Hierarchy

 

 

The political system in Venice developed as a mechanism to serve corporate interests. I suppose this is true everywhere - but that the primary difference lies in the expression of the corporate interests. In most instances, the mechanisms of control by corporations are through political ego and pacification.

 

In the U.S., corporations purchase access to politicians by donations to political campaigns, and then provide valuable "education" and "support" to ignorant and narcissistic members of  the House of Representatives and Senate who ensure the interests of those corporations in sometimes horrendously damaging ways. Whose interests were served sub-prime lending practices, or genetically modified food or Fracking? [In the next 100 years, we will look back on the contamination of our food and water supply as one of the most self-harming things we've ever done - with far-reaching secondary and tertiary effects of public health nightmares, and a decline in our intellectual base.] We may feel that our politicians represent our interests because of our status as a "democracy" but conflict between public interest and corporate interest nearly always results in a win by the corporations. In Africa, the corporations are largely external and the flow of resources extractive - therefore political control and their control of the political system must happen through a mixed form of diplomacy and bribery which maintains the illusion of sovereignty, but which ultimately leaves the country short-changed and suffering.

 

In Venice, manufacturing and trade were entirely self-contained and self-sustained; a situation unique (in my observation). The state was executed by a bevy of mid-level bureaucrats hand-picked for their positions for life by a coalition of nobility tradesmen. To ensure that politicians knew their place in this hierarchy, the office spaces of these bureaucrats were pathetically Spartan - including the un-heated mezzanine offices of the most powerful political appointee of Venice (appointed for life), the Grand Chancellor. 

 

Corporate interests were integral to the survival of this small city-state, and were fundamentally enmeshed with the political hierarchy. Trade secrets were therefore state secrets; and to betray manufacturing or shipping information to an outsider was high-treason. Traitors were sought out and identified by the covert and feared "Council of Ten", and confessions were extracted through interrogation and torture by three Judges from the nobility who executed judgment under cover of night and beneath hooded robes. 

  

The Doge's palace was a strange manifestation of this system: it was, in every way possible, a prison. The official prisoners were kept in stone cells beneath the palace, or as "Piombo" in the torturous rooms beneath the lead roof (Cassanova was kept here). The bureaucrats worked in offices just above the prisons - leaving relatively minor distinction between their own lot and those of the unfortunate men trapped in the cells beneath. Even the Dodge, in his fine palatial rooms in the level above this, was not allowed to write messages freely, or to choose his schedule or his friends. As much a prisoner as his counterparts in this building, his movements and ideas were carefully controlled and monitored by the ruling class.  

 

Political and corporate power both seem so arbitrary. It seems to me that these social constructs are no more "fundamental" or "real" than the rules invented for children's games. Of course, the price for disobedience is higher and we play for bigger stakes, but we have invented the rules and might we not change them? The first step is in acknowledging that these are not fixed. We can disobey. It is our obligation to disobey when our conscience tells us we must.

 

I have often, in the past few years, pondered the social constructs that frequently dictate our behaviors - primarily because Sjors seemed so ruled by the society he was raised in, and the society he chose. The only thing he needed to do in order to be happy and true to himself was to disobey. For a time he did disobey - and it was in that beautiful time that I learned who he was. I knew him better in those months than he knows himself now. When you agree to sacrifice yourself to the will of the state, you must confine your thoughts and ideas and conform them to the rules of the game. Never leave your office. Never leave the palace. Never leave your cell.  

 

 I often wonder about the people who monitored our correspondence, and the men and women in MIVD who take the time to read what I've written. What is it you look for? Additional information? You tried to use my correspondence with Sjors to paint a picture of me that was not true - but you had to edit my words to create the lie. Consider the possibility that you serve as score-keepers to a game that has no more meaning, and no more virtue, than the bureaucrats who lived above the stone cells and who subsumed themselves in the goals of the nobility.