A
small country is a lovely thing. One might immediately say that I am
trying to make a virtue from a vice. No, I do not call for the
disintegration of big countries nor play them off against the small. I
merely wish to indicate that a small country too has its pleasures.
These are just not as apparent as the benefits of a large country and
state.
At
least partly, the problem is that we are living with prejudices. One
such is the conception that only a large country is good, whereas a
small one a misfortune. And I very much am against prejudices,
especially if it has to do with the individual sense of happiness.
Insisting on an unreasonably high self-esteem is evil. But far worse is
feeling bad over something which is not worth it at all.
I
will start with the psychological side, the everyday moods. There is a
joke: an American comes to Estonia and mentions to an Estonian friend
that he had just recently met another Estonian in his homeland. And the
Estonian asks: “What’s his name?”. The point of this story is of course
that there are so few Estonians. The joke would not work with the
Chinese.
Yet
we have it so that no matter the company you’re in, still the
conversation eventually winds up being about people we know or even
mutual relatives. This reminds me some verses from Juhan Liiv’s poem, Autumn home: “everyone
I know are with me and I with them.” Granted, what is initially meant
is the actual home of the poet (the poem starts with a well-known verse:
“My lovely home, so small on yonder hill!”), but this grows into a
larger metaphor.
It
was once said that the academician Ariste knew at least half the
Estonians by their face. Now it is joked that some members of the
parliament know all the people who voted for them. Or that some writer
knows all his readers.
Knowing
that we are all relatives or at least kin from fifth or sixth
generation onwards can make an outlander smirk. Yet it is a rare and
lovely thing - to have such large number of relatives. This is somewhat
more reassuring than the knowledge (sometimes used to encourage
mankind’s sense of togetherness) that we all descent from a few thousand
African ancestors who journeyed out a hundred thousand years ago.
I
imagine more than a few of us have experienced the perplexed awe
foreigners have when we mention that we know the president personally.
To ourselves, this does not seem anything extraordinary (as would be an
acquaintance a Chinese Emperor). Even in the case of political
alienation we so often complain about, it sometimes escapes our notice,
how close the “alienated” politicians really are. Who among us has not
studied or graduated with some MP or some other person of authority, or
is not an acquaintance, a relative or an in-law to one?
Concentration
renders objective benefits. Even if you own many things, but lack a
proper overview, you might as well not have them at all (and vice
versa). If you do not orientate in your own library and be able to find
the desired book fast enough, then it often makes more sense to borrow
it from a public library or even buy a new copy. If a text file you
started has been saved under a random name god knows where, then it is
sometimes easier to reconstruct the text from memory. Time spent on
searching simply does not pay off.
When
handling tools, home-appliances, smartphones or computers the case is
that, when we have familiarized ourselves and become skillful in using a
device with merely moderate capabilities, then the benefit and the
pleasure of using far outweigh a device which does have superior
possibilities, but which we do not comprehend or manage.
These
examples, by the way, refer to one of the core needs of the human soul.
That is, the need for clarity. The need to know, what and how things
really are. The human desires to comprehend the whole. Be this then the
whole in its entirety or some smaller, relatively closed, system.
Comprehension is easier if the object is not too big as there are limits
to the psycho-phyisical capabilities of a human being.
A
representative of a small country will always know more about one’s
land than the average citizen of a big country. This entails both time
and space, both geography and history. One can comprehend Estonia.
Within five hours it is possible to drive from one border to the other,
no matter the direction. With a week you will sail through the
coastline. Being able to grasp our country is a good thing! Driving
through Estonia is like visiting one’s domain. There are people who make
a tour around Estonia every summer. I understand them completely. You
can really see, how a year has changed things, and be able to guess,
where are they about to go. In a large country, in the other hand, one
moves without any tangibility. Everything is new, but as if in a bad
infinity.
I
do not know, for example, how the Chinese feel like when the airplane
touches ground on a landing strip in Shanghai or Bejing. Most Estonians
feel a sweet hobbity sense of having come back home when they reach the
airport in Ülemiste. Of course, if you cruise further into downtown
Tallinn, the houses on both sides of Tartu road will seem rather low.
And the weather is generally gray. But it still is home! For some reason
I think that if home is too vast and multifaceted, the sense of arrival
is not as focused either, and rather tends to dissipate.
The
question is not only about subjective pleasure. By studying a system as
a whole, we will obtain information that its individual parts do not
offer. By observing a single process from beginning to end, we can make
conclusions that cannot be reached on the basis of its individual
stages. The question, whether the system is big or small, need not be
the most important thing in the process. The two primary units of
measurement for both individual and collective memory are volume and
accessibility. One is ineffective without the other.
Estonia’s
history is, in its recorded phase, rather short and small in size. In
one hand, this is no advantage, yet in the other, an Estonian has a
possibility to know the history of his country and his people in greater
depth than one would from nation with a long history. (I do not hide
the fact that, besides history, my other great attachment is local lore.
In Estonia the two more or less go together - a true land of wonders!)
The
same applies for the history of science, sports, art, literature and
culture as whole. It is possible, for instance, for a hard-working and
rather fast-reading person to obtain a relatively adequate picture of
Estonian literature. He carries this in his memory and sees, how each
new literary work connects with has been before. His colleagues in
Germany, the USA or anywhere else where the total sum of literature is
immensely bigger, would not have such a genuine possibility. There a
scholar has to operate with finished models from other readers.
For
similar reasons it still possible in Estonia the universal intellectual
- a highly beneficial, albeit dying, breed - who knows remarkably more
than just his field of expertise. Such a person has a chance to see the
tendencies in the state, nation and the society as a whole, to
synthesize and offer visions.
The
smaller the preserved memory of a collective is, the easier it should
be to realize it, and thus create a sense of eternity, a connection with
the times, even among the common man. The most certain way for this is
the use of public space. On streets, squares and parks, on the crossing
and the hilltop, it would be possible, by way of sculptures,
commemorative plaques, signs, stones, etc... to constantly draw
attention to the people and events of the past. I very much like the way
we have, on the countryside and even in towns, sometimes, the old place
names marked with brown signs. Yet this is still a fraction of what
could be achieved on this field.
Every
society and state is whole and in a way equal to other countries in
size. They have similar functions and, often enough, a similar
composition. I remember one of my favourite parallels between a mouse
and a giraffe who both have an equal number of segments in the neck.
The same applies the countries and their “necks”. Sometimes one meets an
arrogant position as if Estonia were the same as a district in a large
city. This is true only formally, in terms of population. Even in terms
of landmass, no city comes even close to Estonia (there is 3.4 hectares
for every person living in Estonia).
But
this is not what matters. A city district is merely a part of
something, a small country, in the other hand, is complete. The two have
a different amount of segments in their “necks”. In a way, even some
island state the size of Hiiumaa, with a population of a few dozen
thousand inhabitants, still surprasses a city like New York. Behind the
imaginary Round Table all seats are equal. (Actually this table does
exist in the form the United Nations General Assembly. There recently
was a vote about giving Palestine the status of an observer state. Very
few nations were against it, among them some miniature island states in
Oceania. Someone joked that they had been against, because they wanted
to be mentioned in the same sentence with the USA.)
By
definition, a state needs take part on the international level. It
needs to sends its representatives to many organisations. A state like
Estonia can’t make it everywhere. In terms of proportions, population
and resources, Estonia will always need to put more effort into things.
But this is not without a positive side. In a small country, there is a
bigger chance to get appointed to these positions, because there are
more posts per citizen. (And in general, how easy it is to become
someone in Estonia - an opinion leader, politician, whoever.) For a
young person determined to make a career and see the world, things in
Estonia are easier than in some large state, where internal competition
is tougher and the selection process longer. During the last decades,
there have also emerged the EU level, the proto- or pre-state structures
and the organizations next to them. And even though there are places,
where the old countries keep the sweet spots for themselves, there some,
where the representatives of “new” states actually are in an advantage.
This also applies for the admission of foreign students in several
western universities. Actually, the world truly is wide open for the
Estonian youth right now.
Social
entities try to make their structures more efficient. For this they
need constant feedback. In a small state, feedback is generally more
efficient than in a large one. Let us remind a known comparison that a
big state is like an ocean liner and a small one like a fishing boat.
The model is always physically smaller than the object it models.
(Although it seems to me that Estonia is a model of itself.) For
instance, let us think of our e-state. How is it still possible that
such a thing blossoms in a country that is forced with retardation?
True, we did have a high level of education and strong leadership, but
still, a country from Old Europe or North-America is not worse off in
this regard. But there, everything happens slower and more carefully.
“The big guys” experiment with innovations just in some part of the
country (as is the case with Special Economic Zones in China). At a time
when mankind stands, in nearly every field, at the footsteps of
fundamental changes, a smaller country has a threat of going adrift, but
also the benefit of adapting faster.
Still,
there is the sense of isolation and smallness inevitably felt by
anyone, who returns home after having spent some time in New York,
London, Berlin or in some other metropolis. This feeling stays forever,
but it is now remarkably smaller than it used to be. Technology has
greatly reduced the distances. No, I do not say as if now provincialism
now lay solely in the hearts of people. Technology and virtuality do not
replace physical human relations - for instance in the need for
recognition. Perhaps some local celebrity indeed feels bad about the
fact that he is not recognized in all the gas stations of the world. For
a normal person, however, a reference group - a group of likeminded
peers, who share one’s values and whose recognition matters - is all the
self-assurance needed.
Everything
has everything, a drop of water reflects the entire world - this is no
mere triviality or shallow consolation. Even a regional centre with a
population of ten thousand has most of the same human relations as does a
global centre. The zoo here is as diverse, just that there are fewer
specimens in each pen. Of course a person might be encouraged to find a
bigger work field (asides money) by a sense of mission for mankind. But the slogan “think globally, act locally,” does have its point.
There
are more pleasures to a small country than that, if you know where to
look. I have mentioned only a few of the most obvious. In conclusion, I
will once again come to Juhan Liiv. In relation to the quoted verse
about a “lovely home on yonder hill” the first lines of the poem are:
“Here I am so poor/ and so rich.” It seems to me that we sometimes mix
the two things up: a small country and a poor country. Actually we
complain not about being small, but rather about being poor. Because a
small but rich state would be perfect. Maybe the best.
