A way to waste time / Practical philosophy / India, caste system, etc / Art, fish,…

A way to waste time

Try the Sex and the city quiz if you really do not have anything better to do. Since I do not have, I am Miranda. And if you still did not invent anything to do, Qiuzilla will take care of you. Beware!

I am a far-left libaral according to the US-politics quiz. As if I did not know that. Read this and you may turn left, too. I stinks elsewhere...

Practical philosophy

A common exercise in the basic course of ethics is the discuss whether it is justified to torture somebody who knows where a bomb due to explode in few moments is hidden. So far, especially in the countries of EU, this has mostly been a topic of academic exercise. Or so we thought: tomorrow, in Britain, a special panel of nine Law Lords will "will also consider whether the government is entitled to rely on evidence obtained by the torture of people abroad". See the article in the Guardian. This not boring theory anymore, this real, concerning real human beings and the basic values on which we have built our European societies for the last 50+ years. It makes me rather desperate that there a need for the law lords to convene to discuss. I would prefer having this discussed only by philosophers.

Everyone pondering this question of torture will quite soon find one basic question: what guarantees do we have that the information obtained by torture is true. We have now, again, some practical evidence that the truth will not come out by torture. A senior US intelligence officer tells in this story that the US army has not got any real, true information out ot the detainee in Guantanamo Bay camp.

It is about time to join Amnesty International. Remember also The medical foundation.

India, caste system, etc

India got its independence in 1947. One of the first things the new government did was to ban the caste system, a system in which people are born into some social class and cannot move up and in which jobs, priviledges etc depent totally and solely on caste. As usaul, law is one thing and practice is another. The caste system is still alive and kicking. University graduated dalits cannot get any jobs. See an article.

If you want to know more about the caste system and not read too much, I can recommend "The interpretation of caste" by Declan Quicley (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999), which is rather technical but otherwise nice: compares a few theories of caste and proposes another. Or then you can read the "The god of small things" by A. Roy, or you can ask Clusty. Or read one of the best novels I have ever read: Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand. I have it somewhere, if you would like to borrow it.

Some bombs went off in Nagaland in northeartern India. So, there are other areas in addition to Kashmir wanting to be independent. It seems that both India and China are today maybe a bit too large and etnically complex, which together with great differences of wealth amoung provincies bring along hopes of independence.

Art, fish, politics

Even though I have read my Danto and seen some modern and contemporary art, the exhibition in Kiasma left we rather indifferent. Of course, I had seen most works earlier, but even, when seeing them for the second or third time, they leave me wondering what conceptual ideas there are, if any.

I visited the annual Silakkamarkkinat (Herring market) and bought some delicacies. Earlier, herring was one of the most important staple food in Finland. Today, most Finns, the barbarians, do not eat herring at all. But those with well-developed gourmet sense eat herring. Also all large political parties had noticed this and were doing their really quiet campaign work in the market place. Only the greens were missing, pity, since I might have met a few friends at the green tent. But I found the knee-jerk concervative I was looking for yesterday: a young man who thinks that dealing out needles for the junkies should stop. This confirmed what I read from "Heresies": progress in politics is an illusion.

Friends?

Am I a stranger in this town? How else can you explain that I have seen just one friend of mine in two days walking around the centre and sitting in cafe? Possibilities are: everyone lives in suburbs with their kids (acceptable), everyone is as burned-out as I was in 2002 (unacceptable, unfortunate), everyone is shying away when they see me (unacceptable, unlikely), I do not know my friends anymore from the crowd (unlikely). Anyway, we will have the monthly Tuesday-meeting in Sea Horse on Tuesday 5th of October. See you there! (hopefully)

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs from September to October 2004".