Posts Tagged ‘Finland’

Why I am (still) on the notoriously bad Facebook (but not “bad” in the relatively respectable Michael Jackson sense of the word “bad”)

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

I said I was leaving Facebook. I didn’t leave but I have been inactive, which is worse because my presence on Facebook adds a silent air of credibility and consent to Facebook’s unethical intelligence gathering and data-mining operation.

I did take a break though and ignored the continuous stream of begging e-mails from Facebook to look at this thing, that thing and some unknown stranger’s ting-a-ling.

Have you counted how many types of spam Facebook sends you?

You don’t even have to be registered to get Facebook spam. They manage to find your very private e-mail address. How? By gate-crashing your friend’s address book and keeping it. Yes, it’s called stealing. Worse, they pretend to be your friend inviting you to join Facebook and surrender your contact list. That’s called phishing and it’s a crime. Insurance salesmen call it "referrals" and con-artists know it as "working the mark’s trust network".

Do you love your friends? If "yes" then protect them from FaceBook, don’t push them into Facebook’s abyss. Especially your techno-naive granny who will get a Facebook-specific virus like the kooBFace virus and lose all of her bank accounts and pension funds to the inevitable 419 scammer who will prey on her goodwill by pretending to be a god-fearing person in dire need of money.

Without Facebook, what a glorious month of peace, quiet and productivity it has been and no Facebook clouds on the horizon! No news of the latest Facebook privacy leak. No fear, just ease of mind. Priceless!

I spent most of the time by the water lounging in the hot sun. We get the benefits of global warming in Finland too. The polar bears are sliding in on melting polar icecaps up in Lapland. Come and see Finland meltdown next July!

Life without Facebook is fun!

First Belly Laugh! Then Learn Truth. OK?

It’s been a creative time for the Oshana Teaching. I managed to achieve previously unattainable goals:

So why have I returned to using Facebook?

The answer is right there in the title of Douglas Adam’s "Restaurant at the End of the Universe". It’s the second book in the very funny "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe" trilogy. Which is not a trilogy at all but in fact 4 books. I like funny. Do you like funny? I bet most of you can can have more side-splitting belly laughs per day than contractual orgasms (the married kind).

I am using Facebook to promote my Transmission Teaching, especially my Live Online classes (every Sunday) and having fun watching the unethical T-Rex of a social networking dinosaur, Facebook, fall to the floor never to get up again because while it as has two good legs it has only puny arms.

I know some of you will laugh at my prediction because Facebook has 500 million Facebook users, reportedly, and rising. It seems that, like Caesar, it cannot fail. Go ahead and laugh, a big belly laugh, and then laugh some more. I will have at least achieved my first purpose in writing: to get you to laugh. Laugh loud and laugh long. After laughing long you might start to see more clearly. Once you drop your fear of losing your Facebook friends (if you lose them then you never had them) you will get what is going on here and everywhere.

I am on Facebook to watch the spectacular firework show as the monstrous edifice Facebook comes crashing down at the end of its dark Empire reign. Truly a Dark Ages for human consciousness.

If that sounds like harsh words then blame Facebook! The new legal defense heard in courts across every land is "Facebook made me do it" – and it will be very true. First, "They" corrupted the world with drugs, then baby milk power/formula, then Coca Cola and now Facebook!

As well as promote Enlightenment, I will spread an awareness of Facebook’s poor privacy practices and search for healthier social networking alternatives which allow you manage your own networks on your own computer. Ref: the fledgling “Diaspora” project.

My main Facebook teaching account will start again to provide spiritual teaching event dates under the Events section:

http://facebook.com/dave.oshana.spiritual.enlightenment.transmission?v=app_2344061033

But, what did I just say? It’s not really MY Facebook account – because Facebook totally owns it. They can cancel it at any time. Did you realise in your wildest dreams that they can lock you out, pretend to be you and play with my friends’ minds forever? Or worse archive your drunken lavatory photos and make them display them in their futuristic advert sing for time immemorial?

I will update you savvy Facebook dwellers about my Free Teaching audio and video recordings (hosted on DaveOshana.com).

BUT IF REALLY YOU WANT TO WISE UP, GO OFF-SITE. GET OFF FACEBOOK!

I would prefer that you don’t visit me on Facebook. Instead visit my real, self-owned websites – where you can get up-to-date information, articles and resources on Enlightenment, Awakening and come to know who you really are. Let’s avoid the unnecessary hassles of messing with Facebook’s poor and buggy pages. They clearly don’t know or care how to code user friendly pages that would actually work.

GET OFF YOUR FACE — BOOK.
You won’t miss it!

Find me for real at domains that I will actually own for perpetuity:

http://enlightenment-now.com/
http://daveoshana.com
http://blog.oshana.org/

PS It will really bother me in the afterlife if I have inadvertently caused anyone to join or remain on Facebook. Please leave now if I was the inciting cause and then take the time re-think your options. It probably wasn’t caused by me though. You were most likely stressed out by all that Facebook spam, fear of missing out and looking like a friendless loser.

Do you now realise that you you have no control over such things?

But you don’t have to be a victim. You don’t have to take it any longer.

There is life beyond Facebook! Trust me, I am a spiritualist ;)

Long Live the Miraculous Enlightenment Transmission!

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Posted in Enlightenment, FaceBook, FaceBook Virus, Facebook alternatives, Facebook privacy, KooBFace virus, Spirituality | No Comments »

The Matrix Meltdown at Christmas: Real Goodwill

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

I received an email from a writer who complained of feeling “out of it” and disconnected from her family this Christmas. What’s a girl supposed to do?

It comes as no surprise. One day the whole world will stand in wonder how they got duped by the Christmas marketing myth. (It’s going to be a long wait; we have to save the economy first by buying more state lottery tickets!)

My point is nothing so unsubtle the common statements made by the regular debating crews of Christians, pagans, atheists and Jehovah Witnesses like “Jesus was not born at Christmas. It’s a pagan festival and the Bible prohibits trees to dress up.”

We all know that Santa Claus, while bearing a resemblance to W. C. Fields, is not a living person who flits down from the North Pole every Christmas and merrily breaks into homes to deliver presents to sleeping parents. Every 5 year old knows that. So why keep up the pretence?

A number of forces keep Christmas in place the most dominant of which is marketing. I am sure that if businesses did not promote Christmas then it would come and go, as unnoticed as, some of the other festivals on our calendar. In England that would be May Day. Except for a few curiously dressed men in shorts and white socks, British people, do not indulge in dancing around the phallic maypole banging sticks together with gay abandon. I would not be surprised to hear that they do that in Holland where they still wear wooden clogs and where the name for Santa Claus comes (or nearby Belgium, borders have changed).

I gave up Christmas at the age of 17 to avoid meat eating. I headed out to an ashram and even there got a gift of Christmas – a pair of socks of course! It’s easy to feel that Christmas is some alien event when you have never, like some cultures, experienced it.

Picture a bunch of sad people, wearing flimsy paper crowns made of 1-ply government issue waxy toilet paper, staring at a turkey’s ass on the table, gobbling goose carcass until they are stuffed, and drinking unto totally drunk because they cannot really communicate or socialise. The giving of presents is a momentary pleasure which can be fraught with embarrassment or disappointment. The biggest stress is negotiating the perilous Christmas crowds and being assaulted by hypnogogic Christmas jingles and ho-ho-ing Santa’s with dubious job histories. Christian carol singers have somehow bought into the Christmas myth in an attempt to bring the unfaithful to church and justify church taxes. In Finland, nearly everyone is automatically taxed by the Lutheran Church of the former Swedish occupation. These Finns believe, unchallenged by the priests, that they are Christians if they sing at Christmas in church. Instead of singing carol’s for pennies on the streets, these church chorists should be singing songs of hell, damnation and revolution against the materialistic masses.

There are very few myths left but Christmas by the collusion of the church and big businesses advertising creating guilt if you should deliver presents on any other day.

Instead of having an unreal Christmas have a real holiday.

DO:

Respect that that it is winter. Go for walks. Snuggle up early. Light candles and making twinkly things. Being loving, compassionate and kind – not just for one day but all year long.

DON’T:
Work. Shop. Cook all day.

Give presents on another day – and be a bit unpopular – or leave a message on your answer-phone saying you are in China and will be back in the New Year. You then can give presents to whom and when you want. Christmas as Sting recently pointed out is about winter

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Posted in Big Business, Christ, Christmas, Finland, Jesus, Matrix, Religion, Spirituality, The Matrix, society | No Comments »

Tuusula Officials Cancel Community Discussion

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

A sad day at a sad time in Finland.

Tuusula citizens have been deprived of the chance to discuss ways that the community can help in preventing another Jokela High School tragedy after Tuusulan municipality officials over-turned an earlier decision to allow the public discussion to happen in Hyökkälä school. The reason given is that only registered organizations with insurance can use the school.

This much needed discussion event, which would have been the first of its kind, following the Jokela tragedy, had taken hundreds of hours to organise. Now it will take days to take down the posters and forum posts, cancel the press releases. In reality, it will be impossible to alert everyone about the cancellation. Outside the locked school gates volunteers who will hand out cups of tea.

But, despite these early “teething troubles” some good is already coming from this. Ordinary Finns and well-connected community workers are coming forward to enthusiastically offer support. They also have their own tales of frustration to tell. It ‘s becoming clear that local government needs to start listening to people in order to serve them.

Without a sense of community, Finns will continue to suffer in fear, silence and isolation – not because they really want to but because they are culturally bound. To solve this local government should support community-led initiatives. Instead, the newly formed crisis counselling team assigned to Tuusula has strongly stated that they will not support such community discussions and recommended they not happen. Their message suggests that talk is dangerous and to be left only to paid professionals.

There are no winners here. Only victims. Fear rules the day.

We should never forget, that in times of crisis, as in times of peace, people need to talk to people – not officials. They want their family, friends and community around them.

Tragically, it is this lacking sense of community which is destroying Finland from the inside. Finns care but they don’t dare to act publicly. Example, a mother steps on to a Helsinki tram. In one hand she carries a pram and in the other she balances the precious life of her new-born baby, about 3 weeks old – but no-one looks at her or offers her a seat – she does not even expect anyone to.

Finns were deeply upset by the Jokela school killings and wanted to donate money. Consequently, the Red Cross opened a special account. Of course, Finns know that chucking money at a problem does not make it go away, although it may slightly help the families who lost members 16 days ago. Finns want solutions to the social circumstances which gave rise to the Jokela tragedy – but no-one dares to be the first to step out and to show that they care. And worse, if they do take action they might find that not only does their local government not support them but actually resists them.

The frustrating experiences of grieving Finnish families who lost relatives in the Asian Tsunami Catastrophe was that their desperate attempts to get help were met with unnecessary and inappropriate bureaucracy. Government experts do not have all the answers. They need to listen to those they are meant to serve and not decide for them.

The real victims of the Jokela High School massacre are the children. They were the ones who were targeted. How can they ever feel safe about returning to school if their mothers and fathers attempts to discuss community prevention tactics fail due to lack of local government support?

The Finnish President Tarja Halonen said after the tragedy that people should talk to each other. She also hoped that ways to prevent such tragedies everywhere would be found.

Therapy will never solve the problems of today’s society, believes psychiatrist Jari Sinkkonen (in Suomen Kuvalehti 46/2007 article by Leena Sharma)

“Are professionals supposed to take care of all of the problems and
ill-being of children? That doesn’t work, we can’t endlessly grow the
quantity of therapists. We should think, what we are doing, as
parents, as neighbours, as grandparents. What is the life of our
children like? Interference with this is not the purpose of a
therapist.”

Is anyone listening to these Finns?

We need to build bridges in all areas of Finnish society between young and old, community and government, parents and children.

These are issues which I will return to in society.oshana.org

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Posted in Finland, Jokela, news, school, society | No Comments »

After Jokela Tragedy: Picking Up the Pieces

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

This morning Finnish flags are at half-mast in remembrance of the victims of the Jokela High School Massacre in Tuusula

The mourning flags are everywhere, sober reminders across the country of the horrific events of yesterday. The once proud flags which flew on happy State occasions, such as the liberation of Finland, now hang their heads in tears – rain-soaked and unmoving.

The heart-broken sadness is the watery eyes of every Finn. Like the flags, quiet reminders – 5 million in bereavement. There has not been such a public outpouring of grief over the large loss of life since the Asian tsunamis. Now the loss of the innocence of youth dents confidence that schools can protect youth.

It seemed like it was going to be a good year for Finland. So many happy international successes in trade, entertainment and sports. They seem trivial now. What good is success if you don’t have friends and family to share it with?

Now there is just shocked incomprehension at this tragic rupture in a social fabric which everyone believed was once incorruptible.

What happened in Jokela is not just a Finnish tragedy. It is an international disaster on a human scale.

We must all pull together. Identify causes, find solution and practically heal the tears in the psyche of human society.

Today, I go on a scheduled Finnish island retreat with Finns and overseas students. They will become international peace ambassadors. We will find solutions. They will be thinking about their families.

I would write more but I am already late in preparing for the long journey by land and sea. Interesting how I only started blogging again less than 24 hours before tragedy in Jokela.

Please send your best intentions and thoughts to Finland because Finland will be thinking not only about their own children but also children of the world. We are one global family now.

Suggested solutions from the retreat and your own comments will be included on this blog.

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Posted in Finland, Jokela, Spirituality, Youth, education, school, society | 1 Comment »