As you know, it’s mandatory these days that the Anglophone world be obsessed by one Scandinavian lifestyle concept or another. In 2016 it was hygge, a Danish word that somehow simultaneously is a) untranslatable and b) means “cosiness” – and which last year was the topic of approximately two billion different coffee-table books (along with a splendid takedown in this newspaper by Charlotte Higgins, from which it should never recover). In 2017, the signs are that the Fashionable Scandinavian Concept will be lagom, a Swedish word meaning just the right amount; not too much, or too little. This moment in history – days before the inauguration of an unstable US president who rode to power on a wave of anger and conspiracy theories – might not seem hospitable to the spirit of moderation. But maybe that’s exactly why we need it.
The problem with moderation, Peter Wehner argued in a recent New York Times essay, is that it’s seen as intrinsically lily-livered, a lukewarm compromise between more resolute extremes – “a philosophy for tender souls”, as Jean-Paul Sartre said of liberalism. I don’t want to be moderately opposed to dishonest, misogynistic, quasi-fascist politicians; when extremists run the world, we should be extremely committed to their defeat. Yet on the other hand, deep down I know that a victory for My Team over Their Team at the next election or referendum won’t solve much in the long term, either: humiliating the other side simply ensures they’ll come roaring back, more furious than ever, until they regain sufficient power to humiliate me.
Is there a way out of this dilemma? Wehner argues there is, that we should think of moderation as “a disposition, not an ideology”: not a set of views, but a way of relating to your views, and to those who disagree. Moderates “do not see the world in Manichean terms that divide it into forces of good (or light) and evil (or darkness)”, writes the political scientist Aurelian Craiutu, in a new book, Faces Of Moderation, which Wehner quotes. True moderation doesn’t mean you’ve got to split the difference between your opinions and other people’s (for example, to concede that racism might have something to be said for it); but it does mean conceding that nobody’s unreachable or irredeemable. This is a difficult distinction to live by; I don’t claim to be any good at it myself (especially on Twitter). But it’s definitely not pathetic or weak-willed; it’s far more tough-minded than the low-effort option of just writing off the opposition.
Honestly, from the Swedes I’ve talked to, I’m not sure lagom encompasses this kind of muscular compassion for your foes: it’s more about a Swedish preference for modesty and not standing out. Then again, isn’t the whole point of these borrowed Scandinavian terms that they can mean whatever we want? So when it carpets every bookshop later this year, we might at least infuse lagom with a bit of defiance – a hard-nosed alternative to the easy extremism of the age.
oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
