Subarctic summer thoughts

I spent much of the night reading (Andrew Birkin's remarkable, eerie J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys) and was suddenly struck by the thought of how lovely the Finnish climate really is. Now this is an attitude not to be expected - I would recommend trying the pitch dark, wet and cold November with the silent, grim, huddled people to anyone lightly exclaiming the very same sentiment. Or the biting December winds bringing sleet from the Baltic with the day lasting all of five hours in the south and none in Lapland. But now the day lasts almost 20 hours (and 24 in the north) and the air is warm and sweet and the nature suddenly burst to life (to be extinguished again in a matter of mere months). It is this violent contrast that makes the experience so strong and memorable. Further towards the tundra and the summer will be too faint to register and the winter too dominating and to the south the light and dark will be more mixed, less violently opposed, and the summer warmth longer and more reliable (last summer we had almost no hot days at all). This is an exhausting mixture (for these few mad, energy bursting weeks we have in exchange long dark months of fall and winter), but exhilarating also: a crazy, manic-depressive year, violently alternating between extremes of light and dark, of cold and warmth...

No harsh patronage

Last week the new member of the family finally arrived - it had been a long and at times a very difficult wait. It is a curious activity, caring for the young, no more worthwhile thing easily found in this world. Not very Nietzschean I guess to be in service, and that's what it is, serving; and what is truly harsh is the way we measure that service: there is no way of perfection, and partially the unconditional trust is always failed. But this is how we are weighed, in deeds, not thoughts, in love, not intellect - and even if there is no perfection, there is protection and warmth, or the awful, unforgivable lack of them. So, in that sense there is no harsh patronage, even if there is such a hostage to fortune as to lack words to describe, in this unpredictable, uncaring world. With love comes dread, but without love there is nothing here. That is the way of our human world.

We were seventy-six for seven

I suppose my two most eccentric poetic predilections are vastly preferring the early Wallace Stevens to the later production and, even more bizarrely, seeing early Betjeman as a giant of poetry of his era. Later the sentimentality and a certain clumsiness of metre creep through, but the early poems are angelic. This, though naturally on hugely more humble scale, is a kind of equivalent of Eliot's famous confession of being a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics. It belongs to the classical tradition, surely, to appreciate Betjeman's glittering surfaces and rhythmical skill. It has seemed to countless critics (these days I guess no-one is any longer much interested) that this is all there is: a silly pose and a very oldfashioned, passé view of the form and function of poetry. I don't know - it seems such a selfevidently facile view of both young Betjeman and art. He does point to deeper things, indirectly, through the skill, through the offbeat, offcentre handling of the subject matter. You don't have to spell out things, you don't have to shout from the rooftops that this is great, weighty and serious poetry - neither do you have to be deliberately obscure and leave an enticing trail of riddles for dusty academics to uncover (and here we come to early Wallace Stevens as well).

Mõtlen et homme ongi see päev

It is probably far too rarely that I ever pause and reflect on how amazingly successful I have been on the terms that I once so uncompromizingly put to myself. To now have such hostages to fortune, to have such a unified voice, such a coherent way of being in the world was once beyond my wildest dreams. This is of course a very exalted way of putting it - in more mundane words I have simply placed myself open to the random ice cold ways of this uncaring world, as I think we are all obligated to do. And even though for some people this surely would be pitifully little, something always taken for granted, it is not so for me - and that is the only meaningful measure we can have here. So after all these qualifications, this late arrival represents a true measure of success. I should never forget this - that I did after all manage to fashion a self capable of love, of being loved, that this did happen to me no matter how impossible it once seemed.

Dover Beach

We have pitifully little time to achieve full moral maturity here. I wonder if anyone ever has, Shakespeare, maybe? In any case I would think that any such maturity would involve a full realization of our permanent disjointedness. A clever, grasping, amoral animal will forever remain a central part of us ( I can easily recognize that in my own being, the deep, dark impulse). While another part is attempting a strange pilgrimage towards a better home – and sometimes the landscape, the experience feels exhilarating, the cold and the beauty taking the breath away. But mostly not, mostly we muddle, don’t connect, don’t cohere - there will be no escape from that. This we must accept and go on living with the awareness that we would not choose to live so, given liberty to make the choice. Only in this world there won’t ever be such liberty. Sometimes when I watch our carefree little boy I’m filled with huge dread: he could so easily be taken away from us – it’s a cruel, random world after all. The Christians believe that the universe is not so. There will never be no knowing, but all reason tells us otherwise. I wonder if anyone will ever truly be content with that understanding, with no self-deception or wishful thinking involved.

Oh Ontario, oh Jennifer Jason Leigh

For me music almost never compares with literature. But when it does, it does it with force - at its best it really can compete with poetry. Which is much said from me. So, I do have a small selection of musical favourites, basically centering on pop (classical music, dance and heavy rock among others suffer from the non-centrality of words in them), just certain individual songs, not whole ouvres. And very few contemporary bands, and only one whose lyrics I really respect as pure poetry: The Weakerthans' lyrics have an amazing reach and depth, amazing quirky freshness. And not just as part of the totality of a song and performance, but they also work as they are, as just language. This almost never happens. Well, perhaps there is a certain connection anyway between gloomy Winnipeg and gloomy South of Finland, a certain sympathy but in any case John K Samson is one of the few contemporary poets whose work I follow.

Stars in their pockets like grains of sand

There is a great concept in the Finnish language: "yleissivistys". It approximately means the standard of knowledge and understanding that a well educated, well rounded person should have. History, geography, foreign languages, high art and culture etc. etc. are thought to naturally belong to this category, but it is strange how little natural sciences and mathematics figure in it. This is surely quite a universal state of affairs anywhere in the industrial world - you can be thought as a knowledgeable and highly educated person without having the faintest idea of the structure and nature of our physical universe. (That can, btw, only be described as strange beyond anyone's imagination - or I suppose it could be said that our Newtonian common sense experience is the strangely behaving anomaly here.) Modern physics especially has me standing in pure awe (though I rarely admit to it). One could think that much of this wild and highly abstract theorizing is meaningless unless it were for the fact that time and time again theories have been proven correct after a practical, empiricial experiment has - often long after - become possible.  I do claim primacy for our human sciences, but they too operate in the physical world: we should understand the sheer magical strangeness of it. (I would even argue that the humanities would be best positioned to give depth and meaning to these amazing findings, but they seem to lack both interest and capability of even beginning to explore these treasures.)

Not guilty

To continue the theme from the previous post. I think that what most clearly characterizes, defines my brand of robust and self-confident liberalism from its bland and diluted official version (that basically everyone, kind of, supports in one way or the other) is that it is completely unapologetic. I’m quite aware of the awful crimes committed in the name of the liberal civilization (and some of them even genuinely so). Well, our human history is in any case based on awful crimes. If any random tyranny manages to establish a certain stability for a couple of generations, that stability will be based on crime and aggression, it will be maintained by crime and aggression and it will be destroyed by them. That is what history is, what it (most likely) will be and what it has been. The only feeble exception is this unique effort for rational self-control. It is of course gigantic hubris to think that it will amount to anything: in fact it is almost certainly bound to fail. But in that failure it would not be remarkable: without reason and self-control all our efforts will fail. It is the attempt that is unique – the first conscious effort ever to end the slow holocaust of history.

The centre that couldn't hold

The early 20th century was such brutal time to liberal self-belief in the West: the twin nightmares of the world wars, the collapse of the international system, the world depression followed by sustained, credible and vital totalitarian challenges. And after all that, amidst all the ruins of the mid-century stood - yes, Western liberalism. A curious end to all those horrendous blows. But they did have an effect: postwar liberalism has been a hollow materialist affair, there is no vigour, no self-assuredness left, only a method of increasing production. The masses are apathetic, tired by work, consuming mindless entertainment. The elites are intellectually timid and morally puny, concentrating on their technocratic efficiency. This apologetic affair is an alien liberalism for me - the tradition is not, should not be defined by doubt and uncertainty but by a fierce assertion of doubt and uncertainty combined with a firm, self-confident rejection of all those pathetic (and morally and intellectually disastrous) projects to force a pretended certainty on our human experience (I suppose currently the strongest version is the primitive fundamentalist religion). But that sort of confidence and affirmation is not what we have, and as there sooner or later will become an existential crisis in one form or another, I don't believe that these undefended positions will be held, however correct and proper response they are to our experience of being in the world. This simply won't do, not indefinitely.

"One of Freedom's wars"

After finishing Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy it is not possible not to feel that something absolutely profound has been said about the First World War. Not everything there is to say of course, that would be an impossibility, and one can legitimately see flaws and inaccuracies in the text but one cannot avoid a recognition that something deeply meaningful has been posited, a meaningful dialogue opened. That is what fiction is able to do: to bridge two experiences. One would think that the study of history as an academic discipline would aim for the same result only using different methods and being bound by stricter and narrower rules. It doesn't though. Good, profound historical research is exceedingly rare. The discipline is defined in practice in a way to preclude any attempt to profundity, any centering of human experience, the wildness of our human experience.

The study of history is largely an elaborate kabuki play whose relation to actual human experience is tortuous and distant. This comes from aiming to "scientific" respectability. It is an old axiom that history as a discipline is the closest to literature. Well, most historians are deeply ashamed of this claim instead of seeing it as an accolade that it is (and those that are enthusiastic about it are that for all the wrong reasons). There is a difference to human sciences - and this statement comes from someone who largely does accept that history only happens in the physical and material world and that historians should aim for explaining causation. Still there is a difference that comes from our own nature of being aware creators of meanings. Not only do we need to map out the material boundaries but also their meaning to our passionate lives. So, this is where academic history fails: we no doubt have a long queue of angry historians defending the generals against Barker's powerful indictment, defending power and its distortions - or being entangled in the absurd complexities of the radical theory, not seeing the deepness of the tragedy, leaving all profundity to fiction. A strange spectacle.

Hier stehe ich

The famous stand by Luther at Worms epitomizes to many modern politically correct academics the vast sins of the era of the reformation: the monstrous Western ego, the manic strive for domination, the single track railroads to Auschwitz and what you have. Of course Protestantism is seen these days more as a concequence than cause of modernity (when it is thought about analytically at all), but nevertheless it is very popular to see the emergence of the post-medieval Europe as a costly moral failure. I don't share that perspective: in my eyes Protestantism very obviously opened the gates for enlightenment and emancipation. (This is not to deny the existence of the monstrous ego and the bloody strive for domination - but that is only one aspect of a complex whole.) The American Puritans started by hunting witches - mere two centuries later they were freeing slaves, fighting for gender equality, combatting imperialism and aggression, renouncing primitive theologies. Or the best of them were: there is a deep duality to the experience, a highminded, progressive and enlightened impulse resisted by know-nothing, panicky fundamentalism. And as much as I admire the majestic liberal turn of the Anglo-American non-conformism, there is a certain note of abstraction and distance in this admiration - which probably comes from my Lutheran Finnish pietist background - compared with icy Calvin, Luther certainly was a wretched sinner, a monstrous man, who somehow still managed to form in parts a universally meaningful message on human experience, the kind of height that Calvin never achieved: simul peccator et iustus. Which is the most anyone can really be in this imperfect, cruel human world. But that note of mysticism perhaps makes one less inclined to activism and concrete deeds...

The way of the world

I have repeatedly argued on these pages that we are fundamentally imprisoned by history and unable to liberate ourselves as a collective from our shortsighted, grasping human nature. What this means on the high political level is that reasonable, intelligent people hardly ever get to the real power and if they by some miracle do, they are utterly unable to rule with intelligence and reason. All political cultures, all political processes are fundamentally irrational. Even our liberal democratic solution that at least tries to approximate as reasonable course as possible. So, today we seem to have a person exceptionally intelligent, perhaps exceptionally reasonable being harshly bounded by one of the most dysfunctional Western political systems. What he, his administration can achieve remains to be seen - but in any case it will be radically less than what he is expected to accomplish. The system would need a more fundamental New Deal than what FDR accomplished but maybe at least some key reforms can be implemented and the present disastrous slide into moral decadence at least halted. Perhaps even this is to hope too much: so far Obama seems overly cautious, overly bound to the established, and corrupt, and irrational, folkways of the imperial Washington. Much, too much, is depending on a single person, however intelligent, however well-meaning. Interesting times, these.

Keats reconsidered

I suppose the Romantics are the least congenial group of writers for me when it comes to English literature. O, that artificial diction and saccharine sentiment... Etc. Those exclamations, loose, undisciplined language. But now at least with Keats (and why not then with others) it seems that my very early judgment was wrong again. I think it was based on Endymion and Hyperion where he certainly is not my cup of syrup. Should have gone for the better stuff, I guess. His letters certainly give a marvellous image of a frighteningly perceptive and still amazingly humane and likeable great artist (seems to be a very rare combination). In fact the tone reminds me of Charles Sorley and does then give an idea of his potential; even more cruelly early end for his career - Keats at least had time to show his mature scope. It seems that the Romantics were exceptionally uneven in their output - they seem to have been really good when they were good, but much of the time they didn't perform near their peak, and when they were bad... On the whole, there is in me a certain preference for more classical, more controlled and distanced emotional approach in art. I tend to distrust overt artistic emotion especially when it seems to control the form and twist it unshapely, unpolished.

Sense and unsentimentality

I have lately been delighting in the New Pelican Guide to English Literature on my work trips. The series originates from the 1950's, my revised edition being from 1982. This probably explains why the marvelously quirky and individual writers treat literature if it were a universally important and serious moral concern. Postmodernity has certainly gotten rid of that attitude and the literature departments around the world are for the most part happily free of anything universally important and serious. Or of any love of literature. Anyway, I'm now in the middle of part 5, From Blake to Byron and two exceptionally challenging and perceptive essays, one by Lionel Trilling on Mansfield Park and the other by Malcolm Bradbury on Emma, made me think again my lukewarm attitude to Jane Austen.

I have never been too fond of that steely tory glitter behind the graceful prose. But it might be that the provinciality is on my side mostly after all: there perhaps is certain universality that can be glimpsed through that absolute integrity and serious moral concern however constricted they appear to an unsympathetic and hasty reader. I recently happened to reread Pride and Prejudice (I suppose after 25 years) and the experience was admittedly very remarkable: the text was so deceptively effortless and elegant that one might really mistake the story itself to be the fundamental concern, actually pretty much as modern Hollywood seems to "read" Austen. But afterwards, what was left was a feeling of something having been very severely and unsentimentally weighed. That serious severe weighing is the essence of Austen - and it should be our own attitude in this decadent and emotionally overindulgent era. Not to mention intellectually confused.

Nurmo municipality in memoriam

The sorry spectacle of the current local government "reform" has now reached my home town of Nurmo which will be amalgamated with the provincial capital by midnight. An efficient service provider with better performance in every key statistic will join with a much bigger, less efficient and more bureaucratic unit. On the national level this so called reform will certainly achieve bigger service organizations - though in quite random and ragtag fashion - without touching the very heavy structures of the services itself. Some haphazard savings will probably be made but the fundamental issues will be left untouched. This is the democratic political process at its sorriest: every main party was driven by its special interests towards a different overall solution with the end result being even worse than any of the proposed individual schemes.

The process in Nurmo was especially repulsive: a strong and active citizen opinion (almost two thirds in a well attended municipal referendum opposed the solution) was overruled by the morally - one hopes only that - corrupt local council which ended up agreeing with the proposal by one vote majority. The amazingly ugly strong arm tactics led by the leading provincial daily ended up successful. The Burkean in me simply detests abstract, arbitrary principles being chosen over actual historical experience, a deeply rooted local identity. But I suppose our Scandinavian governmental system is one of the least Burkean in existance. From that angle it is inconceivable that local identities would be important as such, that the coats of arms, lines and names on maps, shared historical experiences would be just as important to people as the municipalities' role as social service providers. Any more Burkean reform would have respected and kept these valuable symbolic forms while reforming the substance carefully and effectively. Now we ended up with the worst of both worlds: losing the local rooted identity and keeping essentially in place the top heavy service delivery structures. Oh well, the way of the world...


Postscript in Finnish:

Ilkka-lehden toiminta tässä surkuhupaisassa prosessissa hakee vertaistaan. On toki totuttu melkoisen ruokottomaan menoon sen suhteen, mutta tässä silmittömässä kampanjassa kyllä välillä jätettiin väliin ne alkeellisimmatkin ammattimaisen journalismin periaatteet. Toimituksen johdossa on aktiivisia toimijoita ja vaikuttajia Seinäjoen kunnallispolitiikassa ja journalistiset toimintatavat näköjään alistettiin näiden vaikuttajien henkilökohtaisille poliittisille intresseille. Tätä ei mitenkään lehden kommentti-artikkeleissa edes vaivauduttu peittelemään. Uutisointi oli äärimmäisen värittynyttä ja manipuloitua ja prosessista annettu kuva ilmeisesti aivan tarkoituksellisen vääristynyt. Karua on meno Hokkas-slovakiassa. Nurmon valtuuston toiminta on sitten saaga erikseen - toivoa sopii, että romahdus oli sentään vain älyn ja poliittisen ymmärryksen tasolla. Epäilemättä joka tapauksessa tämän räikeän epädemokraattisen enemmistön kirstuun poikii jatkossa myös maallista hyvää erinäisten postien ja arvonimien suhteen. On ilmeisesti poikinutkin jo: hyvä taito osata nöyrästi kumartaa oikealle ja pyllistää oikealle taholle vaikka sitten tämä jälkimmäinen olisikin se jota vaaleilla valittuna olisi pitänyt edustaa.

Keynesian times

A link to an excellent introduction to Keynes in the context of the present crisis by Skidelsky. Certainly a right person for the task: his brilliant biography of Keynes was my first real introduction to this crazily talented, fascinating 20th century figure. Of course Keynes' economics and his quite crucial role in turning back the left and right radical totalitarian tide are of enormous importance, but I do feel that his relevance extends beyond this. For me it was hugely significant that he was much concerned (as Skidelsky points out in the article) with probability, causality and uncertainty as the context of all social and historical action. In an immeasurably more modest fashion those were the very same themes that I was engaged with when coming to a settled understanding of the study of history, its nature, role and scope. I felt that what Keynes said about economic action was universally true of all sectors of human activity. Our historical stage is a very Keynesian stage. So, for me, it is only in this narrow sense of re-encountering a possibly very terrifying collapse of trust in the economic structures that it could be said that Keynes has again become relevant - he never stopped being relevant.

Like swimmers into cleanness leaping

I only too rarely read Finnish literature. I had my fill of the classics very early on and have barely kept abreast of the contemporary scene. Though those books that have made an impression have made a strong one. I’m now in the middle of Sofi Oksanen’s “Puhdistus”. Grim, grim text – the immediate context being the introduction of Stalinism into a civil society, the violence against women, the horrible scars that history leaves. Amazingly well written, such economical, beautiful language. While reading the first pages I was struck by the universal theme of loss of innocence that also began to emerge from the story. This is of course something that concerns all of us: we all are hardened, at least to a degree, we all get cynical, at least to a degree, we all get callous, at least to a degree. But beyond this ordinary coarsening in this fundamentally harsh world there are whole categories of experience that we modern Westerners have largely escaped, that we scarcely believe possible. This does not mean that we would be immune to them, or that we, or our descendants would have a guarantee of never encountering them. We have been lucky in the blind accident of our historical moment. That is all.

Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do

We would urgently need a coherent theoretical framework to replace the crude market faith that is currently becoming more and more obsolete. Well, actually intellectually it has always been obsolete, it was born obsolete, but immense concentrations of power will support and create belief structures around them. We can see this reflex in the immense cohorts of semi- or partially educated market enthusiasts on the Web. (Not to talk about the hate filled American right wing talk radio whose main role in the world is I guess to keep corporate interests safe, never mind the unborn fetuses or Darwin in the last analysis.) However wrong, power speaks loudly - and in the context of market economy, it is not even completely wrong. Strictly regulated markets do work (and are not too unstable to create overwhelming social backlashes). So, what is needed is a subtle, intellectually flexible approach - a sane middle way. Now should I hold my breath?

Surprised by joy

A striking and pleasant sight on this morning's rush hour train: two high school boys, not more than 16 years old, very obviously more than friends. Nothing particular really one might say and surely even today they were braving something (though certainly not with an air of proving any point, just engaging in private happiness quite unselfconsciously). But I was suddenly struck by the thought of how much more they would have been braving mere 20 years ago (actually the whole scene would have been pretty much unimaginable) - there truly is a strong, forceful wave of tolerance and reason spreading through the younger generations all over the industrialized world. And in that moment I felt - perhaps a non sequitur - that there still is vitality and selfconfidence in the old enlightenment West. The tide of emancipation still is advancing, still alive.

Happy days are here again?

Even two months ago I would not have thought it really crucial which candidate would be elected to be the president of the USA. Two months can be a very long time. I guess it has not been truly realized how tremendous these Wall Street tremors have been. With a less imaginitive and interventionist Federal Reserve we might already been a long way into a global depression. These are very dangerous times, almost comparable to the times of Roosevelt and Churchill - whose election to power was the proof of the vitality and self-confidence of the liberal West. Maybe this decision is a similar sign. So perhaps we would then get the USA back to the serious business of leading the Western alliance - the moment of hyperpowerdom and unilateralist hubris passed quickly but so much damage was made in that short time. Such a disastrous abandonment of wisdom and moderation by the American nationalist right with their aggressive America firstism: no real understanding, no long views. I have now CCR on, the voice of America - such a good feeling to feel the optimism and hope radiating once again from across the Atlantic. One only wonders how long it takes before the freezing cold winds of history will wipe this optimism away. Well, just perhaps not this time.