Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Good and The Greed


A few months ago in this not-so-quaint global village, the remains of oil-rich Libya’s four-decade ruler is displayed in a grocery’s onion and vegetable compartment. Before his end, he begged mercy for his life, and he was killed with his son (one among many of his family who got killed by NATO airstrikes). Weeks ago, he commanded his loyalists to fight to the death. He was an eccentric fashion icon, and more importantly he overthrew a monarchy in his younger days as a revolutionary.

The wind has blown us to a season of Arab Springs. In the West, there is a new ideological space being created in the Occupy Movements. That space will be there, even if the Corporations try to crush them or respond by censoring social media or the internet.

Our own country, hungry for a share of righteousness, stops our 9-year President and incumbent Congresswoman from leaving the country to face charges of plunder, electoral fraud, extrajudicial killings, among others. She was in a wheelchair, face covered in a surgical mask, her neck & back supported by an iron brace, looking stripped of leftover dignity. She didn’t get to leave in the many flights she booked that day. After bouts of TROs and Warrants, the drama leads to a Hospital Arrest and a new national soap opera begins in the history of a forgetful country. Her mug shots should be in the front pages of dailies as of this writing. She was the same president who succeeded a preceding president who got pardoned on a plunder case.

Tired, middle-class workers like me will open these pages in Starbucks branches that’s peppered all over the city. Every cup of coffee earns a sticker. They are collecting these stickers, spending their hard-earned two grand on coffee to get a journal that’s supposed to represent their prestige. This is under the guise, of course, of making a charitable donation through a very small portion of the earnings. The earnings should have belonged to those who worked for it in the first place: the third-world farmers who grew the beans, the supply-chain laborers who transported it, and the contractual servers who took the orders and put them in red cups.

If you go to the counter clutching a book, the barista will ask you about the book you’re reading. So much goodness turns into so much greed in this little global village. I show the Barista my book. He mispronounces Bukowski. And then upsells for pastry. Somewhere in the world, a low-level manager tasks his team to gather observations and feedback. He draws some charts, writes his analysis and recommendations. Behind that feigned interest in my book was a module, a script that’s supposed to make me feel engaged as a consumer. It’s supposed to make me feel good and return to this store, or any other branch. There’s another manager who oversees this practice as a standard is set to all stores. That is even taken to another level, because satisfaction is not only measured by desire to return to the store, but to have me recommend and promote the store to my friends. Superficial Corporate politeness will eat out what’s left of genuine human interest and sincerity.

There’s good, and there’s greed. I imagine, looking out to the bay, drinking imported Arabica coffee thinking about the world and its leaders and its springs and movements. How peaceful the water can look, as excrement underneath it mixes in and invisibly seeps.

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