I often see in online groups and even offline a few people asking for partners to co-write a story with. Most of these callings I find laughable. Why would anyone write somebody else’s story? Isn’t the whole point being able to write your own story? Giving life to your own characters and ventilating your own fantasies? Still, I can tell you with all honesty that writing with others can be a wonderful and fulfilling experience.  So I would like to speak a little bit about that.

I was actually writing with somebody else much sooner than I was writing at all. If you read some of my posts, like this one, you will know that my first bouts of inspiration happened when I was very young and was playing with my brother. We would build our own stories and our own characters and play out the battles and the pursuits we were imagining. After that, I started writing my own stories and I would not share this process until many years later. On a few occasions, I happened to engage with other writers in a sort of cadavre exquis exercise: one of those where someone starts to write a story and then somebody else continues it and passes to a third person and so on – so in the end, you have a story written by many parties. I even did that in Torino, Italy, when I was representing my country in the Bi-Annual Fair of Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean in ‘97 – us writers ended up reading the whole strange text on stage for an audience with music and everything; it was very interesting. These exercises, though, even if interesting, never ended up creating a good story or even a good narrative. And there was always someone who made the whole text even weirder one way or the other – making a strange poem instead of narrating, or a deus ex machina of some sort. And it was obvious it would be so, as people write a lot with their feelings, their own style, their ideas, and never quite ‘fit’ into another person just like that.

For years I never thought I’d have the time to write with other people. I wanted to write my own stuff – imagine my own stories, fly with my characters, write as I pleased. How would I have the time to develop stories with other people when I had so many of my own to work with? That changed, however, when I started writing screenplays.

Scriptwriting is probably the most technical kind of fiction writing there is. Everything you do in a script is full of consequences for a lot of people. For instance, if you write a scene where two people are having a conversation in a car as they cross the Golden Gate bridge you must really have a very good reason for that, or it will never be made – no-one will close or simulate the Golden Gate bridge for a movie scene where two people just talk to each other, it’s just crazy expensive. And everything in a script must be in its right place – if you’re writing a sit-com, be sure to have a joke every other minute. Everything you do, every scene, every detail, has loads of consequences for the producers, for the director and the photography and the wardrobe and the actors, etc. So… it’s technical. Curiously enough, that makes it easier to co-write: because your writing style and your ‘feelings’ about this or that matter less.

Also, you can do an outline or not when you are writing a book, but when you’re screenwriting, fuggedaboudit!, you need to outline, period. So I was in my late 20’s when I had my first real experience with co-writing. And it was a lot of fun! A friend of mine and I decided to write a romantic comedy and we worked several hours every Monday night on it. When you’re outlining with a friend, especially comedy, it’s a blast. You can have hours and hours brainstorming about funny things and building the characters and the story from scratch. And then you can start writing it scene by scene and it’s even funnier and more joyful. And then you can invite a group of friends over and make a reading of the script and laugh and drink and then commiserate together for having written a lousy script. Oh, the good ol’ times.

I ended up doing a lot more of that later on, especially after my 40^th birthday as I was invited to co-write a script that was produced and then invited to do more stuff in co-writing. I had a lot of good experiences screenwriting with somebody else or even in a group. I think that in some cases it’s really the best thing to do – and it presses you to write more and faster and with more quality. It’s a really good experience. But it can also be frustrating. And I am very skeptical about partnerships in writing books, even though there seems to be a lot of them that actually work. This said, I think some things should happen for a writing partnership to succeed.

First of all, I don’t believe you can simply invite a random person, a random writer, to write with you. I don’t believe you can simply go online and ask somebody to write with you. The chances of that being rewarding seem to me very thin. A co-writer must be someone you connect with, someone you trust and, hopefully, someone you really know. Both minds and hearts must be able to integrate the others. Because, don’t forget, when you write fiction you are giving life to your fantasies. It’s only natural that the other person’s fantasies are different – but they must be compatible. You must both be able to get a kick from the same story. Hopefully, you should like the same kinds of stories and the same genres. Maybe even have the same references. You should also be keen to outline. Outlining is the easiest, most engaging and most crucial part of a writing partnership, in my experience.  Only when you have completely agreed on what the story will be, in my view, will you be ready to write. And you must have the same work ethic – it’s important that neither one feels cheated, working harder than the other – or there will be complications.

Second, it’s not easy when someone comes up with the story and one of you comes in to help write it. I was once hired by a film producer to help a director develop a script he was writing and I almost went mad when the guy started every single session by announcing he had changed the names of the main characters. Aaarrgggh!! My best experiences co-writing were the ones where both of us built the story together and owned the story together.

Thirdly, be able to compromise upwards. What do I mean by that? A rule of thumb I had with a director I worked for years was: we only committed to a plot point or an important item in the story when both of us fully agreed with it. If one of us was not sure, we kept working to find a better solution. Compromise upwards – compromise to get the best possible solution. Don’t compromise downwards, accepting something you don’t really like – it will most likely bite you in the behind going forwards or, at least, will diminish the pleasure and the stamina in the process and the work.

Fourth, the three pillars of person-to-person communication are essential. These are: 1)Active Listening – always try to listen carefully, willingly and actively to your partner – really understand what he/she is saying, not just the words but the meaning. 2)Empathy – always put yourself in his/her shoes and go to the core of what he/she is communicating; put yourself in the character’s shoes as well and promote that positioning with your partner, role-play if necessary. 3) Assertiveness – be able to convey as clearly as you can what you really think – don’t be passive or submissive, don’t be aggressive, don’t manipulate – tell it as it is in a way the other person is able to hear and integrate. If you don’t do this it is likely the communication will break sooner or later and all the work will be worthless.

So there… These are my two cents on this subject. I guess many times people will be in a position where it is not possible to have all the best conditions met: if you are part of a writer’s room for a TV-series or if you were hired by someone to co-write or ghost-write a book you may not have the say I profess. Still, I hope this text and these ideas are useful and can help you develop good partnerships. See you around the next campfire, fellow warriors.

When I trained Fencing and Martial Arts in my youth I was struck by the fact that novices and masters seemed to choose their techniques in a different way. Novices seemed to be more deliberate and when they went for a technique they struggled to do the move correctly, just as they were taught. Masters, however, seemed to be more fluid and spontaneous. I learned that masters did techniques in order to breathe correctly so that everything happened naturally. Novices, however, tried to breathe into the technique, forcing themselves to breathe in a manner that allowed for a good technique to happen. You can see the same thing in football, for instance. When you see someone like Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi playing, they seem fluid and you can pick up that they use different techniques in order to go in a particular direction or be in a position to strike. They don’t even seem to think about the techniques they use. Maybe they don’t even realize the techniques they use. (Btw, Portugal just won the 1st UEFA League of Nations Cup – kudos to us.)

Let me give you a writing example. When I was a kid I was enthralled by a particular sentence I wrote. It was something like this (loose translation): ‘The Moon was up on high, a comma of false modesty, hidden but interested.’ I just thought this was the most beautiful sentence I would ever write. It was a clever sentence, as I was describing the crescent moon. It seemed like a comma, falsely modest because it was mostly hidden in the shade but still very beautiful, and it was hidden but looked like it was slightly popping out of the hiding place to look at us. Clever… I still think it was a very good use of a metaphor. But I believe nowadays I write these kinds of sentences and use this technique all the time, without even noticing it. I don’t use it to make a beautiful metaphor or a beautiful sentence – I use it to lead the reader to a specific position and feeling. And that’s all I care about.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not always learning new techniques or new ways of doing this or that. Take a look at this dialogue by Hemingway I talked about here. It’s from ‘A FAREWELL TO ARMS’:

(The leading couple is in bed. The protagonist is trying to convince his girl to marry him – she refuses.)

(…) ‘I am married. I’m married to you. Don’t I make a good wife?’

‘You’re a lovely wife.’

‘You see, darling, I had one experience of waiting to be married.’

‘I don’t want to hear about it.’

‘You know I don’t love anyone but you. You shouldn’t mind because someone else loved me.’

‘I do.’

‘You shouldn’t be jealous of some one who’s dead when you have everything.’

‘No, but I don’t want to hear about it.’

‘Poor darling. And I know you’ve been with all kinds of girls and it doesn’t matter to me.’

‘Couldn’t we be married privately some way?’

Hemingway is using a technique some call ‘Talking Heads’ – he ignores the scenery and physical aspects of the scene and just writes dialogue from one character to the other. It’s a tricky technique, as I explained here, because if it’s not done well it will confuse and annoy the reader. But I like it a lot because it’s very cinematic (curiously enough) and expects the readers to be intelligent and fill in the blanks. Now recently I read one of THE WITCHER’s novels by Andrzej Sapkowski and he uses the technique all the time. But he goes a step further. Here’s a scene by a master teaching his young pupil to fight:

‘Beautiful! Now jump away, jump away immediately, pirouette! I could have a dagger in my left hand! Good! Very good! And now, Ciri? What am I going to do now?’

‘How am I to know?’

‘Watch my feet! How is my body weight distributed? What can I do from my position?’

‘Anything!’

‘So spin, spin, force me to open up! Defend yourself! Good! And again! Good! And again!

‘Owwww!’

‘Not so good.’

‘Uff… What did I do wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m just faster.’

See what Sapkowski does there? He almost writes in the second person POV. It’s an action sequence but he doesn’t describe any of the movements except… through dialogue. You’re following the action through the dialogue. In my view, that’s taking the Talking Heads technique to another level. I love it! I’d never seen this technique used like this!

Actually, the implicit question in the title is a wrong one. You never ‘don’t use’ techniques. Every time you are writing you are using techniques, whether you know it or not. And it’s good to know about them because you will then notice them in other writer’s texts and you can consciously experiment and develop your portfolio, your tool-kit, and your writing. I believe we writers must be able to learn from one-another and reading is absolutely necessary for this.

But having a tool-kit, knowing techniques, must improve your options, not restrict them. Different techniques give you alternatives and new solutions for this or that situation you face. It’s not indoctrination. You should be very wary of people who tell you: you should do this and not do that. ‘Protagonists must be this way or that way. Chapters should be this way or that way. Stories must be like this, genres should be like that. Don’t do metaphors like this, make your sentences like that.’ That’s all bullshit in my view. Original writing, writing that is truly interesting, comes from experimenting, from making mistakes, from doing things people haven’t done before – or did it worse. Also, don’t go asking those kinds of questions: ‘should I start my story this way or that way? Is it wrong to use first person POV in a comedy? What if I describe a fight through dialogue, is it okay? Can I do Talking Heads or is it bad?’ These questions should not take place! Seriously! Just do it. See what happens. Then ask your readers to give opinions. But you will never be original if you write ‘by the pole-numbers’.

My mother taught me this story as a child, of a man trying to paint his house. Every person who walked by had a different opinion about the color he was using and every time he accepted the other’s opinion and changed the color he was painting with. Of course, he never finished painting the house. We must accept that we will never please everybody and that there is no perfect way of writing a story. And that’s the beauty of it. It’s an Art, not a Science! It’s not about being able to repeat the experiment; it’s about experimenting in novel ways.

Now, not everything that is original is good. There was this screenwriting agent I once met who told me that ‘when people come and tell me that this hasn’t been done before, I usually find a good reason for not having been done before.’ Originality is not just about being different. Most of Creativity is actually Creative Problem-Solving. It’s about solving problems in a creative way. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You need to analyze the problem and invent a new solution. But you can do Level One changes – solving a problem in a completely different way; or Level Two changes – solving a problem by improving past solutions. Both are possible and both are desirable, as long as the problem gets solved effectively – and doing that with Level One change, i.e. inventing new techniques, is much more difficult and time-consuming. You can always do Level Two: learn a lot of techniques and use them in original ways – i.e. having a well-furnished tool-kit.

At least that’s my take on the subject. I hope it makes sense to you. See you around the next campfire, fellow knights.

 

They say a writer never has a vacation and that’s the truth. A writer is always writing or thinking about writing. A story is always looming somewhere within the tortuous meanders of a writer’s mind. Throughout the years I started using a few tools I picked up here and there to help me deal with this continuous effort, or rather this continuous energy. These diverse tools have been useful to me in many ways and some of them are actually a lot simpler than you may think. Many writers I know actually use many of them, even if they call them something different, and they are commonly used beyond professional writing. I bet you are using some of them, whether you know it or not. Still, I thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit about at least three of them, so here they go. The order is not meaningful, as you may have learned by other lists of mine.

1. THE NOTEBOOK

The common notebook is probably the most obvious tool. Every writer has his/her notebook whether they know it or not. You can use your phone, your recorder, your web camera, your computer, your IPad, whatever. Every writer has a tool to take notes. It’s essential! Maybe you use it to write in a coffee shop or on the train, maybe you use it to draw your characters or your scenery – it’s still a notebook. I use several forms of it. I usually have an XL sheet I’ve already spoken about here. I use it to gather concepts and gimmicks. These will help me always to have a story to write, and focus on the story I’m working on without getting infatuated by another idea that comes along. Once the concept or gimmick is settled on my XL sheet, I forget about it until it’s time to work on it for real. I have over 40 unwritten concepts on this sheet right now.

I also have a Word document dedicated to each story I’m writing. It’s not a document where I write the story itself, it’s a file where I write character traits, random ideas I have about that story, or even write future scenes or pieces of scenes that I will copy and paste into the narrative when the time comes. The Word document for my current WIP is now over 17 pages long and has the curious and coincidental name of «2030», which is the first line written on it and documents the year the story is supposed to happen in. Many of the things on these pages are now obsolete, but I never change my ‘notebook doc’, I just keep writing on it, because I may want to return to a strange unused idea at some moment or want to understand the origins of another idea, which brings me back to the notes on the doc. This is, for me, a very important document, almost as valuable as the actual document where the story is being weaved.

And then, there are actual notebooks. Notebooks everywhere. The most important of these is the one that I keep next to my bed with its pencil. Many of my ideas come to me in my sleep. However, it is rare for an adult to remember his/her dreams… except for the first 5 minutes after we wake up. So that is the moment when ideas must be immediately stored. Many times we are too sleepy to make any sense and it’s not uncommon for me to get up in the morning and not understand a word I have written in that book. Still, that single notebook has saved many jewels from oblivion and that is certain. It also works as a weapon against insomnia. Many times I can’t sleep because an idea is plaguing my mind, exciting me and troubling me. Once I write down the main pillars of it, however, I feel at ease and sleep comes to me quite quickly. So I’m really grateful for that notebook.

Beyond these, I always (almost always) carry a notebook and a pen with me. You never know when you’ll need one, and I actually have notes spread out everywhere – unfortunately, as I lose many of them.

2. THE BOARD

If you’ve been reading my blog you already know I’m a fan of Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet. Well, in his book SAVE THE CAT, Snyder also talks about a tool many writers, especially screenwriters, use to organize their work. They call it The Board. The Board is basically a lay down of the structure of the story. Some people use a cork board, some cards, and some pins; some people use specially written software or a smartphone app. I sometimes use an XL sheet with squares and text boxes I spread over a 3 Act division. The Board allows you to keep the whole story overview in one place and to keep adding to it, changing plot points from place to place and interlocking ideas in one way or another before you write them. Take a look at this post about it from Isaac Botkin – he explains it well.

Sometimes I also have the Board written down on a Word document, and I even have a template I made with Snyder’s beats listed when I want to check out if the plot points of the story are in the right place. But most of the time I have The Board in the most elusive and dangerous place: my mind. I do not recommend you do this, seriously. I do it because I was doing it for a long time before I even knew what The Board was – and it’s half the pleasure I get from writing: visualizing and playing with the structure in my mind. If I ever forget this or that idea I find it means it wasn’t that important or that good – otherwise I don’t forget it. And most of the times I wrote down or put down The Board I learned I didn’t need to do it. I had it all in my mind. If it’s a story I will not be working on at the moment, I’ll write down the fundamentals on a Word document and then I’ll commit to The Board I’m working on. What’s important is that at any moment I can change the pieces from one place to another and make sense of the whole structure in a single glance. Use a real Board, seriously. Put your story down in words, put it on the wall. I bet I’ll be doing that myself soon, as my age pressures my mind.

3. MIND-MAPS

Mind-mapping is a technique I picked up a long time ago when I was working on Time Management and Presentation Skills. It’s a technique invented by an Australian called Tony Buzan who was studying the way people study. He became an expert on the brain and on memory and speed-reading. The theory behind mind-maps refers that it works by replicating the way our inner brain works. Using images and a fluid design we can organize ourselves as we open our minds. I’m not going to recommend a particular site on the subject, just google it. There is tons of stuff on mind-mapping. I use it for everything. When I have an idea and want to develop it, when I’m on my lunch break and want to structure my latest blog post, when I have a meeting and want to have my ideas organized, when I have story in my mind and want to lay it down simply on one page, I pick up a notebook and mind-map. A few years ago I was on a conference sitting behind a well-known author whose name I won’t mention and I took a peek at what he was doing on his tablet and, surprise-surprise, he was mind-mapping a story. That was so cool! His Board was a Mind-Map!

So these are a few of the tools I’ve been using for years on my writing. Do you use them too? Do they make sense to you? Tell me all about it.

Today I voted for the European Parliament. I love voting. I am filled with surprising joy when I cast my vote. It’s a moment of freedom and pride. We all should do it. It’s scary to note that it is likely that one of the victorious forces to come out of this election will be the far-right parties all over the continent. So abstention must be overcome, it’s a non-starter at this point. We must all vote. After I cast that bulletin in the ballot I came home and went over an unpublished article on Europe I wrote a couple of years ago and found it very current and still encapsulating my ideas. So here are some of them.

Today, it’s a cliché to state that the European Union and all its History since the foundation of the European Community of Coal and Steel in 1952 allowed for a particularly long period of peace and prosperity. Military campaigns in Europe were until recently not only frequent but extremely costly. After the disastrous World Wars and following Montesquieu’s idea that commerce leads to peace, European integration has arguably benefited the whole world.

The path, however, has not been easy, with challenges at every corner over decades. The lightning-fast fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, for instance, took everyone by surprise. Suddenly, countries just beyond the border of Germany wanted to take part in this great experiment of modernity and liberty. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and several other States were released from the tight fist of communism and everyone rushed to welcome them. Everyone seemed eager to take them in. Country after country. And no-one seemed happier than the US, who lobbied endlessly for countries to join the Union. Even Turkey and Ukraine were considered.

Through it all, the European leaders have always responded with steps forward: they promoted rampant enlargement and flourishing bureaucracies, brought down borders, unified currencies, created High Courts and Banks etc. Treaty after treaty, what the European Union is today was almost unimaginable at the beginning of the 1950s. I was 15 years old when my country, Portugal, joined the EU in 1986. The Union was then called EEC, European Economic Community, entertained 12 member-States and was ruled by the Treaty of Rome. Now, the EU has 28 member-States (27 once/if the UK leaves) and is ruled by the Treaty of Lisbon. And no-one ever asked me what I thought of it. Actually, no-one ever asked most of the 500 million citizens of this great behemoth what they thought of these immense changes even though most aspects of their lives are now commanded by European rules. And many of them were not ready.

These citizens have been increasingly showing concerns. European countries are democratic countries, with a solid tradition of legitimacy based on popular vote. However, the European institutions themselves do not follow this principle. The European Commission is nominated without elections and wields considerable power. The European Parliament is elected but in a strange and diffuse way. When I vote for the European Parliament I vote in a national election, and for national parties. But these parties are grouped differently in the European Parliament. So I may vote for Portugal’s Social-Democratic Party in a European election in my country. But this party will be integrated into the European Popular Party in the European Parliament. I know what the Social-Democratic Party stands for in Portugal but, unless I’m very educated and knowledgeable, I will have no idea what the European Popular Party stands for in the EP. And I never actually voted for the European Popular Party anyway, and never will – the system doesn’t work like that. Besides, the European Parliament doesn’t have much power anyway.

So, in the end, it’s the Union’s Council of Ministers that remains the most powerful body, deciding the most important matters behind closed doors. In the Council, the ministers and representatives of the Governments of each member-State trade in influence and big ideas. And some dark and pernicious little monsters start to unveil: the fear of Germanic hegemony, the looming Franco-German axis, secret and selected summits, etc. Maybe all of them illusions or exaggerations. Still, that’s what we see in the Council. The remains of Old Europe, a Europe of greedy Sovereign States, working in the shadows of the diplomatic elites, with arm-wrestling deals and fragile alliances.

If the European Union were a Federation like the United States, the Government would have to satisfy even the weaker states. A Presidential Candidate in the US wouldn’t dream of campaigning only in Texas or California, ignoring all the other states. And even though many of the candidates come from big states like New York or Illinois or Texas, some of the Presidents were born in smaller states. Bill Clinton came from Arkansas, John Kennedy from Massachusetts, Jimmy Carter from Georgia.

In Europe, however, a Spanish citizen or a Slovenian or a Greek knows that Angela Merkel has incredible power over his or her life. But she is not elected by either of them. She must only satisfy the Germans. The same for Macron, the French President, who only serves the French. And the same for any other national leader.

The European Treaties go to great lengths to prevent offending the sovereignty of each member-State. They establish the Principle of Subsidiarity, for instance, determining that what can be decided by individual States should not be decided by the Union. And they force many matters to be decided by unanimity or qualified majority, or even voted in the individual Parliaments of each State. But that’s how the quagmires begin. These principles were easier to comply when there were only 12 States at the table. They become a nightmare when there are 28 States voting. That’s why crisis like the migrations from Northern Africa, the collapse of Libya or Syria or the frailty of Greece have been so difficult to react to.

For many European citizens, the feeling is one of skepticism. What in reality is a problem of «not enough Europe» is felt in the streets as a problem of «too much Europe». If the Union doesn’t work, why are we investing in it? Remember that scene at the end of «Goodfellas» when Ray Liotta’s character is running around cooking pasta, getting high, trafficking drugs, managing his family and lover and trying to escape surveillance as everything crumbles all around him? That’s how I sometimes feel when I look at the Union struggling in the mud with all these geopolitical events. When will it be too much to handle?

Oh, but it gets worse…

As if on cue, enter the National-Traditionalists. These barbarians have been preparing their ambush for twenty or thirty years. They are not Conservatives. Conservatives want to preserve the status quo. Traditionalists want to radically return to the values of the past. One of the strategists of this line of thought is the American Steve Bannon, so active in today’s European elections, another is the Russian thinker Aleksander Dugin, influential within Vladimir Putin’s circle. He says that the major countries listening to him are Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States, but we can see it as well in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Brazil or the Philippines. For them, globalism, progress and modernity are evil ideas. «There is no global flag», says Donald Trump.  They are very suspicious of international organizations as the UN or NATO, and of free-trade, international conventions, immigrants and, of course, the EU. Even more, they are suspicious of liberal western values. Says Dugin: «If we reject the laws of modernity such as progress, development, equality, justice, freedom, nationalism, and all of this legacy of the three centuries of philosophy and political history, then there is a choice.»

These strange people have been gathering strength all over Europe as well. They’ve been biding their time, waiting for the right moment. The moment when the weaknesses of the Union becomes apparent. Figures like Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage even turned themselves into European Members of Parliament, vowing to destroy the system from the inside. Elections in Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany and other countries now feature nationalistic and traditionalist parties that show increasing power. Recently, a far-right member of the Austrian government was caught on tape dealing with the Russians and had to resign… Is it the first of many?

And then… there’s Brexit. Remember «Goodfellas»? Ray Liotta turns to the camera and says: «And now… it’s all over.» That’s how Brexit felt to me. It’s a game-changer. It’s exactly what the Traditionalists wanted. The older citizens of the UK made the decision. Nostalgia won. Let’s just go back.

But what does that even mean? The old traditional values they talk about led to unimaginable catastrophes in the past. World wars, genocides, economic turmoil. When, some time back, I watched the video of Adolf Hitler asking the Germans: «Do you want Total War?», and heard them reply «Yes!», it made me shiver to my bones. Is this the kind of world the Traditionalists are working for? A divided, xenophobic, warmongering world? In the words of Gudin himself: «One of the first, simplest movements in the direction of the Fourth Political Theory [his movement] is the global rehabilitation of Tradition, the sacred, the religious, the caste-related, if you prefer, the hierarchical, and not equality, justice, or freedom. Everything that we reject, together with modernity.» Scary stuff!

Winston Churchill himself was the one who suggested a united Europe – a United States of Europe, as he put it. He warned: «The Dark Ages may still return». Liberal values are stronger values. But they are under siege because we have been too timid in defending them. We relied too much upon their intrinsic worth. So we need to get back to the ballots and the streets. Today at 4pm only about 23% of Portuguese electorate had cast their ballots. 77% was no-where to be seen. Political absenteeism, both real and emotional, is the genesis of all totalitarianism. So our first duty, our first commitment, must be to voting.

Go get them, fellow warriors. This is our fight! As Kennedy once said: «First of all, we’ll be judged by our courage.»

I’m still a bit shocked, just having watched the last episode. Not shocked by anything that actually happened in this last season, but shocked it is over. I’ve known THE SONG OF ICE AND FIRE far longer than THE GAME OF THRONES series. It is a story that’s been with me for much more than a decade, before it became the pop-culture phenomenon that dazzled the world. More than anything, the amazing characters will be missed, even though I’m eagerly waiting for the upcoming WINDS OF WINTER. This last season of the series was bound to disappoint. The expectations were so high that only a genius would be able to carry through this overwhelming story. And Martin is a genius, no doubt about it, and it would have made a world of difference if he had finished writing the books before the series was over. It would more or less bind the producers and showrunners to something a little bit more solid at the end of the journey. Let me speak a bit about this anyway – careful with the SPOILERS.

Most people (me included) cannot imagine the size of an enterprise like the GoT series. We’re talking about many millions of dollars, thousands of people – talented, creative, brilliant people – dozens of locations, mind-blowing effects. Being up there deciding on the very lives of all of these people and ideas must be terrifying. And some mistakes were made. First of all, the lack of courage: someone up there, HBO itself, the showrunners, whoever, was not brave enough to commit to a couple of more seasons. Maybe the actors were getting tired, maybe the organization was becoming difficult to manage, maybe the company felt the money involved was too risky – we have no idea what prompted that decision… but it was a shame. The story would hold up for a couple of seasons more. Still, this season was always going to be disappointing:  the expectations were too high. I spoke here about build-up and pay-off. The build-up of this series was so incredible that the pay-off was almost impossible to achieve. Whatever happened, we were bound to be disappointed. We invested too much. It is a natural phenomenon for people to fantasize too much and expect to be enthralled by a story, an idea, a man or a woman. But then, as life teaches us again and again, disappointment is also a natural result.

There were other underwhelming decisions made by the showrunners besides ending it so quickly, with a final 6-episode season. We will always criticize the strategies of the Battle of Winterfell, or the cinematography of the 3^rd episode, or (SPOILER ALERT) that Daenerys got mad or that Arya did not kill Cersei in the end. These are a few moments that break our hearts. Some more sophisticated options might have been better – Drogon could have gone out of control, or the bells of King’s Landing failed to ring – I wonder if the writers were clever enough to see this would lead to the same situation in the end. I am mostly critic of the fact that at least one of the first two episodes of this season is completely useless and could have been used to improve the overall result.

However, what I find the most disturbing is the following: because of the polemic that fell on this season, and one or two mistakes, we are ignoring that some moments in these final episodes, especially on the last two episodes, are some of the most beautiful, well written and powerful moments in the whole series. The last two episodes are, in truth, close to brilliant – as long as you don’t get shocked by the plotpoints. And I enjoyed most of the others, in truth. I suffered during the Battle of Winterfell, I rejoiced with Arya’s coup, my heart almost exploded when I heard Missandei say ‘Dracarys’. In truth, in spite of the episodes being so long, feature-film long in fact, they went by like freight trains and they all seemed to last just a few minutes. And then there were moments that… will remain with me forever.

Melisandre’s death is a beautiful scene, but Carice Van Houten’s performance on the witch’s last stance at the pit is so very powerful! What an actress! The way her face changes as the dead approach is a tribute to acting.

Peter Dinklage is an incredible actor and the goodbye scene of Tyrion with his brother Jamie is breathtaking. Extremely well written it is a pearl of Dinklage’s performance. I doubt this goodbye could ever be a better one.

Arya escaping the catastrophe of King’s Landing is perfectly well made. I was almost out of breath when I followed her through the dust and fire, as she helped people among the fallen buildings and finished up as a lonely survival – finding an equally lonely horse in the rubble. Very well done!

The fight of the Cleganes was wonderful. Very well staged and Rory McCann, playing The Hound, is an excellent actor.

Dinklage shows his skills again in both his last meeting with Jon Snow and Tyrion’s speech at the gathering of the lords. He is a monster.

The scene of Daenerys death is painfully beautiful. It couldn’t have been better, in my view. Both Drogon and Jon Snow’s pain is impressively real and powerful. It was the last breath of the Targaryen and a deserved one as well.

I very much liked the final montage and the final scenes of the series. It is a tribute to the talent behind this series that they were so beautiful. We will miss this fantastic journey. I hope that you, the ones that felt heartbroken and cheated by this last season, are able to go back to these episodes with fresh eyes and see the beauty that they offer.

And now for the final disappointment: GoT was an event. It’s over. It’s time for the rest of our lives. Some other genius will come… and we’ll lose our minds once more. But not today. See you around the next campfire, fellow warriors.

 

So, as we travel through the wrinkles of time towards the upcoming release of Villeneuve’s DUNE in November 2020, I get to wonder once more about the importance of Religion. As I’ve said here, I believe that the essence of Metaphysics, Religion, and Spirituality is basically aesthetic. There is little logical argument to assert that God exists or that God does not exist. And Science is very far from any definitive answer on the nature of the Universe. Religion and Spirituality deal with the way we ‘feel’ about Existence – it is actually in tune with how we connect with the Universe and how we find it… beautiful. How it ‘clicks’ to us. Is there a God? Some people find it impossible to think there is not, others find it naïve or fantasist to think there is. That comes from a sense of beauty, not logical reasoning. So it’s impossible to discuss and discussion, trying to convince one another of this or that kind of religious belief, seems to me, overall, not only empty but even dangerous.

This said, Frank Herbert’s DUNE is one of my favorite SciFi books, maybe even my absolute favorite, and it has an ingenious and sophisticated way to approach Religion. Like in many other stories, from Malory’s LE MORTE D’ARTHUR (see here) to THE MATRIX TRILOGY (see here), DUNE is about a somewhat supernatural hero that becomes the focus of prophecies and bears the destiny of the species. Paul Atreides, just like King Arthur or Neo, becomes a God-like-figure, something his heirs will also incarnate. I will not speak of it here, I may in the future, in particular after November 2020.

Despite the fact we end up enthusiastically rooting for each of the figures I’ve mentioned above, the fact is this kind of religious worshiping and the intense, unquestioned and fanatic delegation of one’s decisions to another Human Being is incredibly dangerous and worrisome. In fact, some of the worst deeds ever done by individuals all over time and space come from this very phenomenon – from the massacres of the Aztecs to the Holocaust, to the terrorists of today and the Inquisitions of other times – many wars and atrocities were committed in the name of Religion.

Still, we need Religion. Because that basic connection with a Meaning, with the Beauty of the Universe, is not obvious nor necessarily easy. It’s all too big. The whole is too big. We seem too small. So how to comprehend it? How to manage and control our anxiety facing the whole cosmos? Thus, we need a religious sense – even if an atheist one. We need some kind of belief about this whole. There is some mystic side to life, and this is a way to own it. I don’t mean we necessarily need to belong or to integrate this or that Religion. That needs to be clear. I, for one, believe our connection with Existence to be an intimate affair. I tend not to discuss my religious belief, whatever it may be. It’s not secret or anything, but it is intimate – and my basic principle when it comes to Religion is one of freedom: there are too many people in the world trying to influence and dictate a sense of Religion to the others – I, for one, am against this dynamic. Is there a God? I refuse to discuss that subject and only a few people know what I believe about it.

This said, two other phenomena are in need of discussion: 1) the subordination of Ethics to Religion and; 2) the extreme behavior of people in crowds and in religious gatherings. I’ve spoken a little bit about 1) here.

I understand that Ethics, our idea of Right and Wrong, may easily be connected with the way we see Existence. Someone will say that we need to pray five times, or eight or ten times a day because ‘that’s the right thing to do’, ‘that’s the command’. Someone will say if we do this or that we will be rewarded by a better reincarnation. Someone will say to be good to our parents because God says so. Someone will say we need to kill the infidels. The problem with this is that Religious Thinking does not tolerate questioning, it does not tolerate resistance. If we resist, it’s because we do not have Faith, we do not believe enough. And so, if we delegate our Ethics, our sense of Right and Wrong, to Religious Thinking, we are particularly vulnerable to manipulation. A good alternative is Knowledge and Education. Education increases our options, allows for Critical Thinking, multiplies our freedom. Religious Thinking limits our options, shrinks our possibilities and does not allow questioning. Religious Thinking is not wrong per se – we just need to be careful with how we subordinate our Ethics to it.

The other phenomenon, the phenomenon of crowds, has been studied for a long time. People act in a different less-mature way when in crowds, or when belonging to large groups. The larger the crowd, the more basic will have to be the common denominator, what unites everybody. We are all different, but to become one with others, we must find what is common, and the larger the group the more primal the factor. That is why the basic IQ of a crowd is less than the one of a normal individual. It will become closer to the intelligence of a little child. And that’s how normal people can have abhorrent behaviors when in crowds, easily jumping to violence or ecstasy with little control, or being vulnerable to some leader (or ‘guide’) who is clever enough to command the moods and swings.

That is why people imbued with Religious Thinking and a mystical sense of belonging in a large group are dangerous and in danger.  We must not delegate our Critical Thinking or our sense of Right and Wrong. The Universe will be here much after we will, and it is all far larger than our understanding – but our main decisions in life will define how well we’ve lived. And that is on us. Not on anybody else. And even if we are religious, we are intelligent enough not to need to impose our Religion on others, aren’t we? See you around the next campfire, fellow knights. Be free.

Okay, this is my last of three posts on what’s likely my favorite Coen Brother’s movie: THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, featuring Tim Robbins, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Charles Durning. Even though you might feel differently after reading my other posts, I do believe this is a film made in praise of Capitalism. In fact, I also praise Capitalism. Modern Capitalism did so much to take civilization up to another level of progress – not only economic progress but also social progress. What’s most obvious at first glance is the incredible boost in material gains Capitalism brought in the last few centuries. In the last decades alone the PPP (Purchase Power Parity – what you can actually buy with your money) has increased exponentially across the globe (see OECD graph below), with particular emphasis on Asia. The ability of Capitalism to inspire progress around the world has also brought billions out from the jaws of abject poverty since the last century alone. People start believing that if they work hard and cooperate with others they can have a significant impact on the way their lives evolve.

Collaboration, as I have argued already here, is the key to Capitalism: we can see this in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY – as Norville Barnes comes up with the idea of a circle «You know… for kids!», the whole corporation is put into motion and many people come to make this idea into a reality: and thus the amazing ‘Hula Hoops’ is born. This storyline in the movie also shows us how Capitalism inspires innovation and makes people believe in incredible ideas that no-one else will seem to credit, allowing liberty to test them and openness for the market to accept them. With this, Capitalism also promotes the idea of Meritocracy: this thought that if you deserve it, you will succeed – if you have the merit, you have the credit; if you have the credit, you have the reward. This idea, however, seems to be far from the rule of the land. Modern Capitalism and Liberalism seemed to come hand in hand in the last few centuries, but they have been hurt and chastised in one way or the other along the way.

At the inception of Liberalism, one of the great experiments of the time was the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte emerged from the chaos and two ideas emerged with him: 1) that Liberalism and Meritocracy could be used to create incredibly effective and sophisticated organizations, such as the million-strong Grande Armée; 2) that Aristocracy and aristocratic thinking were far from over. The armies of Napoleon were plagued, in the end, by the same aristocratic thinking, nepotism, and corruption that they were raised to destroy. And so was the society in general. In today’s world, wealth and power are still the ownership of an elite of public and private figures, in politics and economics, that are protected and supported by the whole system. And that is what makes for the increasing problem of inequality we see throughout the world: a small group of individuals amasses the majority of all the wealth.

And here is, in my view, another of many of Marx’s mistakes. His focus (and shall we say Lenin’s and Mao’s as well) was on who was wielding the power and who possessed the wealth. On the other side of the Pond, the American Experiment, along with the ideas of the likes of Montesquieu, de Tocqueville, Madison and other, focused on the limits to power and on checks and balances, i.e. on freedom. And that seemed a much more effective way to go about it. In THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, Norville Barnes is raised to the top by the corrupt intent of the Board of Directors – he does not seem to merit the position of President of the Hudsucker Industries. Because of this, he came into the attention of the press, represented by Amy Archer (the talented Jennifer Jason Leigh), who aimed to unravel the whole plot. The press, the Free Press, is one of the most effective checks on the abuse of power – as de Tocqueville argued so many years ago.

Truly limiting power is, in my view, a crucial foundation of a Liberal Society and Liberal Capitalism. For the focus should be on Decision Making and not on Power itself. See the example of Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Semmler. In trying to create a Democratic Company, where employees recruit their superiors, decide their wages and work hours, create their timetables and rules, he kept the ownership and power of leadership – but he viewed it as a one-shot pistol, for the first time he’d use his veto power he would destroy all the democratic organization he had built, all the good he had worked for. In the end, everyone is better off if the best decisions are made, and the best decision-making process we know to date is the democratic one (we’ll talk about it more some other time).

The Aristocratic Capitalism of today that we know and hate is tainted. It is elitist, unjust, corrupt, focuses on material gains of the few, promotes psychopathic and sociopathic organizations, created a narcissistic epidemic, and a rampant phenomenon of inequality, tending towards monopolistic and oligarchic economies.  A true Democratic Capitalism could be more competitive, more productive, more just, more worried with the problems and solutions of the many, would focus on the well being of individuals and organizations as well as communities, would promote empathetic, cooperative and democratic organizations. And I truly believe it is coming… because it is necessary.

One story that Ivanka Trump has told several times is the one where her father pointed towards a homeless vagrant and said to her: «That man is 7 billion richer than I am.» Donald Trump, in fact, went bankrupt several times, living off his father’s amassed wealth, destroying many lives in the process. In his view, he was poorer than a man who had nothing and owed nothing. Still, Trump was riding in limousines and helicopters, dining in the best restaurants and staying at the best hotels all around the world – and was handed one chance after the other until he became the President of the USA. I bet that the man who was richer than him couldn’t do anything of the sort. That is the face of Aristocratic Capitalism.

THE HUDSUCKER PROXY is the story of Norville Barnes. He dared to dream of becoming a great businessman – and he did become the President of a large corporation. He climbed the ladder by the whim of an aristocrat like Sidney Mussberger – not by his own merit. But then he was driven to despair as he tried to own the part and was almost destroyed. The movie seems to speak about the importance of second chances and how we should not sink under our own failures. However, what the story really tells us about is that in a corrupt and nepotistic society, ruled by Aristocratic Capitalists, only miracles can save us in the end. And that is why we need to change it.

 

One interesting aspect of THE HUDSUCKER PROXY is its approach to time and the idea of second chances. As I said in the last post, this is (probably) my favorite Coen movie and it means a lot to me. The movie starts with the camera arriving at New York in the last few moments of 1958. We hear the voice of Moses (played beautifully by Bill Cobbs) narrating as if he was a Shakespearean or a Greek chorus – he is speaking of the way people are oblivious in this last few moments of the year, ‘having a good time’, maybe misunderstanding the nature of Time itself. As the camera travels through the snowy skylight of the Big Apple, we approach the Hudsucker Tower, topped by a splendid immense clock with a lighted hand counting the fatidical seconds as time runs out. Below the clock is the Hudsucker Industries motto: The Future is Now. In a moment, old ’58 will be gone and the new ’59 will begin. But before that happens, young Norville Barnes climbs out of the window of the office of the President of Hudsucker Industries. It’s his office. He has climbed the ladder to the position after the previous President, Waring Hudsucker himself, committed suicide by jumping from the top of this same building: 44 floors not counting the mezzanine. It seems the top position of this amazing corporation is not as exciting as it can be, no?

I spoke a little bit about the Nature of Time when I wrote about THE MATRIX here. I believe that, in the end, we must embrace both our limitations and our ability to choose – what matters is what we choose, our attitude, facing our finitude and our limitations. What matters is our ability to ‘make things happen’ in our lives. To ‘take in’ our time as best as we can (which is much more complex than simply ‘live every moment to the fullest’ as if there is no tomorrow – there is tomorrow and we must want it too).

Now, in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY the Coen brothers are focusing on the way Capitalism acts on the old and the new – we have the idealistic Norville Barnes against the Board of Directors headed by the ‘straight-for-the-jugular’ Sidney Mussberger. In a way, they represent the cut-throat kind of capitalism Max Weber talks about in his groundbreaking work THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM. He quotes Benjamin Franklin: ‘Remember, time is money.’ Weber explains how the devout protestant of the 19^th and 20^th century believed that it was their duty towards their lives and especially towards God that they apply themselves to their material gains. Idleness was seen as a sin. As Franklin would say: ‘He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds’. Meaning: every idle moment has a monetary cost. In this spirit, we can also follow the works of Frederick Taylor, of which Peter Drucker would write: ‘some of the most influential writings in Western Society since the Federalist Papers.’ Taylor’s Scientific Management would lead to punch-clocks, hourly wages, timetables, measured tasks, prolific production operation management, time management and other narrow productivity measures. And if we feel that is a way of thinking exclusive to Protestants, I would be curious to learn what Weber would say to nowadays work ethic of some Indians and Chinese – surely not Protestant in their majority.

This kind of narrow-minded Capitalism, though, misses a few points. First of all, Meritocracy is not what it’s lined up to be nor is it the way of the land. Corruption and nepotism are much closer to the real way things actually happen. We can see that in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY: Norville Barnes ascends to the office of President of Hudsucker Industries not because of his merit but because of his demerit and sheer luck. Luck, as it turns out, (or the Gods, as THE HUDSUCKER PROXY seems to point out) has a lot more to do with success, studies show, than what Capitalists and Capitalistic Aristocrats want you to believe. On the other hand, a short-sighted understanding of Meritocracy does not recognize the role of so many important individuals in society. Teams and other strange groups are often much more effective in completing all kinds of tasks and the role of each member in these is not always fairly recognized. A soccer striker, for instance, may be idolized for the goals he scores, but the goalkeeper has an equally difficult and crucial task and not only earns less but also has less amount of glory.

And then there’s Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction: it is the market itself that will choose the failure of some to give way to the success of others. ‘Out with the old, on with the new’ says someone in the movie. What THE HUDSUCKER PROXY points out, though, with impressive fairness, is the significance of second chances. A society without a safety net is a society where Fear of making mistakes reigns. And that will certainly increase the drive towards corruption and slow down innovation. In the movie, the safety net comes from the Gods themselves: as Norville Barnes falls relentlessly from the Hudsucker Tower (SPOILER ALERT) it’s Moses himself, the unsuspecting chorus, who stops the clock and gives him a second chance. The ability to fall (or fail) and rise again is inherent to a just society, and the inequality that we complain about in today’s economy may result from this feeling that only the rich and powerful have second chances, no-one else.

In the end, it’s important to understand that work cannot and should not be the sole and major focus of our lives. That is also what Norville seems to learn at the end. Being the President of the Hudsucker Industries is only of value if the rest of his life, in particular his personal life, is also satisfying. Idleness, feelings, empathy, being able to enjoy the Universe, are also important factors in a healthy society.

Let’s speak more of this in the future. The future is not necessarily now. Sometimes now should be simply now. Take it in. And paraphrasing Kipling: take victories and failures as the impostors they are.

Sorry for skipping last week’s post. As I told you, I was in bed with the flu. That’s the bad news. The good news is that GOT is back! But I won’t be talking about that today either: that’s the bad news. But my brother came visiting from England and that’s the good news. My younger brother and I are very close in age (10 months apart) and we were flat-mates in another life so we are close and think alike about many things. But as we live so far away from each other we only meet about once a year. So it was very interesting to learn in an exciting conversation that he shares my views about some of the most controversial subjects, as the flawed usual way people speak about Capitalism and what is wrong with it. I spoke a bit about it here. At the same time, I recalled what is probably my favorite Coen Brothers’ movie: THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. It may be considered one of their minor works, but it’s one that says a lot to me. I’ll be using it to structure a few thoughts on Capitalism and this is the first part of that post.

So here’s the story, for those who haven’t watched it. Straight out of IMDB: When Waring Hudsucker, head of hugely successful Hudsucker Industries, commits suicide, his board of directors, led by Sidney Mussberger, comes up with a brilliant plan to make a lot of money: appoint a moron to run the company. When the stock falls low enough, Sidney and friends can buy it up for pennies on the dollar, take over the company, and restore its fortunes. They choose idealistic Norville Barnes, who just started in the mail room. Norville is whacky enough to drive any company to ruin, but soon, tough reporter Amy Archer smells a rat and begins an undercover investigation of Hudsucker Industries.

Let’s start with this: Norville Barnes, played by the brilliant Tim Robbins, is a young and naïve business-school graduate who comes to New York to make his fortune. We can see him looking for work and getting increasingly disenchanted: it seems for every interesting job opening announced there is an overwhelming sentence: ‘Experience Necessary’ or ‘Experienced’. Finally, he finds an advert in a paper (or the paper finds him – destiny and luck play a curious role in this movie) announcing a mailroom job, ‘No Experience Necessary’. It’s low pay and long hours.

The next time we see Norville, it’s his first day at Hudsucker Industries. It’s the mailroom. The Coen/Sam Raimi script describes it perfectly: «The hellish mailroom is criss-crossed by pipes that emit HISSING jets of STEAM. As he wheels a piled-high mail cart down the aisle, Norville is accompanied by an orientation AGENT who bellows at him over the clamor and roar of many men laboring in the bowels of a great corporation.»

The Orientation Agent screams at Norville as he gets flooded by other characters’ shouts, information, and responsibilities. The Agent shouts things like: «You punch in at 8:30 every morning except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday unless it’s a Monday and then you punch in at eight o’clock! You punch in at 7:45 whenever we work extended day and you punch out at the regular time unless you’ve worked through lunch. Punch in late and they dock ya!»

It is obviously impossible to follow everything Norville is supposed to do and all that he can do wrong. But he seems too enthusiastic to care. He is ambitious. He has plans. He has a design hidden in his shoe, a perfect circle he shows to his colleague proudly, explaining: «You know… For kids!» Norville’s colleague, sorting the mail, has been there for a long time: 48 years. «… Next year they move me up to parcels… If I’m lucky.» He says, not stopping his work. When Norville doesn’t know how to sort an envelope too big for its slot, the old sorter has the solution: «Well… if ya fold ’em, they fire ya… … I usually throw ’em out.»

But suddenly, an alarm sounds and the whole mailroom stops. Someone comes carrying a special delivery. It’s a Blue Letter. «It’s a blue letter… top, top level… confidential communication between the brass… usually bad news… they hate blue letters upstairs… Hate ’em!» Everybody is terrified of the Blue Letter. Of course, it’s Norville who’s chosen to carry it. He goes up to Vice-President Sidney Mussberger’s corner office. Mussberger is played by the wonderful Paul Newman. Norville’s delivery of the Blue Letter is a terrible disaster – but luckily for him, Mussberger is looking for the perfect clown, a patsy, a proxy, to assume the reigns as the CEO of Hudsucker Industries – and that is how Norville gets the job, he simply seems the worst person for it and that’s what Mussberger wants.

Now let me stop right here and think a little bit about all this.

As I said someplace else, I believe that we are slowly arriving at a political setting where we can assume satisfaction for macroeconomic and macropolitical decisions and solutions. In certain parts of the world, arguably the most center-leaning political countries as the Nordic in Europe, or New-Zealand, we are well off to an overall attitude that actually achieves social, political and economic progress in a satisfactory way. What we seem to miss is that this overall macroeconomic and macropolitical setting is systematically undermined almost everywhere by the remnants of an old foe: the aristocratic thinking that is still pervasive and corrosive within public and private organizations alike, the corruption dominating the microeconomic tissue everywhere.

This first few minutes of THE HUDSUCKER PROXY show us a bit of this thinking.

• Only aristocrats get easy opportunities: Even though Norville has a higher education, he’s nobody. He didn’t go to the right schools, didn’t know the right people, he is little people. And as such, his only possibility is to be fed to the machine through the bottom, the mailroom. Show me a country where this does not happen. Corruption and nepotism are widespread.
• Lower employees are mistreated: lower employees are not treated as people. This happens all over the world in all kinds of organizations. People are humiliated and abused in their workplaces in a way that you don’t see almost anywhere else in present society. People fear being fired almost as much as they fear divorce or death and disease. There are actually fairly widespread phenomena of work-related suicides and work-related murders. It’s insane! And yet, we accept this status quo as if there was something wrong with the people and not with the system or the organizations.
• The systems are so blind they are systematically boycotted: Not knowing what to do with an oversized envelope, the experienced employee will… lose it. He knows he can get fired for such a little thing, so he creates a rule to survive the absurdity of the system. And so, following the aristocratic arrogance of the Ancien Régime, the organizational aristocratic systems of today are flawed because they are blind.
• They are cultures of fear: lower employees fear their superiors, who in turn fear their superiors, who in turn fear the response of the masses. It’s almost like we are in the tyrannies of the past! Rules are enforced with carrots and whips as if we were rats in mazes. In the 18^th century’s aristocratic environment, this didn’t end particularly well, and it won’t end well today.
• They are whimsical systems: if a high capitalistic aristocrat as Sidney Mossberger wants to install a patsy on the top of the corporation, he can. Why? Because he can do almost all he wants. He will be able to break the law, to destroy lives, to crush the environment, to be unethical and psychopathic – the system will protect him. We’ve seen this recently, with the 2008 crisis, with Donald Trump, with Exxon and BP, with all kinds of high aristocrats all over the world. They can do whatever they want – they will not be destroyed. The companies can be destroyed, employees be fired, people will lose their homes and their savings, small companies will be crushed. But aristocrats survive. And strive. Meritocracy, my friends, is a dream.

This doesn’t have to be this way. There are companies that don’t work in this manner – that incorporate democracy in their fabric and are extremely successful. But they are a minority. We have been blaming Capitalism for all the wrongdoing in the world, for all the inequality and all the misery. And it’s difficult to fight Capitalism because at the same time it brought so much good, it pulled so many from poverty and gave us so much over the years. What we are missing is that it’s not Capitalism itself that’s corrupt or corruptive. It’s Capitalistic Aristocracy. It’s the way organizations function and the way they incorporate the flaws of other centuries to favor certain individuals. We should not, we cannot, accept this. Let’s keep talking about it.

Dear friends, because of a vicious attack by the Flu Central Command this week, I’m postponing this week’s post for a few days. Thank you for understanding.