SPIRALS

In the 1930s two baby boys burst into a society coming to grips with the dawn of a new international order. The First World War had shaken the Giant Empires of Europe to the core. An awkward peace prevailed in the two decades that followed, only to be shattered by the last few gasps of an Imperial World Order and the final conquest of Fascist nouveau imperialism. The new world order that dawned at the end of the bitter battles of the Second World War to quash totalitarian demagogues would usher in a Cold War battle between liberal democracy and the Marxist experiment. Another set of international relations came to the fore in which a single economic superpower would call the shots alongside its allied liberal democracies. The growth of a new globalism held its own for another three decades before the rise of another type of equilibrium would sputter to the fore. A fresh alignment of political and economic power would enter the fray.  Change is the one constant that has undergirded the last hundred or so years – the period in which the two fellows in this story were born and lived their lives. 

The only reason the context of a changing world and the struggle between ideologies and institutions is important when considering their respective lives, is the economic reality in which both experienced the social phenomena they had to struggle with and against. Attitudes towards the individual’s economic circumstances, were largely determined by the system in which they had to navigate their experiences. Each of them had a different starting point, spiraled towards disaster and emerged in vastly different circumstances. Their birth and demise took place at roughly the same stage – which makes it especially fascinating to contemplate issues such as fate, fatalism, nature, nurture, personal choices and ultimately the vastly different outcomes that are the result of lives lived as they are.

Both Bob and Bill were born in 1934 at a Clinic in Cape Town. Their mothers (and fathers) were from different socio-economic backgrounds, but both were healthy, robust youngsters and made their entry into the world by natural birth, not with much medical intervention. The mothers didn’t know each other and the two youngsters would never meet. The only other commonality would be that the lifespan of both would abruptly end in 2014, in the same month.

Bob’s parents were typical 1934 middle class South Africans. They held a good “hand” (in Poker terms) with a government in unchallenged power that supported their peculiar economic interests. Dad was employed in the Civil Service, Mom a dutiful housewife intent on bringing up her progeny as decent, hard working members of society. No parent wishes for their baby to grow up as a loser, addict or hobo. 

Bill’s parents, on the other hand, were of the upper echelons of the working class. The family, though, were still struggling to overcome the deleterious effects of the Great Depression that had belatedly dealt South Africa a body blow. He, like Bob, could count on a decent enough education at a public (state) school though.

It was in 1952 that both these fellows graduated high school with decent enough academic results. Both had participated in the sorts of school activities that are generally deemed to provide a solid basis for a successful life outcome. White state schools at that stage offered an array of sporting activities, cultural societies and an academic foundation that opened doors and options for those willing to venture boldly into adult life. Bob went on to study Chemical Engineering, the pathway to university opened by sound matric results and the course that sympathetic government programmes and bursaries facilitated. Folk not advantaged by a quirk of birth that determined class and station in society had to struggle harder to acquire the sorts of tertiary education that were available to those that were dealt a better hand in power relationships. Nevertheless, simply availing oneself of these opportunities is not sufficient in determining the eventual success or significance of the individual. Those, like Bill, whose working class background had put his family in peril during the Great Depression, often managed to weather the storms of life with greater ease and made choices that significantly enhanced their prospects. 

Bob graduated, remained in academia and progressed through the echelons of higher learning – eventually being appointed a professor and authoring a multitude of peer reviewed publications that were of sound standing. The other chap, having attained a decent matric pass, went straight into the world of work as a public service administrator, using opportunities available to youngsters of his generation and station in society that secure government employment provided. A tertiary qualification was not a vital and important predictor of success and economic wellbeing in that generation. Folk who had managed to pass standard six or eight, but were hard working and intelligent (but without “papers” to show how talented they were) often managed to climb to the top ranks in their institutions on the strength of what they produced and achieved in practice. It is a fact of life that sometimes illiterate or poorly qualified people often have great wisdom, whereas those who parade their qualifications and knowledge occasionally lack the wisdom to navigate a sensible pathway through life’s challenges.

Bob’s upward trajectory sadly took a southward turn as he reached his early forties. He seemingly was a happy and duteous family man, but spiraled out of kilter in the most bizarre way. In his department at the university he gave the impression of a stable fellow with an exemplary moral compass and there was never a hint of impropriety. Staff and students held him in high esteem before the “wheels” came off dramatically. A thirty-five year old secretary who worked as his PA, apparently caught more that just his eye. An office dalliance led to a decline that began with flirtation and ended with an affair, divorce and the shattering of two hitherto happy and stable families. Not long after Bob’s wife understandably showed him the door and booted him out of their marriage and family dynamic, he acquired a taste for the contents of the brown bottle and increasingly stronger beverages that papered over the cracks in a life spiraling downwards. The “fling” patched up her own family situation – the scar forever tainting their marriage, but not splitting it up. Bob, however, found himself alone in an apartment off campus and seeking solace in what was initially a nightly stupor.

As is often the case, the liquor inexorably took its toll on Bob’s ability to function at work. An odd drunken day off, pitching up to lectures in a state of inebriation and setting tongues wagging as the alcoholic fumes engulfed his department, it was not long before his Dean of Faculty and the academic fraternity lost patience with his persistent drunken behaviour. Termination of employment, choosing the bottle store over the grocery store to spend the little he had left, and ultimately being ejected by the landlord for non-payment of rent and raucous behaviour induced by the tipple, followed in rapid succession. Bob, the Professor of Chemical Engineering at a prestigious university and a stable family man, wound up on the streets of Cape Town as a drunken hobo. Filth and squalor became a virtue in his warped mind. Consorting with vagrants and street corner hookers flaunting their dodgy personas to whoever was willing to dispense with the barge pole and approach them with filthy lucre, became a way of life for this long-haired, greasy and unkempt tramp. His attempts to solicit a few pennies from his erstwhile colleagues and students were met with rebuffs – no doubt most of them not recognising this shadow of the respected academic he once was.

At this juncture it should be noted that Bill, the other 1934 baby in this story, had begun to claw his way to the top of his career in the civil service. Bill had a beautiful wife and children and as a late bloomer in terms of his academic pursuits, put in the effort to attain qualifications that enhanced his standing. 

The society that both found themselves in treats renegades and misfits harshly. It is a world in which the fittest and hardest working survive. Woe betide the one who takes a misstep and slides down a slippery slope to destitution. It regards those who claw their way up the employment, social and economic ladder far more kindly. However, in both directions, this tends to resemble a spiral towards disaster or prosperity. Choices made along the way influence the outcome. Never is the outcome a foregone conclusion – it is often a series of missteps or achievements, any of which could alter the future course of the life lived.

In the grand scheme of things, nations and states experience the same phenomenon. The trajectory to the success or failure of a state is also determined by a series of choices made along the way. Empires have risen and fallen on the back of seminal moments which appear significant with hindsight. In the decade of “state capture”, it was not a single aberration that sent the South African economy into a tailspin. It was a spiral that became ever more frenetic until a choice can be made to regain a moral compass and arrest it. The choice to start a war so often spins out of control of those who initially deem it a good idea. Embarking on a path of sound economic policies that have produced the Economic Tigers of the Far East (South Korea, Japan, Singapore …) have set them up for prosperity.

There is little reason to expect that nations, multitudes of individuals, should behave much differently from each person making significant choices about his/her own life every day. For both the macrocosm and microcosm though, the importance of the moral compass cannot be over-emphasised. At what point did Bob’s life start the downward spiral – the first drink? the  first flirtatious glance? the decision to engage in an affair? And Bill? His steady hand and determination to stay the course – when was that choice taken? When have nations lost their morality? When did the downward (or upward) spiral start? How fragile is that trajectory? Which decisions are of seminal importance and which are merely steps along the way?

The two characters who represent the different outcomes in this story were born, lived and died at roughly the same time. The circumstances offering the opportunities each had to work with in constructing his life story were roughly the same. 

What is certain is that what one does in life counts. Everything counts – we just don’t know when it counts.

© Paul M Haupt