Editorial: under the shadow of the Almighty

Photo: SCANPIX

About three years ago, say, there was this news item that for a moment made rounds in global media, declaring: Estonia is a safest state in the world... due to the absence of natural catastrophes. We really don’t have these decent hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanoes erupting. In the EM-DAT database registering the world’s natural disasters since 1900, Estonia’s initial entry is only found for 2005 January Storm aka the Pärnu Flood.

Well, those more in the know will know that we’ve had the occasional roofs fly off and people bitten by cold, to say nothing about the ferryboat Estonia drowned twenty years ago with forces of nature doubtless playing a part. Still, from the outside, it may indeed seem that we Estonians do live under the shadow of Lord God Almighty on this tiny plot of ours, as if. Almost like a serene Shire far removed from the troubles of the broader Middle-earth hassle. It’s just the cataclysms of world politics that, rolling over the land, have done their share of damage – but otherwise nothing really seems to «bite».  

Summing up this global year of conflicts and catastrophes, the tones are rather otherwise than over here. Should 2014 show the trend, things are about to go upside down in this world of ours. Like: a great power by sheer strength bites a piece of its neighbour and fuels military conflicts at the border area, brazenly and publicly lying they haven’t done anything. In Middle-East, brutally backward religious fanatics have risen up to rule over people, thinking it okay to have slaves and opting to simply slaughter those who think different. In several states in West-Africa, an unforeseen Ebola epidemic is plaguing the people. A large passenger jet just up vanishes, people and all – never to be found. Another civilian airplane, flying high over a war zone, gets hit with a rocket. Come the end of the year, a third one gets lost.

So do we worry about the global annus horribilis or do we rejoice we have thus far been spared the terrible tentacles of the cataclysms? With a half-smile, as if, the artist Jüri Arrak observes in our longer end-of-year interview: «The world is very simple – if one believes all is okay, it is.» Let the reader decide if, for him, the 2014 glass was half empty or half full. And what exactly is in it. The big picture, the more so the global events, often come across as just a backdrop – to which we weigh our individual goods and bad.

As long as not under our own skin, why worry if it’s another 1939 we are living in or not? Or, perhaps, we will be spared this time of the shakings preached by power politicians believing their state to have a special mission with enemies all around – ones with so much historical ill under their belt? Again referring to Jüri Arrak: dictators are some miserable no-goods caught in complexes. «It isn’t normal that a biological being wants to rule the whole world.» As 1939 changed to 1940, many probably were the Estonians who thought along these lines. Even so, however eager to hide from the Middle-earth issues back then, most could not escape.

Now, as the keep-aloof-and-hush-up tactics – hoping not to be noticed – has been tried and proved not to work, Estonia in these past decades has opted to tread a totally different path. The path of participation, involvement, integration with those whose thinking and ways of life are close to ours. It can’t be well with us if others are doing bad – and, as we have the strength, we help the troubled ones to do better. So, keeping this in mind, let’s plunge briskly into the 2015 knocking at the door. If not a bona fide annus mirabilis for all, let’s still give it our all.