Sweden’s looking fucked lately. Actually, it’s been looking like that for nearly 20 years.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”-Arnold Toynbee
In the early 2000's, I quit my job and took a lovely trip around Europe for 2/3rds of a year. I started my trip in Switzerland, and traveled in a manner to hit various cities for different events. A protest in Paris, an art opening in Berlin, a feminist conference near Göteborg.
I was traveling for fun, because it freaked out my ex/sometimes lover who was touring Europe at the same time, because I needed a change, and because someone told me it would be very difficult for me, in a condescending tone. I adored challenges-still do-and I was young enough to be pretty highly motivated by someone underestimating me (still am).
I also traveled because my country was looking fairly fucked to me. Bush was president, we had invaded Iraq, and my home town of Portland, Oregon had started a transformation from being something close to Hamburg(ugly, industrial, affordable) to something closer to London(posh, hip, and gentrified). I smelled disaster on the horizon.
I had a delightful trip. Switzerland was smart, and tidy, and people left me (the fuck) alone. Paris was an absolute pain in the ass, (structurally, for my wheelchair) but the pastries were like la petite mort in my mouth, and the people, especially those with brown skin, were kind. Germany was kind of like sleeping with the boy next door; sweet, familiar, dependable, and refreshingly kinky. Denmark seemed to function something like a Borg labor camp, but had beautiful art and nice breakfasts. Sweden was entirely another kettle of fish.
One of the first nights I explored Gotenburg, I stayed out late with new friends, sitting in a park and discussing our travels. I saw a group of very, very drunk teenage girls coming down the street, in and out of traffic. They were yelling, and egging each other on. They careened into a sweets shop, still open, and began trashing it; opening cases of candy and throwing it on the floor, dumping over lollipop stands, pouring out soda. My mouth must have been open, because my new friend Monkey grabbed my arm. “Don’t let them see you looking” she said. A few minutes after they left the shop, she took my arm again. “Let’s go help”. I followed her to the store, where the shop keeper was cleaning up the mess. I couldn’t do much, as the sticky goo on the floor was definitely not going to be improved by my wheels. Monkey got on her knees and started scooping up sweets to put in the trash. “Why don’t you call the police?” I asked. The shop keeper looked up, with heavy, tired eyes. “I don’t want to get them in trouble. They’re good girls, from good families.” Monkey shot me a look that said “shut up” in every language, so I left to grab a few free newspapers from the stand. When I returned, I handed them to Monkey, and she sopped up the puddles of soda with it.
Over the next weeks in Sweden I saw several more troupes of girls behaving the same way. And I saw grown men, passed out at noon on sidewalks and benches. And so many well stocked bars. And I saw empty train cars, and abandoned factories, and a look I remembered from my childhood-then on the faces of unemployed lumberjacks-the look of a trapped lion, resigned to a life of lost potential.
Which politicians sold away Sweden’s manufacturing sector doesn’t really matter anymore, nor do the valiant efforts toward gender equality and immigration. The reality on the ground hasn’t matched the propaganda, nor the average person’s expectation for a happy life, in a long time. People there are divided into economic classes: Miserable, Just Ok, Oblivious. Most of my friends from that feminist conference belong to the Oblivious Class, but a few, like Monkey, were born Miserable. Several more were born to Oblivious parents, but have sunk into Just Ok.
A few months after coming back from that adventure, I was sitting across from the then mayor of Portland. We were discussing the legacy of corruption he had inherited, and the interests pushing their way forward politically, even then. I asked how he hoped to avoid, in a maybe few decades, our city resembling Chicago in the 20’s. He looked at me sadly, and gave a powerless shrug; “We’ll hope for the best.”
“You can’t rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there.”-Jane Jacobs
The Portland of today is no one’s best case scenario. After the Pearl District sucked the marrow from a once thriving downtown economy, US internal migration and classic gentrification stripped out each of the “hip” neighborhoods in turn, leaving swathes of homeless and luxury condos in their wake. Today downtown is a dirty, sketchy shell, and the Pearl District is functionally a suburb. Corruption, in all of it’s forms, is apparent in every city office and construction area, and the current mayor is a meek figurehead.
“We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves.”-Jane Jacobs
For me, 20 years after the first comparison, what Portland and Sweden share is an entirely predictable outcome to easily observable ills. Much like Trump was for the US, the swing to the right in Swedish politics isn’t a marker of a new direction, but merely an unveiling of what already existed. In both places the era of sturdy industrialism is over, and we’re left with increasingly unstable economic, and social, polarization.
Where does this go? Who dares dream a better future, and what would that look like? I’m not sure, which is partly why I’m packing up my copies of Toynbee, and Jacobs, and moving to [XXXXXXXXXX]. It’s looking less fucked than a lot of places, or, more precisely, it seems to be running behind the general rate of global fuckedness. I’ll leave you with this:
“Schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme to return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements [of civilization]. Only birth can conquer death―the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new.” -Arnold Toynbee
