One of Many Final Thoughts

Someone's lost sandwich is found and hanging from a sign....

So, two months have passed, and all the people asking me "So?  What have you decided?" makes me feel a little like being a contestant on the dating game.  So very much food for thought, is the only thing I can really wrap my head around at the present moment.  I can only let them come up to the surface one at a time, and I would be remiss if I weren't to mention a very fundamental difference between American and Norwegian culture: Trust.  I don't mean the kind of trust between people who really know each other ("Honey, does my butt look big in these pants?"), but the kind of trust between a group of people, say inhabitants of a city or even a country, that ensures a certain level of quality of life they have inadvertently agreed upon.   This is why I can walk next to a cross-walk and cars will indeed come to a halt or at least pause with the driver trying to get into my head, "Is she going to step into the street?  What's she doing?  Continuing on?"....if you really want to piss off a Norwegian, hang out next to a cross walk and pretend you're going to cross.  If you want to piss off an American, be in the crosswalk already and watch them have to obey the law.  Anyway, back to trust.  I can trust that here, I will not get run over.  I can trust that when I walk into a restaurant and have to hang my jacket well out of eyesight, it will be there when I leave (and not because it's the frumpiest one on the rack, mind you!).  I can trust that laws designed to protect people, like drinking and driving laws, will be enforced and therefore are followed (we were randomly pulled over on the offramp tonite coming home from a movie and Ela was given a quick breathalizer test.  Yes.  Just like that.).  People really do NOT drink and drive here.


Imagine what I must have felt like when my hosts had several keys made for their house to distribute amongst the various people doing work for getting the home ready to put on the market.  Here ya go, Mr. Photographer, here's a key to the house!  Here ya go, roof repair man, here's a key in case you need to access the power supply within the house....The reason I was a bit nervous was because my hosts were taking a trip to Poland for 4 days, and I would be alone in the house for this time.  Nightfall.  Dark. Big house with 3 levels and lots of rooms....for creepy construction people to hide in and wait to come out at night....to come downstairs in the dungeon and.....strangle meeeeee!!!!!!  Mwaahhhhh!  Or, I imagine walking into the house after a nice hike to find the TV missing, all the computer stuff gone, and my peanut butter ransacked....


How American of me!  


This idea of trust congealed for me all at once because I am also reading one of those "A Very Short Introduction To...." books, this one on Economics.  Now, I vaguely remember sitting through two  semesters of economics in college...it's just too bad they were my first two semesters, because had I waited to take econ when I was at least a junior, I think more would have been able to stick to my whirling, party-infested, undisciplined brain.  But hey, 32 years later, and I'm ready!  


Economic systems are born from cultures and cultures are the embodiment of the degree of trust that a group of people exhibit in order to peacefully co-exist, even flourish, as a society.  Social order is maintained through trust, either at a community level, or delegated at a governmental level.  Research has shown there there is, not surprisingly, a positive correlation between trust and economic prosperity.  Hm.  It doesn't take much research on my part to see it operate here on a very basic level.  


Norway's economic system is neither truly capitalist nor truly socialist, but a mixture of the two.  America is steeped in capitalism, which, with Social Darwinism at its roots (especially ingrained circa. 1890's),  exhalts competition almost to Machiavellian proportions.  We are taught as children in very subtle ways to not trust.  Always look out for #1.  An Army of One.  Because You are worth it!  Never, ever talk to strangers.  My child is an Honor Student at Me-So-Good-Elementary School. Be the best!  Do whatever you must do to rise to the top!  


Ok.  Maybe not so subtle.  But you get my drift.  We, as Americans, feel like such a fish out of water right now, because we have never been taught as children, as a society, as a culture, as an economic player, to trust each other, to collaborate with one another.  Here, people basically trust their government, because their government does what it says it is going to do and just what it was entrusted to do  (kind of  like good parents do, I suppose).  The police enforce the laws, just like they are entrusted to (totally random breathalizer tests to prevent drunk driving).  People just pay their taxes because it is what they agreed to do to live here and pay for "stuff" (oh, you know, like education and health care and what-not).  Trust. 


It may not be perfect.  It is not nirvana.  Just a place where people have decided upon what they value and to what degree they trust one another to make those things happen for as many people as possible, if not everyone.  I think Norway has some hard times coming, though.  Last year, July 22, was a breakdown in trust, in my opinion.  Anders Breivik no longer trusted his government to provide those things it had been entrusted with because of its open policy on immigration and political asylum.  The immigration issue is a real issue here, because it represents the problems created when differing concepts of trust try to co-exist in a single economic system.  


Well, that's my totally abreviated take on it anyway.  


On a parting note, I guess it is nice to see that juveniles can still be entrusted to grace public thoroughfares with artwork, but only a Norwegian would think to do it in masking tape so it can be easily removed....

High School Anatomy Class Day Hike?