Tuesday 17 May 2005

Pic of the day: Yes we love this country. Although we probably still would if it was called Skandistan or any other random name.

National day

Today was Norway's national day, the Constitution day. Normally this is celebrated far more than the formal Independence Day on June 7th. This year may be an exception, because on June 7th Norway will celebrate exactly 100 years since its independence from Sweden. I would have liked for us to have a referendum on EU membership on that day. Because there is really no logic in the flag-waving celebration of national pride on one hand, and wanting to join the European Union on the other. One or the other, please.

Norway has three independence days, really. June 7th is the independence from Sweden, May 8th is the end of the German occupation, and May 17th is a kind of placeholder for the independence from Denmark. In 1814, Norway was transferred from Denmark to Sweden as a reparation for war damage, more or less. The losing Denmark had to pay for being on the wrong side in the Napoleonic wars, and the price was all of Norway. Since Norway was the western half of the Scandinavian peninsula and Sweden the eastern half, it also made a lot more sense in the budding age of railroads. Denmark was across the strait from both of us, and I suppose the coastal Norway in union with Denmark made sense back when ships were the main transportation. Of course, now that communication is global, nations don't make sense at all, but changing the minds of 6 billion primates is not an easy task.

***

No, seriously. I know some people use "globalization" as a scare, but what is the alternative? Isolation? Look at those who have tried it. Look at North Korea. Look at Iraq until recently. Look at Zimbabwe starting just a few years ago. Are these places you want to hold up as shining examples to the world? On the other hand, you have countries that are open to trade, cultural exchange and at least some degree of immigration and emigration. Such as the USA, Luxembourg, and of course my native Norway. Do the governments in these open countries need to patrol their borders with guns trying to keep their citizens from escaping? No, if anything they need to set a cap on the number of people seeking refuge there.

Globalization is not primarily about big multinational companies with budget larger than many decent nations. Sure, it can be nice for them too, but they usually find a way. You will find them represented in places like Burma (Myanmar), not exactly famous for openness. They don't really need globalization, they enforce their own. Globalization is good for common people. You are hearing about people in poor countries working for $1 a day; is that good for these common people? Yes. They are not there because someone is pointing a gun to their head (again with exception of North Korea and such). They are there because until then, they worked day and night on the farms for a handful of rice; and if the crops failed, they starved. But because there was no globalization back then, you did not hear about it. It is always comfortable to not know when people are dying. But in a shared world, that kind of comfort is fading.

Back in 1814, when Norway got its first constitution, life was nasty and brutish and short. Only a couple years before, the wheat failed due to cold summers, and people had to mix the flour with ground bark from the trees to make it last longer. (The English blockade did not exactly help.) Over the next decades, richer European countries started to take an interest. Sweden, obviously, but also Great Britain built industry in Norway where the raw materials were plentiful and labor was cheap. This investment helped lift Norway up from poverty. We like to go on and on about how we went from rags to riches due to our merchant fleet, and there is much truth in that. But the Swedish railways and the English capitalists didn't exactly hurt either. Not that anyone talks about it.

If the steam engine had stayed in England, would the world have been a better place today? Probably not. But because of the globalization of this and other inventions, everyone eventually got richer. True, modern civilization is a threat to the environment. But in the rich world, the forests are growing like they haven't done since the end of the ice age. The air is getting cleaner for each passing year. I have seen it with my own eyes, not that you need to take my word for it; drilling a little bit into a Norwegian glacier will show it. What we desperately need is for the rest of the world to also become rich enough to afford saving the environment. When you are about to die from hunger, and you can't read anyway, environmentalism is the last thing on your mind.

***

On a day like today, it is typical Norwegian to be good. We celebrate ourselves and feel justifiably superior. Indeed, our culture IS superior. That's why people come from inferior cultures and try to settle here. Their culture caused fear and hate and poverty, which is why they leave, but for some reason many of them insist on bringing their inferior culture with them. They and their children would be better off in all ways if they dropped that burden and adopted the culture that causes peace, trust and prosperity.

But culture is a thing that can be learned. It is not like we Norwegians are created more in God's image than other people, or that we are somehow born to be good. Through several stages of good fortune, we were inspired by others and learned from them, turning from barbarians to the people we are today. If we forget those lessons, we will become barbarians once again, as happened to the peoples of Yugoslavia a few years ago. Whenever the idea arises that one people is chosen by the gods to be born superior, disaster is waiting in the wings for them.

We are all one big family. The human race is so genetically similar across all "races" that we would call it inbreeding if it were another species of mammal. There is no reason why lines on a map should keep us from realizing this. We have celebrated independence for generations already. Soon it is time to celebrate interdependence - to be joyful in the knowledge that we are all brothers and sisters. Then we will close the last of the dusty tomes with the chronicles of the warrior kings of old, and the peoples will no longer learn to wage war. If the descendants of the bloody-handed Vikings could walk this path, anybody can. And that is a cause for celebration.