A South American's Take On The Law of Jante
Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose has been credited by some to explain the egalitarian nature of Nordic countries. In Sandemose's novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks (En flyktning krysser sitt spor, 1933), he portrays the fictional small Danish town of Jante, which he modeled upon his native town Nykøbing Mors in the 1930s, where nobody was anonymous, a feature of life typical of small towns. In the novel, he describes the unwritten social code that defines everything there in a set of ten rules or “laws”.
Turns out, Sandemose’s writing resonated with the social code that was present all over Denmark and Norway and to an extent Sweden, too. Across Scandinavia, this peculiar set of ‘laws’ or rules found themselves applying quite accurately; perhaps not directly mentioned, but always there, silently enforced by everybody in unison. These are known as ‘The Laws of Jante’, or Janteloven, and the ten rules state that:
You're not to think you are anything special.
You're not to think you are as good as we are.
You're not to think you are smarter than we are.
You're not to imagine yourself better than we are.
You're not to think you know more than we do.
You're not to think you are more important than we are.
You're not to think you are good at anything.
You're not to laugh at us.
You're not to think anyone cares about you.
You're not to think you can teach us anything.
At first read, they come across as a bit harsh, even aggressive if you like. “You are not to think anyone cares about you”. Damn. But, underlying the somewhat abrasive wording, there is a more nuanced interpretation possible: you (we) are nothing special, and you (we) shouldn’t walk around the place believing you (we) are unique snowflakes, because, here’s some news: we are not, mostly because everyone else is minding their own business. In short, get down off your high horse.
But as we humans tend to do with literature, the Laws of Jante have been romanticized, manipulated and stretched to inimaginable distances to explain complex sociological processes that those ten phrases, or Sandemose’s novel for that matter, were not even remotely meant to address1. What is more, used in the wrong way, the Law of Jante can be seen as an elevated version of the good old tall poppy syndrome.
Still, the laws transpire as a succinct “ground wire” for any grandiosity creeping on us. Hierarchy, power, money; they are all things which we may have earned due to skills, privilege, or sheer luck, but they do not make us different from our neighbor. There is nothing wrong in owning riches, in sitting high in a hierarchy; there is nothing especially wrong in feeling pride of achieving things. What is inherently wrong is to believe that those traits turn you into something different, or entitle you in some way. The car you drive, the title you hold, the rank you occupy, at the end of the day, mean nothing because, fundamentally, you are as good as anyone else, you know as much as anyone else. A fact which is a bit itchy on the skin in the current society we live in where boasting and bragging are the norm.
Janteloven is founded on the rule of the collective over the individual. This is why it comes as no surprise that Janteloven is meant to benefit society, to the detriment of the individual if necessary. The welfare state is organized around the idea of equality and the tensions between contributing or benefitting. Everyone benefits from everyone contributing to the best of their ability, the welfare state mantra goes. The Jante commandments appear to embrace the thesis that you do not deserve to benefit more than anyone else. This can be interpreted as no job deserving more pay than another. Stretching it a bit again, evidence of this attitude can be found in the the low presence of wage disparity in some nordic countries2. Thanks to Janteloven directly? Probably not, but thanks to societies which align well to that philosophy.
As I started leading people in my professional career, a moral dilemma crept on me: how do I genuinely lead others while I am earning more than them? Not because I wouldn’t mind earning more—I ain’t no Robin Hood—but because I understood that, the wider the gap, the smaller the moral grounds to stand and request those under me for sacrifices and extra efforts when they are not compensated for those efforts the same way I am. I never understood how an executive earning ten times more than their subordinates can address them with a straight face and ask them to go “the extra mile” from their marble offices and their six-figure salaries, under the pretense of exercising “leadership”. True leadership happens when exercised at the ground level, next to everybody else, building trust and unity in a surrounding sense of equality, or at least low disparity.
Whenever you find yourself led by entitled elites, remember that they aren’t anything special, that you are as good as they are, and that they can’t really teach you anything, because you are as smart as they are. Jante style.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_404385_smxx.pdf
Refer to link above for more evidence on this