Here’s an original version of a story published in Ääniä Suomesta (Voices from Finland) column series this autumn in Karjalainen.
Freedom of Belief: Mission Impossible?
In my radio interviews on immigration, people mostly agree that freedom of belief is an important asset that a state has to protect. At the same time, many doubt that it is possible to achieve when beliefs are too different or contradictory.
This always leaves me scratching my head. What is the point of installing “freedom of belief“ as an asset if ultimatively everybody has to believe the same? What is a belief anyway?
In it’s widest sense, a belief is a statement about reality that a person has decided to see as truth for himself. Religion is a collection of beliefs that people have decided to be true for them.
Depending on their beliefs about immigrants, different people experience the same foreign person in a different way, as beliefs determine our experience of life. Some of the most common beliefs about immigrants are that they are “in need of education or help” or a “threat to local safety”, they are “a cheap and convenient workforce for jobs that nobody else wants to do” or “lazy parasites for the social security system” and of course “exotic mates for relationships”.
Immigrants in return have their own set of beliefs about Finns. But all people are convinced that their experience of a person is the truth as we tend to forget that we see the world through our beliefs and not reality as it is. Building a multicultural society is therefore challenging. First we will have to make a shift from our beliefs being “the truth for everybody” to being only “one truth of man”. Then we will be forced to see that any belief is only a specific way of looking at the world.
A multicultural society could actually be a lot of fun if we only considered every belief as “another interesting point of view” on life. We could even start to play with it. Hey, that is what you believe? Interesting. I wonder how life feels with such a belief?
But playing doesn’t seem to be a favorite activity, neither in Finland nor in the countries immigrants come from. May be we would have a chance in Finland if we made it a competition? Like: Let’s find out which beliefs create the best life experience and then we put those together and tie a nice multicultural package. Instead of trying to merge a given set of historically incompatible beliefs into a patch work society, we could take “freedom of belief” to the next level and start to create new beliefs that suit our circumstances and allow all of us to have a pleasant life experience. After all, it says in the bible: as you believe, thy shall be done onto you. If we bother to have beliefs about life at all, a multicultural context could be a path to “real freedom of belief” where we throw out beliefs that do not serve us any longer and choose new beliefs that allow us to create the life experience we want. It might take a little sisu though.
Joseann Freyer-Lindner
This story has been produced by JoMoni in cooperation with Karjalainen. The Newspaper Project is also funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, the city of Joensuu and Kansan sivistysrahasto.
