About this time last year, I wrote from the Sunderban Islands, home to the world’s largest mangrove Islands, and the Royal Bengali Tiger, in Bangladesh. This year I write from the Island of Borneo, in central Kalimantan, home to the orang-utan and very interesting indigenousness people, living out in the jungle.
Sabine and I both find this place very similar to the small towns we visited in the middle of the Amazon’s, in Brazil. As we once again travel around the world taking the preverbal “road less travelled” we see so much, we learn so much, and so many questions are posed. The immediate question that is on my mind is what have we become, we western people, who will travel to the end of the earth, to trek to the ends to see indigenous people, and how they live. We have made them nothing more than the Orang-Utans, which live in the Jungle. The westerners we meet google at these tribal indigenous people, as if they are some kind of extra terrestrials, and I ask myself WHY? I know the answers that are offered to me, but I do not believe that these answers are justified. Indigenous people, or tribal people, are just other human beings, who live differently to us, that is all, and as far as I am concerned they should be treated and respected equality and the same as us.
I recall how so many years ago when I first moved to the Basque country in France, the Basque people were fighting to protect their culture, and one of the problems that they were fighting against, was mass tourism, where people would come from all over, to stare and shoot photos of the Basque people living in the small villages, trying to preserve their way of life. The Basque people found it very humiliating, and embarrassing, to be seen as monkeys in a cage. We too once lived like that, a simple life washing our clothes in the river, putting on traditional dress and going dancing once the weeks work was finished. We have lost so much of that, to day the average western person I know, do his, or her days work, comes home, drinks beer and watches TV. Then goes to sleep in an over comfortable bed.

And this brings me to my thoughts for 2009.

The Western world verses the third and developing world.

Why the economic crises, what’s wrong with our economy?

First I would like to state very clearly, that I make no claim to be any expert or even the slightest specialist on world economy. I can only talk from my own experience, and what I see with my own eyes. I have had many a friend in Europe, who has wanted very sincerely to be a “pitit entrepreneur”, wanting to start a small business, to work for them selves. One guy wanted to sell crepes on the market, another wanted to make surfboards, and sell them, another wanted to make spicy Thai food, and sell it from a van, another wanted to sell the goods he bought in Asia on the street, in the markets in Europe. All these people failed to fulfil their dream, because the system simply does not allow for the small one man entrepreneur to exist. Let me give you an example. Here in Asia, Thailand, Lao, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and elsewhere it seems that everyone and his dog, is an entrepreneur, we have a man with just one chair, a portable mirror a comb and a pare of scissors. Every morning he would install himself under a tree, hang his mirror on the tree and “open for business” Another with his wife would make tasty spring rolls, pack them on a portable cart, park the cart on the pavement, and sell his spring rolls. I could give you millions of examples, because this is how they live here, on the street, doing whatever they can to survive, being creative and innovative. Every one trying to get by and contributing to the system, buying, selling, cooking, creating, making and living, always with a smile, and a laugh for us as we pass these people, often trying there offers. When we ask the people in Asia, “what they think about the new world trend of economic crises”? They just smile and answer saying, “hey we were always poor, and so we will just continue to be poor, what does it change for us.?

In Europe the man who wanted to make and sell crepe at the markets, was told he had to pay Taxes to the state, pension charges, social security charges, and unemployment charges. Then he was given a list of inspections he had to undergo, health and safety, sanitary etc. There were some months when the charges and taxes were more that he earned, and he was told “well if you do not earn enough and cannot pay, then you should not be in business.” This was, and is the same story in all of Europe. A man, or woman, cannot just take a chair mirror and scissors and put them under a tree and “go into business” he cannot just build a surfboard, or two, or three, take them down to the beach, and sell them for a bit of profit. Rents are out of proportion, taxes are ridicules, and governments say they are broke, but the taxes paid by us, run into the billions, the bureaucracy is perversely distorted and corrupt. We have created a monster society, and lost our roots, and if this goes on we will lose our very souls. Every thing becomes harder, and more difficult, costs go up, taxes go up, we are forced to pay more and more, people complain and are discontent and unsatisfied. Xenophobia, discrimination, racism, nationalism and fascist’s still exist, in this so called sophisticated, educated, western society we live in.

Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that problems do exist here in South East Asia, but for the Majority of the “people” the poor and the middle class, life is kept affordable and the system allows for these people to live and develop in a reasonable way.

The Political, economic and social system, in Europe has become so complex and complicated, that we are “in so deep” now, that it seems impossible to do any thing about it. There are so many laws and conditions that we have to adhere to, that the average man and woman have lost the will to fight, and most people just give up and retreat into their own world of protectionism. In the Sixty’s and seventy’s the people revolted against the system, when they were dissatisfied. They went to the streets and protested, against the war in Vietnam, they protested against De Gaulle in France, and overthrew him, against Apartheid in South Africa, etc etc. Today, all the people do is complain. No more revolt no more protests, just confusion, indifference, and apathy.

I believe that Europe could be saved from itself, what is needed, is change through “revolution”, the perverse corrupt government’s, right down to the local administrators, the tax system, and the laws, need radical change. The Big companies need to learn how to share their profits with the workers and stop exploiting the workers. The rich need to distribute their wealth more. The people need to be able to mobilise once again, and work as they want,, creating, making, selling, buying, without so many laws and obstacles, and taxes to stop them.

We need to be free!

Indifference and Apathy will not give us our freedom.

Constant revolution is what we need, to change the system, to be truly free.