Copenhagen & Christiania / Blog

Comment

In the Village

Met J. at Moonfishers who said the people here in Christiania have a better sense of democracy than in a normal 20th century city. Christianians recognize really easy where democracy is disfunctional. That people internalized lessons of the 1960s. We talked about the village mentality here and that the ‚social transaction’ is much more important here than the ‚financial transaction’. But social transaction is much more sticky and slower than the free market. Here people don’t just moove or cannot ‚just give a shit what their neighbours think’. They have to cooperate and are dependant on their neighbours, so that supports but as well binds them. The village of Christiania is built on constant recognition of oneself, but on the other hand that limits your ability to recreate yourself. I was wandering abou that since Christiania to me seems to be built on the premises of freedom of expression of ones personality. But wouldn’t that bet the ideal – to have the strength and binds of the community and yet the freedom to change?
We were talking about the philosophical question of legitamacy of justice and self policing and that sometimes the consensus really works while other times it is a barrier. In the socalled violence meetings

the consensus really seems to work. The society is judging your behaviours and the worst penalty is exclusion, which J. said is historically worse than death penalty. Apperently in some cases the police had handed in Christianians to Christiania because they knew that in the vilage the problem would be taken care of better than if the person got in jail for a few weeks! With all this consensus talk I was thinking of Lars von Triers moovies and began to understand: That is what he is talking about all the time!
One of the key problems concerning questions of law and selfjustice seems to me the given fact that humans are caught in a lifelong paradox of a more intellectual and a more animalistic/instinctual side, which includes being influnced by the group also on a chemical level. Well we have seen that. We know that a society can turn bad. People start to associate themselves with the system they live in.
J. also mentioned the respect people give each other in Christiania which includes the respect towards people who want to destroy themselves. He is already the 2nd person mentioning the weird term of ‚the freedom to kill yourself’.

06.12.2007, 16:19