Just a thought:
During my summer holiday, I voted for the first time. I voted on whether or not the Act of Succesion should be altered so that the firstborn, no matter what gender, should be allowed to rule, whereas it has earlier been the firstborn boy rather than the firstborn child.
When I entered the isoloir (feeling very mature and grown-up) I found that the ballot paper read only ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ with a box next to each. Although it makes sense that the voters would know what they were voting for or against before entering the isoloir, I find it very odd that there was no explanation whatsoever on the ballot to indicate exactly what ‘yes’ and ‘no’ meant. I only thought about this for a second, and I imagine that the majority of the people knew what was being asked immediately. But I also believe that a few, or perhaps a large part, did not. I know that a lot of people are not all that interested in politics and was not really aware what they were going to vote on. I find it highly unlikely that anyone, if in doubt of what exactly they were voting on, would stick their head out of the isoloir and ask ‘hey, guys – what exactly am I voting on, again?’
This might be far fetched, but I believe that this might be an attempt to manipulate the small percentage of people who did not know what they were being asked. If I was the one who was in there, not knowing what question I was being asked, I would most probably tick ‘yes’. ‘Yes’ seems like an active choice. It makes you a good voter. You have taken a stand on something, you support something, you are a good and strong citizen. Could that be the case or did whoever designed the ballots simply assume that people would have the courtesy to at least know what they were voting on before going to vote?
Anyway, 85.4% voted YES and the Act of Succesion was altered. Point proven? Not at all, but theorizing is fun.
Political Supermodels
Our recent class discussion on the concept of ‘Political Supermodels’ made me think…
During the time of the last Danish election, my mother was working for one of the smaller parties. Seeing it from the inside, she made it clear to me exactly how much thought goes into every single detail of an election campaign, and exactly how much effort is put into it. On TV, the campaign videos start popping up, and you see posters with smiling politicians in every streetlight. This is a remarkable feature of the political campaigns. These posters are designed so that the face of the person is clearly the essence of the poster, accompanied only by the name of the party he or she represents. There is no mention of the opinions or viewpoints of the politician or the party, only this link between a face and a party. In this way, the focus is on the people rather than the politics.
The strategy that the parties use is essentially the same. They want to make themselves look good. They have different ways of portraying a favorable image, but they are all trying to do it. If those who have the best campaign = those who get the greatest number of votes, this is a vicious circle, since the larger parties have a lot more money available to them to run a campaign than the smaller ones.
I am not trying to say that Danish people are stupid, ignorant or easily manipulated. In fact, I have a number of friends who have been politically active for years despite their young age. Still, I think that a lot of voters have only a very superficial comprehension for politics, and that they are likely to be influenced by a strong campaign rather than develop an in-depth understanding of the party’s political standpoint. For example, I have spoken to people who voted for a party because they liked the color of their campaign poster or because they thought a party-member was attractive.
A few years back, a very conservative Danish political party (Danish People’s Party) used the lyrics of a song to promote themselves. This does not initially seem like a problem, but it caused a great uproar at the time. Loosely translated, the song is called ‘Give Me Back Denmark’ and is written by the artist Natasja. It deals with how Denmark is moving away from what it once were – how the free expression and spaces to unfold are getting lost with a specific reference to the tearing down of the ‘Youth House’. In general, it criticizes a conservative and discriminating mindset and encourages people to bring back the free spirit of an ‘old Denmark’. The Danish people’s party took this hit song that basically criticizes their policies and used it in their favor. They used the campaigning slogan ‘Give us back Denmark’. Many found this outrageous and rude as the Denmark that the Danish People’s Party is asking to get back is a conservative ‘monocultural’ one with no room for diversity. In effect, the exact opposite of the Denmark Natasja longed for. Plagiarism or not, the popularity of the song made the slogan memorable and tongue-in-cheek enough to ensure the party a large chunk of the votes. Whether this was because of their promotional trick or their actual policies, I am not to say.
Since I am eighteen years old I am allowed to vote, and although I would love to say that I am immune to the political campaign, I think that I, as everyone else, will be biased by the parties’ strong self-promotion.
During the time of the last Danish election, my mother was working for one of the smaller parties. Seeing it from the inside, she made it clear to me exactly how much thought goes into every single detail of an election campaign, and exactly how much effort is put into it. On TV, the campaign videos start popping up, and you see posters with smiling politicians in every streetlight. This is a remarkable feature of the political campaigns. These posters are designed so that the face of the person is clearly the essence of the poster, accompanied only by the name of the party he or she represents. There is no mention of the opinions or viewpoints of the politician or the party, only this link between a face and a party. In this way, the focus is on the people rather than the politics.
The strategy that the parties use is essentially the same. They want to make themselves look good. They have different ways of portraying a favorable image, but they are all trying to do it. If those who have the best campaign = those who get the greatest number of votes, this is a vicious circle, since the larger parties have a lot more money available to them to run a campaign than the smaller ones.
I am not trying to say that Danish people are stupid, ignorant or easily manipulated. In fact, I have a number of friends who have been politically active for years despite their young age. Still, I think that a lot of voters have only a very superficial comprehension for politics, and that they are likely to be influenced by a strong campaign rather than develop an in-depth understanding of the party’s political standpoint. For example, I have spoken to people who voted for a party because they liked the color of their campaign poster or because they thought a party-member was attractive.
A few years back, a very conservative Danish political party (Danish People’s Party) used the lyrics of a song to promote themselves. This does not initially seem like a problem, but it caused a great uproar at the time. Loosely translated, the song is called ‘Give Me Back Denmark’ and is written by the artist Natasja. It deals with how Denmark is moving away from what it once were – how the free expression and spaces to unfold are getting lost with a specific reference to the tearing down of the ‘Youth House’. In general, it criticizes a conservative and discriminating mindset and encourages people to bring back the free spirit of an ‘old Denmark’. The Danish people’s party took this hit song that basically criticizes their policies and used it in their favor. They used the campaigning slogan ‘Give us back Denmark’. Many found this outrageous and rude as the Denmark that the Danish People’s Party is asking to get back is a conservative ‘monocultural’ one with no room for diversity. In effect, the exact opposite of the Denmark Natasja longed for. Plagiarism or not, the popularity of the song made the slogan memorable and tongue-in-cheek enough to ensure the party a large chunk of the votes. Whether this was because of their promotional trick or their actual policies, I am not to say.
Since I am eighteen years old I am allowed to vote, and although I would love to say that I am immune to the political campaign, I think that I, as everyone else, will be biased by the parties’ strong self-promotion.
I swear
When I speak Danish, I swear in English. I am much more inclined to throw in a ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ (pardon my French) in a sentence than I am to use the Danish translation. By doing this, I think that I somehow distance the word from its actual meaning. But now that my everyday language of communication is English, I have become a lot more aware of what I am actually saying when I use these swearwords. Nonetheless, I feel that after coming to MUWCI, my tendency to swear has increased.
Why do we swear? I know that many of my peers use swearwords to a much wider extent than I do, but I still find myself swearing more than I need to.
Would cutting out the use of swearwords from my everyday language limit my ability to express myself, or would it perhaps challenge me to describe how I feel more precisely? If I could not just throw in an arbitrary swearword in an otherwise completely valid sentence, I would have to find an alternative that actually expressed what I wanted to express rather than just being a rude addition to a sentence. A curse adds no real substance to a sentence and most swearwords seem to have lost their actual meaning completely. In fact, the extensive amount of swearing degrades the emphasis that each swearword puts on a sentence. It is a vicious circle. The more we swear, the more we need to swear in order to express the same amount of shock, awe, frustration, etc.
Would I swear if no one around me did? At home, one of my closest friends is very religious, and in her social circle as well as upbringing, swearing has been completely off the table. Whenever I am around her, I become very aware of the swearwords I use. In MUWCI, I do not give it a thought, since the people around me swear just as much as I do. If this was a ‘swear-free’ community however, I doubt that I would use the rude words as much as I do now, if at all.
Is this perhaps a pattern of behavior that can be transferred to other areas? Swearing is a very minor part of our interaction, but is the way in which my swearing seems to have increased since I came to MUWCI a sign that I have effectively let the habits of the people around me alter mine? I essentially see the habit of swearing as a negative thing. If it is something you cannot control, the image you project of yourself seems immature and somewhat aggressive. However, I have taken on the habit of swearing, even if unconsciously. I believe this model to be true for a number of other areas in MUWCI. When you gather people from around the world and expect them to fit into one community, some people will adjust to the norms of the community and the people around them.
Why do we swear? I know that many of my peers use swearwords to a much wider extent than I do, but I still find myself swearing more than I need to.
Would cutting out the use of swearwords from my everyday language limit my ability to express myself, or would it perhaps challenge me to describe how I feel more precisely? If I could not just throw in an arbitrary swearword in an otherwise completely valid sentence, I would have to find an alternative that actually expressed what I wanted to express rather than just being a rude addition to a sentence. A curse adds no real substance to a sentence and most swearwords seem to have lost their actual meaning completely. In fact, the extensive amount of swearing degrades the emphasis that each swearword puts on a sentence. It is a vicious circle. The more we swear, the more we need to swear in order to express the same amount of shock, awe, frustration, etc.
Would I swear if no one around me did? At home, one of my closest friends is very religious, and in her social circle as well as upbringing, swearing has been completely off the table. Whenever I am around her, I become very aware of the swearwords I use. In MUWCI, I do not give it a thought, since the people around me swear just as much as I do. If this was a ‘swear-free’ community however, I doubt that I would use the rude words as much as I do now, if at all.
Is this perhaps a pattern of behavior that can be transferred to other areas? Swearing is a very minor part of our interaction, but is the way in which my swearing seems to have increased since I came to MUWCI a sign that I have effectively let the habits of the people around me alter mine? I essentially see the habit of swearing as a negative thing. If it is something you cannot control, the image you project of yourself seems immature and somewhat aggressive. However, I have taken on the habit of swearing, even if unconsciously. I believe this model to be true for a number of other areas in MUWCI. When you gather people from around the world and expect them to fit into one community, some people will adjust to the norms of the community and the people around them.
Awesome trivialities
I first came across the word ‘awesome’ when analyzing a poem in my 6th grade English class. I was instantly drawn to the word as I found the sound of it pleasant and peculiar. Today, I feel that it belongs in the mouths of teenagers more than in old English poetry. In any given conversation, it seems to be slipped into every other sentence.
“Dude, that party was awesome!”, “Your hair looks awesome”, “This hamburger is awesome!”
I dare say that although a hamburger might be good, satisfying, tasty or delicious, it has to be a somewhat extraordinary burger to truly fit the label it is given when we call it ‘awesome’. One definition of awesome is this: extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear. This is hardly what we are trying to express when we use the word in everyday conversation. The overuse of words in itself is something that easily gets on my nerves but in the case of ‘awesome’ I feel that something has been lost with the change in meaning and use for this particular word. For what do we do when something truly is awesome, that is to say when it leaves our jaw hanging open and overthrows us completely; when it leaves us in awe? Of course we can use synonyms to properly explain ourselves, but if this is the direction in which our language is going and we keep discharging words of their meaning by overusing and trivializing them, is our range of possibility to truly express ourselves decreasing?
Seeing the word in poetry now, it stands out to me as being strangely misplaced. In this way, the meaning it has come to have in my everyday life has effectively overruled the original meaning of the word. While I know this is natural, and that it happens to many words it is slightly depressing to know that my opportunities to truly express how I feel has been narrowed down, even if only by a microscopic bit. Although the word is still perfectly valid when used in its original meaning, a sentence like ‘It was an awesome cathedral’ has a strangely casual ring to it, and I am afraid I will never quite be able to appreciate the word in its original meaning again. This bothers me quite a bit and it is definitely not awesome.
First posts, years and impressions.
MUWCI is often referred to as a bubble, a description I find quite precise. When I am here, it is easy to forget that the outside world exists. In a way, the bubble we lived in through all of last year has already burst. There is no way you can take away half of the people who made out a community and still expect things to be exactly the same. In my opinion, this is a good thing. Change allows us to take a step back and evaluate the things we encounter. Our batch has been given the opportunity to readjust our way of thinking rather than simply continuing to act in the same way because that is ‘how it has always been’. Saying that the things we do are right just because we have been doing them for a long time is a passive and unconstructive argument. However, it is much simpler to think like this than to actually evaluate and change our behavior. Coming to MUWCI, my second years’ way of thinking and behaving heavily influenced mine. I think this is quite natural. It took me a while to adjust to being in India, and adapting someone else’s approach to things was far easier than completely building up my own from the beginning. I am not saying that I blindly accepted whatever my second years presented me to. However, having been here for a year did give them some kind of authority or at least knowledge about the place that I did not yet have. Thinking about it now, I realize exactly how much the attitude of the people around us changes our view on things. If each of us attempts to approach the people and situations around us with an open mind this will inevitably affect the general feel of the community. Also, I am wondering how this place will change along with the people in it. If it is true that we are really just an ensemble of relationships, to how great an extent are we ourselves bound to change when more than a hundred new people are introduced to our lives? And how prominent is a first encounter really? I have no memory of when and where I first met most of the people that I now consider my closest friends. I would like to think that a part of me is consistent no matter who I am around. However, over summer I found it hard to combine the person I used to be at home and who I felt I had become during the year I had spent in MUWCI. Maybe it is not true that the people around us completely make us who we are, but rather that every relationship we have leave some kind of impression that will inevitably shape our personality.
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