Poverty

The audit is one of the indispensable business practices to check if the business process has been properly conducted and documented. However, if it has become so rigid and if anything has become impractical, it would be the cause of our big frustration or dilemma.

It seems to me that auditing is a kind of "ruler" that tries to make anything in order regardless (if I am correct) of its practicability, whereas so-called customer satisfaction is a kind of "smoother" that tries to make anything flexible. Of course in the ideal level, both should be well-balanced and more integrated. And yet in reality, not always but sometimes, we are a bit annoyed by this dilemma between Apollonian rigidity (auditing) and Dionysian flexibility (customer satisfaction).

The former is a human instinct that tries to control everything in order. This is why; Apollonian people love numbers and rational-logic. For, numbering or counting is the one of primary tools that provides us the feeling of rationality and logic – the world of mathematics. It is no wonder that auditing is closely related to the field of accounting. The accounting is a measurement to quantify everything in your company, one of the main indicators of this measurement, of course, is the revenue of your company. Even if your performance looks good and even if your customers are so satisfied, it is worthless from the accounting point of view UNLESS the revenue can increase.

In the other words, any companies must be profitable in the first place and for their raison de'etre. Without revenue or profitability, any companies can not exist, otherwise it will be NPO-- Nonprofit Organization. And as you notice especially for the readers who have read "Life Conditions", this way of seeing things is completely belonging to the Orange meme or to the paradigm of modernity. It is no wonder that the capitalistic firms are the symbolic fruits of the modern world. If you are a kind of workaholic in focusing on the profitably of the organization alone, you can categorize yourself in the typical Orange meme person. That is why, in order that the concept of non-profitability can be emerged, we needed to wait for the Green meme.

Also it is important to notice that the Green or non-profitability can exist only when we transcend and include the Orange meme or a kind of material prosperity. Any NGO and NPO look so simple, however, such being simple or simple lifestyle is only derived from the self-criticism of their materialism. That is why, quite often NGO activities come from the first world countries in criticizing their own materialistic lifestyle.

For example, the people who are born in the slum are NOT choosing their lifestyle; they just do not have choices. However, the NGO workers in the slums have chosen to live in the slum based on their Green meme value system. I am not criticizing any sides here, and yet just thinking that there is the meme-related gap between both sides.

While the people who are born in the slum are dreaming that their lives can be a bit richer in their material needs, some (maybe not all) NGO works might think that there must be a kind of dignity among the people in the poverty. Of course in the profound level we have our great respect, for example, on the poverty of Diogenes, St. Assisi and the others, or else the simple lifestyle of Mother Teresa in the slum.

Thus, what I would like to say is that there are three kinds of people in the slum. The first ones are those people who are born in the slum and dreaming to be rich hopelessly or at least have a piece of bread for tomorrow. In such conditions we cannot blame if they are unavoidably remaining in the Beige-Purple meme – a kind of homeless primitiveness.

The second ones are those people who hate their own materialistic lifestyle and have voluntarily chosen to live in the slum with the first people and to help them. Of course their courageous action must be so precious and nothing to be criticized in this point. On the other hand, these second people are consciously or unconsciously still maintaining the connection to the first world Orange-Green meme community and its comfort. In other words, they have chosen to live in the slum but still they can go back to their own material lives anytime if they like.

Is it malicious to say that they are indulging themselves with the poverty in feeling that they are back in the "divine" poverty, just as people are enjoying themselves in the natural resort in feeling that they are back in the nature? Of course I do not criticize this tendency, but it is true that if so-called NGO related study tours have been popularized, increased and in a worst case utilized in the tourism, then such narcissistic stance has become controversial.

The third ones are those people who have truly (not based on their Green meme sentimentalism but based on their true love) decided to live in the slum just like Diogenes lived in a pithos or Mother Teresa in Calcutta. How do we know they have truly decided to live there?

If they have no intention to unnecessarily exhibit themselves in the first world, Orange-Green oriented society, and if they have completely cut their connection to the first world comfort, then we can say that they are neither Mean Green narcissism nor Purple-Beige homelessness, but truly committed themleves to the divine poverty.


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