Satu Taskinen

Satu Taskinen (FI): „I try to add to awareness.“

On 16.07.2015 at 21:40 Satu Taskinen wrote:

Yes, a lot has to do with world views, with the believes of what is „true“.

Behind every action there is thought and a feeling. It is helpful to be aware of what the thought and the feeling are. Then it is more possible to choose the action, otherwise a person becomes someone who cannot steer him/herself. Or a hostage of something that maybe only exists in a thought. It all starts in one self.

I am currently putting these thoughts into  the third part of a trilogy.

I write about these things, that also we have been talking here about, for instance:

  • About people, who don’t feel they have a place on this earth. They feel they are bad or somehow wrong.
  • About knowing and not knowing. Being trapped in the worldview. The boundaries stretching. And then the relation of the subjective truth to the surroundings. What we know so little about.
  • About people saying one thing and doing the other. Often not noticing that there is a gap between these two. Why?
  •  I try to add to awareness. I see people are often not being aware of their own thoughts, feelings and actions. One cannot say at the same time: I want that everybody has the same possibilities, and, you can achieve anything if you want to. And still we do say so. We don’t see, why this doesn’t go together and what our words and actions show about our believes and worldview.
  • Also, many people who say and do horrible things, don’t stand up in the morning and decide: today I will be bad. It is often the opposite: They believe their actions are good and justified, because they don’t know what they are doing. It is like someone who is yelling very loud: I am not yelling! For many other people that is absurd, of course, only the one who is yelling, doesn’t understand what they mean. He or she doesn’t know the meaning of the actions or words. And: there is many different kinds of knowing. It is not just collecting information.
  • In the last part of the trilogy my interest goes much to what we know, information.
  • I went two times to listen to Anton Zeilinger to the Wiener Vorlesungen, how very fascinating, and, I have to say, it is also very difficult for me to follow when he talks science. Then I just try to surrender. And there, like in his books as well, he put information in the core of universe. And then he added self critically: we have to remember that every time believes in one kind of core. For us it is information. It doesn’t mean it stays like that.

This means a paradox: we build on something and know at the same time the funding may not hold. But this is good. We only play with the cards we have, plan tomorrow knowing we don’t know what it brings.

It can be very relieving to know, there is so much that I don’t know. Can be a lot of solutions as well.

Thinking. That is good.

And staying open for what I believe, is a system I have created inside myself. Another system is possible. It can make me a more human and caring and compassionate and wise and intelligent, or: less human and caring and compassionate and wise and intelligent person. It is good to remember, my system is not everything there is. It is just a system that I now consider the best to keep me alive. But it is only a system. In the consciousness. Follow your consciousness. Look where it comes from and where it has taken you. Look at yourself. Look around. Is that how and where you want to be, or is there something to change?

On 17.07.2015 at 11:05 Julia Schiefer wrote:

That is an open conclusion. Thanks a lot for the interview, Satu!

On 17.07.2015 at 16:46 Satu Taskinen wrote:

Thank you, too. It was a pleasure.


Satu Taskinen, who studied philosophy and German philology at Helsinki University, has lived and worked in Vienna since 1999. Her second novel, Katedraali (The Cathedral“/”Die Kathedrale“) is also a one-day novel describing Viennese family. Her first novel Täydellinen paisti  (“The perfect Schweinsbraten”) won the Finnish literature debut prize for novels and was nominated for the short list of the European Book Prize 2012. She now writes on the third part of the trilogy. She is also a member and participant of the Lathi International Writers’ Reunion.

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