26 nov

I was listening to Dolly Parton – Julie’s cleaning music when there is no access to The Supremes – and naturally started thinking about austerity again. Just to be clear. I like austerity as a theory in some ways, of course do not adhere to it, but when studying the 12th century, it is clear that it was seen as the popular and successful answer to the problems of the then dominant society model – the catholic church – which went to its own crisis of abundance.
Let me laugh at myself one more time. When I say studying, I can hardly take myself seriously. I have been the most undisciplined student ever and gladly tend to the more relaxed approach of journalism. Or pseudo-journalism as one of my friends calls it. But it is a way to grab a lot of knowledge from here and there and try to sculpt it into a theme.
But what is the theme then?
A good question, and I am obviously struggling with the answer. Sometimes I feel like I grasp it, most times I feel like I am wandering.
But the first idea was: Capitalism is at a crisis, period. I might have to explain this better. The financial crisis of the past years have shown us that capitalism is not really dealing efficiently with the things that really matter. My disgust with banking has nothing to do with the enormous salaries that are being paid. To me the focus on salaries is extremely narrow-minded, but I do have a problem with the unclear benefits for society that most of these so called bankers are generating. As a society it would be good to redirect some of the money available to social goods such as health care, education and welfare. Protecting the vulnerable and stimulating the talented seems more important, from a society point of view, than rewarding the latest trickster.
In the world of banking there are lots of bankers that are interested in relationships. These are the investment bankers I met in London. Almost one for one these were respectable people with a lot of energy and respectable intellectual capacities. They fool companies into the latest unnecessary takeover, of course – that’s how they make money – but it is really somebody else’s problem, mainly of the stakeholders of the acquiring company, but this is getting into too much detail.
The real problem bankers are not these relationship bankers, but traders. That’s where most of the money of banks was (is?) being made. It is really a disgusting group of young, smart (in a narrow way), very vocal and basically clueless group of people chasing …. money.
They have been able to get their way within banks, everybody appreciating the enormous amounts of money they generate.
Two questions were not asked: Are the methods that are being used to make the money acceptable, and is the purpose of what we are doing beneficial to anybody else. Mark these words, this is probably the shortest definition of the financial crisis you have ever seen.
Back to austerity.
Most of the traders that caused all of the problems we have been dealing with didn’t give a damn about these two questions. The way they spent the money they made – were allowed to make is better in fact – was horrendous. The amount of drugs, extravagant dinners and wasted exclusive golf trips are the focus of plenty of recently published books.
It is disgusting. One doesn’t have to adhere to the St. Bernard fanaticism to see that. But the direction that St Bernard showed, austerity, was right and necesary. And later we will get into the superior model of St Francis. I am getting pretty certain that I need him to make my story a little bit more intelligible.
So we will be heading towards Italy, in the coming days. A few of the best Cistercian abbeys on the way, but then Assisi, birthplace of a guy who did not adhere to austerity, but to outright poverty. And to a role of monks facing towards society instead of hiding from it.
We call that progress, but realize that after this move there have been 900 years of progress after that. Progress we call it, or history, but it is a process with flaws. Sometimes we forget about important details. We need history, and the trials of history to deal with them, to remind us of them.