How Long Does the Santa Claus Live?

Santa Claus or Joulupukki as I know him in my own Finnish language has been a continuing presence in my life since my birth during the 1950s in Lapland, Finland. I am a Christmas child myself who was born in a city that resides both the Santa Claus’ Main Post Office at Napapiiri at the Arctic Circle and the long tradition of tourist industry around Santa/Julupukki, including the official University courses in Elf Profession. Just check here to believe it. I am not telling you fibs.

Once in a while, or quite often actually, researchers do tell you that Santa is a lie, check in here and if you still have doubts here it is in Finnish. Every now and then we are also reminded that adults think too much. I mean in no respect to demean the two articles presented here but I am convinced that whatever we believe does construct our reality, including the metaphysical reality of Santa. Check my previous 2010 posting here about what is the history of the Santa tradition I believe in.

This year, like every year, it has come to pass that people are considering Santa and their Christmas traditions, including its political correctness and the commercialisation surrounding the modern practice of giving enormous amounts of presents to everyone. It boosts the economy, say the economists and many, if not all the shops rely on their Christmas sales to cover much of their yearly expenses. This makes it understandable that we keep on staring the Christmas markets earlier and earlier in the year. And who wouldn’t like to boost the economy? Or maybe not.

I live in Australia and find that the Christmas for me starts with the decorations at the shopping center, because otherwise, it is summer. The season comes as a great contradiction to my birth home of Rovaniemi, where the winter snow falls plentiful and it is freezing cold. In Australia, in the heat and the sun, it is quite hard for me to think about Christmas in the way I used to as a child. Now my traditions much come from having fun with the grandchildren and imagining with them how Santa would ride the skis from Lapland to deliver the presents Downunder.

My grandchildren know very well, where the line of the fairy-tale and the reality lies. They think that it is ‘cool’ that they, for example, know exactly where the North Pole is: that it is at Rovaniemi, Finland. And why do they know is because they have been there themselves. My six-year old granddaughter insists on this. “Mummu, I have actually been there twice.” There is no buts about it. She does not think about it philosophically, or in any metaphorical way. For her North Pole is where the Santa lives and because she knows the Santa, Rovaniemi for her is the North Pole. It is possible for children to think about Santa philosophically as well. At the age of five, my elder son asked me how long I thought Santa would live and when I answered: “As long as you believe in him”, he immediately said: “Oh, just like God!” That was also clear at one go and the end of the discussion.

Oh no, my granddaughter thinks about it all as a great potential for performance. She needs the right costume, and the right music and the right atmosphere and we are on. This will be the best Christmas ever performed. I bet it will include the music from the movie Trolls as for her it is the best dancing soundtrack possible to imagine.

The other way, I get my Christmas spirit rising is through technology and internet. I plan on talking to my family situated around the world, especially the other granddaughter in London. We are planning on maybe decorating our Christmas trees together, at the same time, through connecting on Skype. At least we will build Lego Christmas decorations together in our weekly get-togethers. We will show and tell about all the little decorations I have collected and placed in our tree. They come with different memories of my family for generations. Before this tree decorating used to be on the 13^th of December, because the Saint Lucia’s Day was my mother’s day. The family tradition carried to us from Sweden through the WWII when my mother was a refugee as a child there. We remember, I can tell it all to my grandchildren in my mother tongue, in Finnish.

This year, though, like last year, my grandchildren are in a hurry, and so am I. So, we might decorate the tree during the first week of December, already. The artificial trees that last and last make this longer season possible. The positive part is that we can even choose the colour of the tree as we fancy. This year it will be black. And from there on, sitting quietly, watching the lights on that tree reminds me of the Christmases past, present and the future. Baking cookies and the Karelian Pies with kids makes my Christmas real.

Our Christmas or Yule/Joulu traditions as I say it in Finnish might change and adjust into new technology, new environments and blend with new traditions. Still, for us the message of Santa remains the same: compassion, kindness, light, fun and caring. To me, it is no lie, it is a reality worth sharing with my family and friends and passing on to children and grandchildren.

If the spirit of Santa grows into a figure of a jolly old man or a strong grandma like woman, it might not be so bad to imagine that it is the spirit of the ages, all the good parts from Odin to St Nicolaus and many other unimaginable realities blended together into a consideration of others and their plight. It is not always about us. Mostly it is about the truth. So, how long does the Santa live? I still say that wherever or whenever you are, it depends on your own capability to imagine.

Be the Change You Want to Be - My Year with Healthy Lifestyle Choices

Have you ever questioned yourself and your own ability to change your own circumstances to make your life more meaningful and happier? Have you ever thought that life is really hard and that making a conscious change is not worth the trouble? That leaving everything to chance would be the easiest thing to do? Well, I certainly have.

In my vocabulary, it is called procrastination. Leaving everything to that little change that it might get better on its own without continuous conscious effort from ourselves. We do it all the time, at work, at home, with friends, with family and in ourselves. It is the easy way out. Stalling! We don't really want to change, get out of the familiar and form new habits.

According to research what people believe and what they actually do is a very different thing. We might clearly see that we are overweight, that our environment is non-productive, our friendships are destructive to our development, but instead of doing something to change the situation, we cling to the comfort of it and complain about the situation. We might even blame it on something or someone else. It is comforting to think that we are helpless as it is the outside circumstances that depress us and leave us no other options than taking it as it comes. We might as well accept the defeat right there and then. Some of us might make an attempt, for a short while and then fall back to the old habits when we find that it did not work anyway. It was doomed from the start and we knew it. We forget so easily. What we did a year ago is not relevant to what we do today anyway.

OK. So, you want to lose weight! The easiest way is to fast, for a few days and lose 3 kg in the process. Or to buy any of the women's magazines and follow any of the celebrity insights and compare yourself to anyone of the pictures, especially the 'greatest looser' pictures an find yourself wanting. And you are back to your old habits.

So, you want to get more energy. The easiest way is to join any gym for a month and/or take up an exercise regime three times a week for eight weeks challenge. That is habit forming and you can be sure that you've lost some centimeters from your tummy and thighs. But did you really change anything in yourself or did you just make a little payment for the change that everything will be better if you just did something? And how about getting a face lift like the celebrities do or a non-invasive treatment that takes five centimeters from your tummy in 30 minutes treatment for a price.

Or, you want to get healthy in another way by eating supplements. Then going to the nearest chemist will be exciting as they certainly have an array of supplements that is said to work and have a slight possibility of aiding in the good health project you have going on there. I am getting sarcastic here even though it is not my aim with this article.

I tried it all during the last year. That is the point! Everything I do becomes a research project. I have done the research. And here are the results:



1. Losing weight.
During the last year I tried many methods of fasting and dieting.

The one I still find the easiest and the best after years of practice is called the Lemon Detox fast with Neera combined Palm and Maple syrup. It can now be bought from most of the health shops around Australia due to the new packaging and renaming the product with a more attractive brand name (Lemon Detox).

I found the fast involves very little effort in that you only need to follow the directions and forget about eating or drinking anything else except water and herbal tea. The reaction I got from those near me was a question on how I could tolerate to fast for ten days drinking lemons without eating? The answer is that forgetting about eating was easier for me than keeping a schedule of eating whatever was on the list of things that I could eat. The booklet that comes with the syrup has lots of suggestions for diverse needs and personality types. The Australian instructions are much gentler on the body than the once I followed in Finland during the 1990's although the practice is the same. The benefit was that I lost three kilos and my cravings for sugar and Coke disappeared.

The easiest way for me to lose weight in a longer term was to quit sugar altogether. David Gillespie in his book Sweet Poison. Why Sugar Makes Us Fat makes a good case study argument for the refined sugar as poison that can be an incentive for some people who need to have a scientific and historical explanation to why eating sugar has made such an impact in the human nutritional habits. It gives a believable explanation why type 2 diabetes is rampant in our society when before it was not even known.

That was my incentive. The fact that my doctor told me that I could fix my type 2 diabetes threat myself. During the last year my sugar levels have gone from 13 to 5.9 and I lost 17 kilos with no more effort than watching my sugar and refined foods diet.
My daughter who said that she could not give up sweets, especially chocolate, restricted her sugar intake in support of my effort and has so far lost 14 kilos.


My only challenge is in the finding that chocolate is also made with maltitol as a sugar replacement and holidays like Christmas and Easter where kindhearted people you love give you chocolate as a present can give you 2 kilos just because maltitol acts just like sugar in your body or maybe it is the fat. Then it is giving that up once the habit has formed that presents a new challenge.

2. Getting more energy through exercise and supplements.
My only and most enjoyable exercise habit has been walking our dog. And that itself is an effort for me who just do not like anything to do with physical strain except when doing it in a social context which I do not have anyway.

So, I tried the gym. I paid for it in order to have an incentive to go there. But no, it did not stick. I had no friends to go with except a paid companion and that is no fun. I tried to take up an eight weeks challenge for myself combined with supporting a charity. After one week, I found an excuse not to go. At least I am supporting some young girls for education with that payment I made. So no amount of money as incentive has been effective enough to get me into exercising. Nothing came of it. What my brain knows to be a best method for losing weight is something I just do not want to do. I tried other non-invasive fat loosing methods instead.

The first one was the ultrasound fat burner. I believe, it actually aided my weight loss last year. At least it was fun although a bit painful. But since I had paid for it, I went through with it and in the process found some other cool things about the modern beauty industry I never would have known otherwise. The benefit of it for me was the experience.

The second non-invasive fat losing technique I am trying is iLipo. So far it has not had any effect but it has been fun. Much more fun that any gym I ever went to. Trying all the machines that shake, massage and squish you in effort to lose weight has been an experience I would not give up. The judgement is still out on its effectiveness, though. I will keep you posted on that.


The best and the most beneficial to my changing appearance during the last year has been the Nu Skin Galvanic Face and Body Spas combined with the Pharmanex supplements, especially Vitality and now R2. I have tried many others as well.

There has been a long time habit in our family to eat supplement as it was a firm belief of my grandfather that the food quality in Australia was not enough to sustain all the vitamins and minerals. He used to order his supplements from those considered by his research the best suppliers and I believed that this contributed to his and my grandmothers long life span despite lots of health risks.

In 2005 after a longer struggle with stress at work and an operation I was recommended Matagenics Fibroblex Plus and Meta A & B Complex as a repair by my friend and massage person. And wow what a difference it made to my life. I could feel how it literally went to my 'bones and sinew' and made my life easier. I supplied the supplement to my daughter and my daughter-in-law after their childbirths and both had really good results. Unfortunately the effects of these supplements are not lasting and in time after 7 years of usage I could not feel the benefits any longer although I am sure they helped.

So, last year I was looking for new things, especially as I knew there was so much new medical research done in the world after the Human Genome was completed. Not only that but there has been a tremendous change in the approach to healing practice as well. There was bound to be more efficient methods and supplements on the market. That's when I was introduced to AgeLoc Science as an approach to resetting the cellular and attacking the cause instead of repairing the damage after diagnosing the signs.

The AgeLoc Science and its friendly positivistic approach of changing the gene-expression instead of using the gene manipulation as the rule to design new human beings as a preferred human behavior also came as an answer to my idea historical research on what really can happen with decoding the human DNA. Instead of looking at it as a treat, we can find a more positive and constructive approach that is based on the same science.

Nothing in my former experience had prepared me in embracing this as a possibility. So I tried it all. I have taken the supplement as recommended and found that they really work. I now feel like I did in my late 20's before giving birth to my third child. I know this because I can remember how I felt then and how much energy I had then in contrast of how little energy I had a year ago. My family has also experienced the benefits in me being able to do much more with them, like going shopping for whole days and going to movies in the evenings after a full workday.
And after my resent blood tests, my doctor says that from the evidence he is convinced that LifePak and Optimum Omega have been a contributing factor in my excellent results. That's good enough for me.

The benefits I have acquired with using the spas can be seen in the picture. It is real.


3. Self-Development and life choices
I find it impossible to go through change without incentive or motivation. The modern brain science tells me that I need a lot of dopamine as a fix and seeing myself in a more presentable light might be one but it does not stretch to maintain my need to change in order to improve my life circumstances.

So, of course the last year has also been full of books and chatting with friends and finding new ideas on all areas that life can bring. My favorite books are in the picture apart from The Positivity, by Barbara Fredrickson, which I have passed on already.

In the nutritional field the winner is David Gillepie, hands on. His books have certainly inspired me beyond just looking at food but to actually start paying attention to what is in the food I eat. I also now own a very cool App called FoodSwich that allows me to scan everything I buy and see if there are healthier varieties on the market to try.

In the business strategy field my son recommended Business Model Generation and I have been fascinated by the approach. And you can also Business You. How cool is that!

In the motivational and changeological fields there is Barbara Fredrickson with her positivity research and Les Robinson with the psychology of change. What a combination. And the coolest thing is that on Pinterest I can now collect pictures for My Positivity Portfolio as a reminder to see how positive I can get.

In the spiritual field I will choose The Healing Code by Alexander Loyd. What an impact it had on me and judging from my friends to whom I have spread the message, it is a huge source of solace in many ways. I use the method and feel better for it continuously.

And in the end it is back to my old favorite anyway. It is back to the roots with the Blavatsky Quotation Book, edited by Winifield A. Parley. I better check what it says for March the 31st:

"The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man (sic), save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychosis and reincarnations." (SD,1,17)

How suitable is that for the last words for 'being the change you want to be' right now.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Inspiration Application; An Unexpected Day in Amsterdam

Last week, I got stuck in Amsterdam. There was a storm and I missed my flight and landed a great opportunity to be inspired by the moment in time in a great city.

My conclusion is that Amsterdam is not a bad place to get stuck in. It is merely the question of how to size this unexpected opportunity suddenly and without any preparations. Quick decisions had to be made of what out of all the possibilities a visitor could choose to be inspired by.

So, I chose the most obvious, the canals. It is the quickest way. After all, that is the most striking feature I know about Amsterdam, besides the famous tulips, of course.

After making your way to the Amsterdam Central by train from the Airport, you just walk across the street and hop on a boat that will take you around the city's canals for a day. There is a combi-cruise available, where you can hop on-and-off wherever you like. The coolest thing ever, especially on a dreary mid-winter day.

Then it is another decision of where to hop-off as with a sudden opportunity time is of the most importance as you have to catch the next flight home, for sure.

The other great feature I know about Amsterdam is that it is full of great art. Hoping off next to the National Museum then becomes quite a simple decision. But would there be time enough in two hours to absorb it all? I' d say no. So the next available inspirational, fit-for-two-hours-experience is the Van Gogh Museum, right behind the previously mentioned one. And Wow!

It is an inspirational tour of the best kind. To me, it was an exercise in turning the dreary into colorful. Van Gogh, famously, knew how to do that.

Let's see! Here we have a person, who adores dreary landscapes and colors but instead becomes the trademark for orange.

To make the long story short, here is an example of a person who, at the age of 27, after making a sudden decision of becoming an artist instead of selling art, works tirelessly at improving his skills. He is also confident enough to forgo critique and hold on to the inspiration to the end. It is a show of real self-confidence in one's abilities to be able to say that you are satisfied by your work of art and leave it at that despite of what anybody else says.

I was fascinated by the way Van Gogh was inspired by the Japanese art and how it can be detected in his work. His famous work, 'The Bedroom', for example becomes much more understandable with the background knowledge of where he took his inspiration from. It is much like after watching the special features of making a movie, you can better appreciate the completed work. The Van Gogh Museum has certainly succeeded in giving the visitor that experience.

Amongst the inspirational art that inspired Van Gogh, I also found Odilon Redon, a new favorite of mine in inspiring for the mysterious.

One of the art works also reminded me that I should re-read Emile Zola, which would then in it's turn inspire with the understanding how the rebellious mind of the youth of the 19th Century can be turned into great art pieces.

What I did take with me after spending an unplanned day in Amsterdam as a spectator for great architecture, landscape and art was the concept of inspiration application.

The opportunity is in all of us, despite the dreariness of the day. It is learning to size the moment and channeling every inspiration to make our day a worthwhile experience. Holding on to that inspiration and letting it move us towards an enchanted life then becomes a little bit easier every day.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Amongst the Childhood Memories; Christmas Characters Re-visited

Christmas is fast approaching. It is clearly evident that the shopping centers are starting to prepare earlier and at the same time people are too busy to notice and start thinking about it later and later. This is just the best time for the storybook characters to appear in their fancy best.

So, I found this Facebook page called 'Make your profile picture your favorite character until Christmas' and I 'liked' it. It was actually for the last year but who cares. This is cool, I thought and the next thing would be actually to do it. The picture attached to this posting shows where I have come to. My choice for this year will be the White Rabbit dressed as a Christmas character. I actually met him at the local shopping centre and was able to be photographed with him.

Steps to take when choosing your favorite profile character until this Christmas

1. Overall attitude

The first step is to decide if you like a traditional or recently created popular character as a favorite. Are you a traditionalist or a modernist? In the world of possible characters it makes a big difference.

Traditional characters for Christmas time would enhance the compassionate attitude of the season. Then you could also go for the quirky, or you could go for the elves. That would be enhancing the fun of the season. There is also the 'creepy' way.

My choice of the White Rabbit dressed as a Christmas character is somewhere between, a traditional storybook character with a quirky look about him. Mr Carroll could approve that, I think.

2. Following the times or maybe not

Step two is deciding do you what to follow the times or do you want to keep to the old look.

Sitting in a cafe at my local shopping centre observing this year's children's storybook parade I noticed that the characters walk much quicker than before.

The Loony Toons characters that marched past us were very agile. They are also taller and more streamlined and they have long skinny legs. No wonder that they can dance and sing and jump around the stage like anything. The other storybook characters were clearly influenced by Dr Zeuss characters or by the latest Christmas films.

The most alarming observation in my mind was that the Mother Santa and all her elves were so small and skinny. She wore high heals to boot. OMG, I say. They were cute, though. The tiny elves with skinny, skinny legs all dressed in green and red. On the positive side, the number of the little elves has grown. Instead of one round Santa and an elf, there are huddles of them all around the shopping place, including the Cat in the Hat and the Chrich.

Going with the flow is my choice. It allows for full enjoyment of all the new that has been created and lets you be inspired by the moment. If the old is reinvented, all the best for that, too.

3. Being charmed or not

The third step is to decide if you will be charmed or not by this new development.

So, I chose to be charmed by the crowds of tiny Helpers and Storybook Characters. For my favorite character I had three contestants, namely the Moomin Mother, Mad Hatter and the White  Rabbit.                                      
          
                                                           

   

It was a tough choice until I met the White Rabbit in person. This is a point for direct marketing, I was immediately persuaded.

Merry Christmas Season to Everyone! Let's be compassionate in small things as well as the big ones this year!

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Contemplating Motherhood

On Mother’s Day

I never was a great believe in the Mother’s Day. I always thought that celebrating Mother for one day, when 364 days a year the mothers of the world were treated badly really wasn’t a celebration. I preferred the International Women’s Day on March the 8th because it highlights the importance of our work for building equal relationships between the sexes in our society. My view of Mother’s Day has been impeded by my knowledge of the inbuilt violence against women in our society, but it has grown on me. I am clearly thawing. It is the grandmotherhood that is doing the job of making me see the more positive side of the Mother’s Day celebration.

Do not take me in the wrong way. I have enjoyed many Mother’s Days. In fact my first Mother’s Day as a young mother was when I came home with a new baby boy. I have also instigated a tradition of buying pyjamas to everybody to celebrate Mother’s Day. It has been fun. I have enjoyed sending cards to my own mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother. I was aware that they clearly felt that this day was an important achievement and I have always respected their views. But that time when my daughter gave a Mother’s Day Speech at the Finnish Society’s Mother’s Day celebration a few years back started the thawing process for me for real. And then of course she gave me my first grandchild and my son gave me my second one. That got me researching about this phenomenon called Motherhood.

Biological considerations on motherhood

By interpreting what the brain research during the last 20 years says, I can quite confidentially trace my grandmother’s urge for compensate emotional strain by retail therapy to her mother. My greatgrandmother had lost two babies before giving birth to grandmother. This experience of deep loss had left her emotionally incapable of connecting with the new baby, cuddling her or smiling with her. That caused grandmother a lasting trauma.

According to the brain research, it is the right side of our brain that has the primary capacity to understand and regulate emotions (McGilchrist, 2010). The left side interprets more mixed feelings. A baby stores the face of the primary carer to the right side of the brain. The more we, mother or carer, adore them, interact with them and cuddle them,the more their capability for empathy is developed (Szalavitz and Perry, 2010). According to the most confirmed research done with rats, the way we nurture our young will choose the DNA pathways that determine how we and the generations after us nurture our young.

But all is not lost to biology as according to research we choose the best of the best by mirroring the carer that has nurtured us most as babies. So, interpreting this research leads me to conclude that my grandmother chose to mirror my greatgrandfather, who at the time, instead of greatgrandmother had the capacity left to adore her, cuddle her and think that she was the best. Due to this emotional interpretation she then in her turn adored my mother who then adored me. This was enhanced by my father adoring me as well as he thought that I along with my sister was the best of the best. Following this lead, I of course loved my babies ‘to bits’ and my kids with the help of their spouses love theirs the same.

This according to grandparental investment theory leads to the best possible way for our survival as a family (Coall and Hertwig, 2010). So, why wouldn’t our brain, after a long generational left brain preferred functional interpretation of the pieces of information coming from the whole reality of the right brain knowledge come to the logical conclusion that a day called Mother’s Day would be the best representation of the culmination of this development. That is that on one particular day all primary carers called Mothers in different languages should be celebrated as tokens for this empathy development in our society. This decision of course mirrors the similar logical process by which Alexandra Kollontai and others determined that March the 8th would be the International Women’s Day in rejection of the Mother’s Day celebrations that did not feel politically correct for them. This is of course why we now have a Father’s Day, a Children’s Day and as many token days as we care to celebrate for any reason what-so-ever. They are not the reality but bring the thought into focus for a time, just like our left brain likes it.

Mother’s Day as a cultural statement of intention

To me Mother’s Day as such has not been real. It has lacked consistency in mirroring what really is the daily life of a mother. I can see it as a statement of intention in relation to what would be ideal. However, we are nowhere near there. But as with the idea of Santa Claus as a representation of goodwill in society, the idea of Mother’s Day as representing how we would like to treat all the mothers of the world, every day, is a valid ideal.

When looking at the history of Motherhood, it can only be said that there is a huge lack of sources and materials from where to look for the record of the concrete experience of motherhood in our culture. Across the cultures, through the history, women have been described as ‘made for motherhood’. They are essentially mothers by virtue. According to available sources all women were born to motherhood (Vanderberg-Daves, 2002). Much of these sources are religious statements on Virgin Mothers of various religions as a picture perfect ideal of womanhood. For a long time this distorted picture has determined motherhood as ideal womanhood.

The other reality for women comes from the statistics of domestic violence across the cultures. For me, as a researcher who has researched violence against women for decades and as a result has at times been totally disillusioned by the utter horror of it all, Mother’s Day celebrations seem a little bit too small as an effort to bring the inequality of the situation into focus. However, I am now warming to the idea. As a historian of ideas, I do recognise that it takes centuries to bring an idea to reality and 99-years of Mother’s Days and about the same amount of the Women’s Days is really a short time.

This year I will happily accept the flowers for the Mother’s Day. In fact I’ll buy the Tulips all on my own. I will also go and get myself a Whipper Snipper to ensure that these flowers will keep growing in my garden for the sake of motherhood and grandmotherhood as a cultural statement of genuine change in the world for more empathy in humanity.


References:

COALL, D. & HERTWIG, R. 2010. Toward an integrative framework of grandparental investment. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 40.
MCGILCHRIST, I. 2010. The Master and His Emissary; The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World, New Haven and London, Yale University Press.
SZALAVITZ, M. & PERRY, B. D. 2010. Born For Love; Why Empathy is Essential - and Endangered, William Morrow, Harper Collins Publishers.
VANDERBERG-DAVES, J. 2002. Teaching Motherhood in History. Women's Studies Quarterly, 30, Fall, 3/4, 234-255.

Celebrating Childhood Memories Contemplated in the Light of Sciences and History of Ideas Versus Modern Film and Literature.

“A history of science is rich in the example of the fruitfulness of bringing two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas, developed in separate context for a pursuit of new truth, into touch with one another.”
(J. Robert Oppenheimer)








For the last week on Facebook (FB) people have been celebrating childhood memories. FB users have been encouraged to change their profile to their favourite childhood characters, either from literature, art, films or cartoons and such. Many of my friends have taken up the challenge. I have had a number of interesting discussions about our memories with my colleagues and friends, starting from “I don’t remember any of my toys or characters” to “such a wonderful childhood we had!” My friends are displaying a variety of characters on their profiles. I am noticing some culturally bound adaptations, though. But apart from that, this great multiplicity just proves that as people are individual as personalities, so are their childhood memories as represented by the characters they choose.




Lately I have also been reading a lot about the function of the brain and neuroscience in how our worldview keeps changing in accordance of how we experience our reality. Applying my new knowledge on brain neurons and their effect on our development and the role of childhood memories on our lives I am asking myself how the childhood characters we grew up with have influenced what we have became as adults.

I would say that over the years of maturing I have moved from Astrid Lingren’s Pippi Longstocking and Tove Janson’s Little Myy (because of the Finnish voice of the actor) combined with Mary Poppins as a movie character as my most memorable figures to Moomin Mum’s contemplative approach and Mrs Banks’ determination to save the world. However, much of it is still in relation to yet another memorable character, namely their ‘bag of tricks’.




I distinctly remember that sequence of the Mary Poppins’ musical where Mary opens her bag and takes out the lamp and other furniture to decorate her room. This similar scene was nearly copied by Hermione, in the last instalment of The Harry Potter movie series, where she opens her small beaded handbag and takes out the whole tent and camping equipment. I particularly have always admired the Moomin Mom’s handbag, where she finds what is necessary to fix anything and everything from sorrows to fun. Pippi’s bag of gold coins given to her by her father is the strait forward, no nonsense, representation of the modern world where money can short-circuit a lot of efforts for survival. No magical trick needed except for perhaps the adventurous spirit to find a historical shipwreck full of treasure. This kind of endeavour might not prove to be an easy task any more in the world where everything is already mapped quite extensively.

However, the bag of tricks remains in my mind a metaphor for daring to reach into the subconsciousness and look for out of the box ideas for new approached to solving problems presented to the world we live in.

It was a wonderful week to focus on such things from the childhood memories point of view. Now that Christmas is coming we might find a new ways for compassionate attitude to spread around the world. Here are some references on Pippi Longstocking you might be interested in:



Gaare J and Sjaastad Ø. 2002, Pippi & Sokrates, Filosofiska vandringar i Astrid Lingrens värld. Smedjebacken, Sweden. Natur och Kultur

http://www.dannelseskaravanen.dk/int_conference/socrates_pippi.htm

http://www.paideia.org/docs/research/AnnPihlgrenDissertation.pdf

Enjoy!

Overview of my talk on Helena Blavatsky and the History of Charitable (Philanthropic) Thinking – A theosophical worldview

This talk was given at the Brisbane Theosophical Society in July 2010



The talk is concerned about the roots of the charitable thinking processes and how a theosophical worldview can be seen as a vehicle in aiding humanity in the process of building the core of the Brother/Sisterhood of humanity.

Discussion segments:
1. Helena Blavatsky as inspiration.
2. The brief history of charitable thinking as an idea.
3. The concept of philanthropy in development.
4. Theosophical Society as a vehicle for Philanthropy in Action.
5. Theosophical Order of Service as a philanthropic organisation in action.
6. From charitable thinking to emergency relief.
7. How selfless is our charitable/philanthropic action?

My talk starts with the introduction of Helena Blavatsky as a major inspiration in my life. She was born in Russia in 1831 and was one of the original founders of the Theosophical Society in 1875. I was introduced to her thinking by my grandfather, who gave me her book The Secret Doctrine published in 1888 as a 16-year old and urged me to read it. Of course it went a bit over my head then and instead of finishing it I first completed her The Isis Unveiled, published in 1877. I studied Blavatsky’s ideas as my special subject of study in my university History of Sciences and Ideas studies.

Helena Blavatsky has remained a major influence in my life. I have always liked to talk about her achievements and recite the stories I know about her charitable acts towards others. Many of her actions were just natural random acts of kindness towards people in need, often resulting in a great expense to her own comfort. To know more read for example Sylvia Cranston’s biography of Blavatsky (Cranston, 1993). She was continuously engaged in introducing the world to what would be a philanthropic or charitable action in practice from the theosophical point of view. A brief history of the charitable/philanthropic thinking processes in this light challenges us to talk about several ideas taken from different sources.

The first reference is to Prometheus Bound, a classical book, now convincingly argued to have been authored by a Greek author Aeschylus’ son, Euphorion (Sulek, 2010).

Prometheus is our first classical example of a god who has reached out to advance the humanity in its struggle from oblivion to understanding. Through him we get the concept of philanthropy as an action as he was accused of being a philanthrôpos, a friend of humankind, by other gods and Zeus bound him to a mountain and he suffered for his kindness. Blavatsky referred to this by stating that Prometheus was only a traitor in reference to other gods. In relation to humanity he was a philanthropist (Blavatsky, 1979).

How can we define the word philanthropy?

A colleague of mine, a researcher in America has just published two articles on the meaning of the word philanthropy from both classical and modern references. I shall quote from the hypotheses included in his presentation and the pictures here give you the dictionary definitions arranged by Marty Sulek (2010):



1. Philanthropy has (had) a variety of meanings, academic & common, contemporary & historical
2. The academic definition of philanthropy is more narrowly focused than common usage
3. The meaning of philanthropy has evolved along a discernable historical trajectory
4. Understanding the meaning of philanthropy as a whole can grant insight into its constituent parts

If we further look to understanding philanthropy through authors Payton and Moody, we can see that philanthropy can mean a lot of things:
• Voluntary giving, when we give our money...
• Voluntary service, when we give our time and sometimes our talent…
• Voluntary association, the organized activity…(Payton & Moody, 2008, p. 6)
Philanthropy has an assortment of meanings in other ways as well
• A moral action in response to the ‘human problematic’.
• ‘A social history of the moral imagination.”
• Essential to free, open, democratic, civil society.
• Tradition in jeopardy… (Payton and Moody, 2008)
The philanthropic action includes
• ‘Random acts of kindness’
• Organized action
• Systematic efforts
• Seek to reduce suffering
• Seek to improve quality of life (Payton and Moody, 2008)

How can a theosophical worldview aid us in our aim to understand the charitable thinking processes?

In the letter 45 in the Letters of the Masters to A.P.Sinnett, Koot Hoomi Lal Singh, one of the Blavatsky’s teachers wrote: “A true Theosophist is a philanthropist (Hao Chin Jr., 1998).” His reference is to the first object of the Theosophical Society which involves building a core of the Brother/Sisterhood of humanity. There is a hint of what it means in his declaration that a Buddha is the real philanthropist. The Chohan’s definition of philanthropy as ‘divine kindness’ (Ibid. p. 479) brings more clarity of what they might indicate in terms of what philanthropic action is expected of this core of the Brother/Sisterhood of humanity.

From the modern Buddhist perspective the concept of altruism and its relationship to the philanthropic action can further clarify this underlying meaning. In a resent email Marty Sulek reminded me that the concept of altruism was only brought to our vocabulary by Augustus Comte in his System of Positive Polity (1851). The Dalai Lama takes this modern concept of altruism and explains it in relation to the classical Buddhist concept of bodhichitta as the highest possible charitable action by a candidate, “the compassion towards sentient beings... [and] the aspiration to attain enlightenment for the sake of all (Dalai Lama, 2003).” I can well draw a straight line to philanthropic action in the classical sense. In my mind this matches with the definition of ‘divine kindness’ very well. In his talks the Dalai Lama often states that everybody is seeking for happiness.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) on the other hand did not think that happiness has anything to do with it. He stressed the principal of duty and said that since happiness was based on imagination, this did not qualify as rational action. Koot Hoomi disagreed with him and stated that the western thinkers were not putting the concept of philanthropy in a context of universal law and that they just made it to an ‘accidental manifestation’(Hao Chin Jr.,1998). However that may be, Kant’s thoughts have dictated a lot of western thinking processes, particularly the reformist thinking. Many people following the Lutheran ethics do not handle the notion of happiness, passion or self-fulfilment very well.

The second object of the Theosophical Society urges us to further research in the realms of religions and sciences. Can we find anything there that can enhance this understanding?

The Buddhist example contributes with the idea of Bodhisattva who refuses to take on the ‘divine ropes’ and instead stays as a part of a core of brother/sisterhood in consciousness to aid the rise of the awareness of humanity. Lama Govinda (Govinda, 1969) is a good author to read for further explanation on this philanthropic action model. The Hindu example is in the Bhagavad-Gita with its 18 yoga chapters and different yogas to aid an aspirant from ‘non-action to in-action’. The modern scientific example comes from the brain research in Hypothalamus, the brain of our brain with its ability as a tool to sort out the many layers of our feelings and emotions. With the help of this we can aid the psychological understanding of what relates to the development of empathy and compassion. Our ability to see the others’ views is also a part of the modern study of what is involved in philanthropic action. The Christian view is brought in with the urge to treat the others as you want them to treat you and with the orthodox idea of ‘go-working with God’ as a definition to philanthropic action.

We can name plenty of nonprofit organisations who have taken this kind of action as their core business. The International Theosophical Order of Service was founded by Annie Besant to take on the practical adaptation of theosophical ideas in the real world. The work of the TOS has become even more important in today’s society where there is a real need to understand that the global economy needs global solutions in the fight against exclusion, poverty, abuse and corruption in its aim for the equal human rights to everyone. The US nations 1948 Human Rights Declaration urges us to work towards this goal “in the spirit of brotherhood.”

I myself work in a community care organisation with the aim of making sure that all the members of the community, the elderly, disabled, families, and children and otherwise underprivileged are assured human dignity and equal possibility to community participation and services. The many faces of emergency relief can now be seen as the organised continuation of charitable thinking processes and charitable action in our modern society.

Basically my scientific conclusion is that the charitable/philanthropic action as such is the highest selfish action we can take. On the whole it pays to be charitable and enhancing others will work towards enhancing yourself and your own wellbeing. Working in an organisation which heavily relies on voluntary contribution in service delivery, I see this every day. It brings people happiness and self-satisfaction to work together towards common goals. The positive results that come from being able to help are blatantly visible. I urge everyone to join in the brother/sisterhood of the charitable philanthropic action wherever and whenever possible.

What it all comes to is in the end is the three C:s: Compassion, Conviction and Cooperation.








References:
BLAVATSKY, H. 1979. The Secret Doctrine Vol II, Madras, The Theosophical Publishing House.
CRANSTON, S. 1993. HPB, The Extraordinary Life & Influence of Helena Blavatsky Founder of the Modern Theopsophical Movement, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons.
DALAI LAMA, T. 2003. Transforming the Mind, Teaching on Generating Compassion, Thorsons, HarperCollinsPublishers.
GOVINDA, A. 1969. Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, Boston, WeiserBooks.
HAO CHIN JR., V. (ed.) 1998. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Adyar: The Theosophical Publishing House.
PAYTON, R. L. & MOODY, M. P. 2008. Understanding Philanthropy: its meaning and mission, Bloomington, Indiana Univercity Press.
SULEK, M. 2010. On the Classical Meaning of Philanthrôpía. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 39: 385 originally published Online on 13 March, 2009