French here. My grand pa is old and has caregivers (paid by his public health care + the local county) coming to his home every day, they're always the same 4-5 people.

It's not hard giving people a steady job instead of using disposable contractors.

In more vibrant economies these jobs are seen as largely unattractive and often as a stepping stone to becoming a nurse's aid, nurse, doctor, etc.

One of the major imported jobs in even closed societies like Japan is senior caregivers. Its hard and ugly work, and often thankless (how can a senior with dementia appreciate you?). Migrating to different jobs or eventual burn out is a real issue in this industry.

I'm not necessarily arguing that Sweden is a model society and all other countries should adopt our ways. What I'm arguing against is the idea (fairly common, at least in the US) that higher taxes and a more generous welfare state is always antithetical to individualism and the entrepreneurial spirit. It can be, certainly, but it is not necessarily so.

We in America are very individualistic (eg "I got mine, screw you!" because Freedom Markets™). Our elder care is terrible. Our nursing homes are bleak.

(A buddy worked as the CFO for a nursing home corporation. Told me the biggest thing he learned: Don't end up in a nursing home.)

Most nordic people would call this progress.

Perhaps its a little arrogant to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate. Are we certain science has solved all major mysteries and our cosmology is pretty much close to perfect? How do we know we're not Newton, unable to see Einstein coming, for example? Maybe we can't ever know.

I'm not exactly sure where religion or spirituality fits in with the modern lifestyle, but I suspect it has a place still. As much as I like visiting nordic regions, the lack of smiles and cold attitudes really reflects something I consider wrong and off-putting especially as the son of European immigrants from a 'family' centered society and a liberal US citizen who certainly sees value in the collective, even if the electorate does not. I don't think evolution made us to be asocial, anti-family, anti-spiritual, anti-collective, etc and expect us to be satisfied with the end result (everyone in therapy and on pills for mood issues and complaining about lonliness and lack of meaning constantly).

From a personal perspective, adding a touch of meditation and some lightweight Buddhism and Eastern thought has really upped the quality of my life. Perhaps I'm engaging in an evangelical folly here but the facts do remain that the more atheistic a society the more you see depression and suicide appear, once we correct for depression caused by economic issues or warfare or political instability. Maybe this is an issue that'll solve itself somehow, but I do wonder if we ran too hard towards atheism/materialism, when we should have jogged more towards more liberal and 'lighter' religion, personal spiritual practice, or just plain-jane agnosticism.

That's certainly not an accurate description of secular viewpoints.

Anti-depressant use is also very high in Utah, a very religious US state. So religion or a lack thereof is not an obvious solution.

The challenge from scientific point of view with human traditions is that they are a mishmash of established techniques affecting measurable outcomes and superstition, and sometimes it's quite hard to tell from the point of view of an outsider which is which.

Correlation does not mean causality.

Saying atheism leads to anti-depressant use is like saying eating ice cream makes people drown. (Yes, I borrowed that from the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...).

"I think its clear that reality is far from explained and selling people on the idea of a nihilistic existence that is meaningless may not be good for humanity, nor actually be accurate."

Secularism has nothing to do with nihilism or meaninglessness. Nor lack of spirituality. Atheism does not mean anti-spirituality. It just means non-belief in any of the established deities.

I think you mean - people need spirituality. I have no objections to that.

" the lack of smiles and cold attitudes really reflects something I consider wrong and off-putting especially "

Now you are making judgements based on perceptions on different culture. I fail to see how that connects with anything else you said, except that you don't like unsmiling people. Yes, nordic people actually seem cold and distant to some due to the fact of manners being different. Two pairs of sisters meet - one is nordic, the other of a culture with more vivid body language. The nordic people say hi and stand apart, the other hug, kiss and coo. That does not mean the love between the nordic people is any less strong.

To exaggerate only a little bit, a typical french way of welcoming another person with hugs and kisses can be interpreted in the nordic countries as a sexual assault.

One of the facets of nordic culture is that I'm not really alone anywhere - not in the brutal survivalist sense anyway. If I actually need help, I'm 100% sure I will get it, no matter where in nordic countries I am and to whom I'm talking. This is perhaps one of the reasons the ties with the social safety net do not appear as exaggerated as else where - we don't need to assure each others that when we need help, someone will be there. It's expected as a basic custom and facet of nordic societies.

"I don't think evolution made us to be asocial, anti-family, anti-spiritual, anti-collective, et"

Um, where did that come from. We were discussing how nordic people are unfriendly secularists and now you are confusing it with lots of other things by way of associating it with the earlier comments. Yes, religion is conflated with communal activities is several places. Being atheist does not mean being anti-community or anti anything else, except that 1. you don't want to believe thousand year old fairy tales no more 2. you don't want to hand off political authority to third party wankers just because they've progressed in the power structure enabled by the said fairy tales.

I totally fail to see how current religions can provide us with any tenable long term solutions - we are in a dire need of better spiritual frameworks. I agree, Buddhism has many attractive aspects - but, also lots of dogma. The deeper western people actually dip into it the more obvious it becomes.

Meditation is cool. Also, it needs no metaphysical framework to function, just posture and breathing.

" the more atheistic a society the more you see depression and suicide appear, once we correct for depression caused by economic issues or warfare or political instability"

I would really like the references to that claim.

If we take the hypothetical claim as a fact that the more secular societies are more unhappy, that also correlates with the generic economic and educational status of the said society, as well as the relative increase of urban population versus rural. If we take blunt correlates then we might as well claim that increased wealthy urbanization causes unhappiness and atheism. But the problem is - without any sound theory to explain our findings we are no less the silly. Hunting for correlates in any statistics is one of the cargo cult methods of science and not very effective method of discovery.

Religions have intertwined themselves with all sorts of positive things like knitting societies and whatnot (as a crude example). Now, to denounce the deity of the religion and the old texts does not mean denouncing the knitting society. It just strips the old texts of their false eminence and cuts down the political authority of the priesthood if it's based purely on doctrinal concepts.

I can agree on one thing with you - if people meditated more the world would probably be a happier place.

http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-largest-antidepress...

Also, as the article states "It's difficult to say exactly what the data tell us.

Antidepressant use is not an accurate window into rates of depression. Instead, the popularity of antidepressants in a given country is the result of a complicated mix of depression rates, stigma, wealth, health coverage, and availability of treatment."

US seems to be leading the pack and from cross referencing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligio...

if we do bad statistics, we can conclude that since sweden has lower antidepressant use and higher secularity than US, religion actually causes psychiatric illness.

But what the data actually tells us is that it's pretty damn hard to pull any causality between secularism and antidepressant use.

Sort of suggests that following the collective, being an ant in a colony may have negative effects on intelligence over a few generations. Natures law: "What you don't use you lose." You don't need higher intelligence because so many are chipping in to compensate.

Then again, balance is a fickle thing.

Or "Hey this guy is pretty good at business, lets give him low taxes to reward him and keep him happy."

I think its difficult for successful people to see how much they're lifted up by everyday people in society doing their best to incentivize meritocracy and creating an even playing field where the smart people can succeed.

Lets remember, the idea of the meritorious succeeding is rare in society. Up until recently you had to be a non-woman, non-slave, and at the very least come from a wealthy or political family. Or perhaps sidestep this by having powerful political patrons but then still be under the gun of, say, the inquisition.

Also when we look at many of the enlightenment thinkers and supporters, we see a slew of milquetoast intellects and ordinary people fighting against the old order of theocracies, monarchs, and dictators. Why did the smart need them to build the society they needed to succeed in? Newton wasn't writing about the freedom of man, instead he was obsessed over his place in the kingdom of heaven and went a bit mad about non-violent coin counterfeiters, advocating for their death, and often delivering it using the power of his position in the mint.

I think there's an Ayn Rand sized fallacy hole that you're falling into here.

In most historical human societies, the way to "succeed" was to threaten to kill other people unless they gave you what you wanted.

A couple of immediate objections come to mind. First, "intelligence" is difficult to define or measure. Things like standardized IQ tests tend to come with an implicit agenda. Second, thinking instead about "innovation", history surely shows that most innovation happens when humans group together (in farming communities, cities etc).

It's true though that in recent history, cities are more associated with social atomization. Overall it seems like a very fuzzy and complicated issue.

I live in one of the kommuns with the very worst economy and the schools barely function. So the 100 carers thing is not because of the swedish psyche but because of the way healthcare is funded.