Spain copies and improves on Sweden's model of individualism and social autism

Spain outdoes Sweden in individualism: goodbye to calls, reviews and Christmas greetings

90% of reviews on BlaBlaCar are automatic. Phone calls are avoided like the plague. This Christmas, many people didn't even receive the usual mass message. The Swedish model of individualism, based on autonomy and isolation, has taken hold in Spain so successfully that it now outdoes the original. The difference is that here it was sold as "freedom", but the result is a society of isolated nodes that only interact when efficiency demands it.

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Voice phobia: the symptom of absolute control

Rejecting phone calls isn't laziness: it's the need to control time and emotions. A call demands immediacy and spontaneity, exactly what the attention economy has eliminated. Every interaction competes with 17 notifications, podcasts and social media. The result: written text is preferred, because it allows you to edit, postpone and avoid human friction. This behaviour, once marginal, has become so normalised that even family members and clients no longer question it.

The Swedish paradox: free to be alone

The documentary "The Swedish Theory of Love" by Erik Gandini already warned that total independence – depending on no one to survive – leads to loneliness. Spain has imported that model without the Nordic social safety nets: here the state doesn't outsource care, the individual does. The "weak tie" (calls, reviews, greetings) has been eliminated because the system considers it inefficient. But the paradox is that, to be happy, you need to depend on others at least a little. And that little is what has been lost.

The cost of optimised isolation

Looking 5-10 years ahead, the consequences are clear: the collapse of informal care (the elderly, the sick, children) that can no longer be sustained through weak ties; a generational gap between those who still remember spontaneity and those who only know automated transactions; and a loneliness that will stop being a feeling and become a direct cost on the family balance sheet. Individualism is not a cultural accident: it is the result of incentives that reward isolation and punish connection.

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The question nobody answers is whether a society that has outsourced its affections can be sustainable in the long run. The data says no, but the system keeps optimising so we don't notice until it's too late.

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