December 13, 2014, saying good-bye for now to my beloved sister Judit Révèsz and brother Ikhlaq Hussein.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On December 11, 2014, it was an immense privilege to be invited to see Kneehigh Theater's "Tristan and Yseult," in St. Ann's Warehouse, together with my dear room-mate Kristin. It was such a gift to be invited by Robert Luckey, the brother of our dear Zuzana Luckay!
CONGRATULATIONS, dear Robert and Zsuzsa!
This was a such a wonderful and mind-boggling evening, for which words are simply not sufficient!
• Please click on the pictures above to see them larger (the photo on the left is taken from the great New York Times review, and thank you, Kristin, for taking the photo on the right!)

December 4-5, 2014, Eleventh Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, representing the 24th Annual Conference of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), titled "Work that Dignifies the Lives of All People," at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City

The pictures come in several web galleries:
•  Thursday, December 4, 2014: Please click here to see all of Anna Strout's 181 photos of Day One
Thank you, dear Anna, for taking such amazing pictures!
•  Thursday, December 4, 2014: Please click here to see all of Evelin Lindner's 23 photos of Day One
•  Thursday, December 4, 2014: Please click here to see all of Anna Strout's 38 photos of the Public Event
•  Friday, December 5, 2014: Please click here to see all of Anna Strout's 227 photos of all of Day Two
•  Friday, December 5, 2014: Please click here to see all of Hua Chu's 32 photos of the morning of Day Two, see one of the photos on the Teachers College site
Thank you, dear Hua-Chu Yen, for taking such amazing pictures!
•  Friday, December 5, 2014: Please click here to see all of Evelin Lindner's 38 photos of the morning of Day Two
• Thursday and Friday: Please click here to see all of Hayal Köksal's 203 photos of the entire workshop
Thank you, dear Hayal Köksal, for taking so many nice pictures!

The videos:
Thank you so much, dear Christine de Michele, for stepping up and doing such wonderful video-taping!
•  01 Linda Hartling and Claudia Cohen Welcome Everybody
•  02 Linda Hartling Introduces Our Appreciative Frame
•  03 A Global Dignilogue with Evelin Lindner and Linda Hartling
•  04 Beth Fisher-Yoshida Opens Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  05 Janet Gerson in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  06 David Balosa and Seif Sekalala in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  07 Tony Gaskew in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  08 Claudia Cohen in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  09 David Bargal Yair Ronen in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  10 Gay Rosenblum Kumar in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  11 Tzofnat Peleg-Baker Comments in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  12 Lucien Lombardo Comments in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  13 Susan Smith Comments in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  14 Co-Created Dignilogue 1 "Improvisation"
•  15 Co-Created Dignilogue 2 "What America Are We Talking About?"
•  16 Co-Created Dignilogue 3 "The Size, or Scale of Belonging"
•  17 Co-Created Dignilogue 4 "The Problems of Females in Developing Countries"
•  18 Co-Created Dignilogue 5 "Healing Forgiveness"
•  19 Public Event: Fred Ellis and His Students
•  20 Public Event: James (Jimmy) Jones
•  21 Public Event: David Yamada
•  22 Public Event: George Wolfe and Eric Edberg
•  23 Linda Hartling Opens Day Two
•  24 Michael Britton's Don Klein Memorial Lecture
•  25 Geneviève Vaughan's Contribution
•  26 Michael Perlin in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  27 Anne-Wyatt Brown in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  28 George Wolfe and Eric Edberg in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  29 Lucien Lombardo and Ruth Thomas-Suh in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  30 Kingsley Okoro in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  31 Elizabeth Negrete and David Weksler in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  32 Hayal Köksal in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  33 Stephanie Heuer in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  34 Appreciations: Michael Perlin, Morton Deutsch, and Careholders & Sharegivers
•  35 Richard Slaven Receives the HumanDHS Half Lifetime Award
•  36 Evelin Lindner Receives the HumanDHS Half Lifetime Award
•  37 Co-Created Dignilogues: Chinwe Obianika's Contribution
•  38 Co-Created Dignilogue 1: "Shame and Humiliation"
•  39 Co-Created Dignilogue 2: "Power Concedes Nothing"
•  40 Co-Created Dignilogue 3: "Taking Violence out of Education"
•  41 Co-Created Dignilogue 4: "The Integrated Healing Model"
•  42 Hayal Köksal and Evelin Lindner Post-Workshop

Dignilogue 1 on Day One of our workshop, Thursday, December 4, 2014

Honorary Convenor: Morton Deutsch
Moderators: Beth Fisher-Yoshida and Phil Brown
Seating Manager: Rick Slaven
Participants in Dignilogue 1:
•  Janet Gerson
•  David Balosa and Seif Sekalala
•  Tony Gaskew
•  Claudia E. Cohen
•  Ya'ir Ronen and David Bargal
•  Gay Rosenblum-Kumar
•  Beth Fisher-Yoshida

•  Still photos:
•  Please click here to see all of Anna Strout's 181 still photos of Day One - thank you, dear Anna, for taking such amazing pictures!
•  Please click here to see all of Evelin Lindner's 23 still photos of Day One
•  Please click here to see all of Hayal Köksal's 203 photos of the entire workshop - thank you, dear Hayal Köksal, for taking so many nice pictures!

•  Videos:
•  04 Beth Fisher-Yoshida Opens Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  05 Janet Gerson in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  06 David Balosa and Seif Sekalala in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  07 Tony Gaskew in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  08 Claudia Cohen in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  09 David Bargal Yair Ronen in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  10 Gay Rosenblum Kumar in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  11 Tzofnat Peleg-Baker Comments in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  12 Lucien Lombardo Comments in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1
•  13 Susan Smith Comments in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 1

Phil Brown led the Turning Ideas into Action session on Day One of our workshop, Thursday, December 4, 2014, in our new Co-Created Dignilogues # 1

•  Still photos:
•  Please click here to see all of Anna Strout's 181 still photos of Day One
•  Please click here to see all of Evelin Lindner's 23 still photos of Day One
•  Please click here to see all of Hayal Köksal's 203 photos of the entire workshop

•  Videos:
•  14 Co-Created Dignilogue 1 "Improvisation"
•  15 Co-Created Dignilogue 2 "What America Are We Talking About?"
•  16 Co-Created Dignilogue 3 "The Size, or Scale of Belonging"
•  17 Co-Created Dignilogue 4 "The Problems of Females in Developing Countries"
•  18 Co-Created Dignilogue 5 "Healing Forgiveness"

Public Event on Day One of our workshop, titled, "Work that Dignifies the Lives of All People," Thursday, December 4, 2014

•  Still photos:
•  Please click on the picture above or here to see all of the 89 photos of the Public Event that dear Anna Strout made for us
•  Please click here to see all of Hayal Köksal's 203 photos of the entire workshop

• Videos:
•  Fred Ellis and His Students
In the spirit of our motto of Unity in Diversity, the evening began with Fred Ellis and his children, singing songs from many cultural backgrounds.

•  James (Jimmy) Jones
Jimmy Jones is Associate Professor of World Religions and African Studies at Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY. Over the last three decades, much of his personal and professional work has been focused on conflict resolution within families, communities and across national and cultural boundaries. He and his wife, Matiniah Yahya are active residents of an intentional Muslim community which is an integral part of a multi-cultural inner-city neighborhood near Masjid Al-Islam in New Haven, CT.

•  David Yamada
This talk examined how humiliation, abuse, and mistreatment have become all-too-frequent experiences in our modern work environments, and pose the question "“What will I do to nurture dignity, opportunity, and well-being in the workplace?”  It will draw in part on David's work in addressing workplace bullying and other workers' rights issues.

•  George Wolfe and Eric Edberg
George Wolfe, alto saxophone, and Eric Edberg, cello, December 4, 2014

Michael Britton gave the Don Klein Memorial Lecture on Day Two of our workshop, Friday, December 5, 2014.
Michael uses Don's metaphor of a scrim, a transparent stage curtain, where one believes that what one sees is reality only as long as the light shines on it in a certain way: see Don's explanation.

•  Video of Michael Britton's Don Klein Memorial Talk

•  Geneviève Vaughan's Contribution

•  Still photos:
•  Please click here to see all of Anna Strout's 227 still photos of Day Two
•  Please click here to see all of Hua Chu's 32 still photos of the morning of Day Two
•  Please click here to see all of Evelin Lindner's 38 still photos of the morning of Day Two
•  Please click here to see all of Hayal Köksal's 203 photos of the entire workshop

Dignilogue 2 on Day Two of our workshop, Friday, December 5, 2014

Honorary Convenor: Morton Deutsch
Moderators: David C. Yamada and Tonya Hammer
Seating Manager: Rick Slaven
•  Michael L. Perlin
•  Anne Wyatt-Brown
•  George Wolfe and Eric Edberg
•  Lucien Lombardo and Ruth Thomas-Suh
•  Ani Kalayjian
•  Kingsley Okoro • David Weksler, Elizabeth Negrete, supported by Yvonne Dennis, Courtney Furlong, and April Frazier, brought together by Mariana I. Vergara
•  Hayal Köksal •  Stephanie Heuer

•  Still photos:
•  Please click here to see all of Anna Strout's 227 still photos of Day Two
•  Please click here to see all of Hua Chu's 32 still photos of the morning of Day Two
•  Please click here to see all of Evelin Lindner's 38 still photos of the morning of Day Two
•  Please click here to see all of Hayal Köksal's 203 photos of the entire workshop

•  Videos:
•  26 Michael Perlin in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  27 Anne-Wyatt Brown in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  28 George Wolfe and Eric Edberg in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  29 Lucien Lombardo and Ruth Thomas-Suh in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  30 Kingsley Okoro in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  31 Elizabeth Negrete and David Weksler in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  32 Hayal Köksal in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2
•  33 Stephanie Heuer in Pre-Planned Dignilogue 2

On November 29, 2014, it was wonderful to meet with Jennifer Chim and her husband Stephen Zhu!
After becoming victimized by human rights violations, they now dedicate their lives to promoting human rights ideals all around the world. See the World Peace Elite Association and the Chinese Human Rights Federation.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 25, 2014, it was an important experience for me to see "Father Comes Home From the Wars," by Suzan-Lori Parks, at the Public Theater in New York City, U.S.A.
See the Theater Review: "Ulysses as an American Slave," by Charles Isherwood, The New York Times, October 28, 2014. Thank you, dear Kristin, for making me aware of this important piece!
A slave named Hero is the lead figure in this play. The play reflects on freedom in its various manifestations. Hero is a thoroughly well-intentioned honest man, a man who, for instance, is opposed to stealing. Therefore he will not run away from his master, since a slave like him has a considerable monetary value and running away would be like stealing. At the same time, Hero is not without freedom, at least in certain ways, freedom, for him, is whatever choices are placed in front of him within his slave-status. He cannot fathom freedom outside of that status; he cannot envision the freedom of “owning oneself.” Slavery is an unescapable frame of life for Hero, like a law of nature, and he has difficulties grasping that this frame is made by humans and can therefore also be undone by humans. Slavery, including living with a never-ending sense of fear and terror, is a given for Hero.
To me, this play made palpable the wide-spread inability, also nowadays, to fathom the possibility of different kinds of freedom. A number of frames of contemporary life, far from representing laws of nature, are human-made and can be changed, as there are, among others: the clinging to the need to dominate over nature and “enemies,” despite the opportunity to let go of this cultural script by intentionally nurturing global interconnectedness and stewardship of the world’s ecological and social spheres. There is no need to bow to sentences such as “we are a business and no charity,” which insinuate that profit maximization is a first-order frame with the status of a law of nature, and restrictions to civil liberties in response to the threat of terrorism might even be counterproductive (see a discussion by Freedom House). Like Hero, we may fail to recognize that we, as humankind as a whole, are agents, and that we, at the present juncture in history, may need to reconsider what we should accept as givens. There might exist unnecessary limitations to our freedom, limitations designed by us, humankind, that can be un-designed.
Why not sit together, liberate ourselves from all limitations that flow from human-engineered domination and lovingly accept and respect only the limitations that indeed have the status of laws of nature, such as the finiteness of our planet? It is laudable to be well-intentioned and honest; nowadays, global challenges urge everybody who has good intentions to shoulder responsibilities that earlier generations did not have to shoulder to the same extent, namely, reaching beyond one’s immediate surroundings and envision and engage in global systemic change toward a dignified world, within which dignity can flourish also locally.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 24, 2014, I had the immense privilege of being invited to lunch by Beth Fisher-Yoshida, Academic Director of a new Master of Science in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at The School of Continuing Education at Columbia University, New York City, U.S.A.!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 20, 2014, it was an immense privilege to be with dear Lydia and Morton Deutsch, E. L. Thorndike Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Education, and Director Emeritus of the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR), Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, U.S.A.!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 20, 2014, it was an immense privilege of being with dear Claudia Cohen, Associate Director of the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR), for our annual lunch!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 17, 2014, I had the immense privilege of being invited to the annual luncheon given by Susan Fuhrman, the President of Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City, United States of America, and being able to express my great appreciation for the work she and her colleagues are doing.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 17, 2014, I took some pictures of the bronze bust of John Dewey in Zankel Hall, the main entrance hall of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, United States of America.
Dewey (1859 – 1952) was born ca. one hundred years before I was born (1954), and died two years before I was born...
• Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos.

On November 17, 2014, I took some photos of the venue of our upcoming 2014 Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, representing the 24th Annual HumanDHS Conference and the Eleventh Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, this year titled "Work that Dignifies the Lives of All People." We will have our workshop in room 150 and 145 Horace Mann at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, United States of America, just opposite the Union Theological Seminary, where Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent his postdoctoral year 1930-31. "His experience of the African American community, mediated through the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, alerted him to the evil of racism. …The encounter with racism in America paved the way for his opposition to the racist anti-Semitism of National Socialism (Clifford J. Green, "Introduction," in D. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, in Works, Vol. 6, translated by Clifford J. Green et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), p. 4). The foundation of Bonhoeffer's resistance was not simply a matter of personal ethics. Two days after Hitler's accession to power he delivered the seminal radio address on "The Leader and the Individual in the Younger Generation." (I thank Robert Elliot Pollack for making me aware of Green's Introduction)
• Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos.

On November 17, 2014, I had the great joy of reconnecting with dear Alba Taveras, who oversees the day-to-day business operations of the Center for International Conflict Resolution at the International Affairs Building of the School of International and Public Affairs, at Columbia University, New York City, United States of America.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 15, 2014, having the great privilege of being part of the 34th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, "This Must Be the Place: Creative Enterprise in a New Economy" with Matt Stinchcomb and Caroline Woolard.
Please see Susan Witt, the Executive Director of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. Previously, she was the Education Director and member of the Board of Directors of the New Economics Institute and the Executive Director of the E. F. Schumacher Society, the predecessor of New Economics Institute. In 1980 she helped found the Society and led the development of its highly regarded publications, library, seminars, and other educational programs while at the same time implementing Schumacher's economic ideas in her home region of the Berkshires. I was introduced to her by Margrit and Declan Kennedy.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 14, 2014, what a great gift it was to be with dear Gay Rosenblum-Kumar and her family!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On November 13, 2014, I had the great privilege of being the student of Naoko Matsumoto. I will hopefully never ever again forget what she taught me of the Alexander Technique. Naoko is originally from Kyoto, Japan, and danced for Midori Ballet, Mariko Dance Theater. She has more than 10 years professional experience as a dance teacher. She is also a certified Alexander Technique teacher and a director at Movement Republic Inc., where she supports her students with Alexander Technique and dance education.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

November 5, 2014, reconnecting with very dear Maria Volpe, at her wonderful monthly Roundtable Breakfast, this time "A Conversation with Wendy Kamenshine, Ombudsman forConsumer Financial Protection Bureau," at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, NYC, hosted by the Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York and the CUNY Dispute Resolution Center at John Jay College.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

November 5, 2014, reconnecting with my dearest friend Janet Gerson! Janet is the winner of the 2014 Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) Graduate Student Paper Award for her dissertation Public Deliberation on Global Justice: The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI)! Congratulations, dear Janet!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

November 4, 2014, reconnecting with my dearest friends at the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR)!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

November 4, 2014, my first annual visit to our dear Samantha Lu and her dear colleagues. She is the director of TC's Office of International Student Services and is my wonderful "mother" at Teachers College!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

November 2, 2014, my first annual visit to my beloved sister Judit Révèsz and brother Ikhlaq Hussein.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

October 28, 2014, my annual visit to Suzy Tsang, here together with Mike Chong, in China Town, 343 Canal Street, New York, NY 10013.
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

On 31st August and 1st September 2014, I had the great privilege of receiving Evelin Frerk's gifts of love, in Berlin, Germany.
She carried out an interview with me, see a link here as soon as it is edited,
and she took a number of great portraits.
• Please click on the picture at the top to see it larger.
• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see it more portrait photos of Evelin Lindner by Evelin Frerk.

On 30th August 2014, our beloved Declan Kennedy was celebrated by his friends and admirers in the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum in the German capital city of Berlin. Dearest Declan, this was such a WONDERFUL celebration! I am sure that your next 40 years will be as spectacular!
• Please click on the picture to see it larger.

On 26th August 2014, Lisbeth Vilkan Glad displayed the bride gown that she had received in the Egyptian Salt Oasis Siwa, while Evelin displayed the Siwa bride jewelry that she had been given when she lived in Egypt (1984-1991). You see Lisbeth and Evelin in Lisbeth's home in Nøtterøy, Norway, in front of the painting of Siwa that Lisbeth had created before she and her husband travelled to Siwa to make it one of their homes.

• See also The Story of the Siwa Jewellery, told as a little introduction to the "Deep Dao Dialogue: Dignilogue with Evelin Lindner in the Arne Næss Chair" at the Norsk Taiji Senter (Norwegian Taiji Centre), 11th March 2016, 19.00. Thanks a lot to Allan Hiley for doing the video recording!

• Please click on the picture to see it larger.

On 11th and 12th August 2014, twenty years of friendship were celebrated! Ragnhild & Evelin met in 1994!
Thank you, dear Lisbeth Vilkan Glad for welcoming us so wonderfully in your home on Nøtterøy in the Oslofjord and sharing your deeply touching art! Please have a look at Lisbeth's International Art for Understanding (IAU), see also Galleri Glad.
Together, we celebrate our beloved Egyptian Salt Oasis Siwa!
• Please click on the pictures in the top rows or here to see the photos larger.
• Please see Lisbeth's paintings of Siwa in the middle row.
• Please click on the pictures in the bottom row or here to see more photos of Lisbeth's Siwa bride gown and Evelin's Siwa bride jewelry.

28. juni 2014, Elisa og Ida Helland-Hansen åpner sin flott utstilling i Kunstforeningen Verdens ende på Hvasser sammen med Gerdelin Bodvin!
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more photos.

Evelins bursdag/birthday 2014: En hyllest til Ubuntu - A Tribute to Ubuntu
These are video recordings of Evelin's birthday celebration on 23rd June 2014.
An invitation was sent out by the dignity network to informally gather to celebrate Evelin's birthday in the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History on Bygdøy in Oslo on summer solstice. Everybody was extremely astonished at what evolved from that 'non-invitation'!
Denne videoen viser hele festen klippet sammen av Evelin i full fart og er ca. 40 minutter lang: en stor takk til alle som bidro! Filmen er ikke profesjonelt laget - beklager at du må tilpasse lydstyrken etter behov...
Vivi Storsletten og Ove Jacobsen kom til festen og fortatle om Oves artikkel i Pengevirke 2-2014 om Evelins bok 'A Dignity Economy'.


Klikk på bildet ovenfor eller her for å se flere bilder som Elisabeth Kristiansen tok! Tusen takk kjære Elisabeth!
Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos taken by Elisabeth Kristiansen.


For å se flere bilder som Esben Østbye har tatt, klikk på bildet ovenfor eller her. Tusen takk kjære Esben! Dine er de mest kunstneriske og vakre bilder!
Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos taken by Esben Østbye. Thank you so much, dear Esben! Your photos are the most artistic and beautiful ones!


For å se flere bilder som Trine Eklund tok, klikk på bildet ovenfor eller her. Tusen takk kjære Trine!
Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos taken by Trine Eklund.


For å se flere bilder fra Evelins kamera, klikk på bildet ovenfor eller her. Tusen takk for at du tok så fine bilder, kjære Torstein!
Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos from Evelin's camera.


For å se flere bilder som Jorun Berg har tatt, klikk på bildet ovenfor eller her. Tusen takk for at du tok så fine bilder, kjære Jorun!
Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos taken by Jorun.


Desmond Tutu forklarer Ubuntu

Den 23. juni 2014, ved sammenkomsten for min 60-årsdag, hadde jeg det store privilegium av å være omgitt av vår verdighetsfamilie og kunne takke dem for deres fantastiske støtte og nærvær! Festen var en hyllest til 'Ubuntu'. Ubuntu betyr 'Jeg er på grunn av DEG! Vi er på grunn av HVERANDRE!' Takk, kjære Finn, for at du minnet oss om Ubuntu! Her er stemmen til Desmond Tutu som forklarer Ubuntu. Takk, kjære Linda, for å ha spilt inn Desmond Tutus ord!
On the 23rd June 2014, at the gathering for my 60th birthday, I had the great privilege of being surrounded by our dignity family and could thank them for their amazing support and presence! The celebration was a tribute to 'Uuntu'. Ubuntu means 'I am because of YOU! We are because of EACH OTHER!' Thank you, dear Finn, for reminding us of Ubuntu!
Listen to Desmond Tutu explaining Ubuntu.
Thank you, dear Linda, for having recorded Desmond Tutu's words!

Alle var kjærlig invitert til å gi meg en bursdags klem ved Norsk Folkemuseum på Bygdøy i Oslo på ettermiddagen av Sankthansaften, se den opprinnelige invitasjonen.
Everyone was lovingly invited to give me a birthday hug at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History on Bygdøy in Oslo on the afternoon of the summer solstice; see the original invitation.

Gerdelin Bodvin er min kjære vert for min skrive retrett for juni, juli og august i hennes vakre hjem på Brøtsøy. Gerdelin og jeg, vi startet tidlig om morgen fra Tjøme for å være i Oslo i tide til feiringen!
Gerdelin Bodvin is my dear host for my writing retreat for June, July, and August, in her lovely home at the Oslofjord on Brøtsøy, Tjøme, Norway. Gerdelin and I, we started early from Tjøme to be in Oslo in time for the celebration!

Bilder:
• Please click on the picture at the top or here to see more photos taken by Elisabeth Kristiansen. Thank you, dear Elisabeth!
• Please click on the picture in the second row or here to see more photos taken by Esben Østbye. Thank you, dear Esben, your photos are the most artistic and beautiful ones!
• Please click on the picture in the third row or here to see more photos taken by Trine Eklund. Thank you, dear Trine!
• Please click on the picture in the fourth row or here to see more photos from Evelin's camera. Thank you, dear Torstein, that you took so many lovely pictures with Judit's camera!
• Please click on the picture in the fifth row or here to see more photos taken by Jorun. Thank you, dear Jorun!

Videoer:
Please see the videos Lasse and Elisabeth created, thank you, dear both of you!!! All videos are posted as 'unlisted' on YouTube, meaning that they are more private, they are not public. Let me know if I have your permission!
Vennligst se videoene Lasse og Elisabeth har laget, takk til dere, kjære dere begge to!
Alle videoer er nå lagt ut som 'unlisted' på YouTube som betyr at de er mer private, de er ikke offentlige. La meg vite om jeg har deres tillatelse! Takk!

• 59 Evelins bursdag/birthday 2014: En hyllest til Ubuntu - A Tribute to Ubuntu. Denne videoen viser hele festen klippet sammen av Evelin i full fart og er ca. 40 minutter lang: en stor takk til alle som bidro! (Filmen er ikke profesjonelt laget - beklager at du må tilpasse lydstyrken etter behov... beklager også at sangene Zourouni og Hado gjør at videoen kanskje kan spilles av på mobil bare når jeg har fått tillatelse av plateselskapene, forhåpentligvis ved slutten av juli.)

Her kommer enkelt snuttene:
• 59.1 En liten smakebit av Sankthansaften på Folkemuseet: Barnebryllup! Tatt opp av Evelin.
• 59.2 Gerdelin Bodvin og Jan Smedslund: Gerdelin Bodvin åpner festen og deretter deler Jan Smedslund dypt berørende tanker! Takk kjære Mette for opptaket!
• 59.3 Margrethe Tingstad og hennes nydelige musikk gave! I denne videoen deler Margrethe Tingstad sine tanker og bringer en vidunderlig musikk gave. Takk, kjære Margrethe for at du kom med din sønn og hans fantastiske medspillere! Det var en utrolig nytelse! Og takk kjære Lasse for opptaket!
• 59.4 Paal Sandø og hans partner spiller teater! Utrolig fint! Takk kjære Lasse for opptaket!
• 59.5 Trine Eklund og Kjell Skyllstad: Trine Eklund og Kjell Skyllstad deler viktige tanker som berører dypt! Takk kjære Lasse for opptaket!
• 59.6 Guri Lorentzen Østbyes enestående første sang! I denne videoen synger Guri Lorentzen Østbye en vidunderlig sang til Evelin som er dypt berørt og takknemlig! Takk kjære Lasse for opptaket!
• 59.7 Finn Tschudi snakker om ydmyk stolthet. I denne videoen kaller Finn Tschudi på oss alle å gi næring til ydmyk stolthet snarere enn arrogant stolthet. Dessverre var batteriet tomt på slutten, beklager! Takk kjære Lasse for opptaket!
• 59.8 Mai-Bente Bonnevie sier nydelige ord! I denne videoen sier Mai-Bente Bonnevie nydelige ord som berører dypt! Hun snakker om Babettes gæstebud! Takk kjære Elisabeth for opptaket!
• 59.9 Randi Gunhildstad synger! I denne videoen overbringer Randi Gunhildstad en vidunderlig sangsgave! Du har løftet oss opp på det skjønneste, kjære Randi! Takk kjære Elisabeth for opptaket!
• 59.10 Guri Lorentzen Østbyes dypt berørende strupesang! I denne videoen synger Guri Lorentzen Østbye hennes vidunderlige strupesang til Evelin som er dypt berørt og takknemlig! Takk kjære Elisabeth for opptaket!
• 59.11 Ellinor Halle samlet oss! Denne videoen viser hvordan Ellinor Halle samlet oss alle på slutten av festen! Takk, takk, takk, kjære Ellinor! Og takk kjære Elisabeth for opptaket!

• Birthday greetings from Linda Hartling, Michael Britton and Uli Spalthoff
Happy birthday to you!
Your apprenticeship is through!
Another 60 years of connecting, respecting, reflecting,
Another 60 years of relating, co-creating, collaborating,
Another 60 years of bringing dignity to the world we see,
Is our birthday wish for you!

• Francisco Gomes de Matos, a peace linguist, Co-founder, The World Dignity University initiative, together with his wife Helen, sent these rhymed reflections on 8th May 2014:
On Evelin's birthday: A wish for every day
The day Evelin was born, a deeply humanizing concept was generated
By her living as a global citizen, DIGNITY is being inspiringly demonstrated
She believes that by our
sharing the Earth dignifyingly Humankind's character-conduct-communication will be elevated
and by our implementing the goals of the World Dignity University initiative people from East and West as DIGNIFIERS will be educated
In unison, as members of the Dignity community Evelin farsightedly founded
in all of our languages, let's joyfully say
From May 13th 2014, let's commit to making every day a LET's LIVE IN DIGNITY day

Every morning at 7 o'clock I swim in the Oslofjord on Brøtsøy, Tjøme, Norway, before concentrating on working on my next books. On 12th June 2014 I took some pictures of the flowers and stones I see on my way. Already on 11th June, I had taken some more pictures of the flowers in the amazing garden of my dear host, Gerdelin Bodvin.
Hver morgen klokken 7 svømmer jeg i Oslofjorden ved Brøtsøy, før jeg arbeider med mine neste bøkene. Den 12. juni tok jeg noen bilder av blomstene og steinene jeg ser på veien til fjorden. Allerede den 11. juni hadde jeg tatt noen flere bilder av den utrolige hagen som min kjære vert, Gerdelin Bodvin, har!
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more photos.

See also two videos:
• 57 Brøtsøy: Gerdelin Bodvin's Wonderful World, 3rd June 2014

• 58 Brøtsøy: Path to the Fjord, 10th June 2014
I recorded these impressions in the afternoon of 10th June to document the path to the fjord, where I swim every morning to the island on the other side.
Denne videoen lagde jeg den 10. juni om ettermiddagen for å vise hvilken vei jeg tar hver morgen når jeg svømmer fram og tilbake til øya på den andre siden.

Please click on the pictures above or here to see more photos of the work of late artist Finn-Henrik Bodvin. I took these pictures in and around his atelier on Brøtsøy, Tjøme, Norway, on 10th June 2014. Among others, you see one sculpture (middle bottom) showing, as Gerdelin Bodvin explained it, how care and support can be given without patronizing, by also giving freedom. The two children (right bottom) were inspired by a photo of two victims of the civil war in Cambodia.

Finn-Henrik Bodvin
Finn-Henrik Bodvin ble født i Trondheim i 1928, vokste opp i Bodø og bodde i 24 år på Brøtsø inntil han døde i 2002. Bodvin hadde utdannelse fra Detroit School of Arts & Crafts (USA), Chelsea School of Art i London, Kunstskolen i Trondheim, Statens Håndverks- og kunstindustriskole og Statens Kunstakademi i Oslo. Han laget skulpturer i forskjellige materialer; modellerte i leire og støpte i bronse, formet i stål og tre, og hugget i stein.
Finn-Henrik Bodvin hadde separatutstillinger i flere norske byer, bl.a. en stor skulpturutstilling på Haugar i 1998. Han deltok også på mange kollektivutstillinger og hadde ca. 60 større offentlige oppdrag over hele landet. I Vestfold kan man bl.a. se hans arbeider på Vestfold sentralsykehus, i Teie kirke, utenfor rådhuset i Tjølling, i Sandar kapell og i Graabrødregaten i Tønsberg. På Tjøme står hans skulpturer bl.a. ved kommunehuset og i hagen på Den Gamle Prestegård i Budal (Kunstforeningen Verdens Endes hus). Bodvin har dessuten laget lysgloben i Tjøme kirke og måken i metall på Hvasser skoles fane.

Trine Eklund received the Beacon of Dignity Award for her untiring work for dignity! Gerdelin Bodvin and Evelin Lindner presented the award on behalf of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network and the World Dignity University initiative on 9th June 2014 on Brøtsøy, Tjøme, Norway, together with Linda Hartling on Skype from Oregon, USA, Michael Britton from New Jersey, USA, and Ulrich Spalthoff from Germany.
Congratulations, dear Trine, congratulations!
• Please click on the picture above to see it larger.

I juni, juli og august 2014 har jeg det store privilegium av å være hilst velkommen av Gerdelin Bodvin i hennes vidunderlige hjem på Brøtsøy. Disse bildene ble tatt den 7. og 9. juni 2014.
I have the great privilege of being welcomed by Gerdelin Bodvin into her amazing home on Brøtsøy in June, July, and August 2014. These pictures were taken on 7th and 9th June 2014.
• Please click on the pictures above to see them larger.

I juni, juli og august 2014 har jeg det store privilegium av å være hilst velkommen av Gerdelin Bodvin i hennes vidunderlige hjem på Brøtsøy. Disse bildene tok jeg den 3. juni.
I have the great privilege of being welcomed by Gerdelin Bodvin into her amazing home on Brøtsøy in June, July, and August 2014. I took these pictures on 3rd June.

• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more photos.

See also two videos:
• 57 Brøtsøy: Gerdelin Bodvin's Wonderful World, 3rd June 2014

• 58 Brøtsøy: Path to the Fjord, 10th June 2014
Denne videoen lagde Evelin den 10. juni om ettermiddagen for å vise hvilken vei hun tar hver morgen når hun svømmer fram og tilbake til øya på den andre siden.
Evelin recorded these impressions in the afternoon of 10th June to document the path to the fjord, where she swims every morning to the island on the other side.

Allow me to share some reflections: I notice how happy it makes me to be surrounded by an environment that has been created by the effort and the love of human beings, rather than machines. I become ever more aware of the fact that machine-made surroundings impoverish my inner soul. Here, I am surrounded by the evidence of myriad thoughts of people who made something by hand, thoughts clearly manifested in the objects and environments they created. I feel part of a community of people who all contributed to making this place look as it looks now, rather than a designer having created a prototype that then was multiplied by machines and sold for profit. Here the spirit of community becomes palpable, or what Alen Page Fiske would call 'communal sharing', rather than 'market pricing'. Of course, I do understand that certain objects are better produced by machines, yet, I would vote for minimising them to where they are truly functional, rather than letting them 'pollute' the world for the sake of profit maximisation. I become ever more aware how we, as humankind, need to look much deeper into what the dominator model (Riane Eisler's coinage) of being-in-this-world has brought us. The important question, to me, is: Where does it make sense to aim at control over nature (our human body and mind included) through placing it into artificial machine-like rules shaped according to Newtonian physics, and where does it not make sense? Where would it make more sense to employ a partnership model? How could the notion of happiness ever come to be linked to control over and ownership of things rather than respect for and participation in a natural world, a world that follows laws that are much more complex than Newtonian physics? How could the wealth offered by nature ever be degraded as it is now, not just by pressing it into narrow machine-like frames, but, to make the absurdity of blind hybris complete, defining successful impoverishment as wealth? Those who know my work, will remember that I conceptualise the journey of humankind as a 'conversation' with its living conditions and that I think that the dominator model has acquired its reputation of feasibility in tact with increasing circumscription (a term used in anthropology), the Neolithic Revolution that began around 12 000 years ago, and the ensuing security dilemma (a term used in political science). Today, global interconnectedness requires a radical rethinking of the feasibility of the dominator model.

2nd June 2014: Evelin Lindner spoke about dignity, humiliation, and terrorism, and how to think globally in the context of the Monday lunch series (mandagslunsj) at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights / Norsk senter for menneskerettigheter, Cort Adelers gate 30, 0162 Oslo, Norway, Seminarrom Asbjørn Eide, on 2nd June 2014. Evelin was introduced by Inga Bostad.

Please click on the picture above or here to see the video recording of the entire event:
• Dignity, Humiliation, and Terrorism: How to Think Globally

• Kjell Skyllstad Receives the Beacon of Dignity Award
After the talk, Kjell Skyllstad received the Beacon of Dignity Award for his life-long visionary work for dignity. The ceremony took place at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and the award was presented to Kjell by Inga Bostad and Evelin Lindner on behalf of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network and the World Dignity University initiative.

31st May 2014: I had the great privilege of spending one week with eminent Berit Ås and create videos with her, where she shares her wisdom.
• Please click on the picture above or here to see more photos.

See the videos we created:

• 01 Tidsånd - Zeitgeist: Personlighetens politiske konstruksjon i 'kohorter' (Norsk/Norwegian)
I denne presentasjonen tar hun opp spørsmålet om den skiftende tidsånd (Zeitgeist) og hvordan de ulike tidsperioder former vår politiske bevissthet. Hun illustrerer hvordan individets politiske bevissthet endrer seg i overenstemmelse med politiske kjennetegn i den tidsperioden da individet er mest påvirkelig, stortsett i tiden mellom 16 og 24 år. Hun mener at den som ikke kjenner sin sosiale gruppes historie, står hjelpeløs overfor trussler mot sin identitet i fremtiden. Hvis en ikke forstår hvordan en som medlem i en sosial gruppe blir påvirket av den større politiske situasjon, er det små muligheter for at en kan endre sine politiske grunnholdninger.
Denne videoen ble tatt opp den 27. mai 2014 i Berits hjem i Asker i Norge. Opptaket ble gjort av Evelin Lindner. Vær oppmerksom på at denne videoen er uredigert. Dette er den norske versjonen, den engelske versjonen finner du her: del 1 og del 2.
Erratum:
- Trygve Lie og Dag Hammarskjöld var generalsekretærer i FN.
- Sovjetunion mistet anslagsvis 20 millioner borgere under annen verdenskrig og dermed fryktet fascisme.
- 116 definisjoner av kultur.

• 02 Zeitgeist: Political Personality Construction in 'Cohorts' (English version Part 1 and Part 2)
In this presentation, she takes up the issue of the changing spirit of a time period (Zeitgeist), and how the various periods shape our political consciousness. She illustrates how individual political consciousness is changing in accordance with the political characteristics of the time period in which the individual is most susceptible, mostly in the period between 16 and 24 years. She believes that those who do not know their social group's history, stand helpless in the face of threats to their identity in the future. If one does not understand how a member of a social group is affected by the larger political situation, there is little prospect of being able to change their basic political attitudes.
The video was recorded on 28th May 2014 at Berit Ås's home in Asker, Norway. The recording was made ​​by Evelin Lindner. Please note that this presentation is unedited. This is the English version, the Norwegian version can be found here.

• 03 Humor som en kraft for endring
I denne presentasjonen snakker hun om humor og dens endringskraft. Hun forteller flere morsomme historier, blant annet historien om 'gullgutten', om hvordan hun dro til New York med en cello i bagasjen, hvordan hun ble forvekslet med Oslos ordfører i Mexico City i 1974, hvordan hun fikk 17 millioner lyttere i New York, og, ikke minst, sangen hun skrev og fremførte ved valgkampen i Asker i 1971 "Sov dukke Lise'. Se også hennes 'Six Lectures' med til dels morsomme titler.
SOV DUKKE LISE
Sov Dukke Lise, sov og bli stor,
og mens du sover, styrer din bror,
planlegger veier, bygger bedrift.
Sov Dukke Lise, sov og bli gift.
Sov Dukke Lise, sov og bli stor,
før du vet av det, er du blitt mor.
Kanskje du fikk ditt barn på klinikk.
Vær da takknemlig for alt du fikk.
Sov Dukke Lise, der står et tre,
som du i blant kan glede deg ved.
De andre gikk dukken i kullos og bly.
Sov Dukke Lise, slumre på ny.
Sov Dukke Lise, sov og bli stor,
og mens du sover, ødes din jord.
Fisken i havet, fuglen på gren,
sakte forgiftes en etter en.
Derfor min Lise må du stå opp,
rope et varsko, kreve en stopp,
ruste deg til i handling og ord
både for din og alle barns jord.
Denne videoen ble tatt opp den 29. mai 2014 i Berits hjem i Asker i Norge. Opptaket ble gjort av Evelin Lindner. Vær oppmerksom på at denne videoen er uredigert.

• 04 Patriarkatets maktmidler i politikken
I denne presentasjonen tar Berit Ås eksempler fra ulike nivåer i det politiske system hvor det alle steder synes å være legitimt å overse, glemme og nedvurdere krav om kvinners rettferdige behandling. Eksemplene er to fra et formannskapsmøte i en kommune og to fra det norske Storting fra 1977 og 1980. Eksemplene strekker seg fra streik, til barnehageutbygging, til kvinners kjennskap til statistikk, det vil si kvinners intellektuell troverdighet, og på slutten til grunnlovsforslag fra kvinner.
Denne videoen ble tatt opp den 29. mai 2014 i Berits hjem i Asker i Norge. Opptaket ble gjort av Evelin Lindner. Vær oppmerksom på at denne videoen er uredigert.

• 05 Technology and Rationality in the Male World
In this presentation, she takes up the issue of rationality and technology. She refers to a chapter she contributed to a book in 1979: 'Den manliga teknologin', in Maria Bergom-Larsson (red.), Rusta for fred, rädda livet: Kvinnor och fredskamp, Stockholm: Gidlunds (sider 41-65). Technology is embedded in a more linear way of thinking, a mindset that emerges from contexts in which men often find themselves. A more complex kind of thinking, in contrast, emerges from experiences many women share in their daily lives. Berit refers to Ruth Benedict's work (see Ruth Benedict, 1946, Patterns of culture: An analysis of our social structure as related to primitive civilizations, New York: Penguin Books) and offers examples from her own experience, for instance, the difference between indigenous Sami culture in the north of Scandinavia and the culture in Kerala in the south-west of India, and how those differences made the members of these cultures understand the world differently. Her concluding point is that one cannot speed up the process of growth of, for example, a baby in the womb of a mother, the same way one can speed up the production of artifacts on an assembly line.
The video was recorded on 31st May 2014 at Berit Ås's home in Asker, Norway. The recording was made ​​by Evelin Lindner. Please note that this presentation is unedited.

• 06 Searching for the Female Culture: A Five-Dimensional Model
This presentation follows a text Berit Ås wrote in 1974: On female culture: An attempt to formulate a theory of women's solidarity and action. Oslo, Norway: Department of Psychology, University of Oslo.
The video was recorded on 31st May 2014 at Berit Ås's home in Asker, Norway. The recording was made ​​by Evelin Lindner. Please note that this presentation is unedited.

• 07 Male Master Suppression Techniques
Berit Ås is best known for her theory of five male master suppression techniques. Of these, she has lectured in more than forty countries on four continents. Among others, she refers to Robert Merton (damned if you do and damned if you don't), Ingjald Nissen, and her mentor Harriet Holter.
The video was recorded on 31st May 2014 at Berit Ås's home in Asker, Norway. The recording was made ​​by Evelin Lindner. Please note that this presentation is unedited.

• 08 Hensiktens sakte vridning ('The Covert Shift of Good Intention into its Opposite' på engelsk)
I denne presentasjonen baserer Berit Ås seg på hennes bok fra 1981, Kvinner i alle land ...: Håndbok i frigjøring (Oslo: Aschehoug), og henviser blant annet til doktoravhandlingen til Anu Pylkkänen i 2009, Trapped in Equality: Women as Legal Persons in the Modernisation of Finnish Law (Helsinki, Finland: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura / Finnish Literature Society). Berit refererer også til Evelin Lindners tanker om rollen av vantro, skepsis eller incredulity. I den uken hvor Evelin bodde hos Berit, husket Eveln det Marshall McLuhan skal ha sagt: 'Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity'. Her har du funnet den 8. hersketeknikken, sier Berit til Evelin.
Denne videoen ble tatt opp den 1. juni 2014 i Berits hjem i Asker i Norge. Opptaket ble gjort av Evelin Lindner. Vær oppmerksom på at denne videoen er uredigert.

See some of Berit Ås's publications:
- Berit Ås (1974). On female culture: An attempt to formulate a theory of women's solidarity and action. Oslo, Norway: Department of Psychology, University of Oslo. This article follows the main lines of a lecture given at the Katholieke Universiteit, Nijmegen in May 1974. A summary is available in Feministische Cultuur - Een Wetenschapskritiek (No. 51).
- Berit Ås (1979). De 5 herskerteknikker. København, Denmark: Juristforbundets Forlag. See the English translation: Master Suppression Techniques.
- Berit Ås (1979). 'Den manliga teknologin', Maria Bergom-Larsson (red.), Rusta for fred, rädda livet: Kvinnor och fredskamp, Stockholm: Gidlunds, sider 41-65.
- Berit Ås (1981). 'A five-dimensional model for change: Contradictions and feminist consciousness', Women's Studies International Quarterly 4 (1), sider 101-14.
- Berit Ås (1981). Kvinner i alle land ...: Håndbok i frigjøring. Oslo: Aschehoug.
- Berit Ås (1982). 'A materialistic view of men's and women's attitudes towards war'. Women's Studies International Forum 5 (3-4, Special Issue Women and Men's Wars), sider 355-64.
- Berit Ås (1985). 'The feminist university'. Women's Studies International Forum 8 (4), pages 391-94, summary of a paper presented at a Canadian Conference: The Need for an International Feminist University, June 1984, at Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax, Canada), a women's university going co-educational, later 'regiven' in Groningen, by 'popular request'.

On 13th April 2014, I notice that two big bill boards have been replaced over night. The bill board on the left side is no longer there now. It is matched by a new one on the right side.
I was reminded of what activist Charles Eisenstein shared on 3rd April 2014:
'I just got back from a trip to India that was both heartening and alarming. Many of the things I write about are rooted in ancient tradition and living practice there; meanwhile, the pace of ecocide and culture stripping is appalling. Billboards everywhere display a North American style nuclear family Pepsi-drinking brand-worshipping car-dependent high-tech lifestyle, as if its desirability were beyond dispute. I spoke a lot about how we in the West are beginning to disbelieve in that kind of development. I said that the days of the guy from American coming to tell you what to do are almost over. "I don't know what you should do," I said, "but let me tell you where 'development' has taken my society and the planet." Of course I also described how the global financial system pushes India and everyone else toward the standard development model, which usually corresponds to making the social and natural commons maximally available to global capital.'
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos.

10th and 11th April 2014, Kevin, the highly skilled taylor, made a copy of my 30 years old Thai design that you see on the left.
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos.

9-11th April 2014, small foodstalls in Pattaya, small Buddhist shops, and a dear lady, where I found some gift T-shirts...
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos.

On 31st March 2014, I make my way from Siem Reap to Poi Pet in Cambodia, then to Aranyaprathet and finally Pattaya in Thailand. I am impressed by the interior decoration of our bus... And how the driver survives alongside the mountain of backpacks...
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos.

• See the videos I created (please note that they are not professionally done and are unedited):
12 Angkor, Cambodia: Asia and the Loss of Its Silk - Takeo, 30th March 2014
05 Angkor, Cambodia: Asia and the Loss of Its Silk - Another Sad Confirmation, 28th March 2014

On 30th March 2014, I make another attempt to inquire about silk and whether it is still being produced, and if yes, where. I learn that Takeo in Cambodia was the largest silk producer in Cambodia in the past according a survey of the main silk producers located in Som Rong district, Barty district, Prey Karbas and Mongkol Borey district. On www.tpd.gov.kh one reads 'that the four main silk producing districts developed very fast in recent years under technical support from developing partners. Silk producers in 11 villages of Barty and Somrong district have formed the Takeo Silk Producer Community in order to facilitate technical assistance from various institutions. Production: 2,200 looms in four main districts, 90% of production is Samputh Hole, 10% of production are scarf and plain silks'.
Already on 28th March 2014, I had noticed the Asia Craft Centre on the Road to Angkor Wat. I had stopped and admired the women making silk at the entrance. When I entered, I learned that the shop was owned by a group of Kashmiri families, who have shops all over Asia. Once again, I received a confirmation that silk is being replaced by cheap mass-produced synthetic fabric from China and is now too expensive to produce. Thai silk is no longer made, I was told. Jim Thompson, in Thailand, now no longer sells silk made in Thailand, but made in China. The last rest of authentic silk production is in Kashmir, I learned...
Everywhere on the globe, I observe a dramatic decay of the quality of products or the disappearance of products that were still ubiquitous a few years ago. I lived in Thailand in 1981: Where has the Thai silk gone that was sold at every corner? Thai silk is just one example. Why am I surrounded by mass produced quasi-waste instead, stuff that nobody really needs and that is poisoned by a variety of toxins? Why do we, the human family, sacrifice the recourses of our planet for such an absurdity? Everywhere on the globe, I observe a dramatic decay of the quality of products or the disappearance of products that were still ubiquitous a few years ago. I lived in Thailand in 1981: Where has the Thai silk gone that was sold at every corner? Thai silk is just one example. Why am I surrounded by mass produced quasi-waste instead, stuff that nobody really needs and that is poisoned by a variety of toxins? Why do we, the human family, sacrifice the recourses of our planet for such an absurdity?
Linda Hartling, her husband Rick, and I discussed this also with Nebil Basmaci, on 30th April 2010, at our 2010 Dignity Conference in Istanbul, when we attempted to enjoy the Covered Bazaar and unexpectedly had a very special conversation on the dignity - or rather the lack of dignity - in contemporary economic arrangements.

See the videos I created (please note that they are not professionally done and are unedited):

• 12 Angkor, Cambodia: Asia and the Loss of Its Silk - Takeo, 30th March 2014

• 05 Angkor, Cambodia: Asia and the Loss of Its Silk - Another Sad Confirmation, 28th March 2014

On 30th March 2014, I make my way to the Prasat Kravan temple in Cambodia, together with Lee, my Tuk-tuk driver-friend. I had the honour of being invited to meet his family at their home earlier the same day.

See the video I created (please note that it is not professionally done and is unedited):

• 11 Angkor, Cambodia: Prasat Kravan Temple

See also Das Mysterium von Angkor, Film von Andreas Sawall (Terra X ZDF/Arte/ZDF enterprises)

• See the videos I created (please note that it is not professionally done and is unedited):
10 Angkor, Cambodia: The Home of Tuk-tuk Driver Lee in Siem Reap, 30th March 2014
01 Angkor, Cambodia: Tuk-tuk Driver Lee Speaking, 28th March 2014

On 30th March 2014, I had the great honour of being invited into the home of Boun Sengny, also called Lee, who was my caring guide throughout my time in Siem Reap and Angkor in Cambodia. He lives in a room that he rents from the owner of a wooden construction. One can get a small room for 15 American dollars and somewhat larger ones for 25 dollars. Lee pays 25 American dollars per month for the room he lives in, plus electricity. It is one single room, and Lee lives there together with his wife and their two daughters. His wife offers laundry services; she washes everything per hand. Lee is proud of sending his daughter to school. His dream is to be able to buy his own tuk-tuk so as to be able to earn more money to support his family.
When I see the conditions in which Lee and his family are living, I am touched by the communal life that I see, and the serenity and dignity of the people. Remembering the Karen village Ban Nong Thao in Northern Thailand (and my own childhood in a similar setting), I imagine that Lee, and all those who flock to Siem Reap to earn a higher income, may hail from similar tightly knit communities. Traditional community life is disrupted here in Siem Reap, yet, it is also continuing, at least partly, since the design of the rooms around a small area of open land makes some kind of village-like communal living possible. What will happen when Lee's daughter, after great sacrifices from her parents, will have received the higher education they so much wish for her? She will move into a home with more physical amenities, perhaps. Yet, this house will have a wall around it and she will be alone in there. She will lose her community context even more than now. No wonder that Lee reports that drinking problems and domestic violence are on the rise also in Cambodia. Lee believes that what is responsible is the promise of a 'better life' through the Coca Cola signs I see everywhere, or through the beer advertisement on television. My question: what if the price for this kind of 'better life' will be too high? What if it will not just increase the ubiquitous plastic waste that pollutes every corner already now, and cause the intoxication of its people, but what if it endangers their social and psychological health altogether?

See the videos I created (please note that it is not professionally done and is unedited):

• 10 Angkor, Cambodia: The Home of Tuk-tuk Driver Lee in Siem Reap, 30th March 2014

• 01 Angkor, Cambodia: Tuk-tuk Driver Lee Speaking, 28th March 2014

• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of my photos.
• See the video I created (please note that it is not professionally done and is unedited):
09 Angkor, Cambodia: Dance Performance

On 29th March 2014, I come across wonderful Khmer Blind Massage, with training from Japan in Anma and Shiatsu, Tel. +855 (88) 841 4140 - they say they need more work!
• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of my photos.

Later, in the evening, I attend an artistic dance performance at Jasmin Angkor Restaurant. I wonder if this kind of performance will still be as relatively authentic in ten years time, or if it will have become 'Westernised' and hyped for the sake of attracting tourists...

See the video I created (please note that it is not professionally done and is unedited):

09 Angkor, Cambodia: Dance Performance

• See the video I created today (please note that it is not professionally done and is unedited):
08 Angkor: Ta Prohm Khmer Temple

On 29th March 2014, visiting Ta Prohm, which is the modern name of the temple at Angkor, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia, built in the Bayon style largely in the late 12th and early 13th centuries and originally called Rajavihara (in Khmer: រាជវិហារ). Located approximately one kilometre east of Angkor Thom and on the southern edge of the East Baray, it was founded by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII as a Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university.

See the video I created today (please note that it is not professionally done and is unedited):

• 08 Angkor: Ta Prohm Khmer Temple

• See the videos I created today (please note that they are not professionally done and are unedited):
07 Angkor, Cambodia: Sinat, Genocide Survivor, Disabled War Veteran, and Landmine Victim, at the War Museum Cambodia
06 Angkor, Cambodia: The Streets of Siem Reap

On 29th March 2014, I speak with Sinat, 48, genocide survivor, disabled war veteran, and landmine victim, at the War Museum Cambodia in Siem Reap, which is the only war museum in Cambodia. The museum has a sad collection of arms, some of them still containing the burnt bodies of Sinat's friends.

Please be reminded of one of our Global Advisory Board members, Theary Seng, an author, a human rights activist, and the founder of the Cambodian Center for Justice & Reconciliation (CJR), Civicus: Center for Cambodian Civic Education (CIVICUS), and the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia (AKRVC). founder and board president of the Cambodian Center for Justice & Reconciliation, and the founding president of CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education
I met Theary on 3rd February 2011, through Nora Sveaass, who commented the film "Facing Genocide" by David Aronowitsch and Staffan Lindberg, in which Theary plays a central role.

Please be also reminded of our Global Research Team member Mneesha Gellman. I had the privilege of attending a talk that Mneesha and her colleague Josh Dankoff gave the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (ACPACS) in Brisbane on Tuesday, 21 August 2007, titled 'Conflict, Memory and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal: an Analysis of Reconciliation in contemporary Cambodia'.
They showed a short film, 'Seeing Proof', produced in 2007 by a Cambodian non-governmental organization, the Khmer Institute of Democracy, with Rob Fruchtman. The film focuses on the attitudes of young Cambodians toward the history of the Khmer Rouge, and highlights the complexities involved in trying to create a culture of reconciliation. Today, people under 30 years old make up a majority of the Cambodian population, and therefore these citizens did not experience firsthand the trauma of the Khmer Rouge Army from 1975-1979. Incredibly, young Cambodians often do not believe their parents' stories about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, and this disbelief has far-reaching implications for preserving history and also for the prevention of future violent conflict in Cambodia. In addition to providing context for the film, Mneesha discussed her work on community-based conflict resolution, and Josh discussed the possibilities of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal for providing national reconciliation.

See the videos I created today (please note that they are not professionally done and are unedited):

• 07 Angkor, Cambodia: Sinat, Genocide Survivor, Disabled War Veteran, and Landmine Victim, at the War Museum Cambodia

• 06 Angkor, Cambodia: The Streets of Siem Reap
As many forecast, in 10 years time, Cambodia may be as destroyed as Thailand. Big money will have taken over and pushed out local communities. Therefore, I always make an effort to document everything, even seemingly profane details (because they may no longer be part of daily life in ten years time), even if done as unprofessionally as here. I remember my time in 1981 in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Burma, and my time in 1983 in China, and I regret not having documented daily life then more.

• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of my photos.
• For the pictures at the bottom, please click on them to see them larger.

On 28th March 2014, in Siem Reap near Angkor Wat, I visit Wat Thmey, home to Siem Reap's Killing Fields' memorial.
• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of my photos.
• For the pictures at the bottom, please click on them to see them larger.

I am astonished that the American Dollar is the preferred currency in Cambodia, even in the local markets. I am told that a worker would earn much more money in Thailand, so, everybody I speak with seems to dream of going to Thailand. Yet, as it seems, getting a passport and a visa is difficult. One new-found friend told me how he, once in Thailand, did not receive his passport back, but was put into slave-like work at a factory, told he had to work there for two years to pay his way out, 14 hours a day with almost no food - he took leaves from trees and cooked them. After two months, he fled back home, finding his way home over the border by walking and avoiding detection, as he had no passport...
Conclusion: Wealthy investors look for ways to protect and augment their wealth, they look for projects that would give them a return. This inspires developers to search for places where outsiders can extract profit from local communities. So, developers create projects for investors that destroy local communities to extract profit. They do this in Thailand and have almost destroyed the country's traditional social fabric by now, and Cambodian slave-like labour contributes to this destruction, and draws Cambodian society into this weakening of the social fabric itself in the process. I was told that the same process of sucking out profit for outsiders from local neighbourhoods has begun in Phnom Penh now, too. Investors want to bulldoze communities with small houses to build larger buildings, I am told.
Through my time in Thailand and Cambodia, I have become more aware than before how education contributes to this race to the bottom toward self-inflicted quasi-slavery of whole communities and societies. Starting from school-age, education is geared to make people accepting of this state-of-affairs, glorifying it as the 'success of the brightest', but ending in rising drug-abuse and domestic violence at micro and meso levels and the collapse of entire ecosystems at macro levels.

See the videos I created (please note that these videos are not professionally done and they are unedited):

• 00 Angkor, Cambodia: Siem Reap's Killing Fields' Memorial
I am horrified to observe that killings fields are now a tourist attraction, the one in Phnom Penh being hailed as 'the best one'... by 'cool' youngsters catering to tourists...

• 01 Angkor, Cambodia: Tuk-tuk Driver Lee Speaking
I ask Lee (his full name is Boun Sengny), my Tuk-tuk driver-friend, to bring me to Siem Reap's Killing Fields' Memorial. I invite Lee to introduce himself.

• 02 Angkor, Cambodia: Tuk-tuk Journey from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat
I make my way from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat with Lee. As many forecast, in 10 years, Cambodia may be as destroyed as Thailand. Big money will have taken over and pushed out local communities. Therefore, I always make an effort to document everything, even seemingly profane details (because they may no longer be part of daily life in ten years time), even if done as unprofessionally as here. I remember my time in 1981 in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Burma, and my time in 1983 in China, and I regret not having documented daily life then more.

• 03 Angkor Wat

• 04 Angkor, Cambodia: Bayon Khmer Temple and Then Back to Siem Reap
Read more about the Bayon temple at Angkor.

• 05 Angkor, Cambodia: Asia and the Loss of Its Silk - Another Sad Confirmation
On my way back to Siem Reap from Angkor, I notice the Asia Craft Centre on the Road to Angkor Wat. I stop and admire the women making silk at the entrance. When I enter, I learn that the shop is owned by a group of Kashmiri families, who have shops all over Asia. Once again, I learn that silk is being replaced by cheap mass-produced synthetic fabric from China and is now too expensive to produce. Thai silk is no longer made, I am told. Jim Thompson, in Thailand, now no longer sells silk made in Thailand, but made in China. The last rest of authentic silk production is in Kashmir... How sad that this craft now seems to be shown in special museum-like spaces only... On 30th March 2014, I will make another attempt to inquire about silk and where it still may be produced.
Everywhere on the globe, I observe a dramatic decay of the quality of products or the disappearance of products that were still ubiquitous a few years ago. I lived in Thailand in 1981: Where has the Thai silk gone that was sold at every corner? Thai silk is just one example. Why am I surrounded by mass produced quasi-waste instead, stuff that nobody really needs and that is poisoned by a variety of toxins? Why do we, the human family, sacrifice the recourses of our planet for such an absurdity? Everywhere on the globe, I observe a dramatic decay of the quality of products or the disappearance of products that were still ubiquitous a few years ago. I lived in Thailand in 1981: Where has the Thai silk gone that was sold at every corner? Thai silk is just one example. Why am I surrounded by mass produced quasi-waste instead, stuff that nobody really needs and that is poisoned by a variety of toxins? Why do we, the human family, sacrifice the recourses of our planet for such an absurdity?
Linda Hartling, her husband Rick, and I discussed this also with Nebil Basmaci, on 30th April 2010, at our 2010 Dignity Conference in Istanbul, when we attempted to enjoy the Covered Bazaar and unexpectedly had a very special conversation on the dignity - or rather the lack of dignity - in contemporary economic arrangements.

• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of my photos.
• For the pictures at the bottom, please click on them to see them larger.

• Please click on the pictures or here to see more of my photos, from Pattaya to Siem Reap, impressions of a transition.

On 27th March 2014, I am on my way from Southern Thailand to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Since Russians have taken over Pattaya, and my Russian is rusty, I have problems finding information on how to go to Angkor Wat via the land route. I book a so-called visa-run trip to the border between Thailand and Cambodia, a trip of one day, ca. 8 hours of driving, a 'trick' unpopular with the Thai authorities to prolong a visum: 'leave the country and come back'. I sign up to that trip hoping to be able to cross the border and continue to Angkor on the Cambodian side instead of returning to Pattaya. Yet, once on the minibus, as it is filling up with 'visa-runners' from all corners of the city, mostly Russians, I learn that this trip would be a mistake, since it goes to the border via the southern route, via the city of Chanthaburi, from where it would not be wise to attempt to go to Angkor (290 km to Siem Reap near Angkor). As I learn, the northern route, to the border city of Aranyaprathet, would be the appropriate route for me to proceed to the Klongluk border station and Poi Pet (155 km to Siem Reap from there). I have to abandon the minibus, and find myself together with Noe, the young visa-run manager, stranded in the middle of Pattaya at 7 o'clock in the morning.
After many sighs of frustration on her side, finally, after looking at me sternly (perhaps evaluating what I am able to do, and what not) she does the one right thing that I had been unable to figure out myself: she stops a motorcycle taxi driver, who drives me across the city to a tiny agency for local people who wish to go by minibus to Aranyaprathet. The first agency is closed, the second has a minivan leaving at 8 o'clock. It is a mere 240 Baht for the long trip of ca. four hours, in a minivan that is so full that it almost capsizes, a minivan where I am treated like a queen despite of this, getting the best place in the front. 240 Baht, clearly, is little only compared with tourist tour operators' prices, it is a lot of money with respect to an average monthly income in Thailand, and even more for those migrant workers from Cambodia, whom I will meet later and who will explain their slave-like situation to me. On the minivan, I am befriending a wonderful Cambodian couple (see their picture), with whom I share only body language. The only spoken communication possible is that I learn to pronounce their names (Daen and On?) and they learn to pronounce my name and call on me.
Once on the road, I take pictures out of the window, among others of the advertisement of a blonde woman on the back of a van, a woman with sensuously parted lips: How demeaning and humiliating, for me, to see this! How come that the West peddles such images of women, while at the same time fighting in Afghanistan to give Afghan women more freedom... Freedom to what? To sell their flesh in demeaning advertisements? Oh, I sigh to myself: Men and women everywhere on the globe would benefit from getting over the masculine culture of domination and exploitation, be it the competition for power in war or the exploitation of the female body.
Near the border, on the Thai side, soldiers look at our passports, a young couples is led away from the bus. Behind the soldiers, I read a huge sign: 'Ready to ASEAN 2015'! See the picture!
Later, I will hear many stories of paperless Cambodians being hidden among foreigners to smuggle them back to Cambodia. I hear of one minivan being caught with five paperless Cambodians. They were all detained, together with the driver, the minivan was confiscated, and the foreigners politely brought to the border by the Thai police.
Upon arrival at the border, my new friends Daen and On say good-bye to me. I gesture to them that I am clueless as to how to continue my path: where is the border? Where do I have to go? They shout into the crowd of hundreds of people something that, I assume, means a cry for help. A man appears almost miraculously, on a motorcycle, and I pay 100 Baht for him bringing me to another man who takes me to a place where a third man takes half an hour to make my visum to Cambodia, costing 1200 Baht, plus 300 Baht processing fee. Then I walk through the border controls, awaited on the other side by my two helpers to whom I pay 500 Baht each at the end (see them on the pictures). They try to convince me to take an expensive taxi further on, which, they say, would go to Siem Reap (near Angkor Wat) in two hours, and I insist on the bus, which is supposed to leave at 3 pm and take four hours. So, they bring Mr. Long to me, who makes me a bus ticket. He takes me on his motorcycle to the bus station, where he discloses that I can book a guest house in Siem Reap with him now. As a result of me doing so, he gets me into a taxi instead of the bus to make sure I arrive at his guest house and am not captured by others, he explains.
Once in the taxi, I meet wonderful 28 years old Himchetra ('Chetra'), who has studied German and practices her German with me...
I ask Mr. Long and Chetra about the killing fields and whether their parent generation speaks about their experiences or not. The stories I hear are harrowing... I am told that the parent generation does both - they speak and they are also silent...
Upon arrival on the Cambodian side of the border, I feel that Poi Pet and later also Siem Reap resemble Thailand as I loved it 30 years ago, more than the Thailand of today. I get the feel of community, each little building I look at has its very own particular individual touch. Only seldom do I see 'developers' at work with their anonymous multiplied prototype approach which empties a community of its diversity and soul and turns community members into the consumers of prefabricated space for outside investors to profit. See some photos of examples.
See also the article:
'Thailand, Cambodia endorse border development plans for peace, prosperity', by Supalak Ganjanakhundee,
The Nation, Phnom Penh June 12, 2013.

• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos, from Pattaya to Siem Reap, impressions of a transition.

• Please click on the pictures or here to see more of my photos.

On the morning of 27th March 2014, I have time to study the huge advertisement across the street of where I stay in Southern Thailand. I see the absurd and obscene effects of investor interest to make profit: A beach paradise like the coast of Southern Thailand is idyllic and therefore attractive. However, it is attractive only as long as it is pristine and unpolluted. Yet, there is no profit for investors to be made from romantic indigenous fishing villages and beaches left untouched. If at all, only the villagers themselves may earn a little extra money by integrating a few backpackers into their village as happened on the island of Ko Samui when I was there in 1981. By now, the villagers have lost their island to big money. Because at this point, 'developers' have stepped in. Their role is to make the impossible possible, to square the circle so to speak, namely, to gloss over the destruction of a paradise for profit by replacing the attraction from pristine nature by the attraction from so-called luxurious life. The huge bill boards reads: 'The ultimate beachfront High-rise'.
I would translate this into: 'The ultimate beachfront High-destruction'. Because in reality, the promised luxurious life is a nightmare. Not only are these beachfront high-rise buildings an eyesore, their ugliness thrown into particularly stark contrast by the sad left-overs of the former paradise surrounding them, they also consume energy and water resources at highly irresponsible levels, and they would require an immense amount of maintenance to even faintly resemble their glossy bill boards. In reality, most constructions look shabby and dilapidated even before they are finished, even if one were blind for the ugliness of their design. (I so only a few very high-end projects that invest in sufficient maintenance and at least a certain degree of phantasy in their project design, Centara is one example, where the destroyed beach-idyll is replaced with at least some degree of 'idyllic' design.)
In short, here, investors invest in real-estate, believing this to be a shrewd move to protect their wealth, and they justify this as their contribution to job creation and poverty reduction. Yet, they undermine their own aims by their narrow focus on short-term profit from spoiling, and then glossing over the spoilage, and at the end, everybody will lose out, including the investors.
Antalya in Turkey is an interesting lesson to study for all countries with paradises that attract investor interest: first there is the paradise, then come a few backpackers, then tourists who still walk in the streets, eat out and shop, thus bringing at least some income to the local population. Finally, before everything collapses, comes 'all-inclusive'. This happens now in Antalya. Small local hotels can no longer compete with the huge hotel machines which offer 'all-inclusive' packages to tourists. These big operators have the power, due to the masses of tourists they attract, to press local personnel into quasi-slavery. And since the tourists stay inside their hotels all day, the shops and restaurants in town have to close. Watch the documentary 'Schnäppchen-Urlaub Türkei - Sonne, Strand und Billiglohn' and read about it.

Message to countries with paradises that attract investor interest: Beware, you will be sucked empty! Stop worshipping investor-driven development! Stop selling out your country's quality of life! Work for alternative constitutive rules for the global economic affairs of our human family! (See also my book A Dignity Economy, 2012.)
Message to tourists: Stop being complicit in social and ecological destruction! Stop 'relaxing' for the price of destruction! Travel on your own, meet with people respectfully, and turn tourism into a tool that manifests the fact that we are one human family who has to become the steward of our planet, rather than its destructor.

Charles Eisenstein wrote an email from India on 3rd April 2014:
'I just got back from a trip to India that was both heartening and alarming. Many of the things I write about are rooted in ancient tradition and living practice there; meanwhile, the pace of ecocide and culture stripping is appalling. Billboards everywhere display a North American style nuclear family Pepsi-drinking brand-worshipping car-dependent high-tech lifestyle, as if its desirability were beyond dispute. I spoke a lot about how we in the West are beginning to disbelieve in that kind of development. I said that the days of the guy from American coming to tell you what to do are almost over. "I don't know what you should do," I said, "but let me tell you where 'development' has taken my society and the planet." Of course I also described how the global financial system pushes India and everyone else toward the standard development model, which usually corresponds to making the social and natural commons maximally available to global capital.'

• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos.

• Please click on the pictures or here to see more of my photos.

On 26th March 2014, I take pictures of the huge pipes that transport waste out into the sea from the huge hotels on Pattaya beach in Southern Thailand. It is too late to take pictures of the situation as it was 40 years ago, when, as I was told, there were only rural villages here. But I still can document the contrast between the small beach houses in lovely gardens that came here a few years ago. And I can document how they are now overshadowed by gigantic monstrous silo-like towers that are 'storing' - not silage - but humans. There are a few shops around, all carrying predominantly processed industrial food, Family Mart, Tesco Lotus, and Seven Eleven.
Clearly, I have no problem putting myself into the shoes of people from the West whom I meet here and who live in Pattaya. They laud Thailand for being easy-going (sabai-sabai) and inexpensive. I do understand that as long as one does not question the system, one tries to find the best niche within the system, even if it is an unsustainable one. It is easy to pollute and destroy the environment, I am told. Yet, even those who praise Pattaya, lament that the Thai smile is gone in Pattaya and that traditional Thai friendliness and hospitality is left only further inland. Due to the cost of living being so much lower than in Western countries, I hear that many people from the West are walking the streets of Pattaya who are even penniless; I am told that many hospitals already refuse treating patients they suspect cannot pay.
Yet, I also learn that not everything is easy-going in Thailand; drunk driving, drugs, crime, for instance, I am told, is severely penalised.
Yet, I also learn that not everything is easy-going in Thailand; drunk driving, drugs, crime, for instance, I am told, are severely penalised. Certainly, in Germany, for instance, rules and regulations are often absurdely bureaucratic, but too much cannot be remedied by too little. Perhaps Thailand would be well advised to introduce stricter rules in certain areas. Some of what is too much in Germany, may be too little of in Thailand. Yet, reforming regulatory rules is not enough, I agree with Catherine Odoro Hoppers and Howard Richards: we need new constitutive rules for our global economic affairs, see our forthcoming book with the working title: Beyond Foucault: The Rise of Indigenous Subjugated Knowledges: Dialogues by Evelin Lindner, Howard Richards and Catherine Odora Hoppers'.
My question: Why is Thailand so willingly selling out its soul and its resources to unsustainable global strategies? Again, I ask: Thailand has never been colonised, why now? I urge Thailand to draw on the wisdom of their traditional communities, and to lead the world toward a dignified and dignifying future! Let your wise elder Joni Odochaw speak to the entire world!
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos.

• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of my photos.
• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see more of my photos from 16th March.

This is humiliation at its worst, humiliation of various kinds flowing from commercial life, in this case beach life. This is Pattaya, Thailand, March 2014: The area is a construction site, the palm trees are being replaced by concrete towers, built by slave-like workers who give their all, while the fish that the tourists eat on the beach if it is caught locally, might be full of toxins. The irony is that this is served on table cloths saying 'Pure Life'. The illusion of pure life sells also the concept of a small Western-style nuclear family, father, mother child, rather than the community of a village. The father leads the family, enthusiastically waving his hands in the air, followed by child and mother. The advertisement for 'glamorous life-style' that litters the beach, is even more male-oriented: it addresses wealthy males as it depicts a classy car with a classy girl in front of a condominium tower...
• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of my photos.
• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see more of my photos from 16th March.

• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of the photos taken by Trine Eklund.
• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see what Catherine Odora Hoppers shared on 29th May 2013.

On 17th - 18th March 2014, dear Trine Eklund attempted to document the contrasts in Pattaya - the lovely traditional houses in front of grotesquely huge and uniform hotel-machines. It is 'the profit motive manifested in concrete': An investor buys land, hires an architect, who then multiplies his prototype apartments as many times as possible to maximize profit. This happens, while the sea in front of the hotels is polluted by the sewage from these hotel-machines (as I learned from knowledgeable sources), while the workers who build them are working under quasi-slave conditions, and those who offer products and services in the streets receive pittances. I inquired to find out how much the lovely elderly lady who gave me a back massage receives from what I pay: she receives 100 Baht of the 350 Baht I pay, the rest is kept by the owner of her massage place, and she offers her services there for 14 hours a day, from 10 am to 12 pm, with half an hour commute to the place where she sleeps.
Linda Hartling kindly sent me the following reflections after reading the first draft of my impressions. She wrote on 21st March 2014):
'We are living in a global vortex of insidiously destructive systemic disasters hiding in plain sight. These are sugar-coated business initiatives that seduce and anesthetise the masses into cooperation with their own destruction. Corporations - frequently in league with self-serving political leaders - are colonising our minds with an unsustainable lie: that we can continue to exploit people and our global habitat with impunity. This lie is the fundamental mind-set of those indoctrinated with the dominator culture, a mind-set that allows the dominators to even lie to themselves (for instance, disputing global climate change regardless of the scientific evidence).
If we are to overcome the lies that we are being sold and told, we must dare to join in the solidarity of equal dignity that is built on a foundation of loving relationships. This radically relational approach is the endlessly renewable resource we need to not only transform the dominator culture: it is the very pathway to transform the experience of the dominators and the dominated alike. Rather that plundering, we need to build new systems that replenish the social, economic, and environmental quality of life on this planet. This begins by rebuilding and replenishing the dignity of all people. Our 2014 Human Dignity Conference was another attempt to nurture this urgent collaborative effort.'
Trine Eklund read John Pilger's book 'The new rulers of the world' (London: Verso, 2002), while in Pattaya, and her conclusion is that it might be too late when we get the truth about the lies we are exposed to.

• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more of the photos taken by Trine Eklund.

• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see what Catherine Odora Hoppers shared on 29th May 2013, when she documented her intellectual path to becoming a significant voice in the world. The crocodile's teeth symbolise the rampant destruction of social and ecological resources caused by present-day economic arrangements. They devour all involved, including those who still believe that bringing dialogue and peace to local conflicts would be a good-enough solution. The supposed 'need for dialogue' in local conflicts might even be a wish coming from the crocodile itself, as it would sometimes be easier to eat when every meal is bland and placid, calm and quiet, when the victims do not struggle too much. The conversations with Catherine Odora Hoppers took place in Pretoria/Tshwane, South Africa in May/June 2013.

• Please click on the pictures or here to see more of my photos.

On 16th March 2014, I was still not getting over the shock of facing Pattaya in Southern Thailand, so sadly similar to other commercial tourist destinations in the world.

I expected the worst, but each time I look out of the window, or venture out into the street, I feel even more nauseated than I had anticipated before, nauseated by the brutality surrounding me. Just as in so many other parts of the world, a paradise is littered and poisoned with brutal architecture, monstrous buildings that decay before they are finished, buildings carelessly rammed into a rubbish-filled wasteland where there were fishing villages before. These buildings are then in need of huge amounts of energy to be somewhat liveable inside— air conditioners heat up the streets outside and deafen ears inside. Worse yet, this absurdity then creates the 'demand' for energy that destroys the rivers of the region through dams... see Tom Fawthrop's film Killing the Mekong, Dam by Dam that he presented to us on 8th March 2014.
Everywhere on the globe, I observe a dramatic decay of the quality of products or the disappearance of products that were still ubiquitous a few years ago. I lived in Thailand in 1981: Where has the Thai silk gone that was sold at every corner? Thai silk is just one example. Why am I surrounded by mass produced quasi-waste instead, stuff that nobody really needs and that is poisoned by a variety of toxins? Why do we, the human family, sacrifice the recourses of our planet for such an absurdity? (Linda, Rick, and I discussed this also with Nebil Basmaci on 30th April 2010, at our 2010 Dignity Conference in Istanbul, when we attempted to enjoy the Covered Bazaar and unexpectedly had a very special conversation on the dignity - or rather the lack of dignity - in contemporary economic arrangements.)
Or, why can I not trust the food? How come that the shops are filled with processed industrial quasi-food of the least healthy kind? Juice is no longer juice but sugar-water with chemicals, and bread is no longer bread but plastic-like. And how come that I have to fear pesticides even in the fresh fruit and vegetables that are on sale in the streets? How come that it therefore is not enough to wash fruit and vegetables for a minute in normal water? Why does it have to be soaked in salt water for a long time? How come that almost half of the consumers in Thailand have toxins in their blood? (See the Farming Watch leaflet we found in Joni Odochaw's village.)
The pesticides, however, are not the only problem:
On 21st March 2014, I got gravely ill in Pattaya, with the most unbearable nausea, vomitting and diarrhoea. I headed for the emergency ward of the next hospital after a day of suffering, as it only got worse. I had been eating pineapple the evening before, trusting that it was safe to eat. I had made sure to buy a whole pineapple, not a pre-cut one. I had not been warned that this was not enough caution. The doctor disclosed that water melons and pineapples are often injected with sugar syrup and dye into the core of the fruit to make the fruit appear more colourful, sugary, and make it heavier, since it is sold per weight. This injection can then be contaminated with the most vicious pathogens. The hospital sees many grave food poisonings from this contamination. What is safe are only bananas, because they are too cheap to make it worthwhile to tinker with them, and coconut. My diagnosis was acute gastroenteritis, with a gut so infected that oral medication would no longer be absorbed. Therefore, I received a drip with antibiotics directly into the blood stream and will have to return to the hospital later.
It is a mystery to me how Pattaya can be a place to 'relax', a place to have 'vacation'... let alone the 'glamorous lifestyle' that is advertised on its bill boards... How is it possible that the vacationers can swim in the sea in front of their hotels only if they hold their breath, avoid swallowing any sea water, and take a shower immediately after swimming, as the hotels empty their sewage in long pipes into the sea in front of the beach? If the vacationers still want to swim, how come that their best choice is to forego their desire for pristine nature and opt for the chlorinated water pool in front of their hotel, chlorination representing yet another burden on health? How come that the vacationers cannot eat the food at their vacation place, except if they are willing to live with the risk of being intoxicated by pesticides or directly poisoned, as I was? It seems like a job creation programme for hospitals...
I was repulsed by the smell of sewage and got my skin infected despite all caution when I attempted to swim in the sea. Later I learned that the pipes bringing the hotels' waste far out in the sea might be broken where I was swimming and leak and empty their stinking contents right at the shore-line. A bystander told me he had to travel to a hospital in Bangkok with an ear infection from that water. Showering and keeping your head out of the water is not enough...
Again I ask: is it glamorous to be in a place where you cannot drink the water, not eat the food, not swim in the sea? Is it glamorous when you have to buy water in plastic containers, where you know that they leak antimony, a metalloid element with toxic qualities, that leaches from PET particularly in higher temperature? Is it glamorous when you cannot stay away from processed food and eat a fresh and balanced diet unless you want to risk being poisoned by pesticides and infected with pathogens even when you refrain from buying pre-cut fruit in the street? Is it glamorous when you can only safely swim in chlorinated pseudo-water? Is it glamorous to swim in an artificial pool above the ocean which you pollute with your waste?
In Tibet, sky burials are being practised. The bodies of the deceased are given back to nature through birds who eat the body. Should it astonish us that the birds react badly to corpses treated with medicine and disinfectants at modern hospitals? Even our own bodies are no longer food for nature...
Now, Pattaya is no longer frequented by Europeans, it has been taken over by Russians. What will happen when the Russians no longer come? As Professor Chayan Vaddhanaphuti formulated it so poignantly: commercial tourism is worse than prostitution. It looks for 'unspoiled' spots on the globe, spoils them, and then moves on.
From my time in Thailand in 1981, I remember the sweet sides of traditional collectivistic Thai culture. I see it survive only in small niches now, as it faces the onslaught from a Western dominator culture. This dominator culture represents an extreme form of psychological, social, and cultural impoverishment compared with the complexity of social cohesion in traditional societies, not just in Thailand. This dominator culture colonises the world more than ever in our present times, and I observe this on all continents. Only the justification is new, no longer to 'civilize savages', but cloaked in the language of 'business' and 'development'. The brutality of this new form of colonisation, clearly, is rampant everywhere on our planet; it is only more visible in places such as Pattaya. In 2012, I happened to personally witness a similar situation at the sea front of Recife, Brazil.
Humankind's guiding motto seems to be collective short-sightedness. When the world was not yet as interconnected as it is today, competition for domination may have led to 'victory' in some cases. Now, in an interconnected world, it leads to collective suicide. What about the advantages of prevention over damage-control? What about the advantages of slow thinking when the future is at stake? (See, among others, Daniel Kahneman's book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow', New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). I am so glad that we met the 'Lazy Man' and learned about the 'Lazy School' at the Karen village Ban Nong Thao in Northern Thailand, I am so glad that these villagers were hesitant ('lazy') to jump on the bandwagon of collective destruction, cloaked as 'modern ways'...!
• Please click on the pictures above or here to see more of my photos.

• Please click on the pictures or here to see more of my photos.

23rd Annual Conference of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, 'Returning Dignity', in Chiang Mai, Thailand
8th - 12th March 2014

This business card inspired Kjell Skyllstad to suggest the motto 'Returning Dignity' for our 23rd conference!
The card reads in English and in Thai:
Dignity Returns, produced by Solidarity Factory, factory of worker, own and man by workers

Still pictures:

• Day One, 8th March 2014: see the photos taken by Donna Fujimoto, Marie Ingand, and Trine Eklund
• Day Two, 9th March 2014: see the photos taken by Trine Eklund, Donna Fujimoto, Cornelia Dragusin and Evelin Lindner with Evelin's camera, and by Marie Ingand
• Day Three and Four, 10th - 11th March 2014: see the photos taken by Donna Fujimoto, Evelin Lindner, Marie Ingand, and Trine Eklund
• Day Four, 11th March 2014: see the photos taken by Donna Fujimoto, and Evelin Lindner
• See also our Dignilogue Themes and our Appreciative Introductions
• Day Five, 12th March 2014: see the photos taken by Donna Fujimoto, and Evelin Lindner
• Day Six and Seven, Post-conference, 13th - 14th March 2014: see the photos taken by Evelin Lindner, and Trine Eklund

Videos:

Day One, 8th March 2014
• 01 Introduction by Kjell Skyllstad and Evelin Lindner, and Presentation of Participants
Presentations by Thai NGOs and local filmmakers:
• 02 Overview of Ethnic and Indigenous Human Rights in Asia, by Bernice Aquino See, Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP)
• 03 Film Presentation: Killing the Mekong, Dam by Dam, by Tom Fawthrop, see Trailer
• 04 Special Talk: A Voice from Indigenous People, by Joni Odochaw, a Karen Sage and Former Village Headman from the Karen Village Ban Nong Thao

Day Two, 9th March 2014, 'Burma's Transition: Reforms, Ethnic Groups, and Ceasefires'
• 05 Update from Burma: An Overview of Changes, 2010-2014, by Garrett Kostin (Burma Study Center)
• 06 Guns, Briefcases, and Inequality: The Neglected War in Kachin State + Prospects for Peace and National Reconciliation in Burma/Myanmar, by Alex James (Burma Partnership)
• 07 Dignity Amidst The Rubbish: A Burmese Migrant Community in Thailand, by Jeffrey Warner, photojournalist
• 08 Nothing About Us Without Us: Refugees, Repatriation, and Representation, by Saw Nay Kaw (Karen Environmental and Social Action Network, KESAN)
• 09 Rohingya in Transit: Human Trafficking and Statelessness, by Ekraj Sabu (International Institute of Peace Studies, Asian Muslim Network)
• 10 Emerging Women of Burma, by Ursula Cats, the founder of the We Women Foundation, together with her students and volunteers

Day Three and Four, at the Lahu village Suan Lahu, 10th - 11th March 2014
• 11 Arrival and Welcome by Carina zur Strassen, recorded by Jeffrey Warner, 10th March 2014
• 12 At the Learning Center with Evelin Lindner, recorded by Mark Petz, 10th March 2014
• 13 At the Learning Center with Carina zur Strassen, recorded by Donna Fujimoto, 10th March 2014
• 14 At the Learning Center, Interview with Carina zur Strassen and Evelin Lindner, recorded by Donna Fujimoto, 10th March 2014
• 15 Interview with Laew, Mark Petz, and Carina zur Strassen, recorded by Donna Fujimoto, 11th March 2014
• 16 Coffee Processing, recorded by Jeffrey Warner, 11th March 2014
• 17 Village Impressions, recorded by Jeffrey Warner, 11th March 2014

Day Four, 11th March 2014
• 18 Turning the Tide in Rural Thailand, by Kjell Skyllstad (see The Life University: Learning Institute For Everyone, LIFE)
• 19 Culture, Religion, and HIV/Aids in Thailand, by Patchanee Malikhao (see her book Sex in the Village. Culture, Religion and HIV/AIDS in Thailand (Penang-Chiang Mai: Southbound & Silkworm Publishers, 2011)

Day Five, 12th March 2014
• 20 Communication/Media for Sustainable Change/Development, by Jan Servaes
• 21 Sustainable Development in Bangladesh: Problem and Prospects, by Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad, see also a Pdf file
• 22 Deeyah Khan: Banaz: A Love Story
• 23 Mindfulness into Action: Protecting Minorities - A Case Study from the Rainforest in Ecuador, by Mariana Vergara, see the presentation also on the Global Mindfulness into Action platform and search that platform
• 24 The Art of Peacemaking: Innovative Approaches to Conflict Transformation and Violence, Particularly Violence Against Women, by Trine Eklund
• 25 Carina zur Strassen, with her background from Peru, shared a Spanish song
• 26 Giving Voice to the Least Heard Songs, by Todd Saurman
• 27 Global Dignity, by Evelin Lindner
• 28 Greetings from the Brazilian Amazon, by Dan Baron
- Dance and Returning Dignity: Raízes e Antenas (o processo) - Roots and Antennas (the process) (published on 12th February 2014)
- Festival Beleza Amazônica: Youth Leadership Through the Arts (published on 27th January 2014)
- Festival Beleza Amazônica (published on 4th November 2013)

Day Six and Seven, at Ban Nong Thao, a Pgak' Nyau (Karen) Village, Post-conference Excursion, 13th - 14th March 2014
• 29 Zwae Siwakom Odochaw and Otzie (or Chindanai Jowaloo, or also Chai) Present Their Pgak' Nyau Village Ban Nong Thao in Northern Thailand (at 1200 Meters Height) on 13th March 2014, see the long version of one hour or part 1 | part 2 | part 3
• 30 An Elder Speaks: Joni Odochaw, Karen Sage and Former Village Headman from Ban Nong Thao, in Conversation with Mariana Vergara, Sharing the Voice of the Indigenous Peoples from South America, 13th March 2014 (we apologise that the conversation ends abruptly, due to technical problems)
• 31 Clothing Traditions: Joni Odochaw, His Wife, His Son Zwae, Together with His Cousin Otzie and His Mother, 14th March 2014
• 32 Vision for the Future: Joni Odochaw, His Son Zwae, and His Cousin Otzie Speak about the Karen Vision of Life, 14th March 2014
• 33 The Lazy School's First Student Peter Dering, 14th March 2014

(Important note to our conference particants: During our conference, we asked for your permission to have your pictures posted here, however, if you changed your mind since, either in total or for specific pictures/videos, please let us know! Thank you! Since we wish to walk the talk of dignity, it is very important for us to do our utmost in respecting everybody's privacy. We refrain from gathering written permissions from you during our conferences, since we value the building of mutual trust in relationships, and we also would like to refrain from contributing to an ever more bureaucratic and legalistic society.)

When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
― Cree prophecy.

Day Five, 12th March 2014
• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more photos taken by Donna Fujimoto.
• Please click on the pictures at the bottom or here to see more photos taken by Evelin Lindner.

Videos:
• 20 Communication/Media for Sustainable Change/Development, by Jan Servaes
• 21 Sustainable Development in Bangladesh: Problem and Prospects, by Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad, see also a Pdf file
• 22 Deeyah Khan: Banaz: A Love Story
• 23 Mindfulness into Action: Protecting Minorities - A Case Study from the Rainforest in Ecuador, by Mariana Vergara, see the presentation also on the Global Mindfulness into Action platform and search that platform
• 24 The Art of Peacemaking: Innovative Approaches to Conflict Transformation and Violence, Particularly Violence Against Women, by Trine Eklund
• 25 Carina zur Strassen, with Her Background from Peru, Shares a Spanish Song
• 26 Giving Voice to the Least Heard Songs, by Todd Saurman
• 27 Global Dignity, by Evelin Lindner
• 28 Greetings from the Brazilian Amazon, by Dan Baron
- Dance and Returning Dignity: Raízes e Antenas (o processo) - Roots and Antennas (the process) (published on 12th February 2014)
- Festival Beleza Amazônica: Youth Leadership Through the Arts (published on 27th January 2014)
- Festival Beleza Amazônica (published on 4th November 2013)

Day Six and Seven, 13th-14th March 2014
Excursion to the Pgak' Nyau (Karen) village Ban Nong Tao in the Mae-Win Subdistrict, Mae Wang District, Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand.
• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more photos taken by Evelin Lindner.
• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see more photos taken by Trine Eklund.

Videos:
• 29 Zwae Siwakom Odochaw and Otzie (or Chindanai Jowaloo, or also Chai) Present Their Pgak' Nyau Village Ban Nong Thao in Northern Thailand (at 1200 Meters Height) on 13th March 2014, see the long version of one hour or part 1 | part 2 | part 3
• 30 An Elder Speaks: Joni Odochaw, Karen Sage and Former Village Headman from Ban Nong Thao, in Conversation with Mariana Vergara, Sharing the Voice of the Indigenous Peoples from South America, 13th March 2014 (we apologise that the conversation ends abruptly, due to technical problems)
• 31 Clothing Traditions: Joni Odochaw, His Wife, His Son Zwae, Together with His Cousin Otzie and His Mother, 14th March 2014
• 32 Vision for the Future: Joni Odochaw, His Son Zwae, and His Cousin Otzie Speak about the Karen Vision of Life, 14th March 2014
• 33 The Lazy School's First Student Peter Dering, 14th March 2014

We listened to Joni Odochaw, his son Zwae Siwakom Odochaw, and his brother-cousin Otzie (Chindanai Jowaloo, or also Chai) and learned immensely from their deep and profound insights. We also met Joni Odochaw's wife, Zwae's mother, as well as Otzie's mother, and other members of the community. And we met with Peter Derling from the United States, the first student of the Lazy School!

Please note the Farming Watch leaflet that Mariana Vergara saw in the house. On one side, you see the situation as it should be, on the other side, the situation as it is.

Please see also the Proclamation on Rural Resilience, with the aim to help secure the rights of indigenous peoples in the post-2015 development goals. We understood from Joni Odochao, Zwae, and Otzie that these rights are of central significance for all of humankind's survival, much more than simply of marginal importance for a few minorities. They helped us better understand the dilemma that education, TV, and the digital world can be either beneficial or destructive to sustainable ways of living. As Peter Dering, the first student of the 'Lazy School' formulated it so well on 13th March 2014: our vision must be to expand community learning to include modern knowledge through technology, rather than lose community learning! The proclamation was initiated by Mark Petz and we sent it directly to the delegates meeting at the same time at the UN in NY to shape the 2015-2030 policy goals. In that way we attempted to connect the grass-roots in the village directly with the highest international policy making bodies. If we are listened to, we don't know, but we feel that we have to do our best.

In this proclamation we highlight that education, media, and digital technology pose a dilemma: they can foster diversity or wipe it out. As Peter Dering formulated it so well on 13th March 2014: our vision must be to expand community learning to include modern knowledge through technology, rather than lose community learning! Peter is the first student of the 'Lazy School', which he explained on 14th March 2014. Our aim must be to go from traditional community learning to modern community learning. This means leaving behind, as fast as possible, the present-day dead-end approach that destroys community learning when education is fashioned in a military style or resembles Fordian factories. The dominator model of society (Riane Eisler) is built on values of male competition for domination; it needs to give way to the partnership model of the traditionally female role script of relationship building in cooperation. This means also that it is necessary to give priority to what anthropologist Alan Page Fiske calls 'communal sharing', it means defining authority ranking as respect for the wisdom of elders and the innovative spirit of youngsters, and it means to relegate equality matching and market pricing to the unavoidable minimum rather than allowing it to impoverish us and destroy our communities.

Traditionally, children in the Karen village learn by being part of daily village life. Now, as they go to school, they fail to learn what is needed in a comprehensive sustainable self-sufficient village, instead, they learn to stiffen their bodies and become obedient cog-wheels feeding a larger unsustainable system. Television in the evenings underpins this trend: we were dismayed to see how everybody in the village now is passively glued to images of advertisement creating new 'needs', interrupted by violent films that capitalise on people's fascination with demons and glorifying fighting. There is no space anymore for listening to elders and integrated mutual community learning. This is the destruction of humanity's social resources, and it prepares the ground for the destruction of our ecological resources. What we learn is that the building of schools has nothing to do with education...

On the wall in the sleeping room under the roof we found a poster of the
Inaugural International Symposium on Local Wisdom and Improving Quality of Life
August 8-10, 2012, Chiangmai






This is the text that introduces Joni Odochao:
Mr. Joni Odochao, Thai wisdom teacher in the field of natural resources and environmental management, Northern Thai wisdom teachers Year 1:
Born and raised in a Karen village of Northern Thailand, Kru Joni Odochao witnessed major changes in the highlands and became concerned about the erosion of Karen culture and the rapid degradation of the environment.
Elected as headman of his village, Kru Joni led 13 other hill tribe groups in a campaign to protect forests and wild animals and map out collective action for watershed management in harmony with nature.
Together they promoted ecological farming and consecrated 50 million trees. He also led an effort to form the northern farmers' alliance, to set up the Mae Wang River Basin conservation network, and to open a rice bank. As a Karen elder, he strongly believes in Karen wisdom and stresses relationship with the environment.
Kru Joni was instrumental in developing local curricula for hill tribe people's education emphasizing their own culture. He is also actively involved in knowledge sharing and has served as an advisor and resource person for several NGOs and government agencies.

• Please click on the pictures at the top or here to see more photos taken by Evelin Lindner.
• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see more photos taken by Trine Eklund.

Links:
Please listen also to Karen singer Chi Suwichin, who reminds us that we have to avoid being like those outsiders who come to indigenous peoples and take everything until nothing is left....

Nature the Best Teacher: Re-Connecting the World’s Children with Nature
Written by Kamran Mofid, 10 April 2015
More than parent and student communities, the teaching fraternity needs to understand that the essential purpose of education is not to enable students to earn a living, but to learn how to live life. As the primal teacher, Mother Nature teaches both the secret of life, which is to respect all life, and also how to live one’s own life in harmony and balance with all creation, exemplified by the manner in which various species of the natural world live in peaceful co-existence.'
'Picture a school where the natural environment becomes the classroom and Nature becomes one of the teachers. Even students who don't exhibit "nature smarts" will become more attuned and connected to the world around them. And as many wise people have said, we can't save something we don't love, and we can't love something we don't know. Don't we owe it to our students to help them develop their naturalist intelligence?'
See also: Louv, Richard (2009). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. London: Atlantic Books.
Kamran recommends:
First video: Project Wild Thing: Producer David Bond, 'A gripping story of the desperate struggle to lead our computer-crazed children back to nature.'
Second video: It's Time to Rewild the Child, ' In this video George Monbiot argues that the more time children spend in the classroom, the worse they do at school because our narrow education system only rewards a particular skill set. He says that when you take failing pupils to the countryside, they often thrive – yet funding for outdoor education is being cut.'

"Making Sense of Place: School-Farm Cooperation in Norway," by Erling Krogh and Linda Jolly (2011)
In: Children, Youth and Environments 21(1): 310-321
Abstract: This paper describes the Norwegian "Living School" national project and its related university extension course, "The Farm as a Pedagogical Resource." Since the national initiative began in the late 1990s, more than 250 separate local projects have been developed through the course. Here we focus on one such project in the community of Aurland. It illustrates the basic principal of "rooting" students in life processes and in the places in which they live through participation in practical, meaningful work outdoors.

Wendell Berry Agriculture for a Small Planet Symposium July 1, 1974
Email from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, schumacher@centerforneweconomics.org, on July 4, 2014:
In his presentation at the 1974 Agriculture for a Small Planet Symposium in Spokane, Washington, Wendell Berry remarked:
 "Few people, whose testimony would have mattered, have seen the connection between the modernization of agricultural techniques and disintegration of the culture and the communities of farming."
 "This community killing agriculture, with its monomania of bigness, is not primarily the work of farmers, though it has burgeoned upon their weaknesses. It is the work of institutions of agriculture, the experts and agribusinessmen who have promoted so-called efficiency at the expense of community and quantity at the expense of quality."
 "In the long run, quantity is inseparable from quality.  To pursue quantity alone is to destroy those disciplines in the producers that are the only assurance of quantity. The preserver of abundance is excellence."
 "Food is a cultural, not a technological, product."
Our thanks to our friends at the Berry Center in Henry County, Kentucky for posting this historic video of Berry's talk.
The Symposium launched the Tilth movement and helped Berry clarify the arguments that led to the 1977 publication of The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture -- one of the most influential books of the past fifty years.
At the 1976 Lindisfarne Fellows meeting Berry read from the extraordinary "The Body and The Earth" chapter of The Unsettling of America. In it he describes the estrangement of the sexes as parallel to our estrangement from the land, and seeks for ways to address that estrangement. Our thanks to William Irwin Thompson, Lindisfarne founder, for permitting us to digitalize and post this and all the other Lindisfarne talks at the Schumacher Center's audio files at archive.org. 
Then in 1981, Wendell Berry spoke at the First Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, setting a standard for the series now in its 34th year.  The theme of the Lectures was "People, Land, and Community."  Berry commented that these three were linked in local culture -- a culture that could not be imported.
 "It would begin in work and love. People at work in communities three generations old would know that their bodies renewed, time and again, the movement of other bodies -- living and dead, known and loved, remembered and loved -- in the same shops, houses, and fields. That, of course, is the description of a kind of a community dance. And such a dance is perhaps the best way to describe harmony."
Mark Petz wrote on July 8, 2014: This fits in very much with what organic agriculture does with the IFOAM Principles, where they have Community Supported Agriculture "adapted to the natural rhythm of the seasons and is respectful of the environment, natural and cultural heritage and health." They value cultures through the participatory guarantee schemes, "We consider it essential to recognise local cultures and to preserve traditional know-how, which has always respected nature and favoured a sustainable management of resources."

Culture, Politics & Pedagogy: A Conversation w/ Henry Giroux
Uploaded on 5 Dec 2006
An active citizen, says the prolific and influential Henry Giroux, is "somebody who has the capacity not only to understand and engage the world but to transfom it when necessary, and to believe that he or she can do that." In this provocative new interview, Giroux speaks with passion about the inextricable links between education, civic engagement, and social justice. Strongly influenced by Paulo Freire, the Brazilian scholar of progressive education, Giroux advocates for a pedagogy that challenges inequality, oppression, and fundamentalism. Essential viewing for students of education, cultural studies, and communication.

12th Urban Culture Forum, 'Arts and Social Outreach - Designs for Urban Dignity'
by The Urban Research Plaza, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
convened by Kjell Skyllstad
3rd - 4th March 2014

A Dual Call for Papers had been issued for The Urban Research Plaza's 12th Urban Culture Forum, and for the Journal of Urban Culture Research. Presentations were invited spanning the wide and diverse field of urban culture. The questions below is offered as evocative guidelines rather than requirements:
'How can we open the world of art for all (children, youth, elderly, disabled, disadvantaged)? How can we promote artistic expressions of minority groups? What are the means of enlarging participation in artistic activities among urban populations? How can art stimulate and promote citizens interaction in urban planning and design? How can art activism confront urban patterns of gender inequality and humiliating practices? How can the artist community contribute to solving urban conflicts and restoring human dignity? What allows traditional cultures and values to survive? How can artists contribute to the preservation of national art treasures? What measures can be taken to promote cultural continuity in urban environments? What is the place of arts education in promoting social and environmental awareness? In short: How can we promote art for social dignity?'

Day One, 3rd March 2014
Please click on the picture at the top or here to see more photos taken by Marie Ingand.
Please click on the picture in the middle or here to see more photos from Evelin's camera.
Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see more photos taken by Trine Eklund.

Schedule:
• Morning Session (Moderator Bussakorn Binson, Associate Professor, Chulalongkorn University)
9:00 9:15 AM A morning song tribute to Pete Seger with Svanibor Pettan, Slovenia

• Welcoming
9:15 AM Associate Professor Dr. Suppakorn Disatapundhu, Dean, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn University
9:30 AM Opening Speech, Associate Professor Dr. Lersom Sthapitanonda, Advisor to the President of
Chulalongkorn University

• Guest of Honor & Keynote: A Conversation with Deeyah, human rights activist, film director, music producer/composer, with host Kjell Skyllstad, Professor, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, on Arts and Social Outreach: Designs for Urban Dignity.

• Session 1 Arts and Social Outreach
10:40 AM Applied Ethnomusicology in Urban Settings, Svanibor Pettan, Secretary General – ICTM, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
11:00 AM 'The Norwegian Approach of Presenting Live Music for Young Audiences', Tom Gravlie, Director of International Department, Concerts Norway (Rikskonsertene)
11:20 AM 'Art Film Elucidates Social Inclusion for Children
with Special Needs', Tuenrudee Rugmai, Doctor of Fine and Applied Arts (DFA) Candidate, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

• Afternoon Session (Moderator Pornprapit Phoasavadi, Assistant Professor, Chulalongkorn University)
Session 2 Arts and Social Outreach (continued)
12:40 PM 'Resonance: The Resonance of Reasons from the Streets of Bangkok', Doctor of Fine and Applied Arts (DFA) Students' Group Presentation, Chulalongkorn University
1:00 PM Film: Banaz – A Love Story (70 minutes), Introduction by Deeyah Khan
2:10 PM Discussion with Deeyah: Five videos were recorded after the showing of the film. The videos were recorded by Evelin Lindner. Please note that these videos are unedited.
• Dialogue 1
• Dialogue 2
• Dialogue 3
• Dialogue 4
• Dialogue 5
Read also:"This Woman Was Murdered For a Kiss in a Train Station," by Deeyah Khan, Huffington Post, February 21, 2014

Please click on the picture at the top or here to see more photos taken by Marie Ingand.
Please click on the picture in the middle or here to see more photos from Evelin's camera.
Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see more photos taken by Trine Eklund.

Norsk: 23.-24. januar 2014, 'Kommunikasjon og Verdighet', Nettverkskonferanse om verdighet og ydmykelse organisert av Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies i Oslo, Norge, sammen med 'Impuls' - Student Journal of Psychology at the University of Oslo og Educationforpeace-dot-com. Nedlast invitasjonen og programmet på norsk.

Photos:
Takk, kjære Rachel, for at du tok so fine bilder!

• Klikk på bildet på toppen eller her for å se flere bilder av 23. januar tatt av Rachel Aspögård med Evelins kamera
• Klikk på bildet på bunnen eller her for å se flere bilder av 24. januar tatt av Rachel Aspögård med Evelins kamera
• Klikk her for å se flere bilder av Trine Eklund

English: 23rd - 24th January 2014, 'Communication and Dignity', Thematic Network Meeting convened by Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies in Oslo, Norway, together with 'Impuls' - Student Journal of Psychology at the University of Oslo and Educationforpeace-dot-com. Download the invitation and programme in English.

• Please click on the picture at the top or here to see more photos of 23rd January taken by Rachel Aspögård with Evelin's camera
• Please click on the picture at the bottom or here to see more photos of 24th January taken by Rachel Aspögård with Evelin's camera
• Please click here to see more photos by Trine Eklund

Videos:

• 22nd January: see the video site of the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Oslo for Evelin's lectures since 2009. Thank you, dear Lasse Moer, for your untiring support!

• 23rd and 24th January:
All videos you see further down are on YouTube marked as 'unlisted', which means that only people who know the URL of the particular video can accesss it and it cannot be found by googling. Please let me know whether you wish to have certain videos to be 'public' so that they can be found by the wider public, or if you wish to have certain videos to be 'private' so that only I can give you private access.
Please see the URLs here:

• 23rd January (thank you, dear Randi Gunhildstad, for documenting everything so wonderfully with the video camera!):
- 01 Babs Sivertsen explained how the participants of the 'Communication and Dignity' meeting are to introduce themselves to the other participants: Everybody identified another participant they had not met before, interviewed him/her, and then presented him/her to the plenum
- 02 Elisabet Kristiansen and Evelin Lindner presented each other to the other participants
- 03 Per Glad and Jorun Pareli presented each other to the other participants
- 04 Trine Eklund and Lisbeth Glad presented each other to the other participants
- 04.2 Trine Eklund was presented by Lisbeth Glad to the other participants
- 05 Ingar Evje and Berit Waal presented each other to the other participants
- 06 Sigurd Støren and Elsa-Britt Enger presented each other to the other participants
- 07 Ludmilla and Thomas Daffern presented each other to the other participants
- 08 Ingrid Brudevoll and Caroline Øverland presented each other to the other participants
- 09 Randi Gunhildstad and Rachel Aspögård presented each other to the other participants
- 10 Babs Sivertsen invited into her work with empathic communication
- 11 Elsa-Britt Enger invited into her work with empathic communication
- 12 Evelin Lindner explained the Dignilogue approach (dignity + dialogue) that the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS) network has developed over the years, taking its inspiration from the Open Space Technology by Harrison Owen, who is also a member of the HumanDHS Global Advisory Board
- 13.1+2 Thomas Daffern presented his Global Peace Philosophy Part 1 | Part 2 (we apologise that part 1 ends abruptly, due to technical reasons; we thank Randi Gunhildstad for documenting part 2 with her mobile phone)
- 13.3 Evelin Lindner explained her 'sunflower identity' conceptualisation (we thank Randi Gunhildstad for documenting this sequence with her mobile phone; see also 'Living Globally: Global Citizenship of Care as Personal Practice', the long version of Lindner's contribution to the anthology Norwegian Citizen - Global Citizen, 2013)

• 24th January (Evelin did the video-recording):
- Bjørn Ekelund (unfortunately, to our great regret, due to technical problems, this presentation could not be video-recorded)
- Veslemøy Wiese (unfortunately, to our great regret, due to technical problems, this presentation could not be video-recorded)
- 14 Rachel Aspögård
- 15 Berit Waal
- 16 Elisabeth Kristiansen
- 17 Lisbeth Vilkan Glad and Per Glad
- Ingeborg Breines (without video)
- 18 Thomas Daffern
- 19 Babs Sivertsen