The Darth Vaders' of Development

​"Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat of our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That's something else, and it can be done. ... 
    By holding on to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you." (Campbell, Joseph  (1988) The power of Myth with Bill Moyers, p. 178) ​


What Joseph Campbell so aptly describes in his Star-Wars metaphor - that Darth Vader, who started out as a knight for the 'good side', ends up just participating in a much bigger system, that he simply is a small cog in an enormous machine, a bureaucrat so focused on following the rules in hopes of power that he losing sight of his own humanity - could potentially be said about many other people working in the various forms of systems today.

     I have a tendency to focus on capitalism in my critic of 'the system', which has made people uncomfortable and even questioning my use of the word. In fact, rather than seeing it as a pure critic, it should rather be seen as an homage. An homage to the system of Capitalism that after all has proved itself surprisingly adaptive, despite Karl Marx and pals aiming to ring its death knell over a century ago. On could say that Capitalism knocked out Socialism just like Muhamed Ali did George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974- only about two decades later. Development aid, or as it is called by the OECD: Official Development Assistance (ODA), its theories and strategies - most often and necessarily then must operate within this 'winning' system. Development stakeholders and practitioners should be aware of the mechanisms and caveats of the system - and to avoid turning into a Darth Vader of Development themselves.
      
     








 

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