Becoming Rational about "Money"
Mike Markovits (president of the Re-evaluation Foundation) came to Budapest in late October to lead a local workshop on money. Besides the small Hungarian Community, Romanian, Austrian, and USer RCers attended, as well as a Canadian friend who accidentally happened to be here, too, and wanted to learn more RC.
Mike asked good questions on the phone before he came, listened to the suggestions and expectations, accepted some of them, did his own thinking, and arrived well prepared. He assumed that people who didn't speak English might find it difficult to reach out to him and tend to isolate themselves, so he did a perfect move against it: he spoke Hungarian! No, he didn't learn it all in a few weeks, but he did learn the basics, took a useful book along which had many good phrases, put his feelings aside for good bits of time, and spoke Hungarian. By bedtime Friday night, the gang was his.
"We are right on schedule," he kept on repeating. And needless to say, there was no schedule announced; he had enough attention and flexibility to judge how much people could take at a time. He taught great classes where he gave precious information on how and why we are made confused regarding money-what the general distresses are and what are the ones specific to different groups. He gave a clear list of how to take charge. The bare bones of it are as follows:
- Become competent in handling and understanding money in the current economic sysytem
- Talk about money
- See to your own personal economic well being
- Take control of whatever wealth you have
- Change the economic system
My favorite was his sub-list of what to do in order to change the economic system. Here it is as I understood it:
- Get completely close to and fall in love with people. Show your love and caring. Let people see that you really mean to work for the change.
- Learn how the system works: read, listen to people, share your questions and answers.
- Do your own thinking, build up your opinion, create your vision of what kind of society/economy is acceptable and desirable for you. Talk about it, share it with others.
- Develop your own rational program for how you are going to dismantle capitalism. Encourage others to find their own program. Remember that theirs will be somewhat different, relax about it, and build alliances based on what's in common.
He did many demonstrations which was the best way to get the message across. The key thing is to work persistently and stubbornly on the first memory connected to money. However, he always started the demonstrations with helping the client to discharge old embarrassment, restimulated by being up in front. This took quite a while, but it was excellent discharge for the audience, too.
Mike surely came home to Hungary-the place his ancestors left in 1900-and found his well-deserved place in the hearts of all of us. He made a big difference in each of our lives.
Gabriella Molnár
Budapest, Hungary