There is an anime that just started recently, which explores the struggle of Heliocentrism (Earth revolving around Sun) being adopted at a time when anything that goes against Geocentrism (Sun revolving around Earth) was considered blasphemous. I don't know if it will end up good in the end (it's only been 3 episodes out of planned 25), but it already managed to share 2 important ideas, that I will probably remember for a long time.
Beauty of the world
The first one is quite straightforward. There was a dialogue like "I will do this", "But what if you are wrong?", and the final point in that dialogue was "Wrong answer does not mean meaningless answer". It resonates quite strongly with the idea I preach as tech support, that we have to make assumptions, but we need to validate them, and if our assumptions were wrong, we just make new ones based on new information. Kind of "It does not matter how many times you fall, but how many times you get up", but in a more general and somewhat poetic form.
The second one is a bit more complex. In a dialogue a person believing in Heliocentrism is arguing (kind of) with a scholar astrologist about correctness of Geocentrism, and he ask a very simple question: "Is there beauty in such truth? Is the universe you described beautiful?" Technically these are 2 questions, of course, but they are extremely important, because it kicks the earth from under the opponent's feet, making them avoid the question. But the guy persists: "Do you find it to be beautiful?". The scholar thinks out loud for a moment, inevitably claiming, that it does not seem rational, and as such – no, it's not beautiful.
This scene resonated with me a lot. Not just because the scene itself is staged masterfully, with the how the frames are made, with the pacing, and even the music, making you feel, like something broke at that moment, but not in a sense of "broken bone": rather "snapped into place". It also explains how my mind works when I am investigating a problem. In medical terms I would just be autistic (my psychiatrist says there is a very high chance of that, but formal assessment is quite costly), it's just my mind finding non-obvious patterns in quick succession, similar Shaun from "The Good Doctor", but less dramatically. Wrap this into "beauty of the world" concept, though, and it becomes… Well, more beautiful.
I think this is the idea that we may want to apply to our decisions and plans: if we do X, will we view the world as beautiful, after it's done? Nowadays we see a lot of far right and/or borderline (or even outright) nationalistic notions getting popular throughout the world. Arguably, this is happening because of populistic ideas that respective people share. In turn, populism is leveraging our fears, and it's leveraging them out of fear as well. Is the world created based on decisions made out of fear beautiful?
Fear and politics
Don't get me wrong, fear is a valid tool that we do need to use. But as it was showed in "Kuroko no Basket" anime, fear is a tool that shows us our weaknesses, and we need to embrace it to overcome those weaknesses. In that anime the idea was, that a player was so frightened, because he knew his limitations, and thus it made him one of the best team-players, because of mindset "I can't do that, but that guy can, so I will pass it on to him". It did feel a bit forced in the show, but I hope you get the idea.
Not to bash all rights, but the narrative I often hear is based on "immigrants are destroying our way of life, our culture, they are leeches", and it grinds my gears. It grinded my gears even when I heard same things from my parents. They were saying stuff like "Ukrainians are liars", "Armenians are murderers", "Asians are stupid" and stuff like that. They only wanted to work with anyone who is not Russian when the payment for the work was dirt cheap. So cheap, that it was almost like spitting into the face of a worker, to be honest. Does it not remind you of slavery? So, immigrants are bad, because they do bad things, but we will risk it if they do our dirty work for cheap or even free? That's hypocrisy at its finest.
Another part of the narrative is that immigrants are destroying the culture and are in a security threat, and that's why we need to manage them. This does make sense to me. History knows of situations, where cultures were practically destroyed (Indian reservations, anyone?), as well as cases of espionage. But the same can be done by people from within the culture, as well, and probably much more subtle. That does not diminish the need to have some processes that allow us to filter out potential bad actors, but presumption of innocence is still a thing in the modern world.
My point here is that these kinds of narratives are pushed out because of fear, and people buy into them because of their own fears. What if I let this person in, and that person hurts me? That would mean that I made a mistake, and I do not want that, that's embarrassing, I want people to see me as strong and all-capable and wise beyond my years. I cannot make mistakes. So instead of trying something out, learning stuff, adjusting, I will just cut off possibilities all-together.
Beauty VS Fear
In case you have not noticed, I circled back to the 1st idea, that I've mentioned, about wrong answers not being meaningless, and associated assumption validation. Since people fear mistakes, they find it easier to just not to make the decision, not to try, and just prohibit. It is much easier to just prohibit… Let's say cannabis or crypto currency, instead of putting effort into actual research and implementing controls, that would allow to get as much good from the thing, while minimizing potential harm. Note, that this is not endorsement of either cannabis or crypto: my knowledge on either topic is limited, I just know that from where I am at, they both have signs of potential for good, but can also be abused in various ways, as well, which should prove my point.
If you are making decisions based on fears like this – would the world be beautiful? I do not think so. I look at the world portrayed in Star Trek franchise. It is not devoid of problems and conflicts (including some betrayals from inside The Federation), but the general sense of unity, equality, and, most importantly, trust is an integral part of their society, and that looks beautiful to me. When I visited Helsinki in 2019 and saw people just walking into metro, no gates or policemen (although they do checks periodically, as I learnt later) – that felt beautiful to me, after living in Moscow for my whole life, where no one trusts anyone, and is always looking for a way to screw someone over. When I see videos of some shop just leaving products out in the open trusting that people will pay – I see beauty in that. In Russia, you can't do that, someone will steal something within minutes.
Are there people who abuse this kind of trust? Are all of them doing this maliciously? Maybe some, but probably not all, and I'd trust my gut, that they can teach not to do that. Or maybe they need help to get out of some predicament. I mean, even if they say Finland is the happiest country in the world (which is just some marketing), it does not mean bad things do not happen here. Does that make me naïve? Probably. But I refuse to kill this child in me, because that child can see the beautiful future, that we can build.
Can this naivety of mine (or others like me) be abused? Of course. And it has been abused in the past, probably more times, than I even realize myself. But I do believe that I have enough sisu in me to manage, nonetheless. And even if I fail… Maybe I will be a cautionary tale, at least.
Sisu
Speaking of sisu: even though, this word is Finnish, the concept is not. I would say it's universal. For those, who do not know, sisu is, essentially, high level of resilience, "guts", I'd even say "survivability". Don't you think this is kind of a definition of human race as a whole? We have been surviving and at times striving for centuries, after all. And we keep doing so. It's not always pretty, not always "beautiful", but we are still doing that. In fact, are we not doing that for the sake of creating a "beautiful world"?
It's a funny fact for me, a Russian: "beautiful" in Russian is "красивый", and it's almost exclusively used to depict outward appearance. Essentially "pretty". Yet even in English "beautiful" is a bit different. It can be used to describe a face or a figure or a building. But when you hear "beautiful world", you are not thinking of the world just looking pretty. It's closer to "harmonious" and "balanced". It is something more, like it implies that there is some sort of inter-connectedness of things in it.
What's more interesting to me is that there are at least 2 political organizations in Finland that use the word sisu: Suomen Sisu (nationalist group, technically not affiliated with any particular political party) and Green Sisu (group within Vihreät political party, upholding green values and trying to get more non-Finnish speaking people involved in politics). Coincidentally, "Suomen Sisu" means "Finnish Sisu", and it's a right party. Not judging the party by itself, since I have not followed it in any way, but the name kind of suggests, that sisu is a quality that only Finns poses, which I do not believe to be true. Finns are not the only ones that had hard (or just plain weird) times and survived through them.
So, even if I did not share at least some beliefs with Green Sisu, and was to choose from the 2, I'd side with Green. I mean, when I say "beautiful world", it's definitely filled with green trees, and green hills, and green seaweed… What can I say: I love wakame salad. And I do prefer a world where it does not matter in which country you were born, but rather what you think, what you do, and what you strive for. I guess, that's why I joined Green Sisu. I do not know if it will change my life in any way or if I will be able to change anything in the world through this membership, but…
A wrong choice is not a meaningless one.
