down here, where the workers are, there is discontempt. that, not being news at all, is taking a certain shape, defining itself to a more aggreed and homogenic discontempt. up in the first world geographies, we are witnessing riots, fear amongst authorities, unexpected reactions and some familiar images in a supposedly different scenario; a staging falling apart that reveals a different appeal to our modern societies, a shift in values and culture that no longer can hold its masks to end up showing something we might not have wanted to see.
we liked to think of our modern civilization as a bright result of the teachings acquired from the best past cultures: the civilized greeks, egyptians and romans, the honorable africans, the spiritual asians or the passionate americans. a smart crossover that covered from nietzsche to buddah, from the agala to the zulu. that was indeed a beautiful mirage.
we drank from the fountains of the finest cultures, to end up digesting commercials between soup operas. we cultivated a pride of the exquisite to end up falling to the easiest and most obvious of those philosophical traps: the thirst for power.
that sophisticated social structure on which we take so much pride, ended up being our own mousetrap. and we fell on it good. who took our cheese? we denied the cheese, we chose to screw with the mouse next door.
that happened to be tasty at the begining, but we just can't stop, at any level, just as the cheese runs out right in front of our clouded eyes. when this lust for power escalates at a social and globalized level, which has been happening for hundreds of years now, when the rich get richer, the poor get pooorer and the middle classes carry on with their sustaining role in this mess, the idea itself of power unveils more and more in the shape of slavery, genocide and denial. a cannibal society with an unbearable dead weight that keeps it from moving onwards to more developed stages, turning instead, back to the darkest version of middle ages.
it happens, though, that this stagnation leaves several distinctive cultural marks, contradictions and uncomfortable collective states of mind that create reactions, convulsions in the status quo. the oxymoronic nature of the structures that hold our global "modern democracies" nowadays, creates situations of all kinds at all levels, that result in more or less revealing experiences in more and more individuals every time. anyone smart enough to follow the "bread crumbles" will coincide eventually in the same intellectual and emotional place. those not so smart will be guided by the contagion of that emotional response to end up getting to the same conclussion. we need to loose excess weight or we won't fly anymore.
that weight might correspond to those in power now, but mostly to those values that built and sustain their empires. that's why, after all, there might be a suitable solution for all this mess, even for those who designed it, probably not even on purpose. these are those days when change is needed, people must keep open eyes and minds to come up with ideas and then be listened to. times of exchange, learning and renewal, when values must take shape and take over before it's too late and even more blood is uselessly spilled.
war was never peace. orwell was actually warning us from that absurd idea. war profit has a conceptual weight attached that those who hold it won't be able to shake easily. all wars, wether literal or not, display abundancy of misery in human, economic, cultural, social and technological stages. every argument defending war can be easily disproved by the simple study of history. not even a deep one, just a glance to some war related facts would be necessary. technology advences faster, economies learn to stabilize and make themselves sustainable, civilizations evolve more solidly. all wars stimulate only destruction, driven by an unnoble and primitive desire for power, which can be conceptually reduced to... a simple addiction. down here, where the workers are, we suffer everyday the unnecesary effects of class war. the same that has been denied since the end of cold war, but has existed since the very beginnings of civilization. the same that has the lower classes in the mud and the higher classes ininsufferable golden cages, now specially fortified in weapons and luxury.
luxury is a mirage. actually, it's a classic swindle. the "value added", which makes a product or a service display a practical waste of resources under the weakest possible argument: "because somebody says so". who says so, anyway? luxury is in practice, a social tool: it sucks resources upwards. say, for instance, a manager from a manufacturing company develops a taste for sports cars. in order to improve his collection, this manager decides to make a larger cut from the company, maybe saving a little, say, by firing a couple of employees while substaining production. said manager cashes in huge amounts of money to some "motor companies", owned by trust funds we lose track of, for example, in switzerland. the more than generous profit margins from those luxury products are swung upwards by these managers every day, towards organizations that have as sacred rule the continuous exponential growth of their profits. good job, kids! luxury as a covert kind of mass robbery! good joob indeed...
sharing is good, both in time and resources. that so-called new age concept called "substainability" is, as a matter of fact, quite an old one. one of the biggest lies of modern capitalism is that profits must grow every term. a static growth rate is a warrant for long lasting business models that can also be fair from all parts. when one gear of the mechanism doesn't abuse by taking too much of the synergies generated by the whole apparatus, the process is smoothened and everything works better. simple old school common sense, that's all. greed is much more than a biblical sin, but also a tool to prevent and destroy balance. without balance, societies can't find the desired stability and wealth that makes them evolve, improve, advance. concentration of wealth decreases the chances for creative minds to develop new ideas that would provide the much needed continuous improvements that any civilization requires. thus, we witness the isolation of the demeaning elite, fortified against their peasants. all immobile and deprived of the means to rescue a culture that goes backwards and sees no future perspective. a lock-down, a recess not measurable in cyphers, but very easily perceivable. respectful cooperation leads to better results than hostile exploitation.
economy with real assets is the best way for actual growth, and those assets are products and services, thus societies need to protect both work and their workers. the global algorithmic macro-economy has been proven wrong enough already, and the self-regulation of markets one of history's biggest frauds. basing entire economic systems on hot air balloons due to explode is the typical irresponsible behavior encouraged in the nineteen-eighties, that took us to a series of crisis of increasing gravity. deregulated volatile markets drain societies from their real energy sources, the propelling material for evolution, not just as an economy, but as a whole. management is not human ownership, it is, instead, just another job, with its appeals, and, most importantly, its responsibilities, increasing with size. no matter how high the level, management is work, never mastership. if you punish a system's base, it's obviously due to fall, and oversized fragile systems like global economies are indeed glass giants, bound to break in millions of useless pieces. it is time to transform, not just structures, but also behaviors and conceptions.
so, for everybody's sake, let's just stop this absurd state of denial. it's well embedded in our minds, but if we watch ourselves and correct all these and some more mistakes, maybe we could see some improvement in our lives, if we can measure up for the challenge.
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