I am 2008.
I believe I did a lot of good to the world.
But as is the case always when you do good unbidden what you get is blame.
So while the cheers that greeted my departure still resonate let me reason with you a bit.
Is the fact that a world gone mad with greed has been restored to fiscal sanity good or bad?
There is pain now but the fact is that the so-called economic meltdown is bringing back the culture of merit to the world of business and economics.
No longer will the brilliant engineer cracking the next breakthrough in fuel cells feel belittled by the money and adulation showered on some ethics-challenged sharpie at Lehman Brothers.
Is that good or bad?
The culture of merit has been a long time coming but it finally arrived with me.
It is no accident of history that I saw Obama become the most powerful man in the world.
Bush Jr. was perhaps the epitome of a world bowing to the ever so common marriage of privileged sperm and bad but stubborn DNA.
On the other hand, Obama symbolizes the return of merit to organized human effort.
As for the continuing scourge of hunger, poverty, terrorism, corruption, war and worsening climate I had my fair share of all.
But let me make a prediction.
A decade from now the golden age of a new flowering of civilization will be traced back to the return of the culture of merit in 2008.
It will be the power of merit that will put away the despots in Africa and across the world.
It will be merit empowered expertise that will finally get control of hunger, poverty and get humanity on the road to reining in global warming.
And it will be merit-promoted understanding that will kill terrorism not at the hand of those who sought to wipe it out through military power but from within, by the very people who used to shelter it.
And it will be the culture of merit that will make corruption untenable.
So while you look forward to relief with 2009 remember the pain that I gave you was the kind of pain that is a harbinger of great gain.
1 comment:
While there is indeed some merit in what 2008 reasons with us, in my view, it is just the normal incremental change in the "cycle of change" that has gone on uninterrupted from time beyond count. This rise of meritocracy shall rise to a peak and,inevitably as before, be followed by a downslide into the abyss of greed, parochialism, insider trading and all that comes with it.
It is just a matter of which part/s of this huge "cycle of merit and ignominy" we get to see in our lifetime.
So while I do recognise some of the good that 2008 gave us, and thankful to her for it, we need to be pragmatic enough not to over-rejoice or be over-despondent about the ensuing change.
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