6 ms·

Not knowing one's neighbours may seem like a problem to you, but it can be a great thing for others. So many young people who move from close-knit small towns o

Not knowing one's neighbours may seem like a problem to you, but it can be a great thing for others. So many young people who move from close-knit small towns or villages to big cities (especially, but not only, sexual minorities), find it liberating that no one is scrutinizing their lifestyles like back home. Also, countries like Finland manage to be high-trust and relatively homogeneous societies, while at the same time having strong expectations for privacy in a block of flats, where neighbours might find it uncomfortable and intrusive if you tried to interact with them.

burntoutfire 6y ago
People used to depend on neighbors - for example, they helped each other on their farms on a regular basis. Now it's no longer the case and perhaps the dynamics you're describing is the worst of both worlds, where the actual economical need for rich and frequent interactions with neighbors is gone and everything that's left is the nosiness. But, this itself is a result of modernity compartmentalizing people to the degree where they practically never need help from their neighbors.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  But if you live in a successful welfare state, what need have you for help from your neighbours? The welfare state might help you even better, as it can benefit from economies of scale, and it will not demand anything in return from you except, once you are working a normal job, your taxes. Also, depictions of pre-welfare-state help from neighbours often underscore how that help was always conditional: sexual and racial minorities, women with children out of wedlock, people not members of the locally dominant church or political wing, etc. often found their pleas for help rejected.
  - vixen99 6y ago
    The successful welfare state is the product of your neighbours who tacitly agree to maintain society in many ways including of course paying for it. It's a mistake to suppose that that stance is a given in perpetuity.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      Definitely, but the point is that society found a way for neighbours to assist each other, without requiring individual neighbours to know (and carefully maintain friendships with) their individual neighbours. Of course support for this model could possibly weaken over time, but I think many people find the welfare state superior to the old way that took more effort and would only benefit you if you conformed to expectations.
  - kewrkewm53 6y ago
    Yet it should be noted that a successful welfare state exists only as long as well-doing people feel enough solidarity and trust towards the poor to pay higher taxes in support of them, and as long as those receiving the welfare benefits genuinely do their best to find employment, at least most of them. I'm pretty sure Finland won't be a welfare state in 50 years. There's just too little left of the solidarity and common identity which helped creating the welfare state. Individualism and diversity seem to be today's trends, not community and social cohesion.
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    Welfare is basically mandatory charity - it's forcing everyone to chip in (via taxes) for the people who can't manage to support themselves. What I'm talking about is something else entirely - it's a setup where for example the neighbor takes care of your cows and other animals if you go to town for a day or two. Or you help him rebuild his house after a fire. Or, the older kids of your neighbor look after your younger kid, as they play together outside all day. Or somebody is the village's blacksmith and is fixing everyone's iron equipment. Or, you give excess of apples during harvest to someone and expect some other favor from them down the line. Essentially, it's deep interconnectedness with the people around you and essentially an opposite of welfare state, in which you interact not with your neighbors, but with bored and depressed bureucrats at the welfare office and the kafkesque rules that determine whether or not you will be granted the money.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform to cisgender- and heteronormativity, but your neighbour is a bigot? What if you are a politically active citizen, but your neighbor’s politics are hostile to yours? (Note that the rise of the Nordic welfare states in fact helped to smooth out some political polarization that was hurting those societies in the early 20th century.) In the past, neighbourly help often was refused to people like that. And what if you are a very introverted person who simply doesn’t want to interact with people outside your comfort zone? Also, “bored and depressed bureaucrats” and “Kafkaesque rules” is a caricature, it may not be how others perceive their country’s welfare state. Satisfaction in fact may run high.
      - zozbot234 6y ago
        > Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform Then you vote with your feet and move to a community that's friendlier to your values. That community will in turn have strong values of its own, which will help preserve a sense of high social trust within it. It's easy to move out to a competing community, because these quasi-tribal dynamics are inherently limited in scale to a max of about 150 individuals.
kewrkewm53 6y ago
I guess it can depend from your life-stage really. As a lonely kid with different interests I really hated living in such a close-knit village, and felt great moving away from there. Yet now after years of living in the city, with a stable relationship and all, I constantly dream of moving to rural countryside and raising my future children there, in a more stable and calm environment. I believe it's quite natural for young people to go seek new life and opportunities elsewhere from their place of birth, as many of them have always done historically. But having to constantly move in search of them, never finding a place where you could stay permanently, now that really isn't a good way of living for the vast majority of people, even though modern employment market encourages it. As far Finnish block of flats go, I would argue that rental buildings with high turnover rate have quite low level of trust between neighbours and way more problems, while those owned by their residents have high trust and less issues. Some of it can be attributed to socioeconomic factors of course, but lack of roots and feeling of attachment to rental property is definitely also a factor.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > I would argue that rental buildings with high turnover rate ... while those owned by their residents Note that in the Finnish context (at least in the more-populated south), this isn’t a rental/owned distinction. that is, the expectation for privacy also applies to blocks of flats where residents own their flat and may live there for decades.
  - kewrkewm53 6y ago
    True, indeed Finns tend to be fairly privacy conscious anywhere. But in owned flats people still do seem to be more mindful of their neighbours - less antisocial behaviour of all kinds. Of course it's hard to know how much of this is linked to ownership / sense of roots, and how much to socioeconomic factors.

burntoutfire 6y ago

People used to depend on neighbors - for example, they helped each other on their farms on a regular basis. Now it's no longer the case and perhaps the dynamics you're describing is the worst of both worlds, where the actual economical need for rich and frequent interactions with neighbors is gone and everything that's left is the nosiness. But, this itself is a result of modernity compartmentalizing people to the degree where they practically never need help from their neighbors.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
But if you live in a successful welfare state, what need have you for help from your neighbours? The welfare state might help you even better, as it can benefit from economies of scale, and it will not demand anything in return from you except, once you are working a normal job, your taxes. Also, depictions of pre-welfare-state help from neighbours often underscore how that help was always conditional: sexual and racial minorities, women with children out of wedlock, people not members of the locally dominant church or political wing, etc. often found their pleas for help rejected.
- vixen99 6y ago
  The successful welfare state is the product of your neighbours who tacitly agree to maintain society in many ways including of course paying for it. It's a mistake to suppose that that stance is a given in perpetuity.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Definitely, but the point is that society found a way for neighbours to assist each other, without requiring individual neighbours to know (and carefully maintain friendships with) their individual neighbours. Of course support for this model could possibly weaken over time, but I think many people find the welfare state superior to the old way that took more effort and would only benefit you if you conformed to expectations.
- kewrkewm53 6y ago
  Yet it should be noted that a successful welfare state exists only as long as well-doing people feel enough solidarity and trust towards the poor to pay higher taxes in support of them, and as long as those receiving the welfare benefits genuinely do their best to find employment, at least most of them. I'm pretty sure Finland won't be a welfare state in 50 years. There's just too little left of the solidarity and common identity which helped creating the welfare state. Individualism and diversity seem to be today's trends, not community and social cohesion.
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  Welfare is basically mandatory charity - it's forcing everyone to chip in (via taxes) for the people who can't manage to support themselves. What I'm talking about is something else entirely - it's a setup where for example the neighbor takes care of your cows and other animals if you go to town for a day or two. Or you help him rebuild his house after a fire. Or, the older kids of your neighbor look after your younger kid, as they play together outside all day. Or somebody is the village's blacksmith and is fixing everyone's iron equipment. Or, you give excess of apples during harvest to someone and expect some other favor from them down the line. Essentially, it's deep interconnectedness with the people around you and essentially an opposite of welfare state, in which you interact not with your neighbors, but with bored and depressed bureucrats at the welfare office and the kafkesque rules that determine whether or not you will be granted the money.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform to cisgender- and heteronormativity, but your neighbour is a bigot? What if you are a politically active citizen, but your neighbor’s politics are hostile to yours? (Note that the rise of the Nordic welfare states in fact helped to smooth out some political polarization that was hurting those societies in the early 20th century.) In the past, neighbourly help often was refused to people like that. And what if you are a very introverted person who simply doesn’t want to interact with people outside your comfort zone? Also, “bored and depressed bureaucrats” and “Kafkaesque rules” is a caricature, it may not be how others perceive their country’s welfare state. Satisfaction in fact may run high.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      > Your idealistic vision sounds well and good. But what if you refuse to conform Then you vote with your feet and move to a community that's friendlier to your values. That community will in turn have strong values of its own, which will help preserve a sense of high social trust within it. It's easy to move out to a competing community, because these quasi-tribal dynamics are inherently limited in scale to a max of about 150 individuals.

kewrkewm53 6y ago

I guess it can depend from your life-stage really. As a lonely kid with different interests I really hated living in such a close-knit village, and felt great moving away from there. Yet now after years of living in the city, with a stable relationship and all, I constantly dream of moving to rural countryside and raising my future children there, in a more stable and calm environment. I believe it's quite natural for young people to go seek new life and opportunities elsewhere from their place of birth, as many of them have always done historically. But having to constantly move in search of them, never finding a place where you could stay permanently, now that really isn't a good way of living for the vast majority of people, even though modern employment market encourages it. As far Finnish block of flats go, I would argue that rental buildings with high turnover rate have quite low level of trust between neighbours and way more problems, while those owned by their residents have high trust and less issues. Some of it can be attributed to socioeconomic factors of course, but lack of roots and feeling of attachment to rental property is definitely also a factor.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> I would argue that rental buildings with high turnover rate ... while those owned by their residents Note that in the Finnish context (at least in the more-populated south), this isn’t a rental/owned distinction. that is, the expectation for privacy also applies to blocks of flats where residents own their flat and may live there for decades.
- kewrkewm53 6y ago
  True, indeed Finns tend to be fairly privacy conscious anywhere. But in owned flats people still do seem to be more mindful of their neighbours - less antisocial behaviour of all kinds. Of course it's hard to know how much of this is linked to ownership / sense of roots, and how much to socioeconomic factors.