Sometimes it's better with an abstract ending

It’s not until you finished reading the novel Shutter Island that the actual matter starts revealing. Meantime you’re so caught up in the thrilling story that you forget about the true message. It’s first when you put down the book the thoughts accumulate, not only on what happened, but also what Lehane (the author) wants us to discuss. Shutter Island is the kind of novel you want to browse through and search for clues and link them together in concrete messages.   What looks like one story is actually a parallel to another one and overlapped by a third one, it’s really good written. Therefore I think it’s worth reading it again.

The year is 1954, U.S. Marshall Edward “Teddy” Daniels and his new colleague Chuck Aule have been appointed to investigate a disappearance from Ashecliffe Hospital for criminally insane on Shutter Island. The escaped is Rachel Solando, a woman who’s convicted by drowning her three children in a lake. 

The following is very much considered as a spoiler, so if you haven’t read the book or watched the movie you should not read further! 

Anyway. The story ends when we discover that Teddy himself is mentally ill and that everything is an act arranged by Chuck and Dr. Cawley in hopes that he will face the fact that he killed his wife. It doesn’t work, and Teddy is sent away to lobotomy. His final words is very important for the ending and the story: “Which would be worse, to live as a monster, or die as a good man?”. It’s also the last sentence of the book, and therefore it leaves room for interpretation. I believe there are two ways to see it:

Option one:

He’s insane. To live as a monster would be the knowledge of killing his wife. It would get him of the island, but he doesn’t want to live knowing it happened. To be a good man would be not knowing and feel innocence in his own mind. Therefore, the lobotomy is the only way, and he accepts becoming a vegetable. This is his way of dying as a good man.

Option two:

He’s sane. To live as a monster would be to give in to the story he is being told by the doctors, and live by making them believe he was insane, but now cured. To be the good man he must stick to what he believes in disregard whatever the doctors told him; He’s not a murderer. If he chooses this path he will die, but at least he will die with the integrity that he felt was right.

In this book you don't have a concrete ending of a story, and that’s the charm. You don't really need it. I think every reader has to look for clues and find their own interpret of the story. In a few years  think I will read the book once more and see if I can figure mine out.

Consumption do not equal happiness

Annie Leonard, a proponent of sustainability and critic of the consumerism and maker of the sensational short, The story of stuff. The movie is about the governments, companies and the households approach to massive consumption and how it affects the natures resources. 

According to Leonard this superfluous consumption puts our planets future at risk of running out of resources. The whole 20 minutes is indeed convincing and really made me reflect about my own situation, even though I wouldn’t count myself as a materialistic person. I believe that on some level you get direct or indirect affected by new things in commercials. It’s hard to sometimes reflect on why you need this high-tech mp3-player or those new sneakers, you just get very tempted to buy them for some reason.  To stimulate our perceived obsolescing we need to shop and keep up with fashion turns and people around us. We believe this is healthy for us. We become happy through shopping spree and using these products a limited time. But this happiness is most times just temporary. In time we’ll need something new to stimulate our feeling of insufficient possessions.

Leonard also mentions the meaning of prolonged happiness. Sometimes you don’t realize the things in life that’s important, like friends and family.  To get accepted you don’t need show of with a new car, especially not in front of your friends. Of course, having a lot of money and the ability to buy nice things is great, but not the most important part in life. To feel good you need friends who accept you for your personality and not the all the new stuff you own and that can’t be bought in any way. 

Another interesting thought worth noticing in the movie is the affect of keeping the price low. Who is really paying the price? Considering the planet perhaps, but not to forget, the production workers. To keep prices down, employees in third world countries must make sure to keep the costs down as well. The squeezing might lead to lower standards, sickness among workers and child labour. We must be willing to sacrifice our prices for the right to welfare.

My new blogging career and snooping bosses

This is my absolute first blog contribution to my absolute first blog! I’ve never thought about starting one before. Considering the majority of blogs are, according to me, really uninteresting.

But this first episode won’t be about uninteresting blogging. (because now it feels kind of exciting to have started one) No. To initiate my blog I will talk about an article I’ve read about snooping bosses. It’s an article about employers spying on employees and monitoring their behaviours. Spying is morally wrong! I’ve could have stopped there, but is spying on someone still wrong if the victim is doing something wrong, or even illegal. When you put it in perspective it’s hard to decide if the spying was the right thing to do. Some examples in the article are about people getting busted for quite serious matters.  An employee spending working hours on Facebook is not something that the boss shouldn’t turn a blind eye to. As an employee you have a requirement to follow the working agreement and make progress in the daily job and make an asset to your company. If you’re not comfortable with that then maybe you should find yourself another job. If I caught one of my employees wasting working time, I’m not sure if I could trust that person taking responsibility for his work.

On the other hand the integrity of one person must be protected as well. Everybody has the right to freedom and the boss has absolutely no business of spying on your personal life. The greatest achievement as boss is to gain trust in your fellow co-workers without all this spying procedure.