Danes are peasants ? in-grown, insular, close-minded, afraid of the outside world and peoples, view the world in comparison to themselves and are not open to change.
This view of Danes as peasants comes from a Dane ? Economic Minister Margrethe Vestager. She made this remark at a recent conference on diversity in Denmark. It has made me focus on something I have been reflecting upon for more than a year. I have understood for many years of my life that one either believes in system of abundance or a myth of scarcity. It is that myth of scarcity that explains Denmark?s laborious and painful journey to open itself to people of different cultures and ethnicities. It is why the Danish immigration process is horrifically broken and why Denmark has difficulty attracting and retaining well-educated expatriates. The myth of scarcity.
The Consortium for Global Talent held a conference on Denmark and diversity at Danske Bank recently. Economic Minister Margrethe Vestager field various questions about Danes? interactions with people of different backgrounds. She?gave a clear answer:
?The reason it is so slow is probably because we are a nation of peasants. There?s still an old mindset that if someone comes in, you have to feed them too,? she said.
A Culture of Abundance
For me this fear of others is mind-blowing. My personal Danish friends and acquaintances are not like this. But I see vestiges of this in Danish society and in the culture right now. It is anathema to me. I grew up in a large American household in a large house in a comfortable area. Food and all the comfort, camaraderie and love that went with it, was always plentiful in the house. The main kitchen was in the center of the house and ?opened? starting at 6am. All the children and youth in a one mile radius knew that if you played with any children from our home, when we went in for dinner, all you had to do was file in with us, wash your hands and slide into a seat at the table. You got a plate of food no, questions asked (unless you showed up several times in a row, and then you would get asked about your family, but never denied food). No one left the table hungry.
My family tradition growing up also included barbeques that would start Friday evening and go until Sunday evening and until Monday evening if it was a Monday holiday. This took places from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend. My grandfather fired up the huge in-ground stone barbeque pit and cook huge slabs of beef and pork as well as chicken all weekend. He made his own sauce. This was no little Weber grill on wheels or even a large Weber grill. This was a hand built stone and wrought iron masterpiece my grandfather created. You could smell the meat for miles. My grandmother and several of us would make side dishes ranging from tossed salad and potato salad to macaroni salad, green beans, baked means and more. Whiskey, beer, wine, soda and juice flowed in never-ending streams. Music played. People danced, laughed, talked, ate, drank and children played in the yard and in the house. One of the most amazing things was the sheer number of people. Neighbors would come by for a plate and some conversation. Relatives came. Then there were the distant relatives or relatives and the friends we invited and their friend and the friends of those friends and the friends of those friends. You get the picture There were people there we?clearly did not know, coming to eat our food and drink our liquor?maybe even dance or sing. Did we order get fearful and start counting the food and drink? No. In fact went out mid-barbeque and got more when needed.
My family also took in foster children and adopted some of them. Some were supposed to stay for only a short time and ended up never leaving, and are part of my family today. We ARE their family, the only one they have ever known?and gave them the only real home they ever knew.
We never went bankrupt because we fed hungry people or gave them clothes, food, a home and an education. Margrethe Vestager feels Denmark needs to move away from the peasant mindset, and open up in this way about foreigners in Denmark:
?But it should change to say that if more people come, we can feed more.?
I hold these memories of my family background, and it is embedded in my mindset about economics. Coming from a theological background, and with a great interest in mythology and history, this peasant mindset that Vestager has captured is encapsulated in what is termed in some circles as a?myth of scarcity.
The Myth of Scarcity
In a myth of scarcity, one must not be too generous or there won?t be enough.
Money.? Food. Housing. Leisure time. You name it. Denmark and Danes , like many wealthy western nations and peoples has invested itself and its consumerism. It is hypnotized and mesmerized by consumerism. It is obsessively in love with ?more?.
A large amount of abundance in many forms pours into Denmark.? As Danes have become wealthier, money has become a form of drug. It is Denmark?s drug and it has induced a delusion ? a delusion or myth of scarcity. For a while Denmark did not notice its wealth but when foreigners were needed for manual labor and came to Denmark to do it, Denmark began counting the money in the cash register. When well-educated expatriate foreigners were needed to fill white-collar professional jobs and came to Denmark to do those jobs and make lots of money for the country, Denmark began counting the money in the cash register to make sure none was being stolen by ?those foreigners?. When Denmark wanted more foreign students and they came, Denmark got nervous and began counting the money in the cash register to make sure none was being stolen and squirreling away money. Denmark, has increased in wealth and simultaneously become less generous ? it has created more and more laws to take more and more public money away from the needy and shown less charity for the neighbor.
American Wives and Danish Husbands
It has, for example, made second class citizens of Danish men who dare to marry a foreign wife. There are significant cases of Danish men married to American women in Denmark and the wife is not getting the same economic parity as a Danish woman gets. When those marriages end or need to end, as some do, these wives are stuck because they have no economic and social parity with Danish men or Danish women. An American woman married to a Danish man today has appalling economic, parental and social instability that Danish women fought against and overcame through ligestilling laws (equality laws)? back in the 70?s and early 80s.
Remember the Hebrew scripture story of the Pharaoh who had a dream of famine?? He became terrified and decided to organize a plan to preserve himself and to do it on the backs of the Hebrews. His plan is to administer, control and monopolize the food supply. He single handedly introduces the theology or myth of scarcity into the world economy. As theologian Walter Brueggemann points out in a 1999 presentation, for the first time in the Bible, someone says, ?There?s not enough. Let?s get everything.?
?Martin Niemoller, the German pastor who courageously opposed Adolf Hitler, once traveled as part of a delegation of leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. On this trip, in 1933, he met with Hitler, standing in the rear of a room listening to him speak. Later he told his wife ?I discovered that Herr Hitler is a terribly frightened man.?
Niemoller also wrote that famous anecdote about how people in the village stood by and did nothing when people of other backgrounds were being take away by the Nazis?..and that eventually the Nazis came to get them but no one was left to fight for them because they never fought for anyone else.
Denmark is frightened of well-educated expatriates and people of foreign background in general, is what Margrethe Vestager is telling us.
Changing the Peasant Mindset
The only solution is for Denmark to change its mindset and not be led by peasant fear, which leads to closed mind closed pockets
and the anxiety that people of foreign background will want to have food, housing, healthcare, parental rights, marital rights, economic parity and enjoyment of life.
If you know the full story of Pharaoh and Joseph, you know what happened. As Brueggemann points out, because Pharaoh, like Hitler after him, is afraid that there aren?t enough good things to go around, he must try to have them all. Because he is fearful, he is ruthless. Pharaoh hires Joseph to manage the monopoly. When the crops fail and the peasants run out of food, they come to Joseph. And on behalf of Pharaoh, Joseph says, ?What?s your collateral?? They give up their land for food, and then, the next year, they give up their cattle. By the third year of the famine they have no collateral but themselves. And that?s how the children of Israel become slaves ? through an economic transaction.
Danes in Denmark are starting to feel the slavery effects of the peasant mindset. Foreigners have been complaining for some time about the unjustness of the myth of scarcity, but only now are Danes beginning to feel the effects of it in their lives. The Danes who ARE feeling it are the many unemployed ones who cannot find a job and are facing having NO income not even welfare, returning them to an early 1970s pre-ligestilling (equality) marital situation in some cases. There are Danish women who are about to face having to totally depend on their husbands and to ask them for money after a lifetime of having their own finances. There are people who graduated from university three years ago, have been on employment and will now sink even lower financially on welfare. They are being told there are plenty of job picking cigarette butts of the street and working temp assignments here and there.
Denmark and Danes will not become lesser for being more culturally and socially open to foreigners in everyday life. Denmark and Danes will not sink into poverty by giving American wives (and other foreign wives) of Danish men the same economic, social and parental rights as Danish women.
Only the Danish peasant mindset prevents it.
The Danish peasant mindset?s myth of scarcity, the myth that there is not enough to go around, is, like any myth, a story that is simply not true.
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Source: http://blogs.denmark.dk/barrett/2012/10/08/danish-peasants-and-the-myth-of-scarcity/
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