Through the years, many excuses and few explanations have been given to justify the titanic difference between North and South Europe. The current financial crisis throws this topic to a whole new level.
The border North/South is not geographically clear. These designations started to be used when it became substantial to distinguish two economies with different behaviors. In the late 90’s, “North” embodied Scandinavia. I recall that in the early years of Eurozone there was a general believe that Germans and Greeks were behaving in the same way.
Afterwards, with the 2008 crisis and its consequences in the following years, “South” began to mean, with a negative connotation, the group of countries Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. For the purposes of this text, I will use this last definition of “South” and “North” to mean “Scandinavia”, leaving the Central Europe apart.
On his article “Europe’s crisis is all about the north-south split” published this month in Financial Times, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve wrote “There remains the question of whether most, or all, of the south would ever voluntarily adopt northern prudence.”
Although I recognize the pejorative on this sentence, I must agree with the idea. The “South” has been showing during centuries a completely different behavior. The problems that affect the South are easy to enumerate as well as the economic reasons for them. I don’t want to waste your time on that. I want to dig deeper and try to give the causes of those reasons. What I’ll try to get answered is why, unlike the North, the South tends to make, repeatedly, decisions without considering the future.
Winter is coming in Norway. Norwegian winter is cold and I mean cold although I don’t really know the real meaning of cold yet. Before the snow and the ice there are a lot of things Norwegians need to do. I image that since Vikings' time the rituals of preparation for the wintertime have been part of Norwegian tradition although I realize lot of things have been changing (Vikings didn’t need to change their cars’ tires for Winter ones).
It is my belief that the idea of planning for a season like Norwegian winter developed a mentality of thinking ahead. When I was chopping wood some weeks ago and heard that that same wood is going to be drying during one year so it is ready for next winter it all became clearer for me. Let’s say seventy years ago (we don’t need to go further in the past) than that, when the major source of heating was wood, the amount of wood you needed to chop each year was huge and so was the number of hours spent on that.
The South doesn’t need IMF but generations of cold winters. We are forgetting that we are animals and specifically creatures of habits. We do today what worked yesterday.
A completely different perspective that I also consider valid was said by António Lobo Antunes, the best living Portuguese writer this week during an interview on his last book. In his words, the people let their governors take bad decisions because they are not aware, because they don’t read and he actually gave the example of Norway as a country where people do read and do get informed. I also agree that being informed is the key to take the best decision and to dare to change the paradigm and the statistics confirm this idea (Norway is the country in the world where more newspapers are sold daily per capita). He concluded that culture is a word that makes the bad Governments afraid.
These to explanations seem quite logical to me. About the first (the weather) I’m afraid there is not a lot we can do but about the second (the culture) I believe (probably naively) that it’s in my hands and in the hands of my generation to do something about it.
This is the point of view of a 17-year-old. It is not ultimate or absolute. I know I won’t be thinking the same next week and I know it might not make a lot of sense to lot of people reading this but perhaps someone out there can find something relevant in this idea or make a better interpretation of the arguments I pointed out.
