Involution Labs

Tag: writing

  • We’re All Part of the Broken Family

    I read your words, and I felt something shift—not in the way I imagine you intended. You said what you needed to say, and I suppose this is me doing the same. Skriva av mig.

    You write with the tone of someone who’s already moved on, who’s emotionally detached and looking back at the wreckage from a safe, elevated distance. But I didn’t feel wisdom in your letter. I didn’t feel love. I felt something performative. Something self-satisfied. You used to be someone I admired for your depth—for your ability to hold contradictions, for your courage to look at the mess and not turn away. This felt like the opposite. This felt like someone writing to win a crowd, not seek the truth.

    You compared America to a mentally ill family member. That’s not philosophy, that’s pathologizing a people. That’s taking the worst of one nation and building a metaphor that makes everyone else the sane, stable, rational grownups. Europe becomes the wise wife. Canada, the pretty girl next door. Russia, the neighbourhood monster. And you? You’re the knowing observer, shaking your head in sorrow from your morally secure porch.

    You’ve written off an entire nation as if it’s a single consciousness—chaotic, erratic, no longer trustworthy. That’s not just lazy, it’s dangerous. It flattens the millions of people in that country who are fighting the good fight. Who are pushing back. Who are trying to hold something together while the ground shifts beneath them. You saw the storm, and instead of offering a rope, you stepped back to watch.

    And meanwhile, Europe—your golden child in this metaphor—gets a free pass. No mention of its own ongoing nationalism. No mention of how it’s leaned on the US for security, convenience, and political cover for decades. No mention of its own violent history or its complicity in the very global order you now denounce. It’s easier, I guess, to pretend Europe is rising like a phoenix while America flails.

    But this isn’t healing. This isn’t insight. It’s resignation dressed up as moral clarity.

    You say you haven’t given up on America, that your door is open. But everything in your letter says otherwise. You’ve already packed the bags, changed the locks, and started dating someone new. What remains is the guilt talking, not the love.

    I don’t say this as a flag-waver or an apologist. I see the mess. I feel the grief. But I also see the reductionism, the projection, the convenient forgetting. And that—coming from someone who claims to be a philosopher—is what stings the most.

    If you want to walk away, fine. But don’t pretend it’s out of compassion. And don’t pretend you’re not part of the same broken family.

    We all are.

  • The Blurring Lines: Fact, Fiction, and the Changing Face of Journalism

    A Communication Revolution

    We are living in the middle of a communication revolution and change is the only thing we can trust. We have gone from handwriting to print to the internet, and we still don’t know the full effect of this most recent communication revolution. Journalism is writing, but it’s also storytelling and a filter of reality.

    The Foundations of Journalism: Facts vs. Fiction

    Journalism is still about the five w questions and one h question.

    Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? At times, one might feel the urge to add are you joking? And seriously? Or at least to oneself, is this real?

    Journalism is a filter of reality. Journalists are information consultants who filter through information and opinion

    The Rise of Engineered and Fake News

    Today, we live in a world with engineered news and fake news. Journalism is losing power to people journalism or citizen journalism. We live in a reality where alternative news and facts are shaking and stirring not just journalism but politics and democracy.

    It’s old media against social media and also asocial media. Today, journalism compete with people shaping news with their opinion and feelings.

    The Blurred Lines: Information vs. Opinion

    Journalism has to adhere to ethics and take responsibility for unbiased reporting. Journalism must tell, inform and enlighten not falsify, mislead and seduce, but the border is gone.

    It’s hard to see what’s real and what’s propaganda. We filter news to get our worldview confirmed not challenged. Friends and family and celebrities mean more to us than journalists. X breaks the news now, not newsrooms.

    Different truths fight for attention in media, and false news have it easier since disbelief is everywhere now. It’s no longer sure that news is real and unbiased, the lie has become normal. Journalism has lost its status. Journalism has become misplaced.

    But does it have to be like this?

    The Impact of the Digital Era on Journalism

    We consume more news now than ever before. Technically, journalism has never had such good conditions to be produced and distributed as in the digital era, but everyone wants news and stories for free, and it must be short and instant. The erosion of the boundary between truth and lie has changed journalism.

    The erosion of the difference between information and opinion has changed journalism.

    The fact that good journalism can still be produced does not mean that it will be able to play the same role in people’s perception of reality as before. The information gap we see opens up in a digital society is not because the information is missing or unavailable, but the digital era has revolutionised the terms not only for journalism but the conditions for all human communication.

    How we tell the world has an impact, and as we today say it more through pictures, we don’t necessarily get more than a thousand words. A picture hasn’t been analysed the way a printed text on the subject has been and images can also be manipulated and sometimes we don’t know if what we see is what is there.

    Fiction as a Lens for Truth

    What is communicated directly through sound and moving picture say something different than when the same news is delivered through print. It speaks to another part of our brain. We are intellectually more defenceless when faced with pictures and also emotionally more vulnerable. The internet is changing how we see the world.

    How we tell the world is no small matter, we can make it better or worse depending on our ability to truthfully depicting our experience and the stories we are told to the world. Veracity is not the same as truth. Veracity is an aim, not a result.

    Journalism can’t be fiction or lies or untruth or degrees of truth. Journalism is the art of relevant storytelling, and we need it more than ever. Journalism informs and educates us on what we need to know not just what we want to know. The innate level of journalism is curiosity.

    Realistically today, we can charge for good journalism on the internet if the demand for good journalism exists and it does. We have to make the internet free and let people pay for quality content instead.

    What This Means for Journalism Today

    I grew up in an era when reading the morning newspaper and watching the eight-o clock news were sacred rituals. The news seldom confirmed my worldview, but we didn’t question the news as we do today. The news informed, and people took newsbreaks instead of getting depressed. Today part of being both a journalist and a citizen is the ability to distinguish between true and false.

    Facts are essential in journalism, and no fiction is allowed. Fantasy is allowed and expected in fiction, but it must still be believable and also contain facts.

    So, is there is a clear line between fact and fiction?

    As an unconventional fiction writer, I know that everything I’ve written so far is way off the mainstream, but still, it contains facts but perhaps because a lot of my stories are fantasy it’s easy to think it’s all made up, but there is also a lot of research in imaginative writing. I like using fiction to find facts if that makes sense at all.

    Does it matter if something really happened? Are all non-fictional works absolutely truthful? I doubt it as without even a flickering of fiction a non-fiction book would be dull. There could also be more truth in fiction, but non-fiction is sometimes written as fiction for protection.

    Could it be the same in journalism?

    Non-fiction reveals lies while fiction shows us the truth? Does the value of the story lie in its truth or how it makes us feel?

    A Call to Action: The Need for Veracity in Journalism

    We value truth, but all of us lie every day. We have always mixed fact and fiction, but anything marketed as based on a true story seems to give a story more value, whether we are reading or watching. Even historians make interpretations of the truth, so a novel set in the past must be both fact and fiction, it can’t be anything else. A historical novel can be based on historiography, but it can still never be truly non-fictional because history has layers and even if we were there, we can’t see all the layers of an event. And so can’t a journalist, they have to interpret the facts at hand which can differ from source to source.

    The best way might be to keep an open mind when we read fiction, and presume there is some truth in there and when we read non-fiction presume there are some inventions or biased views in there.

    All fiction can also be true depending on what multiverse one presently occupies. My daughter who frequently inhabits the magic world asked if Harry Potter is fiction or non-fiction and when I replied by asking what she thinks she said, both. And why not?

    Of course, that’s not the correct journalistic view to take, but it certainly can be a more liberating view of literature.

    People don’t read the way we used to though, and it’s not literature shaping our present reality, apart from perhaps Harry Potter, but the stories we share online and the stories that go viral are the ones readers seems to trust the most because they are the most popular ones. So, do we as humans prefer fiction or at least a mix of fact and fiction and is that why so many prefer the stories behind the news?

    Is fiction just another angle of truth?

  • Welcome to Involution Labs

    Involution Labs was born from an idea—to finally take charge of my creative output. Not just for the fun of it (though fun matters), but to share it—something I’ve neglected far too long. Most of my books, apart from PeaceCraft, were written before Involution Labs existed.

    I’m an unknown writer who loves to explore through words—both in English and Swedish, though mostly in English. I’m not an expert. In fact, I embrace a beginner’s mindset—maybe out of rebellion, because I’ve seen how “experts” often stop learning. I know the truth: the more I learn, the more I realize there’s even more to learn.

    I’ve always written: stories for friends (always with happy endings), love letters, poems, short stories that explore different viewpoints in life. I was a bit of a trickster too—telling tall tales and often fooling people with my ability to spin a good yarn.

    Did I dream of becoming an author? Maybe in the early days, when I started writing seriously again. But how many rejections can you take before deciding to write for yourself? Not just because you love it—but because writing becomes a survival mechanism. Here, Swedish has the perfect expression: “skriva av mig”—to write it out of my system.

    Even though English is one of the most expressive languages in the world (and I love it because no one owns it—we all do), sometimes Swedish is the only thing that fits.

    I’ve always looked at the world a bit differently. My life has been anything but linear, and that’s obvious in my stories too. They’re written more in “skriva av mig” mode than for a specific audience. But I love my stories. And while I’m not a mainstream writer—and for years thought, why spend time, money, and effort marketing something that’s not built for mass appeal? —now, with Involution Labs, I’m finally showcasing my work.

    But Involution Labs isn’t just a space for unconventional writing.

    Unburdened is a business idea that’s close to my heart—focused on decluttering and letting go, inspired by concepts like Swedish death cleaning. I hope to bring it to life fully this year, offering guidance and services to help others simplify and create more space—physically, emotionally, and mentally.

    PeaceCraft began as a book, but it was always meant to be more. The initial idea was actually a game, and I believe it still has so much potential to grow—into an online course, a teaching manual, and perhaps even something bigger that fosters peace-building in new ways.

    Far Far Out is my personal idea depository. It’s the space where I park my wild, ambitious, sometimes impossible ideas—the ones I can’t accomplish on my own but still want to share. Who knows? Maybe someone out there will see a spark and want to collaborate.

    So, while stories and words are at the heart of Involution Labs, the bigger vision is a place where creativity, curiosity, and meaningful action meet.

    Welcome.