Nordic Ideology

by Hanzi Freinacht

  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.

  Sandemose got the inspiration for the Law of Jante from growing up in a remote rural community in Denmark at the beginning of the 20th cent­ury. The Law of Jante has, as mentioned, been considered more of a cul­tural trait than a sign of a new stage of societal development. After all, since pounding one’s chest and proclaiming to be the greatest is consid­ered ac­ceptable in a developed country like the US as well as in the less developed Arab world, whereas progressive Swedes and conservative Chinese alike frown upon this behavior, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the level of societal progress.

  I’m not denying that non-developmental cultural factors may play a part, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. I believe there is something going on developmentally speaking, and I think it’s linked to the emotio­nal regimes.

  What’s interesting about the Law of Jante is how fre­quently it has been used to describe contemporary Scandinavian culture. In fact, what makes Jante relevant today is not how accurately it describes the norms of a re­mote Danish fishing village in the early 20th century, but how well it has come to correspond with a new emotional regime in the Nordic countries today.

  Scandinavia wasn’t that different from the rest of the world 100 years ago. Kings and nobles would unabashedly display all the grandeur and splen­dor as their peers anywhere else, and the well-to-do would certainly make sure no one failed to notice how successful they were. The Law of Jante may have characterized some rural communities, but it certainly didn’t app­ly to bourgeois society in general.

  This, however, has changed considerably the last 50 years or so. Today it’s considered bad taste to display one’s social status by driving flashy cars or wearing expensive jewelry, it’s an absolute no-go for successful persons to talk about how much smarter and hardworking they are than common people, and even prime ministers, pop­ stars and royalty are expected to dis­play humility and self-deprec­iation and constantly need to avoid giving the impression they believe they are “better” than others.

  This kind of Sklavenmoral , which corresponds so well with the Law of Jante, is indeed more widespread in Scandinavia than in most other pla­ces. How­ever, I hold it is less of a cultural quirk of the Nordics and more of a premon­ition for what may lie in wait for global society at large. In fact, if we look at some of the most progressive pockets elsewhere in the world, we’ll notice that pride and self-glorification seem to have gone terribly out of fashion in recent years—Trump’s unabashed boasting just isn’t as cool in New York and Silicon Valley as it is in Alabama.

  But if the Law of Jante is so prevalent in the Nordic societies, it may seem strange these societies, according the World Value Survey’s measure of cultural values (as we discussed in Book One) score the high­est in terms of valuing self-expression. How can the countries who value self-express­ion higher than anyone else be the same who simultaneously emphasize self-depreciation the most?

  These cir­cumstances (advanced modernity and the Law of Jante) are in fact two sides of the same coin. When a society advances to the later stages of modernity and people become less con­trolled by shame, more people also begin to strive for “self-actualization” to a greater extent (as we’ve see in Mas­low’s hierarchy of needs). The question then presents itself within society: Who will get to be truly unique and expressive, and who will be left with a bland, “mainstream” existence within the frames of the con­ventional eco­nomy?

  In other words, because life in these societies is “all about” self-actuali­zation, this—rather than wealth and status—becomes a touchy sub­ject. It is increasingly on everyone’s mind: How can I be special, rise above the herd? Why does that person get to be special? What exactly determines who is special and who is a boring mainstream person?

  According to this hypothesis, we are seeing a logical outflow of the ad­vancement of the degrees of freedom in society. Because people gene­rally compete less to become “respectable” and more to be “special”, the emo­tional regime of Sklavenmoral enters the stage. Consequently, people start to adapt by finding subtle ways of avoiding the envy of others, or else others will be unwilling to cooperate with them and may withhold social re­cog­ni­tion.

  And, of course, without the cooperation and recog­nition of others, you can hardly hope to be successful—and you are rele­gated back to the ranks of mainstream people. Dreams and aspirations are fed to the Sklaven­moral -regime and its feast of losses.

  Narcissism Decoded

  The rise of the Sklavenmoral -regime may very well be an under­lying factor which explains the increased level of narcissism in the general population during the last decades, as first famously observed in Christ­opher Lasch’s 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism .

  Not only has research since that time shown that narc­issism is on the increase, but the general discourse has likewise become filled with accu­sations of narciss­ism and lack­ing hum­ility. Today it’s one of the most com­m­on ways to chastise someone: you’re arrogant, you should learn humili­ty, you’re a narcissist. Many have observed that narcissism indeed has be­come more widespread, but most fail to see that society at large has become in­creasingly obsessed with the imagined (correctly or not) self-image of other peo­ple; that we’ve collectively become obsessed with the perceived nar­cissism of others.

  Figure: The emotional regimes that govern behavior and self-organization in society. The emotional regimes roughly correspond to the value memes and/or metamemes I describe in other works. For description of the last box, read to the end of this chapter.

  In the same way 14-year-olds often talk about “being yourself” and others being “fake”, because they obviously struggle with issues of iden­tity, such obsessions often reveal the prevailing inner struggles of people: the scheming Italian families of the Renaissance were all about honor and loyalty as trust was in short supply in those days, the Ger­man Nazis were obsessed with national pride out of shame over losing the First World War, and the more it became obvious that the eco­nomies of the commu­nist countries were lagging behind, the longer were the speeches about the decadence of the West. And today we are wit­ness­ing the rise of a global culture seemingly obsessed with narcissism and hum­ility because we’re afraid we ourselves aren’t that special.

  A core reason for why narcissism is on the rise, both psych­ologically and culturally, is that we are entering a Sklavenmoral- reg­ime. Narciss­ism is sim­ply the flip­side of this emotion.

  If we are controlled by internalized envy, or relate to one another thro­ugh envy, is it then so strange we develop a toxic and charged rel­a­tionship to our own higher pot­en­tials (or lack thereof) and the higher poten­tials of others? Narcissism—the obsession with our own image and the idea of our self—is born from the need to con­vince our­selves we real­ly are special after all, from an inner drive to extingu­ish the painful doubts Sklaven­moral has sown in us. It is an unproduct­ive defense against the subtly ex­per­­ienced envy of others.

  In summary, then, societies advance through four emo­tional regi­mes: from fear, to guilt, to shame, to Sklavenmoral (which, if the patt­­ern holds, is only truly becoming dominant in the most advan­ced mod­ern soci­eties, a sign of which is increasing narcissism as well as an obse­ssion with the perceived narcissism of others).

  Again, all of these emotions exist in all societies and all people, but the social logic governing everyday life still varies substantially: What hidd­en negative emo­tions are guiding your life choices and everyday inter­actions? What emotions are you avoiding as you calmly go about your day?

  Envy and Jealousy

  Understanding the role of envy—and its sister emotions of jealousy (envy in the realm of love) and schadenfreude (the subtle satisfaction procured from another’s defeat
or misery)—is paramount for navigating the com­ing period and to serve real emancipation at a societal level.

  A number of mechanisms may in effect increase the prevalence and intensity of envy in present-day society: an over-exposure to highly succ­essful and beautiful people in magazines and TV, a constant bomb­ard­ment of all the carefully curated “perfect” moments of our friends on so­cial media, all the new amazing gadgets and lifestyles we’ll never afford or have time for. Simply, the overwhelming opportunities the glo­bal markets can offer—and the fact that a lucky few can rise to yet greater heights of fame, significance and prominence in such a larger system. The recent app­ear­ance of godlike public figures like the super-entrepreneur Elon Musk, the sales of so many Harry Potter books, the vast followership of the Kard­ash­ian reality shows, the sheer awesomeness of the discoveries in AI, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and so forth—all of it serves as fur­ther sources of comparison, and thus of envy. Most of us will know at least someone who is ridiculously successful in one or more areas of life. The lives, adventures and exploits of these so painfully visible chosen few make many of us feel yet more stagnated, dissatisfied, envious. Kierke­gaard fam­ous­ly called envy an “unhappy admiration”.

  But envy very seldom announces its presence to us. As I men­tioned, there is little research on the topic—but there is certainly much classical literature. There are few major philosophers, great artists or statesmen who haven’t experienced it and written about it. Such writings show up in the myths parti­cul­arly of societies which have at least some social mobi­lity, dyn­­amic mar­kets and demo­cratic structures, such as ancient Greece and republican Rome.

  What the classics tell us, and modern psychology’s sparse findings seem to suggest, is that we mostly experience our own envy as righteous anger . We feel a: “Why ya little…!”

  We quite easily become symbolically invested in the failure of others’ dreams and aspirations. Whenever another person tells us about a dream or a great project we don’t quite buy or agree with, a part of us almost automatically becomes invested in their failure. Think about it: If some­one told us about a plan that can “save a million lives”, and we don’t play along, what does their relative success imply about us ? If they then do begin to succeed in their plans, this suggests something quite unflattering about ourselves—namely, that we missed a great opportunity or that we failed to recognize a power­ful vision when it was right before our nose. Their displayed greatness implies our own mediocrity and smallness. For this reason, we subtly but eagerly begin to look for signs of failure, and we often take on the role of unsolicited advisors. Whenever they do fail, we can then tell ourselves that it was because they didn’t listen to our advice; and if they do act according to our advice, we can tell ourselves they only succeeded because of our own wise words (which cost us nothing). We may even find ourselves giving poor advice of insidious intent.

  Symbolic investment in the failure of others can emerge either because their aspirations collide with some of our own ideological convictions, or because it conflicts with our view of how reality works, or simply because it disturbs our ideas about social hierarchies and who’s the wiser and more competent person. Whatever the source of this inner resistance, the result is the same: It somehow feels good and reassuring to see them fail. This is symbolic investment in another’s failure —we wish for their fail­ure not because of the results of another’s struggle for a better world, but because of what their success would symbolize and imply about ourselves. It is a rather frightening dynamic; suddenly, we may start preferring that someone fails to save a million lives, just to save our own sense of chosen­ness and immortality. That’s how trivial and automatic envy can be.

  We don’t see it coming. We don’t admit to feeling it—mostly, not even to our­selves. We just feel a silent resistance towards the envied, and we act upon it only behind a thick smokescreen, most often fooling not only others, but also (and often only) ourselves, with hollow justifications.

  So basically, envy is sneaky. It is insidious, conniving. It sneaks up on us, seeps into our relationships, even among family and trusted friends—and it is rampant among professional peers. From there on, it is not sur­prising that our freedom is curtailed as we internalize the envy of others; an invisi­ble force which sets up inner barriers and subtly pressures us to con­form to mediocrity and never again seek to excel or to transcend our posi­tion in life or to try to change the world. Again, this is the Sklaven­moral -reg­ime we can expect to be entering next. Slave morality.

  I am suggesting, then, that society is breaking through the chains of sha­ming and contempt, but that we are hitting a great glass ceiling of Sklav­en­moral and envy. This envy will likely target not primarily the pow­er, wealth and att­en­tion of the fortunate. No. It will go after a much subtler and more sensitive aim: the highest inner potentials of our fellow human beings. Little pins in that voodoo doll.

  Nothing hurts our sense of “chosenness” and immortality more than the manifest sublimity of another’s soul. Not only that they are succ­essful, but that they are idealistic, good-hearted, high-minded and fruit­fully en­gaged in deeply significant pursuits—when we are not. That they are pow­erful in the deep Nietzschean sense of the word. That they are living their lives to the fullest—when we are not.

  All of us long for power in some sense; all of us are born creators. To deny this is game denial. To defend suffocating inequalities is game acc­ep­tance. To accept this game of life and to evolve it—is game change.

  This, I believe, is one of the greatest challenges of the times ahead: So many beautiful minds and hearts will emerge to rise to the challenges of the coming period, and so many will work—unconsciously but conni­vingly—to stop them.

  And most of the time, the mediocre enviers will succeed in installing “humility” (veiled Sklavenmoral ) into the birthing heroes and heroines, suffo­cating them in their sleep. The enviers won’t know why they’re doing it; they’ll just act with a strange perceived “moral outrage” that eats at their hearts.

  If I am roughly correct about this future diagnosis, it means that we’re in for a lot of subtle, icky, sly conspiring. Glass doors quietly shut, dreams subtly dissipated, life projects discretely smothered.

  And this in turn will unleash narcissism: both an obsession with ex­po­sing nar­cissism in others, and a corresponding increase of actual nar­ci­ss­ism as we try to convince ourselves and our surr­oundings of our worth.

  Where does it leave us then? We need to develop a corresponding level of introspective skills in as many members of society as possible. We need to be able to really look inwards. To bust our own bull­shit. We must deve­lop greater interpersonal trust, but we must also, on a pro­found level, be­come more trustworthy. We must develop self-know­ledge; higher stages of in­ner development.

  It is relatively easy to wish one another well, that no harm should befall our fellow citizens and peers. We don’t wish for one another to fall off a cliff—that would be terrible! But rarely do we sincerely wish for our lowly buddy to be­come the next Barack Obama. We prefer it if he gets about the same amount of happiness and success as ourselves; preferably slightly less.

  And if we have to choose between the unlikely exaltation of our lowly buddy to world-savior glory and him falling off a cliff—we may some­times find ourselves quietly preferring the latter.

  How, then, do we beat envy and emancipate ourselves from the Sklav­enmoral -regime? I suggest three angles of attack: First , to improve our shared general skills of introspection, so that we can “bust our own bull­shit”; second , to make it visible and to name it, so that more people can see it coming and not so easily be taken by surprise; third , to help each of us integrate and own our deeply held will to power—more on this towards the end of this book.

  Thus, the prophet said:

  “Brothers and sisters. The great religions have taught us to love one another. To wish one another well. To be
able to say, from our truthful hearts, ‘I wish you health, peace and happiness’.

  But alas, this wish is insufficient for the journey we must now embark upon together. Kindness is too weak a word, too feeble a force.

  We must purify our souls and intentions so as not to hate or envy the great­ness of one another. To be able to share in the glory and mystery of life. And this is a much harder task than wishing health, peace and happiness upon our fellow human beings.

  We must defeat the veiled demons of envy. Our very survival depends upon it—as we have never needed the audacity and creative intellect of others more than we do today.

  Humanity will know no higher freedom until we are able to turn to our broth­ers and sisters in earnest to say: ‘May your heart birth a visionary, a Plato or Marx, a great leader, a Napoleon or Mandela or Catherine the Great or Martin Luther King, an unparalleled creator, a Frida Kahlo or a Bob Dylan.’ [46]

  May the message ring:

  ‘I wish you power .

  I wish you great­ness and super­iority.

  I wish you tran­sc­en­dence .’”

  Escape from Freedom

  And yet, I must confess the naivety of the theory of freedom I have thus far proposed. Because even freedom does not set us free.

  Once we manage to cast off the fear, shame, guilt and Sklavenmoral of society’s conditioning, we are left with no forces pressuring us to do any­thing; no pre-given maps of meaning and no extrinsic motivations.

  Where there’s a whip, there’s a way, they say—playing of course on the saying “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. But without the whip, we may well lose our way—perhaps forever.

  What if no profound and more spirit­ually satisfying carrot of “intrinsic motivation” presents itself to match all the carrots of imm­ediate grati­fi­cation? We may unexpectedly find our­selves choosing the Pleasure Pal­ace and its Dark Playgrounds of infomer­ci­als and virtual reality over truth and meaning; end­less dist­ractions, spect­ator­ship, con­sum­ption, per­pet­ually un­fin­ished wound-licking, ever refined excuses, and pro­crast­ination, pro­crast­ination, pro­crastination. Endless fast carbs, endless gratification at the expense of meaning and dignity. Oh, the digital van­illa pris­on—oh, the candy cotton hell!