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Categories: all (26) | art (1) | climate (1) | cosmos (6) | creativity (1) | intelligence (1) | math (2) | media (1) | sami (2) | shamanism (9) | technology (2)
For starters, the Sámi weren’t warriors. Unlike with Native Americans, there were no military conflicts, no peace treaties, and no reservations. Furthermore, in the case of Native Americans, white man was mostly interested in their lands and valuables found there. It wasn’t about ruining their culture as such, it was about material goods. Possibly a few missionaries may have been interested in changing their ways, but they didn’t have much real power over them. So the Native Americans were at least in a position to defend their culture, if not their lands. (Not that this makes it okay, of course. It was still very coldblooded and cruel.) The Sámi were assaulted in a quite different, and more sophisticated, way. It wasn’t about territory, valuables, or power. It was only about destroying their culture, for various reasons. It may be obvious why the church was interested, but the secular authorities also had their reasons, namely “social darwinism”, the idea that some cultures are superior to others, and that progress happens when inferior ones die — with the implication that actively destroying inferior cultures is both ethically justifiable and a good idea. Since the Sámi people and culture were considered primitive, Norwegians authorities wanted to convert them to Norwegian culture “for their own good”, because, as they saw it, the Sámi culture was bad for the Sámi people. Essentially, destroying their culture was seen as an act of benevolence, of “uplifting” them. It had no other particular purpose, it wasn’t about money or land or anything (although some greedy people took advantage of it, naturally). It was only about people thinking their own culture is superior, and that this made it okay for them to destroy other cultures by any means necessary. And, with secular authorities on their side, missionaries did have a lot more power in Sámi areas than they might otherwise have had. In the latter half of the 20th century, Norwegian authorities finally started acknowledging that this was wrong. In 1997, the King of Norway made an official apology. However, Norway is still resisting a full public investigation. As for Isaac Olsen, as I recall, there were things von Westen wrote that suggest that one of the reasons Isaac was so effective at destroying Sámi religion, was because Isaac had special “insights”, i.e. shamanic powers, himself. Which may help explain how Sámi shamanism managed to hold on through hundreds of years of persecution before Isaac, but lost against him. Johan Turi (1854 – 1936) is generally considered the first proper Sámi author (meaning someone who wrote Sámi books). He wrote several books with stories about Sámi life. He was also a talented artist, and a (shamanic) healer himself. The book that specifically covered shamanism (“Sámit ja noaidevuohta”) was immediately translated into English, with, I think, the title “Lappish texts” (1919). Note that this was during a time that the Christians had already eradicated much of Sámi shamanism, although perhaps not yet all, and this affected some of the content. (It was also published in Denmark.) Another interesting Sámi personality may be Ailo Gaup (1944 – 2014), a more modern shaman, who had the misfortune to live in a time when Christianity had won and Sámi shamanism was almost completely extinguished. Thus, his quest became to travel the world, visit other cultures, rediscover the roots of shamanism, and bring its essence back to Sápmi. Almost all shamanism that’s practiced in Sápmi today, now exists because of Ailo Gaup’s work. He wrote several books on shamanism, some of which have been translated to English (“The Shamanic Zone”, 2014). Other books have been written about the subject matter, of course, but at the moment, these are the only ones I am aware of that have English versions, are about Sámi shamanism specifically, and were written by people who presumably knew what they were writing about. (Edit: In case blogs may also be of interest, I probably ought to mention my sister and her shamanic friend’s blog, Beneath Northern Lights.) The first way is the materialistic way, where I could explain that there’s no particular limit to what you could compute with zeros and ones. If a machine is Turing-complete, then it can compute anything that’s possible to compute, it might just take some time. The things we believe to be uncomputable involve things like infinities and paradoxes, not things like feelings. Feelings are reactions to inputs. You’re scared when you notice something potentially harmful, in pain when you’re damaged in any way, and angry when something violates your perception of what’s fair. In artificial intelligence, preferred outcomes are encoded as “utility functions”. An advanced AI might attach some kind of “feelings” to their utility function: they attach good feelings to high values, and bad feelings to low values of their utility function. This way, all feelings can be expressed as computations. (Note that in living beings, many feelings also have a chemical basis, as hormones and such, which can affect the brain’s computational processes in strange ways. Would still be possible to represent this as computations, though, just very complicated ones.) The other way is the spiritual way, of course. Even if feelings can be computed, there might still be something that transcends the brain. Something that’s conscious, that has a sense of identity, “I am me”, and which is more than the body it’s in. No scientist has yet been able to pinpoint what causes this. They tend to assume, without proof, that it must be an emergent property of the extremely complicated system that’s the physical brain. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, I’d be inclined to agree with it myself. But from what I’ve seen, I’m not so sure it can really be reduced to that, as there are a number of phenoma that appear to falsify it. So, even if feelings might just exist in the physical brain, it seems your core consciousness (including some of your memories) could be rooted in a connection to something else in the universe. If the universe itself is alive, then our consciousnesses might be linked to its life force. (Although we still need our brains in order to exist physically.) Ja, matematikk kan finnes i alt. Hele universet kan beskrives med matematikkens språk, og noen synes akkurat det er veldig vakkert. Og det er jo faktisk den viktigste hensikten med matematikk – menneskene utviklet matematikk for å kunne forstå, beskrive, og forutsi alle slags ting i verden rundt oss. Og da er det kanskje ikke rart mange kan synes det er gøy å gjøre nettopp det. In your first video with Ivar Giæver, much of the physics is correct, but at 1:45 the “interviewer” makes the claim that for the last 18 years, temperatures have been flat. The rise in measured surface temperature was a little slower between 2001 and 2015 (which, to be fair, seems to be when the video was recorded), but saying “flat for 18 years” is basically a blatant lie, at best based on extremely cherry-picked data (I’ve previously mentioned an example of the kind of cherrypicking deniers use in my article “World of bullshit”), and therefore most of the conclusions drawn in this video are also incorrect. Giæver does mention that water vapor is a strong climate gas. That is true, but water doesn’t linger in the atmosphere in the same way that CO₂ does. Long-term atmospheric water concentration will thus only change because of other climate drivers (basically, the amount of water vapor that can be in the air depends on the temperature, among other things). But when it changes, it does have an effect, which means that when we emit more greenhouse gases, water vapor actually amplifies the effect, and makes it much worse. For this reason, CO₂ is considered a cause of climate change, while H₂O is only considered an amplifier (but an important one). Sure, there are many people out there who might claim the physics is “not settled”. For the most important questions, that’s not really true (at least not in the sense they’d like you to think), but even if it was, why should it matter? If it’s “not settled”, it means that there are two options: everything is fine, or we could all die, and we don’t yet know which. So even if it’s “not settled”, there’s a risk. If there’s a chance your house could burn down, but you’re not sure, do you not still buy insurance for it? Do you not want a fire department nearby? Why would we not want to take action even if it was the case that the physics is “not settled”? There’s even less excuse now, because for all practical purposes, it is in fact settled. (Some details are still to be investigated, of course, but there is no doubt which way we’re heading.) But some people (even scientists in some cases) just don’t want to believe and will do anything they can to sow doubt (like in that other video you posted, in which the guy pretty much says nothing substantial about climate change, beyond perhaps trying to create doubt). “The optimum CO₂ concentration” probably depends a little bit on what we want from the climate, but I’d probably be fine with what the concentration was around the year 1900. And yes, it absolutely matters a whole lot if the average temperature rises 2 degrees over a century or two, because that’s much faster than natural evolution could keep up. It’s especially bad if it’s due to CO₂, because too much CO₂ doesn’t just cause warming, it has other bad effects as well. In particular, CO₂ is an acid when dissolved in water (“carbonic acid”, in Norwegian known as “kullsyre”), and too much of it kills life in the oceans. It also matters on land; while it’s possible it wouldn’t be too dangerous exactly where Giæver lives, there are large areas of Earth which will become effectively uninhabitable because it would become too common for summer temperatures to exceed what most life could survive. Warming would also cause sea level rise (remember, water expands as it heats, when above 4°C) and cause a lot of current coastal land to be flooded. The increased amounts of energy in the atmosphere (remember, heat is energy) would cause more severe weather, such as stronger hurricanes. All in all, given how quickly the climate is changing because of us, much of life on Earth would not be able to adapt quickly enough and would die, and with it, much of humanity, perhaps all, would die as well. [Edit 1: added links and minor clarifications] Jeg er bare ikke så sikker på at konseptet med pedaldrevet helikopter noengang blir særlig praktisk. Husk dessuten at selv blant fugler krever det mye mindre energi å fly fremover, enn å skulle holde seg i ro i lufta. Også menneskedrevne flymaskiner som ikke er helikoptre har man allerede klart å fly i over 3 timer. Så helikopter vil nok alltid være den vanskeligste måten å gjøre det på.
Yes, “Læstadianism” is what I’m referring to, but also the impacts of “Finnemisjonen”.
I was not aware that Isaac Olsen was in possession of shamanic powers himself. I have read an article on Idunn.no written by Skjelmo and Willumsen “Isaac Olsen - Lærer og Forkynner”, but the text is partly quotations from Isaac Olsen’s handwritten texts and not very easy to get if you’re not well versed in 18th century Norwegian/Danish. Nevertheless, from what little I managed to comprehend, I got the impression that he knew a great deal about what the shamans was doing, where they performed their rituals and etc, but they did not say anything about him being a person who had shamanistic powers himself. From the context of the article that is maybe not so surprising. I’m not familiar with the authors, but my gut feeling is telling me that the piece is written from a Western perspective which is not emphasizing phenomenons from outside of that frame.
Would you say that the missionaries were treating the Sami people like Native Americans were treated by the Europeans? I know there’s a tremendous amount of differences between missionaries vs. the Sami and Europeans vs. Native Americans, but the creating of an environment of exploitation sounds somewhat similar.
I’m sorry about asking you all these questions, but my curiosity is oftentimes overriding my manners.
Best regards,
Jenny
Thank you for the information about Johan Turi and Ailo Gaup. I will sure be studying their work. What you said about the missionaries persecuting and exterminating traces of shamanism sounds like a sad story. This also made me investigate the period when the persecution was taking place, and a friend of mine from Finnmark offered me an update on this whenever I asked her about it. Amongst other things, she particularly shed some light on what happened in Eastern Finnmark back then. She specifically mentioned one Isaac Olsen, he entered the scene in cooperation with Thomas von Westen. From what she said this here Isaac Olsen was literally using a wrecking ball to demolish the ancient Sami shamanism.
I have heard that there’s a presence of conservative Christianity in Sápmi. Could this be traced back to the missionaries or is it merely a consequence of social conditions during the 19th and 20th century?
Best regards,
Jenny
I have been reading your views on shamanism with great interest. For some time now I have been trying to educate myself on the matter, and I’m particularly interested in shamanism in a Sami context. Unfortunately, to me leastways, information regarding this is not always available in English. Now, I sort of read and understand Norwegian and even some Sami, but it’s not like I can be getting through a text somewhat more advanced than a news article and actually comprehend it in a sufficient way. I’m aware of google translate and stuff like that, but older texts tend to give electronic translation services a hard time on accuracy. Pretty much like my own rudimentary understanding of Norwegian and Sami. This is leading me to my question to you: is there any information about Sami shamanism in English written by people who have first hand knowledge about Sami shamanism? I have heard of Johan Turi. Would he be an author worth considering?
You also expressed that you have experienced things beyond the frame of western minds, if I got you correctly. I share that experience which is why I’m getting more and more devoted to looking into this.
Best regards,
Jenny
Hva synes om farmen i år?
Fra et etisk perspektiv: hvem fortjente egentlig å vinne?
How do you go about harnessing your stream of thoughts?
Jenny
Prøver du noen ganger å løse vanskelige utgaver av feks. Sudoku eller andre matematiske ‘utfordringer’ & hvor ‘enkelt’ er disse oppgavene?
Mener å ha lest at man kan se avtrykk av matematikk i det meste av dagliglivets små og store ting & tang. Hva tenker du om det?
Cheers Magnus
[Edit 2] I thought it might also be interesting to check just how much energy a 2 degree change in the atmosphere is. A quick calculation shows it to be roughly 10²² J. That is about 600 million Hiroshima bombs. Also, it seems to be the total energy usage worldwide for about 17 years. Interesting. And this calculation only includes the air, not the oceans.
[Edit 3] I’ve written another article, “Vi må tørre å tenke nytt”.