Greta Thunberg’s Book

If somebody would remark that it is indeed quite a while since I have been contributing last time to this blog, s/he would be perfectly right. And why might that be so? At least part of the answer is a feeling that contributions to this blog do not reach very many readers, leading further to the question ”why bother?” It may of course be a matter of feedback: if I write to the Facebook group ”Political Psychology” I will anyway get information how many people have had a look at my piece (perhaps even read it), although also there it has become pretty rare that anybody writes a comment (which would be easy – the group is public, anybody can have a look what there is, and also contributing some comment is at least supposed to be possible). So that it is simply more satisfactory to write for the Facebook group (but perhaps I am simply so ignorant about electronic matters that I am simply unaware of the way to see in some easy way how many people have had a look at a contribution to this blog here …). But right now I have the urgent feeling that I SHOULD write also here, just to make sure that I have indeed used all the possible ways to spread a piece of information which indeed SHOULD be spread far and wide:

The piece of information is that Greta Thunberg’s book ”The Climate Book” is finally available at Akademen in Helsinki, in both English and Swedish (and at a rather high price – but I think it is QUITE worth paying as much as one would pay for TWO paperbacks …). And if I just used the term ”finally”, there is every reason to do so. I promised the book as a birthday present to somebody who had birthday on 10 December last year, ordered the book also at least before Christmas, and NOW I was finally able to buy it … . And as there will still go some time before the recipient of the book will be able to pick it up, I had (still have) luckily some time to have a look at the book myself. So far, I have limited myself to reading the pages which are written by Greta Thunberg herself – the pages are printed on blue paper, are, thus, easy to find. And I am VERY impressed, because what she has to report (and illustrate by convincing examples) are all those (partly VERY tricky) ways by which our whole system carefully avoids taking reasonable care of the climate problem. The media are part of the system, Ny Tid is CERTAINLY part of the media system (once upon a time is was politically Left, and the most promising ”Green” – and in that sense climate-friendly – party we have in Finland is in fact Vasemmisto, but the impression is that it is so far a ”kulturtidskrift” that it does not feel any obligation any more to greatly care about the inbuilt problems of our society, nor about the climate; what is ”kultur”? – might it be ”entertainment for educated tastes”? – but I am open to discussion …).

As to the book, the first copy I bought will go as a present to a teacher of biology and geography (and the hope is that she will mention this and that from the book during her teaching). The second copy I bought I intend to share with a friend so that we can both use parts of its content for out activities. I was also emailing two politicians to draw their attention to the possibilities offered by the book, also hope to approach just tomorrow a third politician on Hagnäs torg with the book in hand. And for the Facebook group ”Political Psychology” I was fairly recently writing two longish pieces with some connection to the book, one titled ”Freedom, Democracy, Free Enterprise, and Human Sacrifice” (from which one, if one also reads a comment which I wrote to it since, can conclude that continuing by ”business as usual” is in fact committing mass murder), and the second one titled ”Government by Whom?” And if one should also read a third piece titled ”A Case of Trustworthiness”, it should at least not harm. – Let’s see whether there will come any comments worth discussing further … .