Comment by drorco
3 years ago
I think one should not forget that Denmark's society is mostly homogenous. When you have a vastly dominant, culturally homogenous group, it's relatively easy to trust and support one another.
In a highly diverse country like the US, where the average New Yorker or new immigrant will have a completely different culture and world view from the average Joe in Missouri, and that's just two examples out of many, it's very difficult to build a culture of mutual trust, especially in comparison to the level of support Scandinavian countries offer to their communities.
I hate hearing this argument. Simply because I'm living proof of the opposite: I'm not a native Swede, I immigrated here, I integrated into society by looking at its values, identifying with most of them and sharing those forward. I became a Swede and it has nothing to do with being born Nordic or into a homogeneous culture.
This hand-waving argument on why America is exceptional is really misplaced. America has issues because it has a big population and manages everything in terms of money. Money is the religion of the USA, it's the ideology of the country and when the only metric you use to gauge anything is on how much will be spent and how much return it will give in monetary terms, you end up with a deeply fractured web of perverse incentives and misplaced cooperation to juggle one metric: money.
America was built in a culture of mistrust, it came from inception and it never fought it. Distrust from centralised government, distrust in others (hence having guns, you don't trust you'll be protected from others so you need to take matters into your hands), distrust in commercial relationships, in personal relationships. It makes society feels fake and shallow, like everyone is just playing a part. There is just a lack of communal sense in everything regarding American culture, it's all about individualism and the self.
Sweden may be seen as a communal society but it's really not that simple, I like to say that Sweden is the most communal individualistic country I've been to, people still value self-reliance and individualism, while also keeping in mind a holistic view of society.
I wish Americans could see past this exceptionalism and move towards building something based on trust, it'd be a force to be reckoned with. Right now it's just a huge waste of bickering and pettiness all around, every single issue in America is amplified by this huge egoistic mindset.
You make some fair points about money and mistrust but the parent's argument is not unfair. You mention that you "became a Swede" by adopting Sweden's values. America doesn't have one unified set of values due to being so big. Sweden is smaller than Ohio by population. Ohioans generally share some values, but they are quite different than people in Massachusetts or Mississippi. America is closer to the EU's scale, and the EU has plenty of idealogical differences between member states. Do the Greeks trust that the Germans are looking out for their best interests?
Like dtwest says, you have embraced the local culture.
If someone from let's say, a rural village in central Asia, will immigrate to Sweden and will hold on to their original culture, I doubt the average Swedish guy will be as happy to pay that guy's medical bills, the same way they'd do for someone who does holds a similar culture.
I realize this is just proving your point, but it also demontrates why the US doesn't really see the current culture as an issue:
GDP per capita:
USA: 63,543.58 USD
SWE: 51,925.71 USD
(for reference) UK: 40,284.64 USD
These are all for 2020.
The reason the US does nothing about climate change, privacy, inequality, etc. is lack of homogeneity? I'd like to see some evidence of the connection. Most of those policies are opposed by the same political grouping. The US has accomplished plenty of things in the past.
Homogeneity depends on the definition of the groups. Most people in the US speak English, have a smartphone, etc. The US has long unified behind ideas - democracy, liberty, civil rights, and opportunity for all, a more perfect union, but that same political grouping has significantly abandoned them (i.e., the 'for all' aspect, which is all that matters). When we look at 'ethnic' heterogeneity (often based on little but bias) the US has always been heterogeneous. For example, Italian and Polish, Protestant and Catholic, etc. used to be very separate groups. The definitions of the groups has always been flexible and convenient.
Finally, the parent argument implicitly accounts racism to the conditions, rather than to the people choosing it - a convenient cover for personal behavior. It also fits a popular trend saying that negative outcomes and human evil are inevitable. It's not inevitable at all; we certainly have good and evil in us, and we have the free will to choose which we do - an ancient belief of the Bible, the Enlightenment, etc. Racial division is a choice. There is nothing more inevitable about it than Protestants hating Catholics. Humans have done good things and bad things, and democracy - overwhelmingly the most successful form of government in history - has succeeded by depending on the good in people. You can do it right now.
Why would people look for arguments that success is impossible? We have accomplished incredible things and have much more to do.
I wasn't referring to climate change, etc. when I replied to the nice Danish fellow. I was mostly referring to his note regarding the sense of community and equality in Denmark.
My point is that cultural dissimilarity creates a lot of mistrust and frustration. If I don't have the same common goal as my neighbor, and we have a completely different style--our chances to be in conflict are a lot higher, and so my likeliness of wanting to help him out are much lower.
I'm from Israel, and even if you look just at the Jewish demography, the differences between the different groups, are huge -- even though we all speak Hebrew, part of the Jewish culture/religion in some way, etc. The life goals of a secular Jew in Tel-Aviv, could be almost the complete opposite of a religious Jew in Jerusalem -- you can imagine the conflict to be quite immense, and hence the sense of community greatly eliminated.
> cultural dissimilarity creates a lot of mistrust and frustration
As I said above, 'cultural dissimilarity' is a matter of perspective and changes all the time. And it doesn't create mistrust and frustration; people acting divisively and hatefully, and supporting systems that promote those things - people do it. There's not mechanism to blame. What are you doing? What am I doing?
>The reason the US does nothing about climate change, privacy, inequality, etc. is lack of homogeneity
I don't agree with the general point, but I do think the GOP funding class uses the US's heterogeneity as a wedge to distract from those issues (or anything else that would cost them money). See all of the culture wars.
What's the one big thing congress passed during the Trump years? The tax cut. That's not a mistake.
I used to think this, but I'm not sure the evidence actually supports it. The UK has similar levels of immigration and overseas-born citizens as Scandi countries, but nowhere near their levels of social cohesion/social democracy.
We were more similar < 1980, but I think the rhetoric from right wing corporate and billionaire-owned press, and now the internet, has eroded it to a large degree.
> According to 2021 figures from Statistics Denmark, 86% of Denmark's population of over 5,840,045 was of Danish descent, defined as having at least one parent who was born in Denmark and has Danish citizenship.
> The most recent Census in 2011 highlights that in England and Wales, 80 per cent of the population were white British > from 2001 to 2011, the percentage of the population of England and Wales that was White British decreased from 87.4% to 80.5%
And I imagine that white British population has gone down in the past 10 years.
Denmark is one of the most homogeneous country in Europe.
But to support your claim, Italy is even more homogeneous than Denmark, around ~91% of the population is "Italian" and yet we can't even agree that southerners and northerners are the same people.
I think that in Denmark a small population living in highly dense cities with high homogeneity helps.
I've visited Italy quite a bit and been there for nearly two months in aggregate, spanning all regions in the north, and in the south spent weeks in parts like Puglia and Campagnia. My impression was that culturally, the Italians in the south are VERY different from the Italians in the north.
Even just the different driving style was very apparent.
Wouldn't you say that the cultural experience in a random village in Puglia will be very different from the random village in Trentino?
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The UK is like Sweden, but Denmark (and Finland) are much more homogenous. And Sweden only retains social trust because it was still homogenous 20 years ago, most people don't realize they essentially live in Rio.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I'm a naturalised Swede, coming originally from Brazil, so I have plenty of hands-on experience to both be offended as to ask what the fuck are you talking about because it's a hugely racist take on multiple layers.
Let me know exactly your points on how Sweden is essentially Rio, I'd love to hear it.
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What is that based on? It seems circular: You blame 'heterogeneity' (a concept based on a myth), it is having no effect, so therefore people just must not realize it.
> Rio
What do you mean by that?
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Rather, the media monopolies prior to 1980 suppressed nationalistic viewpoints.