After several days of reading and watching the great things that are happening in the Brazilian social fabric, I came ever-inspired to work with great anticipation of what will be discussed as the Brazilian team was playing today. “Obviously, people will be enraged and boycott the game, preparing for tomorrow’s mass demonstrations”, I was thinking to myself.
To my great shock, the first colleague to arrive, expressed her extreme disappointment that tomorrow’s demonstration is still on, complaining that it will interfere with her commute and criticizing those “silly people that are just protesting over a 20 cent bus increase”. Hmm.. I thought to myself, perhaps she is just a special case, as she is stressed out about work and family at the moment, and cannot focus on bigger issues.
During lunch, I tried again with two other male colleagues – the first was not interested, and the second was complaining about how people in Belo Horizonte (another city) are protesting even though they didn’t even have a bus fair increase there. Everyone just kept reducing the protests to the fact that people don’t have a unique voice and that they are using this situation to complain about all sorts of problems. They even compared this to the Egyptian revolution and said how here it’s so much inferior because in Egypt there was a clear purpose and resolution (which is complete nonsense).
I realized that people who are normally quite intelligent and are paid to see the big picture in business are failing to see the big picture in the world around them. I think that the sense of financial security that their job gives them shuts off their moral common sense. It’s a new kind of anomaly I have (re)discovered. Feeling disillusioned. Need to write the next Great Gatsby.
Grobetrotter 