Stuck In Stockholm

I hardly read mainstream news (they are only designed to put you down, intentionally), but this morning bumped into an article on The Local, which gave me a big laugh, so it might deserve a blog post.

Swedish jobs agency can’t fill own vacancies

Short summary:

The Swedish Public Employment Agency (Arbetsförmedlingen) hired a recruitment company to fill their own vacancies. Which from one side, shows their level of competency to help people in finding work.

On the other hand, this particular company is to get 24 000 Kronor ($3640,) per recruitment. The state-owned Arbetsförmedlingen needs to recruit 700-800 new employees, yearly. Last year they paid 38 million Kronor  (it’s about 5 780 000USD, 4 425 000EUR) to recruitment companies. From tax payers’ money, what else?

I have my personal experience with Arbetsförmedlingen: through the years, I registered twice with them as job seeker. Maybe someone can learn from my adventures.

Read more in my main blog >>>

Report abuse »

Here was part 1 where you can see that I don’t have a super positive view on it…

Now one more aspect of it.

Lagom and Jäntelagen seem to go hand in hand, and in my eyes, the latter S-U-C-K-S, big time, one of the most harmful things that can happen to an individual. With this attitude, Mankind would be still in the Stone Age, without wheel and fire.

Alright, so let’s try to see the whole lagom thing in a more positive way – I am a girl with a very positive attitude, after all.

Lagom has the meaning of  “just right”, “sufficient”, “moderate”, “enough”, “appropriate”, “normal”, “average” and similar. (=again: “not too good, not too bad,” “not too few, not too much”, etc)

I just grasped this meaning today in a way that it can be demonstrated very simply.

Let’s take singing as an example (not surprising from a singer, I guess…)

From the beginning, everyone can sing. I mean, just watch any kid, each and every of them will do it happily, naturally, more or less good (till the less fortunate ones get stopped by stupid remarks of adults or camerades).

And basically everyone likes to sing, this soul food lies so deep in humans, you can observe it in any given civilization.  (Unless it is suppressed directly or indirectly by certain authorities, but that’s another subject.)

For you to sing together with several or many other people, maybe dozens or even hundreds, just for the fun of it, or because you are supposed to sing your national anthem, it is absolutely alright if you don’t have perfect pitch, a very large vocal range or any other special skills that would be required from a singer. You just sing with whatever voice  you have and in whatever way you can use it – and you are happy with it, so are the others, because it simply feels good to sing together.

Indeed, I find this Swedish Allsång thingy fantastic, when they sing together in masses like several thousands even! So this would be lagom in singing.  You sing along with the masses, you don’t have to be particularly good at it, just good enough to have fun and not to ruin the thing – and everyone is happy.

But if you wanna do more with singing (sometimes perform for your friends and family, or with an amateur choir as a hobby, or God forbid, be a professional artist), lagom is way less than enough… Try to tell a singer not to work on extending her range (because “everyone knows that an average vocal range for a woman of  your age is 1.5 octaves”), or not to work on perfecting her pitch or her stamina, and so on, and so on… (oh, I almost forgot which is the most standard way of treating a singer or musician here in Sweden: “You should find a normal job instead”…, which is the greatest ever bullocks to tell an artist, if anyone is wondering why talents are escaping from here to other countries… – did you see my adventures with the Artist Division of Swedish Unemployment Service?)

You can also find other examples from any fields of arts, sports, science etc, where it’s about improving your talents, improving your skills, excelling in your field of activity, aiming for outstanding results in your business, and so on.

Shortly put: if you are happy about going with the masses and not to perform something outstanding, not to be special, not to aim higher than all the others around you, and you love to stand in the line, unnoticable, lagom is your thing. Many people are like that, and nothing wrong with it, if this is what makes them happy.

But if you do aim higher, if you think you do have something you wanna show to the world, if you like to experience, think outside of the box, challenge yourself (and maybe others), improve yourself so as to be the best yourself that you can possibly be, lagom will slowly but surely kill you…

Related posts:

Lagom (part 1, probably)

Think outside the box
Don’t worry kid, we’ll only break you, for your own sake!
What does it take to be happy in Sweden?
Arbetsförmedlingen adventures – part 2
Arbetsförmedlingen adventures – part 1

*** *** ***

My Stockholm photo blog

Report abuse »

Sapphire over at Lost In Stockholm asked a few of us about what lagom meant.

Well, I don’t have time to say everything about it right now, just a few points:

1. In Hungary, this same concept of  “not too good, not too bad” would be expressed in something like “thanks we are fine, as canned fruit on the shelf”. Which is definitely negative: it means to us that nothing interesting happens, there is nothing special or exciting about you or around you, you just live a completely boring life that you don’t want to change. You basically don’t even LIVE, just watch your days passing by, without causing anything to happen… When a person answers your “How are you?” this way, you know that there is nothing to talk about with them, you show each other a few more social smiles, and that was it for the conversation.

Shall I say that for me, this makes Sweden probably the most B-O-R-I-N-G place on Earth? Which manifests in the most various areas of life: from the selection in the stores of food, cosmetics and other goods, the way people dress, the relatively way too less events (concerts, festivals, celebrations, etc, etc, etc) than in other countries, and the list goes on and on. Nothing special, nothing interesting, nothing exciting, – well, that’s all but apealling for me…

2. This was one of the first lessons I learned from my Swedish husband I had: that the Swedish system gives equal chance to everyone. This means two things: one is that the social net doesn’t let anyone fall too deep, indeed you don’t see too many homeless people in the streets etc, and this can be considered good, but two: one can’t really stick out upwards either.

And here we could go into a long discussion about how good is it that the #1 welfare state takes very good care of the unable, the unproductive, the criminal etc – at the expense of the able and productive. For now, my 2 cents on it: the Berlin Wall and the Eastern block broke down 20 years ago, because socialism simply didn’t work…

3. If I understand it right, the lagom concept originated from a very nice Viking tradition where everyone took their turn from the drink at the table, they shared what they had with each other – correct me, if I am wrong. To insist on keeping the lagom concept alive and make it the prevailing idea of life in general, beating the Swedish chests about how fantastically advanced they are in terms of promoting equality, a model country for the world and so on – and having a royal family in the meantime, reminds me slightly of Orwell: “All animals are equal , but some animals are more equal than others.” Just slightly… Doesn’t this put Sweden in a kind of schizophrenia? They can’t decide for either of the two, so they keep both?

4. Let’s take the equality part of lagom: it sounds sooo great, nice, advanced, tolerant and what you want, that in making laws, in treating women and men the same, dealing with different races and religions etc, equality is stated to be sooo important – but take a LOOK at reality how does it really work. Anyone heard about any racist stories, where if you have black skin or hair, and your name doesn’t end with -son, don’t even dream about getting that job, no matter your qualifications? Don’t get me started on this, please…

But okay, let’s see where equality indeed does work: one example is treating men and women. Here we have great advances: delicate, beautiful, fine girls whose role in society should be to make this world more beautiful with their kindness and creativity, love and take good care of the future generation, we see them in ugly uniforms of rough and tough roles, like security guards, soldiers and such… Somehow I have a little problem with imagining how loving, caring and kind such a woman could be at home with her man and children (if she has any)… On the other hand, strong men who should carry the world on their shoulders, they sit for hours sipping latte in the park, chit-chatting with their mates about which pampers are better for the baby’s butt…

I might be very bold with my opinion when I say that this kind of equality sounds wonderful on the surface, and very appealing to many, but indeed it is a nicely wrapped, very vicious hypocrisy that is killing the future of Mankind on a long term basis.

I might continue another time, but now the sunshine and the water is calling – one thing I definitely LOVE about the ramifications of lagom is the Allemansrätten, the Right of Public Access, and there are some nice beaches around

Related posts:

Lagom (part 2)

Think outside the box
Don’t worry kid, we’ll only break you, for your own sake!
What does it take to be happy in Sweden?
Arbetsförmedlingen adventures – part 2
Arbetsförmedlingen adventures – part 1

*** *** ***

My Stockholm photo blog

Report abuse »