... and after six hours of sleep and three mugs of morning coffee I feel like writing a line or two more.

Recently a Finnish politican suggested that we should have a national register of members of different ethnic groups. To have a cencus to classify each and every person living in Finland. One of his arguments was that people who belong to a same ethnic group also think and behave the same. I really don't know if he meant what he said, but I'm afraid that his statement clearly illustrates a non-loving attitude which seems to be a central part of a racist way of thinking.

As a young student I met Val Plumwood, who was visiting Finland. We spent several days wandering in the natural parks, spending summer evening by camp-fire telling stories and discussing philosophy (and occasionally she would play a tune with an irish tin whistle.) As an eco-feminist thinker she saw that sexism, racism, colonialism and domination of nature are all based on same kind of "logic of oppression". She wished that by examining, analyzing and writing about that logic of oppression it becomes more visible, more easy to recognize these patterns of thought - which would also make it easier to abandon this logic of oppression and to find new ways of thinkig. And, in her analysis she pointed out that one typical aspect of the logic of oppression is to think that members of a certain group are all the same, a faceless mass. This usually comes with a tendency to see ones own group as central, superior and more important, while seeing the other groups as a background, marginal and secondary. And it gets nastier when these different groups are attributed with opposite qualities, like "men are rational, women are emotional. White people are smart, black people are primitive. Christians are Good, Muslims are Evil. A man has a soul and free will, but nature is just a big machine composed of raw materials."

So, while writing my previous post I was thinking of this kind of "mental structures" as the network of irrigation pipeline. And that those mental structures are inside us - the structures of society, our legislation and workings of our economical system are all shaped by these mental structures. If there is a country dominated by a harsh dictator, it might be essential to have a real revolution toppling the tyrant. But getting rid of the external source of oppression is just a good start. From that on the work continues, as we tend to carry those very same oppressive mental structures inside us. Personally I spent about nine years of my life living in a countryside hippie collective. The place was collectively owned, there was not a strict hierarchy of power, everybody was equal and the decisions were made in open, democratic discussions. Or, so it was supposed to be, but I saw that getting rid of a formal hierarchy doesn't automatically mean that everybody is treated equal. No, without being conscious about it people are carrying so many ways of putting themselves above the others, seeing their own projects as superior to the others, and using different methods of ridiculing and mockery and non-communication to promote their own views over the others. Honestly, I'm not saying that I was the saint observing the stupidity in the other members of the collective. Not at all - I was painfully aware that I was no better, that I was falling back to those emotional and mental patterns I developed in my childhood; when I found out that it is often frustrating to have a discussion with the others I went on doing my own things without asking the opinion of others. Finally I bought this tiny house of my own and moved here to live alone - not because I wanted to abandon all the ideals of living together with the others, but because I felt that it is easier for me to heal my mental and emotional structures if I have more space and privacy around myself.

No doubt, all the members of the hippie collective loved the place and loved the other members of the collective family. We just had problems with listening to each other, difficulties with self-critical growing process of going through ones own ways of behaving, thinking and feeling. And, more generally speaking, to me it seems that in our western culture we have been putting a lot of energy to teach the kids how to read, write and to do the maths. We know how to build a space rocket, we can make smart phones and we have tehcnology to manipulate the DNA. But it seems that we understand very little about basic emotional and social skills, sometimes it seems that we are bit alien with the inner workings of human psyche. And we have a lot of collective traumas, and a considerable number of population is suffering from various mental problems. At the same time our global industry works hard to destroy the necessary conditions of survival of the entire mankind. And what do we do? The economical elite talks about making more profit, and the political elite talks about promoting economical growth so that we would get more tax money to be spent on something good and nice (like bombing our supposed enemies). Oh well, this doesn't seem very clever to me. Instead of economical growth we need more love and empathy, now. We need to grow and to learn more about skills of communication and co-operation, we need to develop our mental patterns so that we no more see other groups as inferior and non-personal mass. At the same time it is so very simple and a life-long journey of learning.

"... and please remember people, that no matter who you are, and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there are still some things that make us all the same. You, me, them, my brother Jake and everybody, everybody!"

ps. Since I'm going to publish this text in the internet I decided to attach a picture of a cat.