Transcend

Me with Amartya Sen

            For almost one year now, my friend Paula has mentioned a book to me that she says she’s going to send me. “It’s by Amartya Sen, Tina.  Basically he finally rebels and comes out and says that this (meaning the whole academic establishment) is bullshit.  You’ll LOVE it!”  This past year, Paula has been living in Boston as a Fulbright-Humphrey scholar at Harvard so we’ve been able to talk quite regularly over the phone.  The four years previous between this time and our time in the U.K., she served as the youngest and first black Minister in the Colombian government.  For four years she traveled the world as the Minister of Culture, met heads of states, dignitaries and served countless communities in her country and abroad.  When she was appointed, she hadn’t even told me.  I just found out when I was working in Miami in 2007 and was reading the news and happened to stumble upon this article about drug trafficking in Buenaventura:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/world/americas/22colombia.html?scp=2&sq=Buenaventura&st=cse

                I wrote her that day and asked, “Paula, are you the Minister of Culture of Colombia?”  And within a few days, she responded, “Oh my dear Tina, you have no idea how life has changed…”

            Amartya Sen.  He was the first Indian economist to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.  Paula and I met him at Cambridge when he gave a talk there.   I had no idea what he was talking about through most of it but it was cool to watch and meet an Indian Nobel Prize winner.  The talk was more oriented to his peers, fellow colleagues, white male English economists, who had also joined him on the panel.  Most of the talk seemed to be geared towards trying to convince them of what he was trying to say, not us students.  I remember clearly the hand gestures he used to represent the lines on the imaginary economic graphs which seemed so perfectly clear to him.  That’s what stuck out most in my mind about that talk, the imaginary hand gestures he would make right below his face.  No matter, by the time we had left, I had gotten what I came for, a picture with a Nobel Prize Winner. 

It wasn’t until I was in my Development classes that I got a better handle on what he was famous for.  “Welfare Economics.”  Dr. Sen had managed to convince the world’s most elite economic establishment that social inequalities were real and that during famines, people not only starved because there wasn’t enough food or because of market failures, but also because of factors which could not neatly fit into a market analysis.  Factors such as discrimination or other social and cultural inequalities which would not be remedied through simple market solutions and still leave the poor worse off.   Factors which, if you thought about it long enough, began to seem pretty basic.   After a while, a lot of economic theory did.  It wasn’t long into my studies of the global markets before I realized, “Hey!  What all of this basically means is that most of the world is pretty much expendable, as long as we are getting the goods we want at the prices we want.”  I made this declaration once at dinner to a Brazilian who was also studying at Cambridge.  He immediately looked uncomfortable and said something along the lines of how that wasn’t exactly how most people saw it.  I was puzzled and still fascinated by how some of the most basic shit needed to be spelled out with imaginary graphs and hand gestures at a public talk with a Nobel Prize Winner in order for supposedly the most intelligent people in the world to get it. 

So essentially, to me, Amartya Sen had become, what my friend Claudia so kindly refers to, as the “house nigga.”  What’s the house nigga?  Claudia, one of the most brilliant women I am honored to know, whose partner is the director of the Brecht Forum in New York City, describes the house nigga as the slave during U.S. chattel slavery that lived in the house.  The slave that loved his master because he was the only one who was treated like family and trusted by the master enough to live in the house.  The slave that sold out the other slaves to maintain this status during slavery.  But I use the term here loosely because essentially what Amartya had done was become the token brown academic who could tap into the pretentious and esoteric language of the academic elite to explain to them what most of the world’s brown and exploited people already knew.   In the master’s eyes, he was educated, calm and exceedingly deferential, playing the game until they would finally at least listen to him, if not believe.   And even so, at the end of the day, they didn’t even really have to believe him, they just had to give him the highest honor almost previously unheard of by a brown man, a Nobel Prize in Economics.   So essentially, he was the house nigga.  Until recently anyway.

After a year of being promised Amartya’s latest book in which he supposedly rebels and tells everyone to “go fuck themselves” (Paula’s words, not mine), I began to notice that this book never arrived and that in fact, I never had actually gotten the title of it.  One day, I inquired about why I hadn’t gotten the book yet.  Had Paula just casually forgotten to send it or even mention its title?  Did it not exist?  One day, I pressed her about it.  “Paula, what was the book you were telling me about by Amartya Sen, the one where he tells everyone to fuck off?” 

“Yes my dear Tina!  I still have to send it to you.” 

“Don’t worry about sending it Paula, what’s the name of the book?  The title?  I’ll just look it up myself.” 

There was a brief pause on the other line before Paula said.  “No.  No, Tina, this is not the time.” 

Huh?  “Huh?  What are you talking about?!!?”  I asked, a little confused.

“No, Tina, this is not the moment for you to read that book yet.” 

Now, a barrage of emotions went through me.  Well, actually, only two really.  The first was, “What the fuck is she talking about?”  And the second was sheer insecurity.  The, “Oh, this is because I was never minister or any high position after Cambridge isn’t it!?!?”  “This is because I go to a state school isn’t it and nothing I’ve done seems impressive enough for you to send me this goddamned book!”  Stupid, stupid, little insecure, me.

But all I could say was, “What the hell are you talking about Paula!?!?”

Pressed and a little at a loss for words, the only thing that came out of her mouth was, “well, Tina, I think you still need to, well, umm, transcend still.” 

I was very impressed by her word selection, seeing as English is her fourth or fifth language.  And immediately not only did I get it, but I was touched.  “Holy shit” I thought, this is a real friend, a true friend.  I was almost surprised.  In your life, there will be many people who pass and love but few will understand the depths of you.  Paula got it.  She understood me and she was watching out for me.  Still. 

In Cambridge, I used to have panic attacks so bad that on occasion, I would stop breathing.  I could spend a whole day out of commission, just holed up in my room, trying to breathe normally again.   I felt so dislocated from my environment sometimes, so far removed that nothing seemed real to me.  It couldn’t be possible that I was hearing what I was hearing, seeing what I was seeing amongst the idyllic backdrop of a surreal, dreamlike world of castles and cafes.  I had come, almost straight from Colombia, from a situation where I would see entire families of five to ten people and varied generations, camped outside the nicest malls in the country, begging for food, overjoyed  that I had just given them, a family complete with grandma and newborn baby, the equivalent of maybe, 50 cents. 

          And here I was at the height of the ivory tower, because I could be here, trying to understand what I had seen and come up with a good explanation for it, and the best reason that most people could give me was market failure.  “Oh, it’s market failure.”  Market failure.  Why was it always “market failure?”  Because “market failure” implies “market solutions.”  Market solutions are always much more tangible than having to question your own humanity.  As long as everyone said it over and over enough, it was okay.  A civilized market solution will take care of it.  No urgency necessary.  Just hang in there indigent, war-torn and displaced people eating out of the garbage…a market solution is on its way!  In other words what I was hearing was that as long as we searched for better market solutions imposed by the “civilized” world, most people would be expendable and all of those faces I had seen, doomed. 

I’d have panic attacks, and I would cry.  But nothing prepared me for the insomnia.  There would be times that I would not sleep for days.  I was exhausted and could barely function but I could not go to sleep.  I’d lie awake at night, terrified and I would cry.  The only person who could really understand what I was going through was my friend Anna who was going through something similar.  But Paula understood why.  She was the truest friend, my one angel, who would drop everything to be with me.  If I couldn’t take it anymore and I said, “Paula, I need to get out of my room today,” she would meet up and she would listen and she understood. 

She would say things to comfort me.  “Tina, you weren’t used to it.  Us Colombians, we grow up there, we get used to it.  It hurt you differently.” Or “Tina, don’t think it’s any better in the developed countries.  I was in Belgium for a bit and I knew someone who wanted to put a bag over his head and commit suicide.  Can you imagine?  A Belgian wanting to commit suicide?  What real reason do they have?”  She was wise.  It would take me years however, to finally understand what she was trying to tell me.  I wasn’t there yet.  All I knew was my own rational and pain.  I just didn’t have the capacity yet to get what she was really saying.

In the end, I ended up leaving Cambridge early.  I couldn’t take it anymore.  I notified my supervisor by e-mail and told her she would get my dissertation by mail before the due date, I would complete it at home.  By this point, I hadn’t slept for days and days even on pills.  I could not study, I could not read or write, I barely functioned.  Worse yet, I had become afraid of what I might do if the anguish continued.  I needed to go home so I left. 

Few can comprehend what happened to me there because in a sense, nothing had happened. So I had been given the opportunity to study at one of the best universities in the world.  Wow!  Kill yourself Tina.  But during that experience, something profound shifted within me.  I lost my belief.  I lost my faith.  When you are at the bottom looking up, you believe that there must be something better, that someone must be working on making it better.  That something can be done.  But when you are at the top, all you see is ego and people making their careers and becoming famous off of exploiting other peoples’ suffering.  They might start off with good intentions but end up just promoting their ideas without making any serious sacrifices or efforts to change it except add on to the pile of academic excrement that already exists about the subject matter and fight over it.  

Moreover, as I learned more about our economic system, I started to realize that the system that these brilliant people continue to push and reinforce in our future world leaders and policy makers is nothing less than a perfect insatiable human cannibal where human satisfaction will always be at a cost of other humans.  Humanity’s basic life needs (potable water, health insurance, not living in a country of rampant crime, fresh air) have been conveniently pitted against the material things they have convinced us we cannot live without at cheap prices.  And the genius of all of this is that we actually cannot live without our things.  If we started to buy less, we would put ourselves out of jobs and inflict our own demise.  Therefore, our survival is dependent on our rampant consumption that is killing most of the world’s environment and people.  Survival of the blingy-est.  Nice one, Neo-classical economics! 

After a while, knowing this begins to wear at your soul.  Especially when you can remember the faces of the countless people you’ve seen who will continue to suffer and die every day over something as seemingly innocuous as consumption.  Something I participate in everyday. 

And furthermore, hardly anybody smiles at Cambridge.  How do you seriously contend to promote any type of well-being when you yourself are so devoid of the most fundamental tenets of human joy? 

Two days ago, a package arrived to my home from Paula.  I knew it was a book from the way it was wrapped.  I couldn’t believe it.  This was it.  Almost a year later of being in the same country again and I assume, under continual evaluation through phone conversations and e-mail exchanges, I had finally been deemed, if not worthy, at least sane enough to know!  FINALLY!!!  All my thoughts and suffering during my time at Cambridge would be vindicated by the world’s most famous academic house nigga on “Welfare Economics” who, as it turns out, had not really been the house nigga after all but just an undercover operative lying in wait, studying and waiting for the day he was established enough to be able to tell everyone to fuck off!  

I ripped off the brown paper packaging as fast as I could, the taste of vindication already forming in my mouth.  I pulled out the book and low and behold, Mountains Beyond Mountains:  The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder.  WHAT!?!?  TRACY KIDDER!?!?  What the FUCK!?!?!

Inside the inscription read in Spanish:

For my dear Tina:

Whose love and friendship has been a precious gift in my life and a beautiful sample of what unconditional means.  I know that God has made you for many beautiful and marvelous processes in which I can’t wait to see how your internal light will shine on others as much as it has shined on me this year. 

I love you very much. 

                                    Paula, 2011

Bitch.

Paula, by the time you read this, you will be sitting in an airport, ready to board the plane back to Colombia to embark on your new life after the Ministry.  I can’t tell you how much I needed you this year.  I know God sent you because she knew that I would need you to hold my hand again as I slowly reinserted myself into something I so deliberately gave up on so long ago.  And I know she knew that only you could do it, in the way that you do.  Thank you for listening to all of my ranting after my law classes.  There were some things of course that only you could get and this year, just like in England, you never let me feel alone.  No matter how far the distance or how much time goes by, you have always been with me to help guide me and transcend.  Through you and your works and your proposals, I rediscover hope in this world and understand that here and there, we can make our changes.  You have shown me and given that back to me, breathing life into my soul again, helping me believe. 

Paula, there really is no greater gift than a true friend and no matter all that you have accomplished and the endless people you have served, quite selfishly for me in this world, our friendship will always be your greatest contribution.   

                Te amo mi Paulis.      

Paula and I, Kings College, Cambridge