(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[The Abundance Society] There are many reasons why Thomas Hylland Eriksen deserves respect. He is a heavy academic who knows how to express himself in human language.
Many of his colleagues stick to the seminar style: Accepted professional jargon that excludes outsiders, and often robs a false prestige – when a translation into Norwegian reveals that the author says of course. Hylland Eriksen also does not dig into the special regions of research. He often and frequently writes about important, general topics. It can reduce the status of the research communities. One can also get the impression that Hylland Eriksen's work capacity is above the Norwegian average.
In this year's book, Storeulv Syndrome, the theme is the pursuit of happiness in the abundance community. Like many others, he notes that in "paradise", where wealth increases chronically, we only become more outspoken and directionless. I nod and nod, and would love to applaud as I read. It's not easy.
Linguistic similarity
Hylland Eriksen writes everyday, orally, often casually. It is teeming with phrases like: "... to put it this way" (after all, it has been said so). Shortly afterwards he can comment on the mass murder of communism: “It went bad. Very bad, to put it straight. "
If he hadn't said it straight, but saved us from having to read the last eight words, the text would have been less gray. "The future is open and ambiguous," he can inform us. Only exceptionally does he sparkle with a stroke of luck such as: "No matter how many helicopters you own, none of them can match a piano concert by Beethoven" (it must be one of the first two.)
The meaningful and 'hylland-eriksensk' is also: "Everything is relative, but nothing is completely relative."
The linguistic approximation would have been less disturbing if it had not reflected the whole presentation of the topic. In the book, a learned man speaks and speaks, much according to the association principle. He has read incomprehensibly many articles and books. He wants to quote and refer from everything – and does so.
Some of the quotes we have read before, many just seem like we have read them before. He retells comic book stories, well-known anecdotes about old Diogenes, views of recent researchers… Somewhere he lets Elton John carry out some of the meaning of life: "Oh it seems to me / that sorry seems to be the hardest word."
Mummy dad and forced marriage
The essence seems to be that we get used to most things. That we do not become much happier anyway – but that it helps with society without too great differences, and preferably with a unifying project, and where there is room for both individualism and community. Yes, yes: “At the individual level, perhaps the most important contradiction is between those who seek security and those who must face challenges. Sure, everyone wanted both. But people are different now anyway. " Then comes a story about Mummy Dad.
Hylland Eriksen has captured that religion has become popular in his circles (other people's religion, mind you), and may therefore be sharper as he dismisses a couple of atheists as bombastic, oblique and intolerant – and becomes just that himself: "Religion is after all not the cause of violence. On the contrary, religion has always been a means of curbing violence… »
Has not a witch been burned, or a crusade or a terrorist act carried out in religious fervor? But then he goes further in the book: "If religion gets in the way of charity, many of us will be thankful."
Hell and Protestantism he dislikes, at the burial level. He seems to be for arranged marriages: Indian marriages are getting better and better, as opposed to Western ones. Does anyone really want voluntary marriage in the West to be replaced by marriage where the parents choose a partner? No then, it is never meant so seriously.
Later in the book, it appears that what the author will recommend depends on. (On what?) And Indian-Norwegian women do not talk to friends about how the man is in bed – they should not have others, then. (Do we have to prevent sex education?) He finds it thought-provoking that there is less public concern for Norwegians outside working life than for female circumcision. (Perhaps because having his genitals cut off without anesthesia is extreme torture, mostly performed on children?) In the last two examples, he does not deny himself for once.
From banal to incomprehensible
Is not the field of happiness contradictory? Undoubtedly. But then it is the author's task to discuss the contradictions, and perhaps gather them in an overall perspective.
He gives some advice, and goes several times from banal to incomprehensible: "Get used to seeing the glass as half full." "Get enough sleep." "Do not scratch when it does not itch."
There is an almost invisible desperation beneath the text. If the Great Wolf eats the pigs, life loses its meaning. Looking forward to white wine on the terrace gives more happiness than fulfilling the dream. The redemption was not very meaningful, the author observes. Not life either maybe – even if we get enough sleep? Here is an abyss. The author does not throw himself into abysses.
The tone is light, even when he touches on the climate crisis at the beginning and towards the end. "Today, most people seem to agree that we need to reduce consumption." Oh? All parties will increase it.
His teacher Arne Marin Klausen says that it is economic growth we agree on in Norway. Then the author believes in unique naivety the same as Siv Jensen: The rich must start by voluntarily "relaxing" to get greater global justice. There is probably a reason why the rich are rich. The desire for greater justice is seldom that reason. – The rich must reduce consumption first, to save the climate.
He distances himself from environmental moralists who want to give people a bad conscience to destroy the planet. But is not a bad conscience good – if you do something bad and need to change course?
He quotes many, but not Friedrich Schiller who writes that we should do the right thing, not strive for happiness. Should people in the West – and first the rich – ask: Will I and mine get even better if we prevent a heat disaster?
Some would argue that we should do what is necessary, right, no matter what. Maybe it gives a little meaning and happiness too – if not the private feeling of happiness becomes the motive, because then it slips. The belief that the rich will voluntarily save the world is at least not substantiated.
Henrik Wergeland came to the theological exam in a dispute with the examiner, because he did not believe in the eternity of hell. The examiner asked for a justification in the text. Wergeland replied that he did not have it, but he still had his "good hope".
He was put down from laud to haud.
