Cultural signals and national sports.
I have been ruminating again about some of the changes that have taken place in Denmark, while I have been living abroad. I see some interesting trends from my vantage point. Danes used to behave like the stereotypical Japanese. People were in general extremely polite and rarely needed to say things directly. Things were spoken of in an indirect manner and you were expected to understand the cultural code.
I remember a story that I was told about a hapless American exchange student in Denmark. The wife of the family he was staying with had decided that his room needed to be cleaned up. She therefore suggested that his room needed “rearranging”. Translation: clean up your room, it looks like a pig sty. The poor student of course thought that the furniture wasn’t where it belonged and went about literally rearranging the furniture. The situation today is quit different. It appears that Danes have moved from the “Japanese model” to the “American model” when interacting with other people. It has almost become a national sport to insult and use scatological verbiage.
Family violence has become less accepted than it used to be in all sectors of the population. Slapping the wife or the kids around used to be relatively common, but due to changes in attitudes is now considered to be inappropriate and potentially criminal behavior. On the other hand, soccer fans used to be known in Denmark as “roligans” because they were “rolig” or calm and composed – relaxed. Many soccer fans in Denmark aren’t relaxed anymore. Hooliganism has arrived and soccer fans are finding themselves equated with hooliganism and the extreme right as in many other countries.
The greatest change has occured with regards to the treatment of minority groups. It used to be considered that the true test of a pluralist, democratic society was the extent to which the society included minorities and allowed them to participate and integrate. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. It is increasingly becoming almost a national sport to exclude, vilify and discriminate against individuals and groups that define themselves or are defined by others as a minority – based on race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, etc.