Some further comments and reflections on "Storsamfunnet"

(This is a comment to my last post, "Storsamfunnet")

It's funny sometimes when you've been thinking about something, and you found yourself constantly stumbling over things that are connected to this particular subject. This happens all the time to me.

I just read a book called Å gjøre en forskjell (To make a difference) by the Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre. In his book, Støre is referring to the American sociologist Robert Putnam and his thoughts about what he calls "Social Capital". Social Capital is in a sense the glue that binds us together as a society. It is the feeling that we are a society, a feeling of mutuality in the society, of trust, and a feeling that each of is is part of the society.

In Bowling Alone Putnam shows how the American society is disintegrating in the sense that social and civic bonds are being weakened and are withering away. Partaking in NGOs, community service of any kind, etc. is on the wane. People are more focused on individual rights than in taking part in activities that improves the social capital of the country.

I see this as being directly relevant to the attitudes and mentality I described in my previous post. When your view of society is that there is a big bad monster - the big society or "storsamfunnet" - that you are not a part of and that is fundamentally opposed to your own interests, then there is definitely a case of a lack trust between yourself and society. If a lot of people feel there is a big divide between themselves and the society at large (which is really just everyone else, isn't it?), that cannot be good for society as such. Norway tends to take pride in being very egalitarian in many ways. But the idea that there is a "big society" dominating the "little people" is contrary to this.

Storsamfunnet

Occasionally I think and reflect upon words and terms in our language. Language is a funny thing - full of quirks, connotations, color, subtle or hidden meaning, etc. One of the terms I have some issues with I addressed in one of my post from October 2008, titled Social levelling. Another term that I have thought about quite a bit, but I never came to terms with and have never quite understood is "storsamfunnet". Translated, it means society at large or big society or something like that.

The term seems to be mostly used when there is somebody (a person or a group, most a minority one) that has been treated at variance with their rights, or in some way been treated unfairly or oppressed. A lot of times, the perpetrator of these sins is "storsamfunnet". It seems to me that the term is all but exclusively used by the political left.

Like many terms, this is one that only helps to muddle any nuanced and precise debate. It is devoid of any real meaning but conjures up a whole host of connotations. What comes up in my imagination when I hear talk of "storsamfunnet" is an army of faceless and heartless bureaucrats hellbent on making the lives of the "little people" (whoever they are) as miserable as they possibly can. From their shady offices they plot on ceaselessly to oppress any independent thinking there might be in the nation. Of course, you couldn't name any of these boogiemen, it's as if they're not really there as individuals, only as a group. But they are there - make no mistake about it - lurking in the shadows and under beds. And they are up to no good. Needless to say, "big society" is capitalistic to the teeth and fiercely loyal to USA.

In my opinion, the usage of such a term betrays a fundamentally pessimistic, negative and slightly paranoid world view. The state is not there to make our lives and coexistence better, more organised and safer. No, it's there to oppress us, to put us all under surveillance, to take away our liberties, to control us.

Well, to sum up all these chaotic ramblings in a way; I never really understood this term, and I can't really see what this "big society" is as opposed to normal society. And I think I am too optimistic and positive about the role of the state in the modern world to buy into any conspiracy that "big society" is there mainly to oppress us..

News and media in Norway

The decline of serious media is something that has been widely commented upon. Traditional media like newspapers and television have a hard time making a profit, and many turn towards a more "tabloidism". They shy away from serious news coverage and fill up their pages and time with pure entertainment. In that respect the willingness of the state-owned TV-channel NRK to do the opposite is truly laudable.

The quality of NRKs news coverage was already great as it was - serious and balanced - and it has had some really great docu-mentaries and programs on current affairs, especially Urix, a program analyzing various foreign affairs/current affairs topics. Now NRK is stepping this up even more, with more time for news and more debate-programs. One of the most promising "newbies" is Supernytt, which is basically news for kids. It takes guts to launch something like that, and I doubt that any commercial channel would have made such a gamble.

This increased focus on serious news and debate is especially welcome because Norway is in my opinion not rife with such. Granted, we do have a great national broadcaster in NRK, and it's main competitor, TV2 does have a dedicated channel to news - kind of like a Norwegian national mini-version of CNN. And we do have some relatively high quality national newspapers. Norway has a highly educated population and a high proportion of newspaper readers. But we are very few, there are only 4,6 millions of us. And in such a tiny market it is infernally hard to run any commercial tv channel or newspaper economically profitable in the same way you could in a larger market like Germany, the UK or even France. So even though we do have some good newspapers (like Dagsavisen and Dagens næringsliv), we do not have anything that is even close to newspapers like Daily Telegraph, The Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, etc.

That is all fair enough though, given the way things are. But what is more lamentable or annoying or whatever, is that in parts of the country (where I live now for example), the good newspapers are not on regular sale. By that I mean that to get them, you will have to subscribe, which I did for a while, but then you will only get them a day or two late. So what we are left with if we want to read the paper version of newspapers are VG and Dagbladet, which are (in my opinion) crap and a waste of time to read.

Anyway. Ari Fleischer, George Bush Jr.'s press secretary, complained that the press always ended stories on a down-note, to point out something negative no matter how positive the main story was. I don't want to do that, since what I meant to do with this post was to praise NRK for what they are doing, which is truly great. So let me just end this by saying: Way to go, NRK!

Reflections on Christmas

This Christmas, my brother and I made a rather nice gingerbread house - a model of the village church. The result turned out to be quite nice, although the proportions are a bit off. Baking a gingerbread house is also in Norway part of Christmas traditions, and something that my family has been doing for as long as I can remember. A quite nice tradition it is, I think - it certainly gets me in the Christmas spirit.

We do not call it a gingerbread house, though, but a peppercake house. I wonder why that is. It contains both ingredients - pepper and ginger. Why is it that in the English language it derives its name from the ginger, but we name it after the pepper? Strange..

Living with my "foreign" girlfriend/partner, I constantly notice some things that are different elsewhere than here. One thing is about the Christmas tree. We got ourselves a really nice one this year, though not a Norwegian one. Ours is a Danish import. Anyway, normally we bring the tree into the living room and do the decorations on the evening of the 23rd, sometimes after the kids went to bed. So when the kids get up on the 24th, the tree is there for them to see for the first time.

Elsewhere the tree is brought in a long time before the 23rd, in some countries even on the 1st of December. To be honest I think I'd be fed up by the time Christmas came had it been in since then. We made a compromise - we brought it in on the 19th.

The main thing that strikes me as different - at least as to how I am used to celebrate Christmas, is that for me, the 25th of December has no significance. It is really like any Sunday. For many people, the 25th is the main day of Christmas, but for me it's always been the 24th that's been the day (and night, of course). It's the day of the main meal, and for the kids the day they've been waiting for because they open all the presents then, etc.

Well well, some pluralism when it comes to traditions can't hurt.. I guess it can only make things more interesting..

Anyway - I wish you all Happy New Year, and wish you all the best for 2010. As for the new year, I made myself quite a list of New Years Resolutions, and one of them is that I will stop neglecting my blog. 2009 was not a prolific blog-year for me. But through 2010 I will try my best to come up with one post every week.

Merry Christmas!

I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and hope you'll have a splendid time during the holiday seasons. May all your wishes come true!

Here we go again

Here we go again. I'm not really referring to the recent election, which gave the red-green (centre-left) Labour-led government another four years in office. Given that there hasn't emerged any credible alternative on the slightly-to-the-right side of the political spectrum (excluding the Progress Party) that is not at all the worst result.

I am also not really heralding any re-launch of my blog; that all depends on my general level of inspiration at any given time. As anyone following my blog have noticed, my level of inspiration has not been very high lately. The most recent entry in my blog is dated April 20, almost exactly five months ago. Hopefully my muses will return..

What I am referring to is of a personal nature, really. When I started writing this blog, I was living in Prague. I had just quit my job back home as a teacher and left for a job in a global oil-company - which sounds deceptively lucrative and glamorous. It was not.

Anyway, before I left for my little odyssey abroad, bringing me to the Czech Republic and to the UK, I often felt like one of them polar explorers or hunters who let themselves freeze into the ice around Spitzbergen. It really felt like I went into hibernation just waiting for the winter to end and, literally and figuratively, for the ice to melt, so that I could sail south again. Living here back then I felt kind of far removed and separated from the rest of the world.

Now that I am back, and the autumn is here and the winter will soon be arriving, it again feels as if my ship is freezing in once again. Still I feel a little better about it somehow. Why it is exactly why I feel better about it this time, I don't know. Maybe it is because I had my fix of 'the World' for a while, or maybe it is because my family-situation is a bit different now. It's hard to say, but somehow I don't dread the coming winter at all right now..

April 20, 8.30 p.m.

When I checked the calendar this morning, it said April 20. Normally that would spell out springtime in bold letters. But then again, I guess I'm not living anywhere normal, at least not weatherwise. Driving home this evening I took this picture with my mobile phone. Not quite what I associate with springtime..

I suppose this is what you can expect living on 71º north, but to me this is one of the aspects about it that makes me the most depressed. I make no secret of being a summer child. And getting this when I'd rather see the snow gone and the sun shining - not good.. But then again, things tend to change fast, and the spring will probably arrive soon enough. Its just that right now the seems really far far away.