on democracy. While I don’t think that we will live in an Orwellian dystopia within the next week, I am scared that the slow erosion of democracy has started.

My emotion around all this is more Animal Farm than Nineteen-Eighty Four, but the concept is the same. A sham democracy. A faux democracy. A democracy only in name, bolstered by lofty sayings and using television and media to blind the public and keep them sedated.

I’m afraid that Sweden is started down the slippery slope towards a totalitarian government, just like old DDR or various other countries around the world, such as Belarus or even Saudi-Arabia.

… but I don’t really know about what. A lot of things I need/want to write about are pretty local in tone, at least as far as the global community goes. Most of it is Sweden-related.

For example, I’m still completely aghast that the minister of justice here in this country apparently thinks bribery and corruption is an acceptable and completely tolerable policy. At least if the briber is wealthy enough to pay off real big.

The story behind this is the same one that has been causing reality to distort for quite a while now. The police officer Jim Keyser, who got a well-paid job at the global mediamaffia, caused some stir a few weeks (months?) back. Beatrice Ask, the swedish minister of Justice, basically said that she approved of it, and said it was nice that the “competence” among swedish police-officers is at a level that it allows them to use it for their own personal gain. This is the same minister who wants to allow the mediamaffia to completely undhindered pursue filesharers and also wants to introduce complete data-retention in order to spy on her own voters.

Completely crazy. The only real conclusion I can draw from her insane statements is that she’s as corrupted as everyone else involved in this ludicrous pursuit.

Another thing that is causing frustration in my head is religion. I’ve been meaning to write something about why I find religion so crazy and backwards. The trick though is to manage to do it with a somewhat maintained level of grammatical and vocabular style. As it stands, my thoughts on religion are usually peppered with some very rude curses. I really don’t give two hoots if I offend some bibletoting fundamentalist wackjob out there, but I don’t want to stoop to their level either.

And finally, I’m still working on my pro-FOSS posting. It’s been on ice for a while, but I might thaw it out tonight and have another go at writing about FOSS, why I like it, why I want to promote it, why I think more people need to leave proprietary software behind and the direct as well as long-time advantages it will have for every human on this planet!

Yes, I can be quite pompous. Whatever.

I found this satirical little writing about how bread is the unknown killer of today, and even though I laughed at it a more serious part of my brain reminded me that even though it’s satire, it actually showcases pretty well the attitude our media and governments display to us.

(Wow, that was a long sentence. Sorry!)

I’ll quite a bit from it so to whet your appetite.

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. Every piece of bread you eat brings you nearer to death.

Replace “bread” with “terrorists” and all of a sudden it no longer reads as satire. It reads as something that Fox would broadcast on their news.

I’m precognitive. In case you’re not into fancy terms, that means I can see the future. It doesn’t work for everything, but let me show you one example of what will come.

Commercials on television, for example. While today they’re fairly acceptable in the future they will simply consist of a very loud voice shouting the name of the company they’re advertising over and over.

For example:

AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM

and so on. I just chose Amazon as an example. Please don’t sue me.

Accompanying this symphony of madness the screen will flash out the logo of the company in epilepsy-inducing batches. Commercials will also be much longer, probably fifteen minutes or so per commercial. Per hour there will be less than five minutes of actual programming, the rest will simply be these commercials.

—

And speaking of programming. Since people of the future will have mush for brains, the entertainment will have to be reduced in order to fit their limited attention-span.

The only form of entertainment that will survive will be what we currently call “reality-shows”. In the future they will simply be called “reality” and everyone will blindly follow it. Instead of contestants or participants we’ll probably just use red or blue dots to indicate what’s going on. I mean, after all, conversation will require those mushy brains to work and that can’t be expected of the audience, right?

The red and blue dots will bob around the screen while a commenter similar to sports-commentators we have today will explain the intrigue.

Something like this:

“Oh, one of the blue dots is really angry since one of the red dots messed around with a yellow dot, even though they were engaged. Then all the red dots decided to vote the green dots off the island, but the orange dots staged a mutiny and killed all the brown dots”

And so on.

—

Okay, so I can’t actually predict the future. But what we have on television today is simply a less reformed version of the above. And if you don’t like my prediction, well, I suggest you rent either Idiocracy or They Live. Both are vastly under-appreciated movies.

The surest sign of spring is children on bicycles. At least that’s the norm up here in northern Sweden. As soon as it’s bare enough to bike, the kids will take out their bikes and start driving around like tiny madmen.

I don’t know if there’s any last gasp of winter left, but I do know that right now there’s about twenty kids roaming around the courtyard with their bikes. They’re shouting and making up games as they go along. There are older kids, there are younger kids. Some are so young they still have their training-wheels on, but everyone is pedaling and trying to keep up with each other. The energy is quite furious, almost palpable.

All this despite the fact that the weather is grey and sullen, and the temperature is only 2 degrees above zero on the celsius-scale.

But you know what really makes me happy every time I look out the window and see these bandits?

The fact that there’s such a wide variety of ethnics represented. There are kids who are browner than pure chocolate. There are kids of asian ethnicity. There are the kids of the typical pale swedish-nordic ethnicity. There’s kids with a decidedly middle-eastern origin. There are even children whose ethnicity I cannot make out. I know that at least two of the children down there barely speak swedish and communicate with the rest of the crowd in some pidgin-mix of broken swedish, english and their native language.

And I think that is great. They’re all playing along, without a thought in the world as to the color of the skin of their playmates. Not even the boundary of languages is an issue. The only thing important is to have the time of your life on your bicycle, whether this bike is brand-new or a hand-me-down.

Governments of the world could learn a lot from these kids.

(on a sidenote, all the kids have helmets. That’s good considering a substantial amount of gravel cover the walkways and this is probably quite slippery when biking)

A lot of things are rolling around inside the empty space I use for a head.

First off, I think a lot about the adventure that my parents are setting off on. It’s been kinda hush-hush so far, but now it’s pretty much official. They’re leaving Sweden and spending at least a year on the Shetland islands. They’re renting out the house, and generally this is an impressive adventure for a couple rapidly approaching their sixties. I guess that’s my parents in a nutshell though, they’re rarely phazed by anything and once they set their minds to it then it’s pretty much a given.

I don’t want to sound like a big baby either, but this makes me a bit nervous. I really appreciate the need for new horizons, but it feels a little weird to observe this process. My parents and their house always was the center of my universe. No matter how badly I screwed something up, I knew that there was always a serene place up in the north where I could lick my wounds and recharge my batteries.

It’s a weird thing being happy for your parents who are doing something impressive, while at the same time feeling a bit scared by such a big change.

The second thing that consumes a lot of my thought-process is the split with Ann-Sofie. The whole thing makes me really, really sad even though I try to put up a brave face and deal with it. Sure, life goes on and I’ll probably meet someone new in the future. But at the same time I feel so darn insecure. I don’t like moving, I don’t like splitting up. What if the same procedure gets repeated in the future? It’s tiresome to fall in love and a while down the road find out that it’s not working. Sure, this was a bit less painful than my breakups of past, which were always sudden and incredibly intense. Still hurts though, even though I know I will recover and this will not be the end of the world.

But it ties in with that first thing. I often feel so incapable of taking care of myself, and I’ve always had my parents to ask for help. Will that disappear? Who will help me move when I find a new place? Who will help me with whatever shit I manage to screw up in the future?

I’m a little emotional, and all of a sudden everything just feels so big.

There are a lot of things I want to write about right now.

I want to write about my thoughts about myself. My inner process. How the land lays with my soul, so to speak. What’s going on in the bubbling and frothing caverns of my inner being.

I also want to write about my nice new upgraded computer, thanks to a very generous aunt. I want to write about how much fun I’m having with my computer again, rather than seeing it as a big clunky stupid appliance that doesn’t meet what I want to do with it. I also want to go off on a rant about how frustrating I find Windows to be, after more than a year of exclusive Linux-use. I also want to reassure everyone that I’m still primarily an Ubuntu-user and that Windows is simply for playing Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and the like. I want to write about the upcoming Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) which I’m running right now, and how much nicer it is.

I want to write about politics. About how absurd I’m beginning to find the presidential election-race in the USA. I want to write about my plans to become a dual-citizen. I want to write hard-hitting insights about how messed-up the world is today.

I want to write about books, about science fiction. I want to start writing on my own novel. I want to write some memories and thoughts about a very special cat who recently ended her long tenure as the family pet.

But all of this is stopped by a complete lack of energy and “go”. I feel stuck in a creative slump. I’m not particularly depressed, even though it’s always there in the background. I just don’t have any… ooompf, if you know what I mean.

Being depressed and having to look inside yourself is a painful and often difficult process. It’s a bit like surgery on the soul - something that is painful but beneficial in the long run. In the best case, the pain is very small compared to the healing after the procedure itself.

This process of analyzing oneself is none the less interesting. I feel about my own process that I’m being almost reborn. Rediscovering who you really are, who you really feel like is I guess kind of similar to that. Depression dampens your soul, your spirit and your life. It’s like always wearing a wet blanket. Heavy and damp it’s always there.

So, when you finally start managing to get a grip on that blanket and find ways to remove it, you also discover that maybe you weren’t the same person coming out of it as you were going into it. Pain changes a person, whether to the better or worse is really a matter of perspective. Regardless the re-discovery of that person is a voyage both exciting and painful.

I know that if the person I am now could meet with the person I was ten years ago it’s very doubtful that they would get along. Ten years ago I was naive, maybe a little too shielded, and far too sure of myself. Then again, even though I now have shed most of that naivety I have also become cynical and bitter in the process. Too much of either isn’t good.

Wow, I’m rambling.

What I’m trying to build up to is what the topic is about. Accepting help, and how to do it.

The only thing I’m worse at than accepting help is asking for it. I don’t know the roots of this, maybe it’s a society that encourages self-reliance, and maybe it’s also the depression killing my trust in other humans. Trying to figure out why I do it would keep an army of people occupied for the rest of time.

Ever hear of that saying, “no man is an island”? Well, for many years I considered myself to be an island. Of course my own island traded with other islands, but I always kept to myself, trying to pride myself on my self-containment and self-reliance. What flummoxed me was why this never worked. After a while it dawned on me that I needed other people to be a person myself. I was fencing other people out, becoming incapable om emotional attachment and always preparing for the worst.

In short, I needed to ask for help when I needed it and realize that accepting that help didn’t mean I was weak or incapable of living my life. I needed to stop thinking of my life as islands, and think of it as a unity, a patchwork between people helping each other. Friends or family or complete strangers shouldn’t really matter - helping your fellow man or woman should be a natural thing. This later became the foundation of my humanist viewpoint.

But it’s still difficult for me to accept help, and ask for it. Sure, I’ve gotten better at it, but it’s still a work in progress. Combine this with my lack of expressing my thoughts in verbal communication and I feel that maybe people who help me don’t always realize how grateful I am for that help. I’m an introverted personality, and tend to grunt and mumble a lot. This does not, however, mean that I’m ungrateful. It just means I’m a caveman when it comes to verbal communication.

So, let me give a little clumsy but honest advice to anyone who thinks that he or she is an island: just don’t do it. You’re not an island. Instead maybe give people a chance to come close to you. Sure, it’ll hurt sometimes, but when you find a true friend that you can depend on it’ll be worth it. Know that this person is someone who will help you, and who you in return will want to help. In whatever way may be possible. It might be something as big as helping you move house. It might be something small. Regardless, it will be something valuable to you.

When I slept last night I had a dream. Towards the end of my sleep-cycle I had this disturbing dream that’s been haunting me all day.

It was a dream of ending, of destruction and violence. It was a dream about death.

It wasn’t a nightmare, since I almost never have those. I’m almost always aware of my dreams, and thus they seldom frighten me in the sense that nightmares do.

But this dream, even though it wasn’t a nightmare, was disturbing.

In it, the end of the world had come. Society had collapsed, and I roamed around the wintery darkness of a northern Sweden desolate and isolated. It was as dark as the arctic night could manage, and there were no lamps to scare it away. Houses were ruined, burned-out shells that once sheltered families. Even the winter itself was harsh and dark, not the beautiful expanses of snow that one usually associate the arctic winter with.

I saw my parents house. Like every other house it was a ruin, burned walls and wrecked memories. Long abandoned, the ruin was covered with frost. I knew this place was dangerous, and my companion –who suddenly appeared in my dream, creating that absolute continuity that every dream always has– knew this as well and drew his sidearm. Or her sidearm. I never found out the gender, the face hidden behind a mask of some kind.

Then suddenly, my dream switched to a flashback, and I found myself standing on my parents lawn, handing out automatic weapons to strangers. I realized we were getting ready to defend ourselves against some unknown threat, and I started handing out weapons faster. I didn’t know who or what the enemy was, but I knew there would be very few survivors.

Equally abrupt I realized that everyone I was handing out guns to was a child. No one was older than maybe 8 or 9 years. They cradled their gun with a desperate resolute I wished I’d never seen in the eyes of a child. They aimed their guns at an invisible enemy, reminding me of child-soldiers in Africa. In a way I guessed they were the same thing - the sandy deserts and humid jungles replaced with the arctic cold and silence of the north.

My flashback ended at the same time the children opened fire. I stood looking at the ruins of my parents house, amazed at the trees which had fallen into the ruins, connecting it with the husk of the garage in a bizarre kind of way.

Then something roared. Or actually, the sound was more like a lions roar combined with a sound of some kind of engine. In the upper harmonics a high-pitched squeal could be heard, like a pig screaming in fear. My companion turned and opened fire at something I couldn’t see. I felt a sharp pain in my back and knew that I would be dead soon.

Then everything went dark.

After that, I woke up.