“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
– William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet”
A chapter of my life has closed this year, and loridani.net closes with it. But fear not; all things come to an end eventually, so that they can make room for new beginnings. Therefore I bid you welcome to shadowscape.eu, my brand new electronic home.
Democracy means, literally, “the rule of the people”. It was invented by the Greeks, thousands of years ago, and it became the preferred type of organisation for their city states, like the powerful Athens. There’s a lot to be said about democracy of a city state, where every citizen gets to vote. Well, every citizen that is male, owns land and is not a slave, that is. It also helps if your fellow citizens – and the local politicians alike – are practically your neighbours, so you’ve known them, or at least of them, your whole life.
But that was then, and this is now. Democracy is the preferred form of government for more than half of this globe’s population; from Greenland to India, from Russia to USA, Japan, Latin America and South Africa, democracy spread far and wide, much like a certain form of flu. And it likewise mutated.
How does it work? Well, people get to vote. Every 4 or 5 years, they vote a party, a platform, an ideology or, if they’re really lucky, an actual person. But who chooses the candidates? Who pushes them in the limelight, who writes their names on the ballots? In a democracy you may choose whosoever you desire – as long as you choose from our own carefully selected candidates.
Oh yes, democracy is the rule of the people in the true sense of the word – as long as you’re in the majority, that is. And if you, as a majority, vote to, say, deny utterly and unabashedly that a minority even exists, let alone is entitled to some rights, well, let it be so, right? The democracy hath spoken.
And even if you, as majority, do care about minorities, and treat them well to raise your status as a country in the world. You do your job, you elect your politicians, based on their platforms and their promises, and then… and then you go home, you shake your head and you fully expect to be disappointed yet again by them. They all lie, you tell yourself, but you still hope against hope that this time, this time you sent an honest man in office.
Have you noticed that, whatever the report or response of a politician, everybody expects him to lie? Maybe just a little bit. When Amnesty International denounced the war crimes committed in the Gaza strip in the latest soon-to-be-forgotten Israeli-Palestinian war (well, Hamas, actually), both sides jumped up and said that the report is biased and unbalanced.1 Accusations are promptly met by denials, rebuttals, counterclaims; proof is brushed aside, a counterfeit, an image coup manufactured by the political adversaries. Politicians cry their innocence on the way to prison – and then wonder why the vote turnout is low, why people loose interest and stay away from politics altogether. Why indeed.
Take the Lisbon treaty. It was shot down by Ireland, in what must have been the biggest news story of 2008 for the Old Continent. European political animals pulled a fast one and continued the vote in other countries, in spite of the treaty needing unanimous approval by the member states. Most of them didn’t even dare ask their voters via referendum, knowing full well what happened with the late European Constitution project. And now Ireland votes again. Who’s willing to bet it’s going to be a Yes this time?
And yet, when we do vote, we chose the trustworthy candidate. The one with strong moral values. They got a black man to take office as president of the United States and are now claiming that for an extraordinary feat, but mark my words: an atheist wouldn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell. No, we need God-fearing politicians – at least they fear someone, the saying goes.
And the part that really cracks me up?
This is the best we can do.
I was going to write a post about risk and reward today. About executive pay, and how it relates to responsibility in business. The news have been abuzz these days with managers and executive officers raking up the millions in bonuses, even if their companies don’t function very well. Which is another way of saying “bankrupt”.
I was going to write it – in fact I got most of the way through, but I got stopped in my tracks. What have I got to do with all this? I don’t even know what a million dollars looks like. Most of us don’t, and most likely never will.
It’s an alien world, the one I was going to write about. What I learned of it are disparate, small, loose pieces of a puzzle I never got to see before it broke down. What do I know about how these people take decisions? They’re flipping coins in their penthouse offices, for all we know. Or maybe they rent time on SETI@home and fire up huge, complicated social simulations that model market behaviour for the next 5 to 10 years.
We hear the stories of CEO excess, the unbelievable nerve of some early-pensioned bankers, the huge stock incentives that compensate for those symbolic one-dollar salaries. The private jets. The yachts. The lifestyle. The news would boil them alive, just. And we still know nothing about them.
Footballers, we can understand. They too rake millions, but we know why. They can hit a ball. We can hit a ball. We can relate. CEOs, they don’t even speak the same language. They gather thousands upon thousands of air miles a year – the closest any living human ever got to be Superman, with the notable exception of skydivers. They choose, and the companies follow. Like the clans of old, we follow, while at the same time asking for their blood. Metaphorically, of course – that’s what the tabloids are for. Maybe we’re envious. Maybe. Maybe we just want to prove they’re human.
Oh yes we are, don’t pretend otherwise. Those celebrities, they got talent. They got a chance to use it. We don’t grudge them that. These managers, they’ve just been working hard. You could have done that too, if you had a vision of that future. They made it, that’s reason enough to hate. Isn’t it, my dear lynch mob?
The thing is, we have it easy. Eight, nine hours of work, then our work is done, we get to go home and relax. A good manager gets to go home and worry some more. Was that the good decision just now? Was that the good strategy? Where are we going? Where are we going to be in five years’ time? Am I letting my people down?
Yes. They mean us. The good ones always do.