The day to day hustle and bustle of this civic struggle makes us forget the principles that sustain it. That is why I am sometimes concerned when from time to time I am reminded with messages such as the one I recently received from a reader from Valencia, which I transcribe below:
"To the people who stand in line with their vehicles for hours, hours and hours to get gasoline, I have suggested, when I have the opportunity to do so and I still do, that they get rid of the material and fear and instead of doing the will of the murderous narco dictatorship, that all these people, who are millions, would put on their courage; and park their vehicles in the streets of every town, in the streets and avenues of every city, and at the entrances and exits of every intercity highway, I am sure that in hours or days this narco-dictatorship would fall. We do not have weapons; but we do have the will, that brave people, who in the past were, to motivate them with new strategies of courage and pressure to the regime, to get them out of this lethargy of fear. If necessary, after the vehicles are parked and the narco-dictatorship responds with weapons and detections, there will be no other way out but to take more radical actions to recover democracy".
We cannot detach ourselves from the suffering of the people. All this that we are doing, each one from his own trench, and me in mine as a writer, is aimed at alleviating at some point this tragedy, product of the massive destruction that has been done to the country. The reader who wrote this to me speaks of something concrete that he suggests to put an end to the suffering tomorrow, making use of the indignation that people have at having lost something that for us was not only an emblem - gasoline - but was the product of our most precious property as Venezuelans, which was the oil industry. I wrote to him that I would take up that key issue because there must necessarily be a connection between that and what we do. And in my case, which is none other than analyzing ideas and situations in politics, sometimes I forget the principles that support what I do. And you always have to go back to them, keeping the cable glued to the ground. I thanked him for the reminder because sometimes one tends to detach the cable.
I want to start with the answer I gave him. In my opinion, the reason why people do not do what he suggests, and why Venezuelans have not burned the country from all four sides and gone as in 2002(*) in a monumental march to the Miraflores Palace to get rid of these criminals has to do with leadership. Yes, leadership. Nobody commits himself to do anything with anyone he does not believe in. That is a matter of principle and we have seen it in the history of the world. What is happening in Venezuela is not new and has been experienced elsewhere throughout history and even in worse circumstances. What is happening here can and will get worse if we let it. I think that a fundamental requirement to get people to take care of anything other than their basic subsistence activities, is that there is a leadership that inspires action.
Several years ago I wrote about that analyzing the results of that remembered December 16, 2012, in the continued fraud of the regional elections of that year (see in Spanish Tres Dimensiones del 16D, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2012/12/tres-dimensiones-del-16d.html): the inspiration we all saw from the old leadership in Venezuela has been structured and explained in a model, by an American anthropologist named Simon Sinek, in a book published in 2009 titled "Start With Why", where he explains his Model "The Golden Circle". (ver “How great leaders inspire action” https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action), that boils down to a single sentence: "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it".
This last sentence is the key to understanding why people are not moving. If we do not achieve leadership that inspires change, we will continue to see people standing in gas lines and not setting them on fire because there is precisely no gas. And why is that? Because rationality is not a substitute for emotionality-people are not driven by rationality but by what they feel and what they are excited about. Sinek explains it very well in his exposition. Let's look at part of it:
“It's all grounded in the tenets of biology. Not psychology, biology. If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, from the top down, the human brain is actually broken into three major components that correlate perfectly with the golden circle. Our newest brain, our Homo sapien brain, our neocortex, corresponds with the "what" level. The neocortex is responsible for all of our rational and analytical thought and language. The middle two sections make up our limbic brains, and our limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings, like trust and loyalty. It's also responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making, and it has no capacity for language”.
“In other words, when we communicate from the outside in (from the rational-neocortex to the emotional-limbic), yes, people can understand vast amounts of complicated information like features and benefits and facts and figures. It just doesn't drive behavior. When we can communicate from the inside out (from the emotional to the rational), we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, and then we allow people to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do. This is where gut decisions come from…”. And I would say emotional.
In other words, what moves us to do things does not come precisely from rationality, which is what keeps us in survival mode. Until something or someone inspires us to the point of going beyond that natural human behavior based on the rational logic of the "what" and not the emotional "why", we will continue to be trapped in the regime. And that is precisely the leadership that inspires action; leadership that comes from within, from emotionality. Leadership that inspires action focuses on the "why" and not only on the simple "what" of "getting out of Maduro" as it has been moving up to this moment. If the reasons given only go in the direction of an exposition of electoral motives, people will not even move to vote because deep down they know that they will never go that way, but neither do they trust that those same people who call them to vote will be the ones called to lead them, not even to block a street for gasoline.
Sinek's principle, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it" is fundamental. That is why those who claim to group civil society have never been able to do it, and never will, among other reasons because their motivation is not the same as that of the people, and people who are not stupid know it. Why do you think we do what we do in ANCO? Because we want to hand out positions that only exist in the imagination of those who want to get in bed with the regime? Or because we want to ask for a vote within a system that is useless as long as the regime administers it? Our motivation is civic.
Since its foundation in 2016 we were clear in what we wanted for the country: a fundamental change in the political system, because the one we have now, and the one we had before the castro-chavista-madurista criminals appeared, was and is completely unviable. In the face of this prolonged state of degeneration, we have to re-found the country! And that happens, not only because Maduro and his thieves leave, but because those who know that they will also die if this system changes, also leave. And that is what a so-called opposition will not forgive us. We have written those changes in a fundamental document entitled “El Gran Cambio, Una propuesta para el país que queremos” (see document in Spanish, in https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/p/documentos-fundamentales.html).
That's the "why" we do what we do, in Sinek's terminology. That is what we are selling and people are buying little by little. And based on this we are going through the Popular Consultation and now through the Citizens' Pact for the Constitutional and Democratic Reestablishment, with all the organizations that have believed in this citizens' route. (see it in Spanish, ein https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2021/02/comunicado-anco-acta-que-contiene-el.html), which establishes the floor for the creation of the Citizens' Conferences for Constitutional Restoration throughout the country. If the people buy this fundamental "why", they will accompany us regardless of what our enemies say or do, even without having a half a half in their pockets to offer to anyone, as they are already doing all over the country. ANCO is already the origin of a national sentiment to change Venezuela, and that is if it goes in the right direction -from the emotional to the rational- of a leadership that inspires action... Why do we do what we do? For a better country for our children and grandchildren, even if I don't see it or enjoy it for the rest of my life. And if that does not inspire to action, we will never get out of hell...
Caracas, April 26, 2021
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
Instagram: @laguana01
Telegram: https://t.me/TICsDDHH
(*) Erratum: In the original publication of April 26, 2021, I erroneously placed the year 2011, when in fact the massive and historic march took place on April 11, 2002.
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