In the collection of strategies to reach social change, civil resistance occupies a place of honor. We are all well aware of revolutions and rebellions, but even if they are made by the right reasons, in our era tired of the horrors of war, a pacific demonstration is always prefered. The examples in which the good revolutionary heroe finally took the power and became a tyrant are just too many. And yet, a demonstration is always a bit of a tantrum, so the non plus ultra of the activist is not only to protest, but to create alternatives, the real resistance act.
One of those are not far away from my house. In a newly developed space, at the side of a rail track, there is a workshop/shop of wood. You can buy timber in different states, even second hand. The whole place is not run by a chain of business, but by a few enthusiasts. Today I went to buy some planks for a garden proyect, and they were closed to the public, but few people were cutting stuff and making things. So they actually look like they were enjoying themselves, and their work. The economist inside me tells me that the whole thing is a joke, and they are doomed to fail. There is no way their products can compete with the quality/price relations of pretty much Ikea has to offer. And the margins in selling second hand timber have to be fairly small. And yet. I am happy to try to buy from them whenever I can, since I believe that if we don’t support those little alternative realities, there is really no chance of a better place.
Thinking about them, I wonder if we can actually resist all the things that we see that are going wrong. Predictable enough, I got to think about bureaucracy. I mean, as a politician in spe, bureaucracy is an easy target. Also, as a politician in functions bureaucracy is an even easier target, seeing the happily implemented austerity policies of the past decennia. It looks that there is nothing easier than slash the budget of a ministery and look in the public opinion as an heroe. But, if you have worked on a ministery, or have you ever need something beyond the basic services that a public servant can offer, you know that austerity have been self inflicted damage. The efficient running of a society is a complex problem, that does not get solved simply by saying “let there be less bureaucrats”. Quite a lot of the bureaucracy is actually needed, to so it looks. And quite a lot of the existent bureaucracy is a bloody mess.
There are many reasons involved, but I will venture to say that the levels of burned out persons are concerning. So here one hypothesis more about their source: it is not only that every other bureaucrat have an increased working load to face the increase of complexity of their tasks, but it is also that she has a decreased sense of ownership of her work. The more complex the task of running a city, or a company, the less possible is to see at the end of the day, what is actually the point of your work. So no bureaucrat can possibly be, like the workers of my wood shop, having a day closed to the public and enjoying themselves doing something that they like.
So now. If that little shop around the corner of my house is a resistance act against those big business that sell wooden products made by assembly lines in a sad and exploitative way, what could be the resistance act against a ministery?
Can we wind down the increasing complexity of the solution that we have found for the increasing complexity of our societies? Or are we doomed?