You look like me, we must be the same

Imagine you had to find your doppleganger in your country, how many people look like you? Is there a close to perfect match? Your looks, the general looks of your country and the size of the population, will effect how close the match is.

Let's say that you find a match that only your mother can tell one from the other. Cool. You have a body double stand-in for those assassination attempts or dinners with in-laws. Now, find another match. How easy is it to find another match? A fourth? A hundredth?

With each subsequent match, the candidate is actually looking less and less similar to you, right? What happens if you need a million in your group of kinda-clones? How does the millionth person (we can call him Dave) compare to you when standing side by side? Most likely, a blind person can tell you apart.

If we go to the median person in the group, they will look as much like you as they do like Dave, and all the ones before will look more you-like, the ones after increasingly Dave-like. Right?

What a silly exercise I have made you do.

But, this was an interesting week in Finnish politics. The government is made up of 3 coalition partners, the third and smallest is named Perus Suomalaiset (Literally, the Basic Finns). This group, as you may possibly already imagine, are a populist, nationalistic, Finnish first party that is anti-immigration and has several members that have been convicted of inciting racial hatred. There are many such groups throughout the world now.

It started off as a little bit of a joke party but quickly gained a small and loyal following. The refugee crisis saw the numbers swell significantly to the point that they had enough support to take a role in the coalition after the last election. This means ministerial office positions.

At the time, I said to my wife that the group is unstable and will collapse as it has a fatal flaw. The problem is the make up of the group. Perhaps surprisingly for such a group, they had too much diversity, although I do not think there was much skin colour variation. It's support group is comprised of lower income, lower educated, high unemployment rate people who are less happy with the elite class etc. But, it had extreme right, neo-nazi type members and the union supporting, social left as well.

Since the party took its roles in office (the leader was named foreign minister of all things), it has failed to deliver many of its promises that it had made to its constituents. No surprise given that the economic situation in Finland is not great and they promised more money for the unemployed and lower paid workers among other liberal handouts of money.

This 'failure' has meant that the party leadership got challenged (the leader was not putting up a fight for it for personal reasons, but backed another candidate) and was decided last weekend. The winner was from the right side and one of those convicted of inciting racial hatred. No actual surprises there for me at least.

What has been comical this week is that no one here seemed to realise what was going to happen after. The other two, larger government coalition members said that they would have to negotiate whether they will continue with the new party leader who is openly against the current government. After a bit of an interview between the 2 current and 1 new leader of the ruling parties, it was announced they would not continue with the Basic Finns party in government. This is uncommon but does have precedent.

What generally happens is that they will then negotiate with other minor parties to make up the numbers required. But, they didn't have to. As soon as the announcement was made, the Basic Finns party split. All of the ministers and left side formed a new party, and the coalition welcomed them to stay in their roles. 

Business as usual. Nothing changes except the Basic Finns party is now essentially left to the extreme right factions within and will be unlikely to ever be able to garner the support to hold office again. Well, not too soon anyway.

The reason I have told this is because the way we stereotype groups, including the ones we identify with. We name ourselves 'the same' yet between me and one millionth member, Dave from up above, we can be very different indeed and our attitudes and ideals can have a lot of daylight between. Perhaps our only link is like the Basic Finns, possibly racism, nationalism, we all have brown eyes or something else that is tenuous and under pressure, not strong enough to hold us together. 

If I go to an ACDC concert and say all of the fans present are the same, I am probably right. They are ACDC fans. But, I cannot pick what their ideals are, what jobs they have or even what nationality they are. My profiling of an individual based on the group I observe them in is poor indeed.

Just because we think people look the same, doesn't make them the same. Just because they have a few overlapping ideals, doesn't mean that they act in the same ways. Just because they say they love their country, doesn't mean they will defend it using similiar methods or agree upon a common set of rules with which to operate. One can action defence of their country by fighting in the army, another by stockpiling guns in a basement, some by whistleblowing on the government, and others still as politicians in the system itself. They can all claim to be patriots. 

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]