Wales

I have been to Wales twice so far, and I have enjoyed it immensely. It also helped broaden my horizons by realizing how we take things for granted. As you can see in the picture, the Welsh are fond of delineating their fields and pastures with hedges. I've only seen hedges used for gardens by the houses in Slovenia, wire is used to mark the end of a pasture or meadow in Slovenia.

There are of course many other things that people from certain cultures take for granted, like how we take for granted that there is a church on (almost) every hill and that the administration is to be tricked and avoided at all costs.

When cultures collide it almost always causes friction, one of the most basic examples of this is the Americanization (westernization) of the world. Americans are especially notorious for being a melting pot (I think this term is no longer politically correct) of many various cultures, and I believe one of the main reasons for their success is the fact that they are, as a nation, capable of accepting good parts of other cultures, commercializing them, and then selling them around the globe.

Most people of course do not really care about it, a lot are even happy that this cultural globalization is occuring. There is, though, a vocal minority, who bases their identity on the items commercialized and spread through globalization, screaming bloody murder, because they feel that with this streamlining and simplifying of the sources of their identity, they are robbed of something precious and unique.

In the end I think that cultural melting pots are a good thing, and things die and new ones are born, and as long as we have historians who write them down and keep them safe, we should not be overly worried about how other people choose to feed, clothe and amuse themselves.

The need to confess

People have an innate need to confess their sins (or to brag about them), and one of the few great inventions of Christianity is confession. Every week you could go tell this guy who would never tell anyone else all your sins and wrongdoings, relieving yourself of guilt and worry, and getting some minor punishment to perform in return.

This is a great psychological valve, which is nowadays sorely lacking, as people are more and more isolated in our society, afraid to even talk to people, much less confide in them. So the pressure builds and soon the mechanism starts to leak, causing outbursts, depressions and ill tempers.

Thus, now that God was stabbed in the face by Nietzsche, people are starting to turn to other ways of letting out steam, such as psychologists, diaries, blogs (everyone but me of course :) ), writing, art in general and so on.

It is always good to write your own thoughts, dreams, notions, ideas and even random babbling down, as it helps you keep your psyche organized and tidy, makes you remember your dreams better and makes you more honest to yourself.

p.s.: To show off I decided to add a random photo I took.

Jealousy

Do not be jealous, I am sure you could make a picture just as good as I have if you had the same camera as I do.

No really, stop fuming, I know, I am a better photographer than you, but I worked hard for it so you really neednot be jealous.

Projection is always fun :) At once drawing attention to the fact that I am a good photographer and establishing the fact that (in my mind) you care enough about it to get jealous and upset over it.

It is always annoying, being accussed of something intangible, as it is hardest to disprove. If you say you are not jealous you are just in denial, and if you admit it you confirm the projectionist's theory. It is a win-win situation for him.

Jealousy is supposed to actually be conductive to the growth of romantic relationship, as it is a way of showing that the person you are with means something to you, to a certain extent anyway. You can be pretty sure the significant(ly jealous) other is overdoing it when he starts riffling through your emails, letters and *gasp* your text messages in your mobile.

A lot of jealous people express their jealousy by accusing others of some transgression, of a breach of the rules of the relationship, I am not saying they are always wrong, but the pathologically insecure people, who constatly doubt themselves and through it, doubt others. As people mostly use themselves as a measure to judge others, they project their own desires to break the rules onto them.

Pathologically jealous people often have low self esteem, constantly worrying that their partner will leave them and thus feel the need to control them, to prevent them from leaving. Paradoxically, their love and desire often causes the relationship to break up, as partners soon tire of the jealous person's intimations and accussations of debauchery, rude 'jokes' about activities with friends of the opposite gender and constant doubts and suspicions.

The problem is, that when the relationship breaks up, the jealous person feels validated in their suspicions as the bitch/bastard surely left him for the other woman/guy/goat.

It is important to always be honest with yourself, and to examine your jealousy for any signs of desire to dominate your partner, what is the point of having a puppet, it might satiate your ego but surely not for long. And if you are in relationship with such a jealous control freak, do them a favour and dump them, they might reconsider (unlikely) their ways and seek help for what truly bothers them.

Taste

It is interesting how people try to gather people with similar tastes around them, creating their own microcosmoses, where they are constatly reaffirmed about the quality of their taste. Often preventing them from trying new things and maybe thinking that their taste is just as good as anybody else's.

Of course this desire to be a part of a group can be a burden, as people also have a desire to be recognized and yearn for attention. So in this drive for independence, they are constantly fragmenting from their groups, but they they find themselves alone, they quickly find others who fragmented similarly and then they as a group comment how the members of the bigger groups are sheeple and so on. This is especially noticeable in music and when you have gothic metalheads calling power metalheads pussies you know not everything is hunky dory.

Another problem is when people whose lifestyle is damaging to others andthemselves find a circle of similar people, and then they encourage themselves that they are ok (peadophiles or people who cut themselves for example) and that they are beautiful and healthy (obese people). There are even forums for suicidal people, but they don't have many permanent members.

Social confirmation is a very important aspect of our lives, but we should always strive to see ourselves as individuals, not just whether we fit in a certain segment of society or not. I'm sure such people are happy when they find a group of likeminded individuals where they are accepted, however they would probably be even happier if they managed to cure their defect (either physical or psychological) and return to the mainstream society.

I'm sure they think they are cool and dark when they pretend to be vampires and gangstas and so on, but it is only a symptom of a deeper need for recognition and acceptance, the result of a battle between individuality and sociality.

Of course, as long as you do not hurt others with your lifestyle, it is your every right to live as you wish, but still, would you not be happier without the pressure making you desire to stand out and fit in at the same time, which is often caused by low self esteem since such people often think that there is nothing special about them, and then try to artificially create the differences.

Try to see yourself and everybody else as individuals, all special, all unique, and yet part of the same human race.

Translation

Translation for me is a creation of a new textual world, as identical as I can make it to the original, even though that is only rarely possible. It is interesting to see how much a culture's history influences the vocabulary of a language.

Slovenia has little sea and never had any sort of a functional navy, especially compared to English flottilas spanning the globe. So it is great fun receiving a nautical text with plenty of ropes and sails and masts and starboards and portholes and so on, and then translating into 'broad front sail', 'narrow front sail' and so on.

Since the vocabulary of English is 10 times as large as the vocabulary of Slovenian you frequently come across such problems. How to differentiate between a sabre, a sword, a cutlass, a rapier, a broad sword a bastard sword a katana, a wakizashi, a stiletto and so on.

The problem also arises when translating into English, as if you don't know the field you are translating you can't be sure which of the many available terms to choose, so take heed and do not trust the first entry in the bilingual dictionary.

Desire

Why are people so afraid of what they want? I believe one of the reasons is our upbringing, we are taught to believe into this eternal karmic justice, that always gives you what you deserve in the end.

We are even taught to be humble and modest, and not to tout our own successes and our own gifts, pretending to be average like everybody else.

Another reason could be the lack of focus once you attain your goals. If you put a lot of thought and effort into achieving something, and not enough into what to do afterwards (a lot of people idealize their goals as well), and then once you reach them you feel empty, 'why am I not the happiest person now that I have what I wanted', and it is harder to design new goals than to just regress a step and retrace the familiar path.

So as soon as people start to do well in life, they start fearing the other side of the karmic wheel. Being afraid of what bad things will happen to them now, sure that they do not deserve the good fortune that had been bestowed upon them.

Sooner or later such people do something to jinx their own fortune, thus validating their own conviction that they do not deserve success and happiness and returning to the comfortable familiar world of hope and sadness.