Essay · 12 November 2005 (051112)

To Succeed in Going Against the Stream and the Road to a Better Society

Our society is changing in the 21st century at a pace we have never seen the like of. The stress is palpable at every level. The same feelings existed in society during the early industrialisation more than a hundred years ago. Now new upheavals are taking place, as functions of increased globalisation and the expansion of the digital channels of communication (the Internet). This little treatise is my own reflections in the light of today's media noise, my own experiences and trends that can be discerned in the world around us.

To begin with, I describe trends at different levels which I assume will become even clearer over the coming decade. Then I turn to the personal arena, where we as individuals daily fight to protect ourselves from the demands of the world around us.

Since we are all born as different individuals, you who read may take on board everything or absorb the applicable parts of the content. What is right for me may not be right for you. Moreover, the text is relatively shallow in its treatment. Much knowledge that is here recounted in five or six lines was realised after weeks of reflection and conversation. Feel free to send an email to fredrik.nilstromer@swipnet.se if you want to give me any feedback. The text encourages precisely your own reflection; the questions have no unambiguous or given answers.

Globally

How did China become so important to the market? Work breeds prosperity, prosperity breeds consumption, consumption creates demand and employment. The order is not academic; growth becomes chaotic, China's domestic market an inferno driven by increasing prosperity among many millions of Chinese. China also sells to us comparatively few Swedes. It is a matter of economies of scale of enormous proportions. Everything produced in this inferno becomes cheap.

The shareholders become more content as the listed companies grow. Growth lands abroad, not in the home country, and prosperity spreads across our world. Ericsson increases its staff abroad by several thousand, but reduces a few hundred employees in Sweden.

When will Sweden become interesting as a production country again? How many years will it take? Sweden has, as always, timber and iron ore.

Increased prosperity is created for a larger share of the world's population. At the same time, greater environmental threats are created through the greenhouse effect. The jobs in low-wage countries are often insecure with a poor working environment by our standards.

The US economy will falter and be called into question, whereupon the EU takes a stronger role on the world-political stage.

Europe

The strategy of closing Europe to cheap goods through high tariffs and quotas will not create the jobs that are the goal. Well-known clothing brands have already outsourced their manufacturing to low-wage countries. The garments manufactured in Europe are aimed at smaller, prosperous consumer groups spread across all ages. The employment this manufacturing creates is a drop in the ocean compared with the employment the “outsourced” jobs would have constituted had they not left Europe.

Tough environmental requirements and a rigid labour law make European production more expensive compared with the low-wage countries.

Exclusion (unemployment) creates rifts in society; a small working clique must support ever more pensioners, people on sick leave and unemployed.

Segregation in combination with a lack of quality of life breeds increased anxiety, where the individual will always be exposed. We will see an escalating spiral of violence among young men without purpose in life and faith in the future.

The EU increasingly takes the form of a federal superstate, set to watch over the member states and distribute money between various support programmes. EU law applies over national law; when EU laws are transposed to national level, a mishmash of EU law and national law arises. Conflicts and problems of interpretation contribute to the inefficiency at the same time as the national governments lose the steering instruments they previously had. E.g. Swedish alcohol policy.

Driven by increased European poverty, within ten years the trade unions will be based at central European level in order to collectively match the internal market the EU has. During the same time, the EU's member states will in practice be reduced to regions within the EU with a joint intelligence service and police.

Control will be a badge of honour within the EU. The EU becomes Sweden's big brother. Cameras will watch us everywhere. We will become ever more passive about politics and development as power leaves the country. Central surveillance hereby replaces citizens with civic courage.

Sweden

The generation born in the forties leave the stage and to a greater extent move their assets abroad. Many small businesses are quite simply wound up, as it does not pay to let the next generation take over due to targeted taxes.

Greater unemployment and a shrinking private sector pull away the tax base of the public sector, primarily the municipalities. The number of municipalities is cut by 50%, the county councils disappear and the hospitals become politically governed results units. Primary care is transferred to municipal responsibility.

Care as a free commodity is abolished and various attempts to find functioning models are tried. The segregation in society has made people very lonely. One seeks care because one is really worried and needs someone to talk to.

The belief that public authorities should solve YOUR problems has culminated and passed into anarchy. The classic political parties exist only at national level and are replaced by local parties that gather residents' views on various issues. This leads to enormous volatility in public activities, which further strengthens the feeling that society is on a slippery slope.

Locally

Citizens' patrols increasingly patrol streets and squares, both as protection for the young and as protection for home and property. The spiral of violence is dreadful. One can now speak of highway robbers and mugger gangs. The neighbour may kick your cat and run over your bicycle and seem threatening when you raise the matter with him. A police report is of no use. Protection racketeering and the mafia are established as a force in society.

The police can now only investigate the really serious crimes; even murder investigations have to be postponed to the future. For easily understood reasons the police's behaviour has become more brutal at the same rate as violence has increased. The little person soon does not know whom she should fear most.

But surely it must not become this bad!

Where is the heart in today's people? Values? Ethics and morality?

The message that trade and media proclaim today is – Consume! – Enjoy today! Tomorrow you may be dead. We are given only the present; everything happens in the present, both life and death. The instant-gratifier sets no distant goals and enters no binding agreements; he enjoys now, of food, drink, love (sex), experiences in our world of abundance. But is this the same as saying – Live today as if this day were your last? Carpe diem? Today's people can of course not be tarred with the same brush. But one tendency is that we reason more and more like a true instant-gratifier. To live as an instant-gratifier means to me having a destructive lifestyle. Too much pleasure becomes no pleasure. Always eating a lot of sweets, party food and rich sauces does not only make you fat but also demanding and blasé. All food must constantly surpass my previous experiences. Too much drinking leads to alcoholism. Too much sex becomes a habit, diminishes erotic pleasure, and banalises a sexual relationship. A risk is also that when the pleasures are no longer surpassed, the relationships are evaluated so much that no partner is good enough for any length of time.

What we need is excitement, closeness, consideration and love; these values are created from good conversations, experiences and time together with one's partner.

Read about how a relaxed lifestyle can give you values in life at http://www.epicurus.info/

But an anonymous voice on the page above comments on Epicureanism like this:

“Therefore Epicureanism, which is the calm part of hedonism, is something that would suit me really well. Even if I would feel really good from this drawn-out enjoyment of life, and just being. I still would not hold back my urges. To gorge on delicacies, experience intense joy and have wonderful sex – that is not something I want to resign from.”

Epicureanism meets somewhere in a borderland of hedonism, where the instant-gratifier according to the description above belongs. Often we are something of periodic types in these contexts. Important in our stressful age is that one should often stop and cultivate one's inner garden.

Find your own style and relax in your limitations

We compare ourselves with many role models. They can be the boss, mother, father, a friend or some celebrity. Comparing yourself is part of your development; good role models build you up, but excessive demands break you down. You yourself become your own slave driver when you do not realise that you are you, and not the celebrity with a capital C or your successful sales colleague. Turn down the demands, dial down and relax.

What you have not found at home, you will not find on the other side of the world

Worry follows us through life: worry about a sick relative, worry about not reaching the goals that have been set, worry about poor sleep, worry about death and worry about other things. When you realise that you no longer need to worry about what you cannot influence, you can live in the present.

What touches today's people?

People with a big heart have always attracted me. These are the people who love life and their surroundings and who care. People who meet your gaze. People who smile at the world around them. People with integrity and civic courage. People who know they can make a difference. Genuine human warmth, without calculating motives.

What do today's people strive for?

Towards retirement. Towards the final orgasm. Towards greater wealth. Towards death...

Money creates opportunities, not happiness.

I believe it is important to set personal goals that can be reached. When I hit the wall I experienced the worst spring of my entire life; everything I had believed in and worked for I called into question. Thanks to a stay in an undemanding environment and cognitive therapy I got back on track. Now I have never felt better, and I say that even though I learned a while ago that I had developed diabetes.

You can reach goals and personal development by tending your thoughts. Every day we commit unnecessary errors of thought that in turn create worry and in the worst case anxiety, without our really having understood why. We can, e.g., go around believing the boss thought I was an idiot because I said something foolish. But do I really know that what I said was really perceived that way by the boss. He does not know my thoughts and my frames of reference. The mistake we make is believing that others can read our thoughts. In reality it is an impossibility. Be your own defence counsel. Prosecutors are plentiful...

Do not let others take your joy from you!

Why should other people's bad moods pull down my mood and make me depressed? If someone comes along and is negative, you can question what he says, or you can choose not to care. No – the risk is great that you are drawn along in the negative drill and sing along. But with a simple feint of thought you can, in your mind, pretend to kick the negative person off your “inner stage” wearing the roughest football boots. Try it!

What dreams and goals do you have in your life?

When you know you have diabetes, it is easy to say to yourself – food was all I had, what can I enjoy now? Perhaps it is as simple as us humans sometimes being one-eyed. What does it matter if I can no longer stuff myself with food. Restraint gives an extra golden edge to the few occasions when one can really treat oneself. Easy to write, harder to realise. Comfort eating is something a diabetic must give up. That is the hard part. Not having anything to sink one's teeth into. But do we live to eat, or do we eat to live? In today's over-advertised world it can be hard to know exactly. When Mat-Tina says “Gött” (a Swedish TV cook's catchphrase for “tasty”), it is even harder to know.

Money and excessive enjoyment are nothing to strive for; what, then, is worth striving for?

Good relationships and the importance of contentment.

Seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened. The sitting bird gets no food. Work on your relationships. Give, give and give. Do you get nothing back? Then you are on the wrong track. Relationships characterised by the same words and phrases become stale and demanding. The lack of spontaneity breeds irritation and sniping, or a feeling that everything is a social game where only human façades are polished.

Seek out surroundings and people who are your equals (similar values), and preferably with similar interests. You shall both confirm and be confirmed. All people have a need to be seen and confirmed. A relationship feels good if it contains a certain measure of unpredictability. The moment of surprise is liberating and releases creativity. Perhaps you are a person who prefers the safe corner? But then you have probably stopped reading already.

The social network at a workplace is the best. We meet to carry out something that someone else has decided, and we do it together. Our result depends on our cooperation. In this atmosphere, opportunities arise for good conversations that provide support and good comradeship. In many cases the conversations are deeper than those we can have at home.

In old Sweden the farmyard community played a corresponding role; here was the natural social network, fully integrated with kin and family life. Here also lies part of the explanation for the segregation that now exists in our society, in the exclusion that unemployment creates. Benefit money gives no relationships or comradeship. Rather, exclusion leads to great strain on marriages and love relationships. The relatively small group that a family constitutes does not contain the social dynamism that a workplace or a farmyard community contains.

If you lack relationships, you can join an association and find new friends there. In your town there are enormously many associations: sports, model aircraft, car club, art guild, choir singing, temperance movement, sewing circles, weight watchers, congregation, railway enthusiasts and chat groups on the Internet. The voluntary exchange offers a great deal of contact with people, can lead to some work, commitment and responsibility.

Getting yourself a conversation partner can be a valve. In the USA these are called “shrinks”, i.e. mind-crinklers, in other words a psychologist. Just as well one can call the person a mentor – in short, a person with a different life experience from one's own. The conversation partner can put one's own questions in a different context and create perspective for oneself. The psychologist or behavioural scientist can help us put the right questions to ourselves in order to question the thoughts that fly through our brains.

Contentment is the same as happiness. When you are content and satisfied, you are happy.

• You are content with yourself in your own limitations
• You are content with your situation in relation to the world around you (even as long-term sick or unemployed)
• You have someone to love – yourself

Happiness is closer than you think. Think how we run to find happiness, and think how expensive it often becomes when we try to consume our way to it.

The meaning of life is realised in the present. The meaning of life (the collected one) is the sum of the present in the plural.

A happy person is also prepared to take responsibility for a context greater than their own, and this is civic courage. More happy people counteract the disintegration of society.

A book tip is Långsamhetens lov eller vådan av att åka moped genom Louvren (In Praise of Slowness, or the Harm of Riding a Moped through the Louvre), written by Owe Wikström. The book is about finding the good solitude in our age of stress.

Fredrik Nilströmer

PS. Some days it is entirely right to just sit and look out of the window.