The Swedish Underground

Abraham Maslow, the psychiatrist, is most famous for his hierarchy of needs, on which Kalehuruism is loosely based.  It’s a pretty simple philosophy.  You have to take care of your basic survival needs before you can take care of anything else, you have to have some level of comfort before you start thinking about things like spiritual enlightenment, you have to have a home before you can invite people over, stuff like that which is really pretty obvious when you think about it, but he thought about it first.  He drew it as a triangle with, I think, 3 levels, maybe it was 5.  Kalehuruism has 7, but that’s mostly just because I like the number.  Anyway, that’s not the point of tonight’s blog.

Maslow had another great idea.  He wondered why it was psychiatrists are always examining mentally ill people and trying to figure out what’s wrong with them, instead of examining happy, well adjusted, successful and fulfilled people and figuring out what they were doing right and if there was a common thread that we could then apply to our lives and spread the mental health, proactively, instead of just fighting the diseases.

This would make for a more cheerful commute

Now, the way I see it, society is a composite of all the individuals in it, so what Maslow proposed on a human level I think also applies on the governmental level.  American politicians spend all of their time fighting things, fighting Islamic extremism, fighting drugs, fighting each other, fighting prosecution, fighting for Americans’ God given right to own as many automatic weapons as they can fit into a double wide trailer and still close the door, fighting immigration, fighting abortion and on and on.

Maybe they should take a look at some of the amazingly cool stuff being done in other countries, and see what’s worth emulating.

The Hall of the Mountain King (I know that's Norwegian. Close enough)

And that brings me to the topic of tonight’s blog:  the Stockholm Subway System.  I’ve never been to Stockholm, unfortunately, but I stumbled across some photos on the internet this morning and they blew me away.  Mind you, I live in a city (Prague)  with an extremely efficient, reasonably priced and fairly extensive underground rail system.  But it’s nothing like this.

So, kudos to the city of

You can find many more photos like these on the internet

Stockholm and the nation of Sweden.  If the rest of the world were more like you, the rest of the world would be a better place.