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.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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.
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.
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