I have coined Metsämieli to describe a state of mind that believes - against all the odds - that things don’t have to be this way: the forest mind believes in the possibility of preserving biodiversity despite the onslaught of the global economy on nature. It is difficult to keep the forest mind set intact and on track when, in the big picture, consumption is only accelerating, greed is taking over the minds of fellow human beings, and the destruction machine is rampaging everywhere. Even the forest mind set becomes numb and wants to slip into the feeling that nothing can be done. In the forest struggles, this hopelessness seems to be summed up in the phrase: 'A private landowner can do whatever he likes with his land, legally he has the right to do so. Nothing can be done."
Moreover, what eats Metsämieli is how everything always comes back to the idea that local destruction is just part of a larger overall destruction, the scale of which is so great that there is no way to change it except by completely changing the system. In such a state of mind, the protection of individual parcels of forest seems to have no effect, when the change that is needed is so comprehensive that it affects everything, from the psyche to the economic system to everyday practices. When everything should be redefined: happiness, freedom, time, ownership. It is such a big change that it is often impossible to believe in. Metsämieli becomes dull and apathy takes over.
Yet at times Metsämieli gets a grip on the bland everyday mind: as in ecology, what if everything affected everything in unforeseeable ways in other fields, too! What if only it were worth saving at least our local forests, our near environment. Thus metsämieli sometimes raise its head normally tired of losses and facts: you will not take this piece of forest from us! Our cry, this cry to save the forest parcels one by one, if only these and thousands of other cries around the world would join in...
Metsämieli gets activated when fishing and hunting, picking berries, walking in the wilderness. Its call is welcome: this habitat sustains us! Its cry is even necessary (aren’t we always been lectured about necessities): don't come here to spoil it!
And you never know: metsämieli might also lead a way out of NIMBYism and towards bigger horizons. When that happens, the concept of necessity will also be re-examined. Often, economic development is justified by necessity. Equally, everyone has to consider how much wilderness is necessary to maintain biodiversity. Often these two definitions of necessity are on a collision course. Then one has to be able to analyse what is really necessary in the long term.
It is acceptable nowadays to say that saving nature is necessary for the human species. However, highlighting this necessity is still often categorised as utopian and naive. But is it not realism and practicality at best to admit that without biodiversity there would be no us either?
Perhaps metsämieli returning home from a hike will eventually ask: is there any mieli (mind) in the current state of affairs?
