Michel Booth è un inglese che vive a Copenaghen da decenni.
Nell’apprendere la notizia che i suoi concittadini sono le persone più felici del mondo è rimasto sconcertato. Al punto che c’ha scritto su un libro: “The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia”.
***
A dare la sorprendente notizia era stato il dipartimento di psicologia della “University of Leicester”. In realtà la dà ogni anno o quasi quando elabora il “Satisfaction with Life Index”.
Lo diffondono verso marzo, non il primo aprile come viene naturale sospettare.
La reazione tipica dell’immigrato britannico a Copenaghen…
… A man at a university had said it, so it must be true…. Well, they (scandinavians) are doing an awfully good job of hiding…
A Copenaghen un inglese – ma un europeo qualsiasi - è costantemente a disagio. Da quando interagisce (o tenta di farlo) con la cassiera del minimarket…
… had rung up the cost of my prohibitively expensive, low-grade produce without acknowledging my existence…
A quando attraversa fuori dalle strisce una normalissima strada deserta destando l’indignazione generale…
… I’d crossed the street on a red light; there was no traffic, but in Denmark… is a provocative…
Ma poi, alla sera, c’è la pallosissima e arretrata TV danese (a metà tra la svizzera e croda, anche se ora è decisamente migliorata)…
… The evening’s prime-time TV entertainment had consisted of a programme on how to tackle excessive chafing of cow udders, followed by a ten-year-old episode of Taggart, and then Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?…
I danesi possono essere tutto ma proprio tutto… tranne che felici…
… Back then, I had come to think of the Danes as essentially decent, hard-working, law-abiding people, rarely prone to public expressions of . . . well, anything much, let alone happiness…
Si tratta di gente “luterana per natura”. Ostentare è il demonio…
… they shunned ostentation, distrusted exuberant expressions of emotion… they were a frosty, solemn bunch… the least demonstrably joyful people on earth, along with the Swedes, the Finns and the Norwegians…
I barlumi di felicità sembrano perlopiù dovuti al Prozac che assumono massicciamente…
… Perhaps it was all the antidepressants they were taking that was fogging their perception… in Europe, only the Icelanders consumed more happy pills… Was Danish happiness nothing more than oblivion sponsored by Prozac?…
Eppure, anche per l’ Eurobarometro la Danimarca vince sempre…
… more than two-thirds of the thousands of Danes who were polled claimed to be ‘very satisfied’ with their lives…
Cos’ha di tanto particolare questa gente? Questa gente che lascia i bambini fuori dal supermercato come i cani…
… ‘people leave their children in buggies outside of cafés, that you aren’t worried…
Vivono una vita zeppa di fastidi… tempo, tasse, code ovunque, negozi sempre chiusi…
… the punishing weather, the heinous taxes, the predictable monoculture… weather still shitty? Check. Tax rate still over 50 per cent? Yep. Shops closed whenever you need them? Oh yes… standing for half an hour waiting to be served at my local chemists…
Il fuori norma è il demonio, tutto deve essere omologato…
… the fear of anything or anyone different from the norm… the distrust of ambition and disapproval of success…
La gentilezza non è un piacere ma un cappio al collo…
… the appalling public manners, and the remorseless diet…
Altri sondaggi sconcertanti…
… I shook my head in disbelief when, for example, the country topped the Gallup World Poll, which asked a thousand people over the age of fifteen in 155 countries to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, both their lives now and how they expected them to pan out in the future… The answers revealed that 82 per cent of Danes were ‘thriving’ (the highest score), while only 1 per cent were ‘suffering’… in 2012, the United Nations’s first ever World Happiness Report, compiled by economists John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs,… And, guess what? Belgium came first! No, I’m joking. Denmark was once…
La Danimarca sembra non avere rivali…
… to win one happiness survey may be regarded as good fortune, to win virtually every one since 1973 is convincing grounds for a definitive anthropological thesis….
E’ evidente che qualcosa non va.
E quando non trionfa la Danimarca la palma passa ad un altro paese scandinavo…
… the Scandinavians were not only the happiest and most contented people in the world, but also the most peaceful, tolerant, egalitarian, progressive, prosperous, modern, liberal, liberated, best-educated, most technologically advanced, and with the best pop music, coolest TV detectives and even, in the last few years, the best restaurant, to boot… Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland – could boast the best education system in the world (Finland); a shining example of a properly secular, multicultural, modern industrial society (Sweden); colossal oil wealth, being invested in sensible, ethical, long-term things rather than silly tall buildings or Park Lane call girls (Norway); the most gender-equal society in the world, the longest-living men, and lots of haddock (Iceland); and ambitious environmental policies and generously funded welfare state systems (all of them)…
Sarà per questo che per breve tempo in tutto il mondo è scoppiata la “febbre scandinava”?…
… Swedish crime authors Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson began to shift millions of books, and Danmarks Radio (DR), the Danish national broadcaster, sold three series of its miserablist crime epic, Forbrydelsen (The Killing), to 120 countries, and even saw it remade for American TV. The company’s follow-up, the political drama Borgen (‘The Castle’ – the nickname given to the Danish parliament building), won a BAFTA and a million viewers on BBC4; and even Broen (The Bridge), a Danish–Swedish crime series, was a hit. (No matter that there was little original about Forbrydelsen other than its setting – we had seen tough female cops many times before; no matter that Borgen was a third-rate West Wing, albeit with better lampshades; or that The Bridge was actually really, really rubbish.) Suddenly Danish architects, most notably Bjarke Ingels, were knocking out major international building projects as if they were made out of Lego blocks, and works by artists like Olafur Eliasson were appearing everywhere from Louis Vuitton window displays to the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern… Danish films had a major moment, winning Oscars and awards at Cannes with directors such as Thomas Vinterberg, Lars von Trier, Susanne Bier and Nicolas Winding Refn becoming among the most acclaimed of the current era, and the actor Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale, The Hunt, Hannibal) became such a regular figure on Danish and international screens that these days he calls to mind John Updike’s famous couplet on a similarly ubiquitous French actor: ‘I think that I shall never view/A French film without Depardieu’. And, of course, there was the New Nordic food ‘revolution’ and the journey of the Copenhagen restaurant Noma from obscure joke to international trendsetter, named best restaurant in the world three times in a row and making its head chef, René Redzepi, a Time magazine cover star… Meanwhile Sweden continued its domination of our high streets with H&M and Ikea, and of our airwaves with pop producers and singers too numerous to list here, as well as giving us Skype and Spotify; Norway kept the world supplied with oil and fish fingers; and the Icelanders embarked on their extraordinary fiscal buccaneering spree…
Eppure il dubbio rimane. Anche perché, nonostante la febbre, la Scandinavia resta una trascuratissima “Terra Incognita”…
… why wasn’t everyone flocking to live here? Why did people still dream of a house in Spain or France?… Why can no one you know speak Swedish… Name the Danish foreign minister. Or Norway’s most popular comedian. Or a Finnish person. Any Finnish person… Scandinavia, though, really is terra incognita. The Romans didn’t bother with it… Charlemagne couldn’t care less… Even today the lack of interest is deafening… comparatively few of us ever travel in this part of the world… the cost of visiting Scandinavia coupled with its discouraging climate… Where is the travel writing on the North?… the truth is that we learn more from our schoolteachers, televisions and newspapers about the lives of remote Amazonian tribes than we do about actual Scandinavians and how they actually live… Even British cabinet reshuffles make the news in Denmark….
Gli scandinavi non sono certo dei gran parlatori in grado di farsi pubblicità…
… Socialise with Scandinavian males of a certain age, for instance, and the conversation will at some point almost certainly turn to the sketches of Monty Python… Scandinavians are not very forward when it comes to coming forward: they aren’t ones to boast…
Tipico giudizio di un danese sui danesi…
… ‘We are all so boring and stiff.’…
Tuttavia, per i mediocri, la Sacandinavia resta un paradiso…
… ‘If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking,’… Scandinavia, as a wag in The Economist once put it, is a great place to be born — but only if you are average
***
Cerchiamo di fare un quadro più coerente.
Dunque, per molta Sinistra europea la Scandinavia è un modello da seguire: ecco la litania consueta…
… Look to Denmark, the country that routinely leads the world in happiness surveys. It’s also notable for having the highest taxes on Earth, plus a comfy social safety net: Child care is mostly free, as is public school and even private school, and you can stay on unemployment benefits for a long time. Everyone is on an equal footing, both income-wise and socially…
Tuttavia, alcuni elementi stonano: come mai paesi tanto “interessanti” non attraggono nessuno?…
… Why does no one seem particularly interested in visiting Denmark? (“ Honey, on our European trip, I want to see Tuscany, Paris, Berlin and . . . Jutland!”)…
Danimarca = antidepressivi + alcol = felicità…
… Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world…
In Danimarca il bestialismo è legale e diffuso. Buon segno?…
… Some 5 percent of Danish men have had sex with an animal… Bestiality has traditionally been legal in Denmark, though a move to ban it is under way. Until recently, several “bestiality brothels”advertised their services in newspapers, generally charging clients $ 85 to $ 170 for what can only be termed a roll in the hay…
Anche l’economia sembra oggi meno solida. Lavorare non sembra affatto in cima alle priorità…
… productivity is in decline, its workers put in only 28 hours a week, and everybody you meet seems to have a government job…
La Danimarca è anche la capitale mondiale del cancro.
C’è dunque un mistero nella felicità danese?…
… So how happy can these drunk, depressed, lazy, tumor-ridden, pig-bonking bureaucrats really be?…
E’ chiaro che le classifiche internazionali della felicità soffrono di un bug che le invalida alla radice…
… Those sky-high happiness surveys, it turns out, are mostly bunk. Asking people “Are you happy?” means different things in different cultures…
La cultura pesa troppo. In Giappone dirsi felici è una vanteria da sbruffoni…
… In Japan, for instance, answering “Yes” seems like boasting…
Per un danese dirsi infelice è come suonare il clacson: una vergogna irrimediabile.
In Danimarca non dirsi felici, praticamente, è un tradimento della patria…
… in Denmark, it’s considered “shameful to be unhappy,”…
E i danesi, come tutti gli scandinavi, sono soldatini obbedienti: tutti uguali e tutti coesi sempre in formazione “tartaruga” con gli scudi alzati…
… Denmark is a land of 5.3 million homogeneous people. Everyone talks the same, everyone looks the same, everyone thinks the same…
L’orgoglio nazionale è qualcosa che noi italiani – in confronto - ci siamo scordati.
Questa coesione ha un nemico: l’individualista non conformista (che si lamenta e vuole uscire dal mucchio)…
… Any rebels will be made to conform; tall poppies will be chopped down to average…
La coesione sociale spiega anche il carattere introverso e musone…
… Perché gli svedesi sono timidi, introversi, inibiti e ansiosi?
L' ipotesi antropologica più accreditata: perché hanno vissuto a lungo in un gruppo omogeneo. Il linguaggio che emerge in un gruppo omogeneo è estremamente sofisticato e ogni minimo segnale viene colto ed interpretato. Cio' aumenta le possibilità di conflitto e richiede il massimo self control tra i componenti…
Le società nordiche sono essenzialmente barbare, conservano l’egalitarismo delle bande nomadi…
… “Hunter-gatherer societies —which are similar to prehistoric societies —are highly egalitarian. And if someone starts to take on a more domineering position, they get ridiculed or teased or ostracized…
Nelle società nomadi e cacciatrici non c’era modo di arricchirsi molto rispetto agli altri se non con il ladrocinio. Il ricco era quindi un ladro da punire e da ricondurre a normalità.
l’essenza primitiva di questi popoli giustifica anche il bestialismo (vedi sopra) e la diffusa violenza contro le donne sono tanto diffuse.
La dimensione barbarica di queste società spiega anche la scarsa corruzione percepita. Gaspard Koenig:
“… I paesi scandinavi sono scolaretti diligenti nella lotta contro la corruzione, buona parte dei loro successi sono verosimilmente da accreditare al retroterra barbarico che ancora permea una certa mentalità nordica e che produce quell’attitudine quasi militaresca con cui vengono accolti taluni precetti che suonano a dir poco stravaganti quando giungono alle orecchie dei popoli con una civiltà pregressa più corposa… Così come certo folclore politically correct, anche il dogma dell’incorruttibilità richiede, per essere assimilato, una prolungata astinenza dalle tentazioni mondane, una mente naif che si offra come tabula rasa da “indottrinare senza residui” ai comandamenti della nuova “religione laica”, in questo senso non c’è niente di meglio di una tribù vichinga abituata a contemplare da sempre il nulla delle distese boschive e dei ghiacci… Ricorrendo ad un’analogia forse un po’ azzardata potremmo chiederci: dove nel XX secolo trovò più completa applicazione la "modernissima"
dogmatica marxista? Semplice, nel barbaro oriente russo, e ancor di più in Cina o in Cambogia: quanto più predomina il selvatico, quanto più ci si inoltra nella tundra o nella giungla, tanto più la regola è applicabile in modo “puro” e senza mediazioni… Non a caso già il Braudel di “Civiltà e Imperi” evidenziava come la civiltà fiorisca nella ricerca impulsiva e caotica della libertà dei singoli… un certo caos vitale è prerogativa della grande civiltà, affermava lo storico, perché solo una grande civiltà puo’ permettersi di annoverare tra le sue fila individui abbandonati a se stessi, ai propri errori, alla propria follia, alla propria ricerca… è tra costoro che troveremo i grandi nomi di domani… al contrario, più si fa sentire il peso di una religione soffocante, del moralismo, del politicamente corretto, più l’individuo è sorvegliato, protetto, coccolato, più l’influsso della passata barbarie è destinato a stagnare…”
Il politically correct austero è una caratteristica militaresca che i barbari osservano religiosamente. Quando si è in compagnia non è tollerata la minima contraddizione, il minimo accenno al conflitto. Il che, non c’è bisogno di dirlo, rende la vita di compagnia estremamente noiosa… e allora vai con i fiumi di alcol…
… even the Danes describe Danes as boring…
Ma questa coesione sociale ha un altro risvolto negativo: la xenofobia…
… The flip side of the famous “social cohesion” is that outsiders are unwelcome. Xenophobic remarks are common…
L’immigrazione è un problemone, specie in Svezia. Il welfare crea ghetti e rivolte…
… Scandinavian cohesion may not work in conjunction with massive immigration: Almost one-third of the Swedish population was born elsewhere. Immigration is associated in the Swedish mind with welfare (housing projects full of people on the dole) and with high crime rates (these newcomers being more than four times as likely to commit murder). Islamist gangs control some of the housing projects. Friction between “ethnic Swedes”and the immigrants is growing…
E la vita quotidiana del buon danese-tipo?
I prezzi sono salatissimi: un libro è un lusso…
… Danes have to pay more for just about everything. Books are a luxury item…
Anche la sanità – a suo modo – è costosissima…
… Health care is free —which means you pay in time instead of money… Services are distributed only after endless stays in waiting rooms…
Code ovunque.
… Pharmacies are a state-run monopoly, which means getting an aspirin is like a trip to the DMV…
Ogni paese scandinavo ha le sue rogne da grattarsi. Islanda…
… Iceland’s famous economic boom turned out to be one of history’s most notorious real estate bubbles…
Norvegia…
… The success of the Norwegians — the Beverly Hillbillies of Europe — can’t be imitated… Colossal offshore oil deposits spawned a sovereign wealth fund that pays for everything…
Finlandia…
… Finland, which tops the charts in many surveys (they’re the least corrupt people on Earth, its per-capita income is the highest in Western Europe and Helsinki often tops polls of the best cities), is also a leader in categories like alcoholism, murder (highest rate in Western Europe), suicide and antidepressant usage…
Il maggior regista finlandese:
… Their leading filmmaker, Aki Kaurismaki, makes features so “unremittingly morose they made [Ingmar] Bergman look like Mr. Bean,”…
Svezia…
… Geert Hofstede… dubbed the least masculine country on Earth…
***
E la variabile suicidi?…
… Though suicide figures are notoriously unreliable (Catholic countries tend to be more reluctant to declare a death a suicide, for instance), according to the World Health Organisation Finland has the highest suicide rate in the Nordic region: 17.6 people per 100,000 per year, compared with 11.9 for Denmark, which is the lowest scorer in the region (the US rate is 11.8 (con armi che circolano liberamente), the UK’s 6.9). Could this, too, be at least in part alcohol-related?…
Ma perché tanti suicidi? Un’ipotesi autorevole…
… In his book Suicide and Scandinavia US psychiatrist Herbert Hendin observed that the Swedish approach tended to encourage independence in their children at a very early age. Swedish children were, he said, taught that to be dependent on another person – even one’s own mother – is a failing. ‘Children are encouraged to separate from their mothers early on, socially and psychologically,’ agrees Åke Daun in The Swedish Mentality. ‘They deny the existence of any such need and mask it behind an ostensible self-reliance.’…
I problematici rapporti mamma/figlio confermano la tendenza al distacco…
… Ulf Nilson has also written of the pressures that Swedish women feel to conform to social norms by depositing their spawn at the kindergarten on their way to the office every morning: ‘Feminists start to more or less criminalise women who want to stay at home with their toddlers rather than leave them in the nurseries.’…
Non si puo’ escludere che questo “distacco” prematuro sia all’origine di un fenomeno poco noto che affligge la Svezia: la piccola delinqueza giovanile…
… Could this be part of the reason why Sweden suffers from comparatively high rates of juvenile delinquency and petty crime, for instance?…
Forse l’ipotesi di Hendin è esagerata ma molti lo hanno seguito per quella via…
… Few would go as far as Hendin and claim that Swedish mothers did ‘not experience the same joy in being together with their children as mothers in certain other cultures’ (after all, a certain class of English mother thinks nothing of packing her progeny off to boarding school at the age of eight), but he isn’t the only one to have questioned the indecent rapidity with which Swedish society moves to separate its young from their parents. Writing in the mid-1980s, child psychiatrist Marianne Cederblad commented: ‘In Sweden we have . . . extreme expectations from an early age regarding self-sufficiency in children, and parents see the defiance of children during their refractory periods as positive and desirable.’ In a similar vein, Daun quotes a proposal on after-school care written in the seventies by the National Board of Health and Welfare as stating its responsibility was to ‘support the children in their release from close dependence upon adults’. I think it is safe to say the ‘earth mother’ is not a common Swedish archetype…
***
La violenza contro le donne è un’altra specialità scandinava. Enrique Garcia e Juan Merlo l’hanno studiata a fondo giungendo a formulare il cosiddetto “Nordic Paradox”: più eguaglianza, più violenza…
… The Nordic countries are the most gender equal nations in the world, but at the same time, they also have a disproportionately high rate of intimate partner violence against women. This is perplexing because logically violence against women would be expected to drop as women gained equal status in a society. A new study explores this contradictory situation, which has been labeled the ‘Nordic paradox.’… Denmark clocks in at about 32%, Finland at 30%, and Sweden at 28%; Denmark and Finland by the way should disabuse you from blaming this phenomenon on immigrants…
C’è chi obbietta che le donne scandinave denuncino di più. No, Garcia e Merlo controllano anche questa variabile…
… …the same FRA survey provides data suggesting lower levels of disclosure of IPV [intimate partner violence] to the police by women in Nordic countries as compared to other EU countries. For example the average percentage for the EU of women indicating that the most serious incident of IPV came to the attention of the police is 20%, whereas for Denmark and Finland is 10% and 17% for Sweden. In any case, the ‘higher disclosure’ explanation, however, would not solve the Nordic paradox, as these more ‘reliable’ levels of disclosure would rather reinforce the paradox posited by very high levels of IPV prevalence (prevalence rates around 30% is by all means disproportionate) in countries with high levels of gender equality….
***
In economia la Danimarca ha investito molto per rendere la sua società più dinamica, e all’apparenza sembra esserci riuscita: il sogno danese sembra aver sostituito quello americano…
… The standard social mobility statistic measures how much each generation's income is determined by its parents' income. By that measure, northern Europe and Scandinavia have the highest social mobility in the advanced world, and Denmark tops the list…
Ma in questi dati c’è qualcosa che non va, a smentirli è nientemeno che il premio Nobel James Heckman, il quale si concentra sulla sorte dei bambini danesi…
… But this Danish Dream is a “Scandinavian Fantasy,” according to a new paper by Rasmus Landersø at the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit in Copenhagen and James J. Heckman at the University of Chicago. Low-income Danish kids are not much more likely to earn a middle-class wage than their American counterparts. What’s more, the children of non-college graduates in Denmark are about as unlikely to attend college as their American counterparts…
A rendere “ricchi” i “poveri” sono i generosi sussidi e non il fatto che hanno realizzato il “loro sogno”…
… If that’s true, how does Denmark rank number-one among all rich countries in social mobility? It’s all about what happens after wages: The country’s high taxes on the rich and income transfers to the poor “compress” economic inequality within each generation…
La mobilità sociale raggiunta dai danesi è solo un effetto ottico…
… Its high social mobility is not the result of an economy that is uniquely good at helping poor children earn middle-class salaries. Instead, it is a country much like the U.S… Social mobility in Denmark and the U.S. seem to be remarkably similar when looking exclusively at wages…
E i grandi investimenti danesi nell’istruzione? Pagano solo nei primissimi anni della carriera scolastica e solo per chi parte da molto in basso e viene da famiglie problematiche…
… The second big idea in the paper is that Denmark’s large investment in public education pays off in higher cognitive skills among low-income children, but not in higher-education mobility… a tiny share of Denmark’s college graduate population comes from homes where neither parent finished high school…
Ma c’è di più: il generoso welfare danese riduce l’incentivo ad andare all’università…
… Denmark makes it more comfortable to be poor and less lucrative to be rich, so many young people decide to end their education after high school…
Questa realtà puo’ essere letta in due modi. Da destra: nonostante i colossali investimenti nulla cambia. E da sinistra: il welfare non distrugge la società…
… Democrats can say: Despite conservative arguments that a welfare state could destroy poor young people’s ambition, Denmark’s educational mobility is no worse than the U.S. But Republicans can say: Despite liberal arguments that Denmark is so much better than the U.S. at social mobility, its poor kids are no more likely to go to college. “There is something here for the Republicans and for the Democrats,” Heckman told me…
Conclusione…
… Equality of opportunity is a fantasy. It does not exist in the U.S., it does not exist in Denmark, and it probably doesn’t exist anywhere…
Se il sogno americano zoppica, quello danese è una fantasia statistica…
… For the government to make equality of opportunity its singular and absolute policy goal would probably mean breaking up neighborhoods, forcing arranged marriages, enrolling all children in a unified curriculum, and having them all taught by a mass-produced robot; that would eliminate neighborhood effects, assortative mating, peer effects, curricular differences, and the problem of unequal teaching quality…
***
Ma gli scandinavi hanno una testa da economisti, questo è indubbio. Riescono a ragionare in termini di efficienza e di politiche razionali, spesso anche a livello di popolazione.
Questo a volte costituisce un “problemone” etico: tanto è vero che hanno flirtato come nessun altro popolo (tranne i nazisti) con l’eugenetica, e si parla di anni settanta non di anni trenta! Sul punto rinvio al sempre prezioso libro di Luca Dotti: “L'utopia eugenetica del welfare state svedese (1934-1975)”.
Altre volte, però, questa inclinazione alle soluzioni razionali è stata provvidenziale, per esempio quando sono riusciti a salvare buona parte dell’invidiabile welfare privatizzandolo…
… When its welfare state became unsustainable (something savvy Danes are just starting to say), it went on a privatization spree and cut government spending from 67 percent of GDP to less than half…
