Friday, December 21, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
On crises
Crises are typically associated with bad things and maybe that is the most obvious interpretation also. In a crisis like the one I'm currently going through, I guess in all honesty I don't see anything good right now. And the only semi-good thing that I see is that in crises you can often see where people truly stand. Who sticks by you, who doesn't, and who just simply doesn't care. Even now I can say that this has been a truly eye opening experience and I guess a lot of relationships have been defined differently.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Harassment
There was an article about sexual harassment in Finnish elementary schools, especially focusing on the 9th graders, in a local newspaper today. I found the article very disturbing as such, and especially the attitudes that people have towards sexual harassment; "Boys will be boys..." It's quite unbelievable that this seems to be a general attitude of even some teachers in a country which is considered to be one of the better places in the world to live in. "Boys will be boys" is not a good answer and I think people in positions of trust who hold that view should as well relinquish their positions -- in my eyes they no longer hold any trust.
After doing some brief reading on the subject it seems like a real swamp. And it seems that people who experience harassment are in a true hell. At best bringing up the situation with the harasser might help, but I guess that's slightly optimistic to say the least. And at worst there might be powerful networks at play to silence and play down the events. The world seems to be slowly going in the right direction on other fronts (e.g. Amnesty International has a very good campaign to stop the violence against women). And I guess nowadays it is very widely accepted that for instance rape is very condemnable and must be acted upon. But still it makes my stomach turn that harassment goes on and it is performed by and condoned by people who you would assume to be even slightly intelligent.
The question of what to do is also, again, very difficult. I guess it has much to do with attitudes again and in this sense I think this issue should also be tackled at an elementary school level. And that raises the question as to how, considering that most school goers are, well, not necessarily up to par and cannot or will not grasp the problem. And even if the issue was tackled at that level, it still leaves the current situation with the people who have already left schools. It seems that the harassed person has two options: either deal with the situation by flying below radars (and often finding little or no support at all) or raise a red flag and in essence become a martyr and engage in a long and tedious fight to improve the world. Even slightly.
In this light it's clear that in the ideal world everyone who would experience sexual harassment would make a case out of it, but that leaves open very many questions of where the person would find the power, the resources, and the support to go up against a very powerful foe and the general attitudes of people. And I again have found myself holding the ever-so-optimistic view that everyone would have the energy to try to make the world a better place. But from an academic standpoint it's easy to say what should be done; I seem to very often inherently lack the micro-level perspective of how bettering the world affects people on an individual level. Sacrificing yourself to improve the world is a noble cause, but the sacrifice might bear heftier costs than can be predicted by an outsider. A lower-middle single parent of two going up against her employer begs the question: which is more important, to try to better the world at a macro-level or try to survive and protect your children. And in this light I guess there is no moral obligation in one direction or the other; assuming that the victims have the energy to fight a prolonged battle is possibly somewhat naive of me. But this situation simply makes me sick and I cannot understand what the people engaging in sexual harassment are thinking, if anything at all. My apologies for the rant, but I just had to vent about this problem somewhere.
After doing some brief reading on the subject it seems like a real swamp. And it seems that people who experience harassment are in a true hell. At best bringing up the situation with the harasser might help, but I guess that's slightly optimistic to say the least. And at worst there might be powerful networks at play to silence and play down the events. The world seems to be slowly going in the right direction on other fronts (e.g. Amnesty International has a very good campaign to stop the violence against women). And I guess nowadays it is very widely accepted that for instance rape is very condemnable and must be acted upon. But still it makes my stomach turn that harassment goes on and it is performed by and condoned by people who you would assume to be even slightly intelligent.
The question of what to do is also, again, very difficult. I guess it has much to do with attitudes again and in this sense I think this issue should also be tackled at an elementary school level. And that raises the question as to how, considering that most school goers are, well, not necessarily up to par and cannot or will not grasp the problem. And even if the issue was tackled at that level, it still leaves the current situation with the people who have already left schools. It seems that the harassed person has two options: either deal with the situation by flying below radars (and often finding little or no support at all) or raise a red flag and in essence become a martyr and engage in a long and tedious fight to improve the world. Even slightly.
In this light it's clear that in the ideal world everyone who would experience sexual harassment would make a case out of it, but that leaves open very many questions of where the person would find the power, the resources, and the support to go up against a very powerful foe and the general attitudes of people. And I again have found myself holding the ever-so-optimistic view that everyone would have the energy to try to make the world a better place. But from an academic standpoint it's easy to say what should be done; I seem to very often inherently lack the micro-level perspective of how bettering the world affects people on an individual level. Sacrificing yourself to improve the world is a noble cause, but the sacrifice might bear heftier costs than can be predicted by an outsider. A lower-middle single parent of two going up against her employer begs the question: which is more important, to try to better the world at a macro-level or try to survive and protect your children. And in this light I guess there is no moral obligation in one direction or the other; assuming that the victims have the energy to fight a prolonged battle is possibly somewhat naive of me. But this situation simply makes me sick and I cannot understand what the people engaging in sexual harassment are thinking, if anything at all. My apologies for the rant, but I just had to vent about this problem somewhere.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Bubbles?
The Finnish independence day came and went again yesterday. And no, I won't blog about independence, because life's a roller coaster and right now macro-level issues aren't really at the top of my mind. Sufficient to say, yesterday was hell and I decided to just go bury my head in sand for the weekend.
I did, however, stumble across a YouTube video that was going around on some mailing lists and thought I'd share that:
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