Hello again all my friends!
It´s interesting to consider that when I grew up in Sweden towards the middle of the previous century, the vast majority of Swedes, including myself, had never seen a black person in real life. There were virtually no immigrants, and the few refugees that had been admitted were all white people from neighboring countries, most of whom were eventually sent back to their countries of origin. Actually, the very first time I saw a black African live, was in Paris in the 1950s, where I went to practise my French after finishing school at the age of 18.
Today 10% of the Swedish population are immigrants and now Sweden´s nominally conservative government boasts a female black cabinet minister, daughter of refugees, born in Africa but raised and educated in Sweden since early childhood. When she first became a minister in 2006, she was responsible for Integration and Equality under the Ministry of Justice, and since 2010 she is Minister of Gender Equality in the Ministry of Education, and Deputy Education Minister responsible for Adult Education and Vocational Training.
Female ministers are a relatively new and typically Aquarian phenomenon. The very first female member of a Swedish government was a university professor who was appointed minister without portfolio of Household Economy in 1947. As those know who have read my book PARADIGM PULSE, the 1940s was an Aquarian decade. From then on there were sporadic appointments of a female minister, but only in areas traditionally seen as female, such as family and social affairs, and without portfolio, which means that they worked within a ministry headed by another, higher ranking cabinet minister.
In 1967, during another strongly Aquarian period, this began to change. That´s when Alva Myrdal – herself an Aquarian who had already made an international career in the United Nations – was appointed Minister of Disarmament in the Swedish cabinet, though still without portfolio. After that, there was an ever so gradual blurring of the traditional boundaries between male and female in public affairs. However, it would take another 20 years before women finally broke through this traditional barrier and began to occupy any type of government posts previously reserved for men.
A favorite portfolio among women over the last couple of decades, has been that of minister of Foreign Affairs, and it was not the United States that lead the way. One recent tendency that I find rather intriguing, is to appoint female ministers of Defense and national security, the very last portfolio one would have expected covered by a woman, especially a woman with no military training of any kind.
I am wondering if there has been a special hidden agenda behind these appointments. They tend to come from “leftist” governments, who supposedly are less trigger-happy and more peace-loving than traditional conservative governments. Could it be that a female defense minister could be expected to humanize the military? They couldn´t very well have wanted her to “feminize” it, could they?
My first reaction when I first heard of such an appointment – just as when I first heard that women had been admitted to a military career – was one of disbelief and outrage. I took it for a bad joke, and it inspired ridicule in me that a woman should be head of the military of a country, or even become a soldier. Intrinsically a pacifist, I am all in favor of completely dismantling all military forces and functions on the planet, and direct all those enormous improductive and destructive resources to levelling the playing field and improving the human condition in every possible way.
I want men to stop fighting and killing each other, not that women should join their ranks to make things even worse than they already were. But I also feel that it´s all wrong for women to betray their natural maternal and caring instincts to imitate aggressive male behavior, and kill. To me this was not a step forward in the fight for gender equality, but a perverse step backwards for Humanity as a whole. I obviously know that there are naturally aggressive and combative women, as well as men with caring paternal and generally human– if not maternal – instincts. But I see it as a step backwards to honor aggressive behaviors in women, instead of moving away from such behavior in both genders.
In 1999 – the end of another Aquarian decade – Sweden could boast about being the first country to have more female than male ministers in its cabinet. Not necessarily a good thing, if you ask me, since several of those women were appointed on the principal merit of being female, and not based on superior competence and professional qualifications in comparison to other competitors for the posts. But it was a strong statement in favor of gender equality.
Interestingly, with all this Aquarian pioneering of female ministers, Sweden has never, to this day, had a female Prime Minister, only female deputy or vice prime ministers. It was very close in 2006, when the Social Democrat party was headed by a woman, who would have become the first female Prime Minister of Sweden, if her party had won the elections, which was not the case.
Another field where Sweden – and the other Nordic countries – seem to have been pioneering female leadership, is the Church. Though the country has full confessional freedom, Sweden had a Lutheran State Church ever since the mid 1520s. That´s when the newly elected king, Gustaf I, broke with the Vatican and proclaimed himself head of a Swedish Lutheran state church. A few years later, Henry VIII of England followed suit and founded the Anglican Church in much the same way, if for a different reason. Though most Swedes are no longer frequent churchgoers and the Church of Sweden is now formally separated from the State, it still functions as the principal religious center and ceremonial habitat for baptisms, weddings and funerals of the vast majority of the Swedish population.
Sweden ordained its first female priest in 1960, soon followed by the other Nordic countries. Today, the second most important position of the Church of Sweden is held by a woman as Bishop of Stockholm. Topping this particular Aquarian triumph over the old paradigm, she is lesbian and officially married to another ordained female priest who is also a well-known and respected professional and active in various charity and other social programs. If you wondered, Sweden allows same-sex church marriages since 2009 on exactly the same terms as heterosexual marriages. Incidentally, both the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church now ordain openly gay bishops.
I know all this is hard to swallow for traditionally indoctrinated Catholics and other orthodox believers. But it´s a fact of the Aquarian Paradigm, and it´s part of the evolution of the human species towards full soul consciousness. And there is no way the clock can be turned back.
So if you don´t want to spend the rest of your life in grievous denial and futile rancorous protest, the best thing you can do is to get used to and accept the Aquarian ideological agenda. For, like it or not, they are irrevocably shaping the new world of the Aquarian Paradigm. Which, among other things, guarantees your right to keep your different opinion and lifestyle, but not to impose it on others, not even in the name of your own particular God.
From now on, the soul dimension and collective consciousness of the Human Being will serve as reference points, not some fearsome authoritarian and vengeful god out there somewhere, custom designed by institutional churches to support political agendas.
If you wish to go deeper into these questions and do not already have my book PARADIGM PULSE – SENSING THE SURGE OF CHANGE where I discuss it in more depth, I suggest you get it and read it. The special launch discount of the e-book will soon be discontinued, so don´t miss the opportunity to get it today for only US$ 9.99, right on this website.
Another smart step would be to sign up for a membership of the PARADIGM CLUB when it opens for members in the not so distant future. I´ll keep you posted.
To round off this blog with a final note:
Let´s now get together and all promote
Equality,
Diversity,
Understanding,
Cooperation,
And most of all true LOVE in all its forms and expressions!
As John Lennon expressed it so well in a song:
It matters not who you love,
Where you love,
Why you love,
When you love,
Or how you love.
It matters only that you love.
See you again next week!
Yours,
Dr. Jens
