It’s a sign of weakness, not strength, to write off your opponents… stick to your beliefs but find room for others’
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.
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