Kauhajoki: Angst and self-examination
COMMENTARY
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Finland is once again a large and angst-ridden question mark.
The anguish only bites harder, as the answers keep outrunning our grip.
Why Finland, precisely? Why does Finland exhibit so much violence?
This was the question being mulled over less than a year ago in the wake of the Jokela High School killings.
And it is being asked again.
Where in the Finnish body is so much bile and anger stored up that it must explode in killings and murders?
How is one to explain the bloodbaths when there is no marginalisation, no drug abuse, no violence borne as a child, no spiral of institutional care in the personal histories of the gunmen?
Finland is once again in the headlines around the world.
It took the actions of no ministerial brand-image committee to put her there.
We must dare to search out the image of Finland by looking straight in the mirror: why do we have too much scope or too many reasons to grow in the direction of stark inhumanity?
We need a competent and a ruthlessly honest working party to examine these things.
After the bloodshed, there is always loud talk of the weakening of social support structures.
It is so much spent hot air, unless it is followed by actions.
And actions mean money.
Even if Finland’s competitiveness takes a big hit in the doing of it, money has to be found for the mental health of our children and young adults.
Which is not to say that parents are not in need of treatment or that there is nothing amiss with the order of importance we place on things in our society.
This last is gravely out of kilter.
There is a grim sense of speed-blindness in the way we Finns charge forwards through life.
It would be good to pause and reflect where we are going, and on whose terms.
It would also be well to glance around and see who is being left behind.
The role of the Internet gives food for thought in the Kauhajoki tragedy, just as it has before.
The Net does not make a killer of anyone, but global publicity and reach does apparently nurture narcissistic features.
A person appropriates the Almighty’s right to decide upon the life and death of fellow humans.
Others of a similar mind-set are peddling T-shirts lauding the gunman before the day of the killings is out.
It is impossible to fathom from whence this home-made sense of limitless power might bubble up.
It is equally impossible to grasp the admiration of killing, however small the cadre of admirers might be.
The world has truly become a confusing and complex place.
The gunman in Kauhajoki put an end to ten human lives on a perfectly normal September Tuesday.
Then he took his own life.
At the same time he shattered irrevocably the lives of those who lost loved ones.
They will be asking - if they have strength to ask anything - WHY?
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.9.2008
The writer is editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat
REETTA MERILÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
reetta.merilainen@hs.fi
