Rest in peace, Robin Williams!

I'd like to make this post a more detailed eulogy, if the term is allowed of me, for Robin Williams.

The very first thing that sprung to mind when I heard of his demise was the movie 'Dead Poets Society'. However, what mattered most to me about that movie wasn't necessarily the script, or the story, or indeed the many splendid performances.

It was the sincerity of William's acting that caught me. That, and the message relayed by his character, Mr Keating.

There is no single work of art, let alone acting performance, that has had a more profound impact on me than that one.

I have gone through many courses at a university level, and always striven to be worthy of the example set by Mr Keating. To me, it wasn't a fictional character calling on me to stand on my desk and tell what came from my heart, it was Robin Williams. Such was the honesty of his acting, and so in keeping with that sentiment have his actions ever since then been.

Silly? Oh yes. Pretentious? Most definitely. But such is the idle fancy of a young boy finding his place in the world as the demagogue who wishes to embrace life.

There is noone who wasn't shocked by his passing. Nobody saw it coming.

Heck, many people in the US and UK probably grew up with Williams as the Genie in Aladdin. It's a commonly known fact that he simply ad-libbed most of the lines on the spot. He just played around, weaving a character by himself that captured the imagination of people all over the world.

Of course, in Sweden, we didn't have him. We had some random overpaid voice actor doing an offensive arabian accent.

But Williams won in the end, because all the dubbers had to work with was his lines.

That's the testament to his greatness, to his enormous generosity of spirit and energy; the fact that he shone through in the end, even after they changed both the actor and the language spoken.

Petty? Oh yes. Insignificant? Possibly. But when a loved one has died, don't we most fondly remember the small things?

More than anything, I was annoyed by the passing of this great man. It was another death in a line of fairly recent ones that robbed us of among the greatest people to walk the earth.

But I wasn't particularly sad.

Then someone on an internet forum I frequent went and posted this:

"O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! My Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead." - Walt Whitman, 1865

That is what brought me to tears.

Rest in peace, you greatest of personalities. And if you end up in hell, keep the place warmed up for me!

Politics!

Okay, we're gonna get heavy now, because this is something that has been bothering me for a good bit of time.

See, I'm very interested in sorting out politics. I want to figure out a way for humanity to kind of just fix everything and move on to what we're all hoping for; the Federation in Star Trek!

In this, I'm both a blue-eyed skeptic and a misanthropic cynic.

The problem is the fact that I'm quite conflicted between two main ideologies; let's call them 'freedom' and 'unity'.

Freedom, on the one hand, sounds very appealing; people being to the greatest possible degree free to mind themselves without the intervention of government. I'd like to think this is something that could work, given that people in general are honest, good-natured and reasonable. The problem is that they are also deceptive, vicious and completely and utterly unreasonable. The latter category is the minority, but the way I see things across the world, it only takes a few bad ones to screw things up for all the good ones.

After all, in a country of several millions, you just need one single guy to mess it all up by hoarding enough money to buy himself his own army.

Freedom is the way of the idealist to me. If you completely discard the pragmatist arguments, as noted libertarian Penn Jillette does, I don't really see how one can end up anywhere else. You need charity? Trust people to donate. You need to renovate a road? Gather up funds locally and get it done. It would mean much greater efficiency and less waste all around, to boot.

But it's in the practical details that I think it would break down, so we come to...

Unity, on the other hand, seems to be based on two things; pragmatism and reinforced community. Ideologically, it might not be entirely reasonable to force people to show solidarity and to pitch in via the government to get things sorted instead of trusting them to do it without coercion, but pragmatically it's a way to get it done. Of course, this course isn't without an ideological foundation; it does assume that for it to work, the people need to be in on it. They need to feel that this is the right thing to do. If the people isn't behind having high taxes, like here in Sweden, to allow us to forge a working nation, then the system won't work.

Unity has the added advantage of ensuring uniformity in government. The US has fifty different states, each with their own legislation, and that does mean you end up with one country consisting of wildly different regions with no uniformity in exercising law enforcement and the likes thereof. Sometimes, I do believe a central government needs to layeth the smacketh down on some local candy asses.

I simply cannot decide to follow one entirely, because the arguments behind both are strong yet neither can be applied completely to all issues in the world.

On the whole, neither of these ideological directions are a problem, politically. Partisanship and demonization, however, are.

We see it all over the world, but the US is something of an interesting case in point, because it is extremely obvious there. You have people who actually seriously describe their opponents as the antichrist just because they belong to the other party. Republicans start talking about revolution when Obama signs an executive order, but they ignore it when Bush signed an identical executive order. The democrats treat Bush as a a warmongering, profiteering idiot, while they don't look very closely at who fills up Clinton's pockets.

This kind of partisanship is never ever a good thing. Not only does it preclude any fruitful compromise, it also ensures that how good an idea something is never has any impact on whether or not people support it.

Supposing a republican president comes up with a plan that will end all wars in 24 hours, feed all the hungry in the world and make the US of A the most powerful nation in the world, you'll have half the population deciding right then and there that it is the worst idea in the history of the world, and that it must be stopped at any cost.

Why can't everyone at least try to see their political opponents as trying their best to work things out?

I sure don't agree with Glenn Beck on many issues at all. I think he's wrong on so many levels with regards to so many things. But I don't think he's a demon ascended from hell to punish mankind. I think he's holding honest opinions, and tries to maintain his integrity to the greatest degree in the face of very complex issues.

Of course, there are always spineless morons and corporate shills spread throughout politics, but I believe they are the rotten exception. I believe that Bush did his level best to run the country in accordance with his beliefs, and I do believe that Obama does the same.

I don't agree with many of Bush's actions, but I don't attribute them to malice. I attribute them to him trying to navigate a political swamp while balancing conflicting interests all around him. He might've acted like an idiot at times, but we all do that. Nobody is perfect.

Except for Stephen Fry, obviously.

That's it folks!

Yes, it can finally be stated without deception that the Soccer World Cup is over!

In the finals, two teams competed against one another, and in the end one of them won. No surprises there, since that's the exact turn of events I had predicted all along.

During the match, people kicked the football a large number of times, and the team that won scored the most goals against their opponent.

The incidences of icing and the ball being out of bounds somehow didn't stop the match from ending the way it did.

In other news, the two parties in the american parliament disagree with each other on numerous points.

In contrast to this, the Korean government made an official statement.

Following this news, Sweden announced that it refuses to take sides in the football, calling themselves "Not associated with association fotball", instead relying on the Germans to carry the torch for Europe.

Anarchy!!!

Yes, that's right; I make my triumphant return to bloggification with a post about anarchy.

You see, recently I entered an internet discussion thread about anarchy. It was one where what seemed like an irrational and unreasonable anarchist was banging on about how evil the establishment was and how swell just being completely free from it would be peachy, while being yelled at by a number of justifiably frustrated debaters.

That's what it seemed like, at any rate.

I joined in, with the latter category of people, for those who haven't spent more than three seconds in my presence and sort of just smugly assumed that.

Then, in a moment of clarity, it occurred to me that maybe just hurling insults at the man wasn't exactly the best method for all involved. So, I decided to try another tone. I asked him politely to explain his vision and ideas in real, concrete, terms.

And he did so. At length.

He divulged the ways that it could work in practice, and answered all the questions I had about the things I thought were bonkers. It turns out I had assumed many quite silly things that he didn't agree with at all to begin with.

I still don't agree with him that anarchy works better than what we have now, but I can suddenly see how it COULD work better.

Thusly endowed with knowledge, the thread seemed entirely different to me; it now looked like a polite man, who never used neither profanities nor personal attacks, being hounded by irate attackers who had made up their own minds what his points were and refused blindly to see whether or not they were right.

I could all of a sudden see why people like the new pope so much; even though he doesn't share everyone's opinions, he favours honest and open discussions between disagreeing people, where actual exchanges of knowledge can occur.

Imagine how many conflicts, ones small like on an internet forum, or ones big like wars, could be helped by people actually doing that.

Hmm...I wonder...

Nope, it'll never work!