Summer is the year most important season. Spring and summer are the times when most of us move outdoors and get the opportunity to meet new people. Remember, we are social at other times of the year as well, and Northerners have a reputation for seeking contact with strangers to a greater extent than most peoples. But let’s be honest: the time we spend indoors, we rarely spend with people we’ve never met before. We mostly associate with people we know from before. We use the winter to grow our echo chambers!
The echo chambers are apparently pleasant for those who get the opportunity to participate in such, but for society the echo chambers are almost pure poison. The echo chambers create mistrust, alienation and exclusion. The echo chambers are an effective counterweight to social sustainability and a healthy and inclusive societal development.
It is something fundamentally unsympathetic by advocating for the cultivation of what is distinctively Norwegian, because one easily appears chauvinistic, self-righteous and intolerant. But in a very few cases, cultivating the Norwegian can actually be the opposite – it can be generous and inclusive. For many of us, “Norwegian” boils down to two simple words. “Dugnad” is the one, which in many contexts has been voted the most “Norwegian” word of all. “Trust” is the second word, because this is the most underrated value we have in our society – even when values are measured in money.
During the pandemic we got to experience how in Norway we got away from it all cheaper than many other societies, precisely because trust in the authorities is so widespread in our society. We trust the authorities and the authorities’ advice, and thus the measures were also effective. Trust is an essential part of the concept of social sustainability.
In a wonderful way The hard work and the trust are connected. The citizens’ survey of the Directorate for Administration and Financial Management from 2021 did not just tell that trust in the authorities is high. It also said that social trust – our ability to trust other people – is also great, and that this increases with participation in voluntary work.
Precisely because of thatr it is so important that we continue to love the charity, and that we cultivate all the occasions where we are given the opportunity to meet people outside our own echo chambers; people with whom we are not related, who do not necessarily belong to the same generation as us, who come from other parts of the country or from other countries, who believe other things than we ourselves believe, who believe in something other than what we ourselves believe in – and so on. If we think about it, there aren’t that many natural occasions where we have the opportunity to meet people like this – other than people like ourselves – but the opportunities are greater in the summer than in the winter, and the work nights are among the few concrete opportunities.
DUGNAD: Kurt Figenschau, CEO of BoNord, has written the post.
Photo: Marius Fiskum/BoNord
Much has been said and written about the work. A lot of this is funny, but the vast majority of it is wrong. Often the work is portrayed as a plague and a nuisance, and something most people do everything they can to avoid. The truth is different: the vast majority of housing associations in Bonord can tell of good support for their annual efforts in the local communities. This is because most people who live in these housing associations actually understand the most important point of the service, and would like to contribute to what is the most important goal.
It just is apparently that the spring work is only about getting the rubbish cleared away or having the lawns raked clean of pebbles and dirt. The most important thing that happens is that you get the opportunity to meet and talk to your neighbours, and thus – through familiarity – create security in your local environment. Security is the most important thing in everything we humans seek!
For society the gain does not primarily consist of the citizens carrying out things on a voluntary basis that the municipality’s employees would otherwise have carried out. Society’s big benefit is that trust is created – and thus social sustainability is also built. Trust is the very foundation for a well-functioning society!
We humans are social beings, but if our needs for social contact are also to include those who are different from ourselves, we need the occasions. And the arenas. We need to start talking about this more than we have in the past. We have to talk about how local authorities can contribute to creating and cultivating the trust that society so deeply depends on.
If security and trust is the goal, it is difficult to see it differently than that the way must consist in the local authorities having to cultivate the local environments, the districts and the neighbourhood, so that different people can meet in common interests.
The echo chambers builds just fine on its own.
