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Carlo Federico's MANIFESTO
PART II
12.
Let's wake up, my friends. Wake up. And laugh. Laugh and the world will laugh with you. How funny is common wisdom. They condemn Individualism, while we see no other way to human self-scrutiny and improvement. We can understand this position of the Marxists, they probably prefer to deal with a herd to be budged rather than with individuals to be reckoned with. But the Spiritual Authorities! How can they forget the basis of their centuries-long teaching, each of us is going to be judged by his/her personal behaviour... shouldn't each person be held responsible for his/her actions (and bear the consequences of)? Hmm. Such a proposition had been exhumed by Maggie Thatcher and thus it is, er, a bit politically uncorrect? How can our planet have any hope in any scheme where the individual caring for himself is per se considered a threat? Should we hope anything from organized nursing structures where individuals are regimented? Some sort of bureaucracy organized to do well and, of course, unselfish? Laugh, my friends. Are we going to be forcefully brought to accept any new sort of bureaucratic excess, a commodity of which many a country already has a superabundance? I might recount so many stories about the lumbering Italian state bureaucracy, so stultifying that it would long since have sunk a nation of less spirited, resilient and deviously ingenious people.
And what about Consumism? Another word ending in "ism" to be condemned. The funny thing is, that it's an empty word. Consumism means nothing, it doesn't exist. It exists a huge crowd of consumers, and they have the categorical right to choose the best broccolis, loafs, toilet paper and diapers at the best available price, and this is all what market competition is about. Are you trying to condemn free market and competition under the name Consumism? Why? The true purpose and merit of market economy is the best way of serving the interests of consumers. Actually, the market economy does not exist for the ease and convenience of producers. They should sweat and sometimes suffer in trying to offer
consumers the right goods and services at the right prices.
Since producers in this end of millennium are going to be seen (with some grains of reason) as polluters, firers of others and liners of their own pockets, the real danger is that the anti-business reaction will turn out to be anti-market. But what has this to do with nonsense Consumism? Or by that "ism" you mean "consumers brought to worship their buying capacity?" That is worshipping the Golden Calf, and THIS ought to be the proper name for the argument of Spiritual Authorities.
(12. To be continued)
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