Alberto Cottica's blog: learning to navigate the digital age. By trial and error
I have two series of pictures to compare, the first one taken in March 2005, when I was 39, and the second one taken last week, at 47 (going on to 48 in a couple of months). Changes are clear, but they are not all negative. Body weight is almost unchanged, maybe up a couple of kilos but hard to tell in the statistical noise. I expected worse, and there are compensations. See you in 2021.
A few weeks ago, a Swedish man called Borzoo Tavakoli published an article in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The article takes the form of a letter from Tavakoli himself to Kent Ekeroth, a politician described as belonging to the inner circle of the Sweden Democrats Party (Wikipedia). Tavakoli was born in Iran and migrated to Sweden in 1988 as a political refugee. Ekeroth is a notorious xenophobe and Islamophobe; in fact, xenophobia seems to be the main political platform of the Swedish Democrats.
Tavakoli has a simple message to convey: “I, a hard-working, law-abiding, economically successful migrant, make much greater a contribution than you, some dubious politician. My record as a taxpayer is immaculate, while you are under investigation by the Tax Authority. I never attacked people, whereas you and your party colleagues chased people around wielding iron rods (!) in Stockholm in 2010. I never belittled women, whereas you have been known to physically attack a woman and call her “a whore” in 2010. I never had to leave my assignment, whereas a scandal forced you out of Parliament in 2012. I fought for democracy in Iran, and did six years in prison rather than give up on my convictions, whereas you, according to the news, have a habit of lying, and therefore qualify as a coward that does not stand up for his actions. Ah, and I, through my hard work and intellectual qualities, have risen from line worker to high executive in a large company. And my son is a genius. He just won the first prize in the Swedish young scientists competition. Sweden is much better off having citizens like me than citizens like you. I deserve to be Swedish more than you do.”
Many of my friends reacted very positively to this article. This, they argue, surely shows that xenophobia is counterproductive! Indeed, it is hard not to sympathize with this hard-working activist for democracy turned successful businessman, making the most of the chance offered to him by Sweden’s generous policy of welcoming refugees – and all the more grateful for it. My friends – the younger ones, especially – tend to embrace meritocracy as a positive value: people should rise in society according to what they contribute to it. And why wouldn’t they? It’s simple. It’s fair. It’s by no means limited to Sweden: my fellow Italians, divided on everything, seem all to be united by a common contempt of their undeserving ruling class. I am sure you can think of meritocratic undercurrents surfacing in your own country.
But you have to wonder: where does meritocracy lead us? The converse of rewarding positive contribution has to be not rewarding those who don’t contribute enough, or at all. If people don’t pull enough weight, they should be pushed down the social ladder. Someone like Ekeroth, wielding iron rods and foul-mouthing ladies in the streets of Stockholm, has no business being in parliament. He should be moved over to some menial job, under the thumb of a supervisor that prevents him uttering racist and sexist remarks that could offend bystanders. Right?
We can probably all agree that a xenophobic politician is as close to a pure deadweight as it gets. But then, Tavakoli also makes a greater contribution than, say, law-abiding people who are also long-term unemployed. Or dumb. Or lazy. Hell, he makes a greater contribution than me, or you – unless you are a really successful, impressive person. Any sensible country, given the choice, would much rather welcome as a citizen him than 99% of its own citizens.
So, you see: as an ideology, meritocracy is too scary to stick. It promises fairness and social mobility, but at the cost of being, forever, on your toes, in a world where someone will always be better and faster than you, no matter how good you are. Nobody wants meritocracy – not for themselves, at least. European young people say they want it, but what they mean is that they are stuck in a meritocratic fringe of society, shut out of the secure jobs where you are not really expected to jump through too many hoops. They think – rightly – that they would be better off if by some miracle all positions became contendible, because they are better educated and harder working than their elders. So they call for more meritocracy as outsiders, but once they get into the system they will instantly start to maneuver to secure their positions. It’s only human.
By contrast, Ekeroth and his merry gang of European nationalists and xenophobe have an ideology that says: born here? You’re good – you’re good regardless of what you do or don’t contribute. Don’t worry, we’ll take it on those others instead. Takavoli may be smarter and braver, but Ekeroth’s got a much better political product to sell. So, I have to disagree with my Swedish friends here: I don’t think meritocratic arguments are going to be of much help in contrasting the growth of xenophobia in European societies. We’ll need to find something else.
I used to be a fairly successful rock musician (Italian Wikipedia). So, when in the 90s the main Italian daily newspaper, Repubblica, launched a music magazine (called XL in its latest incarnation), my colleagues and I were paying close attention. This was, after all, possibly the only genuinely mass market music medium in the country other than embarassingly bad commercial radio – no Melody Maker for Italians. My projects ended up being featured in the mag several times over the years.
I recently gave another interview to XL magazine – this time in my capacity as an economist with some expertise in the digital economy. Lo and behold: the cover story is dedicated to the death of Rock’n’Roll (with a photo of the late Lou Reed to drive the point home). My interview is titled “Music has lost its ability to change the world”. And this sets the mood for what turns out to be the final issue of the magazine in paper: from now on it will be just a website, bits all the way down. The digital perfect storm, the crisis of traditional publishing models yada yada.
Hardly world shattering news, just another music mag in a peripheral country that did not make it through. But hey: there is a poetic touch in here. Look, I am featured again in this magazine – I used to be in it back in the days. It’s shutting down, because it could not navigate the Internet era. You, dear reader, and I, on the other hand, are not shutting down, because we more or less could. I count myself as very privileged: I had a front seat – more than that, I was literally in the stage – in the 90s, a time when the planet seemed to be changing for the better and music seemed to play a big role in the way we thought about the world and what to do with it. Later, just as the Internet age was setting in, I dropped out of my nice middle-class minor rockstar status and ventured onto the social Internet. I am still here, over twenty years after publishing a surprisingly successful debut album, leveraging my economics studies and lots of complexity science that I picked up on the way, trying to make sense of it all.
And yes, I am confused. And no, I have no master plan, I make it up as I go. But I don’t feel like a complete stranger to this world, and I’m not utterly lost or future shocked. Nor have I ended up a nostalgic. Really, I could not ask for more of my middle age.