Safe idyll ended in 1980s
"Haste, egocentricity, and well-being have all increased"
By Anna-Riitta Sippola
"It has really changed very much", says bus driver Jouko Ruuth, in his assessment of the situation of his country, as he lights a cigarette.
Ruuth drives a Connex bus from the airport to the centre of Helsinki. "Yes, after ten minutes, please", he tells a foreigner who asks about the schedule.
"Platform number ten."
Ruuth feels that most of the changes since the 1980s have been positive.
As for the negative developments, his main complaint is that "kids walk around drunk with beer bottles in their hands".
The most noticeable aspect of the change is technical development, and adaptation to it. There used to be enough public telephones for anyone's needs. Now there are hardly any. They have simply vanished from the landscape. Anyone who doesn't have a computer gets left behind. On a course for heads of security of apartment blocks, it is noted that all correspondence is by e-mail. There is no need to punch numbers into the ticket machine of the bus, as everything is coded in advance, Ruuth says.
And Helsinki has become more international! "At work people ask me if I speak Finnish."
Mikko Säilynoja, an entrepreneur from Espoo, has just done a light ten-kilometre round on the cross-country skiing track in Paloheinä in the north of Helsinki, and is going to eat with his children. He also sees the pace of events as dizzying. Technology is everywhere. In his view, it can help most people, but not everyone has possibilities to utilise it.
"Working life requires skill and knowledge - too much to some extent. Not everyone manages to keep up with the pace."
"The share-out has not been quite equal", Säilynoja says.
Marita Sipola, from Vantaa, who works as a financial controller in a company, is also out skiing. She pours a hot drink from a thermos bottle, and lists some changes in Finnish society: "Haste, egocentricity, and well-being have all increased."
"Finland is no longer the secure idyllic country it was in the 1980s", she says, referring to globalisation, which cannot be ignored.
Sipola is especially concerned about the increased malaise of children and young people - in a country which has the world's healthiest children.
Dental nurse Toini Olin has been retired for a few years, and laments the great sense of rush that prevails. People are not able to concentrate. They do not seem to care about other people, she ponders.
For instance, in health care, employees are pushed to the limit. "It used to be that we were able to get substitutes."
Toini Olin is standing waiting for the train to Vaasa at Helsinki's main railway station, and she complains about the cutbacks in public transport. Especially on Sundays, bus connections to her home on the far edge of Espoo are few and far between.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 14.2.2006
More on this subject:
 Finland became richer and harder in the last two decades
ANNA-RIITTA SIPPOLA / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-riitta.sippola@hs.fi
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