Melancholy of loss
"We are hurtling into an uncertain future," said my favourite author, Orphan Pamuk, the Turkey's Nobel laureate,
who has brought his fictional museum from his latest novel 'Museum of Innocence' to life.
This is Istanbul's first city museum, it covers daily life from 1950 to 2000.
In the main protagonist's lifetime, Istanbul has swelled from 1.5 million inhabitants to 15 millions.
Gone are sleepy willages on the Bosporus. Tall glass skycrapers dominate where wolves roamed.
The book charts special moments in Turkey's modernization as the city's elite, desperate to not be 'Eastern' and backward struggle with...
Parisian fashion, premarital sex and alcohol. The house is full of everyday objects from a particular period. There is an atmosphere.
You walk around the rooms and you feel an unspoken anxiety about forever struggling to be something else - more modern, more Western...
and the secret fear that whatever we are, it just isn't good enough. A Turkish museum shows us our lives as they really are.
Why not dedicate a museum to what might seem shameful, to a longing to come clean, to admit to very human imperfection and pain?
There is a Turkish word for this melancholy of loss, HUZUN, a term first used to evoke the ache of man's loneliness.
In the 8 years Turkish prime minister Erdogan has been in power, Turkey's per capita GDP has grown nearly threefold and the lives of ordinary Turks improved dramatically.
And yet, that lump-in-throat feeling you get on your first night in a foreign bed, that ache of man's loneliness is more prevalent than ever before.
Orphan Pamuk's story is an ode to human fragility, its HUZUN is universal and widely experienced everywhere in our modern world.
The West may have lost the luxury of time. Countries may have to liberalize immigration policies to expand their working population and offset the burden of aging.
We need growth to make the world sustainable, but what we need the most is what French call 'solidarite' - mutual sacrifice for the common good.
What has happened to the entrepreneurial spirit and the desire to excel? People have to be encouraged to take their future into their hands.
With debt ballooning, inverstors in panic, policy-makers working on thougher choices that ever before in allocating tax receipts,
the question we have to ask: "Will they fund health care benefits, hire more teachers or buy more tanks?"
IN AN AGE OF TRANSFORMATION
more connected
as a world
we ever have been
in a 24/7
information drill.
Whatever happens
here
has an impact
immediately
all around
the world,
no safety barriers
no time to react,
technology
takes us on a ride
in a fast train
rushing
in a speed of light.
Governments
still play it safe,
chuffing along
on an old fashioned
steam train,
organized
as they were
in 1912.
Institutions
are the same
as they were
in 1950,
and companies
are operating
the way
they did
at the start
of the century.
We all rush
to hop on
that new-age train,
but the question is,
what set of values
we should leave behind
and which ones to take.
Some people
think about
cohesion,
growth
and greater equity.
Others
look for
more
innovation
and more productivity.
New industrialists
wish for new growth
without destroying
environment
while doing so...
Looking around
the crowded platform,
we realize
how important
is
the human factor
and its capability.
Is 20th century capitalism
failing
21st century society?
When even the haves
and the have-mores
can't agree.
Pushing each other
to get in
we don't even feel
ashamed,
having lost
our moral compass
living
in the world
of greatest
inequity
going backwards
on equailty.
Corporation
and greed
is on top of our list,
not innovation,
sustainability
and reform.
Many hubbers
answering this question
pointed out
great virtues
of capitalist society,
and I have to agree,
being the one,
leaving communism behind
so I can dream big
and live free.
Many people
are wealthier
than they ever were before
but we haven't solved
the problem
of economic disparity.
Reason,
values,
morals,
human knowledge
and people's collective unhappiness
are what bring about change.
People are critical
and the government reacts
by being progressive
moving for reforms
or being repressive.
Finishing my university in Russia,
I often question
the Putin's choice.
A great dose
of economic
stability
corruption
abuse of power
have emerged
in this new capitalist state.
In our capitalist dreamland
of America
people are selected by cosmetics
not substance.
Americans have come to feel
that politics is not going to change anything.
'Gone with the Wind'
an unrelenting tale
of how honour
gives in to greed.
Many Americans
suddenly realize,
wake-up calls in life
often come too late
or not at all....
In the more established democracies,
just like my new homeland,
Australia is,
people doubt major parties,
recoiling at their number games.
Australia is far away
from everyone,
but in today's world
we are more connected
than we ever have been,
Australians have grown cynical,
some of us have settled
for being disconnected.
In newly emerging capitalist states,
just like my old homeland
in Eastern Europe is,
people are tired of ballot ringing
and vote buying
and schoolteachers not being paid.
The loss of connection
with each other,
with the natural world
is the source of our apathy.
You can buy so much,
and yet
the most important things in life
are never for sale.
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