Friday, February 1, 2013

The world, its barest colors

Today I thought about theories of fall, maybe this is because I have been reading a book about decline of society. (The book is Rakas rappio by Jukka Koskelainen.)

People have been predicting the end of culture, society, and wellbeing in all societies in all human history. It was better ten years ago, or 50 years ago, and it is inevitable that our wellfare society will fall, and tomorrow will be worse than today. Why are we prone to such thoughts?

Also, such thoughts bring with them phenomena which grow into drastic scale, making it possible for populistic politicians to gain power. Why it is so that we thrive in such thinking? On the other hand, such thinking can also make us aware of real dangers to society, health, the sustainability of our way of living. So, theories of fall are worth thinking about.

Another theme for today was openness, as in open data, open science, open knowledge. Markus made a posting about the titles of postings, and I hereby reveal that this posting title is from the poem The Work by Tom Sleigh, because the poem contains the word openness.

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