Is that an offer?

I was recently confronted with the word "offer" in a context that made me evaluate the word "offer". And must admit that it's not an "offer", it's an "option". There is a slight difference in co-notation, and my reaction to "offer" possibly reflects a shift in world view that I have actually been working on to achieve.

In the world of offers, the person offering the offer is an authority, and the person accepting it must either accept or decline. There may have been some negotiations, but this is my final offer. Used a lot in advertising as a humble sacrifice: I'm offering this to you for half price.

"Offer" derives from Norse "Offra", sacrifice, which is also the root of the Norwegian word "Offer", sacrifice. So the person offering something is doing a sacrifice. And a sacrifice is a quality reduction of one's life experience. Even in the situation that you want to sacrifice something in order to experience the reduced quality of life, it is a humbling process.

At the same time, the receiver must usually accept their own sacrifice in the process: It is understood that the transaction is not completed in a balance of equals. The receiver might come out better off, knowing in the subconscious that they have taken advantage of the offerer. At the same time, they might feel that the offerer gets offended that the offer was not accepted, when they have already humbled themselves.

While this transaction model does not necessarily reflect every transaction where the word "offer" has been used, it does not change the fact that the word represents a sacrifice.

An option, on the other hand, is the game of equals. I want to play this game, and if you want to play this game, then we play this game together. I am open to play this game, it is not a sacrifice, it is an experience I would like to have in my life. It is a possible outcome that resonates with me. I do not offer or sacrifice anything, I am merely open for the possibility.

Links and comments week 2013.33

How a big idea solved Seoul's parking problem
A smart answer to a seemingly big problem solved by thinking in three dimentions: Large amounts of gasoline spent every day just looking for a parking spot are now saved by making free parking spots more easily visible.

It only takes a spark
Touching story of a child who sees bullying in a completely different way than the parent. Or in other words, this kid has understood it. The answer to the bullying problem is not to avoid things that can get you bullied, but to stand your ground and love the bully anyway. Avoidance means you have already let the bully win. Which brings us to this article in Norway:

The cross is being removed from prayer houses
Being a right wing monocultural paper, I take some of the contents with a pinch of salt, though one can not get away from the basic fact: Public prayer houses, chappels and grave yards (formerly known as "church yards") have their crosses removed to make them "religion neutral". Since the places are public, there is also room for buddhists, muslims, etc. And while the extremists cry foul about the removal of "Norwegian culture", my observation is this: You do not build a tolerant society by hiding the diversity under a white cloth. That's like obtaining gender equality by forcing everyone to wear a burka, so you don't know who is man and who is woman. And you don't force a shopping mall to take down the advertising signs of the businesses inside to make the mall "business neutral". Nay, you do it the other way. Keep the cross and add the crecent, the wheel and Tha. Show off the diversity and be proud of it. Anything less is to cater for the intolerant.

Platform cut down while demonstrators are chained to the top
People demonstrating against exploitation of Sámi land in Northern Sweden built a platform, climbed to the top and chained themselves up. Police started to cut down the feet of the platform with the demonstrators still on board. In the Swedish police's defence, certain other nations would just run over everyone with a bulldozer, saying that "hey, they were in the way."

Letters of Note: People Simply Empty Out
A great letter from Charles Bukowski to his publisher, celebrating his own departure from his mindless post office job before he turned postal. Others who might go either postal or waitral are waiters, so also read this great article:
Observations from a tipless restaurant

Bullying yourself

Hannah Smith committed suicide after a longer period of bullying. Media focus on the last sprint of cyber bullying on a web site where you can anonymously ask someone any question. Questions and answers are public. After an internal investigation, the company concluded that Hanna Smith was doing most of the bullying herself.

A lector at the national centre for learning environment and behavioural science in Norway comments to Norwegian TV 2 that he has never heard of anyone sending bullying messages to themselves before. I quickly wrote to him, because I have heard of someone who did that before: myself. So if anyone is ever in doubt over this being a possibility, allow me to explain how this works.

Assuming you are already a victim of long term bullying, you build an image of yourself with no value, where people will find something they don't like about you, and when they do, they will make sure you know how much they don't like you. It's a line of thought that sits deep within you. It's a long line of assumptions based on how you have experienced years and years of bullying.

Even if you think you have come away from all the bullying, it takes only one comment about one specific thing you hate about yourself to set off a feeling of self hate. And when you hate yourself, you have no respect for yourself.

When this happens in a public forum, something more happens: Not only has this other person shown (or painted a lie) that you're flawed and therefore worthless, but everyone has seen it! On the one side, you want to defend yourself. On the other side, you feel flawed and worthless and perhaps the other guy is right. And so you fall for the temptation of all temptations: To become your own bully. To publicly make it look as one or more anonymous bullies are coming down hard on you.

In your self hate, you already are your own bully, because you doubt yourself. You have no respect for yourself. You keep telling yourself how worthless you are. You really need and want someone else to prove you wrong, to tell you that you ARE worth something. But who is going to do this, when you've locked yourself into your room and stare at a computer screen? Well, there's always "the audience".

So the idea of bullying yourself is to take the view that the bully expresses and turn up the notch. Show how ridiculous it is. Ridiculous accusation times ten. Times a hundred. Times a thousand. How far do you have to go before someone steps in and says "this is ridiculous?"

Truth is, "the audience" doesn't want to get involved. There is no response. There is noone monitoring the stream of accusations real time, stepping in, saying "Stop! You're a wonderful person! We love you!" Nobody does it because they're either not online, or they are surfing another website, or they are one of the bullies who have no idea how to step in when someone takes over their game, or they just don't want to get involved.

The involvement comes afterwards. When it is too late.

This logic doesn't hit you while you're at it. You're in a form of deep depression, you're focused on this one task of proving to yourself that the bully is right, or proving that the bully is not right, something is flawed, it's so hard to think straight, it just feels so bad, and you can put words on all these opinions that make you feel bad, because they have been repeated over and over again by others, and you can't think of anything that is good about yourself, and if there is anything, then it is worthless, because nobody else can see these things. Indeed, you want to be the victim, because then someone can feel sorry for you, but you don't feel sorry for yourself, because you understand how the bully somehow must be right. You become the bully and the victim at the same time, and can not see your way out of it.

I didn't commit suicide, I quit the club whose forum I was a member of. I never heard from the other members ever again, other than one of them telling me they had had a big clean up after I left, and anonymous posting was no longer possible.

There is no reason to believe that the last month of cyber bullying was the full reason for Hannah Smith's suicide. Something had been going on for a much longer time, during which she had completely lost touch with reality. She was then pushed over the edge, into a downward spiral so deep, she didn't find her way back out.

Victims of bullying become masters of hiding their desperation. Hannah Smith's empty reservoir of self love went unnoticed. The remedy lies in the continuing compassion and expressed love for those around you, because you never know who needs it the most.

Interesting links week 2013.32

So you want to pick someone's brains? Do it right!
While one would think that these rules should be obvious, it has become obvious that it is not obvious to a lot of people. And even if it is obvious, it is nice to have a checklist.

5 ways to lead no matter your title
Again, obvious things for leadership attributes. And with a five point checklist, you can make a daily reminder producing a week long cycle.

Songcycles
My good friend Ken McCracken found a tape with the Stuffy Rabbit song. Songcycles are coming back online. I hereby pledge that next time I'm in Toronto, I'll join them for a song or ten.

Adyghe Habze
The Adyghe People had a Pagan ethnic religion, philosophy and world view known as Habze. Combined with megalithic culture makes for a very interesting study, which I hereby have put in my list of future deeper dive studies.

Gabriele D'Annunzio
Before fascism, there was a poet from Pescara known by the name Gabriele. While he is thought to be the precursor to fascism and a source of inspiration for Mussolini, he was also a poet and writer. His books supposedly have nothing to do with fascism, and are considered to be unparallelled works of art.

And finally... for something completely different from Abruzzo

Gatesnotes

The trouble with rich people's visiting habits, is that they come unannounced. So when Bill Gates finally decided to come by my door on Runde, I wasn't even in the country. Too bad. Now he has to return another day.

La jument de Michao (le loup, le renard et la belette)

Reviving Scriba Org

February 1994, Scriba Org was founded in a basement in Øvre Årdal, Norway. While our electronic floppydisk magazine, Scriba Communis Responsi, had already been living for two years, it was during the 1994 olympics, in a basement, that the "Arch prophets" made a grand vision of a huge organization for the betterment of mankind.

In its infancy, Scriba Org gathered some momentum, grew in number of participants and then fizzled out as life caught up with us during the dot.com bubble burst.

Twenty years after the original founding, however, one could say we have not only gained important professional and life experience, but much of what we have ended up doing are important aspects of what was once supposed to be Scriba Org.

For this reason, I have called upon the revival of Scriba Org. Refounding meeting will take place on August 24th, time and location TBD, with some founding members being virtual. More information to follow.