A fun article. I also think that we have a similar effect in some of the people who go back home. Although we have the heroes who go back out of real love for the Philippines we also have the Damaso kind who just can’t hack it overseas and returns home to tell people who never left they are beneath him on some aspects. I am actually thinking of a specific person from one of our clients.
JANUARY 5, 2014 BY MICHAELOCHURCH
VC-istan 8: the Damaso Effect
Padre Damaso, one of the villains of the Filipino national novel, Noli me Tangere, is one of the most detestable literary characters, as a symbol of both colonial arrogance and severe theological incompetence. One of the novel’s remarks about colonialism is that it’s worsened by the specific types of people who implement colonial rule: those who failed in their mother country, and are taking part in a dangerous, isolating, and morally questionable project that is their last hope at acquiring authority. Colonizers tend to be people who have no justification for superior social status left but their national identity. One of the great and probably intractable tensions within the colonization process is that it forces the best (along with the rest) of the conquered society to subordinate to the worst of the conquering society. The total incompetence of the corrupt Spanish friars in Noli is just one example of this.
In 2014, the private-sector technology world is in a state of crisis, and it’s easy to see why. For all our purported progressivism and meritocracy, the reality of our industry is that it’s sliding backward into feudalism. Age discrimination, sexism, and classism are returning, undermining our claims of being a merit-based economy. Thanks to the clubby, collusive nature of venture capital, to secure financing for a new technology business requires tapping into a feudal reputation economy that funds people like Lucas Duplan, while almost no one backs anything truly ambitious. Finally, there’s the pernicious resurgence of location (thanks to VCs’ disinterest in funding anything more than 30 miles away from them) as a career-dominating factor, driving housing prices in the few still-viable metropolitan areas into the stratosphere. In so many ways, American society is going back in time, and private-sector technology is a driving force rather than a counterweight. What the fuck, pray tell, is going on? And how does this relate to the Damaso Effect?
via VC-istan 8: the Damaso Effect | Michael O. Church.