I wrote the following in response to an email I received regarding the mining situation in Romania (the national mining companies have gone bankrupt on account of supposedly “fully exploited resources” and a bogus figure that the national wealth has a cap as to how much can be gold… meanwhile now there are 8 foreign companies looking to extract over 200 billion $ of gold, more than double Romania’s entire national debt, with Romania taking only 4% of extracted wealth - compared to 20% in Africa, for example…)

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I spent my summer (4 months) working in Romania, thus actually living there - a real, day-to-day routine. Before this I had only experienced it as a vacationing place away from my home in Canada, experiencing specifically the good, and guided along by the efforts of others. I didn’t have time to absorb the feeling of living in Romania.

Having spent more time there, I will never want to live there. I know some people my age, raised abroad, romanticize about going back to live in Romania. I definitely don’t.

Before I write anything else, though, I want to make it clear that I feel quite a bit of passion for Romania. For its countryside and natural wonders that I find so beautiful, inspiring, and relaxing; for its rich, riddled history and literature that I find so captivating whenever it is shared with me and expanded upon; for the sense of humour and wit the people can often possess; for the pre-communist architecture that still stands… ultimately, all my relatives, my parents and brother, were all born there and I was raised accordingly, regardless of where.

I networked quite a bit while I was there, and there were several instances where somebody would begin speaking to me in a knowing way, in a tone that was very clearly addressing a foreigner, and before long they changed their tone, and commented how impressed they were that I spoke more knowledgeably, and with more passion, of Romania’s plights than many actual Romanians currently raised and living there. So what I feel and say, I do so with feeling and awareness.

Having said all that, reading the Gold story forwarded to me reminds me of the sick feeling I got in my stomach at least once a day living in Bucharest. The news on TV, and in the paper, was sensationalist, narrow-minded, internationally ignorant… blatant pollution of the mind. The people were apathetic, tired, angry - I would see little confrontations every day, or be spoken rudely to, or hear people talking to each other in a dejected tone about one thing or another - how they’re being stolen from, or lied to, but in a tone that suggests they are ultimately resigned to it.

It’s that resignation, paired with the bombardment of further poor quality, in contrast with the potential that is also spoken about and that I know of, that made me upset. It’s like seeing people insulted to their face, being bullied and having their things stolen. And the things that are stolen are very, very precious, recognizable assets that are stolen from everybody. It’s not the typical bully situation - everybody is the victim. Yet, in the end, everybody speaks dejectedly to each other, broods, and shrugs their shoulders and keeps going, knowing that tomorrow there will be more.

I know I should feel pity, perhaps - and don’t get me wrong, I absolutely do - but on the whole it just makes me angry. When I hear about how Romania went from no debt to tens of billions while life for the average citizen deteriorates; how they could eradicate their debt and bring wealth to its people with their gold, but it is being willfully sourced out of the country (so destroying natural wonders AND not profiting from it); how the national power company and the national oil company have been sold at undervalued prices; how millions and millions are spent on highway projects and a fraction is built, but the money is siphoned out anyways; how Bucharest used to be and how it is now; the quality of education and how it is now; how the media is devolving… and all I see is that bitter, dejected, broody in-fighting amongst the people - that really pisses me off.

There are many places around the world where they have lost less in the past 100 years than Romania has, and they do more about it. There are places where they are much more openly repressed and they have stood up. And maybe that’s the problem, that it’s not made so obvious - though at this stage I find that a stretch. And maybe I have grown up in a place with more hope, more privileged, and so perhaps its easier for me to think of these things. But for all the nationalistic pride many Romanians still speak about, either openly or implicitly, I feel I am not wrong in saying there is no true national self respect, only delusion. If there was self respect, a nation as a whole would not tolerate being stolen from so blatantly, and living in the resulting conditions, for so long, without a spark happening, and some true action for all their upset feelings and words.

Instead, they do act on it, but at each other. That is the environment I experienced. And that is why it won’t change. It is literally hopeless, and hopeless, ultimately, by choice, and I guess that is why it made me feel sick and why it makes me angry.

I almost find it ironic that this is the character of a place that had an uprising against a dictator.

And I’m aware the common reaction is “what can be done? What is your solution?” … “Are you so naive to think that a protest would really do anything?”

My answer to that is this: there is too much potential for doing nothing to be acceptable. Action requires two things: intellectual power; and an effective method of implementation.
While I was there I networked with countless talented, knowledgeable, cultured young people that were brimming with potential and good ideas, and working to make them happen; I am actually working with one of them now on a start-up. These people had not been raised abroad. They were Romanian through and through. The fact that these people still exist, even as millions have already emigrated, and that foreign companies and universities continue to mine Romania for over-the-top talent, tells me there is no shortage of intellectual power to think of a solution.
And paired with that ability to think of a solution, is an uncensored, fastest-in-Europe internet-serving network. The reason we live in the information age we live in now is exclusively because of the internet. The upcoming ruling for SOPA in the U.S. is so pivotal for this very fact. The internet does not supply equity or education or awareness, but it leverages a unifying ability to access all the resources required to become these things, without limitations. The internet is why those that choose to, have become educated with a mere computer, or why children in Africa can now teach themselves with a back-to-basics computer, or why many of the recent middle-eastern uprisings were possible; and it is also the reason why so many carefully-crafted campaigns have actually been successful - why Obama effectively leveraged his change platform with the average American, why Avaaz.org has overturned countless political motions, and why social media continues to prove totally capable of inspiring collective behavioural change like never before. The internet provides endless recruiting ability, and immediate information and communication means for rapid, thoughtful action in the real world. And to top it all off, it requires virtual participation. You don’t need to take off work for the day to join a movement, or stand in line to do what’s right. It is sustained in a digital medium.

I have seen some promise in clever online platforms targeting corruption in Romania, but ultimately they are still proliferated via obscure news clippings and less-than-prominent venues. They are not a real movement.

I am not proposing a specific solution, but I am showing why it is not acceptable to fall back on the excuses of “we don’t have how” or “revolutions don’t work”. A strictly violent fervor or a knee-jerk, ill-informed revolt lacking strategy is obviously not a solution. But Romania is not lacking either the brainpower or the platform to deliver an alternative.

So that’s my rant. I don’t ever want to live in a place where everything is taken from you every day, and you yell at your neighbour to vent, spend a quarter of your social life on collective self-pitying conversation - and, despite both talent and ability, nothing ever changes.

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p.s. My mother shared the following couple of “sayings” with me regarding my rant… they’re old Romanian proverbs going back hundreds of years to when Romania was the setting for much conquering and pillaging:

Capul plecat, sabia nu il taie.

(A head bowed, is not cut by the sword … i.e. keep your head down and you won’t get in trouble)

Schimbarea stapanilor, bucuria nebunilor.

(Change of master(s), joy for the crazy… i.e. only the crazy should be happy with a change in the ruling party)

Maybe it’s no wonder things are the way they are…

1. Focus. Whether that be in your own life or the things you create, put the few best things in and say no to the many others that are even the slightest bit less than that.

2. Use that focus to also keep it simple. Nothing, whether that be your own decisions or the things you design, benefit from excesses. Simplicity is clean and allows you to breathe and see clearly. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

3. Pour your heart in. Chase your vision and put your life into it - and not with the conventional path offered, but in whatever way you can make it work, even if that means breaking with the herd entirely.

4. Roll with the punches. When you get knocked down, find the raw passion that brought you to the top and make it happen again in a totally new way. Anything is possible with that raw passion.

5. Use that raw passion to be ingenious. Solutions exist everywhere and if you force the issue they can be anywhere, anyhow.

6. If you’re going to create something, create something that is not a commodity and likely cannot be turned into a commodity. Finite features - technology, power, etc - they can be readily manufactured and replicated. Innovative design and integrated quality cannot.

7. Quality is king, and quality is in the experience.

8. Build with the future in mind. Just as we trace a straighter line looking to a specific point, we build a more coherent, well thought-out product when we extrapolate its future. Just as a rigorous business plan should have financials over the next 5 years, a thorough design solution should have its perceived evolution over the next 5 years. It makes for steady growth and a steady ship.

9. We cannot use what we know now to think about what we may want in the future. Innovation means breaking the grid and looking to what is ideal, in any form, regardless of what we are familiar now. Innovation should be the target, not evolution. Simple evolution of a product in the marketplace is outpaced upon conception by evolution’s own natural progress; evolution is never truly new.

10. Design is paramount. A customer’s best experience is when they are enchanted – it doesn’t just work well, it feels great. Excellent design is the path to giving that to your customer. As they teach us in engineering (though perhaps not with an eye to the aesthetic as well…): “quality is not manufactured, it is designed.”

For some of the articles that stimulated these insights:

What Steve Jobs Can Still Teach us:

http://www.fastcompany.com/design/2011/what-can-steve-jobs-still-teach-us

The Spiritual Side of Steve Jobs:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/05/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-philosophy/

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

“Three apples changed the world: Adam and Eve’s, Newton’s, and Jobs’”

A visionary thinker; although I never knew him, I feel a genuine sadness because I can feel that the world lost somebody truly special.