DISCLAIMER: The following are the author’s personal opinion and invites everyone’s thoughts for its enrichment and enhancement. These do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Aboitiz Group, neither does its publication on Aboitiz Eyes imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the matters discussed.
ENRIQUE ABOITIZ MENDIETA September 2020
We are hearing and reading and seeing more of the consequence of or the reason for deflation in the value of being able to speak freely. I am not sure if it is weak institutions that have caused the deflation of this precious right called democracy. One competes freely in a world where ideas reign = an idea meritocracy.
The hypothesis I have amalgamated from discussion with people and writers that think profoundly and help me to feel is that, genetically, there are those with the ‘share the pie, zero-sum’ gene and those with the ‘grow the pie, no limit’ dream.
In the same way that any carnal tastes and preferences are genetically driven—and, therefore, naturally—so are the genes that cause the pie philosophy.
Some of us feel that there is no reason why some of them should have more than many of us. Hard work, risk, and possible luck are not good enough reasons for anyone to have more than the other. We both start with a one-acre field. You work 12 hours a day, and I work 6 hours a day. Why should you keep the extra production from your hard work? Half should come to me. It is only fair. Some of us are willing to share part of the extra work and extra harvest if you cannot work because you were born blind but not because you want to take a longer nap. The successful wish to equalize the inequality distributed by Einstein’s God. God is the root of all inequality—Einstein’s God (EG), that is. Now, Lulu’s God, she wants all her children to be better off in all senses, so she sets out to inject compassion in the hearts of EG’s ruthless creations that filter out the weakest for the survival of the fittest.
In recent memory and history, it starts here. A little under a couple of hundred years ago EG gave us Karl Marx. He was a rather lazy fellow, so he felt that the pie should be distributed. Now, chance favored the prepared and Lenin appears in Russia at precisely the moment when these appealing idea of egalitarianism should replace Tzarian stupidity, the stupidy of abuse. He probably did not know any better, or so it seems, history tells us. Then an animal called Stalin takes the concept to town—egalitarianism achieved by all having less together and supervised by having many guns pointing. This was the scene begun 100 years ago. Of course, the pie-growing group got better and better and better. The pie-dividing group eventually crashed.
We thought the Cold War was over. That was not to be. The Cold War was not a war, it was a significant battle. The roots were not extracted. Why? Because they are genetic.
The pie distributors took a new road to Rome. They penetrated regulation in government, media, and universities, particularly in the United States. The winds blow east from California. They fuel up with methane called technology, and the pernicious wind goes viral.
The pie distributors raise their voices because they cannot raise their words. They think that thunder grows flowers when it is rain. (Rumi, I borrowed this from you, so I thank you.)
The PC movement, cancel culture, et al. are Rumi’s thunder. They cannot produce rain. They cannot grow flowers. So they use noise to scare you all away from the value of pie growth.
Cancel culture is succeeding because we are allowing it. Its deleterious nature is that of very slow-acting poison. It is out to kill any voice that disagrees but alerting to words when they are unable to convince with context. The persistent, Woody Woodpecker nature of its adrenalin wins over the pragmatic and their unwillingness to invest time in stupidities until, of course, enough is enough. The pie distributors deviate from reason to emotion and we see the damage that “the enemy of reason”, as Spinoza so aptly names it, does.
We agree with Tagore: “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
As the pie distribution gene merges with the noise of thunder escalated by technology, the freedom to express ideas and their venue to be aired are snuffed. They penetrate institutions that matter. The result is Democratic Deflation.
This weakens public institutions further, and the pernicious, vicious circle spins at an accelerated speed dragging stability, volatility, and risk with it.
As individuals and private enterprises, unintended consequences abound. The unknown unknowns thrive. Risks escalate as volatility thunders.
What are we to do?
The only mitigation to the unknown is preparedness because that is part of Einstein’s Gods plan as well. It is how he filters. As he filters the weak from the strong, he rewards the prepared and sends Murphy to visit the unprepared.
There is one choice left, and that is to go back to success in the hunter-gatherer time—a team of individuals that are watching out for today and tomorrow all of the time.
Attention & Engagement 24 x 60 x 60 996 or ‘777’.
996—a metonym for hard work the Alibaba Way.
