Globalization

Here it comes: GLOBALIZATION, or the search for the means to satisfy at all costs…or, in practice, expanding ad infinitum our ambitions. 
YES! Our numbers are ever increasing and we want more and more for us and only US! The problem is that in this process, we lose ourselves, our identity.

America leads in everything, now it imparted itself on the whole world and we, like monkeys in a sandbox, we push sand from one spot to another, vocalizing louder than our fellow monkeys and understanding even less. We cannot afford to open our eyes and realize how much we are not ourselves, to what extent we are gone.
Do you have a feeling that with the help of our own hands the world turns into a mere comic book? In it, there are schwarzenegers, and other rambos in which we find ourselves, although the sense of WE is missing. Looking at all that is close to our hearts, the human rights, environment, love, democracy, the Pope, etc., we only see the new form of the comic book and ourselves only through and within it. From time to time words ‘the Pope’ slip out of someone’s mouth, but we are not capable anymore of a reflection on what the Pope said! You’ll tell me that I rage on and still my point is not clear at all.

For a few years I’ve been watching creation of ever-bigger companies, American and international. Engulfing became a new sport. One ingests another. Globalization applies to the press, TV stations, the Internet, medicine, the streets, mercantile exchanges, houses where you pay for love, homes without love, and homes of crime. Not only in our home, but also in homes of those who got to the top, thanks to yet another hiccup of the newly created beast, everywhere bubbles Globalization. I’ve seen many highly paid experts in their respective professions lose their job without a chance of finding another, as they got too high on the pay scale. They are replaced with young people, fresh out of college, for a third of the pay of their predecessors. The world is then fed the news of the savings, profits, successes, ‘the firsts’, globalization…

Such is the stale hiccup of our times. A few giants expanding the absorptive power of their pockets eliminate the stinking excess of undigested, and increasingly uniform chow. The only loser is the consumer, as the marketed product gets worse and worse. Why is it getting worse? The new hires don’t have too much of an idea what they are doing and the few nouveaux riches of globalization saddles them up and rides them by forcing the new hires to perform at a yet impossible for them level (just as a 5 year old boy can’t be expected to have a child with a girl of the same age; this is just the situation which results from globalization as observed from employee’s backyard; in the US, it pops into view in all walks of life. This is why I get so irate at the journalistic ‘pseudo thoughts’ never understanding what they spew around, American style.

I am not interested in protesters, just as I feel distant from the theoreticians attempting to usurp the throne of the Supreme Creator. What I see, what stinks of arrogance and our rapaciousness, turning everything into a comic book. Globalization has become what today twists us the most. Out of all great people known to me, only the Pope discerns the weaknesses of this process. Unfortunately, those who could help in improving audibility of his words keep silent, or amplify them in such way that they become a part of our comic book.
"The American Beauty", one of the most interesting American films of the final years of the 20th century brilliantly conveys the atmosphere of life in the times of globalization (though this was not the aim of its creators) – I wholeheartedly recommend that you see this picture, if you have not done that already (one could add here yet another title from the past century, "The Magnolias"), and my personal observations, of a man moving without a hurry, because he LIVES AND IS…

So much for my loose notes of observations of a man moving without a hurry, because he LIVES AND IS! One could write an excellent article about “hiccupping, hollering in a sandbox, about thinking-unthinking”, only this would be pointless, as all write this way.

We have just returned from Utah from our New Year skiing. Imagine unending fog in a city surrounded by the Rocky Mountains (Salt Lake City) and the beautiful sunshine up in the mountains, the white pure snow around. We were lucky to ski in one of the few remaining centers not allowing the use of snowboards. The beautifully located Alta, cheaper by half than competitors, vanquishes the others with its unique charm. The four of us, as you know, adore the mountains and throughout the year we dream of skiing, remaining firmly in our lowlands. I’d better finish this scribbling.
Hugs…

JA