Parallax I

Politics has entered my back door unannounced, it has moved in and now I need to deal with it. In Facts 2.0 Christoph Lüscher asks why the Swiss writers are keeping silent. I read with some amusement and not much surprise what Lukas Bärfuss comments about the relationship between writers and politics. It is one man's opinion, he is entitled to express it and I am glad that he has done so. In my view, his opinion is both self-centered and claustrophobic. Being in the middle of the storm always changes one's perceptions. I am right now in the middle of the storm of what is called swiss politics. At this point I am ready to stop asking myself if I like this, because I see my liking of it as being totally irrelevant. I have been following these 2007 swiss parliament elections that just took place this sunday from a perspective that is new to me, that of actually being an active democratically elected politician. This is a hat - the politician's hat - that I keep turning around and adjusting and that somehow I can not really leave to rest on my head. I feel no identification with the classe politique, yet I belong to it in spite of my feelings and likes.

But what is politics?

A lot of people speak as though politics is evil. However politics is very much an expression of our culture. Have we forgotten that we are social beings who spontaneously self-orgnize in communities? Isn't culture the cohesive expression of human behaviour? Is politics not part of that expression? Politics is hard work, and it is the kind of collective work that is never done and always in progress. Politics is a virtual social construction site. If the work was easy, anybody could do it, and if it was trivial it would be unnecessary. Damn, it is complex hard work, that is what politics is. And like any such labour, it is very susceptible to criticism. Informed, constructive criticism is good. Ignorant, intolerant criticism is annoying, informative and on occasions irritating. Defamation is just plain bad manners. Lots of people talk about Politics and politics - capital P, little p - and I think that they mean Policy and Psychology. One does need some conceptual tools to help with the bit of governing the place, that is usually what policy is intended to do. Policy is intellectual fruit designed for implementation. The place may be a small community, a household, a school, a country, an intergovernmental organization, or any group that somehow has some common goal. The thing is that structures do nothing, and people do all the work, so one has to sooner or later deal with the whole of their psychological and social expression. If it was easy, we had been all born in Utopia, and intellectual endeavour would consist of chasing butterflies.

The violence in the streets of Berne and the big F-word

So now I head straight to a series of events which I did not witness first hand, but which news reached me while I was away. To add insult to injury, I learned of the events first through a press release from the liberal party and then an American writer friend, not knowing that I was not in Berne, asks me what is going on via email. I still can not quite make heads or tails of the details of the escalation that lead to substantial material destruction through violent action on the streets of Berne on October 2007. I have seen my colleagues of all parties doing a more or less plausible shaking of the responsibility away from their parties or and persons. My sarcastic self commented that finally Berne had made the world news. After all not much ever happens in the helvetic capital, other than the occasional demonstration, most of which run their course rather peacefully. However once in a while things get out of hand, it gets hot, objects catch fire, and property is destroyed. Civil unrest they call this. It does remind me of the code words used in management to designate strikes and worker dissatisfaction. The experience of the latter is something that I made while exerting the function of management consultant which only taught me that where there is smoke there is fire. I do like to get to the bottom of things, and this is one stubborn piece of behaviour that has gotten me into trouble a few times, and then, it has also earned me quite a few laurels too. In what concerns the local cabaret around the violence of October 6, the facts reduce to the following: - Several public gatherings had requested and received the necessary permit from the municipal authorities including the SVP and the crafts market (Münsterplatform). - The so called peaceful demonstration against the SVP one did not get the required authorization from the municipal authorities in spite of the fact that their attorney was quite insistent about it and met with said authorities. -There were indeed peaceful demonstrations present on that day in Berne. -There were indeed violent demonstrations that day in Berne. -Property got destroyed. -The police had their share of breakdowns, but did handle the situation appropriately even if locally much political nonsense is still being discussed at this hour about the operative details of the said police's intervention. Actually when I come to think of it, it bores the living bejesus out of me to think of all the details of who was and was not involved. When I checked - with the friendly help of google and clusty - as to what was being written about the events, I got a picture that confirmed a few of the facts that are not so obvious from all the local and international mainstream press hype. Alternatively I could have spoken with a native Bernese dojo friend who votes Green and knows the local alternative scene and have confirmation that the hooligans causing the damage were not locals, and some not even Swiss. There is something of a violence tourism going on and these folks are indeed organized and they do use the internet. For the juicy details, then you have to know that the big advocate of all of these unauthorized demonstrations is a certain local politician who earns his living by picking up his clients at the Waisenhausplatz when they exit the police main station after their release from police custody. In the US we call such unethical attorneys ambulance chasers, but you get the idea. How very convenient indeed it is to preach, propagate and politicize the idea of civil unrest to the common folk, and then when law and order do their job, you are there as their attorney and saviour! It this leadership? Such unethical behaviour - the call for civil disobedience and violence - does indeed give both politicians and lawyers a bad name. If you are harbouring nationalistic thoughts, then you can consider the possibility that such citizens also give their patria a bad name. But what are we to make of a legitimate political party with some proud roots and some good fundamental ethical and middle class values that has been seduced by the charms of a charismatic leader who does not walk the talk? I have had the good fortune to meet members of the SVP and active elected politicians whose values are not that different from mine, and who have at some level or another inspired the idea of trust and community. Read trust as connection, relationship, understanding and possibility. I have also met some members of my own party who leave me a bit more perplexed as to the nature of our joint goal. On most issues the SVP, the CVP and the FDP do not differ in any significant way. However I do have a tough time placing the whole of the SVP in the ultra-nationalist bin. Tyler Brûlé may know something about publishing magazines and the value of Swiss craftsmanship and plumbing, but I think he ought to go back to school when it comes to understanding Swiss politics. The SVP is not an ultra-nationalistic party. That said, what is then the problem with the folks of the SVP? While one can not choose in which family to be born, there is a choice of which political party to join. The coin does turn around that once in a party the whole of the loyalty and interest merry-go-round starts to turn. Once an individual joins a party, and as long as some minimal conditions are met, a member will not be excluded. In a place - this Switzerland - with well entrenched democratic values, the attitude is all about finding consensus. However the fine line between consensus and compromise is not obvious and that may exactly be where the SVP has created a point of entry for ideologies that deviate from their own core values. But how does one phrase this in polite terms? It is not easy to keep this line of argument comfortable. For the one discomfort that the SVP itself is dealing with is that it has managed to attract quite a few sympathizers with radical neo-nazi, skin-heads an ultra-nationalistic ideologies. Fuck, but the big F-word, the big white elephant in the room, the stinking element in all of this is the present current of resurgent fascism dynamics sweeping the globe. Fascism is the big F-word. It is however not a problem that just the SVP has been infested with, it is also a problem with those political parties traditionally designated as being on the left. The problem concerns us all.

Participative Democracy and Consensus

In an ideal world, even in a dictatorship everybody would be content and sastified. However Utopia will remain an ideal, and ideals will also remain just that. Ideal is not real. We are dealing with life as it happens, and we all know it is one bloody mess from the time of birth. Why are the Swiss writers keeping silent? They are not. Is anybody listening? (to be continued)

Technorati Tags: democracy, fascism, politics, theoretical man, thought

BlogCampSwitzerland 2.0

I had a great time today at *BlogCampSwitzerland* in spite of the name and in spite of some physical discomfort due to a sore throat that I hope is gone by tomorrow. I saw some old faces, a few new ones and had several good conversations. I had a little session that I announced as an interactive mashup to the title of "The Swiss Myth". Both Claudio Notz and Sarah Genner blogged the essence of it from different prespectives. I also am looking forward to see the publication of Sarah's recently completed work about blogs in politics in Switzerland about which she gave us a fascinating preview today. I really had no idea as to where the discussion would go when tackling the swiss myth and mash-up politics and blogs. I did have a bit of an inquiry session and do look forward to the video that Greg Vernon made in order to study it within the context of action research methodology. I opened up by telling the story of how I came to think of the swiss myth "rich country" that I often get to hear and that inspired my last post on this blog and how that led me to think that exploring the mythology of Switzerland may lead to some interesting thinking. It was fantastic to witness the discussion shape itself and to see that most of those present did participate. Thanks to all who participated and or blogged. It is this kind of joint thinking and interaction that make the barcamp format a success. updated: Sunday 21.10.2007

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The Imponderability of Poverty

Subheading: The Rich and the Poor in the Age of Abundance or the Swiss Myth The rich and the poor, the have-nots and have-it-all maintains itself as an interesting theme in the age of abundance and in the age of theoretical man. Recently I found myself strolling the night life of a Balkan capital with a group when while engaged in a conversation about banking with an Austrian colleague two children came begging us for money. In Berne, the Swiss capital, the beggars are not quite so in-your-face about begging, but begging does go on in either of two obvious modalities. There are the begging racketeers with opaque origins, and then there are the locals. In a country with a mature and efficient welfare system as the Swiss have it, there is no necessity for anybody - national or non-national who is a resident - to take to the streets and beg for food and shelter, or the means to secure such, money. Really, there is not. I have been speaking at length with several social workers at various levels in the city and the canton, and you would be surprised at how well the system has developed the necessary resources for providing for everybody with dignity. My Austrian colleague and I did our best to convince the two children that we were not going to give them any money - the only English word they knew - and eventually they did give up on the cold blooded freaking foreigners. I for my part did not want to encourage small children being out working that late at night, however I do not have a clue as to why my colleague was equally unresponsive. We both carried out our conversation as though the two children had been nothing more that two pesky mosquitos whirling about. A few days after returning from the Balkans I was heading back home after having done a bit of grocery shopping when I was approached by a teenager with the all too telling question (in Swiss German) "Can I ask you a question?" That is how begging gets done in the streets of the Swiss capital. It is a question that gets attention. I usually smile and say no, or ignore it as the mood strikes me. If the person asking does not look like too disarrayed or confused, I might actually listen. When this teenage boy asked me the question, I told him that he could ask me the question, however I had a few questions of my own for him. I asked the teenager about how he had found himself in the need for begging. I got a sad and expected story of death and drugs. I reminded him of our functioning social welfare system and I was told another plausible story. I asked a few more questions, and always I got a good plausible story. Stories only need to be plausible, truth is anyhow nothing that one relates to at the story level, much less at the begging level. I had to reward this boy for his excellent story telling ability, so I offered him to pick something to eat out of my shopping bag. Now, this is when the surprise got me. This boy actually was happy to take some food from my bag. I got curious anyhow about what this young man's story was, and had a conversation with one of the social workers in the city a few days later. I was curious as to what was going on. I got confirmation that even if this young man had wrecked havoc of some form or another that may have had him excluded from some social support structure, there is always one last resource and that he needed not to beg for food or shelter. Still what seems apparent is that the resource missing is an intangible social resource that has nothing to do with material resources. The system is there and it is open to all in need, however the intangible need for social integration is often not realized by those in the need. This seems to be the greater poverty of them all, the inability to use what is available, and the need to be destitute. This need is one that is independent of socio-econmic status. The fact is that in Switzerland there is no physical need for anybody regardless of very materially deprived their situation may be to be begging in the streets. The true poverty is not a material one, it is one of spirit and conscientiousness. When poverty is looked at from this point of view, then it itself is rather abundant. In the time of physical abundance, poverty resides in the spirit. Are humans ready to eradicate poverty?

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