FreedomPhilosophy Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 I speak with Louise Koch as we contrast the claims that the Danes are some of the happiest people in the world with real life experiences. Louise, aka "Fruity Lou", is from Denmark and we struck up a conversation about a meme that makes the connection between the happiness of the Danes and their extensive welfare state. But are things really as good as the propaganda suggests? I had to interview her to find out more and do some research of my own. The research institutions that produce happiness reports are funded by governmental agencies and of course they tell us that government intervention helps to make people happy. To find out more about Louise and her great work visit http://fruitylou.com/ Sources Depression and Antidepressants: A Nordic Perspective http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3854846/ The number of persons with alcohol problems in the Danish population http://sjp.sagepub.com/content/39/2/128 Happiness Research Institute http://www.happinessresearchinstitute.com/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuger Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 I was over in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden for about 5 weeks back in 2003, and I can remember catching just small snippets of their TV commercials and they had recurring ads from different counseling services and UV light therapy centers that ran the same exact trope over and over again, which was basically, "Why aren't I happy?" or "How could I be happier?". This was in the dead of their long, dark winter, and it really struck me because in American commercials they never just come right out and ask, "why aren't you happy?", it's always just implied in the slick Bernaysian fashion. There was also an unrelated anxious encounter that I had with security at the Oslo airport I'll never forget. I had packed my pocket knife in the wrong bag, security pulled me aside, opened up my carry-on and produced the knife. I got that feeling like, "okay, brace yourself" -- probably because of witnessing the behavior of the TSA nasties stateside. The security-dude saw the look on my face and just chuckled, put the knife back in the bag, checked my bag into the cargo-hold and just took care of the problem in a helpful way. No power-trip, no haranguing -- just did his job. I didn't get a very good first hand understanding of how Scandinavians view the welfare state. The feeling I got over there was sort of like I was among a bunch of fellow mid-westerners in that they all seemed exceedingly polite and civil. Albeit, the Scandinavians were all very fit and less prone to bar-culture. "Contented" (not necessarily in a virtuous sense) might be a better word than "happy", and that fits with the Swedish concept of "lagom", if you're familiar, which is basically a kind of Aristotelian mean -- "not too much, not too little" (as best explained by Will Ferrell [in slick Madison Avenue packaging]). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ4Wol80NZw 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tweety Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 The life in scandinavia makes me sick (was born there, living there). The scandinavians in general are so deep in the leftists ditch that it sometimes feels like they could not dig themselves out if they wanted to. Particularly in sweden, the flood of "we all should stand on the same line (aka. make smart people dum, make rich people poor, praise everyone, criticise none) is overwhelming. One of my first observations from sweden was that there were a lot of babies around, in cities, in parks..but also that many of the people i met were divorced. Indeed, Sweden has one of the highest divorce rates at 55% (2012). Around 20% of all mothers are single parents. Bar-culture in Scandinavia (particularly Norway, Sweden, Finland) is controlled by the state. Selling alcohol is a monopoly of the state and prices at bars are sky-high. This is justified by the extreme amounts of alcohol scandinavians use (Finland 12.3L vs. USA 9.2L of pure alcohol per person per year), so it is "good for us citizens" to make it extremely expensive and not easily accessible. Still I wonder, why Italians, for example, do not seem to suffer from alcoholism even though they are allowed to sell 100% alcohol in local grocery stores? Would we be drinking as much in Scandinavia, if the alcohol would not be regulated but more freely available? In a list of countries ordered by suicide rates, Finland lands 21st, USA 30th, other scandinavian countries are not far behind (Sweden 35, Norway 37, Denmark 41). I would put forward a hypothesis that the "contentment" you see in Scandinavians is a fake surface on top of well suppressed emotions. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anuojat Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 I think we are the "less violent parenting" societys. Where things are better on one hand... and worse since government daycare and school ohoy come to crush us badly. Si id say its not that people are happier but deal with theyre issues in ways the give the appearance of being content (which would be contrast and thus give the illusion of happiness). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreedomPhilosophy Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 I would put forward a hypothesis that the "contentment" you see in Scandinavians is a fake surface on top of well suppressed emotions. I don't doubt this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tweak Posted February 20, 2015 Share Posted February 20, 2015 I am from Scandinavia, Sweden. I can tell you that those shows are made by the people of the many- leftist and liberals. The truth is that life in Scandinavia is not as great as the american leftist media claim. And it goes like this: "Well its "Scandinavian socialism" don´t you see how great of a life they have?" Often referring to our "free" national healthcare witch only looks good from the outside. Say you have a hip injury, by the time you actually are old enough to have such an injury they will tell you that you are "too old" to get treatment. Healthcare is only good for the illegals. A swede will pay maybe 1500 Skr and illegals will pay 50 Skr- maximum. And as for those shows once again, lets just give you one example, the american channel Fox News is actually illegal in this country, because it´s deemed to "right- wing". Now say you are a person who is doing well financially, well lets just say that your neighbor will not like that. That person will actually look down on you. No joke. We have a huge alkohol problem. Being drunk to the point where you don´t know where your head is, is actually normal. And is often strived for, when friday and Saturday comes. We also have a lot of people on drugs but it´s done in the shadows where people does not look. And where tourist won´t see. We have so many people on anti- depressives... It´s sad. To sum it up, Sweden is the poster child for socialism. Witch the world media is using as an excuse to take away rights from there citizens while they show how wonderful it is... More socialism. My mother, she works as a "day- mother" as we call it, for the government. If a girl plays with a barbie doll, she (my mother) is ordered by the soviet to put a truck in her hand when this happens. Of course the people will get screwed up. But Il tell you, they love it. Swedish people love government. Referring to the other post: As for the word "lagom" that means "team- around". If you are 5 people and you have 5 potatoes and you are asked how much you want, and you say "lagom", then you will get one potato. Also one last thing. Remember that if you do not have the "proper" political view and you work in government, maybe teaching. Sooner or later they will hunt you down and you will lose everything. Our major newspapers works with very effective stasi- style government groups who extract data from anonymity sites then the newspapers will go after these people- go home to them, or other ways of "catching" them. One of the more popular program uses illegally gathered information about people who doens´nt "think the way you should". The papers also works with people who for example done things such as training marxist gerillas in Africa. The government run channels even go through their archives now to sort out things that are not on pair with the government. Some things they forbid broadcasting such as some scens of "Faulty Towers" just to name one because they are "rasist". In this country there is a lot of censorship.The government is now going to change the history books that the schoolchildren are using, they said some week ago. They are even changing the name of flowers so that people "wont get offended". One thing is for sure and that is if Mr Molyneux hade said the stuff he says on his show he would be facing jail- time, that I guarantee. To answer TS: No In this country only slaves are happy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Madman Person Guy Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I was over in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden for about 5 weeks back in 2003, and I can remember catching just small snippets of their TV commercials and they had recurring ads from different counseling services and UV light therapy centers that ran the same exact trope over and over again, which was basically, "Why aren't I happy?" or "How could I be happier?". This was in the dead of their long, dark winter, and it really struck me because in American commercials they never just come right out and ask, "why aren't you happy?", it's always just implied in the slick Bernaysian fashion. There was also an unrelated anxious encounter that I had with security at the Oslo airport I'll never forget. I had packed my pocket knife in the wrong bag, security pulled me aside, opened up my carry-on and produced the knife. I got that feeling like, "okay, brace yourself" -- probably because of witnessing the behavior of the TSA nasties stateside. The security-dude saw the look on my face and just chuckled, put the knife back in the bag, checked my bag into the cargo-hold and just took care of the problem in a helpful way. No power-trip, no haranguing -- just did his job. I didn't get a very good first hand understanding of how Scandinavians view the welfare state. The feeling I got over there was sort of like I was among a bunch of fellow mid-westerners in that they all seemed exceedingly polite and civil. Albeit, the Scandinavians were all very fit and less prone to bar-culture. "Contented" (not necessarily in a virtuous sense) might be a better word than "happy", and that fits with the Swedish concept of "lagom", if you're familiar, which is basically a kind of Aristotelian mean -- "not too much, not too little" (as best explained by Will Ferrell [in slick Madison Avenue packaging]). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ4Wol80NZw While I don't question the validity of your observations, I'm going to come out and say this straight; I think you greatly underestimate the level of self-repression that people are capable of if they have been culturally inundated enough. Yes, it's true that we Swedes are good at speaking clearly about certain things, and yes it's true that we are polite and civil almost to a fault. But this is only made possible due to the tacit understanding among us all of what's okay to talk about, and what's okay to do in a social environment. We even had a sort of self-referentially satirical humor show called "Inte Okej" (Not OK) on TV this last summer where a Swedish comedian and director by the name of Felix Hernegren made analyses of certain social behaviors and mores over here and quite a few jabs at our commonly held perceptions. And one suspects that the only reason he got the approval for that show was due to the fact that, among other things, we're also supposed to be world champions at self-deprecation... The sum of the thought ethos in Swedish culture, and particularly academia, as I would describe it after having suffered my years passing through the system, is something along the lines of "You can think whatever you want, so long as it's the right thing". Oh, we uphold freedom of speech, again to a fault, and strive painstakingly to present things in as non-judgmental a fashion as we can. In public conversation, in the workplace, in media. But then again, that says nothing about what we choose to talk about, or connected to what topic. It says nothing about subtext or insinuation or suggestion. And both Swedish politicians and teachers and the Swedish press have over time become fantastically good at cherry picking and making their formulations very carefully. We may not allow the same level of foot-in-mouth talk and sentimentalism as for instance some American cable news channels, and have learned to restrain ourselves from e.g. hyperbole in a fantastic fashion. But even if you're not "allowed" to apply the same amount of spin, sometimes that's hardly a problem; you just have to make it more efficient. How is this relevant, you might ask? Well, it's relevant in that it ties into the high density of political correctness that occupies this place. If there is any country that holds strongly to the naivist dogma of social constructionism and non-innateness of human traits, it's Sweden. Neither is the reason for the other, I suspect. Rather, they seem symptomatic of some more deeply rooted problem, which I suspect has its seat in the academies. And this in turn is relevant in that Swedes are traditionally "overeducated", and have been for a long time, thanks to our public education system. Which is not to say we're on average much smarter; it's just that so many of us are "intellectualized" and steeped in the theories that hold sway in academia the world over. And while they can be practically clever, most people aren't sly enough or motivated to apply even further levels of analysis or critical thinking than the tenured ones who get paid to write stuff down have already done... I could go on to describe and delineate the problems even further, but to put it short; Tweety is right. And the reason the illusion can be maintained is because we Swedes now have doublethink in our culture. The system is self-reinforcing, applying both individually from the bottom up and politically and academically from the top down. The sad thing is that I don't know quite what to do about it, but I suspect a good start might be forcing all Swedish teachers and students alike to read "The Blank Slate"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaki Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Concerning the Nordic mindset this might be interesting as well: We have here in the North something called the Jantelagen- or "Law of Jante". It comes from a Danish book and describes the expected group behavior in Nordic societies: the group is all and individual success is something to be condemned. Here are the ten (eleven) rules: You're not to think you are anything special. You're not to think you are as good as we are. You're not to think you are smarter than we are. You're not to convince yourself that you are better than we are. You're not to think you know more than we do. You're not to think you are more important than we are. You're not to think you are good at anything. You're not to laugh at us. You're not to think anyone cares about you. You're not to think you can teach us anything. Perhaps you don't think we know a few things about you? Even if this isn't really a set of laws, it sneaks in everywhere and people do actually very much live by it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreedomPhilosophy Posted February 25, 2015 Author Share Posted February 25, 2015 Concerning the Nordic mindset this might be interesting as well: We have here in the North something called the Jantelagen- or "Law of Jante". It comes from a Danish book and describes the expected group behavior in Nordic societies: the group is all and individual success is something to be condemned. Here are the ten (eleven) rules: You're not to think you are anything special. You're not to think you are as good as we are. You're not to think you are smarter than we are. You're not to convince yourself that you are better than we are. You're not to think you know more than we do. You're not to think you are more important than we are. You're not to think you are good at anything. You're not to laugh at us. You're not to think anyone cares about you. You're not to think you can teach us anything. Perhaps you don't think we know a few things about you? Even if this isn't really a set of laws, it sneaks in everywhere and people do actually very much live by it. Wow, these rules feel like unspoken stuff I picked up at school when I was moved from the high achievers class to the underachievers! Staying in line seemed to be the desired outcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Madman Person Guy Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Wow, these rules feel like unspoken stuff I picked up at school when I was moved from the high achievers class to the underachievers! Staying in line seemed to be the desired outcome. That is quite depressing to hear, but as much as I want to go on, I just have to ask; how'd you get moved around like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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