...So: Why does no one seem particularly interested in visiting Denmark? (“Honey, on our European trip, I want to see Tuscany, Paris, Berlin and . . . Jutland!”) Visitors say Danes are joyless to be around. Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world. (Its fellow Nordics the Icelanders are in front by a wide margin.) Some 5 percent of Danish men have had sex with an animal. Denmark’s productivity is in decline, its workers put in only 28 hours a week, and everybody you meet seems to have a government job. Oh, and as The Telegraph put it, it’s “the cancer capital of the world.”
So how happy can these drunk, depressed, lazy, tumor-ridden, pig-bonking bureaucrats really be?
Let’s look a little closer, suggests Michael Booth, a Brit who has lived in Denmark for many years, in his new book, “The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia” (Picador).
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“The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia” by Michael Booth (Picador)
Those sky-high happiness surveys, it turns out, are mostly bunk. Asking people “Are you happy?” means different things in different cultures. In Japan, for instance, answering “Yes” seems like boasting, Booth points out. Whereas in Denmark, it’s considered “shameful to be unhappy,” newspaper editor Anne Knudsen says in the book.
Moreover, there is a group of people that believes the Danes are lying when they say they’re the happiest people on the planet. This group is known as “Danes.”
“Over the years I have asked many Danes about these happiness surveys — whether they really believe that they are the global happiness champions — and I have yet to meet a single one of them who seriously believes it’s true,” Booth writes. “They tend to approach the subject of their much-vaunted happiness like the victims of a practical joke waiting to discover who the perpetrator is.”
Danes are well aware of their worldwide reputation for being the happiest little Legos in the box. Answering “No” would be as unthinkable as honking in traffic in Copenhagen. When the author tried this (once), he was scolded by his bewildered Danish passenger: “What if they know you?” Booth was asked.
That was a big clue: At a party, the author joked, it typically takes about eight minutes for people to discover someone they know in common. Denmark is a land of 5.3 million homogeneous people. Everyone talks the same, everyone looks the same, everyone thinks the same.
This is universally considered a feature — a glorious source of national pride in the land of humblebrag. Any rebels will be made to conform; tall poppies will be chopped down to average.
The country’s business leaders are automatically suspect because of the national obsession with averageness: Shipping tycoon Maersk McKinney Moller, the richest man in the country before his death in 2012, avoided the national shame of being a billionaire by being almost absurdly hoi polloi. He climbed stairs to his office every day, attended meetings until well into his 90s and brown-bagged his lunch.
An American woman told Booth how, when she excitedly mentioned at a dinner party that her kid was first in his class at school, she was met with icy silence....
http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/sorry-liberals-scandinavian-countries-arent-utopias/
So how happy can these drunk, depressed, lazy, tumor-ridden, pig-bonking bureaucrats really be?
Let’s look a little closer, suggests Michael Booth, a Brit who has lived in Denmark for many years, in his new book, “The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia” (Picador).
Modal Trigger
“The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia” by Michael Booth (Picador)
Those sky-high happiness surveys, it turns out, are mostly bunk. Asking people “Are you happy?” means different things in different cultures. In Japan, for instance, answering “Yes” seems like boasting, Booth points out. Whereas in Denmark, it’s considered “shameful to be unhappy,” newspaper editor Anne Knudsen says in the book.
Moreover, there is a group of people that believes the Danes are lying when they say they’re the happiest people on the planet. This group is known as “Danes.”
“Over the years I have asked many Danes about these happiness surveys — whether they really believe that they are the global happiness champions — and I have yet to meet a single one of them who seriously believes it’s true,” Booth writes. “They tend to approach the subject of their much-vaunted happiness like the victims of a practical joke waiting to discover who the perpetrator is.”
Danes are well aware of their worldwide reputation for being the happiest little Legos in the box. Answering “No” would be as unthinkable as honking in traffic in Copenhagen. When the author tried this (once), he was scolded by his bewildered Danish passenger: “What if they know you?” Booth was asked.
That was a big clue: At a party, the author joked, it typically takes about eight minutes for people to discover someone they know in common. Denmark is a land of 5.3 million homogeneous people. Everyone talks the same, everyone looks the same, everyone thinks the same.
This is universally considered a feature — a glorious source of national pride in the land of humblebrag. Any rebels will be made to conform; tall poppies will be chopped down to average.
The country’s business leaders are automatically suspect because of the national obsession with averageness: Shipping tycoon Maersk McKinney Moller, the richest man in the country before his death in 2012, avoided the national shame of being a billionaire by being almost absurdly hoi polloi. He climbed stairs to his office every day, attended meetings until well into his 90s and brown-bagged his lunch.
An American woman told Booth how, when she excitedly mentioned at a dinner party that her kid was first in his class at school, she was met with icy silence....
http://nypost.com/2015/01/11/sorry-liberals-scandinavian-countries-arent-utopias/
