DEI FORUM NORDICS - My experienced of the conference. The case for uniformity and exclusion

Yesterday I was invited to attend a conference about diversity and Inclusiveness. The paradox was that I experienced exclusion when trying to ask questions. I was also verbally abused by a man who claimed that it was inappropriate to ask certain questions. Later I met with many people from the conference with whom I had great discussions.

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Yesterday I was invited to attend a conference about diversity and Inclusiveness (DEI). As I’m a strong proponent of viewpoint diversity and heterogeneity, I thought it would be a good idea to go there to listen to what they hade to say, and to partake in some of the discussion.

The conference had been going on since the morning, and I arrived approximately half past three in the afternoon. I got my own badge and was welcomed in.

A good start!

At the conference, I met with the person who had invited me; we met earlier this week when she was doing a talk for another organization.

On stage was a panel of people discussing various topics concerning relations at the office. One person made a remark that people at the office did presentations only in uralic-finnish.

 Here's the backstory.

Finland have existed since December 6, 1917, after a declaration of independence from Russia. Before that, the area was occupied by Russia (1809 1917). Before Russia started to occupy what is now called Finland, it was the eastern part, a grand duchy (1581– 1809) of the swedish kingdom.

Therefore, for most of its history, the dominant language was the trade language around the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic sea (Swedish).

3500 years before the present, uralic tribes migrated from the north-east of Siberia to the northern Fennoscandia (Lamnidis et al. 2018). They settled in the northern coastal areas, but was later pushed out by the uralic-finns. Both remained minorities, with no written culture. And with no written language, any culture will remain tribal (Pagel, 2019, lecture 3).

~1000 years before that, a massive migration from the Caspian-Pontic steppe arrive to Europe. They brought ox and cart, horses to ride, light skin and hair, and indo-european language (Anthony, 2007; Eiberg et al. 2008; Haak et al. 2015; Hanel and Carlberg, 2020; Lamnidis et al. 2018; Lazaridis et al. 2014).

Sveons, or Svearna, the rulers of Svitjod, the

predecessor of Sweden, established a sea kingdom for trade, a hub between Särkland (areas around the Caspian sea), Gårdarike (modern day Ukraine), to the Frankish kingdom.

Sometimes before the viking era, people in Satakunda applied to become a member of Svitjod. In order to understand the geography of the country, you must imagine it orthogonally to current geography; that means, it wasn’t south-north, but rather east-west. Svitjod centered around lake Mälaren and across the southern quark.

Many trading places was establish in the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom: Åbo (1229), Viborg (1293), Ulvsby/Björneborg (1365), Borgå (1346), Raumo (1442), Nådendal (1443), Helsingfors (1550), Björneborg (1558), Uleåborg (1605), Brahestad (1649) to mention a few.

Later influences from Europe, the renaissance, the science revolution, and the enlightenment reached Sweden, including the eastern part of the Kingdom. In 1640, Queen Christina (1626 – 1689) founded Royal academy of Åbo which later moved and became Helsingfors university.

On May 3 1808, during one of many wars between Sweden and Russia, Russian troops invaded Sveaborg – a fortress erected by the Swedish military (1748 – ). At the time of the Russian invasion, more than 5000 people lived at Sveaborg. It's likely that vice admiral Cronstedts (1756-1820) decision to surrender saved thousands of lives.

The defeat of the eastern part of the Sweddish kingdom and grand duchy a vasall state to Russia. That likely traumatized the population.

The Russian tsar wanted the people in the former eastern patt of the Swedish kingdom to alienate themselves from Sweden. That in may be the likely reason why fennomani emerged in 1810.

Even so, the trade language remained dominant. Finland also kept the Swedish constitution.

Johan L Runeberg (1804 – 1877), who was born in Sweden, but who was forced to die in Russia, wrote Finland’s national hymn, in Swedish. It was later translated to uralic-finnish.

In 1835, a second attempt to form a written uralic-finnish history was made when Lönnroth (1802-1884), who was also born in Sweden, gathered myths or sagas that had until then been communicated by oral tradition, into the epic of Kalevala.

Two month after October 1917, When Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924) staged his famous coup d'etat, eight months after the Russian revolution, Lenin accepted to give the Finns their independence.

Swedish remained an official Finnish language. Today 47 % of the Finnish population speaks Swedish. Few in the North, but likely most people in the south.

So, why is a person at a conference about diversity and inclusion excluding Finland's first and still official language - Swedish? I asked that question, but the person had no good answer. The likely explanation is that she only got information about uralic-finnish.

After the panel discussion, we had a coffee break. And as I was pouring coffee into a paper cup, a big man approached me, saying that my question was very inappropriate and said I should have asked the question off-stage so to speak.

This kind of attempt to suppress freedom of expression is coined verbal violence, and is the opposite to diversity and inclusion. Thankfully the threatening man walked away.

After that the last panel was conducted; my interpretation was that most of the attendants conformed to ideas like gender hypothesis, safe-spaces, and discrimination against gender and skin-colour but not language.

After the conference I met a record number of people who approached me to say hello and add me on Linkedin. That was really inclusive. The plan was to go to a restaurant, but there was left-overs from lunch (which I didn’t attend) and we had a standing talking dinner.

Then we moved downtown for drinks; many of the people joined, and it was all great. One person had studied gender-stuff, and because I'm an anthropolical/evolutionary psychologist, some viepoint diversity occurred. The gender person claimed the data from interviews can lead to an explanation (cause-effect), which of course is false. When the place closed, we moved to another place.

Other discussions emerged between person A, B and me, partly about Finland’s original language and ways to communicate with other people Person A argued that uralic finnish was Finland's first language, and then used anecdotes to support the argument. This is what Lamnidis et al. 2018 writes:

Linguistic evidence shows that Saami languages were spoken in Finland prior to the arrival of the early Finnish language and have dominated the whole of the Finnish region before 1000 CE.

When that didn't work she applied stonewalling which is part of the construct of relational aggressiveness, the opposite to diversity and inclusiveness. The cause of stonewalling and relational aggressiveness is the release of cortisol which blocks the hippocampus and activates the amygdala, triggering flight-flight responces. Its important to remember that things like this originate from within and are explained by lack of emotional and social adjustment during childhood (Österberg, 2004).

Because I know something about emotional psychology (Österberg, 2001), I gave a few suggestions for an alternative explanation and to emphasize reasoning (Pinker, 2011). I also offered B to deconstruct my argument and improve it. That didn’t work immediately, but after 11–20 minutes, B:s facial expressions changed, indicating that he had internalized what I had said. And maybe he will reflect on it for use in other interpersonal encounters forward in time.

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