Can't we all just get along?

Cant we all just get along? Finland, Russia, Sweden, and Estonia all share sauna culture, sauna culture extends beyond the sauna though. In southern Europe you have roman baths, in Türkiye you have the hammam and in Japan you have the onsen/sento or even sweat lodges in America. Sauna culture is more than just sitting naked in a hot room, although it’s rooted in hygiene it has a bigger social significance. The core of the experience is the connection, a connection caused by isolation and isolation together and time for just that. It’s relaxing and exposing, you’re vulnerable, but so is everyone else. The most refined and catering to that experience is the Onsen, it’s a structure, a system designed to facilitate the trip needed to ease you into the “sauna”. There is a travel and a ritual, a distance you must travel to enter. The architecture is meant to amplify these emotions, by being at a scale that makes you feel miniscule, harsh, and cold, to make you feel forced to find connection with the others. The design process has taken inspirations from many sources, one being the idea of “ego death” often associated with psychedelics. The isolation makes you feel small, the tall open space makes you feel small, the huge body of water makes you feel small. When you arrive, you have to leave all your possessions to enter, no shield, no facade and no status symbol. You are only yourself in your own flesh. Stripped to only a human. The only option you have left is to seek refuge in each other, or yourself. The Onsen is located far from out in the Baltic sea, close to all four countries, providing neutral grounds. Here everyone, due the rituals to enter, are equal and have the same audacity, it doesn’t matter if you’re a priest, president, or peasant. It’s not by chance the Onsen is located in the middle of the sea, it’s historically and presently a tense ocean. In the book “a sea of changes” by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), a book about development of the Baltic states after the fall of the USSR, it’s very apparent that just handing out money to a country doesn’t really deepen the diplomatic relations. But these kinds of exchanges, invitations to exchange lead to the type of cooperation we now have with those countries. Using this kind of space for informal diplomacy is not a untested phenomenon, from criminals to country leaders saunas and spas are used as a way to communicate honestly. The Finish secretary of state once held an entire speech just praising “sauna politics”. Maybe this common ground is the place where we can find common ground and just get along.