JaakkoMultanen on Nostr: I wrote about the Finnish "luck constancy" belief and the accompanying envy. I've ...
I wrote about the Finnish "luck constancy" belief and the accompanying envy. I've been thinking where this irrational fixed scarcity mindset comes from, and it's quite understandable when you understand the world where the Finnish people come from...
For centuries, Finns used to be pretty self-sufficient, farming their plots of land in the cold, dark north. Because of the high latitude, farming was possible but very hard (no modern fertilizers!), and didn't really provide enough food to sustain large families reliably.
So, people essentially needed a "second job": they also had to be hunter-gatherers. With that and farming, you could get enough to eat and survive... usually at least.
There were still "lean years" when crops failed and hunger came about. You could find some food in the forest, but it was never plentiful. Things like mushrooms and berries are extremely seasonal.
So, imagine a hunger year, especially if it wasn't just one but a few in a row. These happened every now and then. You knew some spots in the nearby forests where food grew, and you saw some mushrooms pop up but they weren't ripe to pick yet. You left them to grow.
A couple days later, you go pick them up with the hope that MAYBE now your children can survive the coming winter... only to see this extremely scarce and valuable resource of your survival gone with your neighbor who got there just before you did. You experience viscerally this very real, non-artificial scarcity.
A rational person might be able to handle that situation, but you've gone hungry for a long time and been at the edge of your limits for too long already. If you don't go and visit your neighbor with an axe, at the very least you curse them to the seventh hell.
Against this background, and knowing that this dynamic has been constantly at the back of mind for people for centuries, it is understandable if your neighbor getting a new flashy car makes you seethe in unexplainable rage.
That car came from somewhere, and there's just no way it isn't somehow away from you... you don't know how and why exactly, but you feel it deep in your bones. It's almost as if that car was stolen from future you.
Damn that thieving neighbor!
For centuries, Finns used to be pretty self-sufficient, farming their plots of land in the cold, dark north. Because of the high latitude, farming was possible but very hard (no modern fertilizers!), and didn't really provide enough food to sustain large families reliably.
So, people essentially needed a "second job": they also had to be hunter-gatherers. With that and farming, you could get enough to eat and survive... usually at least.
There were still "lean years" when crops failed and hunger came about. You could find some food in the forest, but it was never plentiful. Things like mushrooms and berries are extremely seasonal.
So, imagine a hunger year, especially if it wasn't just one but a few in a row. These happened every now and then. You knew some spots in the nearby forests where food grew, and you saw some mushrooms pop up but they weren't ripe to pick yet. You left them to grow.
A couple days later, you go pick them up with the hope that MAYBE now your children can survive the coming winter... only to see this extremely scarce and valuable resource of your survival gone with your neighbor who got there just before you did. You experience viscerally this very real, non-artificial scarcity.
A rational person might be able to handle that situation, but you've gone hungry for a long time and been at the edge of your limits for too long already. If you don't go and visit your neighbor with an axe, at the very least you curse them to the seventh hell.
Against this background, and knowing that this dynamic has been constantly at the back of mind for people for centuries, it is understandable if your neighbor getting a new flashy car makes you seethe in unexplainable rage.
That car came from somewhere, and there's just no way it isn't somehow away from you... you don't know how and why exactly, but you feel it deep in your bones. It's almost as if that car was stolen from future you.
Damn that thieving neighbor!
quoting note1lx8…cdpgThe deep cultural beliefs are a great topic to think about. They affect everything without people realizing it themselves.
In Finnish culture, there is a very deep belief of "fortune constancy", or "luck constancy", whichever word you'd like to use. In a nutshell, it means that the amount of good things in life for people is a fixed constant.
If you get anything good in life, I get less.
You might ask "well what exact group of people is that and how much good things are in store", but that would be a rational question, and this is an irrational belief. For the sake of this belief, it is the people around you, and the good things are whatever happens to be. This is about feelings, not an excel sheet.
This fixed scarcity mindset affects everything, and is the main driver behind the cultural phenomenon of Finns being probably the only people in the world who would pay 50€ for their neighbor NOT to get 20€.
That's sort of a joke in Finland, but when you see people actually behaving like that, it's not funny.
This belief results in extreme and active envy, a serious problem in Finland. It's also the main driver behind the unbelievably high tax rate, around 75% of average person's total earnings go to the state in one form or another (and high earners have it even worse).
People think (or rather, subconsciously FEEL) that it's better if the money goes to the state, where they might get some of it back, rather than have all that wealth be taken away forever by other people. Better just let the tax man take everything.
The government knows best what to do with the money, and as some of it comes back in form of services, it's like an investment instead of the permanent loss and misfortune that would surely happen if other people got that money for themselves...