Living in the future is extremely frustrating: a highly dysfunctional place, where mediocrity has triumphed over excellence, and crushed and suffocated the latter.
by Alex Kurtagic
I write because the future is not what it used to be.I know, because I have lived in it. My parents had overseas jobsduring the 1970s and early 80s, and, consequently, I spent part of mychildhood and early teenage years in Latin America. Venezuelan schools— at least at the time — taught their students that the country’spopulation was racially diverse, going from White to Black, with eightshades in between. Schoolbooks stated that these ten shades of skincolor — each with a designation and a definition — were the result ofintermarriage between three original populations: the nativeAmerindians, the Spanish Conquistadors, and the Black slaves. Theeducational narrative was matter-of-fact, but prevailing attitudes onthe ground suggested a tacit ordering of social status that looselycorrelated to skin pigmentation: whites were at the top, blacks at thebottom.Not surprisingly, whites were wealthy and in positions of authority,while millions of their dark-skinned counterparts were poor and livedin slums. Skin pallor was a valued asset among women. There was noobvious racial hostility in the air, however, beyond the occasionalplayground taunt: outside the most rarefied of gated communities,racial diversity was ubiquitous in everyday life and accepted as a fact.