NEW ORLEANS: A SOCIAL AND CULTURAL MODEL THAT IS SINKING
Categorie: Culture, Art and SportThe latest tragic events in the USA, after the passing of a hurricane, leaves two things clearly exposed: a path of pain and death for thousands of human beings, something that humanists around the world regret profoundly; and the spectacular failure of an economic, social and cultural model that was alleged to be the system to apply throughout the past century and principally in the final decades where it considered itself to be the “only model to follow”.
Thanks to communication networks that that makes our planet ever smaller, millions of citizens, including those within the USA have been able to watch astonished at not only the magnitude of the human tragedy but also the total impotence of the supposed super power to give even a minimal and coherent response.
The same North American population now asks itself about the convenience of the gigantic deployment of men and equipment to Iraq, that includes 95% of the National Guard that is supposed to be charged with the “internal security” of the country.
It also becomes difficult to hide the offensive economic inequalities and the growing poverty of millions of North Americans for much longer, above all among African Americans. Effectively, those who stayed in the city did so because they were without the ability to escape simply because of a lack of sufficient resources to do so. It would be difficult not to relate this to the fact that New Orleans has no less than 28% of people in poverty and of those 85% are black.
But it goes much further: it could be that their system is unjust (internal poverty) and predatory (external militarism), but even so is would be sustainable (although with cynicism but with a certain practical consistency) if this model worked. How grotesque and humiliating it is it when these hurricanes are detected by North American scientists every year; and periodically other Caribbean countries suffer from them. But poorer countries like Cuba, can organise themselves leaving only 4 deaths during the last hurricane. In these moments, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela have offered help and the giant of the North has rejected it with a pride that was predictable.
We do not found ourselves then in front of an unusual slowness from Bush, but rather with the crushing logic of historical processes. Since its foundation, the USA went with the model of economic liberalism, and after isolated social experiments like the New Deal, it ended up defending neo-liberalism that in reality is ultraliberalism. And this has implied that above all any attempt at planning ends up in the hands of large economic corporations, taking power from government and civil institutions. All attempts at a social vision were degraded as “socialist”, not even requiring further explanations after the failure of this block at the end of the last century. Reagan explained it openly: “Government is not the solution to our problems… Government is the problem”. In this way not only was an economic and business model let loose but also a train of intangibles that were left orphan such as assistance, compassion and communication with the people in favour of values such as “competitiveness”, “individualism”, “self-sufficiency”, “efficiency”, “wealth”, etc.
Today, millions of people ask themselves: where is this efficiency and this wealth? Because this society that has left everything in the hands of “market freedoms”, does not have common mechanisms of assistance in exceptional cases… not even for regular cases of growing misery and violence. And it is not that this great power does not have economic resources, it is that it has educated its population with codes that are so pragmatic, immediate and opportunistic that every activity that does not give immediate economic profits is not done by anyone, due to the logic of these premises. Which multinational will take charge of misery if this is not translated into capital growth at the end of the year? And surely, already another company is preparing a film about the subject and another giving an important donation to the victims so that it gains a good image and good tax deductions… but this will not resolve the problem, it only highlights the perverse model even more.
And what happens now? What response will the system give? It is already giving it: violence. Humanists have for years warned that the logic of neo-liberalism will lead to its collapse through saturation and afterwards it would begin to “discipline” the chaos that it had created. And now we are seeing it: the only response that the government can fulfil “with efficiency” is repression. As if the real problem was this minority of people that try to take advantage of any situation. Now they try to exaggerate the number of robberies and crimes, when the majority of repressed people are only trying to find food and water, something which is logical after a (natural) catastrophe and the subsequent inefficiency of the system (that is not “natural” but rather social, or elected).
In case someone has still not realised, after reading in the school books “The fall of the Roman Empire” and afterwards seeing on television the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are watching, transmitted live across the planet, the fall (the sinking) of this supposed Empire, that has already become for History, just an attempt at an empire, because they lacked a greatness of outlook, vision of process and human level.
But we will not deceive you; this does not only affect the USA. Here in Europe, and in other latitudes, phenomena like unstoppable immigrations (fruit of the growing international economic injustice and confusion) is treated like it is a problem of mafias and public order, brewing racism and xenophobia and not like an historical phenomenon that seen in process is understandable and that, well directed, could be tremendously enrichening. And in front of a fruitful interchange between cultures, political and religious leaders from both sides engage themselves in re-launching old crusades.
Meanwhile, thousands of desperate victims in New Orleans watch as their lives, their futures, their beliefs about “the greatness of their country” sink, and without knowing whom to blame look to the skies asking for help or interpreting events as “divine punishment”. When social references have failed, people search everywhere. Hopefully this search will not be an escape towards the irrational or superstitious, but rather it will be directed towards the interior of the human being, to the best of each person, giving impulse to the surge of a new culture and will not have economic wealth of a few as its centre but rather the real wellbeing of all human beings on this planet. And this new utopia will be built by many and already has a name: the Universal Human Nation.
Madrid, 6th September 2005
Nacho Martínez
Secretary of Culture, Art, Sport and Leisure of the
European Humanist Regional