Dynamics of radicalism

We have now had in our recent elections interestingly a very slight whiff of actual radicalism. The "True Finn" party as a whole is more a renewal of our venerable rural populist party SMP just in somewhat more urban circumstances, and not really remotely radical in a serious way. But they do have a Southern metropolitan and fairly educated wing that is a relatively nasty, polarizing force somehow getting energy from the pitifully few immigrants from culturally more distant countries that we now have in Finland. This is probably neither here nor there, a passing phenomenon (Western populations getting to terms with globalization), but it got me thinking about circumstances where the centre does not hold, where liberal democracy is either weak or non-existant.

I myself go instinctively for the extreme middle way, aiming to cohere, construct, approving of messy, pragmatic compromizes, rational dialogues. These reflexes are the fundamental base of our Western liberal democracy. The true radicals, on any issue, aim to polarize, to weaken the centre, to disrupt the rational discourse. If they are weak, it is them who are marginalized, if they are strong enough, it's the rational centre that gets marginalized. Terry Eagleton characterizes liberalism as an ideology that would seek a compromize between fascists and non-fascists, but that's deeply unfair and misleading. Inherent in liberalism is a distrust of passion and fanatism, a lesson learned from our bitter historical experience that rational dialogue must not be extinguished. A radical for me is a person who in the fight against fascism chooses Stalinism, or vice versa. It is the extremes that get hard to distinguish from each other, never the centre.

Tea, anyone?

I am not hugely interested in party politics. It's mostly surface froth anyway and these days absolutely divorced from any high ideals of citizenship and collective responsibility. (I think there was a period when the situation was noticeably better though that's probably a controversial opinion - but there was a moment, I do believe, when it was seriously thought that participatory politics mattered.) Still, there is a sort of groundswell coming in Finland with our version of the Tea Party (angry, not highly educated middle-aged men) rising remarkably in the polls. Much misdirected anger and rage fuelling the "movement". We have so few immigrants that it is quite an acrobatic achievement to create a huge national problem out of them. I guess it is something manageable, something tangible that you can understand and do something about it.

The actual, genuine problems seem to be so far out of the citizens' hands that it's easier just not to see them. In the end it will probably not amount to much anything. An opportunity once again lost - we would need real reform of the political process and social structures in general, but this wave of populism will likely not establish any and will probably make this real reform even more difficult. Oh well.

Dies irae

I have been delighting in the majestic language of James Baldwin in his Collected Essays. It is almost always an exceptional treat to read non-fiction by great fiction writers. Most of them seem to have an automatic knack how not to write in bad language. In great contrast with academics - especially academic literary critics (odd, but there you are). Baldwin certainly writes great prose, but that's only one aspect of the essays - the language fuses with the thinking: the thoughts and the medium they are expressed in fuse (this must surely be true of all great writing). I don't know much about Baldwin, I'm sure the private person is different from the public writer, probably less likeable.

I don't much care - here he takes painful issue with American racial tensions (always at the heart of the republic which should never be forgotten) and African-American experience not in a particularist way, but in a universal way (which universality can only be reached through particular experience, particular circumstances).

I am supposedly that rare thing, a white liberal without personal historical guilt, but I am a Burkean liberal after all. We should remember the particular awful, unspeakable things done in the past, being done today, but they are fundamentally universal failings, humankind's failings. Our failings.

The History Boys

Even while watching the opening scenes I was wondering whether I should really enjoy the movie - it was very obvious, from the opening scenes, that I would. But it was not wholly indulgent and not wholly sentimental. There were genuinely good bits there. Apart from the various buttons of mine that it very expertly happened to push. Sentimentality is one of the worst sins, if not the worst, and much loved by Hollywood (and West End and Broadway). Indulgence is the invariable companion to it: things too pretty, solutions too easy, all sugared by cheap sentiment, sugaring it in turn. You can of course err in the other direction as well with too easy cynicism, killing all emotion, all sympathy. A narrow path to negotiate. Anyway, history is a curious beast - and we curious pray (but we are not only pray). This state of affairs was not totally hidden by the movie, so I think my enjoyment was permissible after all...

Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa (thrice)

I'm sure Tom Stoppard has been amply punished by the academics for the glittering of his language. You cannot fundamentally be a serious writer if your text is madly funny and witty, and if you time comic dialogue like an angel. That's unserious. I am currently re-reading Arcadia - have seen it only once, a very polished Gate Theatre performance in Dublin - and it never ceases to amaze how well someone can write. Stoppardian wit, seriousness and language correspond very closely with my own esthetic ideals - it's very liberal art, very liberal concerns. It's not all there is, naturally, but through his skill, through his language Stoppard surpasses such limitations, and easily, effortlessly approaches universality. That is how it should be done. And there's a deadly seriousness in it.

Come senators, congressmen

I believe much of the Obama administration's strange, even tragic inefficiency would be explained if he actually were centre-right instead of slightly centre-left as he was portrayed in the campaign. What lately used to be moderate Republican stances are quite identical to his apparent thinking and reflexes. This would then be at the core of this wasted opportunity: a system so broken that it does not appear reformable, it no longer lets serious reformers through. We'll see how far the wave of current Republican madness will reach. Surely some kind of a transformation will eventually occur, as this money-infested, decadent system won't be capable of self-correction. Strange, unpleasant times.

Reminiscences

It is strange how the past appears to us: as series of sharply recollected moments against a more general background of imprecise atmosphere. I have had cause lately to recall a past conversation that for some reason has been etched very clearly to my mind. The words do still echo through the time. I was 18 at the time, and frozen. I was debating with a pietist friend about praying: I was already then a vague pietist-agnostic, not really much concerned with God but still vehement about the issue. 

My friend said that he would certainly pray for example in the case of a loved one being seriously ill. I disagreed very strongly: I would not beg for what is right. A question of pride then, largely. I thought I knew sorrow but I only knew pain; I was frozen and burning at that time, flaming ice. Now melted for many years with just foggy memories of that all-pervading hurt. But not without sorrow, not without unconditional love.

Along the narrow path of grace

I was born in the middle of high-minded liberal Protestantism - and when it comes to stakes in high-mindedness there are few traditions, if any, to compete with liberal Protestantism. Luckily in my case it was much softened by the mysticism and radical existentialism of Finnish Pietism as high minded and as liberal as it is. It was handed on with love and acceptance (and in this we were luckier than the earlier generations), along, of course, with the unreal beauty and longing of the Pietist folk melodies. One can hardly think of better inheritance or one more at odds with the realities of our human world. Of course, there are many things besides sorrow here, but there is much sorrow - and if that sorrow and homesickness are not seen as an inherent part of our experience in the world, how deep can that experience be? I can well understand the rationalist critics, I share with Dawkins the estimation of the factual odds of a God existing (almost non-existent), but I have never thought that this was the point of the particular tradition that I was born in. It has a deeper point, a more serious point.

Philadelphia that the spiders ate

I guess it is my country background that makes me wince to see fields turned into suburbs. A strange, alarming sight. I never had to work on fields in any serious way but I still felt their importance in my boyhood. Not a long time had passed then, almost none at all. I suppose that names of the fields are one of the biggest groups of place names in Finland - how many names now forgotten, buried by streets or overgrown by trees? So much sweat, so many generations, so many tales. Now gone. A whole culture, a world has passed during the life time of my parents, their world, their culture. In Southern Ostrobothnia that is: in one generation we moved from agriculture into service industry and high technology. In many ways it has been all for the best, but not in all cases, not at all. So much of the world of my childhood now eaten by spiders, so much long gone that once seemed so permanent. We are like grass. Of course things are immeasureably better now, but this mad, blind change does not inspire much trust in it's long term direction. There is no memory and no control, only change.

Matter of England - A Canterbury Tale

Most of my Irish friends would better not read this post... I have been an anglophile since quite early childhood, strangely enough. Noel Streatfield, The Railway Children (oddly, our family seemed to specialice in classic English children's literature in our remote Southern Ostrobothnia of the 70's), only a bit later Rosemary Sutcliffe and Susan Cooper converted me before I even had encountered the English literary canon (which surely is one of the wonders of the world). Of course by an outsider anglophilia tends to be a romantic affair: for me England, even now, though not present day England, is the home of liberalism and reason, its literature the place where passion coheres with and is bounded by intellect. It certainly is, realistically, the place where my brand of middle way did historically originate. Of course it was only ever a part of the story, even if the best part, and has now mostly vanished anyway. The strange death of liberal England. I don't know why I should have been reminded of this and A Canterbury Tale and Emeric Pressburger this October morning. Perhaps it was the light of that magic movie in this foggy and relentlessly darkening and definitely un-English subarctic fall.

Sex, lies and videotape

JP Siili's movie The Panopticon (and no, that's not its name, instead we have, absurdly, "Young Gods") got a very chilly critical reception in its time. It was accused of being titillating, pointless semi-pornography - and that surely was a reasonable charge (especially in the light of  his later productions, slick and calculated, though not especially daring or even pornographic). The viewers though hated it almost as much as the critics, and there are very few things that are more beloved by movie goers than titillating, pointless semi-pornography. I guess it does qualify as such for some. I wouldn't say it myself - nudity, genitals, our various sexual activities seem rather commonplace, matter of fact things.

This is what we are and what we do, not very elegant, perhaps, but there we are. Yes, surely there is also an element of titillation, often at least, but if the movie is any good, the story absorbs it: nudity, genitals, the various (and invariably quite banal) acrobatics will connect with the rest of the action. And if they don't, well, then it does tend to become pointless semi-pornography and, so, much beloved by most people. The Panopticon is an odd movie, I guess it's not really good, very clumsy in parts (and one wonders what the intentions really were), unpleasant, but it works in its fashion, and is strangely impressive. One of the very few modern Finnish mainstream movies that doesn't treat sex sentimentally and/or commercially. Sex really isn't a very sentimental business, in the final analysis. Or even commercial.

Look into your heart, you will find a county Sligo

Once again reading ancient Irish history (which can only be bettered by the taste of whiskey). Rehearsing familiar scenes, Collins dying, de Valera definitely living (might have been better the other way round). Strange how early I became interested in Irish history (especially the years between 1880-1923). But it was only a lengthy stay in Ireland that got me to combine my even older anglophilia with the hibernian equivalent. Yeats, of course, and the Anglo-Irish tradition, but seeing and feeling the place made the difference. There are many parallels with Finland of course, not only in history and politics, but in mentality. Swedes I think mix better with the middle class English. A certain common narrowness also, but I think the cultural barrenness lasted longer in Ireland though Finland never reached such heigths from where to descend. High ideals seem to have a universal way of transforming into mundane and dispiriting realities...

From the shadow of the factory

I have been reading the excellent literary biography of Toivo Pekkanen by Matti Mäkelä. To write about this is of course very esoteric on many levels. But first and foremost because of the subject matter. Pekkanen is probably the most remote novelist imaginable to our current middle class consumer society. He emerged from the poorest working class in the early part of the 20th century, knew actual hunger and wrote in the context of a rigid and deeply divided class society. Mäkelä makes a very good point that the fact that Pekkanen is remote and unknown today is partly due to his own significant influence. He rejected the hate filled dichotomies and despite being resolutely non party political was a most social democratic writer, compromizer, integrator. He pointed, mapped out, the way to the future. These days he is obscure, but these days also serious literature itself is obscure, seriousness, I suppose, is obscure. Having so thoroughly immersed myself in literature and literary culture, I am a walking anachronism in this amnesiastic, hedonist society. Is there anything meaningful to say about this state of affairs? I suppose our postmodern answer would be, no. Can't help it though. A writer writing about a writer, intelligently, penetratingly, skillfully is such a joy, and not only a joy: long vistas are opened, thoughts provoked. Mäkelä is playful but his playfulness hides a fundamental - and, yes, anachronistic - seriousness. Strange to be concerned, moved by such long forgotten things.

Kaunim linn Eestis

I guess I'm lucky that Tartu is not so well known a place with my Estonia travelling compatriots. The crawling distance from Tallinn harbour to the Old Town is thankfully good enough for most. (You don't actually need to leave the harbour nowadays at all for your cheap booze and grub, very practical.) But the hectic rough and tumble of Tallinn is nothing compared with the friendly cerebral Tartu - the first place in Estonia I ever visited, and the best. Estonia is such a lovely country for a Scandinavian traveller. Ideologically I absolutely prefer my native Nordic society with its idiosyncratic Finno-Ugric variations to the very hard and tough, often ice cold Estonian structures, but culturally Estonia feels much more cosmopolitan, both more connected to Central Europe and Russia than our culturally isolated, perennially towards Stockholm turned Finland. You can see this in shops, restaurants and cafés whose quality and variety far exceed our monotonous Scandinavian style industrialized fare. To lazily spend time in summery Tartu is such a luxurious experience, much missed, as these days chances for that don't come very often. Such a lovely place.

On hearing about a 2 years old boy's disappearance

Seeing this news made me almost physically sick - whereas before it would have merited only a glance and just abstract sympathy. Such hostages to fortune in this random world. I suspect that children dying is the fundamental reason why we still employ gods, as little of use as they appear to be. God is the only abstraction that can deal with this issue. No science, no reason, nothing human is able to correct such an unspeakable thing, only God can, should he/she/it only exist. Which isn't very likely, so in practice we can only close our eyes and trust our luck and pretend that every man is an island, that no such loss is a common loss. What else is there to be done?

Quite an uninvited "et in Arcadia ego" moment into this high Nordic summer of brilliant blue skies and warm and light nights. There is not much to compare to this schizophrenic subarctic nature, from dark and grim November to this sudden explosion of life and light. And that's how it goes here: we remain perpetually poised, for our brief moment here, between great beauty and certain loss. There is also hope and proportion in this sentiment as grim as it may sound. We give hostages to fortune should we be so lucky, and I have been very lucky in my life, every moment a gift.