You've crossed the line

Lo folks
Yesterday the swedish riksdag (the decision making body of the Kingdom of Sweden) refused to pass the (social democrat and environment party) government's budget, and passed the moderate/liberal oppositions coalitions budget. As a result of this the swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven promised that in december he will announce a new election (according to swedish constitution ha cannot formally announce it until three months after the previous election) to be held in March the 22 of next year (again in accordance with constitution he could at earliest slate in in february but he's pushing it back one more month to allow the second largest party the Moderate Conservatives time to elect a new leader after their previous leader, previous prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, resigned after he lost the election earlier this year).

Most of us knew this would happen, more on why later, and even with it looming the parties close to Löfven's government has been unwilling to open up any kind of dialogue, amongst them the liberal party that I myself am a supporting member of. Now I'm not saying the leftist government are entitled to the support of the centrists and liberals, they aren't, but I fail to see why listening to them would have been a bad thing. After all the conservatives that the liberals reigned with during the previous term (collectively known as the Alliance for Sweden, or derogatory as the bourgeoisie alliance) was no more liberals than the social democrats are. The liberals have reigned with the social democrats before and I hope they will do so again when it fits their agenda. This locking ourselves up in blocks is problematic since it pushes us towards a two party system that benefits no one.

That said this is not primarily their fault, the alliance (however little I may like it) proposed a coalition opposition budget and of course they will vote for that budget. No the ones to blame are the third block. The Swedish Democrats, isolationist, mercantilist,  cultural nationalists and value conservatives (derogatory usually referred to as racist, though granted that is an oversimplification).
Now you don't need me to tell you that their ideals and agenda is basically diametrically opposed to everything I stand for, I find them simplistic, ignorant, biased, shortsighted and overly fond of simple solutions to what is really complex issues. So naturally a lot of people love them. There will always be those ready to rally to the banner of "Those there are the enemy let's fight them" (granted that is true for the extreme left too).
But (ah that little word), I have regardless defended them from a lot of the flack they have received over the years, not because I agree with them, but because I believe in freedom of speech, I believe that if 13% of the swedish people vote for them, we need to respect that. Well that was true, up until yesterday. Up until then the Swedish Democrats for all their loathsome opinions have, parliamentary speaking, acted like professionals.
But in abandoning their own budget proposition and supporting the alliance they have also abandoned every pretense of being a serious party. Now some of you people will say "But hey Fredrik what if they liked the Alliance Budget", and you'd be right, if that was the case my point would be moot. But a statement they made two days ago when they promised they'd resort to this course of action blows that possibility out of the water. acting party leader Matthias Karlsson promised that the Sweden democrats would vote down any budget proposed by a government that did not cave to their demands of reduced immigration (they desire a 90% reduction).
I'm sorry... did but to me, that sounded awfully much like a threat, a threat of reprisal to anyone who does not give in to their demands.
You know I believe there is a word for that, it's called terrorism (albeit white collar one). And that's a line that once you've crossed you cannot come back from. I have been defending your right to express yourself, defended the task you've been given by the swedish people, but this is not it, you have made a mockery of the system and shown your true colour. I can see only one answer to that, as much as I am a fan of compromise, there can be only one course of action, this must be opposed whatever in every way possible. This is a declaration of war towards the establishment, and they think it will benefit them, but the truth is that they have given us the people who like me have been forced to shield them because of our belief in the democratic systems a perfectly good excuse not to.
And your declaration of war will not hurt the ones you oppose, no it'll hurt everyone, the swedish stock market will suffer from increased uncertainty, which by extension means that the economy of every person in Sweden will suffer. Funds that should've reached schools and welfare will be frozen. And any reforms by either side of the political spectrum, as well as the ability to react to things that happen, will have to wait six months to after the new election and the election of a new prime minister.

You may have pleased your angry young men demographic but you will find that crossing that line has cost you a lot, and you will not be able to get back over it, not easily at least. When you eventually get voted out of office you'll look back and you'll see this moment of petty as the turning point.

Arr there be a change in the waters.

Lo folks, this post is about Pirates, no not the jack sparrow kind the pirate party movement. Specifically about the swedish one.

Most of you don't know it but I used to be a firm believer in the movement back in the day. I believed as Marconi did when he introduced the radio (Yes I know Tesla managed to get it to work before he did, no I'm not interested in whatever you think Tesla invented) that open dialogue would make mankind better people more open minded and less hateful. And then Hitler and Stalin used it for the exact opposite, well we're not there yes, hopefully we will never get there with misuse of the internet. But the thing is while I still believe in an open and free internet as a propagator of enlightenment and reason, I long ago lost faith in the Pirate party movement and it's simplistic anti authority solutions (I'm simply too old to be a angry young man).

But because of my former interest in the party I kept them in my facebook feed, I have over the times commented on some of their posts telling them they need a vision beyond being a discontent party. Well they did no better in the last two elections than in any of the previous, and now today their party leadership announced that they resigned.

(These are all in swedish but international readers may want to translate using chrome)

Here's a press release by Party Leader Anna Troberg.

Here's her letter of farewell to her supporters.

Here's a letter of farewell from vice party leader Marit Deldén.

and last a letter of farewell from party secretary Henrik Brändén

Now assuming that you have read these I'll discuss the issues I have had with the Pirate Party and the issues they seem to have had in their party.

When I talk politics I like not to define it as one dimensional left right axis, I prefer to view it as a three dimensional cartesian space. Defined by three axises. The first one is obvious, it's the left right axis, from conservative on the right to socialist on the left.

The second axis is progressive versus reactionary, no reactionary is not conservative.
The last axis is globalisation, versus isolationism and merchantilism. (Enlightenment to me is in the progressive centre-left globalisation corner)

Now the pirate party long ago decided upon where it is on the progressive reactionary axis. It's progressive, it wants to tear down the old order and always struggles against authority. But it has issues on where it is on the other two axises. It has avoided touching the globalisation issue (and the related europification) with a ten foot pole, it has also failed to define it's position on the left right axis, making sudden leaps between liberalism, libertarianism and borderline socialism. And while this has managed to help them get discontents from both sides of the left right spectrum it has also led to strong opposition inside the party when the party decided to expand it's issues.
The whole gamer gate thing seems to have upset that balance further, with the leftists in the party moving strongly against the opinions of gamergate seeing it as the hand of the patriarchal authority that according to the party's anti authority creed needed opposing, but the libertarians in the party saw that opposition to be authority of the cultural socialism that needed opposing. That is ever the problem with anti authority messages indignation and righteous rage. With we and them thinking. Because authority isn't a united them, not is those without it united we.

And that's where the party fails to live up to it's potential, it needs to make these choices, now I think they should go for the liberal path, education, knowledge and freedom of through, even when that means we have to suffer such lowlives as those who use the so called gamer gate to propagate sexism. That is the price we pay for freedom, but being a liberal and a progressivist I am a firm believer that the voices of reason will eventually win out.
But perhaps even more because the leftist party already pushes the integrity line in the left flank so they're not really needed there while the political centre needs an influx of new thoughts.

I also wan to raise my voice in opposition of the idea that questions of gender struggle and ethnic and cultural diversity are leftist ones. They are not, they are progressive ones, and while the nature of how they are handled on the left right and centre may differ the end goal does not. In fact the idea of gender equality came from a liberal concept of egalitarianism, one of the fundamental pillars of liberalism.

Well change is at hand in the pirate party, new leaders will have to be chosen, I hope those are strong visionaries that can lead us back on the path of progress, and better living through technology, but I find if rather more likely that the pirate party will descend into gamer gate hell and lose it's progressivism in favour of taking the reactionary idea to preserve the status quo. 

Well enough ranting for now, until next time.

Prelude to Axanar, strangely prophetic

A few months ago I saw the youtube clip called prelude to Axsnar.  A trailer for a new star trek movie. Included in it was a speech made by admiral Ramirez.  At the time I thought it was just a cool speech, very star trek.
But with the raising level of hostilities between the European Union and the Russian federation the speech has begun to feel very much an ale got lay for what way be facing soon. Which is odd since is.must have been filmed before russia annexed crimmea.  Anyway here the speech, consider it yourself, with the federation being the European union and the klingon empire representing the Russian federation.

We are facing an enemy that is consumed and committed to our total destruction . Am enemy that demands to be fought, and we shall fight.
But I say to you all, our greatest challenge is the not might of a klingon fleet.
The greatest challenge laying before us is to do what must be done, without undoing the dream of the federation.
For myself I have but one fear destroying the dream of the federation, compared to such a loss, I do not fear the Klingon empire.

I say it applies very well to the situation we are facing, nothing is more important than maintaining the European dream. If we must fight russia so be it. But we must not let them break the union apart. Don't get me wrong I really don't hope we have to go to war. But if we abandon the valt states and finnland to Russian advances we will have sacrificed the europea  dream. The dream of a europe United through diplomacy and against war. A dream that people if so many people can come together as one and coexist. This dream rather than the American dream and it's promises of eternal progress may be the defining idea of our age. The key to a future where there is neither war nor conflict. Where all humans may live in peace and have sufficient food medicine and wealth to live happy content lives.

May be that we have to fight now so that future generations may live in peace. But we must on the other hand not become Russia. We must defend ourselves but no more than is nessecary.  Otherwise we have again sacrificed the dream that is europe.

The shots in Sarajevvo where a matter of Princip.

Today its exactly 100 years since the one of the dumbest decisions in the history of our species were taken. Gavriello Princip pulled the trigger on the first world war. And since the second world war was pretty much an effect of the first one, also by extension the second one. Of course he likely had no idea he was giving us the two most masive confkicts in human history. And neither did the other leaders making equally as moronic decisions in the following days and weeks. No they did not know they were starting a world war. But let's be perfectly honest with ourselves here, Gavriello Princip (and the leaders of europe) knew one thing perfectly well. That they were starting a war.
They knowingly and willingly in the midst of a financial boom, at a time when they had so many potential futures, decided time had come to go to war. The reasons where nationalism. The reasons were revenge. The reasons were quite frankly nonstubstansial.  And the decision they took shaped the century to follow. Why am I reminding you of this then?  This stuff that you know (or at least should know) perfectly well. Not to tell you that they did something incredibly stupid. No to remind you that dark as fraught with conflict as our world is today we still learned from their mistakes. Sure there are still people digging trenches (that would be russia on crimmea) but a hundred years ago every damn country in Europe were doing it. Today 100 years later we as a continent (or well most of one) came together as one and elected officials, for each of our countries, to solve our problems peacefully by the negotiating table instead of leaving our sons, fathers and brothers (as well as in the case of a present day conflict our daughters, mothers and sisters) dying, while pissing themselves, in shallow muddy graves.
And yet there is still nationalism, those who would try to undo the system that we have set in place to prevent this tragedy from ever repeating itself, those who for non substantial reasons seek war and conflict. They don't have massive support but at times there only takes one man holding a gun. Gavriello Princip proved that exactly 100 years ago and we must not forget what our principles may cost us and our children.

David Cameron: A game of Shadows

Lo folks, I have been meaning to write something relating to the recent (well not that recent any more) European parliament election.

Fist of I want to say I deeply regret the rise of extremist parties on both sides of the political spectrum. especially the openly anti-semitic, islamophobic, homophobic and anti-zigenistic ones. What I, as a strong supporter of the European cooperation, regret almost as much is the rise of Euroscepticism. And even more what it has led to.

You see while the most extreme ideas mentioned above are certainly frightening, there aren't enough of any one of those groups to cause any real damage. However Euroscepticism is a prevailing thread through each and every one of these extremist parties and thus a much more powerful force inside the European parliament following the election. What is even more disturbing is the decision of several key leaders in Europe to appease the eurosceptics by taking a harder line on the European cooperation
The most important of these is of course the guy in the title, David Cameron, the prime minister of the united kingdoms.
David Cameron has decided that Jean Claude Juncker who represent the party-group that received the most votes in the election, EPP (European People's Party), is too federalist to become president of the European commission and has thus decided to work against him.

Now to understand the problem we need to understand the European Union. The peoples of Europe chose the European parliament, who are the main legislature and decision making body of the union.
"Taking in account the result of the election" the european council, which is made up of the heads of states of the member countries of the EU proposes a candidate for the job as president of the European commission (as well as some other positions, all at once). Before the treaty of Lisbon a unanimous decision had to be reached. But now a majority vote is enough to propose a candidate. The European parliament then votes to either accept or reject this proposal.
Why is it important? Well the European commission is the lawmaking body of the union, all that the parliament can do is to accept or decline to the proposals made by the commission, controlling the commission is thus controlling the direction Europe is going.

Considering the new clause of "Taking into account the result of the election", and earlier critisism that the process of deciding the president of the commission  is a very opaque process, often settled in back-room deals, the five main party-groups of the european cooperation came together to try and reform the process for greater transparency. They thus elected each a representative that they would put forward and offer as a choice for president. That way a voter would know who they voted for depending on which party he voted on.
There is however nothing forcing the European council to chose these candidates, they can chose to take the result of the election into account by other means. And this is the idea that Cameron is trying to push. Truth is that Britain has always preferred weak leaders of the EU. And Cameron is again looking to install a puppet of the council (where Britain on account of being a powerful country has a lot of power).

The problem is that doing so is a step back, a step back towards an opaque process a step back towards backroom deals and games of shadow. A step back to the system that led to the saying "If you think a person might be president of the commission you can be certain they never will".


Now today David Cameron along the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, the German Chanselor Angela Merkel and my own (Swedish) prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is meet in Stockholm to discuss who will be the next president, behind closed doors (yet again). At least Reinfeldt is know to support Cameron's coup (despite going to the election on an EU friendly line, and supporting Juncker's proposed free trade agreement with the US). While Merkel probalby just want to keep Cameron from following up on his threat to leave the EU should Juncker be elected. They ow seek a candidate that the parliament can't afford to dismiss or who can gather enough support in the parliament regardless of the promise the party groups made not to support anyone but the candidates.

Truth is as some of the presidential candidates said during the live debate, if they disregard the will of the European people this time, they will have a very hard time to get people to vote in the next European election. Also stepping back from the idea of transparency that the candidates represent at this point will deal a crippling blow towards the work for increased transparency in the Union. We can pretty much stop saying Europe is a democracy if they make this decision behind closed doors. And doing it to appease the British who are going to vote on leaving the union regardless of who gets chosen as the next president is ridiculous, if the British want to leave there is little we can do to stop them but David Cameron is fishing for support in the waters of UKIP voters, UKIP who went to the election with the idea that they want European cooperation dismantled entirely.

So I ask the European council, please affirm the party-groups interpretation of the process, please stand up for  transperacy. Please don't let the British ruin the European Union for the rest of us. Please end the game of shadows and take European politics into the light.

I don't like Juncker either but he's not worth sacrificing the possibility for greater transparency in the European Union to stop.

P.S. the name of the article is of course a reference to Cameron's fellow Britt, Sherlock Holmes and the Movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. The main difference is that Sherlock Holmes seek to unravel the game of shadows while Cameron seek to maintain it.

Take Back The Flag!

This is a call to arms! Or rather a call to words, or perhaps pictures.
You see today is the Swedish national day, and Sweden as so many other countries out there is plagued by nationalistic right wing extremism, which in turn is besieged by left wing extremists. Hate versus hate. And so hate breeds hate. People get profiled either as any of these three groups, Foreigners, racists or violent anti racists.
I say it's a trend we need to break and thus I offer this call to pictures. The idea as a campaign against hate in all it's forms we shall reclaim the old patriotic symbols not as symbols of superiority of us and inferiority of others but as what they should be, sources of pride, in the best sense of the word. The foremost of these symbols is the flag. So let the flag be the icon of what we try to do, Let's take back the flag from the extremists, not as an act of hate but as restoring it to what it should never have ceased to be.

Let it represent unity not division.

Let it represent hope not despair

Let it represent pride not guilt or shame

Let it represent love not hate.

What I ask of you is that whoever you are, wherever you are that you during your national day post a picture on social media of your countries flag with the hashtag #TakeBackTheFlag.
So here's the view from my window:

Let the flags parade here not opposed but united as equals for a more open and more understanding world.
 Until next time folks!

The Trinity of Ethics

I assume we are all familiar with the concept of the trinity, Th idea that god is three yet somehow one. However this is NOT a bog entry on religion. This is a blog entry on ethics.

You see ethics just like the bible claims that god does also comes in three varieties (actually it's more but then my entire analogy breaks down so bear with me).

These three are:

Duty ethics, also often called moral absolutism. It says that an action has an inherent moral or ethical value, proponents of this version of ethics are Aristotle, who gave us the golden rule ”One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself ”, Jesus, who was very fond of quoting Aristotle’s golden rule and much later Immanuel Kant, who perfected the golden rule to his categorical imperative ”Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.”, which means act only in such a manner that you'd see raised to common practice.
This philosophy of ethics have the problem that it doesn't take circumstances into account. It is also utterly to fascinated with the past. Other arguments against it is that people may want to see some very odd things raised to common practice.

Consequence ethics, as culminating in John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, often reduced to one of several statements such as “Greatest amount of happiness to the greatest amount of people” Or least amount of suffering to the least amount of people. Also often quoted as “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” (Thank you mister Spock). Whilst an open acknowledgement that we may not ever be able to find a perfect course of action that brings everyone happiness or spares everyone suffering (though cynical minds have suggested that the later can be accomplished by wiping out all life leaving nothing alive to suffer). Unfortunately the moment we stop trying to save everyone we make it morally acceptable to save no one.

Which leads us very smoothly to our last, and by far most controversial structure of ethics. The ethics of the ego. Since we cannot rid ourselves of the ego, that we at the most fundamental level are wired to be selfish, we should not try to. We should accept this and instead try to make as good a decision of what serves our self interest as one can. From this arises the idea of enlightened self-interest. That by helping others we in turn help ourselves in the long run. Or if not ourselves then our progeny or their progeny, or so on, that we by acting to the detriment of our own interests in the present actually serve to fulfil our primary genetic imperative,the highest form of self-interest. Which leads us back to where we started, while these three methods of arriving at a conclusion are vastly different from each other, they will often arrive at very similar conclusions. A follower of the idea of inseparable self-interest will tell you that our ideas of a ego separated morality is just an instinctual grasp of enlightened self-interest that evolution has given us. Thus it is perhaps a short cut to construct a categorical imperative or to consider the needs of the many allowing us to quicker make hard decisions without having the total or at least vast knowledge needed to argue ethics from the point of ego.

Subsequently the three are separate in theory but one in practice.

Now I mentioned earlier that there are actually more schools of thought here, two more actually, two that in some ways are subsets of two of the others, the first of these is the morality of intentions. It is very similar to the ethics of consequences, it however judges actions based on the intended consequences rather than the achived consequences. It is always to some extent part of the consequential ethics since we can only really judge the consequences of an action with hindsight (and even then it requires not overlooking aspects). But there's also the old maxim that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and while old maxims are often wrong (just ask the next guy) one could argue that Stalin and Hitler had the best of intentions (and yet they failed both from an egotistical and a utilitarian standpoint), so I guess there's something to it.

Who's the last guy then? The ethics of transcendence. Friedrich Nietzsche argued that there are no such universal truths that we have no such universally applying ethics that we must ourselves judge what we deem important, and do what we can accept having done to achieve those goals. He called it imposing ones will on the universe. And told us that life and the universe itself is will to power and nothing else. But he also tells us that others will be imposing their will on the universe and as such we must be mindful of the consequences that we incur by placing ourselves in the crosshair of others ability to impose their will upon the universe. One could see it as do what you argue that you must do and accept the consequences of your actions, if those consequences are to steep, then you don't do it. In a way this is a less tangible form of the morality of ego, it relinquishes the idea that there have to be inherent things that we all strive towards, because even if those things may have come naturally we are capable of setting ourselves above that too. What we evolved to be and what we are have long since separated. Nietzsche also warns us against accepting others maxims of morality as our own blindly. That's not to say there is no morality but that we must transcend the expectations of our society and forge our own personal code of ethics if we wish to become supermen and impose our will on the universe.
Nietzsche may seem impossible to combine with the earlier statement that the three are really one but again it all comes down to the question how you arrive at a conclusion. All neitzsche's philosophy says is that you should find the answers yourself, because an answer given to you by someone else is worthless, if you cannot argue why an action is good or bad then you're not making a decision of morality, and as such the action has no moral value, you can chose to cure cancer or end all war but if you don't understand why you are doing it, then you have no right to take responsibility for the action, you are merely a tool for the one who chose to impose his or her will upon you. And a decision to let someone else decide for you is always a bad thing. To many horrible things in the history of mankind have been done by people who were only following orders.
Of course perhaps that is me (and by association Nietzsche) imposing my will and moral code on you.

Turning on the light.

Hello folks!
My name is Fredrik Dunge, I've previously had a blog called 'Rationell Empirism' (rational empiricism) where I discussed philosphy politics and so on. I have however felt that I was severly limiting my readers because the blog was in swedish so I decided that it was time for the great silence for the old blog and the lights to finally be lit for my new lighthouse of enlightenment. The name was chosen becuase I'm a liberal, a scientific person (don't yet have the diploma to atually call myself a scientist but I'm getting there) and a beliver in enlightenment and logic.

So I'll kick this of with quoting a passage from the fanfic Harry Potter and the methods or rationality:

"Harry stared down at the can in his hand, the coldness settling into his blood. Charming, happy, generous with his favors to his friends, Draco wasn't a psychopath. That was the sad and awful part, knowing human psychology well enough to know that Draco wasn't a monster. There had been ten thousand societies over the history of the world where this conversation could have happened. No, the world would have been a very different place indeed, if it took an evil mutant to say what Draco had said. It was very simple, very human, it was the default if nothing else intervened. To Draco, his enemies weren't people.
And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now as in the darkness-before-dawn prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law, at least when it came to some peasant girl. There were places in Muggle-land where it was still the same way, countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place and time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment. A line of descent, it seemed, which didn't quite include magical Britain, for all that there had been cross-cultural contamination of things like ring-pull drinks cans."

I feel it greatly relates to how I view the world, I recommend you read the fanfic, it really reads as an instruction manual to logic and scientific theory. 
But now I have to shut down the lights of the old blog... until next time!