You can condense the ten rules down to one: 1. You're not to think.
I don't know if you live/have lived in Scandinavia but this is depressingly accurate.
Law of Jante
21–30 of 66 posts
Re: Law of Jante
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What voters vote for wealth redistribution? Mostly urban areas. What do any of those examples have to do with Jante? You think gang violence is because people are trying to stop other people from rising out of poverty, rather than someone trying to rise out of poverty through crime? Please tell me you don't think gang bangers are out there telling kids not to go to school because of Jante. That's hilarious.
> What voters vote for wealth redistribution? 1. You're not to think you are anything special. 6. You're not to think you are more important than we are. > Where does Antifa corner someone with bad speech and beat them up? 4. You're not to imagine yourself better than we are. > Where does gang violence (epitome of contrived us vs. them) happen? 2. You're not to think you are as good as we are. 8. You're not to laugh…
Suburban violence rates are almost as high as urban rates. Rural violence rates reported to the police are significant, but may be lower than urban and suburban due to lower reporting rates. When you look at victimization rates of violent crimes not reported to the police, there are nearly as many rural victims of violent crimes as there are urban victims. And note especially that the rate of aggravated assault victimization is higher in rural areas than urban. This doesn't prove you're wrong, but it is fairly suggestive evidence that the idea that violence happens in mostly urban areas is off the mark.
https://ovc.ncjrs.gov/ncvrw2016/content/section-6/PDF/2016NC...
As far as wealth redistribution, which kind are you talking about, the kind where the rich take from the poor, or the kind where the poor take from the rich? This seems like a political troll unrelated to the Law of Jante, but it's safe to say that all voters vote for wealth redistribution, it just depends on which direction you believe it should go.
Re: Law of Jante
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What voters vote for wealth redistribution? 1. You're not to think you are anything special. 6. You're not to think you are more important than we are. > Where does Antifa corner someone with bad speech and beat them up? 4. You're not to imagine yourself better than we are. > Where does gang violence (epitome of contrived us vs. them) happen? 2. You're not to think you are as good as we are. 8. You're not to laugh…
Suburban violence rates are almost as high as urban rates. Rural violence rates reported to the police are significant, but may be lower than urban and suburban due to lower reporting rates. When you look at victimization rates of violent crimes not reported to the police, there are nearly as many rural victims of violent crimes as there are urban victims. And note especially that the rate of aggravated assault victi…
> which kind are you talking about
Sorry, that was vague. I meant the way it is most often used: wealth redistribution towards equality.
> It is frequently heard in politics, usually referring to perceived redistributions from those who have more to those who have less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistribution_of_income_and_w...
Re: Law of Jante
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What voters vote for wealth redistribution? Mostly urban areas. What do any of those examples have to do with Jante? You think gang violence is because people are trying to stop other people from rising out of poverty, rather than someone trying to rise out of poverty through crime? Please tell me you don't think gang bangers are out there telling kids not to go to school because of Jante. That's hilarious.
> What voters vote for wealth redistribution? 1. You're not to think you are anything special. 6. You're not to think you are more important than we are. > Where does Antifa corner someone with bad speech and beat them up? 4. You're not to imagine yourself better than we are. > Where does gang violence (epitome of contrived us vs. them) happen? 2. You're not to think you are as good as we are. 8. You're not to laugh…
> Second, vengence is primarily about hurting the other guy, not helping yourself.
What kind of romantic world do you live in where you think crime is motivated more by "vengence" than economics? You've been watching too many gangster movies or something where you think it's all about vendettas and less about fighting over highly profitable criminal enterprises like drugs. Have you heard of the war on drugs? This Jante reading of urban violence is preposterous.
Re: Law of Jante
#25You learn about this when you grow up in Sweden.
Wise people will tell you to disregard it as it won't get you anywhere.
Wise listeners will take that advice to heart but also refrain from mentioning their progress too much as that might put sticks in the wheels when moving through society.
The end result is perhaps something resembling humbleness. Which, if it comes from the heart, is a beautiful quality to have and strive for. But when its imposed on you by society gets a slightly more ominous tint.
Re: Law of Jante
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What voters vote for wealth redistribution? 1. You're not to think you are anything special. 6. You're not to think you are more important than we are. > Where does Antifa corner someone with bad speech and beat them up? 4. You're not to imagine yourself better than we are. > Where does gang violence (epitome of contrived us vs. them) happen? 2. You're not to think you are as good as we are. 8. You're not to laugh…
so, jante's 'be humble' is actually coded rationalization for violence. what a world. for some reason this reminds me of a time when a few internet eccentrics were trying to suggest that hegel's dialetic was some kind of freemason/illuminati conspiracy theory. in some ways jante isn't all that different from japanese wa, or really even the attitudes of many rural americans.
> jante's 'be humble' is actually coded rationalization for violence
It can be, yes.
Religions can inspire peace or war, depending on how strongly their followers need others to agree.
Re: Law of Jante
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suburban violence rates are almost as high as urban rates. Rural violence rates reported to the police are significant, but may be lower than urban and suburban due to lower reporting rates. When you look at victimization rates of violent crimes not reported to the police, there are nearly as many rural victims of violent crimes as there are urban victims. And note especially that the rate of aggravated assault victi…
> which kind are you talking about Sorry, that was vague. I meant the way it is most often used: wealth redistribution towards equality. > It is frequently heard in politics, usually referring to perceived redistributions from those who have more to those who have less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistribution_of_income_and_w...
Not just vague, but wildly and needlessly politically charged. Capitalism is a system that redistributes wealth away from equality by definition, and it highly encourages and favors individualism, by definition. Suggesting that the Law of Jante would judge social programs that aim for the common good to be individualistic seems misguided and blind to the economic realities of the growing inequality we actually have.
Re: Law of Jante
#28I think foreigners tend to profoundly misunderstand what the law of Jante is about. It is not guidelines for how to behave in Scandinavia. It is a caricature we use ourselves to fight negative aspects of our culture. IMHO it is the negative aspects of things which are actually positive in Scandinavia. Humbleness, solidarity, consensus seeking, honesty are good Scandinavian virtuous. But there is always a flip side of the coin.
It is like in America, having faith in yourself and be proud of yourself are virtuous things, but there is also a flip side to it which is negative. That is bragging, being self centered and selfish. Taking sole credit for success of which you were only a participant.
Janteloven is not something to be celebrated but a rethotical tool to use against fellow Scandinavians when they are acting too negative towards an individual trying to do something great and new.
Re: Law of Jante
#29Re: Law of Jante
#30As a Dane, this is what I grew up with. One of the reasons I love living in New York is that it's simply non-existent. However, I do think the Law of Jante exists in most small communities where being the same is considered a virtue.
> However, I do think the Law of Jante exists in most small communities I live in a small community, and I think the opposite. What voters vote for wealth redistribution? Mostly urban areas. Where does Antifa corner someone with bad speech and beat them up? Urban areas. Where does gang violence (epitome of contrived us vs. them) happen? Urban areas.
This comment breaks the HN guidelines badly by bringing extraneous flamebait into a substantive and interesting thread, turning it into a political flamewar. That may not be arson but it is criminal negligence. Please don't do it in HN threads.
It's up to each of us to prevent this, just like we don't light cigarettes at gas stations or let campfires smolder in dry forests. That's not hard. I feel like Smokey the Bear.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
May I suggest ten close readings of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15374168 (once for each comment currently in this off-topic subthread) as a good example of what we do want: substantive, grounded in experience, civil, teaching something new.
Edit: I want to add something about the mechanism at work here. Not to pick on you, but as an illustration for everyone.
If we look at the path taken by this subthread, what can we say about it? It gets consistently more generic. That is, it starts with something specific (a self-observation of Scandinavian culture), swaps that out for something much more generic (small towns: good or bad?), goes to more generic and inflammatory things (gang violence) and then to informational heat death ("Religions can inspire peace or war").
So we can sum up how to avoid the unwanted this way: Don't go generic. Note that that's not the same thing as "don't go off-topic". Going off topic can be fine if the direction is interesting. The trouble with the generic is that's predictable and seductive, producing not only the uninteresting but a lot of it.
(I might come back and add more here. If there's one point I wish I could effectively communicate to the HN community this thing about not going generic is it, because it makes the difference between interesting and lame discussion.)