In Europe, as well as in the US, living at the epicentre of a Megacity has become fashionable over the years after semidetached suburban bliss . Except for New York, London and Paris, the centre with all the noise and contamination has been deserted by the most solvent strata in exchange for good air, space and a view. Having a park and a flock of domestic deer of your own is an il faut if you are on the Hello Magazine centerfold spread..

The Gringo fascination for staring at the closest skyscraper wall some meters from your window, unless you are the proud owner of the Top Penthouse flat, seems odd with the widescreen view of your neighbors ´private life in every aspect, like looking at the Ugly, Naked Man in the television series “Friends” and hard to understand.

Does the compact mega city living in an anonymous environment remind you of your Middle West Smallville origins where you may be voluntarily or involuntary invited to share the detailed intimacy of the next door two storied colonial green gables at arm length´s distance from your porch?

For most people, moving to a central Manhattan or Mayfair, may be the ultimate proof of financial and esthetical success, but let´ s face it, there aren´t too many us and most of the posh Mayfarians have been residing there for generations, although lately somewhat over flooded by Arabian Oil Princes and Russian Oligarchs much to their incredolous dismay.

If central Paris mainly houses the artistic and academic intelligentsia, the French upper classes prefer the more distant arrondissements for their Chalet City Homes. True to affluent international homogenous settlement patterns, the upper class Londoners also will sport a four room flat in one of the downtown Bayswater Residential Areas or in quaint Chelsea, but furthermore are sure to possess at Country Residence within some twenty semi rural kilometers of London, right at the spot of their peers.

Looking at the Centre from a distance may be the right thing to do in Europe, whereas overlooking Central Park in Central New York is preferred by the less aristocratic Americans, who obviously are still fascinated by the tiresome sky scrapers, often regarded as violation of inner city architecture in the European cities.

Paris and London, according to the more sophisticated circles, are disgraced by the eighties megalomaniac construction boom which resulted in hundreds of misplaced forty two storied monsters overshadowing the Place de la Concorde or causing the Saint Paul´s Cathedral to rest in eternal shadowland.. Not much to look at from the distance of a country manor and definitively not in good taste. The idea of an Assurance Company building overlooking Buckingham Palace in a future scenario is enough to make an Englishman choke whether he is titled the Duke of Windsor or lives under the Tower Bridge.

Turning to Latin America we find the fascinating fact that the grandezza will willingly reside in the often contaminated overheated central canyons of the formerly fortified centers of the indigenous ancient capitals, whereas the ghettos and the pueblos jovenes will climb the mountainous hillsides surrounding most cities, often with a stunningly beautiful view to share with the rats, the vermin, the cockroaches and broke down or non-existent drainage system of the picturesque and dramatic landscape.

The poorer you are the grander the bella vista. You may not recognize the benefits of the panoramic altitudes while slowly fighting your way upwards in the muddy paths, breathless because of the thinning air, to the very top where the most recent arrivals have tried to build shelters of paper and waste and brought their guinea pigs and llamas to roam the landscape in an imitation of the alti plano home village left behind.

The Peruvian, Bolivian, Ecuadorian, Guatemalan and Columbian shantytowns divinely situated at celestial closeness overlooking the foggy urban central valleys will cause any European real estate agent´s heart to race and become a wet dream of hundreds of bulldozers plastering the lodgings of the poorest of the poor to the ground to construct palatial villas that would keep them financially aroused Viagralike, but hélas, to no avail.

No one with money on his hands would buy the luxury because of the tepid cold and eternally frozen grounds caused by an average altitude of some 3000 meters or more.

The vivid blue of all shades are reserved for those who have nothing and who are destined to stay that way unless they survive a couple of years engaged in one of the extralegal drugcartels reigning in these settlements and everywhere else for that matter, where only the armed forces dare to tread occasionally every second year or less.

These astonishing Belle Vederes are the kingdoms of Starvation and Humiliation. To withdraw into the Hills in order to savor your Otium cum Dignitate like a Catullus is as far from the truth as can ever be imagined. While Catullus sought a soothing coolness of the moderate steepy hills surrounding Rome, people are likely to freeze to death every night in the Latin equivalent and the only Otium available will be the Coca leaves or the Heroine.

Life in these shantytowns, be it in Rio or in Quito is perverted and violent to an extent we cannot fathom, a bonanza without the dreams but all the hardships of a gold rush resulting in alti plano desert sands and frozen potatoes and nothing more.

As Scandinavians we may be enchanted by the spellbinding views but the inhabitants do not see it. They stoically await their doom and the only time they are gently eased to the ground will be to be lowered into a windswept grave in the frozen yards in front of the small white washed clay churches where colorful women with mens´ hats on their sculls chant interminably at the side of their dearly departed who seem to amount to innumerable figures due to the extreme habitat in which they lived.

People come hear to die. On the slopes of the Andes overlooking the megacities and the toxic filled air of the illustrious centers where they may have dreamt to end up. Travelling downwards in a contradictory movement of socially and physically descending to happiness instead of climbing.

Yes, you may feel worried when you become aware that an alarming amount of aircrafts do not manage to leave the Quito Airport because of the runway´s position at the altitude of 4000 meters and little air the enable the planes to become airborne. While you are biting you lips you pass some hundred meters over the heads of the miserable, living and dying with the greatest of views, a picturesque postcard colored landscape housing the poorest of the poor.

And while the flight attendants smile coyly and prepare your airborne meals, scattered groups of High Plane Indians screen the rubbish heaps of filth being exported upwards instead of downwards to try to find a potato or a tomato to go with the guinea pig for supper.

Douglas Modig

Life as an individual may differ profoundly if you were born into either a Collective Oriented Society or an Individualist´ Oriented Concept and the road may always be long and winding but chances are great it may be straighter and less fickle when your are regarded as part of the glue that holds the collective together only. Liberty at all costs may not be the Schlaraffenland of masses.

But do we truly understand the nature of collectivism and may we have gotten the benefits of individuality all wrong ?

Picture a habitat with scarcity of means of reproduction. Access to water, grass and shelter is spare and the competition for the means of surviving a daily life and death scenario. The need for every family member to be highly specialized in her or his role in the division of labor is vital for the outcome of the family conglomerate´s success.

Diverging from your social role may endanger the whole group. Individuality and self interest may jeopardize the thin line between survival and extinction.

Nomad life, with a paramount demand for obedient social positioning, with high potential of speedy mobility and flexibility within a given habitat, may earn as an example. Living in the South Arabian desert or the barren wastelands of Somalia and Ethiopia will reflect the socio economical structures developed in order to survive and reproduce. At the top you will find an elderly patriarch whose orders will be obeyed and whose judgment you will have to rely completely upon, should any squabble or interior discrepancies occur within the conglomerate.

Social sanctions are severe. Deviation from collective rules may be severly punished as far as to capital punishment or expulsion. The endless fighting´s between competing clans over water sources or grass result in a reduction of the male population and a surplus of women vigorously guarded not to go astray or indulge in sexual or social relations with other men than potential allies to the clan as a whole. Polygamy may be frequent due to the inequality in numbers between the genders.

Potential mates and even married couples may regard each other with suspicion over the years. Although the wife to be will be placed at the camp of the husband and the Patri locality will be reflected in Patri lineage descent, suspicion may still fall upon the imported females´ true loyalties.

A husband must at all cost be recognized as the Genitor*, whereas the blood related loyalty of a brother may propel him into the role of Pater*, the actual social mentor and male model for the children to respect and obey.

The Avunculate is common from North Africa to Sampi and the Same and understandably so. The merging of two opposing clan in order to obtain a fragile cease fire may still be a potential source of sudden conflict and the marriage between oppositional clan members hazardous to family harmony and stability. Therefore the rules of conduct are strict, ceremonial and leave no possibilities for improvisation or deviation what so ever.

In order to safeguard traditional rules of interpeaceful relations you may want to marry your cross cousin as far as possible. In times of conflicts pacifying a enemy tribe by intermarriage is a must, copied by the Head of Nations all over the Universe.

Growing up in this community will mean that you will always refer to yourself as one in the group and your self will be understood in this context only. Ideas of individualism or self fulfilling are simply not a part of the train of thought and cosmology of the tribal or nomad society.

The enormous collision when a refugee is being introduced to the ideals of self dependency, self reliance, the fulfilling of one´s unique talents and the mobility of the nuclear family unit or even the single persona household is devastating to all actors.

Landing in a host country where children are left in the care of professional keepers as are the elderly seems gross and offensive to any collective oriented individual and the absurdity will create confusion and rejection for rational reasons as well as super structural, i.e. beliefs and religion. The code of conduct and thought is being disqualified and it´s a free fall from everything well known and experienced.

Individualist oriented societies are but a second long in the history of man. The Nuclear family, consisting of one or two parents and children, is a structural adaptation to the industrial society and the demands of a tremendously mobile labor unit, the two generational family, in order to correspond to the many facetted demands of capitalism.

From a very early start the child is being encouraged to be rich in initiative, creative and inclined to fight for his own place and possibility to advance in the struggle over the means of production and successful career moves

This struggle is basically the same as in the nomad life, only that the individualist oriented society may offer a Horne of Plenty, whereas famine and scarcity is a common experience in the arid habitats of most the nomads.

There is a “Get it While you Can” mentality taken to it´s extreme in the Calvinist theoretical and theological interpretation of Christianity in which a rich man is a good man, awarded by God himself. This forms part of the generative American Dream which has spread epidemically all over the Western Hemisphere, although in somewhat more sober disguise.

Collectivism and interrelation marriages were common in pre-industrial Sweden, as in the rest of Europe and still exist in the less stratified countries of former East Europe relying on agriculture and the organizational traditional division of labor directing the general conducts in matters of business, sexuality and reproduction.

Growing up in an ambience of plenty may be profoundly confusing and to be stressed to specialize on individual talent from a very early age, means you may be heading for a long and winding road, having to educate and re-educate yourself repeatedly maybe with interminable changes of profession and relating to new places of work and colleagues, which may cause exhaustion and disillusion in the long run. People do not work themselves to death. They try to cope with new and ever changing info and stimuli in a mindblowing illness generating mode.

The loose knot of family ties, depending on the mobility and the individual development of each family member to live up to the expectations of the predominant socio economical demands often result in the dissolution of the family unit and marriages and endless new constellations with bonus daddies and siblings with whom you are supposed to bond at the spur of a moment, leaving you clueless and sometimes in anger, because trust is what we continously need and the conditions to ensure such a trust are constantly being sabotaged by the colliding demands of structural conformist behavior with burn out personal chaos.

This is not a discussion with a goal to validate the two systems because both of them are structural adaptations to external agents and not the result of ingenious thinking and deep felt desires.

Social, religious and emotional preferences are molded on the access to the means of productions and the assets of the habitat in a superstructure guiding life with moralistic and ethical imperatives.

None of the systems are perfect and when forced into merging immense structural problems of marginalization and estrangement are there for everyone to eperience and for the society to manage, often by legal measures and financial sanctions.

Living in an ever changing individualist oriented IT society in the aftermath of the industrial one, does not mean that the individual is freed from oppressive superstructures, only that these superstructures are constantly on the run and the individual is left with bewilderment and disorientation as to what is valid and what is not. The Road to some kind of socio emotional stability is Long and Winding and may not even lead to the Door.

Human evolution may not be the same as adaptation to the ever shifting demands of a society trapped in a process run amok and with no notion of the difference between quality or quantity because, face it, in the society of plenty, plenty is what we get. Quality seems reserved for the very few.

* Genitor = Biological father
* Pater= Social father

Douglas Modig

As fascinating as it was to discover the wonders of the pre-Columbian Valdivia Culture of present day Ecuador and northern Peru, some 3500 years BC, with a hierarchical but astonishingly fair distribution of surplus crops and game from the top to the bottom, a pattern of reciprocity often characteristic for a rising civilization in America as well as in Asia, sooner or later degenerating into excess consumption and greed at the top, thus implementing the tools for a collapse typical of Empires and Dominant international allies, as tiresome it is to see that we are swiftly on our way to repeat the devastating mechanisms of accumulation and exploitation proceeding the inevitable avalanche.

The evolutionists claim that the Redistributive Economy is a phase in the development of economy, more or less bound to end up in a Capitalistic reproductive system, being so far the most advanced system of exchanging or stealing modes of production.

Functionalist theory appears intellectually meagre due to the mechanistic approach and may as well be expressed in terms of contemporary creationism in it s blind belief in the rationalism of the order or the chaos of things and too defeatist for creative thinking and planning.

Looking back at the megacities of the Mayan Copán and the Olmec Toltec Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City) we see the perversion of a redistributive system with all surplus accumulated at the top and with exhausted satellites. Without the constant influx of staple food and goods to maintain the already ample armies, the Centre will make a last paradoxical effort to force the submissive societies to willingly commit suicide by exporting the their own necessities for life. Once the armies start to go without, rebellion is born, allies are created and the submissive satellite societies march versus the Centre. The rest we know.

The irratic rise and fall of the Nazcas, the Mochicas, the Chimur, the Zapotec, the Inca and the Uru-Aymara all follow the same pattern. The rise of a sophisticated centre affluent because of an initially even distribution to all citizens no matter the position on the social ladder reciprocating with loyalty, until the top develop greed and reduce the redistribution until the devastating conflict develop.

During the centuries of the rise and fall of nations, the glory of Tetihuacán and Cuzco and the ruins of them, a persistent strategy of survival developed based on lineage and intermarriages.

Contrary to the dominant Patrilocal settlement pattern throughout most of the preindustrial world, the Avunculate of the Americas became a prominent social pattern with the children settling with their maternal uncles and getting their social education and means to survive by these paters, social fathers, opposed to the genitors, the biological fathers.

Once the Jesuit missionaries arrived they immediately discovered the system and to their amazement recognised a redistributive system of socio emotional and socio economical means reflecting their ancient Padrazgo, the God Father system, originating in early Christianity and still an integral agent of interactive social patterns in Spain and in the Latin countries in general.

Compadre, which literally means sharing the same father (God), is a relation between to adult males from different nuclear families, that bond socially and emotionally, as well as economically in a lifelong brotherhood of great importance for an even distribution of the means of production and the access to them, thus an important agent of the prevention of conflict and competition.

Contrary to the American avunculate settlement pattern, the Spaniards did not place their children by their brothers-in law unless chaos and wartime made this an option. But the maternal uncles definitively had an important task to safeguard the upbringing and education focusing on the spiritual growth but also worldly skills such as fencing and war faring.

In Spain as well as in pre-Columbian America the marriages were arranged to merge the families in bonds of loyalty and non-aggressiveness. In business as well as social lives they were each other´ s equals and the bondage was meant to last for generations to come.

Compadrazgo in the Americas had an extended concept of sharing every thinkable surplus between compadres thus leaning on an inextinguishable socio emotional and socio economical agent for the survival and reproduction, no matter where the families were positioned in the social strata.

The relations between the compadres are described in detail in early 1900 ethnographic research in present day Mexico, advocating the system as a guarantee and a lifeline for the individual in a sometimes poverty stricken reproduction context. The friendship between the compadres, brothers in spirit, is generally described as very affective even overshadowing the love between siblings.

The compadrinazgo structure has survived the rise and falls of civilizations for thousands of years, transformed verbally into a Catholic Nomenclatura, but with the original function intact and still in force in contemporary Mexico and Mesoamerica.

Legends and myths focus on the sacred bonds between compadres and their commitment versus their Ahijados, Godsons. Gradually the system has extended to include Ahijadas, God Daughters, which originated in the Old World and exported to the Spanish speaking Americas.

In a world where the assets are unevenly distributed a reminiscent of the ancient Redistributive Economy persists within the Compradazgo Concept. The Concept has proved to be off eminent endurance and maintain a great influence in the choosing of spouses and the social merging of the different extensive families for the families to respect and rely on in a lifelong commitment.

Douglas Modig

Looking in retrospective at the yes and the no no´s of the charmingly overpopulated Swedish middle class you do not have to dig deep in order to unveil a set of notions and believes to be traced to pre-Christian times, seemingly modern and on par with a social development run amok by the accelerating demands of the Information Society, which enables us to be anywhere at any time while curling up before the Computer Screen in our Compact Living one man household apartment, furnished by the paramount IKEA retailers flooding the hemispheres like the Huns of pre medieval times.

Belonging to the over seized middle class automatically gives you the slightly ridiculous status of a wanna be or a has been, and, unless, you travel upwards the social ladder, you will easily be forgotten among the hordes of the reasonably well-off and well educated that dominate contemporary Sweden with Volvos and Sony Ericsson cell phones, accompanied by the soothing comforts of Lugna Favoriter ( Musical Tranquilizers for the over the hill) in order not to collapse by the imperative demands of looking like twenty when you are in your fifth decade and feeling good about it.

Two generations ago you were named after your ancestors in a simple order such as carrying the family name of Nilsson, ( that is the son of Nils) until this rural tradition fell out of fashion and you turned to the National Board of Name Managment and reqested a more suitable career moving alias with ninety percent of allusions to phenomena in the nature. Anything with a connection to valleys, hills, animals, and flora would be plausible and ultimately you may end up luckily with a silly name such as Fjäderfot (Feather´s Foot), in order to manifest your social status and uniqueness.

Now, for all the Nyquists and Nygrens filling the telephone guides, you may mimic the Hollywood elite by naming your children Tuesday or Menopause, in order to stand out in the numerous mob of middleclass nobodies but old habits die hard and the above mentioned Name Management Board is not given to fashion impulses so you probably will have to accept that your are raising a Silvia or an Ellen and adding a challenging nickname in order to separate your offspring from everybody else´s.

During the Vendel Era, shortly before the development of the Viking society, names were connected to the physical attributes of the bearer such as Erik Enöga (One Eyed Erik) or the lineage, much like the sons of Erik and Nils ( Sony Ericsson, Birgit Nilsson). Names relating to the physical appearance is not a contemporary hit, although some unlucky families having been ordered by the Military Authorities of the late nineteenth century to change their common family name in order to distinguish the recruits from one another to silly names such as Snygg (Handsome) or Hurtig ( Stamina´s).

No matter how silly your recently acquired family name, the change opened prospects of climbing the social ladder without revealing the humble origins and without too much attention put to lineage, an occupation much cherished by the aristocracy,you could feel safe in the socially determined nomenclatura of social status and stratification.

Belonging to the middle class may be a sign of certain extinction in many countries but the connotation does not do much for the Swede, since some two thirds of the population will be there on social par with you.

Social climbing within the aristocracy is monopolized by blood heritage or fortunate intermarriage according to strict rules, whereas you may extinguish yourself by monetary success to an extent that you will referred to as money aristocracy. They are few.

Sweden does not promote excessive personal climbing such as the paramount dogma of monetary success and position as a capital driving force like that of the American Dream. People simply do not get immensely rich in Sweden and if they do, they probably will live in London or Monaco, due to tax legislation and the unwanted attention of envious compatriots fed on the Danish/Norwegian Jantelag (the Law of Jante: Do not extinguish yourself or believe you are superior to anybody else).

Le charme discret de la Bourgeoisie is not that charming in Sweden, since it´s everybody´s mannerisms faithfully copied and multiplied into exact molds dictated by the Swedish austere mantra lagom (cannot be translated, maybe not too little and not too much) implemented in the restraining Jante Lag, which potentiates collectivism and rejects individualism unless it can support itself financially…

Does this seem boring? Yes, it is to a certain extent. Strolling down the streets you will se manifold duplicates of yourself parading in the same attires and haircuts and yes, you can get bored stiff and grab the speediest Charter to the diversity of Rome, but somehow it is stabile and safe in times of speedy social, political and financial alterations on a daily basis.

Being a Fjäderfot may promote mirth in some but it reassures you a lifelong position within the ranks of the politically coma of the Swedish Middle class and some stability as to when to live, sexualize and die.

The State benevolently follows each and every step along the way and farting may be the only pleasure you do not have to pay taxes for, so try why it is still for free. In the Fjäderfotian domains you may expect the absence of provoking excesses and extreme scarcity and the social code is distinct and explicit with no exceptions to the rules.

In Sweden we respect the royal family because they did not turn out idiots and hate our politicians because we cannot tell them apart. Food is plentiful and tasteless and shelter so alike you may try to enter your neighbor´s door after one too many. Trust your composed neighbor to discreetly guide you to the correct entrance and be silent about it for the rest of your lives.

Boozing yourself silly and having sex with a colleague at a social event in connection to your place of work may result in a divorce but not in a social stigma. In Fjäderfot land, or ABBA Land as we may prefer to call it, the Mama Mias are as open about their sexual cravings as their husbands and the Greek tragedies with an obsession of hymens gone astray attracts no attention, unless your are a Ingmar Bergman or a Norén and their productions are principally for export….

Now what became of the boisterous and hooligan Viking forefather´s legacy ? Why do Swedish males seem fallen from the skies and embarrassed of whatever attention they may attract?

To be honest, a vast majority of the Vikings went into exile in Russia, leaving the pacified slaves behind and hoopla, maybe those are the proud forerunners of the present days Fjäderfots.

Douglas Modig