Guest Column: How to ruin the happiest country in the world?
(Note: I was an exchange student in high school, winding up in Finland, where my counterpart would go on to be Finnish Ambassador to Australia and France. I haven’t done so bad, either! JP, the author of this piece and a Finn, independently entered my community a few years ago, and actually knew of us both!)
How to ruin the happiest country in the world?
I went to the parliament to take a stand for Finland’s future. The message was simple. Here are its basic ideas:
- Finnish society is like a Midsummer Eve baseball game.
The happiest country in the world is a democratic, individual liberties-respecting, and safe playing field for everyone. Both the drunks and sthe ober, skilled and unskilled, smart and not that smart can join. You can stand in the backfield scratching your back if you don’t like catching balls.
- A hole is being dug for this field.
Players whose thinking has come to be considered unsuitable for the game are being lured to the edge of that hole and pushed down from it. This has happened quickly, in the last few years, and its diggers have been making a lot of noise. Since diggers are mostly highly skilled, their skills and knowledge are mixed with the simple fact that they are digging a hole for other players.
- When a hole is dug on the playing field, the playing field becomes smaller.
The smaller the field feels, the bigger the backlash is. This causes a social threat. There must be a place for everyone, and if there isn’t, the game of a democratic, individual freedom-respecting ,and safe society is over. Then it’s no longer about how to get to the finish line as efficiently as possible and pleasantly for all players. Then it’s all about who are worth getting there. That leads to a “society of saints.” where penalities are out of proportion.
- This is no longer a game, but religion of the elect.
Woke culture, which quickly changed from a culture of social awareness to a cult of right-mindedness and religious thinking, is an inflammatory state of the post-modern mind, that has morphed into an extremist movement. It has risen so fast that we have been too slow to both detect and challenge it. Its goal awareness of oppression in social structures does not sanctify its means, which include the basic methods of fundamentalist religion: preaching, removal from the tribe, and the mutual sniggering of the right-minded at the expense of the unbelievers.
© JP Jakonen 2023
(JP Jakonen, PhD, is a scholar of Comparative Religion, a commercially published author and a coach. His consultancy, Integral Foresight Finland, helps people in business to enjoy more and suffer less.)
