Helping the young find a 'first life' before they lose themselves in second life

Mal Fletcher

The chilling murder this week of five students, a nurse and a volunteer teacher in a Finnish school should give us pause to think about the challenges facing Europe's young people.

I have visited Finland many times over the past decade, meeting with church and community leaders and speaking to crowds, large and small, which included many teenagers.

Violence, of course, is a very real possibility in any community, but having written about school shootings in the USA I never thought I'd be writing about such a thing in rural Finland.

Within Europe, Finland is famous for Nokia and Formula One racing drivers. It is better known for saunas than shootings.

When 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen walked into Jokela High School in the south of his country, carrying a 22 calibre handgun, he marked Finland with a terrible stain of sadness. And he showed that gun violence may become an issue in Europe, too.

Normally, Finnish people are carefree, outgoing and friendly in the long days of summer; then quietly stoic during the dark days of winter when sunlight is hard to find. Their standard of living is one of the highest in the world; and their education system enjoys some of the highest average test scores in Europe.

In today's globalised culture, however, small and well-off nations can no longer claim immunity from the social traumas normally associated with poorer regions and huge populations.

What, if anything, can we bring out of this tragedy?

First perhaps a reminder that communications technologies like the internet, while they're a fantastic boon to our lives in so many ways, cannot substitute for healthy face-to-face human interaction.

In some cases, as here, they seem to encourage greater social isolation and feelings of alienation within an already troubled young mind.

Hours before his murderous spree, Auvinen posted sinister warnings of his intent on YouTube.

His first YouTube site had operated under the name 'NaturalSelector89'.

Auvinen was a self-confessed fan of social Darwinism, which applies Darwin's theories of natural selection to society as a whole. Basically, it says, the weak must be jettisoned to help preserve and advance the strong.

YouTube decided that Auvinen's violent rantings were at odds with its policies and removed his site. So he constructed another using the codename 'Sturmgeist89', taken from a German word meaning 'storm-spirit'. It now seems a fitting name for his inner condition, but it was also the name of one of his favourite heavy metal bands.