I was recently chatting to a colleague, who initially called to query a work issue, the result of which got us talking about the world of financial crime, the world order, geo-politics, and basically humanity. I'll let you figure out how anti-financial crime problems that banks face might have led us there. What struck me was the perspective, and the powerlessness therein. He was granular and specific in his analysis, citing numerous instances, historic and current, of wealth ruling the world, injustice, inequality, accumulation and abuse of power and influence. Travelling the world, and the paths of so called civilisation, through the lens of human ills and spills. He detailed offences uncovered by government leaks, the self-interested duplicity of US foreign policy, and the power dynamics of global economic leaders. While I was aware of most of his examples, he had dug in, proffering more detailed insights and assessment of these things than I had, the US in the wider Americas being a particular interest, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, a veritable feast of wrongdoings.
As I listened, offering the odd interjection to ensure my knowledge of such events was noted, I also gave the wider perspective, power has been abused forever, more recently by overarching capitalist ideals, the psychology of manipulation by politicians and corporations, who figured out what humans responded to before they figured out why, and know they now why, they have almost absolute power. While I may not have been as articulate as I hoped on a Friday afternoon, I realised that I looked at things more from above and he from ground level. Of course, when required I dig in, but he was obviously well read and interested in the wider aspects of our work in financial crime and the way the world works. He was also obviously troubled by the world yet continued to dig, to learn. Proving both, that ignorance might be bliss and that those who learn must suffer (per Aeschylus, if that's what he meant). It was autodidactic torture, edu-geo-political-self-flagellation or something.
I mentioned to him, in fewer words, that I don't often get into the news and detailed ongoings of things, rather grazing on stories, articles and factoids from the various books about financial crime, democracy and economics that I read. I go wide more often than I go deep. I prefer watching shows that take me off world and offer a look at the potential of humanity (Star Trek being the main one atm), to balance my studies and interest in the murkier areas of human misdeeds. I realised I do try to remain detached, and see and keep 'the hoomans' at arms length, maybe at a length that equates to the sky, to lie above it as Nietzsche said (quote below), and aim to make that distance more like the exosphere than the troposphere. Illusions of grandeur, a god complex is it? No. A coping mechanism? Maybe. But, it's more like an objective, logical lens, to see the journey of humanity and all that lies in it, all it has been and all it might yet be. Accepting the good and bad, the injustice and advancement, despair and hope - the big picture. It is not just seeing from this perspective, it is being, living from this perspective. Yes, wars make me sad, people suffering, and children dying makes me cry, but attempting to put this in the context of a story spanning stars and aeons gives me hope.
"...he will neither despise and hate existence, nor love it, but rather lie above it..."
To hear his underlying anguish and hopelessness was familiar, it was also, I realised, the same story over and over again, a person or group abusing their power for some kind of gain - it was in essence, a story of corruption. The story of the bad side of humanity is a story of corruption. A story of that equates to a well-known if oft rejigged formula that goes something like; wealth is power, power is the key to influence, influence the way to progress, and 'progress' is a subjective area those who have wealth, power and influence get to define. Now, I'm not saying my semi-detached (or maybe penthouse) way of being is better or best, but it works for me. I don't see terrible things and shake my head with a dismissive smile, saying, 'silly hoomans, when will they learn?' But the difficult, selective and determined separation of emotion from the big picture allows a clearer lens to view life and humanity, to see potential, progress and pain from myriad kaleidoscopic angles. Our lenses can often be smudged to point of severe opacity through life's events and traumas, don't forget to clean or change your lenses regularly. From here I build my knowledge of events, the cause and effect, the affected, to make sense of the injustice and beauty of our existence. I don't dismiss anything, I assess my feelings, I analyse my ideas, and thoughts to ensure that I am seeing things from angles other than my own. I may be fooling myself, maybe this is the slow way to a nervous breakdown. But as I attempt to amalgamate the ideas of others with my own, as I study and develop, things just become more and more interesting, curiousity grows and life captures rather than enraptures. I'll leave you with a quote that sums this up better than my rambling can;
"Life is absurd, but you can fill it with ideas, with enthusiasm. You can fill your life with joy."
-Reinhold Messner - Explorer, Mountaineer, Author.
This subject of knowledge acquisition and filtering does remind of Foucault's idea of the archaeology of knowledge. I see it as going wide, and then deep into the ideas, not always into the acts. Understanding is key, and that's all we are trying to do in our own way, but so often, we are sabotaged by psychological wiring and emotional overreaction that we lose our way. You can fill your life however you choose, it's not easy but you can choose your perspectives, you can reprogram the computer. I've been there, and now I'm trying a different way.
People say, separate your life from your work, get that work life balance. But my work is part of my life and a part of the way I see and understand the world, it is a blessing and a curse, it's a blurse if you will. Part of this blurse is the post graduate studies I have in progress, interesting but annoying. I start the new year with vision of what it will be, with goals and ideas. I will endeavour to meet and materialise those, but we know that life will throw dirt at us and smudge our lenses. So, I won't forget to keep cleaning the lens as I attempt to lie above it all.
Wishing you a happy new year and a happy whole year.
Al.
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