CA-The Third Horseman of Neoliberalism-may 12

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    CENTRAL AMERICA

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    Weve identified four horsemen galloping through

    Central America in these terrible neoliberal times.

    They cause change, development and new identities.

    Weve already looked at drug traffickers and NGOs;

    now its the Neo-Pentecostal evangelical churches.

    But before following them on their wi ld crusade,

    we need to reflect on the syncretism theyve built.

    Its based on two harmful nutrients:

    management culture and

    positive thinking.

    43

    may 2012

    The radio announcers persuasive voice seductively

    whispers, Need a miracle? Come and ask Jesus for

    your miracle. An energetic masculine voice then

    adds, This young woman was suffering from kidney failure,

    followed by aremorseful female one: My skin started to

    regenerate... Pastor Cash Luna, leader of the House of God

    in Guatemala, offered miracles on the nights of September

    17 and 18, 2011, in the Dallas-Fort Worth American Airlines

    Center in Texas. Jesus Christ did the inviting and thoseblessed with enough good fortune paid for it.

    Miracles and miracle workers arent the post-modern

    novelty; thats provided by the forms currently adopted in

    Central America by the big gurus who oil the systems cogs

    The third horseman of neoliberalism:

    Management culture and positive thinking

    JOS LUIS ROCHA

    and ensure that the wealth flows, depositing fortunes for

    their own plump bellies and the dilated pockets of the big

    companies. They appeal to the same mechanism as the

    secular versions: the psychotic desire to see reality spiced

    up. The secular exploitation of this appetite appears daily

    on television screens: Will this be the love of your life? Do

    you want to be sure before taking this great step? Send

    WEDDING to 2525.

    Send GRIM REAPER to know when and how youregoing to die. Send LUCK to obtain the winning lottery

    number. How many take the bait? Abracadabra: the anxieties

    and uncertainties of post-modernity can be dissolved by

    magic words, by prophetic advice sent to your cell phone or

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    44

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    CENTRAL AMERICA

    After drug traffickers and NGOs, the

    Neo-Pentacostal churches are the third

    horsemen that deserves attention, due

    not to their large albeit not yet massive

    numbers, but rather to their influence

    and efficacy, their social impact and

    their capacity to leave their mark on

    the new map of power in early 21st

    century Central America

    by a visit to a famous conference room or church. The one

    sure result is millions in the pockets of the telephone

    companies, swindlers, airlines, hotels and other indirect

    beneficiaries. Both the religious and secular versions of

    positive thinking have expanded their influence and

    accentuated their role as accelerator of Christian capitalism

    and its mega-businesses.

    The power of the Neo-Pentecostals

    In this article, Im using the term Neo-Pentecostals for

    those political actors who are the fruit of syncretism, who

    were formed and propagate by feeding off of and dissem-

    inating positive thinking and the secular cult of manage-

    ment. Although not all of their groups and leaders are

    involved in Politics with a capital P, they are political actors

    because they send out guidelines on how to act in society

    and how to behave in relation to the State. Their pastors are

    an extreme case of organic intellectuals: they not only

    disseminate a kind of common sense and a way of being

    citizens, but do so penetrating right down to the ins and

    outs of the most intimate elements that remain out of reach

    of schools and the state apparatus and increasingly elude

    the once-omnipresent Catholic Churcheven molding

    sexual behavior and family configuration.

    After drug traffickers and NGOs, they are the third

    horsemen that deserves attention, due not to their large

    albeit not yet massive numbers, but rather to their influence

    and efficacy, their social impact and their capacity to leave

    their mark on the new map of power in early 21st century

    Central America.

    Religious syncretism digests both

    nutritious and unswallowable foods

    Are the Neo-Pentecostals syncretic? Syncretism is part of

    the vital process of all religions, including the big ones, which

    are the result of a vast process of syncretism. As Brazilian

    Catholic theologian Leonardo Boff put it in his book Church:

    Charism and Power, Catholicity as the synonym of

    universality is only possible and attainable through the

    process of syncretism from which catholicity itself results.

    There are different modalities of syncretism. The

    syncretic expressions I will look at correspond to the

    modality Boff defines as syncretism as adaptation:A religion

    first is exposed to different religious expressions and thenassimilates them, interprets them and recasts them according

    to its own identity. For Boff, this historical process is a

    decisive factor that allows the basic ethos of the dominant

    religion to digest the outside elements and make them

    its own. Its a vital and organic process, similar to the one

    involving food, which, no matter how diverse it may be, is

    injected and absorbed into the system of human life. But

    harmful foods are also ingested as are others that produce

    excreta.

    Christianity became RomanAlthough Boffs definitions concentrate on the syncretism of

    two or more religious traditions, his examples address the

    syncretism of the Roman tradition of Christianity, in which

    the religious component is just one among others.

    Christianity absorbed the norms, rites, policies,

    nomenclature and language of the Roman culture. It was

    inevitable: the administrative and legal imbrication led to a

    doctrinal fusion and the absorption of institutions. The

    Christianity-Empire symbiosis was perfect: the Roman

    monarchical tradition that sought subterfuges in tetrarchies

    and diarchies received the supernatural underpinnings of

    the Christian monarchy. The emperor gave the Christians

    certain official buildings (basilicas) and then, trying out the

    recently-acquired title of the new David, he called councils.

    In 315 AD, Christs monogram and other Christian signs

    appeared on coins (what was Cesars was finally rendered

    unto God!) in a measure of the utmost importance because

    they amounted toand still doan almost global propaganda

    instrument. The ecclesiastical courts acquired civil

    jurisdiction and bishops were put on the same power level as

    governors. Tax exemption then reinforced the accumulation

    and the happy marriage.

    Later, the State became the Churchs fiscal arm and the

    Church adopted diocesesconglomerates of the empires

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    CENTRAL AMERICA

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    45

    may 2012

    provinces invented by Emperor Diocletian (244-311)as

    its administrative units. To improve tax collection,

    Diocletian doubled the number of Roman provinces from 50

    to almost 100 and grouped them into 12 dioceses, each

    governed by an official called a vicarius, another thing

    Christianity inherited from the Romans.

    Christianity broke with its Judaic roots

    In 325 AD, Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea,

    which he directed through a bishop and imperial commis-

    saries designated for that purpose. He turned the Councils

    resolutions into state laws and assimilated the Churchs

    organization into that of his empire. From then on, the

    ecclesiastical provinces coincided with the imperial dioceses

    and provinces. The Church broke with its Judaic roots and

    developed a Christian anti-Semitism built on an already

    existing anti-Judaism. The army and civil administration

    soon acted as secular arms of the orthodox imperial Church

    against heretics. Monophysites, Arians and Donatists all

    suffered repression from the new Roman-Christian empire.

    Historian Leopold von Ranke tells us that on thosespots where the Olympian gods were worshipped, amidst

    the very pillars which had supported their temples, arose

    shrines in memory of those who had scorned their worship

    and had resisted unto death. This facilitated the fusion

    with the old state religion. That early Christianity also

    incorporated pagan customs, such as the cult of relics and

    the belief in miracles, which were very extensive in

    barbarian, grassroots rural areas.

    The success of Christianity lay in the fact that it

    contained elements capable of satisfying all tastes, having

    incorporated rites, protocols and customs from multiple

    religious and secular traditions, not as mere syncretism but

    truly assimilating and fusing them. The rites thatcommemorated Jesus crucifixion and resurrection recalled

    the mystery religions. The figure of Mary, mother of Jesus,

    provided a softening female touch that evoked the female

    deities of the Greek and Roman pantheons. And the

    Christians austere customs coincided with those of the Stoics.

    Christianity was open to all, including slaves. The Pauline

    slogan of being all things to all men had been applied

    effectively and gave generous fruits.

    Syncretism is both a risk and a need

    As Boff warns, this Christian syncretism implied the

    assimilation of both harmful foods and excreta. The

    integration into local contexts pushed towards barbarization,

    which was taken to the extreme of incorporating practices

    incompatible with the original Christianity: the Churchs

    participation in violence, ordeals and rituals of penitence.

    Divine justice and earthly justice became confused in the

    same savagery. And the peaceful Jesus of Nazareth was

    represented by a Roman military uniform.

    The Roman cocktail was swarming with anti-Christian

    bacteria. But some church hierarchs felt so comfortable with

    the Roman institutions that they rescued some that had

    fallen into honorable disuse: Pope Leo I (440-461) took the

    titlePontifex Maximus after it had been renounced almost a

    century earlier by Emperor Gratian the Young, who

    considered it incompatible with Christianity. The fact is

    that once having taken the bull by the horns, Christianity

    was not so loyal to the legacy of Jesus, leaving three basic

    structures of Roman economic life unscathed: respect for

    private property, compliance with contracts and the

    legitimacy of profits.

    Although it involves dangers, syncretism is a dynamic

    that characterizes a religions openness and vitality. From a

    theological perspective, the Christian religion seeks

    mediations to transmit Christs saving message. It has to do

    so because religion sinks its roots into the concrete world inwhich people and the community are inserted. Faith is

    expressed in a sociological dimension, drawing on the

    instruments it finds in the culture, society and class status.

    Faith becomes visible, audible and tangible in the

    corporeality of rites and symbols, dogmas and norms,

    institutions and behaviors. The key to true syncretism lies

    in a religions incarnation in the most diverse cultures

    without losing its identity.

    How to distinguish between

    healthy and harmful syncretisms?

    Boff establishes criteria for distinguishing between true andfalse syncretism. The true kind translates the Christian

    identity; the false kind deteriorates and destroys it. One of

    the main pathologies of syncretism is the betrayal of the

    essence of Christianity: a syncretism will be Christian if the

    The key to true syncretism lies in a

    religions incarnation in the most

    diverse cultures without losing its

    identity

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    CENTRAL AMERICA

    basic core of the Christian faith takes form in the symbolic

    framework of another culture. For Boff, this supposes a

    conversion in the cultures nucleus, to the point of ceasing to

    be what it was and becoming instead an expression of the

    Christian faith, which is impossible without conversion. If

    the contrary takes place, the Christian identity will have

    been corrupted and absorbed by the identity of the culture

    with which it has come into contact.

    If, as appears to have happened in Brazil with the Yoruba

    religion, the other cultural tradition produces a syncretism

    using elements of the Christian tradition, then we have a

    Yoruba syncretism, not a Christian one. This criterion

    presents us with a very tough landscape because theres not

    a single Christian church. Even within Catholicism, despite

    the existence of dogmas and an official doctrine, theres no

    unanimity over the definition of what is essentially

    Christian.

    So how do we know if a syncretism is healthy or harmful

    from the perspective of the Christian tradition and its

    strategy of permanence? Even without completely clearing

    up this unknown factor, the criterion of the betrayal of the

    essence of Christianity has the value of signaling that each

    process of syncretism can go in at least as many directions as

    there are intervening cultural tendencies. And contrary to

    popular belief and plain intuition, the shark doesnt always

    swallow the sardine: the most callow, emotional and minority

    religious tradition can win the day over the most ancient,

    wise and massive one.

    Lets take a look at whats happening with the new

    syncretisms taking place in the Central American countries,

    because such processes arent a thing of the past. In a way

    thats just as dramatic and gradual as in ancient Rome, they

    are happening today in the new Romethe United Statesand in the peripheral provinces that we Central American

    Thumbelinas represent.

    Managerialism is the new religion

    The Neo-Pentecostal syncretism Ive identified digests two

    nutrients: managerialism and positive thinking. Mana-

    gerialism is an obsession that has turned into common sense.

    It propagates as imperceptibly as pollen, but without

    producing any allergies or stinging sensation. Its conceptual

    heritage and panoply of resources have managed to achieve

    the rank of unquestionable instruments, located somewhere

    beyond good and bad: they are science, so hands up!Managerialism is the name I givefor want of another

    to the empowerment of language and methods coined in the

    management cubicleslairs would be a better wordand

    then disseminated to the four points of the compass. Its the

    proof that the language of managers has become the lingua

    franca of the professional discourse of development

    cooperation, the organization and accreditation of universi-

    ties, reflection on politics and alsothe most novel of

    noveltiesreligious discourse.

    Ive taken the term from an Anglo-Saxon source. In an

    article on NGOs, British anthropologist David Lewis referred

    to managerialism when denouncing the strong emphasis

    on merely management issues in the form of managerialist

    language. He revealed the concentration of issues such as

    organizational strengthening, capacity building, strategic

    planning and best practices based on a language that pays no

    attention to theoretical density applied to the management

    science of NGOs and aimed at doing things in the cheapest,

    best and quickest way possible, just like any business. Lewis

    stresses the influence of managerialism in the literature on

    and by NGOs.

    Managerialism is proof that thelanguage of managers has become the

    lingua franca of the professional

    discourse of development cooperation,

    the organization and accreditation of

    universities, reflection on politics and

    alsothe most novel of novelties

    religious discourse

    Entrepreneurism is the new cult

    Managerialism implies, of course, a veneration of entrepre-

    neurism. The fallacy that there is a need to promote

    productive usebusiness investmentof the remittances

    sent home from other countries by migrants is one expression

    of the cult of the entrepreneur. That fallacy is based on the

    assumption that all receivers of remittances have something

    of the businessperson in them and can therefore prosper

    with a corner shop, a bread basket, a car shop or a big pot of

    nacatamales with a bit of help from NGOs, the State or the

    World Bank.

    For managerialists, the heroes of the movie are big,medium, small or micro managers/businesspeople. Mana-

    gerialism therefore presents itself as a professionalization

    of the virtues of the Protestant work ethic: knowing how to

    administer, audit, invest; being an expert in calculating cost-

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    CENTRAL AMERICA

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    47

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    benefit. The virtues become techniques that can be acquired

    through training. Following this thread leads to the ball of

    yarn that is the funding of strategies. In this sense, the

    problems and solutions of society and the economy find their

    most polished expression in the financial worlds objects,

    concepts and methods. If theres corruption, the solution

    lies in the famous concept of accountability.

    On the field of play, that reductionism means that

    proposals must be formulated in terms that are mathema-

    tizable, quantifiable money-wise, procedural and/or

    expressible in a plan with objectives, activities, goals and

    success indicators. The managersoften business admin-

    istration professionalsare strategists who design roadmaps,

    advise the disoriented and, like Don Quijote, roam the world,

    setting wrongs right, redressing injuries and protecting

    maiden businesses.

    a context in which the State and society have declined as

    sources of legitimacy, powerwhich remains unauditable

    legitimizes itself through rituals of control. The Audit Society

    stresses the dysfunctional consequences that audits generate

    among the bodies audited, due to their limited possibilities

    and the reductionism that perverts them. This is percep-

    tible when, for example, evaluationswhich should assess

    the relationship between the changes observed and what

    was programmedare reduced to audits, which are incapable

    of assessing all the changes and often concentrate on dogma-

    like rules and procedures that imitate rituals.

    British anthropologist Marilyn Strathern argued that

    while the practice of audits tends to appear as an inevitable

    element of bureaucratic processes, looking at it in perspective

    shows us its contours as a distinct cultural artifact and its

    character as an instrument of neoliberalism. An old name is

    used for a new phenomenon: accountability. It doesnt matter

    what accountability used to be: theres a new consensus about

    what constitute good practices and the need to achieve

    economic efficiency. Only a determined set of procedures

    which Power and Strathern refer to as ritualscan measure

    that efficiency and adaptation of practices. Only certain

    operations count.

    This is how the financial and the moral meet in one

    turn of the century rendering of accountability, says

    Strathern, in a process thats molding culture: theres an

    emergenceand predominanceof socially plausible ways

    and modes of assessing the processes. In this favorable

    context, the concept of auditing leaped from the level of

    finances to all of the stages and is now synonymous with all

    evaluations and measures.

    Both professionals and the uninitiated are becoming

    devotees of implementation. And the language of themanagers is talked and listened to on the left, right and

    center of the political spectrum as the language of

    standardization and organization. These practices and that

    language determine the flow of resources and appear crucial

    to business credibility.

    Managers are the new priestly cast

    We find ourselves standingwith arms crossed? dazzled?

    before the imperialism of a discipline. It was lawyers who

    officiated throughout the 20th century, absolving or

    condemning, brandishing the labels legitimate or

    illegitimate. Their monumentsmany in an acceleratedstate of oxidationare the United Nations, the European

    Unions bureaucratic agreements and procedures, the now

    decadent state bureaucracies and other legal constructs.

    Their scholasticism built a virtual reality in which the formal

    The current NGO reductionism means

    that proposals must be formulated interms that are mathematizable,

    quantifiable money-wise, procedural

    and/or expressible in a plan with

    objectives, activities, goals and

    success indicators

    Audits are the new rituals

    The auditing industry is a sub-world and instrument of thismanagerial culture. Fifteen years ago, Michael Power

    published The Audit Society, in which he analyzed the rituals

    of verification as a fever that had been spreading in Great

    Britain and the United States since the early eighties,

    causing a genuine audit explosion: In addition to financial

    audits we now hear of environmental audits, value for

    money audits, management audits, quality audits, forensic

    audits, data audits, intellectual property audits, medical

    audits, and many others besides. Power was an accountant,

    auditor, professor of accounting at the London School of

    Economics, a member of the Institute of Chartered

    Accountants in England and Wales, and an associate scholar

    of the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Manage-ment, and was therefore someone who lived inand off

    ofthe belly of the monster.

    Power sustained that the avalanche of audits originates

    from a political desire to control and acquire legitimacy. In

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    48

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    events preceded, produced, compensated for or replaced the

    real events. Face value was superimposed over real value.

    Now, however, managers are the new priestly class

    and accountants their acolytesthat divides businesses,

    people and countries into solvent and insolvent, deficit-

    making and surplus-creating, precarious or consolidated,

    profitable or impoundable, efficient or supernumerary. Their

    verification rituals can redeem or excommunicate. If the

    only things that exist for the legal pen-pushers are what can

    be classified and regulated, all that counts for the managers

    is what can be counted.

    An ideology disguised as science

    Through procedures very similar to those of the pettifoggers,

    managerialism has also created its scholastics and its

    metaphysical entities. In his book Technology and Science

    as Ideology, German philosopher Jrgen Habermas

    denounced an attitude that naively correlates theoretical

    propositions with matters of fact. This attitude presumes

    that the relations between empirical variables represented

    in theoretical propositions are self-existent. At the same

    time, it suppresses the transcendental framework that is

    the precondition of the meaning of the validity of such

    propositions. As soon as these statements are understood in

    relation to the prior frame of reference to which they are

    affixed, the objectivist illusion dissolves and makes visible a

    knowledge-constitutive interest.

    But managerialism is often impenetrable to that

    analysis, as its variables and highly reduced reservoir of

    categories present a deliciously simple reality malleable to

    mental manipulation. The fact is that, like many other fairy

    godmothers of capital, managerialism is an ideology disguisedas science.

    Ineffable proposals emerge from it, such as auditing

    ethics in small and medium businesses, or advanced

    mathematics such as the equation brought to us by a World

    Bank official that breaks down components and proportions

    of corruption.

    The world of life escapes managerialism

    Under these scientificist proposals is hidden a desire for

    control and technocratic dominion, as interest guides

    knowledge. In its desire to legitimize itself as a scientific

    authority, a managerial technocracy that concerns itself withessentially social matters reduces experiences to mere digits,

    statements, variables and other abstractions from which the

    world of life escapes. Experiences arent a matter for

    measurement because, as philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer

    pointed out, The primary data, to which the interpretation

    of historical objects goes back, are not data of experiment

    and measurement but unities of meaning. If we dont attend

    to the world of meanings, to the production of meaning and

    therefore to experiences as the essence of what is human,

    social constructions are incomprehensible.

    In managerial analyses, human events and slip-ups lack

    any meaning. They are errors of calculation, accidents,

    collateral damage They end up in the black boxes of

    accountancy. Migrations, while experienced by millions of

    Central Americans, were negligible as a social event for the

    macro-economists who calculate the national accounts. For

    years they tossed migrants remittances into the category of

    errors and omissions. That was until the error grew to

    such an extent that it exceeded the main export categories,

    foreign investment, international finance institution loans

    and international donations.

    The world of experiences has to guide the administrative

    space, not the other way round. The administrative arena is

    a fragment of the world of experiences, yet there is no space

    for that world of experiences in theintendedmanage-

    ment universe, savein a caricature-like wayin the

    millions of recipe books on business leadership and personnel

    management, which is an area where managerialism and

    positive thinking intersect.

    There are no great discourses to transmit in managerial

    literature. Its nothing more than a host of recipes.

    Technology has been converted into doctrine. Apparently

    there is no imago figurata other than the calculation

    protocols, the formats, the sequence of steps, the formulas.

    The dogmas are procedures. But for the same reason, this

    new modality of indoctrination is more penetrating and

    persistent; the concealed catechesis makes inroads with

    In its desire to legitimize itself as

    a scientific authority, a managerial

    technocracy that concerns itself with

    essentially social matters reduces

    experiences to mere digits,

    statements, variables and other

    abstractions from which the world of

    life escapes

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    49

    may 2012

    unprepared subjects. The field is free of scrub, clean for

    inoculating value systems. No school of cadres has had such

    effective prior recruiting work, such customary training

    sessions, such a-critical students or so many pro bono

    multipliers. But then, what criticism could be made if there

    are no theories to refute?

    but still atypical, Horkheimer considered that the search for

    sense was disappearing in the administered worldwed

    call it managed today. Philosophy and rigorous reflection

    were tending to disappear and could come to be considered

    things for children. In the new instrumental/managerial

    thinking the instrument becomes the goal; technology and

    procedures replace doctrine; and the preacher/manager

    replaces the preacher/theologian and philosopher in the task

    of explaining the world and texts. The manager supplants

    the lawyer, the accountant the sociologist, and the business-

    person the knight errant. Logical frameworks and SWOT

    (Successes, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analyses

    have replaced current, structural, semiotic, historical and

    folkloric analyses or any other label that got slapped on

    analyses before the management era.

    The priests who talked of social justice in the eighties

    are now up to date and preaching the gospel of social

    management. Those who embodied the preferential option

    for the poor now negotiate business social responsibility.

    Sermons, which once aimed to produce a hermeneutical

    exercise to penetrate and illuminate the meaning of life,

    history and the scriptures, cede to motivational talks their

    indisputable millenarian first place in the top ten of

    introjectors of norms and values. The institutions of Christian

    inspirationincluding parishes and other pastoral bodies

    no longer analyze reality or conduct see-judge-act exercises.

    Almost all do strategic planning following the guidelines of

    some business school from the North.

    A suicidal change of direction,

    a spiritual impoverishment

    The owners of the money impose the method and categorieswith which organizations must evaluate themselves and plan.

    And those methods and categories are clearly managerial.

    They emerge untainted, free of any leftwing ideological

    blemish that may want to contaminate them. The managers

    and their emulators dont worry about debating concepts; in

    fact they try to avoid ideologizing discussions.

    When words arent being used to weigh up technically

    relevant probabilities, they are suspected of being nothing

    more than mere charlatanry because knowledge and

    production of meaning stopped being ends in themselves.

    Why question the predominant focus of citizens security?

    Why reflect on the meaning of violence in society if the

    managerial panoplywith its logical frameworks, indicatorsand scenario technologiescan tell us where, when and how

    much we can invest in projects to reduce that violence?

    Mathematicsthe extreme example of the formali-

    zation of thinkingrenounces thinking about what is at

    The priests who talked of social justice

    in the eighties are now up to date and

    preaching the gospel of social

    management. Those who embodied

    the preferential option for the poor now

    negotiate business social

    responsibility

    Theres no longer a search for meaning,

    just logical frameworks and SWOTs

    Philosopher Max Horkheimer observed that the triumph of

    instrumental reason meant the reduction of reason to its

    operational dimension: calculating probabilities and

    determining the right means for achieving a given end. From

    the point of view of this kind of reason, it doesnt make sense

    to discuss the rational preeminence of one end over another.

    The original task of reason, before being reduced to mediating

    between means and ends, was precisely to understand and

    determine the ends.

    Bourgeois tolerance, an extremely ambiguous concept,assumes freedom from dogmatic authority, but also a neutral

    attitude toward any spiritual content, which is thus

    surrendered to relativism. Formalized reason, the

    intermediary between ends and means, is profoundly

    relativist. Having its autonomy taken away, reason

    degenerates into a mere instrument. Its unrelatedness to

    content is played up and its operational value is lauded: Its

    operational value, its role in the domination of men and

    nature, has been made the sole criterion, explained

    Horkheimer. Any use transcending auxiliary, technical

    summarization of factual data has been eliminated as a last

    trace of superstition. Concepts have become streamlined,

    rationalized, labor-saving devices. It is as if thinking itselfhad been reduced to the level of industrial processes,

    subjected to a close schedulein short, made part and parcel

    of production.

    When this current was becoming alarmingly massive

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    50

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    CENTRAL AMERICA

    stake. The mental economics of mathematics might be good

    for industry, but not for reasoning about institutions,

    development, justice, equality, happiness: the statement

    that justice and freedom are better in themselves than

    injustice and oppression is scientifically unverifiable and

    useless, complained Horkheimer, for whom the result of

    this suicidal change of direction in reason is a spiritual

    impoverishment, a constant dumbing down.

    Parodying Horkheimer, we could say that the manage-

    ment culture is one of those perversions of reason that

    degenerates against it. But it is a perversion that became

    the norm. The management culture has penetrated

    universities (with its audit culture), NGOs and development

    cooperation (with its SWOTs, logical frameworks, strategic

    planning) and international finance institutions (with its

    accountability as a panacea). Certain religious tendencies

    are also assimilating it. That absorption is perceptible in

    whats known as Ignacian social management in the

    Catholic Church and in the theology of prosperity and the

    business and leadership schools in the Pentecostal and Neo-

    Pentecostal churches.

    You attract what you think about

    Religion is perishing not at the hands of science, as Hork-

    heimer predicted, but rather at the hands of a superstition,

    a new magic: the power of the mind to materialize desires.

    Positive thinking is the new element religion has syncretized

    with in our countries.

    After achieving great success exposing the impossibility

    of surviving on a workers wages inNickel and Dimed, US

    writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich turned her energies

    to Smile or die: How positive thinking fooled America andthe World. It is the most complete and penetrating study of

    the science?/industry?/religion? of positive thinking.

    Is positive thinking a science? The Secret by Australian

    TV producer Rhonda Byrne, which has become the Bible and

    Koran of positive spirits, claims without hesitation that it

    is. The book reveals that the law of attraction, the most

    powerful law in the universe, is the principle and foundation

    of success: Everything thats coming into your life you are

    attracting into your life. And its attracted to you by virtue

    of the images youre holding in your mind. Its what youre

    thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind you are

    attracting to you.

    According to Byrne, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, VictorHugo, Beethoven, Lincoln, Emerson, Edison and Einstein

    all knew the secret. The book quotes John Assaraf, presented

    as a street child turned businessman and expert in the art of

    making money: We can have whatever it is that we choose.

    I dont care how big it is.What kind of house do you want

    to live in? Do you want to be a millionaire? What kind of

    business do you want to have? Do you want more success?

    What do you really want?

    The Secret offers good news: It doesnt matter who

    you are or where you are, the law of attraction is forming

    your entire life experience, and this all-powerful law is doing

    that through your thoughts. You are the one who calls the

    law of attraction into action, and you do it through your

    thoughts.

    The Secret lavishes pieces of advice that its millions of

    readers blindly believe: To attract money, focus on wealth.

    Its impossible to bring more money into your life when you

    focus on your lack of it. Its helpful to use your imagination

    and make believe you already have the money you want.

    Make it your intention to look at everything you like and say

    to yourself, I can afford that. I can buy that. You will shift

    your thinking and begin to feel better about money. Give

    money to bring more of it into your life. When you are generous

    with money and feel good about sharing it, you are saying, I

    have plenty. Visualize checks in the mail...

    Religions absorption of the

    management culture is perceptible in

    whats known as Ignacian social

    management in the Catholic Church

    and in the theology of prosperity and

    the business and leadership schools in

    the Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostalchurches

    The roots lie in Christian Science

    The infallibility of the law of attraction is explained by the

    placebo effect: When a patient really believes the tablet

    represents a cure, he receives what he believes and is cured.

    So all those who persuade themselves they are happy end up

    being so. The thinking creates the reality, as in Aldous Huxleys

    Brave New World, where Sixty-two thousand four hundred

    repetitions make one truth. Its from here that manybusiness administrators, international lecturers, life coaches

    and also former Nicaraguan President Bolaos took the slogan:

    the secret is attitude. A positive attitude gets you everything,

    even if the literature on the topic is markedly financial.

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    51

    may 2012

    Byrne is convinced that People who have drawn wealth

    into their lives used the secret, whether consciously or

    unconsciously. They think thoughts of abundance and wealth,

    and they do not allow any contradictory thoughts to take

    root in their minds. Their predominant thoughts are of

    wealth. They only know wealth, and nothing else exists in

    their minds. Whether they are aware of it or not, their

    predominant thoughts of wealth are what brought wealth to

    them. It is the law of attraction in action.

    Digging around to discover the roots of positive thinking,

    Ehrenreich takes us back to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. The

    father of the New Thought movement and grandfather of

    positive thinking, he discovered that Calvinist doctrine was

    producing a growing number of psychosomatic illnesses

    among its followers; they were frequently plagued by feelings

    of guilt or terrified by the idea of their inevitable and eternal

    sentence. Quimby became famous developing therapeutic

    talks aimed at convincing his patients that the universe was

    fundamentally benevolent, that they formed a single unit

    with the Mind from which they were constituted and that

    they could cure their illnesses with the power of their minds.

    In 1863, Mary Baker Eddy, a 42-year-old invalid who had

    been widowed by her first husband and abandoned by her

    second, became his patient and disciple and benefitted from

    a miraculous healing.

    As a prolific writer and charismatic teacher, Eddy

    disseminated the focus of the new thinking so successfully

    that she turned it into a religion, known as Christian Science.

    The core of its doctrine is that there is no material world,

    only Thought, Mind, Spirit, Goodness and Love, or, using the

    economic term she tended to employ, Supply. Therefore,

    illness and maladies do not exist except as temporary

    delirium.

    Many applauded the advent of Christian Science and

    New Thought. From an eminently pragmatic point of view,

    William James recognized that an academically trained mind

    resists admitting its postulates, but has to recognize and

    accept its results. Christian Science cured legions of that illness

    called Calvinism, which was responsible for neurasthenia and

    associated with the outdated theology of hell.

    Positive thinking: A concept

    popularized some 60 years ago

    Fearing that unless they were reigned in, Christian Scientists

    would form a majority in the US Congress in 1930, Mark

    Twain dedicated one of his most caustic booksChristian

    Scienceto them, in which he crowned Mary Baker Eddy as

    queen of frauds and hypocrites. Eddys magnum opus and

    the Christian scientists bible, Science and Health with Key

    to the Scriptures, inspired this and other visceral paragraphs

    by Twain: For of all the strange and frantic and incompre-

    hensible and uninterpretable books which the imagination

    of man has created, surely this one is the prize sample. It is

    written with a limitless confidence and complacency, and

    with a dash and stir and earnestness which often compel the

    effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to

    have any traceable meaning When you read it you seem to

    be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech

    delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you

    get but not the particulars

    The core of both Christian Science and positive thinking

    is the unshakable faith in the power of the mind to create

    and mold the world. Only what the mind produces exists.

    Reality lacks autonomy. In the most concessive of cases, the

    external world is a pale reflection of the mental production.There were other followers of this kind of unbridled

    Platonism; blessed beings who inhabited the world of ideas.

    In the mid-20th century, Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

    popularized the expression positive thinking. Peale was

    even more prolific and widely read than Eddy, producing a

    monumental pile of best sellers: The Power of Positive

    Thinking, You Can If You Think You Can, Six Attitudes for

    Winners, The Positive Power of Jesus Christ, and so on almost

    to the point of abuse.

    Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) provides the link between

    Eddys time and Peales. An advisor to Woodrow Wilson and

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hill achieved celebrity with The

    Law of Success in 16 Lessons, Think and Grow Rich, TheMaster-Key to Riches and Your Right to be Rich. Nowadays

    there is such a host of positive thinkers that if their mental

    emanations were put down in writing and posted on the web

    it could cause even the most powerful servers to collapse.

    The core of both Christian Science and

    positive thinking is the unshakable

    faith in the power of the mind to create

    and mold the world. Only what the

    mind produces exists. Reality lacks

    autonomy. In the most concessive of

    cases, the external world is a pale

    reflection of the mental production

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    52

    envo

    CENTRAL AMERICA

    Positive thinking enters

    the world of management

    Although the religion-positive thinking link is perceptible

    at its roots, and that connection was obviously solidified with

    Peale and other authors, positive thinking has had a secular

    development for winning over more followers, or at least one

    not tinged with any ecclesiastical color. Its development in

    non-religious arenas is palpable in the doctors who prescribe

    positive thinking, adducing its supposedly beneficial effects

    on health. It is even found in academia, which has created

    departments of positive psychology and science of

    happiness; and above all, of course, in the world of business,

    full of lecturers and talks on motivation. There it is located

    in the significant crossoveror crossoversbetween positive

    thinking and the management culture, with its cult of

    entrepreneurism and obsession with wealth.

    Although at first glance it would appear that positive

    thinking and managerialism are to be found at opposing

    polesone in delirious irrationality and the other in

    rationalism taken to its extremethere are multiple

    crossovers between positive thinking and the management

    culture. Lets start by mentioning that, according to

    Marketdata Enterprises, the motivation industrysaturated

    by positivitybrought in some US$9.6 billion in CDs, DVDs,

    books and coaches fees in 2005. The International Coach

    Federation calculated that estimated global annual revenue

    for the profession was close to $1.5 billion in 2007. Its clients

    tend to be businesses that are eager to produce highly

    motivated employees, the best known of which include

    Sprint, Albertsons, Allstate, Caterpillar, Exxon Mobil and

    American Airlines.

    The pioneers of New Thought and Christian Science did

    not get to see just how lucrative their findings could be ifapplied directly to the world of business, where their

    techniques could offer employers greater control over their

    workers and their productivity. The first to perceive that

    source were the editors of Norman Vincent Peales Power of

    Positive Thinking, when they printed an ad with the following

    eye-catching notice: EXECUTIVES: Give this book to

    employees. It pays dividends!

    Positive thinkers and

    managers in the world of work

    There are other obvious links between positive thinkers and

    managers. In the commercial sphere, the best seller isconvinced of the benefits of his or her merchandise. The

    techniques of positive thinking are placed at the service of

    that conviction and are similar to the hypnopdia, or sleep-

    teaching, ofBrave New World: repetitions, signs with slogans

    and photographs to reach the subconscious, so that the person

    assimilates without judging what is being assimilated.

    In human resource management, the best personneladministrator will be the one who can best persuade the

    employees and manipulate their craziest expectations. The

    most successful CEOs cultivate an image of charismatic

    leaders who make snap decisions based on the impulse of

    positive hunches. It doesnt matter if the manager isnt

    very knowledgeable about accounting or a conscientious

    student of stock market fluctuations. Its enough to know

    certain SWOT rudiments, say critical path in each

    paragraph and launch encouraging speeches. The image of

    the CEO has changed from being a responsible administrator

    to being a motivating leader; more similar, in fact, to a

    motivational speaker or a life coach.

    An era in which many have predicted that the spiritualworld would be out of place in the rationality of business has

    seen the emergence of guru managers and shamanistic

    administrators. Magic has been technified in positive

    thinking strategies and management has been magicized to

    respond to a changing world in which all that needs be done

    is to administrate the chaos of the global casino, its flight

    capital and its volatile work posts.

    Hand in hand, birds of a feather sticking together through

    many fights, positive thinking and managerialism have

    united to deal a crushing blow to wage work. Ehrenreich hit

    the nail on the head when she defined the role of positive

    thinking in the world of wage work as follows: With

    motivation as the whip, positive thinking became thehallmark of the compliant employee. The whip has a

    structural extension: todays employers censure and fire

    workers who file complaints and demands. It also has a

    social extension: employees run from and censure their

    Although at first glance it would appear

    that positive thinking and

    managerialism are to be found at

    opposing polesone in delirious

    irrationality and the other in rationalism

    taken to its extremethere are multiple

    crossovers between positive thinking

    and the management culture

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    53

    may 2012

    negative colleagues just as the pious previously anathema-

    tized sinners. Even with the squeezes brought on by the

    crisis and job contraction, if theres unemployment,

    underemployment or bad working conditions, the problem

    is attitude of the bad workers, of course.

    one presented, but to refind such an object, to convince oneself

    that it is still there. In other words, people clinging to the

    pleasure principle build a reality that is satisfactory for them.

    In Civilization and its Discontents,Freud explained how

    this mechanism works: One can try to re-create the world,

    to build up in its stead another world in which its most

    unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others

    that are in conformity with ones own wishes. But whoever,

    in desperate defiance, sets out upon this path to happiness

    will as a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him.

    Those who persist in banging their heads against reality, or

    rather denying and substituting it, fall into psychosis. The

    psychosis creates a new reality exempt from the motives of

    dissatisfaction provided by the surrounding reality. The

    psychotic person does not let him or herself be dominated

    convinced or held backby reality.

    In its most innocuous version, positive thinking takes

    narcissism to its extreme: the actionsand even positive

    thoughtsof others cannot upset the realization of ones

    own desires. The others are no more than extras or puppets

    in the long Hollywood movie in which each positive thinker

    plays the lead. They are like the set ofThe Truman Show,

    there to satisfy the desires of the positive thinker.

    Positive thinking is the opiate of our times

    The extreme of positive thinkingits most alarming

    versionis to provide oneself with the perceptions that

    correspond to the desired reality through hallucination.

    Without always reaching the pathological extreme of

    hallucination, positive thinking ends up producing the same

    as psychosis: the loss and substitution of reality. From this

    perspective we can say that positive thinking is the mixtureof militant hedonism with the impossibility of satisfying

    expectations. Thats why it arises in a time of inflated

    expectations with only unrealistic possibilities of realizing them.

    Positive thinking emerges as a fantasy concealing the

    unpalatable reality that we wage workers are falling down

    the social pyramid with nothing to grab onto save the

    innermost imaginative capacity to create hanging gardens

    from rough crags. Positive thinking emerges where the

    conflictive elements of social life are repressed or denied. It

    denies the violation of rights, the blocking of success, the

    decline of the world of wage labor.

    Positive thinking keeps discontent, tensions and

    conflicts repressed. Rather than a whip, its an opiate in theclassic Marxist sense. What was previously obtained from a

    God whose favor was won through prayer and magical

    formulas is now materialized through the sheer force of

    desire.

    We can say that positive thinking is the

    mixture of militant hedonism with the

    impossibility of satisfying expectations.

    Thats why it arises in a time of inflated

    expectations with only unrealistic

    possibilities of realizing them

    Positive thinking on the psychoanalysts couch

    Although positive thinking dresses up as science, the element

    of magic remains. The core of its proposal gives it away: its

    enough to fervently desire an object or situation to produce

    it. This is s pretty unsophisticated formulation of the ancient

    faith in the omnipotence of ideas, one of the phenomena

    most studied by psychoanalytic theory. In Totem and Taboo,

    Freud defined it as a process in which man attributes

    unquestionable efficacy to something intensely thought and

    emotionally represented. Just like members of tribes with

    magic cults, positive thinkers believe its possible to

    transform the outside world with the power of their ideas

    alone.

    Freud sustained that its possible to trace thatomnipotence of ideas in human childhood. The first phases

    of infancy are characterized by geocentricism, in which the

    pleasure principle is everything. Maturing consists of the

    principle of conservation, to guarantee the individuals

    survival, replacing the pleasure principle with the reality

    principle. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud stated

    that we know that the pleasure principle is proper to a

    primary method of working on the part of the mental

    apparatus, but that, from the point of view of the self-

    preservation of the organism among the difficulties of the

    external world, it is from the very outset inefficient and

    even highly dangerous.

    In psychologies governed by the pleasure principle, theinfant psychology of the first years, The antithesis between

    subjective and objective does not exist from the first. The

    first and immediate aim, therefore, of reality-testing is, not

    to find an object in real perception which corresponds to the

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    54

    envo

    CENTRAL AMERICA

    Witchcraft was responsible for obtaining the illusion

    that positive thinking produces. Its non-primitive version

    has produced a kind of technification of magical thinking,

    more in line with the supposed managerial rationalism, in

    which the old witchcraft has to rename its ancient resources

    so as not to be out of sync. It thus talks in terms of laws (the

    law of attraction, among others), self-persuasion tactics (no

    more than ritual repetitions), life coaching courses (rites of

    passage) and the six attitudes for winnersbehaviors that

    keep away bad spirits?and master-keys for getting rich.

    Positive thinkers also connect with the traditional

    religions. Ehrenreich demonstrated that the point of contact

    between the old Calvinist religion and positive thinking is

    their obsession with self-monitoring: Calvinists sought to

    extirpate sinful thinking and laxity, while positive thinking

    wants to eradicate negative thinking.

    The poor are poor because

    they dont think positively

    The most delirious fantasies of positive thinking are not a

    mere curiosity rooted in the marginalized wing of some

    eccentric museum. They are acting here and now, in postwar

    Central America. Their ideological creatures and their

    deification of desiderative faculties would be innocuous were

    it not for their impact on the transformation that Central

    America has suffered thanks to their adoption by powerful

    political actors.

    Their power has an inequality-consecrating bias

    inscribed in its corollary. Positive thinking builds a non-

    conflictive reality that denies inequalities, structural

    conditionings and the barriers to the social ascent of the

    disinherited, non-connected and castoffs of today and always.In its idyllic vision, poverty and the existence of losers

    simply reflect a lack of positivity. This means that the

    individual is totally responsible for his or her social position

    and achievements. There are no oppressive structures to

    identify and dismantle.

    Theres a novel turn in the inculpation of individuals, as

    the wretched of the earth are no longer blamed for their

    misery because theyre lazy, ignorant or sinners, but rather

    just because they are negative thinkers. This world is

    forcefully unequal because the distribution of positivity and

    knowledge of the secret is unequal, as Bob Proctor stresses

    in one of the quotes that buttress The Secret: Why do you

    think that 1 percent of the population earns around 96percent of all the money thats being earned? Do you think

    thats an accident? Its designed that way. They understand

    something. They understand The Secret, and now you are

    being introduced to The Secret.

    Lets be like those mice

    Among the most successful promoters of blindness to conflicts

    elevated to the rank of cardinal virtue is Spencer Johnson,

    author of books with titles as promising as The One Minute

    $ales Person and The One Minute Mother. His masterpiece,

    Who Moved My Cheese?, sold millions of copies. It was a

    Trojan Horse that many bosses gave to their employees.

    Emblematic in its promotion of terse thinking, removed

    from conflicts, it uses the form of an allegorical childrens

    tale to tell the story of two mice called Sniff and Scurry and

    two littlepeople (beings as small as mice but who looked

    and acted a lot like people today) called Hem and Haw who

    one day arrived at Cheese Center C, where they normally

    got their cheese supplies, only to discover there was no

    cheese. While the littlepeople ranted and raved at the

    injustice of it all, the two mice chose not to complicate their

    lives and simply looked for alternative cheese sources: The

    mice did not overanalyze things. And they were not burdened

    with many complex beliefs. To the mice, the problem and

    the answer were both simple. The situation at Cheese

    Station C had changed. So, Sniff and Scurry decided to

    change.

    Humans are invited to be like mice, which do not

    overanalyze or overcomplicate things. The books subtitle

    announces part of its proposal: An amazing way to deal with

    change in your work and in your life. The amazing way

    consists of not complicating things: if your boss and the

    system turn you into just another victim of the contraction

    of jobs, you urgently need to avoid the pernicious human

    tendency to overanalyze and complain. When you lose your

    job, the best thing to do is to look for another. There will be

    some delicious morsel of cheese waiting for you some place.

    Protected in this blissfully serene cosmovision, employershave replaced the odious terms labor cuts or dismissals

    with more amiable phrases such as alleviation of resources

    and career change opportunities.

    Positive thinking builds a non-

    conflictive reality that denies

    inequalities, structural conditionings

    and the barriers to the social ascent of

    the disinherited, non-connected and

    castoffs of today and always

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    55

    may 2012

    Complaining was also frowned upon in Aldous Huxleys

    Brave New World. Nonconformity was dangerous. In

    response to the slightest nonconformity, the inhabitants of

    that futuristic anti-utopia took drugs that produced a sense

    of wellbeing.

    The Central America of the seventies

    and eighties offered the disobedient

    exile and burial. Todays Central

    America offers generous doses of

    positive thinking

    The Central America of the seventies and eighties

    offered the disobedient exile and burial. Todays Central

    America offers generous doses of positive thinking.

    Immersed in a syncretic process, the Neo-Pentecostal and

    other Christian churches are absorbing and promoting the

    techniques and values of positive thinking and managerial

    ways of acting. Their pastors are the organic intellectuals of

    those tendencies of thinking.

    In the next edition ofenvo, we will look at how

    managerialism and positive thinking converge in the religious

    arena to convince us that it is Gods will that we be rich.

    Hallelujah!

    Jos Luis Rocha is a researcher for the Jesuit Service for

    Migrants of Central America (SJM) and a member of the

    envo editorial council.