For transparency, I’m atheist. I dislike organized religion so, so much, but I do think individuals can find comfort in their spirituality and that has value. Maybe not for me personally, but not everything is about me.

University of Helsinki has a space for exhibitions where they present their more interesting or (in this case) esoteric research to the public. As of this writing it’s about how people understand angels. A large part of the exhibition was about the work of a photographer, who’s name I’ve forgotten. Sorry. Anyhow, she took photographs of people playing the part of an angel, then they presented them to people to get their reactions to those depictions, after which they allowed people to play the roles of how they see angels.

Some of them were actually pretty cool, like a younger goth woman sitting in a church with an older woman, each having their own guardian angel, with the goth woman having a goth/punk angel and the older woman having a more traditional one. Also, it turned out, guardian angels were what many of the people gravitated towards.

Which I find is weird. If you look around you, is there anything that would even suggest that there are such things? If so, where were they when the US bombed a school for girls killing hundreds? Believing in guardian angels is, in fact, quite toxic. It’s weird that the exhibition didn’t want to talk about this at all.

Anyhow, I don’t see angels in that way. To me they are grotesque creatures, where their physical being depicts their monstrous role as part of the extended patriarchy. After all, God is often used as a justification for patriarchy, which means that he is on top of the hierarchy. The angels are his tools in maintaining it. They have no other reason to exist than just do the bidding of the hierarchy. Since they lack the free will given to humans, they are built for this specifically.

So, the exhibition was interesting, but also lacking. It took a very naive view of angels and ran with it, with seemingly no criticism. Sure, I shouldn’t stop seniors having fun by creating angel costumes for themselves from recycled materials, but the discussion on angels can’t be this shallow, can it?

Sure, the work of the photographer can be, but there’s multiple researchers involved, including a professor. Didn’t they want to do something a little deeper? You can argue that we are interested in how normal people view angels and that is interesting in itself, but if that’s the case, why did they show the photographs to people first? That’s poisoning the well. That’s telling people how you want to discuss angels.

Okay, okay, on a lighter note, what would my guardian angel be like? Bored. Very bored. After all, if, based on the photos, our guardian angels resemble us, that’s what would happen. I don’t get bored, but that’s because I’m always doing something, and if I’m close to getting bored, I’ll find something to do. However, staring at me writing something like this can’t be very interesting. And maybe this would be okay for someone else’s guardian angel, but, again, I don’t like getting bored, so my guardian angel wouldn’t like getting bored. However, do they have the option of just stopping following me? If so, what would be their point, so my guardian angel would just be perpetually bored out of his mind.

But then, at times, I will get myself into trouble. I get out of it as well, because I’m a white cishet male from Finland. So, my guardian angel would experience long stretches of boredom interrupted by just looking at me doing something stupid without being able to do anything about it. So, basically a cursed existence.