Venezuelan trickster, historical but not eternal (Full version as of July 18, 2009)
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.
RROOPSTR 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