Bullying as a national disease

We have a presidential election in Finland. The two main candidates are Sauli Niinistö and Pekka Haavisto. Niinistö can be said to represent the old world order in which economical values dictate everything. Haavisto is a representative of the new world order in which humanity, freedom, equality, and environment represent the most important values. For me the choice between these options is easy although I have nothing against Niinistö personally.

Haavisto crystallized something very essential about Finland as a nation as he said that bullying is the national disease of Finland. Teasing begins already in elementary schools and continues in various educational establishments and eventually it continues at working places. Web has become also an arena of bullying providing completely new opportunities. Now and then some-one gets enough. The two mass murders that took place in educational establishments for few years ago are just two sad examples of what "enough is enough" really means.

Personally I belong to the victims of academic bullying. The terror began for 34 years ago and has continued since then. I have lost my academic human rights and have been unemployed most of the time after I began to write my thesis 1977. I will remain so until I get to the age of 63 (only two years of this humiliation anymore!) and start to receive a minimal pension. I have done impressive life work: 15 books making about 12 thousand pages and a lot of articles. This does not means anything since so called "evaluation by equals" (direct translation for "vertaisarviointi"), a scientific equivalent of inquisition, can be used to label my work as crackpottery. There are many people out-broad and also in Finland who appreciate my work and they have made attempts to inform about my work in Wikipedia but (very probably finnish) censors have reacted immediately and vandalized the attempts.

I have tried to understand what drives people to this kind of sadistic behaviors in which human life is literally destroyed. As far as I know, these people are quite descent human beings as individuals. But as members of collective they become sadistic beasts. Or some of them. The others remain completely passive and this is probably the core problem. We do not have the courage to say no when some sociopath starts the cruel game. I am of course just one of the many victims of this national hobby and I sincerely hope that Finland as a nation could heal from it. Haavisto is certainly experienced as a symbol of this healing and my sincere hope is that he wins.