There are two blocks of political parties in Swedish politics. On the ”left” we have the red parties, the left party (former communist party), the socialdemocrats and for the most part the green party. On the ”right” side, we have the blue parties, today calling themselves the ”alliance”; the center party, the peoples party, the christian party and the conservatives. All together seven parties with a varying amount of votes in every election.
For the last 100 years, the Social democrats has ruled the country about 80 of those years, with support mostly from the left party. Alltogether, Swedens has been and stil is a very socialist country, and even though the conservatives call themselves the conservatives, they are probably more left oriented than most conservative parties in America or the rest of Europe. They actually won the last election by re-defining themselves the new labour party.
Since I was young, politics has always interested me, as a way to change a world that obviously needs to be changed. But for the last few years, my views of myself and the world has clearly changed. For me, politics today is more part of a game I no longer find too interesting to play, and mainly the battle ground for two seemlingly opposing beliefs.
The underlying ideology of the left and the right blocks is the beliefs in on the left side security and community and on the other side, the right side individual freedom.
These beliefs is the cause of this war, in that either of these beliefs is held to be the key to creating a society where the people is at there best.
Looking at these two beliefs more closely and how the blocks argue for them, you realize that on the one hand, the cause of security and community is practiced by creating a society with high taxes, a huge welfare-state and strong unions and laws that makes it almost impossible to get fired from your job. You can almost always rely on the government to take care of you if something happens. The government also regulates basically every business so that it will not become greedy but rather help the people.
On the other hand, the cause of individual freedom is practiced by trying to create a society where people pay only for what they use in terms of medical treatment, the government avoids setting to many rules and laws and where business regulate themselves. Government owned companies are sold out so that old monopolies are broken up in favor of an open and free market.
There can be quite strong arguing going on on which of these ”systems” are the best to create the perfect society, but for me, I more and more see them as different sides of the same coin. A battleground between to concepts that on closer inspection show themselves to be illussions of what we call reality.
A couple of years back when I was working for a recycling company, a boy who was working during the summer vacation died in an accident. It was a very tragic death, he got stuck in one of the machines and got squeezed to death. In a society such as Sweden, where the Socialdemocrats has ruled 80 out of a 100 years, the arguments was not ”why did he climb in to the machine in the first place?” but rather who was to blame. Sure, there will always be people blaming others for accidents in this world, and sometimes justified, but what happened to individual responsibility? You do not jump in to a fire just because the government hasn’t told someone to put up a warning sign, do you?
Just because the governemnt form laws and regulations doesn’t mean that things are safe. If you get unemployed it doesn’t mean that it is the obligation of the government to give you money and find you a new job. For some reason, everyone seem to think that it will all be provided for them by someone else.
In the other team in this game, the idea is instead of individual choice. Everyone should be allowed to choose what to do in life, what to spend their money on instead of paying taxes and form their lives in any way they want without the government putting their nose in saying you must do this or that. It is a very nice thought but for some reason, when practiced these choices usually comes down to choosing between two rather meaningless things. You can choose if you want to buy a new car or a nice flat-screen tv, just as long you consume. You can choose how to behave, as long as you do behave. You can choose what you want to work with, as long as you work, and if you choose not to work, you are banished from the holy temple of society and considered crazy.
Both these ideas create illusions of safety and choice, neither of which is truly satisfying. Sure, sometimes it is great that things are regulated (just look at the financial crisis at the moment, mainly cosidered to be caused by greedy unregulated businesses) and I really appreciate all the different things you can do and buy in todays society, since it makes it possible to get the things that suit you. But in the end, having ten different radio stations when they are all playing the same music, or having the possibility to choose from hundreds of different kinds of beers when in the end you are still ”punished” or considered weird for making choices that doesn’t go with the herd.
Liberation is not choosing from products on a ”free” market and safety is not having someone else telling you what is good for you and the rest of the planet. Freedom is something much much deeper. Something totally different. Something we are distracted from looking at because the world we live in dazzles us with it’s apparent variation and order.
This world is included in This. It is part of it, but it is not the whole itself. It is all an illussion, enjoyable, beautiful, wonderful.
Yet, still, only illussion.
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