Last Thursday me and an agency project manager had lunch at Grodan, a place located in Östermalm. This is a district in Stockholm known to most Swedes for being poshy and upper-class. Whilst eating and discussing about diets, we get interrupted by a 60-plus gentleman by the table next to us. He introduces himself as a senior physician ("överläkare") slash consultant to the business elite (in the realm of industrialist Peter Wallenberg himself apparently) and briefly explains to us how diets work. What then comes as an unpleasant surprise is that the doctor starts making super-derogatory remarks about women. Not in a subtle way, but flat out in every other sentence.
Fast-foward one hour, we are in Tensta doing some fieldwork for a supermarket pitch. Tensta is the opposite of Östermalm: a low-income suburb with high levels of unemployment, social decay and where the majority of people are of Middle-Eastern or African descent. As it happens, it's also a place where the supermarket has a Halal-section that we were interested in. So, we're standing outside the supermarket at the town square and interviewing customers. Suddenly and out of the blue a hostile voice behind us tells us to stop filming. The guy, who is probably not older than 18 but big as a house, totally aggressive (and probably pumped up with steroids) tries to provoke us into giving him a reason to fuck us up. We manage to calm him down, and so he leaves but tells us to go back to where we came from.
Obviously, there are idiots in every segment of society, regardless of education and background. But I cannot stop asking myself: why do people keep defining themselves and others categorically and in a simplistic way when they could be better off by avoiding contextual pigeonholes?
Choice is underrated.
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