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On December 10, I was invited to partake in a conference. According to the invited speaker's own testimony, he was almost on a government level. The message: it's not going so well for Finland, financially. He also claimed that Finland lacked innovations. He compared Finland to Sweden, which seems to be doing better, and asked the question: why?
The day after, state owned media Yle, the Swedish-speaking version, published an article with a similar message (Schauman, 2024).
The backstory is that I was invited to Finland because of my expertise in entrepreneurial thinking and creativity – a prerequisite for innovation.
During the conference, I therefore remarked what is common knowledge, that Swedish culture to a great extent is marked by entrepreneurial thinking, but I didn't mention the more sensitive information – that Finnish culture to a great extent is marked by tribalism (Pagel, 2019).
Entrepreneurial thinking:
- is about learning from others, and is marked by a disjunctive outlook on things, heterodoxy, and willingness to learn from mistakes.
- is a consequence of something called the executive functions – a set of cognitive processes that support goal-directed behavior, and creativity, by regulating thoughts and actions through cognitive control, selecting and successfully monitoring actions that facilitate the attainment of chosen objectives (Ardila, 2008, Ardila et al. 2018; Adornetti, 2016; Barkley, 2001; Diamond and Lee, 2011; Pribram, 1973), which explains the existence of all artifacts on the planet, as well as global progress.
Tribalism, on the other hand, is marked by one-sided outlooks, dogma/moral shaming, and unwillingness to admit being wrong.
The latter is of course devastating, especially if your decision making will have implications on other peoples life, e.g. a family life or in an organization of people.
Facit, Nokia, and Kodak have become three famous examples where the executive management's:
-
goal-directed behavior failed.
- ability to admit being wrong also failed.
A current study tested willingness to admit being wrong, as a function of one-sided versus a disjunctive outlook (The whole picture) and overconfidence.
Link to source. Here's a Link to the popular version.
The study's design included three groups: A, B, and C, and two one-sided arguments - 1 and 2. Group A received information about alternative 1, group B received information about alternative 2, and group C received information about both 1 and 2.
The result of the study revealed that those who were handed one-sided information (group A and B) were more confident in their decision and more reluctant to admit they were wrong compared to those who received all information (C) - had a disjunctive outlook.
The result can be applied to a variety of situations, and because I'm an expert and in Finland, I can relate.
More than 1000 years ago, Satakunda (Finlandia Septentrionalis~germanic North), which today is divided into Satakunta and Birkaland, integrated to the sea Kingdom of Tiundaland in Svitjod (Klinge, 1985), which from 1384 was called the kingdom of Sweden (Harrison, 2018).
“Tiundaland is a historic region, Folkland, and since 1296 part of the modern province of Uppland. It originally meant the land of the ten hundreds and referred to its duty of providing 1000 men and 40 ships for the Swedish king's leidang” (Wikipedia).The connotation of Satakunda also includes hundreds, but villages or similar (Recent testimony from a Finnish historian).
Because of ship-building and ornamented war helmets (in Vendel) occurred in the region during the Vendel period (540 - 790 AD), northern Europe's larges cathedral was constructed and erected there (ca 1270-), and also saw the founding of Uppsala university (1477), one can assume that:
- the culture in Tiundaland was based on entrepreneurial thinking promoted by functioning leadership style (for that time).
- this culture was transferred to the northeast. Not because it was the shortest distance, but because the wind was blowing in that direction.
In 1808, Russia invaded the Swedish naval fortress Sveaborg (1748 - ), situated just outside of Helsingfors in the southeast of the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom. Vice Admiral Cronstedt chose to surrender and thus probably saved the lives of more than 5,000 people who lived on the islands.
Starting 1809, Russia occupied Finland for 108 years until 1917. During the occupation, in 1863, Kreml demanded that the Finns stopped speaking Swedish – the trade language around the Baltic sea and the Gulf of Bothnia – in favor of a uralic-language wihich was spoken in different forms by tribes in the inland.
That's likely when Finnish culture started to transform, away from the entrepreneurial culture started to spread after Satakunda became part of Svitjod, to tribalism, marked by one-sided views and the unwillingness to admit being wrong. One example is the overconfident belief that the uralic-language which was imposed by Kreml in 1863, always was the majority langauge in the country. Another example, which probably was caused by the former, is the belief in the Diet-heart hypothesis – that saturated fat is dangerous for health.
In reality:
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Finland was mainly Swedish-speaking until 1910 - 1940, a timespan which coinside with the country's language strife.
- the diet-heart hypothesis was rejected at least twice decades ago (Howard et al 2006; Ramsden et al 2016; Teicholz, 2023) – saturated fat is crucial for brain health (Mayo CLinic, 2016).
Now, the following are issues in Finland:
- Finnish women's relational aggressiveness (psychological violence; Crick and Grotpeter, 1995; Hyde, 2005) is the biggest challenge (Helsingfors Police department, 2022); 40% of Finnish school children are victims of psychological violence at home (Maj Estlander, Director of Preventive Child Protection Operations at Bensow, 2023).
- The research at The University of Helsingfors has, according to Helsingin Sanomat, and I quote, collapsed (Bäckgren, HS, 2023).
- Finland has the most cases of Alzheimer's in the world. It's twice as common to die of Alzheimer's in Finland compared to Sweden (No 10 in global ranking).
- Finland has issues with its economy and lacks innovation.
Also read: Why does Sweden do better economically than Finland? (Yle) The answer may partly be blowing in the wind
Startup companies criticize the government's intentions to kick experts out of Finland more easily: "They are not interested in social security" Solution? Re-ignite the enlightenment movement
Björn Wahlroos i Stockholm: “Finland är konkursfärdigt”. Min kommentar: Finland behöver återgå till upplysnings/entreprenöriellt tänkande (Swedish, use translate).
See my comment on TikTok or YouTube.
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Article is based on some kind of (possibly deliberate -?) misunderstanding of some very elementary facts. During the Swedish Colonial Period, max 15% of the population of Finland had Swedish as mother tongue. (One part of the exploitation was just the neglecting of the most basic human rights in linguistic terms, of the Finnish majority population, in their own country...)
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