Some Cultural Undercurrents

Since I arrived here in Sweden, I have been doing my best to understand this culture more and more. When I find myself in a new environment my initial response, as a social perceiver, is to illuminate the reality trough the lens of my personal perspective and build my initial impressions. As I have found out from past experiences, however, these initial impressions can quite often differ from reality. As you know, Sweden is a country with very unique characteristics, and a strong sense of neutrality on most controversial topics. I have always wondered how this society has been able to sustain an existence so different from most, with its focus not bases on human greed, at least not individual, or other such addictions. As I began to read about Sweden, and the Swedish values, there was one very odd "law" that kept reappearing in every book I read. The first time I read it, I simply disregarded it as something of a myth, but as I discovered it in a second and third book, I focused my attention on it, and its implications. This "law" is known as the Law of Jante and it goes as follows:
1. You shall not believe that you are somebody.
2. You shall not believe that you are as good as we are.
3. You shall not believe that you are smarter than we are.
4. You shall not think that are better than we are.
5. You shall not believe that you know more than we do.
6. You shall not believe that you are superior to us.
7. You shall not believe that you are good enough.
8. You shall not laugh at us.
9. You shall not believe that anybody cares about you.
10. You shall not believe that you can teach us anything.

As you can see why, at first I was very willing to dismiss these ten rules as some sort of bogus myth, however, they in fact are more like the Swedish "ten commandments" in a sense. Every one has heard of them, and they serve as a sort of a moral stem of the Swedish culture. These rules are not thought in a class environment; instead, they are passed down from generation to generation without much questioning. By the time, these "ten commandments" are fully perceived by the mind they have sort of boiled down to some sort of a mellow form of the original with the simple intend of reminding everyone that no one’s opinion should be regarded as irrelevant. The "you" and "we" in the ten rules remain undefined, and are left to take on a rather universal meaning. This sort of gives them the status of contract law, making them individually applicable to all situations, and all times.
I personally believe that this "law" is one of the key factors for the cultural uniqueness fostered here in Sweden. On the other hand, I am sure that there are many more mysterious such as this one that I have yet to discover, therefore, I will do my best to keep you up to date on my quest to discovering the bases of Sweden's mysteriously marvellous culture.

People or Tasks?

Task Oriented or People oriented?

Efficiency, it seems to be defined a bit differently here in Sweden. As a norm, we take efficiency as the combination of competitive pricing, low transaction costs, and other task oriented factors which provide us with the best product at the best price. For the most part, we develop economic systems, and let natural selection determine the rest, with a bit of fiscal policy help of course. Here, however, things are very different.
It seems that the definition of efficiency combines factors which are mostly oriented at creating the best people-friendly system possible. The social infrastructure here is simply amazing, and of course it comes at a price. Taxation averages, in the mid 30% of income, and in certain cases even reaching the 50%. This, however, is a price Swedes are willing to pay. The reality is that this in not a revolutionary model, many countries of the former Soviet Union region, attempted to use similar models - they however, failed.
So what makes this system here different? What is it that stimulates the growth in the Swedish economy and keeps it up at the status of a developed nation? Is it really true; are Swedes really able to overcome human selfishness?
These are just some of the questions that I have been asking myself since I arrived in Sweden. My impression so far is that this system, just as any other, has its faults; they however, seem to be very insignificant when it comes to the grand scheme of things. Efficiency in this country truly does take on a different definition, and this difference seems, for once, to take in the factors which most developed nations, at least on the contrary of views, seem to lack.