The Human Condition-III

Everyone uses the term “the Human Condition” without thought of what it actually means. Normally it seems to describe the misery of our daily survival attempts, but it goes a bit deeper than that.
The ideal ‘anthropogenic’ society prescribes characteristics such as being cooperative, loving and selfless.
However, more often than not we are judgemental, competitive, aggressive and selfish.

Kammerat Napoleon (1984), Oligarchs, war-mongering, Business Competition, Party Politics, neighbour-gossip, ordinary human interaction and the prevailing promotion of self-interest (UK MPs come to mind) illustrate what I mean quite well.
We seem to be able of limitless love and sensitivity, but unfortunately it doesn’t eliminate our capability of greed, hatred, brutality, rape, murder and war.
Words are too poor to describe this contradiction.
It seems to be something we just have to live with.

That’s why we call it the “Human Condition”.

In my opinion nothing describes the Human Condition better than the art presented by this marvellous young Ukrainian woman:
http://pelapapas.com.mx/htmls/animacion-arena-2.html

Compare this to the trash produced by the YBA or for the Turner Prize.
That is also "a human condition" - - -

l'Annee 2009

This is what it looks like.

Unfortunately you can't taste it in cyber-space!

Tough - - - -

- but it was worth the effort!

The great Climate scam – or AGW nonsense.
The revelations from East Anglia University in Nov. 2009 are terrifying in many ways. Slowly a lot of us begin to realise that the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) theories may be a load of poppycock. The focus on the impact of man-made CO2 is turning our minds away from the real problems.
And that is why signing of the proposed treaty in Copenhagen in December may not only be a red herring but outright dangerous, as it will address the wrong reasons with the wrong measures, investing the wrong money in the wrong causes.

The world has become warmer in the last 50 years. This is beyond dispute.
Just look at the rising sea levels, most significantly apparent in the Island states of the Pacific Ocean, and the slow, but certain disappearance of glaciers across the globe.
Anyone with a 50-60 year memory can remember the icy winters in the 1950s with intermittent re-occurrence in 1970s and 1980s, but what have we seen after that? Temperatures have stabilised since 1998, despite increased “anthropogenic” pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere, ostensibly close to 10 % more now than in the 90s.

If the Earth's atmosphere were 1 km deep, 781 m would be Nitrogene, 209 m Oxygene, 9 m Argon, 18 cm Neon (Ne) - and only 38 cm CO2, the remaining few cm made up of small amounts of other gasses, one being Methane (1cm), apparently the most dangerous of all.
Most of the 38cm CO2 is nature's own and has always been so.
The question is: how large a percentage of the 38cm is man-made?
Even if we assume that 10 cm is the product of our industrial activities (indications from ice-cores and sea-bottom point in that direction) is it then realistic to expect a few cm to have the claimed impact? And couldn't it be something else, e.g. wholesale burning of the rainforrest?

Right now everyone is looking for hard evidence of a correlation between the CO2-emission and rising temperatures, but having great difficulty finding one.
If there were one, the last 10 years would have provided dramatic evidence and these are the 10 years, where we don't see any warming.
Sorry folks: we can’t find it and the Hockey-Stick model is wrong.

Research, deep into the ice-sheets of Greenland, Antarctica and elsewhere, has proved that CO2 emission and global warming is uncorrelated the AGW-way. Temperature rises appear to have come before CO2 levels increased, and often with a time-lapse of 50-100 years, so perhaps it is the other way around: the world warms up and then either the oceans or jungles or something else release more CO2.

Scientific research shows that it is much more likely to find the reason behind the climate swings amongst the many possible parameters totally outside of human control, e.g variations in solar activity and radiation, the Earth’s elliptic path around the sun, the tilt of the Earth’s axis (which seems to ‘wobble’ a couple of degrees around a 23 degree norm for some reason), volcanic activity, ocean currents and, sometimes, an unlucky combination of these. Once started like in the last ice age, which everyone can agree was not initiated by human activity, the process may become self-amplifying.
This could happen if a massive release of icebergs from Greenland suddenly changed the Gulf Stream (the Atlantic conveyor). In that case a northern hemisphere ice-age could be induced in just a couple of months.

A lot of scare-mongering has taken place around ice and sea-levels, in particular the melting away of Antarctica.
At present ca. 50 Bill tonnes of ice is supposedly breaking off, causing a millimetre rise in the level of the oceans pr. year. For comparison, Antarctica holds more than 3.000.000 Bill tonnes of ice. Greenland’s ice and the world’s glaciers are also on retreat, contributing to a small rise in sea-levels, a fact we can measure. However, nature seems to have a built-in breaking effect on the melting process, causing the melt-down to stop.

But something else could happen. At present the Atlantic conveyor and the impact of a high volume of ice-bergs is closely monitored. We now understand that an ice age could happen within a few months, if the Gulf stream is stopped, as it happened 12.000 years ago during the Younger Dryas period, when fresh water from huge American lakes broke into the ocean. A 3 km thick sheet of ice above our heads and 40m lover sea-levels are quite unbearable to consider.

Around 1100 CE we had a globally warmer period than today, allowing the Vikings to settle in Greenland and harvest a crop, while in 16-1700 there was a so-called mini ice age that caused failed harvest and much misery.
None of this was impacted by human activity, only by Mother Nature’s mood.

And then there are the computer models.
We can hardly predict the weather a day before, so how much faith should we put into the AGW Computer models? When you hear that
- the programmed sensitivity to CO2 has been adjusted to be many times greater than
actually measured
- the solar activity has been downgraded despite measurements and better knowledge
- the models predict a warming of the troposphere (6 miles above the tropics) that we have
not been able to verify despite countless weather balloons and
- the models so far have failed to “predict” the climatic weather we can verify, namely by
inputting the data from the past and correlate them with actual observations
then it seems to me that we have a responsibility to ring the alarm bells.
Why is this information suppressed? 1984?

The UN climate models apparently predicted a 20th Century temperature increase of 2-3°.
Actually measured was 0.7°, 3-4 times wrong!

The conclusion is scary.
If we cannot do anything about the change in climate and if the AGW is a false assumption, then we are about to embark on a series of investment programmes that will make the bank bail-out in 2009 look like pocket money. We will fail to have resources left to invest where they should have been invested in the first place, namely in alleviation of the unavoidable effects of Mother Nature’s little games. We could have prevented deforestation, planted trees in the whole of Sahara, ensured evaporation-free irrigation systems world wide to help feed a growing population, generated cleaner energy for all, etc.
The list is endless.

The conference in Copenhagen may represent one of the biggest decision-disasters in our recent history, if the suggested declaration is signed. There will be no way back and the already vested business interests will, for a while, see even greater profits. Politicians will pat each other on the back, in particular the UK politicians, who have now decided that they will “lead the way”.
Ehh? Lead from the back seat? A country that has no double glazing, that produces much more pollution than the agreed limits and that flows over with professors, who state that renewable energy production is useless while the politicians maintain they are doing everything they can? (The UK has 2% green energy production against e.g. Denmark’s 30%).

Just wait until the permafrost, unavoidably, sneaks through the Watford Gap. Perhaps we should look differently, and more friendly, at Afghanistan?

Art in the doldrums – anno 2009.

Channel 4 TV showed a feature in November 2010 about the 10 most promising modern British art students, who competed for the attention – and funding support – of Charles Saatchi. 6 out of the 10 would receive massive help in terms of money and logistics for the whole year.

Saatchi has made his impact on the British art scene felt for several years, but he is a shy benefactor, who’d rather let his gallery-curator Rebecca do all the hard work up front and only step in, when the final selections have been made.
True to form, this is exactly what he did in respect of the Channel 4 feature.

I don’t blame him.
At least, if these artists fail, it is not his fault.

The art scene in the UK has become a money-chasing marketing machine that does its utmost to push art into becoming synonymous with “never seen before”. Preferably it must leave the observer confused and certainly it must not reveal even a modicum of beauty in the punters’ mind. The moment an artist dares slipping into ordinary traditional boots, he/she will be cut down to the socks. Expressionism may still be accepted, as the definition of expressionism is rather loose, but only if it possesses a level of daring that makes it novel and slightly crazy – e.g. the German expressionist George Baselitz’ figures that all have been turned upside down.
What a novelty.
Beauty as an object has no place – it is passē.

Tracy Emin's unmade bed with strewn condoms, prized by Saatchi at £50,000, and her summer exhibition photos of a menstruating woman are in. If you buy her book, “The art of Tracey Emin”, you will know exactly what I mean.
Anish Kapoor’s red-sh*t canon, actually wax, shown at the RA in November 2009 and a towel handle from which a whistle was suspended, constructed by one of the winning artists in Channel 4’s feature and here copied after memory, are in.
I can assure you, it was not difficult to remember the details – here rendered publicly in all its glory!





However, praise is due, where praise is required!
One of the artists, who tried to make it above the parapet to Saatchi’s attention, had arranged 15 canteen-chairs, lying sideways in a circle on the floor. Even Tracy Emin, who was on the panel of 5 judges (a paradox in its own right), could see, that this was bull sh*t – which was exactly what she said on TV during the show.
I agree.
But I fail to see the difference between this chair-circle and most of the other ‘products’ shown. Perhaps the problem was that the ‘artist’ had great difficulty expressing, in a clear language, what was the concept behind his contraption.

The acid test came, when the budding Saatchi winners had to prove their ability to draw a simple model drawing. A faultless female beauty had draped herself on a couch in Manet’s Olympia-style. All what the artists had to do, was to show that they mastered some basic drawing technique – in my opinion the least one can demand of potential celebrities worth Saatchi’s millions.
You guessed it.
Not one of them had any idea about what it means to draw.
In one of the scribbles you’d be hard pressed to see that a naked woman was part of the object at all. Typically that was the only drawing, the judges thought was worth mentioning. Was it because no one else would be able to see the object and hence have an opinion contrary to the judges? Was it because the other drawings were just bad drawings, too obvious to everyone else?

Even worse, none of the ‘artists’ mastered a minimum of ability to express the concept in their creations, perhaps with one exception: the only one of them, who had never attended art school. The judging panel had great difficulty coming to terms with the fact that his art was both exciting and creative, but they didn’t hide their misgivings that ‘he was not cued in to the accepted art-lingo’.
In fact he spoke clearly and comprehensibly about his work.

The art world has forgotten that art must have an outward orientation and Channel 4’s feature showed this deficiency in abundance.
Art has become a totally self-centred celebrity machine: the object is the artist, not the observer; the language has to contain a high percentage of multi-syllable words that to ordinary humans mean nothing; the more ‘unaccepted’ or ‘new’, the better – anything that smacks of something that has been done before is unacceptable. This means that ultimately anything is art, even if it is a slowly dancing, clumsy bear (the Turner prize 2007), a video of someone sleeping on a sofa (the entry of one of the budding Saatchi artists) or something that preferably upsets the philistines .

At art school no one learns basic painting or drawing any more. Why waste time, when you can become a celebrity pouring a bucket of paint over the canvass and “see what happens”.
A stick in a pot of soil, on a chair, is art.
As are 500 diamonds glued onto a scull (Damien Hirst).
Or a 2m tall poo, another of Saatchi’s accepted creations, seen here – not too different from celebrity artist Anish Kapoor’s piles of concrete intestines.










Balance that with an artist like Kandinsky’s technical ability, his personal and artistic development over a 50 year career (here illustrated through his early picture of Odessa Harbour and the much later "All Saints II") and a statement made in the 1930s: "I am really happy that my early research into high quality paints has been successful, judged from the longevity of the colours."


Will we one day accept the Saatchi-protegees as the bee’s knees of what the 21st Century could produce?
Your guess is as good as mine.
The impressionists were once savagely vilified and here’s what Kurt Kuerchler, a German art-critic, said about Kandinsky in 1913:

“There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that this sort of art has finally reached the point where it reveals itself as the ‘-ism’ upon whose shores it must run aground, that is to say: cretinism.”

How wrong can one be? Does it remind you of the manager, who said to the Beatles: "There's no need for yet another guitar group".
Nevertheless, I will dare a judgement of the 2009-art seen from the year 2110:

“A good 80% of the 2009-production was mere junk, as no technique, no deep learning, no differentiation was required before it was called art. It was the result of an intensive marketing drive by money-hungry people, who couldn’t produce anything unique themselves. The objective was all about celebrity creation and it illustrated an empty, materialistic, spiritless society that had become obsessed with fast money, at any price, me-me-me and meaningless new forms of expression that didn’t segregate ‘art’ from anything else that surrounded us. Marcel Duchamp’s urinoir, first exhibited in 1917, is a good example, and as we now know, it never made it to become a ‘piece de salon’ in the following 200 years, proving my point.
Only, very few people in the art world took the step to say: bullocks.
Of course they forgave Malevich for his black cross on a white canvass, and Matisse’s 10-sec charcoal-drawn women, as they had other, and more serious, stories to tell. And they had the ability!
But make no mistake: like in 2009 you still often pay for the signature, not for the painting.”

Back to 2009.

Saatchi has become a ‘God’-maker (Obs.: not an art promoter), an art-world’s Simon Cowell, who, like in the X-Factor, is able to push art in a celebrity direction with a heavy focus on the artist, not on art itself, simply because he has the money to do so and not because of the artist’s talent. It worked for Damien Hirst, whose latest skull-obsessions, in oil on a blue background exhibited at the Wallace Gallery in London, have been cut to the socks with the conclusion: he can’t paint! That could have been a shot under the waterline to the marketing machine, but he seems to have survived.
Nevertheless, he's the richest living artist in 2009 – again proving my point.

The emperor’s new clothes are still very new indeed.

The HUMAN CONDITION – 2

Hubris and religion are closely related issues.
Just because there's something we don't understand, we immediately make it the creation of a supernatural power and start genuflecting, or even killing, if other people don't agree with us.
“We are right, you are not, and it is our duty either to save your soul or to make sure your beliefs are not propagated, whilst ours prevail. And by the way: out of the 100s of choices it is OUR definition of the deity that’s the correct one.
Convert or go to the sword.”

This is a pretty serious statement with wide ranging consequences and a strong threat that will determine the destiny of our fellow human beings and sometimes animals. It is an attitude that for millennia has caused war and unrest and still does, from the crusades to Northern Ireland, from Kabul to Washington.

If that is not hubris, then I don’t know what hubris is.

What we don’t understand is continuously wrapped around a set of artificial core truisms belonging to whatever god, we happen to believe in at the time the concept was created. Layer upon layer of mysticism envelope these humanly created dogma. As time passes, they become mystic in their own right. The origin becomes part of the cult, creating yet another impenetrable layer, which, after 1000 or 2000 years of religious Chinese whispers, results in common amnesia and a firm belief that a ‘God created them’.

Smart people were quick to discover that there was power in this onion of commands. It could be used to control others, to become rich. The early popes are as good examples as is the march of the Caliphate in the 7-8th C.
As long as the great, believing masses were kept in ignorance, it was a money- and power-spinning machine (well, that’s the same). An artificial enemy, namely those believing differently, was conveniently held up in front of our own believers to provide a focus for our righteousness, or eliminated, so we could expand our power.
If you think this is a description of a distant past, you have been sleeping most of your life.

But something has been happening quite recently in historic terms.
When Richard Owen, in 1881 in London, created the Natural History Museum, he could not imagine that he was cutting off the branch he sat on. Owen vehemently opposed Darwin’s theories about the evolution being a long string of natural selections, interrupted by cataclysmic events, only to continue with whatever was left. According to Owen, species were planted, feet first, firmly on the ground, finished as a sculpture, by a creator.

But now there was an institution, which with scientific means began to ask too many questions for comfort, at least the comfort of the contemporary religious people. Humility and sensibility had finally entered the brain of a few human beings. When Crick and Watson discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953, nothing would ever be the same again and layer upon layer of the belief-onion was peeled off.

It had started before, but progress was slow. Magnetism and lightning once belonged to the onion, actually for thousands of years. But people like H.C. Oersted had removed electromagnetism from the celestial sphere in 1820 and Franklins kite and key made lightning more earthbound - literally.
Knowledge and progress had begun a slow march that would accelerate dramatically in the 20th C. Ignorance was on the way out, although not totally.
Even the National History Museum has now exchanged the statue of Owen, its creator, with one of Darwin at the honour spot on top of the first flight of stairs when you enter the museum hall.

What has happened is a major change in our minds, or at least some of our minds: we are not completely above nature, as we have thought during 2000 years of Christianity. We are just another little speck in the picture that nature is busy painting around us and we have no intrinsic, select value. We are part of nature and just another element in its meaningless evolution and natural selection.

It would be too naïve and beautiful a thought, however, to believe that enlightenment and humility would have a free reign from now on.
Action creates reaction – and so it happens.

With very little left of the religious onion, some other arguments must enter the scene in the camp of those, who for a number of reasons still close their eyes.
It can be extremely difficult to give up a belief, an idea, that has been the well trodden path for the whole of your life. In most cases it would have started when you were a child. The child’s mind is like plasticine, but once we grow older, it hardens and becomes titanium steel. Once a concept is in, it’s next to impossible to get it out.
Try to convince an old communist, or better: a member of Jehova’s Witnesses, or a scientology convict. Try to argue with a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. Such a conversation does not follow the normal rules of debate. Once you have professed your belonging to a dead idea, how easy do you think it is to lose face and abandon it?
Exactly: too hard.
So, what argument is left?
A very powerful one indeed!
It is called: I don’t just believe, I KNOW.

This is where every discussion with a fundamentally convinced person starts or ends and it is very difficult to circumvent. In fact, you can’t.
It becomes even worse if you talk to a creationist or an end-timer, both the result of brainwashing and deliberate dumbing down. The first lot simply ignore facts in all their naïvety and orchestrated stupidity, the second are downright dangerous in their belief that the world is forecast a dramatic and imminent end as stated in the bible. This means that whatever they do, it is bound to happen. Therefore it is better to ensure you fight on the side of the God (in which they believe) and help send the rest of us to a very warm place. George Bush belongs to this dangerous clan, which may go a long way to explain American foreign politics in the past 10 years.

The general danger is buried in fundamentalism, both Christian and Muslim. Neither can be contained behind a personal, private set of walls any more, as some of us with tolerant attitudes have thought for a lifetime. 9/11 and Tony Blair’s conversation with his god before going to war in Iraq are frightening examples on how religion can go astray and the message of ‘love thy neighbour’ be trampled under foot.

You would expect such people, as heads of state, to possess a little brain, but again: once the child’s mind has been boxed in, it is almost impossible to modify its confusion.
Now consider the bible and its 25 gospels. Why were 21 of them eliminated, in particular the one created by a woman, Mary Magdalena? Why were most of the dogma, to which present day Christians adhere, created by the church at the synod of Nicaea in 325 AD? Or the hereditary sin in Cluny, 410 AD? And why, oh why, do we find virtually every statement in the Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead’ repeated in the Bible, word for word? Did God not do his/her school homework in time, so that he/she had to copy the class’ smart kid before the teacher arrived? That is, if the Bible was written by God and not by a whole army of clerics, as is the accepted knowledge.
The same can be said about the Quran, although there is one major difference between the two: the New testament flows over with good ethical advice, while the Quran is completely devoid of same, concentrating on all the bad things that might happen, if you don’t believe in their version of the almighty.
But in both cases the deity appears to be a vengeful, warmonger – something humans have been fast to copy when it suited them, but slow to accept when it was angry.
All in all: it is very difficult to consolidate the angry god in both religions with the message of love. Consequently human beings have continued to be confused beyond any rational reason. The Norwegian philosopher, Peter Wessel Zapffe, expresses it in this way:

Humans are born with an overdeveloped skill of awareness, understanding and self-knowledge – (what I call "ability to think in abstract ways") which does not fit into nature's design. The human craving for justification on matters such as life and death cannot be satisfied, hence humanity has a need that nature cannot provide satisfaction for. The tragedy, following this theory, is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore, is a paradox.

In our quest to determine, factually, whether there is a ‘god’ or not, we often refer to our ‘god’s inclination for disaster management. Apparently the preacher Billy Grahams’ daughter had a comment about the hurricane Katarina and the destruction of New Orleans. Ben Stein from CNN found it very profound. It goes like this:

'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman he is, I believe he has calmly backed out.

Gentleman?
Phh.
I think this potential 'God' has had the same attitude always, even when everyone in the world was genuflecting ad nauseam.
Pest, volcano disasters, untold tsunamis, landslides, climate change and hunger as for example the 10 years in 536-546 AD, you name it, anything not humanly created, are good examples of ‘God’ walking quietly away. Or never being there.
But of course we didn't all know ‘God’ then.

If the disasters were of human origin, it was easily explained as ‘God's revenge.
Like war, torture, etc, where he commands this species, that he loves so much, to fall upon each other.
Revenge? Punishment? What a miserable kind of love!

In my view we must begin seriously to understand that the universe, of which our world is a microscopic part, is a naturally evolving environment that unavoidably and constantly turns into a killing field. Land is created through tectonic action and volcanic eruptions and animals constantly develop - not because of their strength, but because they adapt (big difference, that Hitler didn't understand), protecting them from being eaten.
This gives rise to new environments and species, a fact we can verify scientifically.
A lot of this we call "Nature's beauty".

A lot of the beauty shown is actually the consequence of erosion and breakdown. When the beauty turns violent it suddenly becomes God's wrath, because we have misbehaved. How convenient: always an explanation.
Try staying a night alone and unarmed in a Kenyan jungle and you’ll know what I mean.

With a bit of technical savvy, we could now put another You-tube video together, preferably accompanied by the very same song, showing
- the cruelty of nature (eat or get eaten) - beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, e.g. an antilope just downed by a lion or one of the early human remains found in Tanzania with a hole in the scull from a leopard's tooth
- the Indian and Samoan tsunamis
- slaughter in Rwanda, Uganda and Indonesia
- clips from "the Mission", a very powerful film showing the true face of religion as a political device
- immense poverty and suffering across the world, even amongst those who believe, from Calcutta to Timbuktou
- pollution (including natures own like the volcano in Cameroon that killed 80.000 people through spewing CO2)
- and many other examples.
Nature’s own forces have a free reign and always had, while constantly - on its own - changing the operational conditions without the tiniest sign of benign, or malign, interference.
I find the pictures beautiful - but the message disgustingly devoid of the message: be responsible for your own actions, with unconditional love and respect for your habitat and fellow beings.
Look at it again and consider how much of these sugar sweet pictures we may not be able to see in 100 years from now.
The song ends with "believe as a child" - of course; children can be impregnated with the desire to kill each other, Americans in particular as it happens in some countries - and feel good about it.
So why not twist their minds with religion from the start?
Now you only have to choose which religion of the 50 major ones on the menu, all claiming to be the only one.
We must begin to understand that we should use our powers, not our non-existing uniqueness, to protect a nature that would have absolutely no problem with 'getting on with it', i.e. evolving and killing, both animals and mountains, if you will, without our presence or interference.
Unfortunately humans have greater power to destroy than to build.
It is very sad that we have learnt so little in our miserable 1 million years of slowly evolving existence.

So the dinosaurs disappeared. According to the Creationists this happened well into the period (or after) where stone age man roamed the earth. Right!!
Well, seriously I believe that humanity will self-destruct one day.
We will take a good chunk of nature with us when it happens. Deserts, apocalyptic flooding, nuclear winters, etc. come to mind.
It could, of course, also be because of a comparable reason to why the dinosaurs disappeared: Hyper volcanoes such as Yosemite, asteroid impacts, etc.
But some sort of 'nature' will emerge again - whether a new and prolific nature such as the one that emerged after the 90% destruction of all life after the Permian period, or a silent, ice-filled quiet as on Europa (one of Jupiter's moons).
It doesn't matter. Mother nature will make up her mind when the time comes.

If you want to believe there is a God behind this, be my guest. I respect people’s freedom to choose, but I do not respect the content of the prevailing religious beliefs. Religion had its time and reason in the ages of ignorance. Not any more.
So far humanity has created 100s of gods if not 1000s.
A lot of them continue to live on in our present ‘God’(s) and their characteristics can be traced a couple of thousand years back.
Even present day Christianity (Catholicism) has over 5000 ‘Gods’.
They call them 'Saints'. People pray to them and they have godly powers.
That's polytheism in my view.

I think it is our conditioned upbringing over 1000s of years that makes us inherently religious. We needed religion when we came down from the trees in the East African jungle a million years ago. There was nothing else to help.
It is a calming thought that when we can't explain nature, then someone must have created it. It couldn’t possibly be by accident.
Well? Why not?
Hubris!

Stone age man finds a Swiss watch, lost by a missionary in the jungle or sees an airplane - and a ‘God’ is born.
The Cargo-Cult in New Guinea is a good example.
‘God’ even gave them presents (cargo).

It is even more calming to believe that when we are in trouble and no one is there to help, we can pray to someone or something.
What else is there? The weak would go under, as they would have nothing else.
And if you firmly BELIEVE it, it is better than a shrink.

The more we can enlarge our scope of wonder and learn to respect nature in all its self-generated enormity, the more we will enrich our lives, without succumbing to our tendency to explain everything through the unexplainable.
Wouldn’t it be nice, if religion were a private matter and not an excuse for righteousness, war, dominance and a need for converting 'the others'??

From Fermentation Vat to Demijohns today

What a mess - but now we know: 7 1/2 litres pure must bubbling away in the 2 demijohns.
The Triomphe d'Alsace grapes were really too small this year, but proper spur-pruning in December should prepare the vine for a bumper crop in 2010.

And now: The lively bubbling away of the fresh must is a sound for the Gods! And me.

I have learnt two things recently:

a) It is necessary to add more sugar than indicated in the ordinary tables for Brix vs % alcohol. This acts as a conservation agent during initial fermentation and also brings the wine up to a more modern 12.5-13% alcohol, rather than the previously accepted 10-11%. The rule-of-thumb is 250g/Gallon for sweet grapes; 400g for sour.
b) Triomphe d'Alsace was first created in 1911 as a cross between Vitis Ripara and Vitis Rupestris and Goldriesling in Colmar (Alsace), but didn't appear commercially before 1921-22. The grape is relatively small (Black Currant size) with large pips, which may account for the fact that it is nowhere to be found in commercial vineyards! However, the quality of the wine and its resistance to disease surely make up for these drawbacks in a patio-vineyard!
Jim Page-Roberts' 75m (length of the stem) of vine this year produced 5 Gallons!

There are about 50 bunches of Cascade (?) grapes ripening, ready to be vinified in ca. 2 weeks, depending on a little indian summer. They look marvellous, but the problem with Cascade is clearly that it ripens unevenly and rather late. Some grapes are dark blue, others Chardonnay-green.
I shall leave them until most of them are blue.
The result will be added to the half full demijohn, providing my first mix.
Clos St. Pierre Reserve Speciale 2009 !
....

There is one problem, though: I am not sure any more that it is a Cascade. Comparing leaves it looks more like Brant - more on that later.
If the mix-taste is fine I shall leave it, otherwise it will be replaced by another Triomphe d'Alsace, which I shall plant anyway this autumn!

The most handsome bloke on the block!

- and on 12 Sept. I found out: It is Brant. Picked and vinified 12 Sept. It produced 3 Litres of pulp. Brix achievement was slightly less than the 18% reached by the Triomphe d'Alsace: 16.5%, but for this I compensated with a "chaptalisation" of 170g sugar. After 3 days in my antique French jam glass which holds exactly 3 Litres, on 15 Sept., I filled it into the demijohn that had only become half full by Triomphe d'Alsace three weeks before. It is now bubbling away, promising a delightful mix of a lighter must, as Brant's juice is white.

If the Brant is to survive my critical ambitions, I shall endeavour to harvest all grapes by mid September next year.

Also - a good dollop of extra sugar to get the process going, beef up alcohol content and create a more protective atmosphere during initial fermentation, is one of the lessons I have learnt.

Les Vendanges 2009

Les vendanges sont fini. Here’s the result on display.

The grape bunches ready to be stripped; the green and unripe grapes and stalks to be thrown onto the compost heap; the voluptuous, juicy blue grapes bursting with expectation (or is that me?) ready to be crushed in the cocotte and poured into the fermenting vat.
Two Gallons – not a great result, but fine considering the youth of the vine. Next year no doubt will produce a more consistent crop. And next year. And next year - - - -

The bottle of red-wine is for the crusher.
That’s me too.
Deserved, as picking and crushing actually took 4 hours and gave me a blister on the index finger.

The mix of grapes from two Triomphe d’Alsace vines achieved a Brix reading of 18, with some grapes reaching 20, but weather conditions and ripeness dictated 25 Aug. as the day of picking. I added a minimum of sugar (ca 120g) in an attempt to obtain between 11 and 12% alcohol. Let’s hope for 8-10 bottles!
The Cascade vine will have to wait another two weeks and I shall have to consider how to blend the two varietals, as there only are 35 bunches on the vine.However, the grapes are considerably larger than the Triomphe d’Alsace.

Gorm Danebod - Not Thyra Danebod

(See my blog entries about Gorm and Thyra from June 2009, where the following has been entered in both English and Danish)

Det ser for mig ud som om forklaringen paa tilnavnet ‘bót’ er fundet!
Problemet med ordet ‘bót’ er, at man er blevet taget ved næsen af både Saxo og Aggesen. Det er et typisk eksempel paa et ‘ledende udsagn’, da begge d’herrer tillagde Thyra denne betegnelse, og man identificerede ordet ‘bót’ med betydningen af en glose, ‘but’, der først kendes 300 år senere, i stedet for at læse glosen som ‘bøt’. Man har forgæves ledt efter ‘bót’ på andre runesten, men i betragtning af det begrænsede kildemateriale og indskrifternes knaphed er det vel ikke mærkeligt, at søgningen har været resultatløs. Smigeren er åbenbar, men er det ikke lidt tamt at oversætte ‘bót’ med at forbedre, bøde, hjælpe?
Det mener Johan Lange i Kuml 1982-83, p.213-17 i hvert fald.
Et af problemerne er runen 'U'

Den kan læses som både U, Y, Ø, O.
Hvis man derfor sammenligner med de normale vokalændringer som f. eks. ‘thusi’ til ‘thausi’, der er kendt i runesproget og som videre overgår til ø (laukar bliver til løg paa Dansk), så er parallellen ‘baut’ til ‘bøt’ nærliggende.
‘Bauta’ betyder ‘at slå’ på Old Nordisk, jvfr. Bautasten, med den opr. betydning ‘slagsten’.
I al korthed: Tilnavnet ‘bøt’ bør oversættes til ‘den der slår’, eller ‘en særdeles stærk mand’ – jvfr. andre slående navne som Karl Martel (hammer), Erik Thexla (økse) og Sigmundr Spærr (spyd).
Tilføjelsen 'il' angiver i ON instrumentalis formen, altsaa 'bautil', hvilket saa ændres til 'bøtil' og derefter med blødgørelsen af 'd' til 'bødel' - - en meget 'stærk' mand; et ord alle kender i dag!

Et andet problem er hvor meget Aggesen og Saxo TROEDE de vidste.
Oprindeligt har man i 940’erne udmærket forstået hvem der var den ‘stærkt slående’ – men i de følgende 250 år ændrede sprogbrugen og overleveringen sig, nok til at ‘bøt’ blev til ‘but’ og hægtet på Thyra.

Der er efter min mening ingen tvivl mere:
Det er Gorm der er ‘Tanmarkar bøt’
Kulturelle, sproglige og logiske og overvejelser vedr. indskriftsformerne på runesten peger alle i same retning.

Clos St. Pierre 17 Aug. 2009

A lot is going on in this picture!

The almost ripe Triomphe d'Alsace is hanging heavily from the canopy of thinned leaves. I have had to string a steel wire from wall to wall with a support wire connected to the arbour, as the whole construction threatened to crash down on our heads.

As the 'vineyard' is positioned in a "pit between houses", I have had to consider how to optimise the available sunshine. The arbour is one way, lifting the grapes 2m up, closer to heaven, sun and fresh air. Thinning the leaves is another approach - I may have been too early out this year, but it is both a way of delimiting the otherwise rampant wild growth and a necessity for improved air circulation. Late July for thourough thinning is probably optimal.

Then there are the pigeon attacks.

They can rip the lot to shreds in 15 min. flat!

And then they leave the results on our cars afterwards, as large splats of a severely acid composition.

A thin net, spanned over the patio is a first line of defense (invisible in the photo). The Triomphe d'Alsace on the front wall of the house is easier to deal with; a net, gently draped down from the top is very effective.

For a while I was afraid it would catch butterflies or birds with the intelligence to attack from floor level. But butterflies are smart - they easily find an escape route in the small un-netted areas. I have even seen a "large cabbage white" (kaalsommerfugl) sit on the net and squeeze itself through the small 2 by 2 cm masks! Incredible.

Pigeons? No worry. They are stupid.

And in any case the second line of defense can be seen on guard on the table.

Now for the wasps - my biggest fear, as they don't just go away when you tell them (as do the pigeons).

My secret weapon, the green bottle hanging from one of the branches, is loaded with a lethal mix of Tesco's the best 'Bonne Maman' jam, thinned with water.

Boy, does it work!

I think the lion's share of a still unidentified wasps nest in the neighbourhood now has moved to the bottom of the bottle.

When inspecting the bunches, it is clear that a few wasps have managed to chew the skin and suck the juice out of one or two grapes - but clearly: these attacks on my property have been thoroughly revenged and largely prevented. I may even have to empty the bottle, making it ready for the even fiercer late August attacks, when wasps traditionally go berserk on half fermented fruit juices in the neighbourhood (Apples, Pears, Plums, even figues).

It is particularly interesting to observe that the two other trap-bottles on the vine, filled with a mix of honey and maple syrup, only attract ants and flies, no wasps. Ants? Yes, our ant-plague has been all but eliminated throgh a wrongly designed wasp-trap. But I guess that's normal: you choose the weapon best suited for your prey; grouse hunting with a Colt-45 doesn't work either, or what? So now we know.

Finally, the merrily waving arm of horizontal leaves, bottom left in the photo, is a Triomphe d'Alsace being groomed for 'fountain pruning' - but this will be documented on its own later on.

2-3 weeks max. to go before harvest.

The Human Condition - 1.

One of my favourite poets, Peter Wessel Zapffe, once wrote that humans are born with an overdeveloped skill: awareness, understanding, self-knowledge - exactly what I for years have called "our ability to think in abstract ways", which does not fit into nature's design.
The human craving for justification on matters such as life and death cannot be satisfied, hence humanity has a need that nature cannot provide satisfaction for. The tragedy is that humans spend all their time trying not to be human. The human being, therefore, is a paradox.

Religion, whether expressed through the 3m tall wooden Nerthus/Frej statues from Iron-age bog-finds or more contemporary manifestations, unfortunately reflects this condition in abundance.

Frey from Broddenbjerg, DK

Satisfying the Gods in the past was all about passing on items or behaviour that in the society of the time was considered to have high value, i.e. sacrificing our treasures or something we really appreciated ourselves: gold rings or abandoning a rich lifestyle.

Satisfying God in some of our present religions is all about our own reward: 99 virgins (actually a mis-translation from 99 white raisins, a delicacy at the time) or a place in 'Abraham's lap'.

Humans have moved from exo-centric religions (the Romans' 'do ut des'/ I give, so you shall give) to ego-centric: how will I be rewarded.

....

There was an implicit community feeling imbedded in the former.

Do ut des!

Without we would never have had the rich bog-offerings to the deities in Denmark from Hjortspring, Vimose, Illerup, Thorsbjerg, Ejsboel, etc. and La Tene in the Neuchatel lake, to name just a few.

Churches and mosques represent the same feeling: built to the honour of whatever God is in fashion - something that for the individual, by the way, still totally depends on where and when you are born.

Compare that to most religions today: it is me - me - me, wrapped in credit cards and a severe competition about whose God is the right one, and a plethora of rules, created by humans, with little emphasis on the God herself, rather on control of the people.

Hjortspring spear heads

As Seneca said: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful",

or Einstein, whom religious people wrongly take under their wings, saying: even Einstein was religious.

No he was not.

Here's what he said:

"I never imputed to nature any purpose or goal or anything even mildly anthropomorphic."

Have we become wiser in the past 2000 years?

OZ3CF 1961 - - How time flies!

That was the year that was!!
1961.
I was 18.

It was when VS9 was Aden and Oman.
When South and North Rhodesia existed.
And when I had contact with Yuri Gagarin: 17/4 1961, a week after his famous space flight and before his autographs became automated (so mine is the real one).

Not to speak of my QSOs with the famous Ernst Krenkel of M/S Chelyuskin fame and polar expeditions.

An 11 tube home-brew super-heterodyne RX, a 100W double 6146 driven by a Geloso VFO and a 40m long wire antenna + stacks of TVI - - - -

and this is what it looked like in 1963

And then raising a 3-el Yagi on a summer house in 1999.

Triomphe d'Alsace 4 Aug. 2009

- Developing just fine!!

I have arranged a net, 2 cm masks, over the

arbour and in front of the house.

The effing pigeons have already been there!

I hope they choked on the pips.

Fimbul-winter in the year 536 CE?

This was the year humanity could have perished, leaving the planet intact!

I shall rewrite the text later with references, events, etc. - suffice a few bullet points at this stage, as this event has a strong bearing on the history in the post migration era, the so-called dark ages.

- Chronicles from Europe and Asia describe how the sun was blanked out. Consistent reports mention the sun's power as equivalent to that found during an eclipse. I remember the eclipse in 2001 and was surprised how cold it felt.

- The moon could hardly bee seen and the stars disappeared.

- The Scandinavian soil is replete with gold-offerings. Hmmm - perhaps it worked after all?

The sun did return, didn't it? Maybe the Catholic church should create a sainthood for Odin and Thor?

Adding a couple of veterans to the 5136 other saints shouldn't be a big problem - and if anything deserves a sainthood it must be bringing the the power of the sun back!

- The 'nuclear winter' of 535-36 caused panic, hunger, upheaval - and change.

The immediate effect (of whatever caused this situation) lasted 1-2 years, but it is likely to have had a 10 year impact.

- Volcano or Meteor impact? I shall come back to that shortly - but look at these pictures for a start - taken from the web-site http://www.ees1.lanl.gov/Wohletz/Krakatau.htm.

Here's an interesting poem - Darkness - by Lord Byron, written 1816. The eerie likeness to a 'Nuclear Winter' has been misused by many of those, who see a mystery in the most banal events, from UFOs to Marilyn Monroe's death. Yes - banal is the word, as the most likely explanation also carries the highest probability for an explanation:

Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd,

and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space,

rayless, and pathless,

and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went--

and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

of this their desolation;

and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,

the palaces of crowned kings--the huts,

the habitations of all things which dwell,

were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,

And men were gathered round their blazing homes

to look once more into each other's face;

Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos,

and their mountain-torch:

A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;

Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour

they fell and faded--and the crackling trunks

extinguish'd with a crash--

and all was black.

......

The poem is longer - but this gives an impression.

'Nuclear Winter' forecast?

Rubbish.

1816 was the year the volcano Tambora exploded, creating a year without a summer.

It was a massive cataclysm, a model for the even more powerful 535 CE Krakatoa event.

Lord Byron experienced the effects.

That simple

Does EU and Gordon Brown never stop goofing?

This man never listens - and then he is forced to make a U-turn later.
10p scandal; Gurkas; you name it.
Here's the latest.

Broadband over Powerlines (Power Line Telecoms/ PLT) may provide a cheap method of watching TV over Broadband and connecting other digital equipment but is has some very serious interference pitfalls. Despite these shortcomings, the EU, supported by the UK Government, have treated with contempt legitimate complaints from some very respected organisations NATO, BBC, ERA Technology & York University plus many in Europe.

Why is this? It was recognised from the outset that PLT had inherent technical problems with respect to interference but such was the onslaught of the commercial interests that it was agreed Regulations would be ignored in the interest of Broadband commercial success.

Will the misguided politicians and bureaucrats never learn?
Is it not that very same attitude that has devastated our rainforests, cheap fuel, gas guzzling cars and over burning of coal in power stations, that has resulted in unacceptable levels of pollution?
All largely in the interests of commercial success and allowed to run amok by those self same bureaucrats, who now desperately try to make themselves look good by solving the problem.

And they wonder why we do not trust them.

Max Ehrman's "a Prayer" English and Danish

I never knew Max Ehrman's work - but the more I read the more my soul wraps itself in his words.
"A Prayer" is apparently one of his most famous, although I think "Desiderata" (see elsewhere on my blog) may compete for a 1st place.

Sunset at Beachy Head, 2009 (my photo)

Here goes - and I wish I could have said it so beautifully:

Let me do my work each day;
and if the darkened hours of despair overcome me,
may I not forget the strength that comforted me
in the desolation of other times.

May I still remember the bright hours
that found me walking over the silent hills of my childhood,
or dreaming on the margin of a quiet river,
when a light glowed within me,
and I promised my early God to have courage
amid the tempests of the changing years.

Spare me from bitterness
and from the sharp passions of unguarded moments.
May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit.
Though the world knows me not,
may my thoughts and actions be such
as shall keep me friendly with myself.

Lift up my eyes from the earth,
and let me not forget the uses of the stars.
Forbid that I should judge others
lest I condemn myself.
Let me not follow the clamor of the world,
but walk calmly in mypath.

Give me a few friends
who will love me for what I am;
and keep ever burning before my vagrant steps
the kindly light of hope.

And though age and infirmity overtake me,
and I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams,
teach me still to be thankful for life,
and for time's olden memories that are good and sweet;
and may the evening's twilight find me gentle still.

...

...

Danish translation (by me)

...

Giv mig ro til den daglige don’t;
og mister jeg haabet i mørke stunder,
husk mig da på den styrke,
der trøstede mig når jeg før var nede.

Lad mig mindes de lyse timer
fra min barndoms ture i de tavse bakker,
hvor jeg sad ved den rislende bæk
og følte lys og haab i mit bryst,
da jeg lovede min tidlige Gud at bekæmpe
ændringers storm med mod.

Frels mig fra bitterhed
og det ubevogtede øjebliks vilde passion.
Lad mig huske, at fattigdom og rigdom hviler i ånden.
Da jeg er ukendt for verden,
lad mine tanker og handlinger
bygge venskab med mig selv.

Løft mine øjne fra jorden
til stjernernes skønne glans,
og lad mig dømme mig selv
før jeg dømmer andre.
Styr mig fri af verdens støj
og lad mig følge min sti i fred.

Giv mig få, men gode venner,
som vil elske mig for den jeg er;

og lad mine famlende skridt blive ført
af håbets venlige lys.

Og hvis alder og sygdom presser på,
og jeg taber af syne mine drømmes slot,
da lær mig takken for livets gave,
for gode og søde minder.

Og lad aftenens tusmørke give mig mildhedens slør.

COMMENTS ON JANTELOVEN and sameness

A history essay written in response to a ‘foreign’ university lecturer in anthropology, who purported to study the Jantelov in Denmark – and totally misunderstood it.

Let me do a ‘Catch all clauses’ from the start: my knowledge of Anthropology is limited to Margaret Mead (classic), Kate Fox (recent, about the English), Francis Fukuyama (modern thinker on sociology), Hoofstede and Frans Trompenaars (both Dutch culture/sociology gurus). I am not even sure you may call all of them Anthropologists.
Well, as an amateur I can do what I want, right?

Overview
The 'Jantelov' goes like this:

Don't think that you are special.
Don't think that you are of the same standing as us.
Don't think that you are smarter than us.
Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
Don't think that you know more than us.
Don't think that you are more important than us.
Don't think that you are good at anything.
Don't laugh at us.
Don't think that anyone of us cares about you.
Don't think that you can teach us anything.

First of all, I personally do not believe the Jantelov is Danish at all. It is a label that happened to be glued onto a general human characteristic by a Danish/ Norwegian author, Axel Sandemose, in his novel "En flygtning krydser sit spor" (A fugitive crosses his tracks) from 1933, when both Denmark and the rest of the world was widely different from today. It was also invented in a thoroughly parochial arena that in my eyes could have been anywhere (almost) in the world – it just happened to be Nykøbing Mors.

If you don't believe me, then read the following, written by the American CEO of Strategic Management Group, Les Spero, to his European counterparts:

You sounded disturbed by not being more deeply involved with this client.
Some comments:
Do not patronize yanks.
We have a far higher standard of living
We clearly have more freedoms
We have lower employment, higher labor force participation rates, greater cultural facilities, a more beautiful country.We know we bailed you guys out twice from world wars, defeated communism. Do not patronize us. We are better than you. More important than that, do not in any way intimate to us that you are better than we.”

Get the point?
It is NOT a Danish characteristic, as most anthropologists would like you to believe.

So why would Danes know about Janteloven and e.g. Dutch people not?
Simply because Sandemose is likely to be on the Danish school curriculum – and it is roughly the only reason Sandemose is remembered today. Just try reading one of his books!!
I discussed my take on the issue with two well-educated Danes last week (age ca 31) – one is a Marketing Manager in a Bank, the other Manager in an Insurance company. None of them remembered Sandemose from School! So perhaps it has changed from my time. I am 66 – and was forced to suffer Sandemose’s utterly boring texts and even wrote an essay on the Jantelov around 1960 (long lost!)

My various postings abroad (Schweiz, UK, Holland and numerous travels elsewhere) have given me both an interest and an experience in Human Behaviour and cultural differences. I have picked this knowledge up – and used it - mainly in my function as a Manager in large companies and later as a Management Development Consultant, but clearly in a practical way and not pretending any academic studies beyond what reading other people’s work could provide (e.g. the authors mentioned above).

If I have to distil the essence of my experience, then I can best express it as “if you behave in a way that is different from the norm of the place where you are, then you are likely to be met with suspicion; the reaction is invariably a level of distrust, even rejection”.
That’s the bottom line.
With more time I could probably find an endless number of examples – most of which wouldn’t be Danish, but here are two:
“Chocolat”, a French film about a woman and her daughter, who open a chocolate shop in a small French village. It totally shakes up the rigid morality of the community. It is the Jante-law to the bone, but I doubt the director ever heard about Jante. A more personal example was my experience from moving to the South-Western part of Holland (Terneuzen) in 1975. I was interviewed by a local newspaper and committed the faux-pas of expressing quite openly what it meant to me and my family being exposed to a parochial Flemish community. Retrospectively, I understand what Sandemose must have felt in a mind-constrained Danish community.

I got a very strong feeling that your discussions with your Danish “informants” (what a wonderful word - sounds like underground IRA ;-), and the answers in particular, were immensely predictable. I tried to emulate two of the ways questions could be formed during an event with 20 people in København, attending a 60-year birthday party. The first was: “Do you feel that the Jante-law is valid and still has a significance in the present day Danish Society”? – followed by: “give me an example or two”. The other was: “Tell me, are we allowed to perform competitively and to achieve success in today’s Denmark?”.
The answers to the first question were interesting: some immediately said that of course the Jantelov was valid. Others said it was an obsolete notion.
The answers to the second question ran along the line, that competition and performance were necessities in today’s global society. None of the incumbents, to my knowledge, heard the question posed to the other group, as I tried to lead the conversation with individuals.
Mentioning the Jante-law, known a priori to all Danes, was a wrong move. It created a focus for the answers and immediately turned their mindset towards its effects. Margaret Meade in a nutshell.

Issues concerning the study of the Jante-law.
Battaglia mentions that “experience must have priority”. It makes it extremely difficult for people, who have no intrinsic knowledge of the language, symbols and interpretations, to penetrate the anthropological barriers – ref. Margaret Meade. If you do not speak/ understand Danish – both in terms of the actual translated word and the sometimes totally different cultural/ sociological interpretation – you will remain an external observer. You will never become a participant (which by the way might change the observed event a la quantum mechanics) – and never, ever an Eavesdropper (Kate Fox, 2000), although this is one of the best ways to find out what REALLY goes on. Vital clues may be lost and misunderstandings may occur. I may be wrong, but I have a strange feeling that your ‘Informant’-interaction possessed a degree of “given outcome”, simply because of the way questions were presented – just as I observed in my (admittedly) very unscientific approach.

I do agree that the Jante-law is anything but arbitrary – it is extremely integrated in most western cultures and perhaps others too. But I disagree entirely that it is part of the Danish “cosmological, political welfare-state” – a Danish Sittlichkeit as you mention. Sittlichkeit perhaps, but definitely not a national symbol.
You describe your informants’ various reactions to the Jante-law (irritation, laughing, disregard etc.) and yet no one being able to distance themselves from it. In my opinion, because they all knew about it as mentioned and hence had a pre-determined label to stick on a given behaviour, which in my opinion is universal! In my experience the Jante-law has become a welcome excuse, an easy way of explaining something everyone, everywhere may encounter. It is a Danish word with the same significance as other words in the language, like embarrassed, happy, angry, rainy weather or rich. Everyone knows what it means, while few may remember where it originated. I found the same reaction as you – but drilling people for a deeper answer and examples they all responded that the Jante-law only had significance the very moment I brought it up. It meant absolutely nothing to them otherwise and they never thought about it.

Society, with its rules and mores, was an entirely different affair in a dark province 70 years ago – with no internet and a population that often had not been off the island in a lifetime. Have a look at the map – Nykøbing Mors is not exactly at the centre of events! I knew people like that in the 1960s – my girlfriends grandmother on Langeland for one.

Lex Insita (Bourdieu 1977) should in this context have been something I must have felt - - and yet, when I went to school, the whole system was tuned towards reward for performance. But perhaps I was too thick-skinned? My Danish-teacher in the gymnasium (1960-62) called me a “nosy troublemaker” (“kværulant” in Danish), because I always asked ‘why?’ and tended to disagree with him. I can’t remember why – perhaps I really wanted to dig deeper, perhaps he was an old fool, perhaps I just was a trouble maker?
Children were sent into different educational directions depending on their abilities, the ultimate being Gymnasium and becoming a student. Grades were, of course, given along the way, determining your future – at least to a degree - not like today, where an ability to kick a leather ball full of hot air between to sticks by far outperforms a mere academic career, at least in terms of income.

It may, however, be true that the tendency of the advanced welfare state to make everything the same has created a more substantial flower-bed for a pseudo Jante-law growth! Everyone needs a chance and no one should have more than others, ref. the tax-system with 70% marginal and Denmark’s stupid obsession with trying to solve the problem of the 4 Billion poor in the world. In the school system the effect has become boredom for the clever and inability to cope for the rest. Result: no one can spell, read or write properly today. But this is NOT the Jante-law effect. This represents a misunderstood social-missionary attitude that boomerangs violently on Danish society.
However, I do NOT believe this effect was caused by an inherent ‘Danish’ psyche.

In the 1960s and 70s the media were red as tomatoes. Social-Democrats were in majority They were constantly chased to their feet by radical leftist parties (Venstre-Socialisterne, Socialistisk Folkeparti and a still extant Communist party). This was a major departure from the past. The demand was a cry a la 1789/ 1918 for equal opportunity for all. School reforms flattened the performance-criteria and called for everyone to have an opportunity, rather than an ability, to become tops in society. In my graduation year, 1962, as a student there were 7,000 students. In 1990 there were 50,000. I will eat my old hat, if the system is not turning back to strict performance criteria and even numerus clauses one day. Corduroys and big sweaters were de-rigueur in 1960s – I only started wearing a tie when I moved to Holland in ‘Big Business’. But ties and suits are back in DK business today – and so is 4x4s, expensive restaurants, villas along the coast, etc. It seems to me that class and wealth is marching ahead faster than equality, only held back by anachronisms such as 70% marginal tax.
A very high % of the work-capable population is held in passive coma through the social welfare system – many more working in non-producing service jobs. Probably only 20-25% of the population earns a living for everyone else.
That’s scary and it could become the downfall of the welfare state as Francis Fukuyama predicts

Your account of a midwife, who returned to Denmark from New Zeeland and Canada, experiencing ‘small shoes’ is nothing to do with the Jante-law in my opinion. It is in the first place an effect of what we see overall in Western Europe. Hospitals have become cost-centres and there is an enormous focus on performance. In England hospitals are closing at the same rate as in Denmark, inefficiency is rampant and our ability to do the most complex operations is forcing a very unpleasant choice: must we repair the hip on the 74-year old woman before treating an ulcer in a 27 old man? Who goes first? How long can any of them wait? Will someone constantly get in the way for either of them due to pressing priorities and growing capabilities, e.g. plastic surgery for the rich?
In the second place, the world’s economy has changed dramatically. My house cost £100 in the 50s and was scheduled for demolition. Now it is worth £650K. This effect has penetrated everything around us – from salaries and their demographic distribution to the type of work we do – from an industry society to a service society, where everyone serves and no one produces. Nurses, policemen, teachers and firemen can’t afford living accommodation in London or København – yet they are the pillars of a civilized society.
What your midwife is complaining about is the effect of all this, the stretching and stressing of society-economics and demographics, and certainly not the Jante-law.

Your informant, who feels he cannot read in the bus without feeling that he is better than everyone else, must have a personality problem. I remember learning Greek in the train (1970). Many long distance trains have bridge clubs or language courses – just like in England, and a couple of days ago I saw plenty of people reading and (perhaps more importantly) many young people who certainly had no fear of looking different. I didn’t ask if they knew the Jante-law and this is what young people do anyway. The people at my party confirmed that the sameness/ Jante-law notion was “rubbish” (sorry – these were their words).

Your “Showing off the house” example? We visited some remote friends last year, whom we hadn’t seen for ages – and they actually asked if we wanted to see their house! I also remember that this was something we did 30 years ago as a standard expression of politeness if people showed interest. Again, it is quite a normal thing to do in Denmark. There are even TV-series that focus on ‘house-crawls’. I have pondered the reason – perhaps it is because Denmark has a high proportion of individually designed homes. It is not like in England, where whole streets – even cities – are copies of the same “two down/ two up”. It would be unthinkable to have a walk-about in an English home for other reasons than finding the loo, as every house is the same, something that for ages has made me giggle about the oxymoron “an English Architect”. Not a bad word about Norman Foster or Lutyens – but privately designed homes in England are by and large a non-extant subject. Not so in Denmark – hence everyone’s desire to see “the other people’s home”. Again nothing to do with Jante and not at all a show-off.

Now your Katja, who felt she couldn’t tell people she had been travelling? Everyone in Denmark, in particular if you are below 35, travels. My Mother was an Au Pair in Bristol in 1921. She lived 10 years in Paris in the 1930s and only returned because of the war. My Father lived in a suitcase and worked in South Africa, Estonia and Latvia in the 1920s till late 1940s. Everyone in my fairly large circle of friends has travelled extensively – from short stays to emigration – and most have returned enriched in culture and global understanding. I can guarantee you that none of them has felt the slightest animosity – on the contrary. Danes find it exciting and are probably only surpassed in their quest for travel and for foreign impressions by the Dutch.
No Jante-law here.

You mention the Danish lack of a ‘killer instinct’, e.g. in soccer. Try to turn it around. You don’t need the killer instinct to be great in sport. Hans, the worker from the Metro who supported your notion, must have a memory failure; Denmark won the European cup in 1992, beating England, Holland and (oh happiness!!) Germany. We have World masters in Badminton and Kayak and Danish footballers constantly get sold off to European clubs, making Danes proud (and a little irritated, as we can’t keep them home to boost our image!). Jante-law? Quite the opposite. You could even say that the once famous English fair play still exists in Denmark. But what do you expect from 5 mill inhabitants? Nothing to do with a killer instinct, but perhaps a lack of choice in a small population! You are probably quite right when you analyse why hooliganism exists in particular in this sport – so my explanation is that Denmark is such a small country that to have a large group of really eccentric (violent, hyper-religious, etc.) people is close to a physical impossibility. At the same time, Denmark has always been quite “orderly” and it would be wrong – and dangerous – to begin gluing the Jante-label on what you might call proper behaviour in a society that by and large respects decent relationships – that is, until we experienced the untimely influx of people with very different habits, religion and paradigms, who use rather than produce. But that’s another discussion.

Sabine’s examples of ‘Du’(tu) and ‘De’(Vous) is quite correct – an example of symbols that may be used for certain purposes e.g. to distance yourself from the person you speak to, showing a level of superiority. I use it sometimes when I want to eliminate someone coming down on me, e.g. the attendant in the Danish Visa office in London, whose power implicitly is greater than mine. It is in my opinion nothing to do with the Jantelov; but today no one would bat en eyelid if you consistently used ‘Du’.

I don’t quite understand the issue you mention about people feeling shy about Lars von Trier, the film instructor. My impression is that people are quite proud of a Danish person’s international performance – football (Smeichel) or films. If Lars von Trier has a problem it is probably more to do with the tax-authorities than anything else. They are robbers by daylight and he wouldn’t be the first Dane to move to a tax haven.

The issue around immigrants, presented in “Jyllandposten” and “Information” is probably too big for this write-up. I would have a lot to say – but perhaps I can refer you to Francis Fukuyama’s latest books, recently mentioned in “Jyllandsposten”. I find him intelligent, well argued and certainly not a post modern, evangelical neo-conservative Bush fan. His key gripes are; a) Yes the Muslim issue is dangerous (with or without Bush) and b) the welfare states are out of their minds allowing the Muslim progress to eat into hard won freedoms and tolerances.

It speaks volumes for the Danish way of thinking: freedom of expression, ability to self-criticism, constantly trying new boundaries, a searching and argumentative climate – again a non-jante-law characteristic!. Jyllandsposten asked a group of artists to draw their impression of Islam, when an author complained he could find no one willing. No one in their wildest nightmares had foreseen the consequences, stirred up several months later by Imams with a religious/political agenda – and the Danes ought to be proud of this innocent attitude. A later article in “Politiken” argued for the right to reprint them. Giving in to threats and terror that belong in the 7th century is not Danish. The opinion amongst my friends was that the few million Danish Kroner lost by ARLA in global sales was nothing compared to the loss of work and freedom of the cartoonists and their families. THAT is probably a very Danish attitude and I agree wholeheartedly. By the way – many international newspapers have since reproduced the cartoons.

The understanding of the immigrant-problem is difficult to explain in a few short sentences. A few clues, though: if 20% of the working population has to keep 80% service workers and a stream of economic immigrants alive, the strain will become unsustainable, exacerbated by an aging population. If the immigrants are seen to get preferential treatment above native Danes in terms of e.g. available housing (a HUGE problem in most places, but mostly in Kobenhavn), tempers are bound to flare. If immigrants use the business start-up support available to open and close shops to the tune of €10,000 every time in support, almost cyclically, then it will create anger. Denmark had no commitment to the world, like colonial nations, other than as a responsible state with a genuine socialist attitude of help-thy-neighbour; but wishy-washy governments that had only one objective (staying in power) and off-the-rail leftist do-good’ers opened the flood gates with no plan for integration – all within a mere 25 years from 1980.
Consider 12,000 Somalis, un-integrated and speaking no Danish after 10 years in a city with perhaps 150,000 citizens. It takes no rocket science to find out that these people want to live above the support level, seeing an affluent society around them. So many of them become the now well-established core of the criminal drugs trade.

Another example: My wife is Ukrainian. She is highly educated and has residence permit in the UK as a ‘spouse of a Eur. Citizen’ – until she gets a UK passport. We have gone through years of visas and difficulties to get this far, but I accept this as a reasonable way to control what is going on in the world’s mobile population. If she wants to go to Denmark, however, she needs a DK or Schengen visa, an invitation and preferably a travel route, just to visit. In the worst case she would have to live in DK for 13 years, living with me, to get citizenship. It could be brought down to 3, if she spoke fluent Danish, had a senior job etc., almost impossible demands in the time frame, and she would be deported to Ukraina if I died before the 3 or 13 years had expired. Travelling in DK (Tirstrup, Aarhus) I saw a family of 8 Somalis aged 6-30s. I walked over and talked to them in Danish. They didn’t understand. But they DID have Danish passports!
What feelings do you think I had comparing this with my wife?
If you now add an established tradition of equal opportunity for all, a successful feminist movement in the 70s/80s, animal welfare above halal meat in schools, focus on humanity, and a hard won right to freedom of expression, don’t you then think there is a much deeper reason for the animosity towards immigrants, as you describe when referring to Jyllandsposten and Information’s articles about “dangerous” immigrants, than the mere reference to the ethos of the Jante-law?
I think the Cartoons said everything about Danish freedom of speech and humour than many articles. No one is sacrosanct in Denmark. Holberg and Moliere first, and later many 19th and 20th C authors you would probably never have heard about, taught us to laugh at ourselves.
Danes have often been quite radical, sometimes unwittingly and definitely anti-Jante-laws.
If your studies led you around Victor Hørup, Georg Brandes and Gustav Wied you will understand.

But the animosity towards immigrants is not a Danish feature. It is universal. Monrad, the designer of the 1849-constitution was expelled from the country after the 1864 debacle with Germany. He created a small colony in New Zeeland called Dannevirke and quickly experienced the hate towards foreigners. Even then and there.
It is just “what we humans do to others” - everywhere. Sometimes there are very strong and identifiable reasons. Sometimes it is the intrinsic tribal gene in our DNA.
In Denmark today I think the strain arises as described above – in a population that is almost a family – only 5.5 million, half of Greater London.

Now Homo Aequalis. When the Vikings started their outward bound adventures 1200 years ago, the reason could definitely be explained by “Foster’s Limited Resources theory”. Farms were inherited by the oldest son and there was too little land to go around. The big empty Europe was too good to be true, particularly England after the departure of the Romans. Contrary to standard belief, many of the Viking settlers in England lived quite peacefully side by side with the locals – they even understood each other, as many of the Angles would have come from Denmark 2-300 years before.
Very little of the culture of the sagas, however, was left in the mind of the remaining Danish population as the century passed. Denmark was ruled by king and nobles in fluctuating relationships. Where King John had to sign Magna Carta in 1215 in England, the Danish king – in fact Queen Margaret I – took total control in the 15th C and demolished both the power and the 100s of fiefdom castles protecting the self-assumed rights of the majority of the Danish noble class, so much so that their moats and ruins are more frequent in Denmark than the splendid castles and forts of Germany and England. Her reorganisation of the assets in Denmark was perhaps the most significant turning point in Danish society. From her control after the Nordic Union, where she “sat” on Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and until 1658 Denmark remained a significant power in Northern Europe with a clear stratification of classes. The farmers had become serfs with no influence on ‘society’. For approximately 400 years (1300-1700) Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) experienced a uniform culture, uniform trading, uniform language, despite regular skirmishes with the Swedes.

Denmark was still a power to reckon with despite the loss in 1658 of Skaane, Halland and Blekinge, which today remains the only arable land in Sweden. In the wars with Sweden and Karl XII, who even ravaged Europe way into Russia and present Ukraina, where he was defeated at Poltava, Denmark lost the right arm. Norway was only lost after the war with England 1801-1814 (Denmark was a Napoleonic ally), but until 1807 Denmark had the largest navy in Europe, then destroyed by Nelson. In the 17-1800s Denmark was also a colonial power (Ghana, Virgin Islands, Tranquebar, Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands) and had since the 1300s possessed the lands of the ‘Duchies’, including Schleswig, Holstein and Mecklenburg (where incidentally my family held massive possessions in the 1400s). The southern Danish border stopped at Altona on the Elbe river, just across from Hamburg. The Duchies were secured in one of the many wars with Germany in 1848, following which Denmark got its (still valid) constitution, 1849. However, in the 1864 war all was lost and the agony was immense. The national movements woke up, seriously, during these critical years of 1800-1840. The king (Frederik VII) was a father figure, even married to a ‘citoyenne’! Losing the Duchies in 1864 was therefore the final blow to a shrinking Denmark. Some land was recovered in 1920 at the plebiscite, but incompetent politicians let majority Danish land go.
It was the effect of “Big cats” at play – not the Jante-law!

As an aside – the Danish Foreign Minister Hækkerup lost probably 70% of the ‘reasonably’ allocated North Sea oil area due to over-consumption of the contents of a now herostratically famous whisky bottle. I doubt he had Jante in mind -

So, why do I describe all this?

Because “the smaa sko” (small shoes/ petits chaussures) syndrome, you mention, is a false label if it is supposed to reflect something Danish. It is a universal label for parochial humanity. Denmark never had a snowball’s chance in hell when the big powers started to play. In fact, it is an enigma to me how Denmark managed to stay high in the ranks of European ‘powers’ for so long. Everyone seems to forget that Denmark never exceeded 10% of the population of e.g. England and France, yet for centuries we managed to play a major role.

Having said that, there is no doubt that the constant decline of the state in the 1650s and later after 1814 (the loss of Norway, the left arm) must have produced bitter feelings, probably not with the farmers and fishermen, who had enough around their ears to stay alive, but with the city-merchants, the politicians and the powerful noble class.
It was not, as you describe, well-off farmers who took over land as such at the end of the 18th C. They had no power, and perhaps no energy, to begin such an enterprise. It was upper class nobles, land-owners such as Reventlow, Bernstorff and Colbjørnsen, who, under the impression of something as banal as increasing corn-prices in the 1760s, began a change process that just happened to be helped on the way by the European spiritual influences in the 1770s. A keen commercial opportunity thus worked hand in hand with an increased focus on humanitarian values, e.g. the American declaration of 1776. This feeling got a strong outlet in the early banishment of slavery and the view that simple farmers were humans too. It also made good economical sense. Until then the noble class could demand anything from their farmers – and they did. From the “first night with the bride” to severe physical punishment and unreasonable taxes. From 1400 till 1800 Østergaard is right: Denmark could be described with the translation of a famous saying: “French with his wife, German with his servant, Danish with his dog he spoke” – very international in the upper echelons of society, where decisions were made, very plebs and ‘Danish’ (?) lower down.

A late import was, for example, Graf (le Duc) Struensee, who managed to impregnate the wife of the insane Christian VII, Caroline Mathilde. He almost managed to take total control of the state in the 1770s – before his head found a lasting resting place different from the rest of his broken body. The royal family was German and the nobles were traditionally German (mainly), French and Italian import. A rich merchant class had its eyes on the world, enjoying a strategic position at the entry to the Baltic Sea.
The farmers and fishermen? Forget them. They just spoke Danish.

The Danish ‘lower classes’ were only introduced to real life after 1800 – expressed and promoted as an ideal in the literature of the golden age by Oehlenschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, Hertz, Baggesen and many other writers, inspired internationally by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the American declaration of Human Rights and the French revolution. By 1849 Danish nationality was well developed and the next 75 years experienced the foundation of a modern, civilized, caring state: “where few have too much and fewer too little”, from the 1930s.
Denmark can truly lay claim to being the world’s first welfare state – not built on envy and sameness, but with a tradition coming from the loss of a great past, literature of world class (in its time) and great thinkers in the 130 years from 1770 to 1900.
The impact was massive – quickly felt on a population hardly exceeding 2 million, speaking a language few other understood. Not a mean feat, quite frankly.
Lacking a killer instinct?
A quest for sameness?
I beg to differ.

The song you mention (Grundtvig’s “langt højere bjerge”), is a starter signal to the Danish national movement in 1820. If we really lost so much, why not be happy with what we have gained? Freedom, ability to live worth-while lives, accepting that a small population has no chance of creating a colonial empire like England’s and France’s. “Hvad udadtil tabes må indadtil vindes” - what we lose externally we must compensate for inwardly. Perhaps this was history’s lesson and a signal to Denmark. If you look at the country today, you will find Denmark top-rated in terms of living standard, lack of corruption and general welfare - - well, you name it. Perhaps we were lucky to lose our colonies and the trouble that went with them?
But did we really win it internally?
The society that has emerged is a consequence of massive immigration by totally irrelevant peoples, to whom we never had a commitment. It has become both a threat and an opportunity.

The negative reaction is not a consequence of the Jante-law – it follows from a more basic feeling of being threatened on hard won values: No “suppressed” women, respect for the individual, tolerance, an equitable view of humanity, security for all – under responsibility. When Danes see Imams, who produce nothing but children and who live on benefits paid by the rest of the population, demanding foreign powers to punish the Danish prime Minister on an issue that took 200 years to achieve (freedom of religious belief; freedom of speech) – then tempers flare. But they flare the Danish way: loud speaking and democratic protest in action. No revolution, rather satire and political discussion.

I would dare the statement that Denmark has overcome its lost grandeur considerably better and more elegantly than the English, where slowly the notion of the “multicultural society” is recognised as a misnomer, driving people into the arms of a highly fascist party, the BNP. In my opinion it is to do with the Danes being more level-headed and realistic. This was created by authors, artists and painters in the 19th Century. Because Denmark is so small – hence homogeneous – common feelings, statements and mental seeds were much easier to sow.
They still are.
Consider the Brenderup Trailer. Everyone has one – try to find a different brand!.
Nike trainers? Everyone has a pair.
The rucksack “Fjællræven Kånken”? If you have a rucksack, that’s the brand for everyone.

Compared to business, culture and marketing in the ‘city’ of England, Denmark is just one street long. Someone at the end begins to put green peppercorns in his traditional strawberry desert – and everyone in the street will use green peppercorns.
In England they fight to “keep up with the Jones’es”.
In Denmark it comes naturally, as Jones (Jensen) is your neighbour two houses down.
It is not a trend to gain sameness – it is viral communication. You experience it immediately when someone has it. It becomes a “want” above equalisation, simply because it is there and you are told about it. Compare with the explosion in utterly un-necessary functions of mobile phones today (worth a separate study).

When Denmark said NO to Schengen/ Maastricht/ Euro it followed as hand in glove from the above. Denmark is easily overrun by the “Big Guys” – in particular Germany. Example: imagine Germans (or just Hamburg) being allowed to buy Danish property (one of the EU/ Maastricht Benefits) – there would be nothing left for the local population. No summer houses, no villas, nothing. It would take less than 2 years. The Danes love the money Germans bring in during the summer months, but they hate watching the sand castles and fences they put up with signs of ‘My Property’. Their back in the autumn is as nice a sight as their nose in the spring. I have a feeling that a fairly recent law, free access to the beach in a 10m distance from the sea for everyone, was intended as a future protection against Germans.

Make no mistake – Denmark was always very close to Germany. Danish partisans didn’t wake up before mid 1943 and more so when the Germans deported the entire police force in September 1944. There was a huge Scandinavian SS-force (called Viking) and the Danish Civil Engineering Industry flourished in the 1930s and up through 1944, building U-boat bases (St. Nazaire) and bridges (Croatia) for the Germans.
The German scare was an undefined historic under-current before that and it has only become re-emphasised after the war, now economically more than nationally, when the Germans became an danger to our culture and material ownership!

You mention ‘small minded Danish opposition’ to the Bridge between Denmark and Malmø. There is a long standing semi-friendly mental stand-off between Danes and Sweden. Probably going all the way back to the loss of Skåne in 1658, the undecided Nordic war in 1708 and the fact that Sweden assumed a governing position over Norway 1814 to 1905. Skåne was a very Danish piece of property and only became Swedish through forced measures (read: deportation and terror). The flag of Skåne today is red with a yellow cross – telling a little story when you compare the Swedish and the Danish flags. When I was young we all travelled to Sweden to buy cheap – and available! – goods. It was after the war. But during the last 30 years the Swedes totally bungled their position as the world’s nr. 1 rich state and Denmark has become an Eldorado for the Swedes with their alcohol restrictions at home, minimal arable land (no bread, cheese, meat – and most importantly: beer). I grew up in Helsingør. Even when I was a kid we said: “Keep the city clean, carry a Swede to the ferry”. In the streets you find Swedish spoken as much as Danish. The bridge was no doubt a huge benefit to cross-Scandinavian transport, but it had to be built with an agreed financial sharing. The rationale for Danes was never clear, but the Swedes pressed on – and now it’s there. It was hardly used in the beginning and I am not sure it has yet become an economic success, neither in time saved nor in toll profit.

Remember the Chunnel (Tunnel sous la Manche)? It has taken 15 years for the UK-France connection to show its benefits and to demonstrate that the effect goes well beyond a mere ROI (Return on Investment) – which is still a dream of the future. My guess is we will see the same with the DK-S connection. The Danish objections, therefore, were more to do with the enormous costs. THAT’s something people understand. In the meantime the narrow strait between Helsingør and Hælsingborg (only 3 Km) remains one of the most heavily trafficked waters in the world.

You have a problem with the statement: Danes consider their tolerant, rich, secular and democratic nation as a result of the effort by “men and women working hard together”. I agree that it sounds too ‘sweet’. It is always individuals who start change. The arts and enlightened leaders got it moving. The viral effect, as explained above. Once it got going, Denmark was small enough to catch fire and a rich tradition for an argumentative democracy quickly established deep roots, stretching back to 1820.
Our focus on respect and consideration is rather unique in the world – one of the reasons that a foreign threat to these values is taken very seriously.
Whether Danes consider themselves different from the rest of Europe or not is an entirely trivial matter. Everyone, everywhere in my experience, consider themselves different – Dutch, German, English or French. I have heard that statement, constantly, everywhere. But Danish society has slowly become competitive and more international. If young Danes travel abroad I doubt they do it just because life ‘out there is less predictable’. It is an eye-opener for any young, well-educated (i.e. thinking) European to see the conditions under which other people live. More importantly, young people can afford such travel today and it helps generate tolerance, develop personality and establish a personal outlook that may help create change and keep the Danish society young and vibrant. Ask any Head-Hunter today: being international is “it”.
Less affluent countries will feel the pain as they stay parochial and the new-rich Russia will wake up to massive conflicts and social division.

Greenland is a special chapter.
Critical comments about Danish behaviour must no doubt be accepted. No doubt the Danes have sucked Greenland’s resources as much as they could in the past, but endless resources have been pumped into the Greenland society in the last 30 years. Again, don’t forget size; Greenland has perhaps 55,000 inhabitants and is being supported any way thinkable in their attempt to create an (almost) autonomous state. It is unfortunate that this requires a critical size and I am afraid they are below the threshold. However, Denmark has won a deep understanding of the Inuit society sadly lacking in the rest of the world. Just look at English animal protesters who spray seal-furs on London’s streets with paint, ignorant of the attempts of the Inuit people to live sustainable lives in balance with nature. Or Brigitte Bardot, who started it. Or Bing Crossby’s protests against Danish salmon fishing, only resulting in the Russians buying the Danish trawlers, continuing where the Danes were pressurised to let go.
The Inuit in Greenland now have almost complete control over the island, but predictably, and despite massive support, they continue to struggle as tradition and small size make it almost impossible to move forward. Even the Iceland el-dorado: 250,000 people becoming momentarily some of the richest in Europe has failed. Your Journalist informant, who just lashes out and criticises Denmark, clearly speaks through his elbow (nice expression instead of what I really want to say).

The concept of a “wife from Thailand” also exists everywhere, not only in Denmark. We have become global in many ways. It is not necessarily weak men who turn to this resource (although I am aware of a couple). No rule without exception and again I find it irrelevant to elaborate here. “A wife from Denmark” is the reverse syndrome – when a Turk, a Greek, an Arab or a Nigerian picks up a Scandinavian wife for a whole raft of reasons – one being the holiday temptation from both sides, another that “Danish women are considered ”easy” because they are more ‘free’, something highly restrictive, gender-confrontational cultures in many parts of the world don’t even begin to understand. The antipathy towards immigrants often latch on to this effect, for three reasons, a) “they take our women”, b) culture clashes and c) a lack of respect miles off our gentle culture.
This sometimes results in gang-rape perpetrated by Muslim boys, who consider it a show of masculinity in a society populated by “sluts”. Well, we call it a tolerant dress-code!

I must admit that I shake my head when I read about your example of a man returning with many ‘trophies’ from the Amazonas, experiencing a negative and miffed reaction from a neighbour. Danes are used to travel, Everyone finds it exciting if this results in a story to tell. Thor Heyrdahl (Norwegian/ Kon Tiki) is a good example; Tage Nissen, the Danish explorer in South America, is another. I knew his wife personally – a well respected and hugely interesting woman, who always gathered a crowd when we met.

I shall refrain from many more comments about the focus on the Muslim culture, but if it makes me Danish, I agree that either they must integrate, in a supported way, or stay away. We do not intend to give up the fruit of our struggle, a secular and safe state. Unfortunately a democratic Muslim is an oxymoron, although one Danish/Muslim politician has tried to form a democratic Muslim party. According to the Quran, state and religion are inextricably glued together and Muslim land must forever stay Muslim. I cannot see that the 700 faith schools in England produce anything but maladjusted youngsters with as little tolerance and understanding about the depths and wonders of this world as the creationist, evangelical Americans promoted by Mel Gibson and Bush. Denmark has no tradition in this direction and has no need for being part of new religious wars, promoted by an imported anachronistic element. Every other religion enjoys complete freedom in Denmark and as long as it remains a private matter, I find it perfect. What really upsets me is the eternal demand that we “must respect them”, while the opposite is not the case. Try to behave out of the norm in Saudi Arabia and you will understand what I mean. Danes will never understand – and not want to understand – the huge gender difference promoted by Muslims. The fight for equality was too long and too successful – albeit not yet entirely won. So, why extend the tolerance to something that is abhorrent in our eyes instead of doing what the French just did: Keep religious symbols at home and – above all - private.

As to the feeling about being an immigrant? Even after 26 years in England I meet an attitude of “go home if you are not happy”, particularly at heated discussions – or “How often do you go home?” to which I always answer: “ Every evening”. My Ukrainian wife also feels that it is heavy going to become accepted – and it was something I felt in Holland. It is an international, human condition, not just a Danish one.

Intrinsically I am probably 100% Danish, whatever that means. I still laugh at the English class society (Lord this, Lady that) – how uninteresting. And boarding schools: Get a life, you English people and bring up your children in the protection of the home. Perhaps we would se fewer maladjusted youngsters in the streets if that were the case!

My basic attitude remains: if you are a guest, you don’t try to change the host overnight. If you don’t like the smell of bread, get out of the bakery. Lasting change will only take a firm hold if we respect each other and work within the host-parameters. Democracy with all its weaknesses is probably still the only viable form of decent governance. The only way we can help the poor third world to get a better life is local help, not by importing their peoples to our turf and not pressing our systems upon them.

We have a lot of adjustment to do in the next 100 years, including spreading the knowledge about not destroying our earth and how to share knowledge and resources. I honestly believe that an objective observation of the Danes would concur that Denmark has led the way in both society, ecology and adaptation to a modern world.

If the Jantelov had been a firmly embedded national Danish phenomenon, this would never have happened.