Bali Institute

Hello!

I'm a 20-something, highly driven man, living in the northern part of Sweden, in a small town called Umeå. 

I found Wiserearth thanks to a friend, a very bookaholic friend (even more then me, but the differences is that he actually is reading the books he buying - I'm not :)) which recently had been reading Blessed Unrest.

Finally I signed the application forms for Wiserearth, and found a great diversity of areas of focus. During the first stage I noticed a lack of activeness, and that made me walk away. But I'm now giving the community another chance, I really believe in the idea and if there is a lack of activeness me myself can contribute and make it more active and alive. Perhaps its more alive then I found out the first session, last spring.

My background:

During first years of 21th century I organized a local newspaper with target group: Youth. The papers basic idea was to pinpoint the need for a democratic plattform, where the young people of the city could write and do some sort of "activism" towards a better society. The team behind the paper (I was its project coordinator) made it for the Internet, not a regular home delivered newspaper. We had a environmental perspective, and wanted to use the new technologies to save the planet!

After a while I joined the Swedish armed forces as a peacekeeping soldier, and made two missions abroad. Kosovo and Afghanistan. I couldn't say I found myself during the missions, but I found my own mission. “I want to work with people in need, and I want to do it without weapons of death around my shoulders”. No sooner said then done; I started to study at Malmö, and Lund University. Since I always been interested into world politics, the field of studies became a natural choice, International Relations, Human Rights, Peace, Conflict and Resolution, Ethical frameworks of the new agenda of International Relations, Cosmopolitanism, International Political Economy and so on... Highly interesting, and very - believe it or not – fun!

Today I'm working at Swedish Red Cross.

During autumn 2008 a friend (yup, the friend who talked me into Wiserearth) and I arranged four Worldcafé-sessions, the last meeting was far from worldcafestylish tho. The overall topic was “Sustainable Lifestyle” and each night there was two questions, I.e “How could we increase humanity, in our way of living?”

I'm not:

Pro-revolutionary, I do not agree with standpoints such as a fast paradigms of todays international , regional, national society, since revolution is very conflictual and its ripple effect is an unstable world, which leads into more conflicts and so on..

I am:

I believe in, and working with, identifying and transforming norms. If there is a unjust interdependency or failing structures of todays organization (governments, democratic institutions, business rationality etc) the only way of changing those is by changing the contextual norms, and those norms could start with the small norms in my living room. Such as; I can pick a fair trade popcorn, and I can make myself comfy in a sustainable sofa!

I want to be:

Better skilled with languages. That's including way better English written skills.