Besides working, I have lately also sparked some political interest again, and have actually also changed party. I am now member of the Norwegian Liberals (www.venstre.no), and have the intention to be a bit active in Bergen Liberal Youths.

Yesterday I was at a meeting where we discussed a Bosnia project which Unge Venstre has. Since I know very little about Bosnia and the challenges the youth there are facing, I got some documents, one of them being the "Human Development Report" 2000 on Bosnia and Herzegovina, published by UNDP. The report, which is about youths and their hopes and dreams, their attitude towards sexuality, politics and other issues, has an interesting fore-word, which I will quote here.


"YOUTH

With the beginning of industrial civilisation, youth appear as a specific sociological grouping that is becoming ever
more significant in the shaping of a society on the path to a world of information technology. In the past, the period of youth was passed over through earlier participation in the workforce and thus earlier maturation. With education
becoming a massive phenomenon and the period of youth being extended, young people appear as a new category of
people with different needs.

The struggle of young people for rights in society has lasted for a long time. The “French Revolution” of youth
reached its peak in the sixties – 1968, with young people securing access to the political scene through rebellion. It
took a long time for older people to understand the slogan: “Be realistic, ask for the impossible.” Music was the central medium that brought young people throughout the world together into one community (the rock paradigm). The
basic category brought to our world by young people is the sub-culture, or, as young people like to say, the underground.

On the one hand, there is the official category of society. Its cultural pinnacle is represented by theatres, concert
halls, State mediums and similar institutions financed by the State. Young people find this distant and dull, lacking
the “pulse” of trends, that secret strong current (in the words of a famous pre-war rock band, Bijelo Dugme -
“There is a secret link!”) that flows through them, linking them to each other. Words, themselves, are not enough to
articulate this current, but music is here to flow through this secret thread. Young people emigrated from official
salons and delved into the cellar, sat on old couches in the dark and created, wrote, played and searched. With their
creativity, they gradually leave the cellar and, decisively, through their spirituality, enrich the world above them.

The basic characteristic of the youth of “sixty-eight” is faith in a changing society and world. This generation truly
believed that it could change the world for the better, it was full of rebellion, plans and programmes and a fierce energy through which they wished to adjust the world to their vision. This faith often made them seem rough, radical and violent, even to the point of extreme terrorist actions. Revolution was both their style and their paradigm of experiencing life. They were heroes, prepared for sacrifice, ready to forsake things and undergo self-denial, idealists who lived for their principles. Newer generations are appearing in considerable numbers following the failures of the revolutionaries.

Contrary to this earlier culture of protest and desire for change and revolution, young people are now emerging
who do not feel the need to change things. They are not interested in change but are instead delving into the creation of their world full of choices for comfort and joy. They want to be happy and are more satisfied than their parents, more humane, considerate and compassionate, they like to accept and be accepted. Their basic feeling is a love for life.

Nature is part of life and they experience it as their own. That is why they are easily “fired up” by ecology. War and
destruction is not their trend, military heroes are part of an incomprehensible and laughable parental mythomania.
That is why they are “fired up” by peace. Their individualism is not exclusive like that of their parents: they are sensitive to equal rights for all, for the poor, for those deprived of their rights, for people who have no opportunities. The idea of female emancipation, or rather the advancement of gender, is particularly trendy - in other words, these issues are part of the sentiments of life.

Therefore, the younger generation has a fresher sense of humanity and one which is of better quality, as they grow up
in families of fewer children and receive greater care and are raised with less coercion. However, all of this investment in youth could be wasted if they are not given the chance to grow up, that is to say, to find employment, generate an income and earn enough to money to cover their living requirements, to establish a family. They must be allowed to take their lives into their own hands.


I will get more updated on what is going on in Bosnia currently. Did you know that in Bosnia & Herzegovina, as much as 65% of the youths there actually want to move away from the country? :(

Often when talking with people I hear, either expressed or between the lines, something like the following:

Those who are on unemployment benefits are just abusers of the system, they need to get off their fat butts and get a job like all other normal people.

Sometimes the double stigmata of being unemployed AND being an immigrant from say Africa or Iran can really draw out the anger in some people. By chance I talked with an elder man of 60 some weeks ago and he (of course) went to the topic of "there are too many foreigners here":

Foreigners just get children like crazy, they are most likely involved in the narcotics industry, and they sell their daughters to some cousin in the home country, where the daughters are forced into an islam woman-role &etcetcetc.

Today, on IHT, I read an article which is about how German politicians now have given up on a political issue which would lead to more incentives for unemployed people to go and get a job.

A quote:


But to many labor economists who see unemployment as a chronic problem here, the move would have delivered results. "A general housecleaning of German labor market regulation is overdue," Deutsche Bank wrote in a recent analysis that blamed the country's persistent unemployment on a "regulatory straitjacket."
.
Under the current benefits system, a recipient receives up to 67 percent of his former wages for 32 months and then, if he or she remains unemployed, gets 57 percent for an unlimited period.
.
Hartz, who is a longtime political confidant of Schroeder, had favored 12-month limits on both levels of unemployment benefits. The commission's 15 members retracted that part of the plan on Friday.


What causes unemployment? How does this affect the individual? What signals are we giving the unemployed if the system is so lax that they can basically just sit at home doing nothing and receive unemployment benefits for it? Or if we are treating them like sore losers because they, for some or other reason, are unemployed for a shorter or longer period of time?

Youth unemployment is not really a big problem here in Norway, but there are a lot of countries where this is a huge problem. How do we solve this problem?

I know that there will be a youth employment summit in Egypt this year - let us hope that some fresh initiatives can come out of this.

Unemployment is not only a problem for the economy, but also for the individual. We need to have a labor system where people have a lot of incentives to go out and find a job if they are unemployed, but at the same time they must have a minimal amount of security so that, while job hunting, they don't need to go around begging for money or something.

For about three years I have been very interested in the writings of Michael Oakeshott, and especially his essays on education. I have lately been playing around with the idea of writing a piece which is not really a review of his essays, but rather a thinking-aloud on the relevance which these works has for Me. Or rather, I will be starting by pointing at a general issue (which is quite wide, indeed) and then try to show how Oakeshott can be of use in our discussion of these topics.

Today I had a discussion with my "mentor" at university about this, and here are some of my notes from that meeting.

The experience of the information age: the lack of a distinguished voice among all the information.

The vital part of learning is to recognise the Voice?


Quality (in a Pirsig sense of the word) / Style (Walter Pater? Virginia Woolf's voice/style in her novels?)

There is a security in there being a consistency in the voice of Oakeshott on the topic of learning and education. This consistency should also be reflected somehow in the article I am to write.

The richest resource we have is in the Conversation, not in didactic discourse. (!)

My uncomfort in seeing the lack of a distinguished voice in so much of contemporary society/academia, and show HOW Oakeshott, or other thinkers can be of Comfort for me personally.

We have so many possibilities for sharing information, but what about the good olde discussion in all this? The talk?
(yes, we still do talk, but do we do it in the same way as before? if yes/if not: why/why not?)

How can the gifted teacher help in identifying (sic) the Essence and cut away all the noise which is cluttering up the image.

It may come as a revelation to know that it is not only a matter of what one has been told, but how one is told it.

Quote from Oakeshott's essay on "Learning and Teaching":

"When I consider, as in private duty bound, how I first became dimly aware that there was something else in learning than the acquisition of information, that the way a man thought waas more important than what he said, it was, I think, on the occasions when we had before us concrete situations. It was when we had, not an array of historical 'facts', but (for a moment) the facts suspended in an historian's argument. It was on those occasions when we were made to learn by heart, not the declension of bonus (which, of course, had to be learned), but a passage of literature, the reflection of a mind at work in a language. It was on those occasions when one was not being talked to but had the opportunity of overhearing an intelligent conversation.

And if you were to ask me the circumstances in which patience, accuracy, economy, elegance and style first dawned upon me, I would have to say that I did not come to recognize them in literature, in argument or in geometrical proof until I had first recognized them elsewhere; and that I owed this recognition to a Sergeant gymnastics instructor who lived long before the days of 'physical education' and for whom gymnastics was an intellectual art - and I owed it to him, not on account of anything he ever said, but because he was a man of patience, accuracy, economy, elegance and style."

Consider the title of one of his essays: A place of learning

Theory     vs.   Poetry

  ^                ^

  |                |

Durable         NOT durable through

through         different paraphrases! (translation etc)

different

paraphrases.



...

Well, I will be working on this article the coming days.

This week I finally got a job, after having been here in Bergen since medio july. My difficulties of finding a job is not due to me not having any useful skills, but because the job market is cluttered with thousands of students who are having summer vacation and would like to earn some money. In Norway, it is normal among students to plan it like this: Work for 2 months, earn 3000 US$ and then go vacation in august before the semester starts. Around the world, or to Bali or whatever.

This week I got a weekend job at a new 7-eleven shop here in Bergen. Great, all I now need is a week work, this either being in a challenging position, or in a shop. I don't care, I just want to earn the money at this point.

But working at this 7-eleven can be tough sometimes. In the weekend, the shop is open all hours, and sometimes one can get the shift like the following one: Saturday work 16-00.30, sunday work 06.30 - 15. Wee! So, it is 00.50 here now, and I just got off work, and I really need to get home and sleep before I get up at 5.30 and take a quick shower and then jog the 45 minutes it takes to get to work (no suitable buses at this time of the hour here). And then tomorrow work till 15. I will be quite exhausted - but duh, I'm not complaining :) I like being active, and I like working in a youthful, intensive and so disgustingly pop-fixated place as this 7-eleven shop. We sell junk food (and some fruits for the greeners, they are part of our customer segments as well) and youth magazines, comic books and even roses for the romantic people. I do not know if 7-Eleven shops in other countries are like these (they certainly are not in Hong Kong) here in Norway, but it surely is an interesting sociological phenomenon.

While walking from work towards this internet cafe (which also is open 24/7 in the weekend and where youngsters of all ages around me are now playing Counter-Strike, Quake III, Warcraft III, and other hype-games) I went through the main part of Bergen, including the main square. The scene was surreal. It was like another world.. Since I have been abroad for so long I could look at my home city with somewhat new eyes. And the drunk people staggering over the streets were amusing. Some were on their way home, while others (arriving in maxi taxies in bunches of 6) were on their way to the city centre and the discos, night clubs and concert venues. I saw more than a few 14-year olds with visible cleavage and wearing britney-inspired clothes walking around or just sitting on a bench staring at their GSM phones or SMS'ing. And then I noticed the night clubs. One with rock music, one with Top 20 music, and another one with the characteristic boomboomboomboomboomboom of some psyched up trance tune, DJ Tiesto like. And then I thought about the society I am living in here, in Norway which is one of the richest countries in the world. I am not some anti-materialist, but gosh this is almost too much. The self-adoring smile of spoiled young people going out to have as much as fun as possible before the night clubs close and they have to retire to the homes of some people to have nach-spiel, which is the norwegian term of after-partying-partying with loads of booze in someone's home. Here in Norway, night clubs Have to close before 0300, and after that one cannot get any alcohole anywhere in town.. So

umm, what's my point?

just fleeting observances of life around me.

go go go have fun working have fun spending the money you earn on working join the hype join the wave (ever read "The Wave"?) join the trance tune now join with your glow-sticks and devil mascara and goth costume, come dance with us, have sex with us lets have some huge gang bang true Paris style!

have we, modern man, in our urge to think New and not be bound down by petty morals, gone too far? have we become so obsessed with the glossy pictures that we forget the essence of things?

and then I think about all we hypocrites. the hypocrism (sic) is not out there, with others who we can brand as this or that, point at make fun of and so on, but it is in here, among us, it is the itching on our backs we cannot scratch.

it is easy for me, as an outsider, going from work towards the net cafe to write an update on TIG and then go home and rest before working again, to criticize the others. those girls of 18 or 19 wearing white clothes and then some black see-through material thing over that (those kind of girls I hate the most! :/), or those yuppie guys studying business administration at the business school here in town or working at some 7-eleven like me, earning their dough, and who then like to party in the weekend, every weekend if they can, drink Smirnoff Ice, smoke Benson & Hedges or Camel and go ..

farkit, we all need to get drunk sometimes, I guess. drunk and irresponsible. being drunk is so blissfull. you can act like a total prick, and because you ooze of booze long way you are sort of excused, and indeed the next monday you can perhaps even be proud of it "I got soooo drunk this saturday!". This is part of a drinking culture which I consider very Norwegian - I surely havent experienced it anywhere else, not even in Denmark, where the inhabitants drink more alcohol per person in the year, but it is more spread out. Not like 10 half-litres of beer in the course of a few hours on the saturday evening.

im off to bed. need to be fresh at work tomorrow.
cheers.

This project sounds very interesting. But heh, some of the pages could do with a better color scheme.

E-mail forwarded:
******

From Abloome@worldbank.org Fri Aug 2 12:10:45 2002
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 10:50:52 -0400
From: Anthony Bloome
Reply-To: gkd@phoenix.edc.org
To: gkd@phoenix.edc.org
Subject: [GKD] HIV/AIDS and ICT: Social Action Website Competition Winners

Hello all,

A note to bring you up-to-date with some of the lastest World Links for
Development AIDSWEB: HIV/AIDS and ICT activities.

As you can see from the following, we've had a busy year, but are now
looking to scale-up project activities to more schools and countries
across Africa and elsewhere. Suggestions of support for project
expansion would also be greatly appreciated.

1) AIDSWEB Social Action Website Design Competition - Ten Winners
Announced!

With support from the World Bank's AFTQK program, we were able to
sponsor the first AIDSWEB Social Action Website Design Competition. The
competition -- which provided website design training to students and
teachers from sixty African schools in six countries (Botswana, Ghana,
South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe) -- has just concluded with
website submissions showcasing HIV/AIDS school-community prevention
activities and best practice initiatives. After being reviewed by a team
of judges, the following ten sites of thirty-six websites submitted,
received the highest commendations.

Best Sites Overall
*******************************************************
TSODILO (Botswana)
www.tsodilo.botsnet.co.bw
MKOBA HIGH 1(Zimbabwe)
www.zimworld.org.zw/mkb1/home.html

2. Most Creative Site
******************************************************
MARONDERA HIGH (Zimbabwe)
http://www.zimworld.org.zw/marondera/index.htm

3. Best Technical Design:
******************************************************
TSODILO (Botswana)
www.tsodilo.botsnet.co.bw

4. Best Layout:
******************************************************
NAMILYANGO COLLEGE ( Uganda)
www.geocities.com/ngoaidshot/index.htm

5. Best Social Action Content:
****************************************************
GWERU ( Zimbabwe)
www.zimworld.org.zw/mkb3/start.html
NAMILYANGO COLLEGE ( Uganda)
www.geocities.com/ngoaidshot/index.htm

=================================================================
THE TOP 10 SITES BY COUNTRY:
=================================================================
BOTSWANA:
Tsodilo: www.tsodilo.botsnet.co.bw
Mowana : www.mowana.botsnet.co.bw

GHANA:
West Africa Secondary School:
http://www.geocities.com/wass_aids/index.htm

SOUTH AFRICA:
President Mangope Technical and Commercial High School:
chool/Web2/index.htm>

UGANDA:
Namilyango College: http://www.geocities.com/ngoaidshot/index.htm
Bishop's Senior School: http://www.geocities.com/bishaids1/
King's College Budo: http://www.geocities.com/budohicomp/index.htm

ZIMBABWE
Marondera High: http://www.zimworld.org.zw/marondera/index.htm
Gweru: http://www.zimworld.org.zw/mkb3/start.html
Mkoba High 1: http://www.zimworld.org.zw/mkb1/home.html

6. Special Recognition (new AIDSWEB country):
*************************************************************
ZAMBIA:
Mumana Basic School: http://www.zla.co.za/aidshome.htm

For a complete list of all thirty-six websites submitted for the
competition, please let us know.

2) AIDSWEB Online Collaborative Project

In June, we completed the third project round of this information and
social action online activity (taking place over six months) with 30
schools and 300 student and teacher participants from seven African
countries (Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, Botswana, Zambia,
Kenya) and the US participating. As part of the culminating activity, we
hope to find funding to underwrite some of the social action plans which
the students have proposed as part of the online project. These include
promoting peer education, helping local AIDS orphanages and working with
HIV/AIDS NGOS to develop microenterprise projects. We're also conducting
a comprehensive evaluation of project impact over the last three years
with some outside evaluators.

3) WBI's Development Outreach Magazine: AIDSWEB Article "Fighting the
Insidious Killer: African Teenagers Battle HIV/AIDS Through ICT"

In the Spring 2002 issue of the World Bank Institute's Development
Outreach magazine, there is a feature article about the AIDSWEB project.
Please contact the folks at the Development Outreach magazine
for a reprint or see their website at
.


4) Auntie Stella website -- Stockholm Challenge
Finalist

The AS website -- electronically adapted from the print product produced
by Zimbabwe's Training and Adolescent Support Program (TARSC) --
underwritten and co-developed by WorLD, was recently ranked as the one
of the finalist projects in the Stockholm Challenge competition. The
Stockholm Challenge is a highly respected international competition
ranking recent ICT projects in development. AS was one of the finalists
in the health category as an invaluable source for HIV/AIDS and
reproductive health information targetted at youth.

5) AIDSWEB Website

The www.aidsweb.org project website will be up mid-August.

We'd be happy to personally brief your staff or organizations about
these or other AIDSWEB:HIV/AIDS and ICT project activities, including
linkages with a new initiative we have initiated promoting youth IT
entrepreneurship (the YouthIT project) which will target youth,
particularly women and out-of-school youth.


Anthony Bloome
AIDSWEB Task Manager
World Links for Development
WBIHD Education Team
202-473-2282



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