The (Least) Favorite aspects of your culture.

[Carrna]

Ooooh yeaah, wall of text of rant inc. *cracking knuckles*

I hate it how Finland is trying to show everyone how well we're doing, having free education and social welfare, getting good points from PISA, giving billions of euros to other countries while smiling and saying "use it well" like we'd have endless amounts of money.

In reality, Finland is totally not doing well. Yes, we have free education and social welfare, but often those are used as reasons to whip people to do more and more of work so that you wouldn't look like a lazy parasite getting free money. They're adding more hours to grammar schoolers and giving them more homework, like there wouldn't be any need for personal freetime or sleep. People are being taught since kids that resting is bad and many are forcing themselves to go to school and work even if they're ill. Finns are often dying in illnesses caused by long-term ongoing stress.

Most of employers are also demanding ridiculous things from young people who have just graduated. Despite of our population getting older they refuse to take teens to work because they don't have work experience. How the hell are you supposed to get work experience if no one takes you in? So, instead of taking young finns to work they're raising retirement age and trying to keep the old folks working as long as they're still alive.

Which brings us to immigrants. Finland currently has a reputation of being a racistic country. We're not racists, we're just pissed off. You know why? Because of the text above. We have millions of unemployed teens here looking for work, but instead of taking them in they're rather taking immigrants, because that makes them look better and more tolerant in the eyes of other countries. Although they'd lack education and couldn't speak finnish. Finns also get less money from social welfare, just because they're white. So finns are experiencing racism in their own country by their own leaders. If someone has enough courage to publicly go and say "this isn't right" they get blamed of being racists towards immigrants and will be sued.

Finland is also a promised land of school bullies. Schools are trying to cover it up and pretend "no no everyhing's just fine, bullying is just an urban legend" while more and more of children and teens are either getting depressed or killing themselves off. Apart from the bullied and their parents no one else usually wants to intervene with the subject because it'll make the school look bad. It's not easy to get mental help either. Most of people are just given a can of pills, are sent back home and told to survive. Eventually someone snaps and goes to shoot people on streets or kills his/her own family. Then there's huge headlines in afternoon magazines "Could this tragedy have been avoided?"

So. Finland likes to pretend. A lot. And got to mention our beloved politicians as well. If they think Finland needs to save money, the first places they'll take it from are: children, teenagers, sick ones, unemployed, elderly and health care. Despite of the fact that they get paid about 10k euros per month themselves... Good going! *thumb up*

---

Feeling a bit better. Nao I'll go back to play some more gaems and pretend this world around me doesn't exist.