Esa's Notebook

In Finland, there have now been discussions about two media outlets related to social inequality. In another, a Finnish actress urged that people should just look to the other way in shoplifting situations, because she understands that the thief is stealing for his own need, and that any theft is due to the fault of the current government.

The second conversation started with comments by a young Finnish woman, who voluntarily became unemployed, in which she said that “work never really felt good”. According to her, “an employment relationship is often a toxic power relationship in which the employer exploits the employee.”

These are just examples, but it seems that this is perhaps – at least for the younger generation – a broader way of thinking. It is thought that they do this because they have symptoms, and the root cause is always outside of them, in society.

People do not seem to have any responsibility themselves. The root causes of the problems are outsourced elsewhere, to the flaws of society. People have symptoms because society does. And in the above cases, apparently because the government’s economic policies make people less fortunate.

In general, young people’s problems, such as poverty, gang crimes and illicit drug use, are always seen as some kind of symptom. They are seen as a symptom of social problems that should first be resolved before these grievances disappear. This is what we have been hearing since the sixties in Finland and elsewhere in the Nordic countries. On the other hand, no one talks about what the individual’s own responsibility is. What could individuals do to build their own lives and find their own happiness and to work for the society? Can a person be responsible for himself? How could man build society himself? We in the Nordic social democratic societies are not in the habit of having such a debate.

Of course, the disadvantaged must be helped in all societies. But it is not the intention that people should deliberately throw themselves on safety nets because they just want to. And it is not meant that it is allowed to break the law (steal from a store) if you are poor. Otherwise, we are going down the same road as California, where police cannot arrest anyone for shoplifting if the value of stolen item is low.

And if the relationship with work is so sick that it is considered a toxic power relationship, something is really badly wrong in the attitudes towards oneself and society.