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  Unlike many of his co-workers, Mikael doesn’t participate in his company’s savings plan that gives tax breaks to those who do. He is not strongly committed to any political party, and speaks of politics disparagingly and without involvement. He looks upon his union dues-which, along with his withholding taxes, are deducted from his paycheck — as a kind of tax. One political question that does interest him is the shortening of working hours, an issue that during the seventies was of more interest to women than to men.
  Mikael Karlsson finds patriotic talk slightly ridiculous. He does not love Sweden. He loves the archipelago, and if he ever moved abroad, he would return every year to summer there. Seen in global perspective, he lives a short distance from Leningrad but has never been there, and he never thinks of it. When anyone talks about big cities, he thinks of London And New York. We gather that he was greatly alarmed by the Soviet submarine activity in his beloved archipelago, but this happened after our interviews with him.

  Sven Svensson and Mikael Karlsson do not exist in the real world: rather: they are composites fashioned from in-depth interviews in 1978 with large samples of the kind used by public opinions pollsters.
  It may be noted in passing that the Mikael of 1978 is different not only from the Old Breed of Svensons, but also from the student revolutionaries of 1968. He is not drawn toward the solidarity and fellowship of a collective but a small, rather selfish circle. Unlike the back-to-nature enthusiasts, he does not wish to return to an earlier tried-and-true type of technology on the community level, but wants to practice instead new, small-scale technologies on a large economic scene. Unlike the radical Left, he does not want to transform society; at most he wants to change or at least experiment with himself. Yet, in another ways, he is similar to his 1968 counterpart; he is retreating from the emphasis on achievement and competition, and he accepts emotions, wants to employ all of his senses, and is willing to take some risks. As a person, Mikael Karlsson listens much more to inner signals than does Sven Svensson, who is guided more by external cues.
  Mikael Karlsson represents a common problem to his employer, especially on those occasions when he must work overtime and shoulder some responsibility. Old rewards such as promotions and 

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