Primary Colors

Political scientists, trained to think in buckets and building intellectual scaffoldings, lose their compass when political processes do not fit perfectly in the buckets that have been useful in the creation of theories that explain the past.

I remember when sets with paint brushes, water colors and drawings with numbered grids became popular. It was suddenly possible to paint by numbers. I received a colorful and splendorous macaw as a gift. I spent days coloring it carefully, making sure to stay within the lines. The result was no work of art, but the process was fun and the toy continues to sell well. None of them is a Picasso, but many could resemble one.

Something similar to painting by numbers occurs when we try to grid the political processes and their dynamics under the rubric of democracy, dictatorship, capitalism, socialism, communism or mercantilism. The labels lose significance when we do not understand how governments and societies combine the primary colors of political organization. In order to understand if a political system is participatory and progressive or repressive and destructive, and other permutations of these four factors in the political spectrum of a society, it is useful to indentify the “primary colors” with which the social reality of a country is painted. Societies and processes that are constructive, participatory and dynamic produce “works of art” that inspire and uplift the citizenry, even if not everyone likes them. When the primary colors do not combine, the end result is a destructive dynamic.

The “primary colors” of constructive political processes are: Freedom of expression (speech and conscience); connectedness, or the opportunity to connect with leaders and everyone else; and constructive recognition and feedback. Freedom of expression is achieved through training and specialization. Social connectivity with my co-citizens and leaders is developed through the growth of mutual respect. Constructive recognition and feedback is achieved through evaluation and reporting systems that we understand and to which we can respond in order to get “good grades.” Freedom, connectivity and recognition are the yellow, blue and red of political growth.

If a government is able to utilize at least two of the three primary colors, the political system will last, even if the economy fails. If a government uses only one or less of the “primary colors” to paint society, the political system will collapse even if the economy is relatively stable. Of course a growing economy allows us to forget the colors for a while, but not indefinitely. Two examples are helpful in the analysis. Cuba has grown poorer over the last 50 years and the political system has lived on. Beside military repression, the Cuban regime has used two primary colors to satisfy the political needs of its inhabitants: connectivity and constructive recognition and feedback. It has not allowed freedom of expression. Those Cubans unhappy with the lack of liberties exiled themselves. Venezuela has gone through extreme economic cycles and there are many more in the future, considering the dependence on the State and oil, and the regime of President Chavéz has survived the economic highs and lows, because the system has used two primary colors: freedom of expression (open to more than 50% of the population and closed to the vocal opposition) and connectivity. It has not given its citizens constructive recognition and feedback. To the contrary, it entices its citizens to behave destructively, critical of one another and loaded with mistrust in all. The Soviet Union fell because it stopped painting with any of the three colors. It survived for many years, just like Cuba, thanks to connectivity and constructive recognition and feedback, but those two colors were lost when the leaders aged and stopped expressing empathy and constructive recognition to their citizens. If freedom of expression disappears in Venezuela and is not replaced by constructive recognition, the only way of maintaining the regime will be through military repression, particularly in the face of an economic crisis.

In order to organize the political systems of countries it is more important to recognize and utilize the primary colors than political and economic memos.

God is a Dilettante

As all youngsters exposed to religious teachings, I was profoundly impressed by divine powers. God has infinite abilities. By comparison, we are limited but aspire to attain the reach of Gods. Yesterday, while having breakfast with a good friend, we discussed the problems facing the Obama administration, his successes in national and international relations, and the challenges of aggrandizing the tentacles of government, which begin with virtuous promises and end up strangling growth.
While analyzing strategies to improve public health systems and the difficulty in maintaining high rates of innovation vis-à-vis corporate growth and stability, my friend and I discovered something very simple and revealingly tragic. God Almighty is a dilettante, as are many other public and corporate leaders. That is why the world faces such surprising and destructive events. If God had chosen to specialize, humans, especially those that aspire to be gods, would have also chosen to specialize and everything would work much better!

Governments should specialize in covering epidemic risks, defending their tribes from unexpected attacks by destructive troops, and making sure laws are obeyed. Governments do not know how to manage companies, save banks, produce steel or electricity, let alone develop high-tech companies. I won’t even get into whether governments should handle education, since that is a lost battle even in the most advanced countries; but wonder why education is the industry with the lowest growth in productivity in the last one hundred years?

Our breakfast discussion focused on the mounting costs of health care in the U.S., and probably everywhere. Medicine and the efficient administration of public health, also lend themselves to the benefits of specialization. Doctors should not pretend to be more than high level supervisors of pharmacological or surgical intervention processes. Surgeries and the greater share of health care delivery should be, metaphorically, in the hands of midwives. In Venezuela health care worked better when pharmacists recommended prescriptions, even if restricted, in order to cure well known diseases. Technical experts that specialize in repeated surgeries and cures do a better job than great doctors whose responsibilities are split between handling patients, keeping up with advances and managing their practices. Most medicine, except for rare diseases which require creative cures, should be left to the carpenters, electricians and plumbers of medicine. Literally, technicians without a medical degree that focus on routine operations and cures, and do it well, are better than doctors that are not equally specialized and are more interested in becoming Gods or even bullfighters. Countries, such as Cuba, China, Russia, Canada and others in Europe, that have separated routine surgeries from more sophisticated, imaginative, scientific and creative processes, show high success rates in routine treatments and lower mortality rates in basic surgeries, carried out by technicians without a Doctor’s degree (maybe a health technician accreditation). That is why it is better to not have generals acting as police officers or running countries.

Those who believe they can do it all because they count on divine or mythological powers, end up doing it all poorly. If God was not a dilettante he would have eliminated telluric phenomena. But since God wants to be in the business of getting boyfriends, winning lotteries or finding lost keys, s/he does not have time to specialize in the more important problems that humans can’t really solve. The key to a better world is pushed-down, widespread specialization and not dilettantism. Dilettantes should be circumscribed to aimless children of the rich that scatter their wealth as quickly as possible. Even the most creative and capable need to learn how to specialize. Creative people must not try to control all that surrounds them, they should leave that task to specialized managers. It is no accident that the Catholic Church has promoted so many saints. I am sure that the Church’s intention is to help God focus on the more important aspects of human destiny and let the saints take care of everyday miracles.

As you can tell these notes are not about the dilemma of the existence of God or the usefulness of saints, which is indubitable. These notes are about the importance of developing technical training schools, not only for carpenters, plumbers, electricians and beauticians, but for medicine, construction engineering, education, public service and many more, to increase the productivity and integrity of these services. If our public servants obtained diplomas certifying their technical knowledge and ethics, it would be more difficult for them to become opportunistic and corrupt for they would risk losing their professional accreditation and, more importantly, the pride of being a specialist in the field. Professional pride and specialization go hand in hand. Dilettantism is psychological consumerism with low social productivity.

The Liturgy of Life

In a month I am to give a speech in honor of Philip Glass. Philip Glass is a contemporary composer famous for many reasons. A great pianist trained in Julliard and by Nadia Boulanger, the extraordinary goddess of the keys; a brilliant and unforgettable composer who will go on to posterity as an everyday Mozart or Beethoven; sweeper of concessionary garbage in the composition of feature films such as Kundun, the Illusionist and the Hours, and the artist behind operas such as Einstein on the Beach and Monsters of Grace.

Because I want to praise his work in a way that does justice to his creativity, talent, and humanity, I have entered the world of his music and his life as a joyful Voyeur. Philip Glass does not like experiences or life to begin and end. He wants to live and create eternally. Like Gregorian chants, his perception of life is a form of mundane liturgy. The mundane and the divine are combined in the alienating, hallucinating and precocious repetition of what remains and acquires the meaning we give it. Living life liturgically is the most elegant, generous and engaged way of living it.

Like a tree that extends from the sky to the earth possessed with light and oxygen, and full of infinite seeds, his work, like his life, is full of light, shadow, wind, profound anguish, discoveries and surprises. Storms and calms are the same if we allow ourselves to see their beauty and cruelty. There are no lessons in life or in his work, but there is a shared experience with those we touch and those who touch us. There is extraordinary discipline, noble work as a way of creating a fleeting and lasting connection with time, space and the love that transcends space and time. What a pleasure to share life with his sound, his honesty and his vitality, his sense of humor and his energy. I am charged with hope, even for Venezuela, that distresses me when I do not inhabit Philip Glass’ world.

The liturgy of life in Venezuela does not go on like a Gregorian chant. It goes on more as a mix of Rap, Hip-hop, bolero, and out of tune rumba. What is more, life in Venezuela in no way resembles a liturgy. Nothing is predictable except for the chaos, and because of this chaotic days surprise us with miracles. The liturgy in Venezuela is not baroque or renaissance, but it has miraculous moments of order, virtue and excellence, that appear unexpectedly and give us hope. The country of miracles develops from fright to fright, from bankruptcy to bankruptcy. Mills, dams and factories are built and in time they turn into tin. Highways and bridges are rebuilt centuries after hope has been lost. We are lucky we are not an African desert, but instead a biological and ecological diversity alive with contrasts. If we had been an African desert, we would have been burnt by the sun and our ashes carried away by the wind a long time ago. How lucky we are! We have the luck of lottery winners: rich from one day to another, then poor for the rest of our lives.

The liturgy of our lives is certainly not Gregorian and Philip Glass would have lost his monotonous and adventurous rhythm in the compact and never ending traffic of Caracas.

Indifference

Love is not the opposite of hate. Both feelings emerge from the same yearning: the ambition of sharing. In love’s case there is the hope of reciprocity. With hate, hope is lost in the perception of rejection. The opposite of love and hate is indifference. Indifference is the forced and successful separation from that which threatens us. Indifference is a powerful and destructive weapon. We grow when we lay bridges that connect us. When we lift these bridges in an effort to protect psychological borders we run the risk of alienation. A temporary alienation is desirable in situations when we need to protect ourselves psychologically from outside attacks. In those cases, lifting the bridges, as in a medieval castle, allows us to temporarily survive the attack. Moments of introspection allow us to anchor ourselves in creative and noble idiosyncrasies. Permanent alienation turns us inhuman. Leaders and criminals assault their communities and fellow people motivated by continuous waves of alienation. Alone and without any type of lasting emotional connections, many of us survive through opportunism and abuse. But alienation ends up killing our souls. People without souls end up cannibalizing their most enduring values and shorten their physical, economic and spiritual life expectancies.

All of this looks like a flood of vagabond words, but it is more than that. In countries where opportunism and abuse reign supreme, human beings search for the lair of indifference in a bid to survive. In countries where respect and rule of law reign, people can open up to the idea of depending more on self- and group-improvement. People with souls create networks that allow for personal and collective improvement because they have protective nets for qualities that transcend the cruelties of the moment.

It is hard to understand how in Hitler’s Germany a couple of guards could abuse hundreds or thousands of unarmed Jews. The victims of Nazi repression had lost the capacity of emotionally responding to the abuse. What happened in ‘30s and ‘40s Germany has also occurred in many other countries, and is increasingly occurring in Latin America, with the rise in governments with dictatorial tendencies that abuse economic, security and political power. The cost for these nations and the continent is high. There will be lost generations that have lived their only life in indifference as an instrument of survival.

But how does one overcome indifference when it has become the most immediate tool for survival? The answer does not lie in miraculous spontaneities. The only way to overcome states of indifference is with “deference.” Deference is the process by which we appreciate our rights, and we carry out the duties of respecting and developing our own personal qualities. We differentiate between good and evil without excessive shows of emotions. We adopt correct ways of acting and reject those deemed improper. We don’t play dumb when it is convenient and accept moral inaction when it is not convenient or when we do not feel like fighting harsh remarks. Deference occurs when we support those that make an ideal effort to rectify mistakes and we respect the rights of everyone, including those we do not personally admire.

Difference and indifference have something in common. Both states subtract emotionality as an instrument for survival. But in “deferent” states emotionality is subtracted in order to respect the rights of others. In “indifferent” states emotionality is subtracted in order to allow the abuse of someone else’s rights. Deference allows us to grow spiritually. Indifference leads to the death of the spirit and profound social violence.

Resurrection of Libya or Diversions of a Despot

One of the most interesting and chameleonic leaders of contemporary politics is Muammar al-Gaddafi, revolutionary leader of Libya for the last 40 years. I am not, nor do I think of myself as, an expert on Gaddafi. I would rather develop other abilities. I observe Gaddafi from time to time, because he is great at reinventing himself and surprising us. He gives hope to those of us that are forced to withstand, at some point in time, the abuses of a tyrant.

Gaddafi was the leader of the first of OPEC’s arrogant challenges in the ‘70s, he protected terrorists over the years, trained revolutionaries, and threatened the world as much as he could from his poor but petro-powerful country. Gaddafi was a threat to world peace, until one day foreign planes bombarded his military bases and among the victims was one of his daughters and several of his colleagues. He was spared in the bombardment and I thought he would emerge from the experience even more bitter and resentful. It was not the case. Gaddafi disappeared from the public eye for a long time. Sometimes photos of him, looking tired and weary, would appear (I would have felt the same way, but dictators rebound from the punches like magic balls). However, he remained in power. A couple of years ago he put together a series of policies that seemed laudable, albeit a bit carried away by the imagination and dreams of economic grandeur. Libya would become a leader in technological education and would increase its industrial productivity. It sounded promising but a bit unrealistic given Libya’s history. But recently Gaddafi made a surprise announcement. He fired all members of his executive (I don’t think there is a Judicial or Legislative branch, per say, in Libya) for being corrupt. He has also stated that all oil revenues the country produces will be distributed directly to the people, since they are the real owners of the oil, which is true. It is an extreme and extremely sensible measure, assuming it is legitimate in its objective and not just a parody of power.

At a time when politicians around the world are lobbying for more intervention in the economy, justified by the failure of the global banking system and the possibility of a global economic recession, Gaddafi announces he is going in the opposite direction. He is going to leave the economic vote in the hands of the Libyan people. I’ll have to see it to believe it, but it is a valid idea. Increasing aggregate demand to bypass prospects of a global depression is quite sensitive if coupled with rule of law and other growth policies.

Maybe he won’t do anything and this is just his way of diverting the country’s attention, fighting political enemies and experimenting with other ways to communicate with his people. Who knows what problems Gaddafi and Libya face? In any case, the announcement gives some hope to the belief that good ideas can emerge from corrupt and incompetent systems. It give us hope that humanity and leaders that seem stuck from so many vantage points, sometimes, when they hit rock bottom, can come up with redeeming ideas.

History takes many unexpected turns, and that is why we should and should not believe in miracles. The only sustainable miracle is that of being alive and being able to contribute to the economic, spiritual and emotional growth of humanity. If we all pitch in, day in and day out, with work and morality, bravery and sensibility, put a stop to greed and our own pillaging, and signal a better path to our friends, little by little we will gain in economic and political democracy. That is the best and most lasting type of active resistance. Who knows what lies ahead for Gaddafi, but we can learn to respond to the daily and common attacks against our own dignity and responsibility with seriousness, dedication and determination to achieve the moral triumph of the community. If other leaders follow Gaddafi’s example and decide, without the help of vagabond intermediaries, to distribute the public purse, we should then be ready to take full advantage of those resources and invest in our future.

Where are the crickets?

As I recall, the cricket from Pinocchio, Jiminy, is one of the most meaningful fairy tale characters. I’ll remind you that the fairy godmother sprinkles the marionette with some magic powders that allow him to start moving on his own, if haltingly, and become almost human. One of the aspects of his “humanity” is the ability to tell lies, some gratuitous and dumb, others politically or economically opportunistic. Jiminy Cricket, who plays the part of inmature Pinocchio’s “conscience”, cannot keep up with the responsibility and work generated by his pupil’s fickleness. But Jiminy stays alert, active and innovative in his message. In the end Pinocchio is sorry for his actions and is rewarded by his Godmother, who turns him into a real human (God help us! – but the story has a happy ending). Pinocchio, the human being, promises to be good, brave and generous.

Many of us have a cricket in our own consciences, but many of us gag or put ours to sleep in the purgatory of the millions of forgotten crickets. “When in Rome, do as the Romans” and that is how the decadence of the empire, the people, the family and the individual begins. The crickets of conscience are the most endangered species in societies that lose the sense of respect, the rhythm of intellectual nobility and the tenor of the state of grace. Societies flourish ecologically and economically when crickets are free to sing, sigh, and reproduce, proud of their work and success.

Happy endings never last, but they do permit a return to the right path with determination and a sense of achievable and reasonable goals. The world economic recession is a good juncture to save crickets that are either dormant or annihilated by the goddess of success. Yearnings for fortitude, integrity, work and generosity are lasting yearnings that are refreshed and regenerate themselves through the challenge of their own maintenance.

Let us wake up our internal crickets and begin a campaign to recruit external crickets. I have, among my good friends, three first class crickets. If I have doubts and am not willing to listen to my internal cricket, I can simply call up the three external crickets and listen to the quartet (because mine begins to sing clearly and instantly).

Where are the crickets? They are everywhere. Consciences are dormant, but they are never dead. We can start by waking our own. It is important to do so amidst so much confusion and appreciation for what we have lost. What we have lost in the revelry of liquidity and turbo-consumerism of recent years is not as important as what we can gain with calm, will and the help of Jiminy Cricket. Pinocchio is barely starting his life at the end of the story. He can’t imagine how hard life is, especially when we decide to ignore our conscience. Crickets blow the whistle and don’t sing when we ignore them. If we pay attention to Jiminy Cricket, his sounds are calming and far away songs. They remind us of the calm night in the Llanos, or walks through dark but fragrant gardens. They remind us of the infamy of childhood pastimes of trapping crickets in order to feel brave, without realizing that we are capturing something essential in our history: the ability to listen to the sounds of nature as whispers of a conscience at peace.

Unemployment

In the last 20 years most of the world has enjoyed full employment. Both men and women; and in many places even the children had more than enough work. If one’s salary was not enough to cover the expenses of uncontrolled consumption, you took two jobs. If pay wasn’t good, one could switch countries, legally or illegally, in search of better economic opportunities.

In the last 20 years more than 20 million people entered the United States in search of better living conditions. Europe also saw its populations, decimated by old age and low birth rates, grow. Even in Latin America we witnessed work related population movements from one country to another like never before in history. For reasons more political than economic, but certainly motivated by the prospect of greater earnings, Venezuela imported 20% of its population in the last 10 years from countries like Cuba, Colombia, China and others. Al of this has ended for several years. Many of the immigrants are back in their native countries. It is preferable to be unemployed in one’s own country, surrounded by loved ones that can lend a helping hand, than in a place were you do not have many friends or family.

Work is something noble and strange. We work more out of duty than out of desire. But if we didn’t need it we would do it anyways. Need and wants are tightly intertwined when it come to work. We hate Mondays and love Fridays (unless we live in Islamic countries where the work week begins on Sunday). I still remember my first day at work. I was so proud of finding a good job as an economist. I arrived at work on the Monday right after the ’67 earthquake in Caracas. I wasn’t sure there would be any work, even though I had walked by the building of Luz Eléctrica de Venezuela on Sunday, to make sure it was still standing. There it was, safe and sound on Avenida Urdaneta. And I arrived punctually on Monday at 8:00 a.m. They gave me a flamboyant grey metal desk, a pile of accounts to work on and a training manual. Everybody was nice and sensible. I was proud and comfortable. In spite of this, I found myself looking at the clock in horror. It was ten in the morning and I still had eight hours before the end of the work day (from 8 to 12 and 2 to 6). I felt overwhelmed and surprised by the cruelty that 50 or more years of my life working in an office implied. I would never again have the freedom of riding my bicycle through the neighborhood or seeing and speaking to my friends between classes at the university. There was no longer time to dream of becoming a trapeze artist or a famous singer. Or of being a writer, poet or actress. My destiny now was to clear up accounts as an economist, even when I didn’t fully understand the need for all the bookkeeping. I was employed and have been lucky to remain that way for more than 40 years. Being employed adds value to weekends and vacations. It domesticates us. It connects us with other humans. Those we like and those we don’t. Most importantly, being employed gives us a salary and a measure of what we contribute to the country’s production, and allows us to maintain a family and dream of a better life. Employment makes us feel useful. Unemployment is corrosive. It makes us feel worthless, disposable. We lose the normal connections that guide our decisions. One can’t decide in a void, one can only make decisions between contrasts and preferences. To be content we have to have restrictions and the ability to overcome them. Employment gives us those restrictions and the tools to overcome them.

Work and family are the two motors that give us identity and impulse in our lives. Unemployment is like a divorce, a destructive and at the same time liberating turn in our lives. But unemployment is worse than a divorce. Once you have gotten over the loss of your life partner, one can begin a new life in search of new friends and partners. Unemployment leaves us without income, insecure, and increases the chance of destroying the family as well. This is a nail that does not take out another nail, instead it crucifies us. Despite how painful and destructive a period of unemployment can be, it can always lead to a reencounter and rediscovery of our real goals. We can do a lot and reinvent ourselves many times in our lifetime. To reinvent ourselves we need to undertake, with valor and tenacity, a period of reeducation, rehabilitation and rebalance of our faculties. The important thing is to stay active and concentrated. Employed or unemployed, tenacity, education and the ability to serve others makes us better. One of the most useful expressions I’ve heard is that if the glass is half empty or half full depends on whether you are filling the glass or drinking its content. If we keep “filling the glass”, there is real hope that we can reconnect, actively and effectively, with the world. If we only drink from the glass, sooner or later we will find it empty. Community services are always an opportunity for employment if we can’t think of or come up with another job. John Stuart Mills, the famous economist, said: “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others or the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed no as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.” Serving others is the most satisfactory mode of self employment, and there is little chance of being unemployed in that occupation.

Witch-Hunt: Battle at Kruger

One of intelligent animals’ great abilities is that of organizing in order to benefit the group. Among the most watched videos on You Tube is an 8 minute clip called “Battle at Kruger.” The video shows a herd of water buffalos being attacked by a pride of lions, one of which manages to sink its teeth into a calf. When the calf’s life seems lost for sure in the jaws of the lion, a crocodile jumps out of the water and tries to wrestle the calf away from the lion. Poor calf! Surely it is doomed now, stuck between lions and crocodiles. Unexpectedly, the buffalo herd returns ready to claim the calf back. I will not tell you how it ends, so you will watch the video and learn an important human and civic lesson: Strength is in unity in the defense of freedom. Even though we have to fight lions and crocodiles, and the battle looks lost in the jaws of one or another, if the herd sticks together and support defensive tactics, freedom can be won strategically. But just like there are constructive and intelligent collective actions, there are also destructive collective acts. There are abundant examples throughout history of minorities entrenched in power exploiting the majority, or a comparatively advantaged majority exploiting a debilitated minority.

The so-called witch-hunts are one of the destructive results of the human race’s ability to organize itself in order to destroy a perceived common threat. The problem is that there are evil witches that like the lions in the video, deserve to be defied and exterminated, but there are also good witches, agents of change and innovation, that deserve none of that. Extermination groups can be used for good or evil. They are concentrations of the power of many to respond to the excessive power of a minority, or the grouping of few seeking to recover their voice. One thing we learn from the buffalos is that they are not dumb animals. They have an undoubtedly creative capacity to strategize and organize themselves. Interestingly, once they achieve their objective, they do not have criminal minds. Once they scare off the lions, they let them go, even though they could have exterminated them.

So many people are under the attack of hungry lions, and like the calf in the video, have few defenses outside the power of the herd. Unfortunately, the human herd does not always respond consistently to rescue a calf from the claws of a lion. Other times, it is the pride of lions that abuses the minority and gets away with it.

Either way, sooner or later, humans and animals arm themselves to hunt witches, good or evil. Unlike the noble buffalos, when we get together to hunt we usually end up destroying more than what we build, and in the process innocents end up paying for the sins of others. Some people have been, and continue to be, abused by shameless and powerful minorities. The moment will come when crocodiles or buffalos step up and defend the calves. We hope that in the process of witch hunting we do not destroy morality and nobility both at the individual and collective level. Chile achieved this; Argentina did for a while but later ended up losing it. Colombia has rebuilt, little by little and with persistence, all the losses accumulated over years of civil battles. That is something political leaders can achieve. The fundamental role of political leadership is motivating a society to achieve personal and collective success, rescue calves from lions, but without causing disaster and the destruction of institutions and lives. It is a task that requires intelligence, subtlety, humility, and determination. It is not a task for despots. Tyranny is not a useful form of leadership. Tyranny oppresses and destroys. The Battle at Kruger is the most simple and inspiring metaphor I have seen in a long time. Buffalos can teach us more than we could have ever imagined.

Echoes of Valentine’s Day: The Abused Woman Syndrome

It seems like yesterday when we were celebrating Valentine’s Day 2008, and now it is around the corner again.

Valentine’s Day is a day to eat chocolates, think about future or past romances, and prepare for the lush spring in Northern countries. It is a day of long excitement and short joy. But it is also a day that leads us to think about all the friendships we should have undertook with more determination and all of those failed romances. Romances that began as many others: full of passion, dreams of accomplishments, and infinite possibilities through emotional leveraging and enabling. Romance is one of the great capabilities and examples of human creativity and imagination. We invent possible romances as creatively as we invent Gods. And those possibilities fill us with motivation towards excellence.

But what happens when the object of our imagination and love decides to take advantage of the sad dependency so commonly created, when instead of offering us support and encouragement, we confront deception and abuse? The abused woman syndrome, which impedes her from breaking free from the emotional hold of a destructive relationship, is not only shared by those women afraid of the alternative loneliness, if they dare to escape their torturer. Many countries and their inhabitants experience this syndrome. Many men also experience this syndrome.

In the last 100 years, countries like Germany, Iraq, the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Venezuela, Italy, Zimbabwe and Cuba have been clear cases of the abused woman syndrome. The narcissistic and abusive leader submits the community to all kinds of emotional, physical, economic and judicial tyranny. When he crosses the line and the community responds, the leader asks for forgiveness or tells them he loves them, and the community believes that if he does love them he will behave better and he must not be as evil, since he appears so devoted to the community’s future, and so full of passionate revolutionary promises. And even when we don’t believe his apologies, we still don’t believe that we deserve or can achieve a better captivity arrangement. Or even better yet, a live free of destructive deceptions and manipulations.

In all of these cases of abused women, men and communities, a situation of toxic co-dependency is created. The victim stops growing emotionally and intellectually, looses the capacity to differentiate between constructive alternatives and the freedom to act. Dreams of self-improvement are clouded by the permissive and abusive hand of the tyrant. In the end, either the victim dies, figuratively or in reality, or he rebels against the abuser. For individual, there are more possibilities of a real escape if the emotional captivity can be overcome. For communities, the probability of a collective escape is slim but possible, and requires a strong and decisive social will in order to resist the abuses and eventually break free from the tyranny.

To those abused women and communities that deserve a liberating Valentine’s Day, we should remember that destructive relationships do not improve with time. Quite the contrary. The abuser continues with the abuse and the victim becomes weaker everyday, unless the victim rebels and reclaims its honor and right to self-determination. In the community and one’s own personal integrity is where you can find the strongest support system and the real redeeming and liberating power of love. Let us celebrate this plethora of love and possibilities this Valentine’s Day!

Sweat and Modesty

It could seem that our lives go by between a sweet and arduous monotony, except when passions increase our productivity and when the possible excesses force us into a modest retreat.

We go from being fierceful actors to modest audiences depending of the circumstances that hound us and the opportunities that present themselves. In politics, as in our professional and private lives, it is important to strike a balance between sweat and modesty. Hyperactive cultures, such as the Huns or Romans, end up getting into trouble. The excessively sweaty alpha males always end up in trouble. Extremely fiery love lives are unsustainable. Like fine cars, spirited passions, cause too much overheating and melted motors, because when we are in more of a hurry than other people, traffic jams and bottlenecks, end up debilitating us undeservingly.

On the other hand, if modesty is a virtue for fifteen year olds and old maids trying to create a sense of scarcity and promote the burning desires of he who cannot posses us, too much modesty causes dangerous problems like excess passion and sweat. As is the case in managing personal impulses, countries, and the people that inhabit them, need to develop personal conscience and institutional mechanisms in order to balance the two opposing and frictional forces.

Northern hemisphere countries, with more survival experience than those in the South, have understood the importance of balancing expansion and mediation forces. Many have adopted constitutions and political systems with division of powers. Companies, in spite of the abuses observed amongst many abusive and narcissistic managers, have directors and shareholders that eventually can take control and call for modesty in an effort to control excesses. Advanced political systems and mature institutions are by no means perfect, in part because the only way to evolve is by finding and correcting new abuses. Errors and correction allow us to improve our processes over time and fortify our rationality and competence.

In the South we tend to be a little more exaggerated in everything: hyperactive or hyperpasive. Either we sweat too much or we are too demure and modest. The Satiro or the Virgen are mistakenly idealized images of human behavior. Witches and saints are still entrenched in the fabric of society. To reconcile both tendencies, we believe in miracles.

If we observe ideal routines for personal and institutional longevity, an hour and a half a day of sweating is enough. The same goes for modesty, an hour and a half should be enough. Sweating includes exercise, acts of leadership and creativity, and vigorously loving activities. Modesty should include some 90 minutes of humility, generosity, meditation and empathy…if we add to that 8 hours of sleep, three for eating and one for transitions, that leaves us five hours of peaceful, dedicated and responsible work, without sweat or modesty.

Division of Power

There is no leader in the world that does not leave something to be desired. It is fundamental that governments have a division of powers because of the fallibilities and vulnerabilities in the character of leaders and mere mortals. The Gods make even greater mistakes!

There are few situations where the concentration of power does not lead to the abuse of power. In the United States, where the division of power amongst the executive, the judicial and the legislative is reasonably balanced, there isn’t a president, congressman or judge that can rise with limitless power for too long without being denounced and brought down in the process. That is not the case in many Latin American and African countries. The presidents, congressmen and judges in our countries get rich, exact revenge on whomever they please and abuse their positions without being punished or limited by counterbalancing institutions.

Today, left or right wing political regimes no longer exist. What exists today are political regimes where there is a balance of power and regimes were the concentration of power in some individuals is out of control.

Jung, the great XX century thinker and psychiatrist describes in Psychoanalysis of History, how humans tend to abandon the responsibility of deciding their own destiny in exchange for getting closer to any leader that offers to ease their lives. That is why totalitarian leaders like Hitler and Mussolini emerge. In behavioral economics the phenomenon is known as the insider gain vs. the outsider loss. We tend to sell our soul to the devil, to be insiders. We are born with more fear for life than love for liberty. Love for liberty is acquired and strengthened through the individual’s training and his taking responsibility over his individual decisions. It is natural to get close to those that offer us protection. But character, like muscles, grows weak when stop carrying the weight of our responsibilities. Fear is a powerful deterrent for initiative and the greatest obstacle to personal and community fulfillment.

Countries without institutional controls, where anyone that holds public office can do what they please without division of powers to limit them, are destined for failure. Failure for a country is a future in which the citizens grow poorer both economically and spiritually, lose liberties and lose the possibility of carrying out their lives in equality and mutual respect with other members of the human collective. By losing international respect and debilitating as an ideal continent, one falls in the hands of opportunistic and incompetent groups. These opportunistic groups only look out for their short-term gains.

There is no greater crime in the history of humanity than that of a ruler that destroys society’s balance of powers, because the destruction of this balance destroys the motivation for personal improvement and taking responsibility for our actions, and it destroys the political infrastructure and the souls of our people. Without a division of power we end up poor, weak and divided, like a body without an immunological system, vulnerable to any invading infection.

Happy New Year

This year surprised the world because of the fall in assets all over the world, and a dark outlook for the economy in 2009. Halfway through the year we feared accelerated inflation and nuclear experiments in Iran. Today we have a world recession. The sharp fall in the price of oil, instead of benefiting importing consumers, created a liquidity crisis by stopping the recycling of rich and oil and resource exporting countries’ surpluses towards the financial markets.

That is the nature of surprises. By definition they come unexpectedly. While peaking at 2009, it is worth thinking about what can happen, good and bad, in order to be prepared and be able to handle what happens gracefully.

There are great opportunities. There are financial bargains everywhere. Those with liquidity will be able to invest their savings little by little in a well diversified portfolio, to provide for the needs in their future. But those that invest will have to be able to handle great economic, political, and financial volatility, and maintain their discipline no matter what happens.

In the United States, politically there is change in the air. President elect Obama has chosen an intelligent, well trained and experienced cabinet, with an open mind towards dialogue and a variety of opinions. But there is no doubt that with the rise in importance of the executive power in the economy, a fall in productivity will be felt over the long term, unless fiscal intervention is limited and austere, and it does not take indefinite hold over the budget. Unfortunately fiscal policy is less agile and more sensitive to political contradictions than monetary policies. A strong and determined cabinet will also create controversy and confusion sooner or later, both internally and internationally. We all hope that the wise and well tempered Obama can orchestrate his cabinet towards policies both daring and sensible.

In Venezuela they are getting ready to discus and vote on a constitutional amendment that will allow for the indefinite election of the head of state. That does not seem very democratic, independently of how many people vote for it. It seems ironic that voting for a kind of monarchy without any balance of power would be considered a democratic process of regime. In any case, the economic and political outlook for Venezuela is bleak for 2009, except for those that manage to get rich even though the country grows poorer. People adapt to a lot of what is happening, hoping that with patience and dedication they can lift themselves.

The end of a year is a good time to make healthy resolutions for the coming year. It is important to make everyday and all of our actions relevant. I send all my readers my heartfelt wishes that they maintain their sense of humor despite any political or economic tragedy they have to go through. I wish you can keep your spirits whole in order to encourage your loved ones to keep their personal integrity when so many others are losing theirs. Finally, I wish you the capacity to live life with imagination, grace, creativity and relative peace. Enjoy the music, good books, the lunch and talks with friends, some good hallacas, pan de jamón, ponche crema and wine. I will do the same and ask the Gods who may listen for a Happy 2009 for all.