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Net Addiction Gets Finnish Soldiers Out Of Army
nerdb0t writes "Reuters is reporting that the Finnish Defense Forces have allowed some men to be excused from military service because of 'Internet Addiction.' The service period is 6 months - but that's too long away from the internet for these guys. Is this a joke? Is this a legitimate illness? Hm..where can I apply for disability..."
Actually, they were not excused from military service, they were sent home and told to grow up and return in a few years for another try.
Seems to me six months on duty, away from the Internet, just might be the cure for this terrible illness.
Recall that about half the country is above the arctic circle, so cell phnes and computers are great when you can hop a reindeer to visit the next village over. They probably have more net addicts than Korea, since the Internet is an easy to stay in contact with people when it's -20 out.
They also have one of the highest rates of alchoholisim in Europe, and I wonder how many people get waivers for that each year.
But really, what self-respecting Army would pass on a soldier because he spent too much time practicing his BFG9000 skills...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The purpose of the Finnish army is to defend Finland. It's purpose is not to psychologically damage its recruits.
Some might argue that military service IS a treatment program of sorts...
I just heard a mention of this on the news. Someone was quoted as saying "for people who stay up all night playing computer games and don't have any friends, military service can be quite a shock."
I'd say such people need that kind of shock more than most.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
The question is, should this 'addiction' be treated in the first place?
On one hand I think claiming to be 'internet addicted' to the extent that you cannot cope without the internet is a joke.
On the other I would consider myself to have a dependancy on the internet which could be classed as a mild addiction - I begin to feel like a part of me is missing when I need to spend a prolonged time away from the Internet.
I imagine the main reason I am so dependant on the Internet is convenient access to informaion. If I stumble accross anything I don't understand, or something I would like to know more about, I can obtain a wealth of information and endless user opinions after a few google queries.
When I am at a computer, I almost consider it to be an extension of my brain. Whilst my own brain keeps a record of personal memories and knowledge, the Internet lets me augment my own experiences and knowledge with that of other people.
Spending most of my life with access to the internet at my fingertips, I have got used to (and to a certain extend dependant on) the ability to instantly recall any phone number someone gave me 12 years ago. Or the ability to consult thousands of experts in any specialised field and receive a response within a few seconds. Or the ability to instantly share my experiences and discoveries with others who may find it interesting/useful. When that access isn't possible, is it that surprising that I feel as if something is missing?
Is thirst for knowledge really an addiction that should be treated like a mental illness and cured?
> All finnish men have to do their military service, which is 180, 270 or 360 days.
Not true.
They can come to any decent EU country (like the UK) and not do it. We are not still living in the 1900's.
Finns can tell their government to fuck off, but so many find it's easier 'just to go along' with things and not rock the boat then justify that to themselves later (with some spurious trite reasoning).
It amazes me that a nation of largely intelligent people fall for the propaganda that national service being useful, and that governments in countries like Finland and Germany still manage to get away with it. In reality it's a barbaric anachronism and in the face of so many other countries that have had it in the past having now phased it out, or having announced plans to end it, people in Finland should really be questioning this rather than going along with the idea out of a sense of tradition. The lack of recognition for conscientious objectors in Finland is something I find particularly morally repugnant (and let's not even get into the sexism debate).
It would have been phased out by the EU by now, if it hadn't been for the dissent of countries like Germany that are so dependant on it for the success of the state, where it's used to make up for a shortfall of civil service employees (and so to allow the state to get away with not paying real wages) but that's a different matter that has to do with poor, neigh incompetent governance, it that's not a valid excuse for keeping in place a system of forced slave labour.
The overwhelming chorus of advice from renowned intelligence organisations like Janes continues to be that it's not a way to create any sort of useful military force, and that's it detrimental to overall performance of what should a dedicated and professional organisation made up exclusively of people who want to be there to do what is a very important job.
My advice to people in Finland would be to just go and live in another EU member state like the UK, where we don't force people to signup to work for the government (and where they don't get to tell you what weekends you can go home and what ones you cant).
We don't have national service and it's precisely because of that (and because we do the Right Thing (TM) and choose to pay to have a large, competent and professional army rather than trying to scrape one together from kids who don't really want to be there) that we have one of the most powerful armies in the world (in the top 10, after the USA, India, Russia and Korea (north and south)). For such a small country, that's not bad going, and vastly better than the majority of the rest of the world, even with their swelled ranks fluffed with conscripts.
Given the evidence against it, and the insistence by the intelligence community that it's not only of no value, but can be of negative value it's a wonder people still do it. It all comes back to 'doing what's right' vrs. 'doing what's easiest'. If more people had a backbone it would have been abolished long ago, the army would be stronger, the people would have more freedom and they'd be quite a bit happier.
With a society that has the kind of outlook they do on issues like this, perhaps it is not surprising that Finland has the highest suicide rate of any western nation.
Finns, the government are there to serve you, not the other way around. Do yourself and your entire nation a favour and them to get stuffed. National service costs your nation money overall (through lossed taxes, equipment and wages), it doesn't give you a useful fighting force and it is part of an oppressive environment that harms the physiological well being of the nations citizens.
From the USSR's point of view Finland is the gateway/blockade to the entire Nordic penninsula, which is the most obvious staging area for attacks on Britain and North-Western Europe available.
Additionally, western Norway is the nearest thing the USSR has to a defensible set of seaports usable in the depths of winter.
If WWIII isn't just an unlimited ICBM exchange (unliklely I know), then Finland is gonna get it in the neck in the first few minutes, purely for blocking the way into Norway and Sweden (or possibly for blocking the way into St Petersburg, it really depends who's on the offensive).
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
In one of the local neswpapers is a story about this, it say that the biggest reason is the very different life-rhytm. It's about a marginal group of yong men who havn't had anyone controlling their habits, they haven't been woken up at 6:00 and nobody has ordered them to do anything, they have been living without any limitations. When suddenly all this is true, they can't handle it. Net addiction is not a disease as such, but the other symptoms are, and they vary; panic disturbances, pressure handling problems and other psychological factors. These guys only have online friends and suddenly living in the same room with 10 other farting people is too much for them.
They go on to say that these people are examined later (1-3 years), and that most of them are rid of the addicion at that point and then they can continue their service. About 80% finish their military service.
-- [Partly (shamelessly) quoted and freely translated from "Iltalehti" http://www.iltalehti.fi ]
No sig. Go away.
A sibling post describing the issue in more detail makes it sound like "internet addiction" is mainly a euphemism for "lazy, undisciplined and poorly socialized".