My philosophy in life, at its simplest, is to say and to write what you think.
Even if the thoughts and opinions wouldn't last forever. Because most often they won't. I've already noticed that one of the greatest, saddest mistakes that can be made, is to deny, without looking any further, all the new, different and surprising voices diving into your head from most various directions. Protecting your own point of view so aggressively that other angles show up as a threat actually proves how weak is the bottom your theory stands on.
From which we can easily move to the subject of the day. Which actually seems to be the subject of our time, the headline of media, the theme sitting on our shoulders and putting words in our mouth.
It actually isn't one thing, but a combination of many. It's a bunch of things feeding and raising each other and giving birth to most inspiring and advanced as well as most terrible things. There, in the bottom, it's actually building frame for such things as loneliness, marginalization, social dropout, hate and terrorism. There, in the big knot, lies many different things which can be examined from many different angles. Right know I'm going to be quite sharp-tempered and look at that knot in a very large context.
I'm going to call it individualism.
It's a word that can be used in so many contexts. Being individual is usually considered positive. It means that we're all unique and independent. We have rights, privacy and our own, independent thoughts and values. It means that we are free. Free to live, free to plan, free to grow and free to make our own decisions.
But are we?
It's obvious that there are countries where human rights are a only a dream, still hanging a little too far away to catch in the ongoing situation. But also in the developed countries which do have (at least mostly and theoretically) a working democratic system, judiciary and canonical values of freedom and equality, there are many big questions while talking about freedom.
In the public, political narrative here in Finland the voices supporting economical liberty are strong. Our government places right, but not in a very conservative way. The talk of individual, economical liberty is considered as a purely good, desirable thing with no doubts. Who could resist a possibility for unlimited freedom to choose, freedom to build your own story without anyone trying to forbid it?
It's just not true. Economically it is clear that your background affects your possibilities in life, or at least makes it harder to succeed for some. It's clear that forming your own company is not a piece of cake for anyone, least for those without a good capital - financial, social, and educational. It should be obvious for everyone that with mental problems, poverty, loneliness and illness it is not possible to be completely free to choose. Everyone has different building blocks in the beginning, and though the society seems to give us the freedom to choose how we place our blocks and the freedom to reach more, it really doesn't. It never could.
And I'm not even talking about money anymore. I'm talking about our thoughts, feelings, values, decisions.
The individual trend affects more than just our economy. It forces us to find our own path and make it always better, always stronger. It consist a thought of competing - winning and losing. It consist a lack of trust. It makes trust look dangerous, even a weakness.
Trough the massive revolution of digital development and speed of communication, the globalization has reached a completely new level. It gives us a feeling of having the whole world in our hands, just a couple clicks away. When connected to the ideal of individualism, it gives us a massive thrill - we can form our own opinions, our own worldview by searching information by ourselves! It's an open book and there's nobody to prevent us from reading it! It's honest, free and equal! It depends on ourselves how we use it!
Wish it could be so. But the total of information is too big. There are too many worldviews, too many stories of life and historical backgrounds for us to handle. So we end up cheating ourselves - oh yes, that's so right, I think that's true, that must be true, I've been thinking the same! Well, exactly.
Nobody wants to end up in a crisis with their identity. Nobody wants to deny the things they have believed in, the things they have build their life on. Nobody wants to lose hope or feel stupid. The fear of losing ourselves makes us look for the information we're pleased with. The commercial cookies in the internet make it easy. In facebook or google we're amazed - the whole world seems to fill up with people thinking the same way we do, it feels like a revolution. One can take part into a great world change without really moving away from his or her computer chair. But again, it's a trap. As long as it's too easy, it's lying to you. As long as it seems you can change the world without changing yourself at all, it's a lie. As long as everything happens so deep inside your comfort zone that you don't even see out, it can't be very effective to the world.
Or it can. But the result won't please even you. We've seen brexit. An revolution of individual, angry and disappointed people with an apparent freedom to their opinions and knowledge. We may see Trump's election in November. In more and less public speeches in politics and social media we have seen the anger of the individual, lonely people with no courage to find out about other points of view in the fear of losing their freedom and rights. In the fear of losing their opinions, pride and belief. Losing themselves.
The rise of nationalism is not a new phenomenon. It's not a first time populist characters lead people fed up with their economy to protect their land, rights and the (fancied) homogeneity of their nation.
Still, I think it's a little weird people stand for nationalism now, when there seems to be so many other ways to identify yourself as well. Through internet you can find people you identify with, in so much deeper level than sharing just a same home country, language, skin colour or even a religion.
The answer may be that nationalism is an easier way to show your anger, fear and need of community than looking for different, same kind of thinking people from the net. When the financial and cultural shout of individualism is this strong, people prevent the feeling of loneliness by searching people with the same history, same outlook, same traditions. They seek for familiar faces like babies. When people are afraid of the changes and feeling unsafe, they try to find something familiar. When they are afraid such things as climate change, the change of financial structure, losing a job, radicalism and all that's weird an new, they try to feel safe close to nostalgia.
The anger is a natural consequence of fear. When you have few people to lean on and even less courage to show your weakness, you choose to fight. I think the idolization of individualism makes it even harder to admit your loneliness, sadness and weakness. What are you complaining? You have the whole world on the screen of your mobile!
I think that even more than nationalism, it's the heating, "liberal" economic structure that we're following like God, that's driving us to disaster. It drives us to nationalism. It drives us to the situation, where we have to compete. Where the only options are win and lose.
You may say that's how human works. You may say that we've seen Soviet Union, China before its economical growth, North Korea... And they didn't work. You may show all the data of developing countries that have risen from terrible poverty, made their health system better and their child mortality rate half of what it was before - just because of the economical liberty.
I know. But I still think the economical liberty is far from liberty. Though it has given a kick-start to the world's exponential development, it can't last forever. By forgetting everything else than the desperate need of competition and financial growth we well destroy our environment, ourselves and each other. As long as we're not ready to see further than our own facebook-profile, our own livingroom and our own coffeetable conversations, we're not developing the world. And as long as we keep swearing that individualism gives us freedom we float further from each other.
Because loneliness is not cured with money, nor hate. It's cured with trust. And trust is a natural resource we're destroying by thinking we can't be free together.
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