in the city of Brno where I live there is a great shopping mall right in the middle of the city. today morning when I drove around it I saw the great contrast between outer surrounding and the mall. Within there is a VIP sector of those correct citizens who can aford to spend money on things as too expensive clothing and food, those people are the citizens who fulfill the dictates of the powerful-those who want us to spend our life in consumersm- fulfill and perform, in short: live in a menagerie of fullfilling orders of others instead of following one´s conscience. this bleak autumn morning when it was raining there was a great contrast of the sanitary mall with shining walls and hygienic parking lot nearby because it even bore an insciription: VIP zone. I as a social care workers cannot be more moved by the irony of the whole system. there is people on the streets , the lowest of the low just a few meters from the mall because it lies in the vicinity of a train station where these people gather very often. One can just stand and stare at this contrast of lifes of those above and those below and their life priorities. Those above think they are above but by consuming they actually fulfill the will of people above those above the low. Maybe not all of those homeless people would like to be in the middle of consumer society but most of the would like to join the normal life-style but do not have the capacity, ability, health or will to do so-and the society does not help them very much. It is irrelevant by the capitalistic society because if it helped those homeless people they would make of them another inhabitants of the consum menagerie and could teach them how to perform and what to perform in order to be fully-fledged citizens worthy of praise by the capitalistic lords. Menagerie is in my view anything where one gives up individual conscience to the dictates of others by which he denies his freedom and is voluntarily (un)willingly but sometimes unconsciously under the rule of others. The will to be free again is in all humans because that is our nature and entelechy,if we are self-conscious enough we would see the opression by others and could destroy the cages which mark the boundaries of our freedom(outside) and confinement inside . In the cage there is safety and comfort which makes us “happy” in a way and content with the fact that we are not free-we do not want to see the confinement when we feel good. The system of earn and spend forces us to live in such a way of menagerie and makes us content with it,because the system needs consumers in order to survive. Giving up individual conscience will never makes us happy because uniqueness and individuality is what we are born with and into-to fulfill what our conscience tells us,not to give it up. on the other hand we must never use our energy and life for our ego,but for the good of all mankind,not for individual people or myslef, not in order to gain, but in order to give, to uphold society, humanity and keep the civilisation as our former prezident Vaclav Havel said in one of his last interviews. Maybe the time has not come and there is enough of other such people who are willing to take their place and perform under the metaphoric lash what the government wants them to perform. Maybe homeless people will be needed and cared for later – in order to be kept in menageries or in order to be really helped. Menagerie is a very pleasurable place unless one discovers that the supposed freedom ends where his cage ends. The shelter, food, safety-in short bread and games as Patrick Brantlinger suggests, that government and capitalists offers, is a big prize for the confinement with which one has to put up with in order to be kept voluntarily in the cage. If is much more easier for all of us to be kept in a cage where we are looked and cared after, but then we willingly keep us under a total surveillence of panopticum as already Michael Foucoult noticed. Unless we see our freedom to act according to our conscience-which is i believe not in accord with the “happiness” consumer society offers, then we will still live in the cosy little cage of large menageries of the world where it does not rain, where there is a supposed peace,pleaure and warmth,where we all have enough to eat but our lords which we accepted voluntary are growing more and more demanding, the cages are shrinking and shrinking and the lash is growing more and more tough.
Systemická supervize a koučování zaměřené na řešení 