Sad news
Being in Sweden makes you feel closer to the crimes the last weekend in Oslo. It's hard to comment, first you don't have words, but then you think we have a great deal to say. Intolerance and fanatism, and where this can end. Of course it's the same in the other side, extreme ideas from any political side are the same, extreme, simple and dangerous. So simple that you got to start wondering. Because yes of course to kill cold bloded like this murderer, sure he has to have some problem, psychopathy is the first thing that comes to mind, but when crazy people come close to simplistic and extreme ideas, then we have to think twice. Because a lot of people like them. Specially when there is crisis, when things are not going very well, there is nothing easier than to blame it in the neighbor, or the one who is different than me, or than us, in some way. And the simplest the idea the easiest it is to spread it out. But here is the point, things are not simple. If you want to understand the world, you better get informed, read, listen to the others. There is too many people out there that thinks they are smarter than others, that they "know", but they just have opinions, like everyone else. One opinion is like another and if there is something makes an opinion better than another is that is grounded, that the person has been informed, has listened to others, that is critical. There is where simple ideas fall. If you think your country/language/whatever? is better than the neighbor's falls because the neighbor thinks the oposite (this is, the same, but not about your country), and who even knows who put the line there to separate the countries? And the reason I write these things that may seem so obvious it's because lately I hear this kind of ideas more and more. The "I'm not racist but the X do not like to study/are not clean/are lazy...". Then they fill the X with whatever they feel like. How can these ideas spread out?? I find it really hard to believe that people repeats these things. I try to explain to myself how this can happen. And I guess it's just that it's simple. Everybody tries to understand things and simple ideas are just easier to understand, and prejudice and hate are universal. There are experiments in which they make two random teams and give green shirts to one and blue to the other and automatically they start to think the "same color shirt people" are their friends and the others, the enemy. Well, I guess what I want to say here is, before generalizing, please, think and read more. A crazy person followed by many others with simplistic and fanatic ideas have already almost destroyed the world... in several occasions, and no one wants to see that happening again. And what can we do? Teach people to think, prompt them to think critically, I guess. Other ideas?