If politicians are not the solution to a better world…then what is?

A good friend of mine once asked me to spend an afternoon with his son – I did not ask why, neither did he explain…but it must have had something to do with this young man’s altruistic nature and idealism that even shifted his interest to politics.

When I asked this young man why do you want to be a politician. He replied in a condescending tone that can assume that question hardly requires any elaboration. He went on to tell me – a politician is like a world class soccer player. You dribble, pass the ball and when you’re part of a great team…you can really make things happen and everyone cheers for you! Because they know, you did it all of them.

We were sitting down in the verandah and judging from his body language – he expected a reply from me. But I simply kept quiet…then finally when he could stand the silence no more. The aspiring politician who hopes to make a better tomorrow for people and planer asked of me……you don’t have a lot faith in politics or politicians do you?

I told him. Being in a winning team is great, but do you notice these star players never ever seem to close the circle very well. They either end up having to always fix their knee caps and even if money comes their way, they always seem to end up penniless as once they’ve past their prime – it’s game over. But do you notice, the guy who owns the football club. The man who owns the franchise that makes it possible for a $2 made in China polyester jersey to sell be in the high streets for $300…..he’s the guy you should seriously consider aspiring to be…..I reckon he can do more than the whole team put together with just his little finger.

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‘If you are well read in the history of power and politics. And mid way in this conversation, the name Rothschild or the Medici’s is mentioned – you would know intuitively where I am coming from along with probably where the conversation is going to go.

If you don’t know, then it’s best to click on the next excellent blog elsewhere or drop in on Mr Brown. Better still spend the rest of the day trying to figure out how to get to level eighteen of angry birds….you see when you don’t know about these things that you should know, it’s not the simple case of you just don’t know, like how you don’t know where the black or yellow wire is supposed to be screwed in a three pin plug.

In this case when you don’t know, it’s like during moment of my averagely miserable childhood when I actually believed – there were people living in the radio. I just couldn’t figure out how so many people along with all the stuff like drums and even trains could fit into such a small box. That really bothered me, so one day when all the adults weren’t around I opened up the radio and to my surprise I found no one there. There were just stuff like wires and colorful things stuck together in a jumble on a flat board. So like how one eventually figures out his the head bone is connected to the neck bone and that’s connected to the backbone and so on – I started to educate myself about transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors and the whole idea of shortwave radio etc etc.

That I reckon was a very life changing experience for me. Because it taught me the valuable lesson of always looking beyond things for what they merely appear to be.

When I was in middle school….the same thing cropped up again. I became fascinated with a TV commercial character simply known as the man from Del Monte.

This chap was exactly what I wanted to be when I grow up. He drove a really cool period Mercedes Benz. At times he even flew on of those seaplanes that could land on water. The man from Del Monte was my role model. He always wore a pristine creme suit, sported a stiff Panama and when he gave the thumbs up…things just happened.

So I read up everything there was to know about commercial farming. This was before the internet age, when everything was either analog or proceeded by slow mail – but I wrote to every company on this planet that farmed banana’s, pineapples, apricots etc etc etc. I even wrote so many times to United Foods, they actually posted a case of premium canned apricots begging me never to write to them ever again and this was curtly followed with a by note that mentioned, for further information concerning the man from Del Monte please contact the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN.

So I wrote to them as well, asking his mail address and the life history of the mythical man from Del Monte. They were equally clueless as well. I even wrote to the ministry of agricultural and livestock of the Soviet Union who actually believed I was a CIA spy masquerading as a geek who had a fetish for combine harvesters – tasked to find more about their failed five year agricultural plan for the Ukraine. Eventually when they couldn’t tell me more about the man from Del Monte – they too begged me never to write to them again or the Kremlin and even offered me an all expense paid tour of the glorious Soviet Union providing I stopped asking about the man from Del Monte.

Guess what? Despite my best efforts. Eventually I realized, he didn’t bloody exist at all! The man from Del Monte was essentially a figment that probably emerged from some faceless advertising firm where the copywriter probably couldn’t even tell the difference between a pear or lychee!

So I started to read more about how banana’s and pineapples are really grown – I started to read about chemicals, herbicides and their effects and what happens when the land is milked for all it’s worth in the grand capitalist name of the profit motive and even how this was all accomplished….and let me tell you this succinctly – it’s not a very pretty picture. Not at all.

That was when it dawned on me the idea of power and politics is not merely the two dimensional image of a man talking about a better tomorrow on TV or for that matter the homily sugary character of the man who likes to yes to the very best from Del Monte…it’s a much broader expanse of competing schools of thoughts and states of minds that involves so many elements like how tiny cogs, springs and levers all combine seamlessly together to create the complication of a watch.

So to me the world just like the entire disquisition of power and politics can never be a simple thing that can ever reside in the hands of politicians – it’s terribly complicated and when we ask ourselves the real question of where does power actually reside? We don’t need to discuss whole seminal schools of thoughts or even go to far from where we are to get to the crux of the answer – it’s like the perennial haze, it’s a pithy summary of how the vested interest of a select few who belong to the oligarchy of the rich and powerful will always trump over whatever politicians and politics can ever hope for do when they wax lyrical about delivering a better tomorrow.

It’s been this way since the beginning of time.

All I am willing to say is, do you see the Rothschild’s, the Medici’s or even the post modernist agent of change George Soros taking the slightest interest in politics or politicians? Of course not – they’re playing a bigger game with higher stakes as for politicians they’re chips in the larger scheme of things – because when you ask yourself one fundamental question what after all is politics all about – who is it supposed to serve? What’s the goal? Where is the logical end? no matter how you cleverly you decide to cut and splice those questions, it all comes right down the age old hubris of maximizing resources and opportunities in an age of scarcity and diminishing opportunities – that’s all it is and when you know this interrelationship between power and politics as a dynamic idea and not one that is set in stone or can even remain the same – then you would know why the man from Del Monte along with politicians who exist to serve and make life better is at best chimeric. Neither do they have the power to change anything whatsoever let alone craft a better tomorrow for all of us…..truth is stark, brutal and cruel…only a select few stand to reap it all while the rest have to make do they best they can with their averagely miserable lives.’