I write this out of love. It is because I care about the future of Finland, the country, that I know little of its language and much of its history and current societal challenges.
While I know this won’t be useful to the Finns and Swedish-speaking Finns of my time, it may help one or two people. Moreover, I write this to let future historians know that there were some voiceless people who saw what was happening in culture before politicians, journalists, scientists, scholars, and experts.
I love reading real books. What I love more is talking to people from different walks of life and observing their words, clothes, walking style, voices, ideas, and how they make decisions. Therefore, my knowledge isn’t merely from books.
Here are four signs I identify that are damaging this culture:
Respect for law: In a functioning society, culture, or nation, the rule of law means something. When the foregoing prime minister got drunk and got intimate with another male even though she was married. There were two issues with the drunken prime minister. The first issue is that there was resignation and no accountability to the oath of office. The second issue was that the public had defended her indecent action, particularly the leftists, socialists, feminists, and ladies. I wasn’t surprised by the first point because I’d already seen Western Europe’s elites break, misuse, and abuse the law. I was disappointed to learn that tribal politics had committed barbaric acts in the name of identity politics. It was then that I realized that the public no longer upholds the rule of law either.
Salary: I saw this in Western Europe in the 2007s, when the salaries remained the same for the past two decades, and when the price of food and petrol rose, the attitude changed. People were confused. They became bitter. They despised others. This is what is happening in Finland. Last April, the white working-class people voted for the two right-wingers because the policies of the majority socialist government, the SDP, had hurt them. In his monumental book, Ibn Khaldun writes that when inflation goes up, it is the beginning of collapse. So, the working people have been hurt the most. What did they do? They turned to identity or tribal politics because the right-wing parties promised them a better world without refugees or others coming into the country.
Public Discourse: I learned that the Finns and Swedish-speaking Finns attitudes changed right after the war in Ukraine. Of course, the changes have been ongoing for decades; nevertheless, the war has accelerated drastically. For the first time, Finns realized that there is another world outside of Western Europe and North America. In other words, they learned that there are ideas that are different from the ones they’d been fed by their elites. Thus, they’re losing trust in their own culture.
Indifference: Most Finns and Swedish-speaking Finns are not concerned with the suffering of humans as long as it is not in the media. The elderly Finns and Swedish-speaking Finns at nursing homes who are lonely, worried, and terrified is not their concern. They don’t care about the refugees in their own streets or neighbourhoods who are going through war traumas.
Americanisation: Finnish culture is no longer in use. Its politicians act like Americans, its children speak or at least imitate the American accents.
When people don’t respect the rule of law; when people can’t afford to buy food, when they cannot tell false from reality; when they think about themselves, and when people overlook their own culture and imitate a new one, then the culture of those people is in bad shape.
A healthy culture cares about others, respects the law, andake food and water accessible to citizens.
Axmed Bahjad
Justice Lover 