”Equality is the most dominant social value in Sweden,” says a British Internet site aimed at entrepreneurs seeking to do business in our country. ”Consensus and compromise pervades business and community life,” it continues. Anyone who wants to do business is asked to keep a low profile and avoid too elegant attire. To dress up provokes the egalitarian ideal and might lead to problems when dealing with Swedes. It points out that consensus thinking is probably also meant to serve as a warning: you should not expect rapid decisions of a manager who points with the whole hand. Here it is popular agreement and negotiation that work.

Equality and consensus may sound positive. No one gets ignored and all decisions are taken in a democratic spirit. But consensus has a downside, which is spelled adaptability, fear of conflict, and often moral cowardice. And, where equality comes first, individual success can be seen as a problem – at least if it challenges the doctrine that all are equal and deserve equality of outcome.

At the same time, Sweden is seen to be one of the most individualistic countries. In the global survey of people’s values and outlook on life, the World Value Survey, Sweden is anything but ‘the Lagom country’. On the contrary, we distinguish ourselves as statistically extreme in terms of the degree of non-traditionalism, secularism and our focus on individual well-being. How does this fit with the image of Sweden as being influenced by consensus thinking and conformism?

The answer is that these two positions are perfectly compatible with each other. An individual’s willingness to invest in their own well-being is not incompatible with her desire to also ‘be like everyone else’. Consensus and equality might well go hand-in-hand with their own dreams of summer cottages and the annual trip to Thailand. Investing in yourself is not necessarily tantamount to individualism and independence in a more challenging sense.

Non-traditionalism and secularism need not be the result of independent considerations, but may well involve adherence to the modernist climate that has prevailed at least since World War II. When the times are becoming more puritanical (”pornography is offensive”) and respectful of religions (”the caricature of Mohammed is offensive”), so you notice that Swedes’ freedom of thought starts to falter.

It is not the case that search for consensus need necessarily conflict with the satisfaction of individual needs. The problem is rather that these efforts threaten to undermine our moral integrity and make us less able ”to stand against evil”, to quote Vilhelm Moberg. Our desire to avoid conflict leads us to talk quietly about what is right when we encounter tyrants and fanatics. We bend and bow so as not to provoke, and along the way, we are failing values in need of our defence.

When consensus is all-important we will, sooner or later, also sacrifice the principles of intellectual honesty. The important thing is not what is right or true, but what is agreed. It is rather ‘wrong together’ than ‘right, alone’.

In a similar way, equality becomes a destructive rather than a dynamic force, when it ceases to be about the conditions (such as the right to education) and focuses on outcome (everyone should have the same amount). Such equality fundamentalism leads to social stagnation. It is simply easier to accept collective mediocrity than to allow a few to perform (and be rewarded) better than others. (Therefore in some quarters. there is greater concern about the emergence of ‘elite classes’ than about the Swedish school system’s generally poor performance.)

Equality and consensus solutions are rooted in the Swedish nation’s history. Its roots go deep into the farm country of Sweden, where the village community spirit and collective action prevailed. The village may have been abandoned for a long time, but it has not disappeared. When Sweden urbanised, the village came to the city and its factories. Peasant children became industrial workers and peasant collectivism was recreated in the labour movement, which became the meeting point and headquarters of the building of the social democratic welfare state.

The peasants as a social class had been strong by virtue of their organisation as a collective. Unlike their counterparts in Europe they had been represented in parliament since the late middle ages and, in the 1600s, were in alliance with the monarchy against the nobility. They supported the absolute monarchy and were guaranteed in return continued ownership of their land, while farmers’ land in the rest of Europe was a part of the nobility’s estates. From the village came also the soldiers of autocracy, and the division farmers guaranteed them their upkeep, while the soldier became a farmer like the others in the village.

The Swedish peasant’s freedom, say historians Henrik Berggren and Lars Tragardh, formed the basis of a democratic tradition, which ”offered wide participation but left limited room for individual differences. Consensus and social conformity rather than individual rights … were the distinctive features ”. The ethnologist Åke Daun believes that these traits have been persistent, and not only in Sweden but in all Nordic countries: ”When it comes to power, collective is always superior to the individual in the Nordic countries. Anyone who … joins the community is forced to adapt their views and values to the group in question. ”

The village gave the collective strength outside and demanded individual adaptation inside. The individual farmer’s position in society depended on the power that could be mobilised by the village community. Cultivation of the earth normally assumes cooperation with others in the village. Independent farmers did not survive entirely on their own. For their support, and to have a political voice, the farmers had to engage in the collective which was the village or parish.

Historian Peter Aronsson described in a study of Småland parish meetings in the period 1680 – 1850 how ”a strong tradition and appreciation of the unity of decisions means that purely individual behaviour and arguement rarely won the upper hand.” As a possible contributory factor, Aronsson cites the subsistence society’s perception of available resources as ”a zero sum game in which everyone had an interest in the defence of the status quo, when a change for the better for one must mean a deterioration for another.”

Although it was possible for a farmer to get richer without directly made any other peasant poor, so would his newfound wealth create worry because wealth could translate into power, or at least to a greater freedom of action. The other farmers could thus see themselves as victims of a relative decline, with respect to the distribution of power and status within the village. Here we have the basis for the grudgeful society’s equality, which says that if everyone cannot have something, then no one should have it. Or, as Ake Daun describes the Swedish situation: ”The high valuation given similarity makes all kinds of personal success problematic.”

Berggren and Tragardh also note another aspect of Swedish equality: ”In the United States and England it became democracy’s goal to raise people to aristocrat level. … In Sweden, however, democratisation sought to equate the nobility with the people by the abolition of all privileges and special rights, Jante, rather than natural law, came into force as the basic principle. ”

Now it is not a problem in itself to abolish the nobility’s privileges. Also, natural law advocates found it incompatible with human and citizen’s rights that certain groups of people could, because of their birth, stand outside or above the law. And as for the abolition of aristocratic privileges and the promotion of political equality (universal suffrage), Sweden was rather less radical and substantially slower than the U.S.

But there is one point in Berggren and Tragardh’s critique, namely that a culture that looks with suspicion on an individual’s success offers thin soil for original thought. Neither is tolerance given to ideas that deviate from the norm. Questioning is easily interpreted as an attempt to put on airs (and a conformist society too easily feels challenged). It is in such environments that the popular wisdom says that you can lose the understanding of reading books (a risk to which these well-read critics have hardly exposed themselves) and where one can dismiss anyone who does not want to trudge patrol with the group with a ”Do you think you are something?” (which is thus the ultimate challenge against the collectivist group-think).

The culture of consensus, however, is very compatible with material wealth. The industrial society welcomed work collectivism, because it gave the predictability and reliability in production. The law of Jante and the culture of consensus thus shape a society where people are at once well-fed and intellectually timid. The point is not that you become a morally worse person because you cannot discuss philosophy and literature. Nor should we make the mistake of thinking that the academically trained are always more profound or illuminating than the self-educated individual. But you still get a limited man, if you just rely on what one can assume, if you only see things, but never the connections, if you are constantly moving within the given, rather than within the possible limits. And you become insecure meeting with people that you do not know.

How often have you not noticed the mixture of shyness and buffering characteristics of Swedes abroad? They make their entrance to the hotel’s breakfast room and an effort to look away so they can avoid eye contact with other guests and, above all, avoid greeting them. At the same time they may ease elbow their way to the buffet, reach over other people’s dishes to get their own slices of cheese, and use loud mobile phones next to people who obviously want to read their newspapers in peace. The inability to see beyond their own horizon and ignorance of other approaches than their own, creates a social edge when they move outside the large village which is Sweden.

That social life is poor in a society marked by cultural consensus and Jante is nothing to be surprised about. There is also a frequent observation in the descriptions of Swedish culture.

”In general Swedish social life, is not of great interest,” writes Gustav Sundbärg in 1911, and continues: ”And how could it be otherwise? The Swede … is generally not very partial to reason. And least of all interested in studying the people he has in front of him. The Swede is a ‘great friend of nature’ but ‘a poor judge of character’ and feels embarrassed by the requirement for reflection or thinking deeply. He is content, according to Sundbärg, to divide the environment into pleasant and unpleasant people. ”The former he seeks instinctively, the latter he avoids just as instinctively.” There is no analysis of why someone is nice or nasty nor why he would not seek their company, neither does he question his own impressions.

The group of disagreeable people are those who do not share their personal view. The Swede does not want to be troubled by the possibility of being challenged and having to defend their position. He lacks self-confidence and ”is too afraid of the discomfort,” writes Sundbärg. The same is noted by Susan Sontag, more than half a century later. The Swedes seek to ingratiate themselves with foreign visitors by telling them how awful they think it is to live in Sweden. This, writes Sontag, is at least partly about ”the Swedish dislike of questioning discussion and controversy.” In Sweden, ”there is a strong aversion to controversy, as such”. At first, the desire for national self-criticism seems beguiling, but ultimately, she writes, ”it may look like a cop-out” – that is, an escape from conflict.

Like Sundbärg, Sontag notes that the Swedes are ”significantly not psychological” and ”show a strong aversion to reflect on motives and character.” They choose studied boredom in front of wit in conversation, in the hope of thereby eliminating a source of discord. If we only talk about completely banal and trivial things, so probably not even the most emotive nature will be provoked into opposition. Thus, writes Sontag, ”much conversation progresses through quantification”: people talk about how many hours of sunshine there were the past month, what the time was when you went to bed last night, how much you pay in rent for your apartment, and so on.

Sundbärg noted in his reflections on Swedish culture, the prevalence of the grudgeful society’s equality: ”The Swede looks happy enough, that Sweden is rich – if it could only be done without a single Swede becoming rich.” To praise a fellow Swede is undesirable, writes Sundbärg. ”The heart is empty, and my mouth speechless.”

Envy of the successful results in a dull mediocrity, where none provoke with success. Sundbärg quotes one diplomat as saying that Sweden is ”the country, where only mediocrity succeeds,” and commented:

True enough, only he who can do only what everyone else could can fully enjoy civic trust in our country. Anyone who can do any more is always suspected and easily becomes a wolf in Veum …. We do not love in general well-known and original people in Sweden, – if they do not amuse us.

Susan Sontag sees, for her part, something almost pathological in the Swedish fear of conflict. She says she is convinced that ”the Swedish reasonableness is a profound shortcoming, which has too much to do with inhibitions and anxiety, and distance from the emotions.” She continues: ”To avoid confrontation and to suppress the rejection to the extent that Swedes do rarely glides over the mentality of inaction and indifference. I am, for example, sure that it is not only related to the constant shortage of labour that people rarely get fired here, however much they neglect their jobs. It is also true that most Swedes would prefer to continue to run a business with incompetent staff rather than expose themselves to the discomfort of talking seriously with someone, hurt their feelings and incur their enmity.”

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The Swedish fear of conflict is not just a social psychological condition but has evolved into a fully-fledged normative doctrine. In every case, it has come to be seen as not only wise, but also right to refrain from anything that might cause discord and provoke a conflict. It can certainly sound agreeable to strive not to offend others or cause unnecessary trouble. But when the fear of conflict becomes a supporting foundation of politics and society, so you lose the ability to take on the necessary moral battles.

It is easy to cite the power-realistic reason for Sweden’s accession to German requests during World War II (the transit of German troops, iron ore exports) and to please the Soviet dictator after the war (Bait extradition, passivity in the case of Raoul Wallenberg’s fate). Small states are often forced to act on the conditions set by the surrounding great powers. But it is another thing when you make a virtue of necessity and, under the cover of the name of neutrality, seek to portray your actions not as a forced concession, but rather as an expression of moral consciousness and wisdom. It creates a connection between public appeasement and national security, which further helps to cement cowardice as principle.

A society characterised by fear of conflict develops its own morality, in which right and wrong align with the ambition to minimise conflict. Those who claim their freedom to criticise violent groups within or outside its borders may have to put up with reprimands from authorities and citizens who want to avoid trouble; as was Torgny Segerstedt, who was told it would be his fault if Hitler went to war with Sweden as a result of his anti-Nazi journalism. And, in connection with the Islamist suicide bomber’s failed attack in Stockholm in December 2010, there were voices that said that if someone had been killed by his bomb, it would have been Lars Vilks’ fault because Vilks’ drawings of Mohammed as a dog had been the provocation.

Of course, Hitler would have been responsible for a German attack on Sweden (Torgny Segerstedt did not force him to go to war), similarly Taimour Abdulwahab and no one else would have been fully and completely responsible for all the victims of his attacks. But in a society marked by fear of conflict, there is no desire to emphasise the most dangerous and aggressive enemy right way, but instead a preference to blame individual deviations, which in any event is easy and safe to do.

They adjust their moral judgments of the outside world to their opinion of who they would prefer to avoid having to mess with. Foreign Minister Osten Unden called the Soviet Union a ”society under the rule of law” and scolded Raoul Wallenberg’s relatives when they expressed their suspicion of falsehood towards the Soviet authorities regarding Wallenberg’s fate. The same Unden called the U.S. and the West ”the so-called free world.”

It was not about ignorance but was a reality distortion in order to provide a moral alibi. One simply had to claim that East and West were about as good as each other to defend the adaptation policies that left Wallenberg, like the Baltic refugees, to a grim fate in Soviet captivity. The same adapted narratives were expressed when Unden’s modern successor, Sten Andersson, in 1989 denied that the Baltic states were occupied by the Soviet Union.

The policy compliance towards the Soviet Union was balanced by the military intelligence cooperation with the United States, directed specifically against the Soviet Union. But since there was no other normative guiding principle other than to avoid being drawn into a conflict with an overwhelming enemy, so this double game probably did not cause politicians any great moral anguish.

A society where conflict avoidance is a virtue is a weak society with no moral integrity. We bow to the strongest winds of the moment, and will do anything to avoid challenging them. Consequently, the National Police Board seems to be more concerned that the police uniform gives an ‘aggressive’ impression, than about the fact that the police are unable to prevent street activists from vandalising the inner cities. Thus the police are required to begin ‘dialogue’ with the suburban thugs who burn cars and throw stones at the fire department, instead of disarming them.

The desire to include everyone in a general consensus, and to avoid fighting fire with fire, may appear to make sense. But it leads too often to a flabby relativism, where the most aggressive and uncompromising forces within and outside national borders dictate the agenda. Adaptation and appeasement make democracy weak and its enemies stronger than they need be. The consensus culture thereby contributes to a situation where the law gives way to power, and where the fuss of fanatics and fundamentalists is raised to the order of the day.