28May

What curing my fear of flying has taught me about anxiety

When the anxiety awakens it’s as if a wild beast wanders into my home, sits down on the middle of my coffee table, and lies there, observing me with cold eyes. It growls hungrily, licks its mouth. It’s ready to leap at me, but doesn’t. It just lies there. I know that this animal is not real, so I try to ignore it. I try to read. Write. Watch a movie. Play a game. But I can’t focus. There’s a hungry predator on my table! It smiles at me, like a cat playing with a trapped mouse.

The fear fills my head. There’s no room for other thoughts. All I can do is look back at the beast. Look and wait.

It’s the spring of 2014. In two days I’m going to do something I’ve avoided for years: Fly on an airplane. I spend every waking minute of the following days in fear. The beast never lets me out of sight, not for a moment.

Anxiety disorders

Fear is supposed to be for children, but it’s young adults who tend to develop anxiety disorders. The most common anxiety disorders are social anxiety, where one fears other people, and specific phobias, where one fears a particular thing: Spiders, snakes, closed spaces, heights – or flying.

Specific phobias are quite simple disorders. They work in a simple way, and there’s a simple, but unpleasant, cure.

The phobia starts with something you find unpleasant. The reason you don’t like it doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do next: You start avoiding the thing you find unpleasant. Every time you face it you stop. You turn around, go away, and do something else.

Every time you do this, the fear grows stronger. Avoid it often enough, and the initial seed of unpleasantness may grow into a seemingly unbeatable phobia.

Fear is good

Fear is, for lack of a better word, good. Listen to your fear. If you suddenly start feeling scared, and you do not have an anxiety disorder, it is possible that you’ve noticed something important. You’re descended from animals that were very good at detecting dangerous situations. Respect that inheritance.

Fear is a powerful, unconscious reaction. It comes and goes as it pleases, and there’s nothing you can do to will it away. It’s like the reflex that makes you pull your hand away from a burning hot plate. When your fear detects that you are in danger, it puts you into survival mode. Your pulse increases. You become extra aware of your surroundings. You’re overwhelmed by a sense of “I. Do. Not. Want. To. Be. Here. Let. Me. Out. Of. Here. NOW!”

And then you do one of three things: You flee, fight, or play dead. This works. It is a strategy that has been developed by animals in danger of their lives through hundreds of millions of years. Fear is good. Fear keeps you from being eaten.

Cross-wired

But for some us, fear fails. The fear part of our minds can be quite stupid. Imagine that you once got stuck in an elevator. You were in no danger, but it was unpleasant, so you start feeling a little anxious about lifts. The next time, you choose to take the stairs. Now your fear observes your actions and thinks: “Aha! I knew it! Elevators are dangerous!” This makes you more anxious about elevators, which in turn makes you more likely to avoid them, which makes you more anxious. And so it continues, round and round, until you have a phobia.

It’s not your discomfort that causes the phobia, but your avoidance of the thing you fear. Fear reinforces itself. It balloons outwards, for as long as you allow it to. It eats up everything in its path, until you don’t only avoid the fearful thing itself, but anything that can remind you of it.

I almost never flew when I was a child. When I started flying as an adult, I thought the movements of the plane were unpleasant. They were abnormal, like nothing I was used to on the ground. I flew rarely, and every time I did, the discomfort and fear increased. Eventually I started saying no to interesting trips. When I did fly I would become more and more sensitive to the tiniest movements. After one particularly turbulent trip, I was barely in the air for years.

I used to be able to read books on planes. Now I would spend the entire trip in a desperate attempt to distract myself. I would put on a podcast, close my eyes, and flee into myself and hide until it was over.

But all fleeing makes the phobia stronger. Fleeing confirms the fear.

Anticipatory anxiety

Phobias affect you in two stages. The first is while you wait for the thing you fear, for instance if you have social anxiety and you know you’re going to hold a lecture tomorrow. This is called anticipatory anxiety. It may start hours, days or weeks before the event. It makes it hard to focus. All you can think about is the thing that will happen, and how much you wish you didn’t have to.

Anxiety is one of the most motivating forces there is. After a few days of anticipatory anxiety you’ll easily think of excuses to escape. You’re not really feeling well. It’s not all that important. Go ahead, cancel it, it’s okay! So you cancel the plane trip or the lecture, and at that moment an amazing sense of relief washes over you. The anxiety is gone! You feel strong and brave again, and you tell yourself that next time you’ll go through with it.

But you won’t. Next time will be harder.

The beast in the living room I described above is anticipatory anxiety, the way I’ve experienced it at its worst.

The fear you experience when you actually do the thing you’re afraid of is different. To me, it feels like being force-fed an unpleasant liquid. I swallow as fast as I can, but I can’t control when it starts or stops, or the volume. I’m fine right now, but what if there’s too much? What then? What if I can’t handle it? What if I panic? What if I go crazy?

Exposure

Phobias are simple, and the treatment is simple too: You need to expose yourself to the thing you fear. But don’t come here with your film clichés. If you know somebody with a phobia, please don’t tell them that “you just need to jump into it and learn that there’s nothing to fear!” They know that there is nothing to fear. They’ve already tried jumping into it. Possibly it made everything worse.

You don’t cure arachnophobia by bathing in spiders.

Exposure is a tool. It has to be used properly. You need help from somebody who knows what they’re doing. Therapy for a phobia may consist of learning more about the thing you fear, learning how phobias work, and learning breathing techniques that help you to calm down. You may learn thought patterns that steer your mind in the right direction. (Embrace uncertainty! Wish to be challenged!) You learn to observe yourself objectively. “Yes, I am afraid right now, but exactly how scared am I on a scale of 1 to 10?”

But sooner or later you’re going to have to face the thing you fear. Therapy cannot remove the fear, only prepare you to face it. Exposure works best gradually, with frequent, controlled amounts of discomfort. An exposure session is supposed to be unpleasant. You’re supposed to face something you’re not fully comfortable with. That’s the only way to learn.

The purpose of exposure is to learn. The learning happens after the session is over. Your fear thinks: “Yes, that was uncomfortable, but I managed to cope with it. It went pretty well.” So now the fear becomes weaker, and the next time you do it, it will be easier, and you can push the boundary a little further. All people with phobias have security blankets that they think they need in order to cope with the discomfort. Getting rid of these is part of the cure.

And finally, if you’re motivated enough, then you really can bathe in spiders. Phobias should be overtreated, so that you learn to love the thing you once feared. Otherwise they may return.

Flying

I didn’t go into therapy to cure my fear of flying, but I read everything I could find about phobias and anxiety. I found the articles on Anxieties.com and the book Mastering Your Fear and Phobias to be useful.

I learned that phobias are best treated with frequent, controlled, educational doses of discomfort. But this is difficult when you’re scared of flying. It’s too expensive to fly every day, and there is no way to gradually ease into a plane trip. You’re either up in the air or down on the ground. Nothing in between.

So I asked my doctor for sedatives that would reduce the anxiety. And then, in May 2014, I bought tickets for my first flight in nearly two years. Oslo to Stockholm. One of the shortest trips available. I spent the following days paralyzed by anticipatory anxiety. I used medication during the flight, but it didn’t really help. The fear was so strong that it cut through the haze, and dragged me into the awful now.

Three weeks later I flew to Dublin. I thought the second flight would be easier. It turned out to be worse. Now the anxiety began a week before the flight, and didn’t release its claws until we’d landed. I doubled the dose of sedatives, and I don’t remember much of the trip, other than that I hated every second of it.

I decided that three weeks was too long to wait between each trip. Exposure is supposed to happen frequently, so I increased the frequency. During the summer of 2014 I went on flights every one or two weeks. Up and down. Again and again. Copenhagen, Stavanger, Bergen, Gdansk, Berlin, Geneva, Nice.

New muscles

Gradually, I got better. The anticipatory anxiety disappeared almost completely. I was less fearful during the flight. It was as if I was building new muscles in my mind, one unpleasant workout at a time.

The effect was greatest at the beginning. After a while it slowed down. But I continued to fly. Over the last year, I have gone on plane trips every month. I took a break for two months, but the fear came back. You can’t kill phobias with one blow. You must be patient. So I’ve continued to fly, and will continue for a long time.

The fear hasn’t disappeared completely. I still find flying to be an unpleasant experience. I haven’t worked myself up to long distance flights yet.

But it worked. It worked.

I felt pretty tough after those first trips. I have never in my life done anything as brave as when I walked those steps towards the plane, while my inner two year old was screaming and my body was in “I’m about to get eaten by a tiger” mode. I know that I’m bragging, but it’s well deserved. Those of you who have or have had an anxiety disorder know what I mean. The rest of you will just have to try to forgive me.

But I’ve had it easy. Only the first few weeks of flying were truly horrible, and specific phobias are the kindest of all anxiety disorders. The others are much worse.

OCD and PTSD

PTSD. OCD. Panic attacks. Agoraphobia. It wasn’t until I began to treat my fear of flying that I got a small taste of what lies behind those words. It was as if I went on a summer vacation to Hell, and discovered that some people are permanent residents.

All anxiety disorders are somewhat similar, because they’re all caused by cross-wiring in the part of your mind that deals with fear. OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, gives you anxiety when you fail to conduct certain rituals over and over again, such as washing your hands or checking that the door is locked. The rituals are absurd, but there’s a logic to them: It is possible that you forgot to lock your door. The possibility causes anxiety. The anxiety motivates you to check if the door is locked. Checking confirms and reinforces the fear, and so you have to check the door the next time too.

When you suffer from PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder, fear is triggered by something that reminds you of a traumatic experience, such as abuse, violence, or an accident. You’re held captive by your own memories, and these memories can be triggered by everyday events. You start avoiding situations that may trigger the memories, which reinforces the fear.

Panic attacks are episodes of extreme fear that strike you suddenly, without cause. You may be out on the street, in an elevator, or in a mall. Suddenly your body reacts as if you are in mortal peril. You think you’re going to die. Perhaps you’re alone, surrounded by strangers who don’t understand what is happening to you. They may think you’re drunk or dangerous. Or they want to help, but make everything worse.

Panic attacks can last from minutes to hours. I have never experienced one myself, not even when I’m flying. But a friend of mine, who describe panic attacks as the worst experience you can imagine, have them so often that it has triggered an even worse anxiety disorder: Agoraphobia.

Agoraphobia

All anxiety disorders are awful, but there is something uniquely cruel about agoraphobia. At its worst, it is a kind of super phobia that attaches itself to so many different situations that you end up being stuck in your own home. It may start with a panic attack in a shopping mall. This makes you anxious about shopping malls. Then you have another one while driving. This makes you afraid to drive. You stop visiting malls, you stop driving. But the panic attacks keep on coming.

Each panic attack creates more anxiety. Fear eats your life. You become extra sensitive to the signals your body is sending. If your pulse increases you may think: “Oh no, I’m getting another panic attack!” This fear creates more fear, which triggers an actual panic attack, which reinforces the anxiety the next time you get a high pulse. You become afraid of fear. Afraid of even thinking about anxiety.

The circle of situations you feel safe in becomes smaller and smaller, until the only place you can tolerate to be in is your own home. Imagine the thing you fear the most, such as spiders. Imagine that the whole world consists of this. The whole world, except for your home, is covered with spiders.

All anxiety disorders can be treated, but the road is difficult. My agoraphobiac friend has lived almost as if in a prison for several years.

A dark parallel reality

I didn’t truly know fear until I began to cure my fear of flying. Now we’re on speaking terms, my anxiety and I. We have learned to respect each other. But I don’t have to face it very often any more. I felt sorry for myself when I started this treatment, but I’ve learned that I’m one of the lucky ones.

I’ve also discovered that something odd happens when I talk openly about my fears. People I thought I knew start to tell me about their own dark sides. Anxiety, depression, panic attacks. It’s like opening the door to a hidden parallel reality where everything is darkness.

I’ve made some visits to that dark reality over the past year. But others go there more often, and some live there permanently, and can’t find their way out.

But out in the sunlight reality everything is summer and joy, and nobody notices the ones who have gone missing.

[Originally published in Norwegian in Aftenposten.]

08Nov

Hope, heroes and useless optimism – A report from Oslo Freedom Forum 2014

“What is it that drives these people?” I thought. “Where do they find their strength?”

Oslo Freedom Forum gathers activists for freedom and democracy from all over the world. The theme of this year’s conference was “Defeating dictators”. Speaker after speaker talked about how they’ve confronted tyrants in their home countries. Many of them have been imprisoned. They live in fear of their lives. They’ve been beaten up, exiled, tortured, and raped. They’ve been through Hell.

Now they were all on the same stage, telling their stories.

The story that touched me the most was that of Marcela Turati Muñoz (7:06), a journalist who covers the drug war in Mexico. More than a hundred thousand people have been killed in fighting between the government and drug gangs over the last decade. Journalists who write about these killings are threatened, tortured, and murdered.

Muñoz describes herself as a war correspondent. She covers a war with no front lines and no clear rules. Any story you write about the drug war can be the one that gets you killed. Some journalists have left Mexico, others have given up journalism. As the media falls silent, the violence becomes invisible. People die, but nobody hears about it. It’s like turning off the lights in a house full of monsters.

She had the cautious and tired voice of someone who has cried much over lost friends, and knows that one day it may be her own turn.

What is it that drives these people? Where do they find their strength?

Yeonmi Park from North Korea spoke about learning what freedom is in the least free country in the world. Her first lessons came from the black market. When you trade, she says, you must think for yourself. It changes you. Another eye-opener was the movie Titanic, because it was a love story. Love of something other than the state and the Leader does not officially exist in North Korea. Love is revolutionary.

After her escape she read George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Only then did she fully understand the nature of the Kim dynasty.

Today she lives in Seoul, where she helps other North Korea refugees adapt to life in freedom. Refugees travel a long road out of North Korea. Geographically, it goes north through China, where many end up as debt slaves. Psychologically, the road is even longer. Arriving in South Korea is a culture shock.

Hyeonseo Lee (50:25) too survived the trip to South Korea, and learned that the Kims are not gods. Then she returned, to help her family escape.

What is it that drives these people? Where do they find their strength?

It’s always easier to obey those who have power. It’s the safe option.

Between sessions I met a Swede. I told him, reluctantly, what I’ve been writing about Swedish politics lately. I’ve argued that the political correctness of Sweden’s media over immigration is to blame for the rise of the Swedish Democrats, a radical anti-immigration and anti-Islamic party that is now Sweden’s third largest.

Sweden’s progressive elites are touchy about this subject, which they see as a fight between good and evil. I expected a tense reaction. But no, he agreed. He had thought a lot about this, and he talked at length about the subject.

And then, without much shame, he said that he would of course never say anything like this out loud in Sweden. It was an absurd moment. Were we at the same conference? Had we just watch the same speeches?

What is it that he lacks, that the speakers at OFF have? Where do some people find the strength to risk torture, while others fall silent for fear of hard words?

Iyad El-Baghdadi is an Arab Spring activist who was recently forced to leave the United Arab Emirates. After the conference, he applied for asylum in Norway. He calls himself an Islamic libertarian. He believes that the reason that the Arab Spring failed was that the democratic activists didn’t know what they wanted to achieve with their protests.

The protesters knew how to fill the streets, but that was all they were good at. Only the Islamists and the tyrants had a vision for what would happen after the protests were over. So that’s what they got. More of the same. More fanaticism and more tyranny.

He is now writing an Arab Spring Manifesto, for use during the next uprising. In the most powerful moment of his OFF speech, he spoke directly to his newborn son. I would rather that you die young, he said, than for you to grow up to become another of those cowards who gave us the Arab world that we have today.

In an interview, he says he wants to promote a rational Islam that is able to observe itself critically. He believes Muslims will want this, if they can only be convinced that it is possible.

Norway has been ambivalent about the Oslo Freedom Forum, which does not spring from its own human rights community, but from a Venezuelan of Norwegian ancestry, Thor Halvorssen Mendoza. Norwegians feel more comfortable talking about peace and development than freedom, in any case. Some suspect that OFF’s focus on “freedom” is some kind of right-wing Venezuelan plot.

But OFF has proven its critics wrong by consistently inviting some of the most important and interesting freedom activists in the world. What makes the conference so exciting is that so many of the speakers are personally involved in the conflicts they talk about. They’re not academics and pundits. They’ve been to prison. They’ve been tortured. Many in the audience have too.

OFF is sometimes compared to the World Economic Forum at Davos, but that’s unfair to OFF. There are very few “Davos men” there.

But there are some. Jeffrey Wright (38:15), an American actor, began his speech by making fun of American actors who show up at human rights conferences to talk about themselves. He then proceeded to talk about himself, before ending with some platitudes about Ebola.

And after two days in darkness, Steven Pinker (53:18) ended the conference on a happy note. Yes, he said, it is true that in the short term the bad guys often win. The battle for freedom and democracy is an uphill struggle. But in the long term, we have every reason to be optimistic.

Pinker brought out his graphs. Here, he said, is a long term trend line that points upward. And here is another one. Peace, democracy, and everything nice has been making progress, in the long term. And if we simply extend these trends into the future, (and why shouldn’t we?), the lines will surely go even further up than they are now. Oh joy!

Pinker’s optimism felt out of place at the OFF. It was as if he was taking part in a different conversation than the rest of the speakers, the kind people in safe countries have among themselves when, after a summer of particularly grotesque events, they hunger for a dose of contrarian optimism.

His graphs reflect the emergency of liberal democracy. Why should we assume that this story will repeat itself? Pinker speaks seriously about “historical forces”. There’s no such thing, and if there were, there’s no reason to think they would be on our side.

More importantly: Pinker’s optimism is useless. I do not believe that this kind of optimism is where the activists at OFF find their strength.

When I left El-Baghdadi’s speech, I overheard someone calling him an optimist. After all, he is still confident about the potential of the Arab Spring. His was the most electrifying speech at the conference. “Those who love liberty must learn to organize just as well as those who love tyranny”, he said. He spoke like a revolutionary leader in exile. “We are the future”.

He and his rational Islamic libertarians may very well be the future. I hope so. But his passion is something else entirely than Pinker’s abstract optimism. Let us call it hope. Hope is what gives you the strength to carry on when everything goes against you. Your revolution failed, the bad guys won, but you’re still fighting. That’s called hope. You can have hope and optimism at the same time, but optimism is fragile. It shatters against the rocks of reality. Hope doesn’t.

Optimists don’t need hope. They think the “historical forces” are on their side. It may be true that tyranny will disappear in the long term. But in the short term, the tyrants have the power to destroy your life. They can harass you, exile you, imprison you, or kill you. In order to defy them you need something more powerful than a cheerful long-term trend line. You need hope.

You also need ideals that you believe are worth being destroyed for.

There were plenty of such ideals on display at OFF this year. OFF is a freedom conference. All the speakers are fighting for freedom in one form or another: Personal freedom. Political freedom. Freedom of speech. In order to secure these freedoms for others, they are willing to sacrifice what little freedom they have themselves.

The father of Ti-Anna Wang (20:00) was kidnapped from Vietnam in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison for his activism against the Communist Party dictatorship in China. She has been working for his release ever since. But, she told the audience at OFF, her fight often seems futile. It’s little but year after year of press conferences that don’t lead anywhere. She finds her strength in the belief that she is on the right side of history. It’s an honor, she believes, to make her own small contribution to the progress of humanity.

Activists need hope, and hope is created by heroes. Think back to times in your own life when you’ve fought for something against all odds. Why didn’t you give up? What gave you hope? For many, it may have been a story about somebody else who overcame a difficult challenge. A sports hero, perhaps, or an artist, a thinker, an activist, a religious figure. They didn’t give up, so why should you?

We humans are easy to motivate. When the right inspirational story strikes roots in us, it can feed our hopes for decades.

The wrong story can do the same, with disastrous results. When Suleiman Bakhit asked children in Jordan who their heroes were, they answered Al-Zarqawi and Bin Laden. They didn’t know of any other heroes. They had never heard of Batman and Spider-Man. So he decided to create the first Arab super hero comics. One of his comic books is about an all-female Jordanian anti-terror unit. His goal is to give children an alternative to the mythology of the extremists.

Grown-ups prefer heroes from real life. We find them in a mythical version of our own history. When Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina from Pussy Riot were put on trial, they modelled their behavior on Russia’s tsarist and Soviet dissidents. Heroes inspire heroes, who in turn inspire more heroes. When the history of the powerful dictator Vladimir Putin is written, the one story everyone will include is of the time he was humiliated by a group of masked girls.

As I watched the speakers at OFF, I realized that I was probably watching the future national heroes of their countries. Turkey will remember Erdem Gunduz (28:35), “The Standing Man”. Cuba will honor Yoani Sánchez, the blogger behind Generation Y. Perhaps. Or they will be forgotten, and rediscovered by historians in a better future. I hope.

Even Mikhail Khodorkovsky had the appearance of a hero, as he stood there on stage. Maybe it was the lighting, or the visuals, or just the whole context. The kindest thing that can be said about what he was up to in the 1990s is that he was among the less dirty of the Russian oligarchs. There was nothing heroic about it. But now he has spent a decade in prison for getting in Putin’s way. He’s fighting for a democratic Russia. So he gets invited up on stage, with the heroes.

What makes someone a hero isn’t their goodness, but their ability to inspire others. Heroes aren’t saints, otherwise there wouldn’t be any. But I am skeptical of Khodorkovsky’s ability to inspire Russians. I suspect he’s the kind of enemy Putin prefers: One that reminds Russians of the humiliating chaos he “rescued” them from.

In any case, all heroes are regular human beings when you look behind the mask. Tearing masks of heroes is something we need to do from time to time, as a kind of mythological spring cleaning. We must bust their myths. We need to know that our national heroes and founding fathers were human, that Churchill and Roosevelt and other “great people” were flawed.

Otherwise their myths will grow corrupt, and sell out to the powerful, who will use them for their own ends. War heroes inspire patriotism, but are also used to start bad wars. This creates more war heroes, who are then used to start more bad wars. Heroic myths are powerful. Heroic myths can be dangerous.

Yulia Marushevska (3:50) said in her speech that she believes the “Heavenly Hundred”, the martyrs who died during the Euromaidan protests, were sent from Heaven, and that they now watch over the new Ukraine as angels. How long will it take before such hero worship becomes a tool the powerful can use to stifle dissent? Ukrainians should bust such myths before it’s too late.

But we do need heroes. When times are at their darkest, it is heroes that inspire us to hope, and hope gives us strength to act. If your country becomes a dictatorship, who do you think will prove most useful? A cynic, or somebody who believes in heroes?

Heroes are real, as long as we remember what they really are: People who inspire others. That is all they are, but it’s often all we need.

Jamila Raqib (38:10) said that it was the civil disobedience of Norwegian teachers during the Nazi occupation that inspired Gene Sharp to study non-violent resistance movements. He learned that dictatorships are weaker than they appear. But you must attack them at their weakest point. If you use violence, you’re attacking them where they’re strongest. There are better ways.

Today, Sharp’s theories are used by activists all over the world, such as those who overthrew Milosevic in 2000. This is one of Norway’s small contributions to world freedom. And with Oslo Freedom Forum, we have, reluctantly, and through little effort of our own, made another.

Originally published in Aftenposten.

More articles by Bjørn Stærk. Also read Warblog: Armchair Generals of the War on Terror, available for Kindle and other formats.

26Oct

New ebook single – Warblog: Armchair Generals of the War on Terror

The “warbloggers” who emerged after the September 11 attacks believed that the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq could trigger a humanistic and democratic reformation of the Islamic world. They were wrong, but not alone. Their optimism reflected an old and powerful Western fantasy: That liberal democracy is natural, inevitable, and appealing to all people everywhere.

Seen through the eyes of one of the original warbloggers, this is the story of the amateurs who wanted to prove that they were just as good as the professionals. And they were: Just as bad at predicting the outcome of the War on Terror as the Bush administration, and just as lazy as the mainstream media.

Available for Kindle at Amazon, and other formats at Smashwords.

11Dec

Norway’s Choices

Should Europe’s leading immigration country preserve what makes it unique or embrace post-nationalism?

Read the essay in the World Policy Journal, Winter 2013/2014.

10Aug

The politics and psychology of self-help

The self-help movement has its fair share of nonsense, but its more modest claims are now being confirmed by psychologists. 

There is always a self-help book on the bestseller lists. In one of the most popular books in Norway at the moment, Erik Bertrand Larssen claims that you can “become best with mental training“. Larssen argues that it’s the many small choices you make every day that determine whether you reach your long term goals. Inborn talent and environment may give you a good start in life, but real success comes from controlling your thoughts. You are stronger and more resilient than you think you are. You can take more.  You can do more.

The unending cheerfulness of mental coaches and self-help authors tends to bring out the pessimist in me. I once listened to the motivational speaker Randi Skaug, who has climbed tall mountains, and now goes around to dull corporate seminars to share what it feels like to be at the top of the world. It feels awesome, she says. Stand up, she commands us, and roar out in search of that feeling in yourselves! I remember standing there with people roaring all around me, everyone cheering on command, thinking: But I don’t want to feel awesome. Too much confidence makes me behave like an idiot. I need my doubt and pessimism in order to function. Leave me alone.

Many of the ideas that circulate among mental coaches and self-help authors are nonsense, and anyone who has been to a few revival meetings will recognize the style at motivational seminars. The best that can be said for some of these people is that they believe their own bullshit. The worst, that they don’t. But I do have a lot of respect for the readers of self-help books. These are people who recognize that there are parts of their lives that need improvement, and then search for a plan to make it happen.

This is a humble and courageous thing to do, and more people should be doing it.

Unfortunately they are often rewarded with bad advice. Millions of people have learned from The Secret that the universe listens when you think happy thoughts. In the years that follow, the universe then teaches them otherwise. These people deserve better.

The wrong question

Other self-help books answer the wrong question, or they help you achieve the wrong goals. If you happen to weigh a few kilos over the norm you’ll easily find books that will help you to shed them, (at least temporarily). But perhaps what you really need to read is a book that will tell you that a little overweight isn’t dangerous, and that exposing your body to regular crash diets is a lot worse. Instead of encouraging your dangerous goal of looking like a model, dieting books should tell you to be physically active and eat differently because it makes you happy and healthy, and never mind the weight.

Perhaps books on getting rich should remind you to spend more time with friends and family, and books on being efficient should tell you that you’re working on too many projects, and should abandon some of them. And any book that tells you it’s possible to live without pain should come with the label “Warning: Does not apply to our reality.”

The self-help movement wants to help you reach your goals, but what if your goals are harmful to yourself or the people around you? The murderous cult leader Charles Manson learned how to “win friends” and “influence people” from Dale Carnegie’s self-help course.

Priests and moral philosophers, predecessors of today’s mental coaches, were less timid. They told you which goals to have as well. They talked about duty and sacrifice. People today choose their own goals. They just want help in reaching them. Is your goal to make the world a better place? We can help you with that, says the self-help movement. Or is your goal to become rich and famous? We can help you with that as well. Pick the book that fits your goal.

Implicit individualism

Self-help is a non-political and individualistic idea. When everyone thinks only about how to improve their own lives, political reform movements are unlikely to follow.

One of the roots of self-help is Stoicism. Roman Stoics like Epictetus were read throughout the Middle Ages and almost up to our own time. They taught that you should seek happiness not in what is outside of you, but in your own thoughts and choices, because these are the only things you are in full control of. As long as you are conscious of the power of choice, nothing that comes from the outside can upset you. Others may harm you, but it is up to you whether you bear it or break down.

Stoicism will be of help to you if you suffer injustice, but it will not motivate you to do anything about its cause. Stoics are not radicals or revolutionaries. They are too content.

And when Samuel Smiles published Self-Help in Victorian Britain, introducing the modern use of the term, his message was explicitly liberal, almost to the point of laissez-faire. He saw self-help as an alternative to politics, an alternative to placing your faith in systems, nations and great leaders. He argued that all good things in society come from individuals with good habits and good character. If we create an overly active state it would replace character building with institutions, thus undermining its own foundation.

Self-Help consists of inspirational biographies of great scientists, engineers and artists, who made up for their often humble origins by cultivating good habits and good morals, by being hungry for knowledge, and by working patiently towards worthy goals. Smiles’ heroes were threads in a social web, not modern individualists, but today’s self-help books are written over the same template: Look to great people and learn from them. And don’t wait for political reforms to save you.

The dark side of life

It’s not surprising that those who have more faith in political reforms than in character building are skeptical of the self-help movement, particularly that segment of it that tells you that anything is possible if you sit down quietly and think very positive thoughts. It’s not working? Hope harder.

When Barbara Ehrenreich got breast cancer she found herself instructed by a unanimous breast cancer community to look at the bright side of cancer, and think positive thoughts. She objected. She couldn’t find a bright side of cancer. The experience was actually pretty awful.

Her response was to write Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, an indictment of the excessively positive thinking that characterizes much of the self-help movement. She traces it from the Christian Science movement, which believed that disease could be cured with the power of thought, to Enron, who fired the pessimists who could have prevented their fall, and positive psychology, the great psychological trend of the 2000s. Ehrenreich argues that positive thinking does not liberate people, but tricks them into thinking that there are no political solutions to their problems.

Self-helpers and political reformers are actually not quite as bitter enemies as one might think. They both believe that man can, and should, be improved. For a long time psychology seemed more interested in proving that you were doomed to remain as you were. If you were born into the wrong race, you were doomed to be genetically inferior. If your head was the wrong shape, you were doomed to become a criminal. And to the conservative aristocracy, self-help and political agitation were equally distasteful, because they encouraged low-born people to rise above their station. Self-helpers and reformers thus have a common enemy, and share a common belief: That people can, and should, aim high in life.

The conflict between them is over where to draw the line. Which kinds of improvements are the responsibility of individuals, and which of society? This conflict has usually been won by the political reformers, who have steadily increased the extent of what the state is meant to help you with. This has made the road to a good life easier, and less dependent on character. Smiles would have been appalled.

The things you can’t redistribute

But perhaps the reform project has now reached its zenith. It can’t go any further up. Society can achieve much by building good institutions and redistributing wealth, but we can’t redistribute the health benefit of being physically active, or the knowledge you get from reading a book.

We can build libraries, or attempt to even out the socioeconomic factors that increase the likelihood of reading books, but unless you take the time to actually pick up a book and read it, none of this will benefit you. Our hospitals can go to great expense to fix your body when your life of laziness catches up with you in a couple of decades, but you would be much better off if you could muster up the motivation to get off the couch right now and start moving.

Society can’t help you with these things. Only you can do that, and if you must resort to annoyingly cheerful self-help books and mental coaches to achieve this, then so be it.

And, interestingly, psychologists have begun to confirm many of the more modest claims of the self-help movement. They’re now following in the footsteps of Stoics and Victorian character builders, and are rediscovering dusty ideals like willpower, good habits, and good mindsets.

The power of will and habit

Willpower is your ability to sacrifice short-term goals in order to reach long-term goals. People who have this ability do better in life than those who don’t. According to one theory, willpower is like a muscle, it gets tired with use, but can be strengthened with training. The psychologist behind this theory, Roy Baumeister, sees this as a vindication of Victorian character building.

There are some problems with this theory, particularly the claim that willpower can be replenished by eating. Other psychologists find that willpower is not a limited resource, but that it depends on your attitude – you have the willpower you think you have.

In any case, the most important thing you can use your willpower for is to build good habits, as Charles Duhigg covers in The Power of Habit. Habits are all those things you do without thinking. Habits are triggered by a particular cue – a time of day, an emotion, an event – and then you respond to that cue by doing what you normally do, without thinking much about it.

Habits are often formed unintentionally, but it is also possible for you to deliberately create or change habits. This requires a lot of effort and willpower in the beginning, but once your new habit is in place, it will be easier to follow it than it will be to break it. A good habit thus gives you many good things in life almost for free, while bad habits can destroy you.

Growth-oriented mindsets

There is also a lot of interesting research into the power of mindsets. In her book Mindset, the psychologist Carol Dweck divides people into two groups: Those with a fixed mindset, and those with a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset believe that their abilities are something they simply have, and can’t do much to change. They may believe that they “are” intelligent, and thus do not need to work very hard to reach their goals. And if you “are” intelligent, and somebody criticizes you, you’ll interpret it as an attack on your core identity, not as useful feedback. Or they may think that they “are” stupid, and that there’s no point in even trying to learn difficult things.

Growth oriented people believe that all abilities must be cultivated, and that they can learn almost anything with a bit of effort. They believe that you become good at what you work hard to achieve, and it is never too late in life to learn something new. When they meet failure or criticism, they ask if there is anything they can learn from it.

According to Dweck, people with growth mindsets do better than those with fixed mindsets in most areas of life. Also, their view of the mind happens to be correct. Not everything in your mind is changeable, but with effort and motivation, surprisingly much is.

Dweck says that parents should never praise their children for being smart, but for working hard. This will teach them the right mindset.

Back to start

New psychological research should always be read with caution. Much of it may not survive a decade or two. But it’s interesting to observe that many psychologists now agree with what the more modest self-help books have recommended since the start: Build your character with good habits and effort, and you’ll be well prepared to reach your goals.

And what about Erik Bertrand Larssen, the bestselling Norwegian self-help author who claims you can become best with mental training? I like his book. It deals with many of the same themes – habits, willpower, long-term thinking. But it’s too oriented towards management and sports for my taste. Carol Dweck’s Mindset fits me better.

And I rather like Samuel Smiles’ old tribute to the heroes of the industrial revolution. I prefer self-help authors who say that not all goals are admirable, and that it is more important to have character than to “become best”.

[Translated from Aftenposten.no, August 7, 2013, Å tenke seg bedre.]

15Jun

The impossibilities of global migration

[Translated from Aftenposten.no, Migrasjonens umuligheter, June 3, 2013]

Norway needs a new immigration policy. But the dilemmas of global migration ensure that no matter which direction we choose to go in, somebody will be paying a heavy price for it – with their money, health or conscience.

Norway is now an immigration country. We have been one for a while, but have failed to acknowledge the scale of it. We currently have one of the fastest growing populations in Europe. It increased by 1.31% in 2012, which along with 2011 saw Norway’s fastest population growth since 1920. Immigration accounts for 72% of this growth. It passed 50% in the mid-2000s, and has stayed there ever since.

This is a lot of immigration by Norwegian standards, which was basically homogenous until the 1970s. It is also a lot by European standards. It is even a lot compared to the country most of us think of as a typical “immigration country”, the United States in the decades around 1900. At that time, the American population grew faster, at about 2% a year, but immigration accounted for only 30% of this growth, compared to our 72%. In fact, only in the 1850s did the U.S. have a higher net immigration rate than Norway does today: 10 immigrants annually per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to our 9.4.

Most of the immigrants we receive are labor migrants: 50,000 in 2012. 6,000 refugees were also granted residency, as well as 24,000 through family reunions, half of them from outside the EU. Poland is the largest source of migrants to Norway, with 11,000 in 2012. Sweden, Lithuania, Denmark and Somalia are next at the top of the list.

Such figures can be hard to grasp. It’s easier if you translate them into towns you are familiar with. I grew up in Halden, a typical small town in south-east Norway, with 30,000 inhabitants. Norway received 47,000 net immigrants (in minus out) in 2012 alone, or 1.5 Haldens. By comparison, Norway’s total population is only 5 million, or 169 Haldens. Immigration has been at this level since 2007.

Growing pains

It is difficult for a country to grow this fast. Even if we did everything right, there would still be growing pains in the forms of investments in infrastructure and public services. But there are strong indications that we’re not doing everything right, and that we have created an immigration system that is economically unsustainable. The Norwegian welfare state, one of the most expansive in the world, is designed to transfer wealth from those who have much to those who have little. Most immigrants fall in the latter group, and many fail to find their way out of it. According to the newspaper Finansavisen, Statistics Norway estimates that each additional non-Western immigrant adds a “cost” of 4.1 million NOK (€537,000) to society over the 2013-2100 period, as measured in expected tax revenues minus public spending. Even Eastern European migrant workers end up in minus: 0.8 million NOK (€105,000).

The problem is the labor force participation rate, which is lower, and slopes off earlier. Some immigrant groups do quite well. Men from Sri Lanka work more than Norwegians. But only 23% of Somali women are employed. Both of these groups consist primarily of refugees, but Somali refugees seem to end up on the outside of the labor market. They are not alone. There are 122,000 immigrants in what Statistics Norway calls the “problem group” that have greatest difficulties in entering the labor market, with a participation rate of only 41%. True, it’s not easy getting native Norwegians to work either. Arguably our entire economic model is unsustainable, because people vote themselves more welfare entitlements while simultaneously growing too old to pay for them. But immigration, as we do it today, isn’t helping.

There’s also the problem of ethnic segregation. The government insists that Norway is not becoming a segregated country, but white Norwegians behave as if they disagree, and continue to abandon what they consider immigrant areas. Immigration is all well in principle, they seem to be saying, but I’m not going to send my children to a school where most of the children come from foreign-language homes. If this process continues, segregation will eventually be a fact in Oslo, whether we admit it or not.

Am I painting an excessively bleak picture? Possibly. The last word has not been spoken on the fate of Norway’s immigrants. The strange thing, though, is that while Norway’s immigration pessimists were long dismissed as being irrational, anecdote-driven xenophobes, while the optimists supposedly had facts and science on their side, today it’s increasingly the other way around. It’s pessimists like Christian Skaug and Nina Hjerpset-Østlie at Document, and Rita Karlsen at Human Rights Service, who have full mastery of the statistics of immigration, while the optimists get carried away by hopeful anecdotes, and offer dubious figures that do not stand up to scrutiny. The optimists will have to make a real effort if they intend to become relevant again.

The guest worker who returned home

Since Norway has no experience with this level of immigration, it should surprise no one that we’re bad at it. It would be nice if we had someone to learn from, a country that does immigration right, and can teach us how to get the best of everything: Immigration that is economically sustainable, does not cause segregation, allows us to keep our welfare state and economic equality, holds the door open for people in great need, and sends those we cannot receive away in a humane manner.

But I have found no such model country to learn from. This is not because immigration is rare. 3% of the world’s people are immigrants. Everyone has an immigration policy. But none of them are without a dark side. Whether you go for a strict immigration policy or a liberal one, there is always a depressing price to pay – for the immigration country, for the immigrants, or for both.

Some immigration skeptics argue that Norway should learn from Asian countries, which tend to have immigration policies that are the exact reverse of our own. They reject all forms of permanent immigration. They have no interest in new citizens who expand their cultural diversity. They feel they have enough diversity as it is. All they want it guests who stay for a while, and then return home to where they came from.

This applies even to refugees. Pakistan has the largest refugee population in the world. Somewhere between 1.7 and 2.7 million Afghans live in refugee camps, many since the 1980s. But integrating them as permanent members of Pakistani society, the way refugees are in Europe, is unthinkable. They are only temporary guests, and nothing more. Similarly, 1.4 million Palestinians still live in refugee camps in the Middle East, three generations after the 1948 war with Israel. Jordan has granted citizenship to many, but in Lebanon they face systematic discrimination.

Migrant workers too are treated as temporary guests in Asian countries, and may stay no longer than their job requires them to. They’re to come when they are needed, offer their labor, and return home. This is easier said than done. The guest worker who actually returns home afterwards is the Holy Grail of immigration policy – many have searched for it, but given up in disappointment. West Germany invited several hundred thousand Turkish guest workers in the 1950s and 60s, and thought they would return home by themselves. They didn’t. Instead, they invited their families over, and became a permanent part of German society.

Germany’s “mistake” was to treat the guest workers as human beings who had rights like anyone else. Migrant workers are not robots, but people. They want their families to live with them, and the longer they stay, the more they grow attached to their new society. Asia has learned from this “mistake”. Their migrant workers may not bring their families with them. Their residency depends on their employment, and they have few or no rights. If your boss fires you, you’re out. Employers take advantage of the power this gives them. Horror stories about mistreated servants abound.

Should we grant Norwegian employers similar power? It would take great faith in their benevolence to think that they would not abuse it. And what effect does it have on a society when it treats migrant workers as harshly as they apparently must be, if you wish to ensure that they return home later? What does this to do the self-image of the native master race?

Norway has already taken steps in this direction. Like everywhere else, our immigrants tend to get jobs with low pay and low status, and Norwegians are now acquiring the habit of speaking dismissively about hiring a “Pole” or a “Filipino” to do our menial tasks. When some immigrant groups in addition are poorly integrated, this exacerbates the problem, and if we were to import an underclass of guest workers who would never be allowed to rise above their station, we would be taking a big leap towards the master mentality. What will we think of future generations of white Norwegians who have grown up in a country where class and skin color are the same thing? Will we like them?

No, I don’t believe Asia has the immigration policy we’re looking for. If we are to have immigration, then give us citizens, not servants.

The American immigrant dream

The United States has had more success in turning immigrants into citizens, but at the price of a smaller welfare state, economic inequality, and a constant pressure from below against native low-wage workers. Personally I find this acceptable, but most Norwegians are quite proud and happy with their welfare programs, and would like to keep them intact. You’ll sometimes hear immigration liberals on the right who argue that immigration is not a problem, because all we need to do is to dismantle the welfare state. But they have no credible plan for how to do this, against the wishes of an overwhelming majority. In any case, it’s dishonest to use immigration to force this on a society that does not want it.

And although the U.S. is a successful and experienced immigration country, there too immigration is marked by brutality and suffering. The reason is the same as everywhere else: There are more people who want to live in the U.S. than they want to receive. So they sneak in, to an uncertain existence as illegal immigrants. There may be 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., most of them from Latin America. They live in hope of another amnesty, like the ones that gave legal residency to 2.8 million people in 1986, and 1 million in 1997. But the U.S. is not, and does not want to be, a country with unrestricted immigration. They want control over their own borders – particularly after September 11.

Immigrants pay the price. In 1990 it was feasible for a Mexican to cross the U.S. border without aid. Then border control was tightened. Border guards increased in number and effectiveness, closing off the easiest and safest routes. This did not put an end to illegal immigration, it just made it more expensive and dangerous. 4-500 people die annually while attempting to cross the border. Hiring a smuggler can cost you $3-5,000 – a considerable sum to recoup down at the bottom of society.

This is the biggest unsolved problem in immigration policy: When the desire to migrate is strong enough, there is no humane way of controlling your borders. You must choose: Do you want a high volume of immigrants, or do you want heavily indebted immigrants who risk their lives? And you may end up with both.

On the boat to Lampedusa

Europe faces the same dilemma. One of the major migration routes into Europe runs from West Africa across the Sahara, to North Africa, and then on to Italy, Spain and Greece. There are many variations of this route. The most comfortable is to arrive “legally” on a tourist visa or false papers, before seeking asylum or disappearing into the informal economy. But the poorest Africans travel in small, overcrowded boats, often to the Italian island of Lampedusa, halfway between Sicily and Libya.

This is a dangerous trip, but if you have come this far you already have months or years of toil behind you, and you do not scare easily. You have crossed the Sahara. You have paid off corrupt officials. You have taken odd jobs to finance the next step of your journey. If you get so far that you see the Mediterranean, you’re one of the lucky ones.

Many imagine that these routes are controlled by a kind of mafia of human traffickers who shovel boatloads of slave laborers into Europe, but this is rarely the case. Human smuggling is certainly organized, but usually only one step at a time. You jump from one place to the next, hoping to find a way forward. Most Africans do not, and fall off along the way.

And it’s not necessarily “organized crime” that organizes this, but a migration industry that is really as diverse as any other industry. It contains actors who sell papers, information, or transportation. And it contains rogue actors who will swindle you out of your money and labor, and give nothing in return.

A competent human smuggler may be a criminal in the eyes of the state, but in the eyes of the migrant they offer a valuable service, and will charge accordingly. Migrants often finance their journeys by going heavily into debt. This does not make them slaves, but it does make them vulnerable. Their creditors may use violence and intimidation to collect their money – often targeting their family in the home country.

The line between debt and slavery is a bit hazy. Nigerian women are not happy to end up selling sex on the streets of Oslo, while they repay their debt and hope for a better opportunity. But they would rather try than return home, and do not live up to the trafficking stereotype. Burmese women who end up in brothels in Thailand have it far worse. They too have a “debt” they must repay, but it’s the kind of debt that binds you to a life of exploitation.

Perhaps the border between debt and slavery goes by whether you choose or is chosen for, but in any case, at the bottom of society, outside the well-lit premises of civilized banks, debt is a deadly serious matter. It always has been.

Migration entrepreneurs

Border control does work, but not in the way we wish it to. There are many myths about immigration to rich countries. One of them is that the migrants come to us like an unstoppable tsunami, fleeing from poverty. Another myth is that rich countries can choose exactly how much immigration they want.

To clear up these myths it can help to consider migration from an economic perspective. Imagine a global migration industry, where some people make money by facilitating migration, and others make money by controlling it. The industry feeds on the money of both those who would want to migrate, and those who would want to prevent them. It pits big dreams against powerful interests, and there is a lot of money in circulation. The money finds its way to illegal operators like smugglers and document forgers, but also to legal ones such as border guards and purveyors of labor migration.

As an entrepreneur in this industry you may one day see a new opportunity, one where you can make money by facilitating one step of a migration route. You succeed at this. Many migrants request your service, and your business grows. Competitors arrive, and start fighting you for market share.

In Lima, Peru, there is a street with hundreds of providers of fake documents of all kinds. They live in symbiosis with corrupt officials, and have long been the first stop on the journey for Peruvians who wish to migrate to Italy and Spain. False documents do not just spontaneously come into existence. Somebody has to create them. Likewise, the boats Africans travel to Lampedusa in are not created out of thin air. They are offered by Libyan fishermen. Migrants are no tsunami. They follow roads built by entrepreneurs, making economic decisions along the way.

These roads may be closed off, because on the receiving end, too, there are entrepreneurs, who look for creative ways to control migration. The result is an arms race between these two sides, where more effort and more money on one side puts pressure on the other to keep up. This drives up prices, but because so much is at stake, the willingness to pay is high – on both sides. A Chinese migrant may pay tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled into the U.S. or Europe.

The price is not only monetary. Migrants also pay with their lives and their health, and rich countries pay with their conscience. In 2000, 58 Chinese migrants suffocated in a truck that was headed for the U.K. Hundreds of Africans drown every year while crossing the Mediterranean. Every control measure comes with a dark price. The Friendship Treaty between Italy and Libya in 2008 reduced the number of boat migrants significantly. The conscience price for this was that Libya placed the migrants in internment camps. Europe outsourced its border control to Gaddafi.

A world that no longer exists

Norway resides on a desolate fringe of Eurasia, and this save us from many of the brutal dilemmas faced by the U.S. and Italy. But we meet a variation of them in the form of asylum immigration, where we futilely search for a “fair” asylum policy that will distinguish between “true” and “false” refugees.

The Refugee Convention was created for a world that no longer exists. In 1951, Africa was ruled by European colonial powers, and the refugees the writers of the convention had in mind came from beneath the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. There were a million Eastern European refugees living in western refugee camps, refusing to return home. The Refugee Convention allowed them to be resettled, and afterwards the Communist’s own border controls restricted the flow of further refugees. Those who managed to escape were welcomed as defectors and dissidents.

Western immigration policy as this time discriminated openly. The U.S. accepted few immigrants from Latin America, Asia or Africa until 1965. Australia had a White Australia policy until 1973. Italy only accepted Europeans as refugees until 1990.

But the world changed. The Europeans left their colonies, leaving misery behind. Communism fell in the east, and racism in the west. New technology made it easier for the dreams of the West to captivate the Rest, and for the Rest to travel to the West. The stream of refugees increased throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and wherever they arrived, friendliness towards persecuted dissidents was quickly replaced with suspicion towards “fake” asylum seekers.

Our world is very different from the one in 1951. But we’re still using these words they made for us. Refugee: A person fleeing persecution in their home country. Asylum seeker: Someone who seeks recognition as a refugee. The words have frozen solid. We ask if our asylum policy is “fair”. We don’t ask if the concept even makes sense any more.

The road to asylum

When a person flees war, persecution or poverty, they do not sit down on the first flight to Oslo. Most end up in a neighboring country. Europe’s “refugee problem” is nothing compared to that of the neighbors of war zones. 10,000 asylum seekers arrived in Norway in 2012, creating a headache for immigration authorities and for the municipalities that will have to resettle the half of them who were granted residence. By contrast, after the genocide in Rwanda, 1.5 million refugees arrived in Zaire / Congo. The chaos triggered a war that indirectly may have killed several million people.

Refugee crises do not usually end that badly, but many people will spend years under harsh conditions in the refugee camps of unwelcoming neighbors. The lucky ones may eventually be recognized as refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which gives them a hope of being resettled. Most of them are resettled in the United States. Norway is one of the few other countries that accept resettled refugees, receiving 1,000 in 2012.

Becoming an asylum seeker require more effort. You must first make your way to the country you wish to stay in, and then report yourself to the authorities. It’s almost impossible to do this legally. Western countries require a visa for travelers from refugee-producing countries, and they require that you deliver your asylum application in the first safe country you arrive in. You won’t get far without forged papers or human smugglers.

This means that there is not necessarily a big difference between asylum migration and other kinds of migration. The method of travel is the same, and so are the risks and costs. The difference is whether you melt into the informal economy when you arrive, or apply as an asylum seeker.

Genuine refugees

The difference between “true” and “false” refugees can be equally unclear, causing absurdity when we attach significance to it. There is no doubt that many people all over the world are persecuted, and thus fulfill the criteria of the Refugee Convention. We live in a brutal world where functioning democracies are the exception. But how many of the world’s persecuted manage to become asylum seekers? How many of those who do become asylum seekers are actually persecuted? And what is it about persecution that means that those who experience this “deserve” a new life in a rich country, while those who have suffered other misfortunes do not? This all made sense in 1951. Does it still make sense today?

The African Union has tried to introduce a broader definition of refugees: Not just those who are persecuted, but anyone who flees their homeland as a result of war, aggression or serious unrest. This definition includes so many people that we couldn’t possibly use it as a criterion for asylum immigration. But at least it derives from the world we live in today, where these are the causes for refugee crises, not a Europe that no longer exists. It makes sense. It’s just that the sense it makes is useless.

Asylum seekers too see the asylum process as absurd and arbitrary. Many of them believe it is okay to lie, if they believe it will help. In the report Viewed from the other side, Kurds from Northern Iraq who have emigrated or tried to emigrate to Norway and Europe explain that in their view it is a basic human right to be free to live wherever they want to in the world. According to the report, it is a myth that asylum seekers understand the asylum rules of the country they arrive in. Kurds are as confused by our immigration policy as we are ourselves. What they do understand is that it helps to have the right sad story, and come from the right place in Iraq. So they lie, and tell immigration authorities what they believe they want to hear.

These claims do not come from immigration authorities, but from Kurdish asylum seekers themselves. In the report, several claim that not only they themselves but “everyone” they know who has applied for asylum in Norway has lied about something. If they are rejected, they blame bad luck, or that they didn’t lie well enough.

Extensive cheating

Kurds from Northern Iraq have a higher rejection rate of their asylum applications than most. Other groups have a larger share of “real” refugees, at least according to immigration authorities. But when so much is at stake, it is as absurd to assume that asylum seekers tell the truth as it is to blame them when they lie.

Merit Wager has conveyed many stories that illustrate this from anonymous case workers in the Swedish Migration Board, the organization whose mission statement is to “protect the possibilities of global migration”, and implements Europe’s most liberal asylum policy. The case workers tell of widespread lying, and a work load that prevents meaningful verification of the stories they are told. For instance, they claim that most asylum seekers who arrive in Sweden as unaccompanied minors, (and thus have an easier route to residency), do in fact have families. Once their application has been approved they “discover” that they do have a family after all, and bring them over through family reunion.

Sweden is not Norway. But it’s interesting to note that nearly a thousand unaccompanied minors arrived as asylum seekers in Norway in 2012, almost all of them boys, and half from Afghanistan. Most of them are allowed to stay. We do not live in a word where you can make that journey without somebody paying quite well for it.

The arms race between asylum seekers and recipient countries works a bit like the one between Mexicans and U.S. border guards. Prices go up, and so do the risks of migration. Even if you make it all the way to your destination country, you may face a long and meaningless stay in an asylum reception center, or, in some countries, an internment camp. Or you may be sent home in disgrace.

All who migrate from poor countries are ashamed of failure. They want to call home and tell their friends and family of how well they’re doing. They want to be the “rich uncle in America” Norwegians used to boast of having, back when we were an emigration country. But instead they may end up sleeping on the streets and taking odd jobs in Spain, or they may find themselves waiting to be forcibly returned from Norway after their asylum application was rejected.

Even if you are granted residency, if you built it all on a lie, then you are never truly safe. Khalid Ahmed was smuggled to Norway in 2002. He applied as an asylum seeker, was granted residence, and became a local politician for the Labor Party in Hamar. But in 2013 he was arrested for having given false statement to the police. He had told them he came from Somalia. He actually came from Djibouti. Now he’s going to jail. How many others walk around fearing that the same thing may happen to them? What does this fear do to them?

Owners of the state

Global migration everywhere is marked by suffering and unsolved dilemmas. The great possibilities are balanced by great impossibilities, and perhaps they must be, when the inequality is so great, and the distances are so short. The ambitions of the poor and the suffering collide against the fears of the rich, and no matter how you resolve this there will be a price to pay – in money, health, or conscience. Migration pits my money against your money, my conscience against your health. Who is the highest bidder?

But all solutions are not equally bad. Is there a principle we could rely on to find the least bad way to do immigration? I can think of three candidates.

The first is the rights-based model, which says that migration should be controlled by inalienable human rights, such as the right to seek protection if you are persecuted. When we debate asylum policy it tends to be such rights we are thinking about. Asylum activists often propose that we solve the absurdities of the current asylum policies by introducing even more rights, for instance by involving the Human Rights Council in Strasbourg.

When immigration is an issue of rights, we give away some control over our borders, and must simply accept and make the best of the immigrants we end up with.

The second model is the ownership model, which says that citizens are the owners of their country, much like a family owns a home. The owners have a right to decide who may cross their borders, and on what terms. They are free to say no to types of immigration that they do not believe are working out, for instance if it leads to a large, segregated underclass.

This is not the same as saying that immigration must be profitable. The owners may choose to be charitable. It’s as if you have an unused room in your house. You may choose to rent it out, and make money from it, or you may choose to let somebody live there for free, because they need it, and you want to help. But the decision is yours. As the owner of your home, you have a right think about how charitable you can afford to be.

The third model focuses on democratic values. It says that migration should be assessed according to whether it moves us closer to, or further away from, a world where all people live in liberal, tolerant, prosperous democracies.

This means that immigration is bad when it creates a society marked by distrust and an underclass of segregated immigrant communities, because this undermines democracy. But profitable labor immigration can be bad too, if it creates a native master race who enjoy lording over the migrants so much that they forget their democratic values.

If immigration creates new citizens who embrace democratic values, it is a good thing. We will need the help of such immigrants if our values are to survive in a world where the U.S. and Europe are just two out of many global powers. But when immigrants bring with them the same polarization, fanaticism and corruption that made the countries they’re leaving so miserable in the first place, then it’s a bad thing.

It all depends on the effect.

Hosts and guests

In Norway, the rights-based model is very popular with asylum activists. But I think it has failed, and that some of its supporters have become fanatics, because they only think about fundamental principles, and not about the consequences of following them blindly. I like the democratic model better. It provides idealists with a vision to believe in, without deteriorating into literalist pietism.

But the most interesting model is the ownership model, because it’s the model that lives in the minds of most of us, even when we don’t acknowledge it. I believe that much of what we today call xenophobia is actually about something else: People feeling that their ownership rights are not taken seriously.

One useful way to look at immigration skepticism is as the host’s frustration with what they perceive as ungrateful guests. This frustration is not always justified, of course, but I believe it’s that particular role many Norwegians enter into when they object to immigration: The offended host. You can’t understand their feelings if the only thing you have in your head is last generation’s anti-racism and the Refugee Convention of 1951.

It’s easier to understand what it means to be a bad guest if we turn it around. In the town Torrevieja in Spain there’s a large community of Norwegians. Every May 17 they celebrate Norway’s Constitution Day with a big parade, just like Norwegians have been doing since the 19^th century. But in 2009, several Norwegians complained because the municipality had refused to sponsor their parade with free band music. They demanded a public apology.

Now, most of us realize that it’s rude to behave this way. Marching loudly through the streets of a Spanish city with Norwegian flags is already stretching hospitality a bit, but complaining about not receiving this for free is just offensive. This is not how you treat the hosts who permit you to live in your dream community by the Mediterranean. I would understand perfectly if some Spaniards were insulted by this.

In the same way, it is okay to feel insulted when others exploit Norway’s own hospitality. When it turns out that someone who claimed they were persecuted, and needed protection, actually lied. When those who escape countries ravaged by religious fanaticism help the same ideas strike roots here. When the shrinking number of ethnic Norwegians who remain in immigrant neighborhoods experience bullying. When large groups of immigrants seem to stretch their welfare rights as far as possible, instead of stretching themselves not to be a burden.

The hosts sometimes feel insulted without reason. Earlier this year, there was much irritation in Norway over a story claiming that children would be waving foreign flags in the Constitution Day parade. The story was blown out of all proportion, but in order to understand the controversy it created, you must use words like “host” and “guest”. You must talk about the host who feels a growing frustration that they’re not able to put into word, and end up exploding in anger over minor annoyances. They then end up being bad hosts towards good guests. This is an insult too.

Even integration can be understood in terms of hosts and guests: How do you turn the guests into full and equal members of the host? This is about more than having a job and being a citizen.

New policy

But Norwegians know very little about such things. Nor do we understand much about the patterns of global migration, in which we are just one of many end stations. We have become an immigration country now, but we’re not a particularly competent one. All we have on our side is luck, over-confidence, and a handful of outdated ideas. And perhaps that is how it must be. We have been an immigration country even shorter than we have been an oil country. Of course we don’t know what we are doing.

I propose that we move away from the rights-based model of immigration, towards a more selective one where we think about how much, and which types of, immigration we want and can afford. It will never be “profitable” to receive refugees and their families, nor should we aim to make it so. But the higher the cost is, the less we can afford. Those who wish us to continue receiving a high number of refugees should thus work towards reducing that cost.

I also propose that we begin to use segregation as a measure of how skilled we are at receiving immigrants. If Oslo continues to split in two, then we are not doing a good job, and should reduce the volume of immigration until we get better at it. The implication, then, is clear for immigration supporters who want to make a personal contribution to the cause they believe in: Move to an immigrant neighborhood.