Swedish Sex
In the interest of disapointing the world at large and taking potshots at dearly held beliefs I am going to state that the Swedes seem a bit uptight sexually. It is hard to put one's finger on, so to speak. They are, certainly, very open in many ways and seem to attach little or no shame to having had a one-night stand or brief fling. They do it and like it but perhaps their almost militant (if such a word can be applied to modern Swedes) openess and liberality has, in practice, translated to a sort of de-sensualization -- that in removing any shame or prurience from the act they have also lost some of the essential mystery and even romance that tends to make sex so much fun. Perhaps exorcising neurosis from the physical act of love has created its own set of neurosis.
Think that, at least for some, that during the ascension to climax the name of the Creator is called out, repeated mantra-like, combining, I would theorize, an inner tension between calling such a name in possibly sinful or blasphemous conditions but also transcending those notions in that generative moment as two (or perhaps more?) individuals join as close together as is possible for the essentially isolated human organism -- briefly reaching for a shattering moment of transcendence and oblivion. But what would one call out in a dedicatedly Godless culture?
Amongst the average Swede the divine spark has been so thoroughly denied, religiosity so completely quashed, that calling out such a name would seem ridiculous. In America and other ostensibly civilized lands many are victim to endemic agnosticism, casual atheism, unfocused paganism and a vague anger at organized religion for the neurosis it has given, real or imagined, to childhood dreams and adult confusions. Not so, here in Swedelandia. For most, religion, God and faith simply did not and do not happen. They have no relevance. They are things that happen elsewhere in less-evolved societies and are rarely even a cause for anger here as they are essentially inexplicable phenomena that involve others. The unstated implication that such irrationality is, perhaps, the idiom of hotter places where passions run freer beneath layers of oppression or of other chillier climes where governmental or societal oppression causes the heating of the blood and emotions. In other words, more savage places where the masses need their opiates...
Currently, the question is what the future will hold for Sweden as their economic system and cradle-to-grave social programs go through a correction. They are facing erosion of a core belief: that the more or less benevolent government cannot, for annoying economic realities, forever continue to provide every last social service both to native Swedes and an increasing number of immigrants. Those Swedes I have spoken to seem genuinely angry and more than a little hurt. While anyone in any country might get angry that their government has proved incompentent or corrupt, few wold be surprised. In the majority of world views that is the state of the State. No one trusts their government as a matter of faith. No one, that is, except the Swedes. And now they seem actually bereaved, almost as if they were Republicans that found out Ronald Reagan was actually a commie spy or Catholics recieving undeniable proof that the Pope was a fraud and a humbug, pulling levers and pushing buttons from behind a curtain to provide an insubstantial light and dance show. And if The State, whom Swedes trust in a way as unfathomable to Americans as God is to the Swedes, loses its credibilty, then Swedes will have lost faith in the one thing larger and more powerful than themselves as individuals.
What then does the future hold for the Swedish psyche? Well, perhaps someday, in the act of clean, tested, unshameful love (between consenting adults of whatever combination of course) someone might call out in a moment of clarity, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and find transcendence in the unknowable. Then again they might just turn their faces away into the pillow of self-indulgence, grip the sheets, raise their asses in the air and cry out, "Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, why hast thou screwed me so?"
Think that, at least for some, that during the ascension to climax the name of the Creator is called out, repeated mantra-like, combining, I would theorize, an inner tension between calling such a name in possibly sinful or blasphemous conditions but also transcending those notions in that generative moment as two (or perhaps more?) individuals join as close together as is possible for the essentially isolated human organism -- briefly reaching for a shattering moment of transcendence and oblivion. But what would one call out in a dedicatedly Godless culture?
Amongst the average Swede the divine spark has been so thoroughly denied, religiosity so completely quashed, that calling out such a name would seem ridiculous. In America and other ostensibly civilized lands many are victim to endemic agnosticism, casual atheism, unfocused paganism and a vague anger at organized religion for the neurosis it has given, real or imagined, to childhood dreams and adult confusions. Not so, here in Swedelandia. For most, religion, God and faith simply did not and do not happen. They have no relevance. They are things that happen elsewhere in less-evolved societies and are rarely even a cause for anger here as they are essentially inexplicable phenomena that involve others. The unstated implication that such irrationality is, perhaps, the idiom of hotter places where passions run freer beneath layers of oppression or of other chillier climes where governmental or societal oppression causes the heating of the blood and emotions. In other words, more savage places where the masses need their opiates...
Currently, the question is what the future will hold for Sweden as their economic system and cradle-to-grave social programs go through a correction. They are facing erosion of a core belief: that the more or less benevolent government cannot, for annoying economic realities, forever continue to provide every last social service both to native Swedes and an increasing number of immigrants. Those Swedes I have spoken to seem genuinely angry and more than a little hurt. While anyone in any country might get angry that their government has proved incompentent or corrupt, few wold be surprised. In the majority of world views that is the state of the State. No one trusts their government as a matter of faith. No one, that is, except the Swedes. And now they seem actually bereaved, almost as if they were Republicans that found out Ronald Reagan was actually a commie spy or Catholics recieving undeniable proof that the Pope was a fraud and a humbug, pulling levers and pushing buttons from behind a curtain to provide an insubstantial light and dance show. And if The State, whom Swedes trust in a way as unfathomable to Americans as God is to the Swedes, loses its credibilty, then Swedes will have lost faith in the one thing larger and more powerful than themselves as individuals.
What then does the future hold for the Swedish psyche? Well, perhaps someday, in the act of clean, tested, unshameful love (between consenting adults of whatever combination of course) someone might call out in a moment of clarity, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and find transcendence in the unknowable. Then again they might just turn their faces away into the pillow of self-indulgence, grip the sheets, raise their asses in the air and cry out, "Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, why hast thou screwed me so?"
posted by Andrew at 5:44 AM
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