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Transcript of CA-The Third Horseman of Neoliberalism-may 12
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7/30/2019 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
envo
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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46
envo
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
may 2012
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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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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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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7/30/2019 CA-The Third Horseman of Neoliberalism-may 12
12/13
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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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7/30/2019 CA-The Third Horseman of Neoliberalism-may 12
13/13
CENTRAL AMERICA
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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.