Columns | Nobody really knows whether joining NATO is good news, and Shakespeare reveals it to us

Shaking is about a farmer whose horse runs away. When the neighbors complain about something unpleasant, the farmer says: “Well, let’s see.”

The following week, the horse returns to the yard with another horse. “Great news!” the neighbors snort.

“Well, let’s see,” the farmer replies. He gives another horse as a gift to his son, who immediately falls off the horse and breaks his leg.

Again, only the same laconic answer comes out of the land juss to the complainers: we’ll see.

Then war breaks out, and all men are called to the front. All except the farmer’s son, who is allowed to stay at home because of his leg injury.

Several versions of the old Chinese story are known, and more twists could certainly be invented. At the core, the same lesson still remains.

People tend to navigate with the help of clear emotional states and place things unilaterally on the axis of positive and negative. However, good and bad often turn out to be something else.

Farmer’s the story has been running through my mind as I have followed the spring and summer NATO discussions.

I grew up in the early 2000s in an era of extraordinary peace and surrounded by staunch pacifists. In my inner circle, joining the army was not an option and NATO seemed sheer madness. It was also clear that Russia would never seriously threaten anything.

This spring my belief system changed. Rauhanaate suddenly felt ridiculously blue-eyed. Pacifism was found to be a luxury that could only be afforded in peaceful times. In a moment, I understood – or I understood – also the necessity of joining NATO.

When the war in Ukraine drags on and NATO membership is not even reached in a couple of days, there is still time to think about the matter several times.

Right now, we make and outsource huge solutions to decision-makers on a fast schedule. The solutions bind us for decades and affect the fate of entire nations.

Compared to that, the statements of foreign policy experts have seemed wonderfully calm and confident. Do they know for sure how things are going to turn out? Or is it also a poker face?

The current one the world situation is said to be fueling even sharper opinions and more extreme solutions. It is less often brought up how the atmosphere can also affect people the other way around.

My own thinking has drifted into even more fanatical caution in many matters. Even sure things can turn upside down at any time.

Let’s take an example from the other side.

Newspaper executives and other media authorities strongly recommended me to join Facebook in the middle of the last decade. Many thought it difficult to imagine a credible journalist who did not actively operate on social media. I finally created a profile.

Recently, a colleague stated that he would not recommend it to anyone again. Optimism had evaporated and social media had turned into a stage of bickering, scheming and information war maintained by money-hungry multinational companies.

But there is still much more to social media, someone says – and they are right. It would be a mistake to interpret the Chinese farmer’s story as a cynical lesson about the futility of everything. Even things that seem bad can turn out to be good again.

Maybe the toxic pool of social media will soon be cleaned up and journalists will be able to get into the metaverse to make toasts about the triumph of democracy?

American author Kurt Vonnegut pondered similar themes as the ancient Chinese storytellers. In exhilaration In his Shapes of Stories lecture he draws different shapes of curls on the blackboard according to how different types of stories present good and bad news.

Particularly popular in our culture are stories where the main character vacillates between strong luck and bad luck. We call this variation the arc of the drama.

Shakespeare’s of Hamlet when describing the plot, Vonnegut draws a completely straight line, a steady mild misfortune from beginning to end. But wait a minute, isn’t the story full of death, revenge and intrigue?

Vonnegut explains. We don’t know if the ghost that appears to Hamlet is his father. We don’t know if the play Hamlet staged really reveals his father’s murderer. Hamlet accidentally kills the wrong man, but nothing comes of it either. In the end, Hamlet himself dies.

What should be learned from all this? We do not know.

According to Vonnegut, a flat line does not make Shakespeare a bad storyteller, but reveals his talent. Hamlet tells us that we don’t understand enough about life to know how to tell the good news from the bad. We just pretend to understand. Often we just imitate the feelings of the people around us.

To realize this, you only need to sit in a sauna, on the top floor of which the old men talk seriously about politics. Generally, there is a competition between the most consistent political viewpoints, which are most obvious at any given moment.

Right now, the Swedish parliaments are repeating the necessity of NATO. I envied the stability of their vision. Personally, I see nothing but fog in the future.

I have only one ancient, unsatisfactory phrase to offer for the discussion. Well let’s see.