[rex_gallorum2]

I found the discussion here more interesting than the article/blog post.

Most of you are talking at cross purposes, and there are some major intercultural communication problems here that are masked by everyone reading/writing in English.

If we were all part of a single culture and organic community, where the unwritten rules and mechanics of how things work and don't work are known to all, we could have a meaningful discussion, and perhaps debate the ethical aspects of the author's lifestyle.

But we are not and do not and can not.

I would argue that although the author wrote in English, what he wrote really only makes sense within a Swedish cultural context. I see comment after comment projecting foreign norms, values, and circumstances on the author without any knowledge whatsoever of how things work in Sweden.

I am even seeing classic stuff right out of Geert Hofstede's six dimensional culture model such as individualism vs. collectivism.

I don't expect everyone to understand this comment, but someone definitely will!

[olau]

Another side of this is that when people are confronted with someone doing things different from what they're used to, their innate ego centrism makes them react if it is about them. It reopens the identity crisis of their teenage years.

I once experienced this on the board of a kindergarten. There was a public debate about whether kindergartens should have computers or not. The kindergarten I had my kids in thought not, for good reasons. When talking to the other parents, with some those reasons clicked immediately. But many were simply not able to digest them. They were stuck thinking about their own situation as parents and the fact that their children were using tablets at home. Big parenting identity crisis, no constructive discussion possible.