Tuesday 20 April 2004

Pic of the day: Endlösung der Gangsterfrage? (Screenshot from City of Heroes.) But why did they become gangsters in the first place?

New Vikings

I'm not talking about sports. Those who think so, go away. Now.

OK, everybody. I want to say something about this age and an age that was, a thousand years and more ago, and a pain shared by those two ages.

For some of us, this time is one of wonderful opportunities, a time of growth. The world's cultures are mixed in a way they have never been before, and we can learn something from one of them and something else from another. Like the hundred different menus found in world port, so there are also cultural menus where we can find different clothes, architecture, music, poetry, visual art, spirituality and idioms. Like a well-stocked supermarket of the soul, there is more than we can carry with us in a lifetime.

***

But there is another, darker side to this. Not all people have the sheer capacity of the soul to make all these choices. There are many who prefer a single, simple worldview. When exposed to contradictions, they either cling so much harder to the old view, or they let it go and make a jump for the new view, or they get lost in between. A historian from the end of the Viking age noted that people had believed in the old gods, the Aesir; but when they learned about the White Christ, some stopped believing in the Aesir but did not start believing in Christ. Instead, they believed in their own strength.

The old Norse were not out and out barbarians who delighted in wanton destruction. Although when you sent a few shiploads of armed men on a long voyage, bad things were bound to happen. Even modern soldiers from civilized nations will sometimes commit atrocities. There is a sense of unreality when far from home and surrounded by strange people. But by and large, the Norse were not barbarians. Some of the Vikings, however, were very much so. They had lost any moral compass, seeing as their old traditions were after all not universally respected as they had believed.

The same time is happening in our country again, more than a millennium later. This time it happens mostly to people who come here from afar, so it seems to me. The last years we have had increasing trouble from young immigrants and children of immigrants, mostly from Islamic cultures. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but it is the truth. People of such origin are still fairly few, but make up a disproportionate number of murderers, rapists, arsonists and robbers. In many ways, they behave like the stereotypical Vikings of the past, and I suspect they do so for the same reason. Because in the culture clash, their beliefs are shattered and all that is left is their own strength.

(That and, of course, some of the guys we've let into the country are outright criminals fleeing from justice while claiming to be persecuted for political or ethnic reasons. Then again, we export a few of our own criminals as well.)

Children born of immigrant parents are known to run a high risk of becoming criminals, and indeed make up most of what little we have of actual gangs here in Norway. Again, these are not the boys with Swedish or Scottish parents, but people from far away, and particularly those with a different religion. Often parents cling to traditional values even more than their relatives that still live in their country of origin, as it is such an important part of their identity. But the kids grow up and quickly find out that these values are not respected by society. And neither are they. Unable to fit in at home, unable to fit in outside home, they trust their own strength and those in the same situation as themselves.

Or perhaps that's just my imagination. But it fits the fact.

***

This is an observation only. I don't really have a solution. It's a bit late to not let the people into the country in the first place, and besides we would lose out on cultural impulses. Isolation doesn't seem to work wonders for North Korea, for instance. So I guess we shall have to deal with these people the way we do with everyone else who behaves the same way.

Personally I am partial to the Neanderthal solution: Sterilize anyone who behaves violently, and all relatives who share at least 50% of their genes. With the current population in the world, we have a unique chance to weed out destructive traits. OK, perhaps it would be more palatable if we only sterilized the actual aggressors themselves and not their family.

We know by now that a violent lifestyle is caused neither by genes alone nor by social conditions alone, because people can have the same genes and act differently, and grow up under the same conditions and act differently. So it must be a combination. But changing society is a big deal, and would no doubt mean sacrifices for the rest of us; while sterilizing individuals is cheap and emotionally satisfying.