According to Wikipedia, Social responsibility is an ethical or ideological theory that an entity has a responsibility to society but this responsibility can be “negative” – a responsibility to refrain from acting (resistance stance) – or it can be “positive” – there is a responsibility to act (proactive stance).
Relating this definition to Estonian society, I may say that here the social responsibility is “null”. And it seems to be only null.
This was one of the most chocking things to me. I’ll get to the point…
In Brazil, down there, where the wind turns, we see social responsibility even when we don’t want to or need it. If I have a son, and he’s bullying other boy at the street corner, you can count to ten, my friend, because soon enough someone will come out of the blue and correct him.
Down there we learn quite soon that if we don’t teach our kids, with love, at home, they’ll learn it, painfully, on the streets. If I don’t teach my kids what is right and what is wrong, or if they don’t hear me carefully, out there they will, and there’s no love or care on a fist.
At that hot place you will probably never see a fight in which nobody intervenes. It’s common, actually, to read on the papers that someone died trying to stop a fight. The thing is, people die trying to do it right, to teach someone the right thing. In a terrible moment, but it is at least in good faith. This shows that, down there people is still learning and teaching what is right and what is wrong.
In Brazil we see the positive and the negative responsibilities walking together. At the same time that a person has a negative responsibility in order to refrain an action – from the ones fighting – he employs the positive responsibility of acting towards the situation in order to cease it.
I grew up with this model. For sure I won’t find it everywhere, but we always expect at least a little of it. I don’t know, don’t interven but call the police, an ambulance, but do something!
I was surprised here… and yes, this is about “how my fantasies about Europe went down trough the drain”
Estonia seems to be numb. Some few unfortunate times I met some “angry-at-the-world” boys and in all of them I expected some reaction, any reaction from the expectors. And I never got it.
Once I was at Kaubamaja. Gosh! That was annoying. I was comming down the stairs, with my husband and we kissed (well, I’m a brazilian and we were engaged, or newlyweds, so, yes we did and we still do kiss anywhere!). One of this boys passed by us and called my husband “idiot” out loud. [I’m not so sure why… Because he still lives in the 40’s when a white man could never be with a black woman – at least not in public? I don’t know…]
My surprise was not really for the fact that he said that, but because everyone around simply ignored what just had happened, like an instant memory eraser. That’s the numb moment of the social responsibility.
This was at Kaubamaja! It wasn’t at a public place or no one’s land. If anything similar happens inside a shopping mall in Brazil, the boys will be taken out of the place by huge (probably black… hihihihi) security guards. I thought that shopping malls wanted, above everything, to make you feel comfortable enough, so you will spend most of your time there, giving them your money, undisturbed. It doesn’t seem to be the same shopping ideology here. From my shoes, this is a great ideology! If this town were bigger, I would probably never go back there… but, well, this is a province, even though it is the second biggest town in the country.
When I see all those kids drinking and smoking their time at parks I have the same feeling. I always ask myself: Will I ever see a parent come and take the kid back home? Will I ever see a scene of a mother giving a speech because she wants her kid to behave properly?
They seem to be raising themselves. I don’t know their realities, but maybe their parents are really busy working their “asses” out (excuse my language) to be able to give the new Nike shoes to their sons, the new Lacoste shirt, or a new celphone, a laptop… that they cannot notice that actually all that might not be exactly what they need.
It seems like no one really cares about their own image as a country or town. They don’t seem to feel responsible for anything… Someone once suggested that this comes from the soviet times, when they would pay with life for any “misplaced” opinion. Might be… but it’s good and healthy to change. Estonia is not anymore under Soviet madness… why behave like it? They own their noses, but they seem not to know how to use it.
Let me make clear that in Brazil nothing is perfect, absolutely nothing. But we have the “Third World” tag as excuse, and even then we are always trying to improve. I would say that our problems are more in the political esphere. Nothing works because our politicians are too busy taking vacation with public money.
But I keep hoping that Estonia will find its way to triumph, and than I can bring the rest of my family here for holidays!
Daily life in Estonia 