I
have read Axel Capriles' book whose title into English could be
translated as "The Venezuelan trickster or the triumph of Uncle
Rabbit", and I find it quite interesting. I have reasons to
believe that in the future, due to globalization, massive internet
access and as many political sectors from all trends are increasingly
fed up due to current events, maybe in the near future there could
be, if not an abrupt cultural change, at least a national evolution
leaded by some Venezuelans who not necessarily function as
individuals bound by the trickster archetype. For example,
Venezuelan-Americans living in Florida as a whole do boast a
significantly higher educational level than the average North
American of Caucasian descent, as reported by Wikipedia. Perhaps this
assertion of mine will only confirm; however, the eternal duality of
the trickster archetype.
Rivero & Cooper, Inc.
The
historical description of the causes and manifestations of the
Venenezuelans' double personality, friendly but distrustful, is
pertinent and adjusted to our reality. However the author Axel
Capriles on the first chapter, on page 34, comments what some of us
Venezuelans have already concluded, once we have managed to transfer
this historical experience from our collective unconsciousness toward
our individual consciousness:
"Even
though we may be extremely attracted to the romantic argument
according to which it is preferable to live intensively during a
brief timeframe for a great achievement instead of having a long,
irrelevant life, it is a must to considr that human progress and
welfare is much more due to the slow consolidation of institutions
and to the accumulation of small inputs derived from the formation of
social networks and the cooperative work, rather than the solar shine
from the great geniuses and cultural heroes."
The
question I ask myself, since paper and imagination can handle
anything, is if due to various causes of the most diverse nature, a
significant portion of Venezuelans, all of us tricksters according to
our collective unconsciousness, would be able to become aware that it
would convenience us to prefer that underestimated, long and safe
irrelevant life. If we were to address such an alternative at a
massive level, a social change could be generated at a conscious
level already, because of a hypothetical but enormous sum of
behavioral individual changes, so that our future actions would
become more profitable to us, our culture, our development and our
offspring.
I
am not suggesting that it would be possible to remove ourselves from
our national archetype. However; at the individual level many persons
who repond to other types of more productive personality, are anyway
bound to follow the trickster pattens in order to survive in this
society.
The
trickster has completely kidnapped our national psychology the same
way than addictions have wholly sequestered many people's individual
psychology. Whenever recovering addicts consciously acknowledge their
illness, they learn how to act soberly and sustainably throughout a
longer timeframe. In spite of this they do not overcome their
addiction, but they significantly improve their behavior and in some
cases they manage to go on with their lives more fully and supported
by unsuspected positive changes.
Therefore,
as our national addiction consists in performing everything through
tricks, disdaining hard and productive chores, we could similarly
make a conscious effort to lower our aggregate tricksterness to a
statistically less sickly level, and empower future successive
generations so that they release from their individual consciousness
toward the future national collective unconsciousness, other kinds of
behavior in accordance to the remaining archetypes. There are
individual Venezuelans whose individual unconsciousness is better
suited to the animus, the anima, the self, the shadow, the persona,
the child, the hero, the great mother or the wise old man (senex).
The bloated Venezuelan trickster is currently kidnapping us and. Our
various individual personalities, once taken to our collective
behavior, are not fully manifested because we are compelled to act as
tricksters in order to survive in our current social environment.
Dating
back to our independence days through today, spanning two full
centuries, we have been victims and perpetuators of the trickster
hypertrophy. By gaining consciousness that these long centuries of
trickster excess have motivated a major portion of our
underdevelopment would be the first step to transform our society in
favor of greater welfare and progress, featuring better consolidation
of institutions and accumulating cooperative inputs to the benefit of
our offspring.
A
voluntary awareness of the trickster stored within our national
collective unconsciousness would only be possible through the synergy
of several slow individual processes. Any exogenous event that may
occur could actually accelerate or impair this awareness process. In
any case our greater interaction with the psychology of the rest of
the world through globalization and the internet could make us
discover the existence of more effective ways to live our existence
more fully and with less contradictions. Each one of us individually,
Venezuelan "wild birds", could actually learn to
acknowledge that we are not bound to constantly lie among ourselves
for survival.
Rubén
Rivero Capriles. Caracas, July 18, 2009
Rivero & Cooper, Inc.
