Christmas tales...

Someone asked me yesterday if I like Christmas and at first I had to think for a few seconds in order to reply.In the past I must admit that I did not like Christmas very much because I did not like this seasonal exploitation where you are supposed to consume not because you really want to but because you have to.I did not like that you were suppose to eat with your parents at that time but the rest of the year it didn't really matter if you ate alone.

From the moment that I was able to decide what I want to do for Christmas then Christmas became my favourite season. I am spending my Christmas with the people I want, I am not pressured to follow traditional gatherings and relatives (I can eat with my parents and then go or I can go away for holidays).I can have an unconventional tree and I buy presents not because of the season but because I want to.

Christmas was never a melancholic season for me.Even if I had difficulties in the past and it was that season the whole festivity mood and the light in the streets always cheered me up.I have also many funny stories to remember Christmas adventures that always make me laugh.

When I first came in England my first relationship was with an English guy.He was really superficial (I did not realise it at that time) but I had fun with him.I met him in a punk rock concert and we started dating the next day.I really liked him but what he liked about me was my looks.We would go out with his friends where he would treat me like a trophy.Well I must admit that I liked him bragging about me until I realised that he didn't want to know me any better.By that time 3 months had past and it was Christmas.On Christmas day we went to a dance festival and it was the first time that I went to such an event as at that time I listened only to metal and punk.He listened to punk but I was happy he was open-minded with music.Anyway we went to this festival were everyone was so friendly, I had never seen anything like that.At that night he said to me for the first time that he loves me and didn't stop hugging me.A week later we split up.I realised that what made him love me that night was ecstasy!

I am going away for a little trip on Christmas to relax and explore. I think that people who have lived a lot have a lot of memories.If you want, share a story about your previous X-mas or what you plan to do.I wish you to have a great wonderful time.Merry Christmas everyone!

art by ploop
photography by nighty

On the Press and Freedom

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

Noam Chomsky

I always considered the press to be the best way of acquiring information that was not as directed and controlled as the television. Since I was 14 I used to buy the newspaper that I thought was more independent from the others and read; something that I did especially on Sundays that I had free time.

Growing up I realized that the press was not as independent as it should be and that it did not offer the freedom of speech and structural pluralism that was suppose to (the extent to which the community has an open structure that permits minority voices and opinions to be heard). That was obvious as people who owned the largest newspapers also owed multinational companies, followed a political line something that created a bias and often lead to censorship. This of course is the case for the so called independent newspapers as the press imposes a limit and does not encourage independent writing. Nevertheless, this did not prevent me from reading and relying on the press for obtaining information.

Yesterday I started reading a newspaper and I really started questioning why I continue buying newspapers. Surely, inside newspapers we can read some nice articles but I have the impression that they get fewer as the years go by. On top of that they are filled with advertisements, cds, dvd’s and lack critique and diversity.

On the internet and inside blogs I have started realizing that I am reading more critical articles that are diverse and I also learn faster about the news that interest me as the internet does not select for me the topics that I should read but I make the selection. Of course the writers of the articles may also exhibit personal biases in their articles but on the internet one has the opportunity to discover pluralism. Different articles for the same topic can exhibit different opinions something that the press always lacked. The press could never successfully distance itself and present different views and opinions for the same incident.

I feel that the internet could be a tool that could empower people to express themselves. We can’t always rely on journalists to choose what could be interesting for us to learn. The news is made by people and can be distributed by the people whose opinions are not censored by their editor. I only fear that when governments realise this potential, they will start censoring internet pages as even though our constitution is based on the freedom of speech when the word freedom is mentioned there is always a person that tries to place a limit on what freedom represents.

(art by dorothy shoes)

The dream factory

“Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”

Virginia Wolf

Every night we close our eyes and an extraordinary thing happens. We shift into a different state of consciousness were we meet new and strange people and face challenging situations. This is when we forget our reality and enter a magical world made of dreams.

It is not a surprise that human beings always were concerned with understanding the nature and purpose of dreaming. It begun with people viewing dreams as a message send by the gods and with eyes filled with superstition. Aristotle was the first to believe that dreams could have a function and pointed out that they reflected a human’s bodily health. Scientists have being arguing over the decades concerning the purpose of dreaming and until today we have not an agreement upon the nature of dreaming, just theories and assumptions.

Freud was the first thinker that emphasized that dreams are the guardians of our sleep. He believed that we manufacture dreams in order to escape from environmental stimuli (i.e the noise, the temperature in the room) but also to escape from internal stimuli such as our personal worries and anxieties that would keep as awake. He believed that our unconscious desires are depicted in our dreams and reveal things about our subconscious. The forbidden wishes are not apparent in our dream but are often hidden behind symbols and this is when he developed dream analysis that is often incorporated as a part of psychoanalytic therapy.

Physiologists argue that dreams do not carry a hidden or secret message. During sleep our consciousness is suspended and this occurs during the two major stages of our sleep (NREM and REM).They believed that the experience of dreaming occurs during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage. The REM sleep is often called paradoxical sleep as the activity of the dreaming brain is similar to the activity of the waking brain. At this stage there is no cognitive responsiveness to stimuli and as if we were paralyzed. However, this is the time that we have our most vivid dreams and if we wake up at this stage we would remember them.

Allan Hobson proposed his own theory the Activation Synthesis (AS) denies that dreams have a meaning. The theory supports that because our brain is active when we are dreaming we activate some neurons randomly. In order for the brain to interpret what just occurred it creates a narrative and dreams are produced.

So far, there is not a lot that we know about our dreaming brain as we still rely on theories and it’s your choice what you like to believe in. I believe that dreams have both a bodily and psychological function. I have the sense that dreams are images constructed that are released so that they can throw the garbage of the day (things we have heard or seen that are insignificant) and clear our head. At the same time they often express anxieties, wishes, impulses that we are many times unaware of. I don’t believe that the symbols in our dreams carry a certain symbolism as Freud but I value that he is the one that emphasized the importance of dreaming. I believe more in the theory of existentialism that we all have different personalities and experiences so it would not be possible for a symbol to carry a certain meaning. Moreover, another proof that there is a psychological meaning in dreaming is the example of the repetitive dreams and dreaming after trauma.

An integration and a synthesis of the biological and psychological functions of dreaming could be useful in truly investigating the nature of dreaming. I am interested in your opinion as we all carry a dreaming factory in our brain.

(art by krecha)

Pixie's day

4 brief reasons that make this day pixie's day:

I love the slight drop in temperature that makes us stay at home and enables us to concentrate on ourselves.
The Christmas is near so this means a break from work.We can also start planning on our Christmas presents. It’s a nice excuse to buy more presents for the people we love without making them feel uncomfortable. It’s my birthday and so far at least they bring me joy, another chance to celebrate and be with people I love.
I wish I could invite you all…

(art by celinemeisser)

The fallacy of political correctness…

“Political correctness is a term used to describe language, or behaviour, which is claimed to be calculated to provide a minimum of offense, particularly to the racial, cultural, or other identity groups being described.”

The belief for employing political correct language was derived by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that aimed to bring to awareness biases that we make in our everyday speech. The term that was originally used by Marxists-Lenists in the early 80s was used by right-wing activists that wanted to challenge communists’ dogmatism. In the mid to late 80s the term was used by conservatives who thought that by using a politically correct vocabulary democracy would be protected. Will Hutton mentions that “"Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism...”
Today the term political correctness is been used widely and brought changes in the language that we use and brought the emergence of the politically correct dictionary and many revisions on the classic ones.

Politically correctness gave birth to a constant use of euphemisms. Euphemisms are words that describe something unpleasant in the most polite way often metaphorically so as not to disturb the listener. Politics and diplomacy are full of euphemisms. Moreover, the influence for the need to use language that is politically correct has given way to a wide and many times unconscious use of euphemisms. Of course euphemisms are not stable over time; they change as what is politically correct today might not be politically correct tomorrow. For example:
negro → colored → black → African-American→ People of Color
lame → crippled → handicapped → disabled → differently-abled
Shell shock (World War I) → battle fatigue (World War II)→ Operational exhaustion (Korean War) → Post-traumatic stress disorder (Vietnam War).Observe the extreme euphemisms of People of Color and differently-abled.

I think that the use of politically correct speech is creating more problems than it is actually solving. The use of politically correct language in my opinion gave birth to a different form of conservatism that would attack anything that strays for what is proper. Also, it generates difficulties in communication and comprehension. Language is supposed to be a tool to aid communication and not to hinder it. This is what happens when you need to find the proper word in order to speak; not to mention that its also a way for the lawyers to get richer. Moreover, it is a wooden speech that is used mostly by politicians that as they speak instead of using one word they use a whole paragraph. Also for me it is a language of pretense and lie. You might call someone old because he is old, and I wonder what the big deal is. The politically correct word is chronologically gifted. For me chronologically gifted pays more attention to a persons age than old. Similarly, the term minority groups is not politically correct, the term Members of the World's Majorities now is.

I oppose to the use and evolution of politically correct vocabulary. Language should be a bridge to unite people and not to separate them by employing pretense language. My view is that one can be sensitive and polite towards ones view without using all this politically correct language that is adopted by a hypocritical society. I don’t think that is a mistake to name things as they are. I believe that it’s not the word that you use but the way you use that word.

(Art by hockeychick)