A global client is surprised that the most advanced, working technical implementation of a certain system is to be found in their Brazilian subsidiary. This is something I find again and again consulting for global organisations, not just Brazil of course, but any of the many, much ignored places that happen to also contain the most of the world’s population.

Europeans and Westerners are still waking up to the fact that they aren’t at the cutting edge of innovation, or even geopolitically relevant (except when they use overpriced military gizmos to kill innocents with “smart” warfare. F35s and multi-million dollar remote controlled airplanes: dazzling innovation). Go home Europe, you old drunk.
That ‘chaos’ that Germans find abroad on holidays in the global south – which to them, confirms their domestic superiority – is in fact an error-tolerant order they are incapable of comprehending.

Order within systems must not be confused with aesthetic value judgements. There is a horror inherent in the Germanic aesthetic sense of order and cleanliness which no amount of disinfectant and obsessive-compulsively designed public spaces can extirpate. Haneke expresses this brilliantly in “The Seventh Continent”.

…No wonder Freud came up with what he did…

 

More and more, I appreciate “creative destruction”: innovation, technology and history’s death drive. The hilarity of the voter that chooses Brexit or Trump just to watch the chaos that ensues. That new technology that once unleashed has completely unexpected consequences and unintended uses. My issue with neoliberal capitalism is that it is fundamentally a restraining, conservative force. I’m too much of a nihilist to be a good Marxist church-goer, not that I ever was one. I’m a left-winger only as far as my “think of the children” instincts are concerned, for the rest, roll the dice, hit the enter key, think of the consequences later.

Curiosity is the only reason for staying alive.