The Tunes of Tradition: The Final Member of the Trinity of Control

There are a lot of positive aspects to my culture, but in many other ways Danish culture and Scandinavian culture in general also provides a great example of the last member of the Trinity of Control. This is also the most insidious and subtle of the three, and one you very seldom realize is at work over you. This was certainly the case for me, growing up inside Danish culture. It wasn’t until I left my homeland and gained an outside perspective that I realized how much power culture had over me. And yet every time I spend a long time there, I can still feel it creeping up on me and clouding my hard won transcendence. This is the final member of the Trinity. Cultural traditions shape how you think and act before you even realize they exist. It is not until you leave your original culture and gain a larger frame of reference that you can begin to choose and make your own culture. That is why I many times and probably again in the future have chosen to reside abroad, to become an expatriot. I love Denmark, but not living within it enables me to only take with me the parts of my culture that I truly cherish, and live free of other more suppressive parts. So while I enjoy and cherish our familiarity with death, our social welfare and our freedom of speech, I shun our so called Law of Jante and the traditions of conformity and collective thinking that can otherwise completely drain you of ambition and dreams.

The Law of Jante originated in a Norwegian novel and brilliantly summarizes a very Scandinavian and particularly Danish mentality of Schadenfreude and protection of the status quo. It consists of several commandments that overall teach people not to separate themselves from the collective, to not think you are better than anyone else or special in any way and as a result, not try to fulfill your dreams. Rather just fall in line with everyone else and accept your destiny of working the same job for 30+ years, mortgaging the foundations of your own existence to ensure that you have to maintain this job, paying your taxes and raising 2 or 3 children to do the same. Thus the welfare socialist society that is Denmark will always keep reproducing itself. I am a big spokesperson for social welfare, but for many transcenders, an existence like the one described above would probably be very difficult to accept. Because once you gain that outside perspective, you start to see that it is actually the Tunes of Tradition guiding you into submission and then culture becomes like shackles around your ankles preventing you from fulfilling your dreams and desires and pursuing your own happiness. But as with the rest of the Trinity, for the dancers, the Tunes of Tradition are a welcome beat, giving them a rhythm they can follow, giving them purpose and guidance. In that sense, as with the other members of the Trinity, religion and society, the Tunes of Tradition can be a benefit as well as a nuisance. It merely depends on your own perspective.

Using the Trinity is not necessarily harmful. It greatly depends on the micro-universes and personal ambitions of the people it is applied to. Denmark is continually rated as one of the happiest countries in the world and I have met many people around the world who are envious of our lifestyle. We certainly do many things right, and I would surely not have been able to live the life I have lead had I not been born into a welfare society such as the Danish. For that reason alone, I am not averse to living there from time to time or even raising children there, it is just important to always try and maintain a broad perspective once you have obtained it. And I find the longer you listen to the Tunes of Tradition, the more they start to appeal to you, which is why it is good to get away from time to time to break the spell. Hopefully, more Danes will thus transcend the Dancefloor of Existence so we can slowly eradicate the Law of Jante and really start taking advantage of the opportunities our lifestyle provides. But a balance will always have to be struck. After all, without dancers a welfare society would be an impossibility.

A world made up entirely of transcenders would not function at all. As mentioned before, dancers and transcenders need each other and their combined efforts is what make up a successful society. It works well in Denmark and other Western countries, especially those with smaller populations. It may not be perfect, but the Tunes of Tradition is arguably the lesser evil compared to the other Tunes. It may cloud free thinking, but it does not completely ban it, as is sometimes the case with the other Tunes. A similar welfare system to the Danish on a global scale could potentially provide the same freedom of thinking for everyone, which is a real goal for the future.