Tolerance and Equality, Swedish Style

There are four ways of talking about politically, religiously or otherwise sensitive topics:

• to argue,
• to redirect to other problems,
• to talk only about the desired direction,
• not to talk at all.

It seems Scandinavia has chosen the last - if you don't talk about a problem, it will go away on its own.

In Sweden, within the framework of gender equality pedagogy, it is planned to ban traditional fairy tales in kindergartens, replacing them with stories about same-sex parents, single-parent families and child adoption, as well as to replace the pronouns he and she with a gender-neutral pronoun. [1]

One is forced to conclude that such a tactic has been adopted in Scandinavia by politicians, opinion leaders and society as a whole. From the vantage point of an ordinary Latvian's values, it is not entirely clear what the "problem" is.

The root of the problem, evidently, lies in the fact that in a world governed by competition and inequality, there are two sides: minority and majority, the weaker and the stronger, the less clever and the more clever, the black and the white, etc. The other root of the problem lies in the saying that "nothing irritates so much as another person's success".

An example: on 9 May in Riga, "victory" celebrations were held with great fanfare. In war, as is known, there are both winners and losers. The survivors and the fallen, regardless of which side of the front they fell on. Looking at these festivities "on the bones and skulls", how should those feel who lost someone or something in the war?

How do those children feel whose parents are of the same sex? Those who come from single-parent families or were adopted? How do those feel who are not genetically endowed with intellectual gifts and talents?

Viewed in this way, fairy tales about princesses and happy families are in reality a story about inequality, where human will has very little significance. A story about illusion, disappointment and predestination. Although from the vantage point of an ordinary Latvian's values, Swedish values look, to put it mildly, "messed up", there is something in all of it. One way or another, that is the choice of the Swedish people, which one may accept or not accept, but ought to respect.

Here is what I have been thinking: should those for whom everything is in order feel responsible for that? Perhaps guilty?

[1] http://www.irir.lv/2015/6/9/kas-paliek-uz-vestnieka-dzentlmeniskas-sirdsapzinas