GRETA GARBO: GENUINE LONER
The corridor of a forested, blackish belt of dark woods, thousands of lakes and inaccessible mountain peaks can be found from Canada, Northern USA, the North of Russia, the Japanese Sea to the inlands of Finland, Sweden and Norway.
It is a habitat with a richness of flora and fauna, although usually very dark and extremely bright in the short summer months when everything comes alive only to be exhausted by the round the clock living in order to compensate for the pitch darkness for most of the year.
The absence of serotonin promoting vivaciousness breeds a melancholic, often asocial and inwardly brooding individual living in close symbiosis with Mother Nature, happy when coming into contact with the wild life, a product of a deep felt emotional bond with everything living in these dire circumstances. Like the indians we do not take the killing of a wild animal lightly and we are very cautious not to overexploit the fauna and the flora, where we all, living on the fertile soils of Skne or in the Artic North of Lappland, find ourselves best at ease, often alone in the ecosystem which may allow us to survive or break us.
Ve often vant to be alone to live in the symbiosis and wander in the woodlands alone, totally in awe of the greatness of the Mother Nature and Gods all creatures. In most of this international belt people find the Nature something to fight and try to domesticate by all means. People tend to drink too much and live sad and exhaustive lives and the harsh environment with the lack of daylight push people into massive depressions from Alaska to The Baltic Sea.
In Sweden we fare somewhat better. Whole regions are still virgin like the South of Argentina and so plentiful of game and wood create the relation between man and nature, which is a relation of profound love. The Swedes were never meant to be city dwellers and we needed immigrants to build our towns while we stayed behind in the countryside. Moving to Stockholm may seem very tempting when you are in your early twenties and looking for distraction and a mate but the fascination often wanes off when you have hit forty and you wish to return to your precious woodlands or the breathtaking beauty of the hilly apple blossoms orchards of Skne.
We often deliberately seek loneliness. But it is not the same as being alone. You are on your own because you chose it and, no, you are not truly alone, because you have an intense co living with the flora and the fauna which is as giving as socializing with people. Yes, that may seem very strange, but it is very simple. Thousands of years of man, due the harsh habitat, has molded man to go on the hunt or gathering alone or in the company of a few men, silent not to scare any animal away, and it seems to be invested in our genes.
Greta Gustafsson was the first generation of city dwellers of her line of descent with a rural background as a vast majority of the Swedes all are. The Spanish conquerors of Latin America came in a mixture of sophisticated city dwellers and labor hands from a rural Spain already heavily populated. Inter exchanging socially was nothing strange to them. Living their lives in crowds came natural as it still does. Only in the most remote parts of Spain will you have found people resembling the introvert Scandinavians. Italy was run over by different peoples and civilizations since millennia. Completely deforested and eating every little bird one could catch. It is quite a different scenario and it affects the biological human mindset.
To us there is nothing fake when Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo or Bjrn Andrsen whish to be left alone. Until recently that has been the privilege for every Swede and a totally rational thing to want.
Garbos withdrawal was no image. Why did she stay in New York? For exactly the same reason as those who wandered off into the woods. Among the immense crowds of New Yorkers she was no one. For most of the part she could walk around unnoticed into a "human woodland" and was as eagerly on the hunt, as those of her ancestors, only that Garbo haunted for antiques, which now days is a national sport in Sweden, the original hunting transformed into the 21st century. No deers are to be found in New York or Stockholm but the urge to hunt and catch your game persists. Garbo was only one generation from the rural woodland Sweden with its thousand of lakes hidden among the foliage for you to discover over most of the country.
Scientifically we know that people dwelling in the broad and extended ecological zone of the Subarctic woodlands and the scarcity of daylight produce a serotonin deficiency and seasonal associated depressions (SAD). The over consumption of alcohol, which until recently, has been the only means to fight your melancholia has, for rational reasons, been replaced by tranquilizers and antidepressants in the western nations, whereas alcoholism still thrives from Finland to the Japanese Sea.
Sexuality is affected by the transmitter system and most of the inhabitants of this dark belt are suffering from a reduced libido. Being asexual is not an attitude but a function of the biological system as a result of the slowed down lifestyle in an exhausting habitat. Functionally, promiscuity and a high nativity, would be contra productive in a harsh environment, although full of game and other natural resources. This attitude may take generations to exterminate due to the strong agent of social inheritance although the environment may have drastically changed.
The long tradition, only recently broken, of lifelong commitments and fidelity served as a mechanism of perfecting the division of labor in everyday life. People did not so much ask themselves if they were in love but if they made a good match. Sexuality for the most part was performed in the marital beds except for the most marginalized and mobile proletariat crowding the countryside in the 1850s and forward due to medical and hygienic improvements. The ailments of the homeless on the march into the cities were compensated by an often liberal sexuality, irrational and extralegal relations and sexuality as a means of escaping a sad reality of poverty and dramatic social change. The liberal views on sexuality may be a result of a vast majority of destitute proletarians gradually gaining an immense influence on the political arena in Sweden, easily barring the way of a minuscule bourgeoisie and a poverty stricken aristocracy, due to the intense war faring in which Sweden had been involved since the seventeenth century.
The radicalism of the poor, marginalized Swedes, almost produced a Bolshevik revolution and could only be stopped because the King and the Radical Social Democrat Leader, Branting, a bourgeois armchair socialist, joined forces and managed to keep the most rebellious at bay. By a clever policy of heavy bourgeois influence on a majority of the labor force in terms of launching nationwide projects of stability, health care, housing and education, thus constructing a well fare state, a string of pragmatic social democrat leaders succeeded to domesticate their adherents and to hold hands with the leading capitalists, a socialism unique for Sweden during eight decades.
Better housing, better standards of living and with an excess time of leisure time, the working class idealized their relatives in the countryside and their favorite spare time, if any at all for the peasantry, to hunt, to let oneself be absorbed by the breathtaking impressions of the deep forest, to discover a virgin lake by yourself or join a smallish hunters group of locals to go on the chase while the ladies picked berries and mushrooms as feverishly as in the old days.
This pattern persists. A vast majority of the Swedes are affluent enough to travel to Thailand or Egypt for a sunny vacation but usually never miss a chance to spend some weeks in the countryside and in the woodlands and like Garbo taking extensive hikes into the wilderness on some visit to Sweden or her urban hikes in an anonymous New York.
It is a habitat with a richness of flora and fauna, although usually very dark and extremely bright in the short summer months when everything comes alive only to be exhausted by the round the clock living in order to compensate for the pitch darkness for most of the year.
The absence of serotonin promoting vivaciousness breeds a melancholic, often asocial and inwardly brooding individual living in close symbiosis with Mother Nature, happy when coming into contact with the wild life, a product of a deep felt emotional bond with everything living in these dire circumstances. Like the indians we do not take the killing of a wild animal lightly and we are very cautious not to overexploit the fauna and the flora, where we all, living on the fertile soils of Skne or in the Artic North of Lappland, find ourselves best at ease, often alone in the ecosystem which may allow us to survive or break us.
Ve often vant to be alone to live in the symbiosis and wander in the woodlands alone, totally in awe of the greatness of the Mother Nature and Gods all creatures. In most of this international belt people find the Nature something to fight and try to domesticate by all means. People tend to drink too much and live sad and exhaustive lives and the harsh environment with the lack of daylight push people into massive depressions from Alaska to The Baltic Sea.
In Sweden we fare somewhat better. Whole regions are still virgin like the South of Argentina and so plentiful of game and wood create the relation between man and nature, which is a relation of profound love. The Swedes were never meant to be city dwellers and we needed immigrants to build our towns while we stayed behind in the countryside. Moving to Stockholm may seem very tempting when you are in your early twenties and looking for distraction and a mate but the fascination often wanes off when you have hit forty and you wish to return to your precious woodlands or the breathtaking beauty of the hilly apple blossoms orchards of Skne.
We often deliberately seek loneliness. But it is not the same as being alone. You are on your own because you chose it and, no, you are not truly alone, because you have an intense co living with the flora and the fauna which is as giving as socializing with people. Yes, that may seem very strange, but it is very simple. Thousands of years of man, due the harsh habitat, has molded man to go on the hunt or gathering alone or in the company of a few men, silent not to scare any animal away, and it seems to be invested in our genes.
Greta Gustafsson was the first generation of city dwellers of her line of descent with a rural background as a vast majority of the Swedes all are. The Spanish conquerors of Latin America came in a mixture of sophisticated city dwellers and labor hands from a rural Spain already heavily populated. Inter exchanging socially was nothing strange to them. Living their lives in crowds came natural as it still does. Only in the most remote parts of Spain will you have found people resembling the introvert Scandinavians. Italy was run over by different peoples and civilizations since millennia. Completely deforested and eating every little bird one could catch. It is quite a different scenario and it affects the biological human mindset.
To us there is nothing fake when Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo or Bjrn Andrsen whish to be left alone. Until recently that has been the privilege for every Swede and a totally rational thing to want.
Garbos withdrawal was no image. Why did she stay in New York? For exactly the same reason as those who wandered off into the woods. Among the immense crowds of New Yorkers she was no one. For most of the part she could walk around unnoticed into a "human woodland" and was as eagerly on the hunt, as those of her ancestors, only that Garbo haunted for antiques, which now days is a national sport in Sweden, the original hunting transformed into the 21st century. No deers are to be found in New York or Stockholm but the urge to hunt and catch your game persists. Garbo was only one generation from the rural woodland Sweden with its thousand of lakes hidden among the foliage for you to discover over most of the country.
Scientifically we know that people dwelling in the broad and extended ecological zone of the Subarctic woodlands and the scarcity of daylight produce a serotonin deficiency and seasonal associated depressions (SAD). The over consumption of alcohol, which until recently, has been the only means to fight your melancholia has, for rational reasons, been replaced by tranquilizers and antidepressants in the western nations, whereas alcoholism still thrives from Finland to the Japanese Sea.
Sexuality is affected by the transmitter system and most of the inhabitants of this dark belt are suffering from a reduced libido. Being asexual is not an attitude but a function of the biological system as a result of the slowed down lifestyle in an exhausting habitat. Functionally, promiscuity and a high nativity, would be contra productive in a harsh environment, although full of game and other natural resources. This attitude may take generations to exterminate due to the strong agent of social inheritance although the environment may have drastically changed.
The long tradition, only recently broken, of lifelong commitments and fidelity served as a mechanism of perfecting the division of labor in everyday life. People did not so much ask themselves if they were in love but if they made a good match. Sexuality for the most part was performed in the marital beds except for the most marginalized and mobile proletariat crowding the countryside in the 1850s and forward due to medical and hygienic improvements. The ailments of the homeless on the march into the cities were compensated by an often liberal sexuality, irrational and extralegal relations and sexuality as a means of escaping a sad reality of poverty and dramatic social change. The liberal views on sexuality may be a result of a vast majority of destitute proletarians gradually gaining an immense influence on the political arena in Sweden, easily barring the way of a minuscule bourgeoisie and a poverty stricken aristocracy, due to the intense war faring in which Sweden had been involved since the seventeenth century.
The radicalism of the poor, marginalized Swedes, almost produced a Bolshevik revolution and could only be stopped because the King and the Radical Social Democrat Leader, Branting, a bourgeois armchair socialist, joined forces and managed to keep the most rebellious at bay. By a clever policy of heavy bourgeois influence on a majority of the labor force in terms of launching nationwide projects of stability, health care, housing and education, thus constructing a well fare state, a string of pragmatic social democrat leaders succeeded to domesticate their adherents and to hold hands with the leading capitalists, a socialism unique for Sweden during eight decades.
Better housing, better standards of living and with an excess time of leisure time, the working class idealized their relatives in the countryside and their favorite spare time, if any at all for the peasantry, to hunt, to let oneself be absorbed by the breathtaking impressions of the deep forest, to discover a virgin lake by yourself or join a smallish hunters group of locals to go on the chase while the ladies picked berries and mushrooms as feverishly as in the old days.
This pattern persists. A vast majority of the Swedes are affluent enough to travel to Thailand or Egypt for a sunny vacation but usually never miss a chance to spend some weeks in the countryside and in the woodlands and like Garbo taking extensive hikes into the wilderness on some visit to Sweden or her urban hikes in an anonymous New York.
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