WEBVTT

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It was a cold, sunny March day.

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I was walking along the street in Riga.

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I remember the winter was slowly
coming to an end.

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There was still some snow
around, here and there,

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but the pavement
was already clear and dry.

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If you've lived in Riga,

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you will know that feeling of relief

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that the first signs of spring bring,

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and you no longer have to trudge
through that slushy mix

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of snow and mud on the streets.

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So there I am, enjoying my stroll,

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as I suddenly notice a stencil
on the pavement in front of me,

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a graffiti:

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white letters painted
on these dark grey bricks.

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It says,

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"Where is your responsibility?"

NOTE Paragraph

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The question stopped me in my tracks.

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As I am standing there,
considering its meaning,

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and I notice I'm standing outside

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the Riga Municipality
Social Welfare Department.

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So it appears that the author
of this graffiti, whoever it is,

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is asking this question to people
coming to apply for social assistance.

NOTE Paragraph

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That winter,

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I had been doing research on the aftermath
of the financial crisis in Latvia.

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When the Global Financial Crisis
erupted in 2008, Latvia got hit hard,

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as a small, open economy.

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To balance the books,
the Latvian government

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chose a strategy of internal devaluation.

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Now, in essence,

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that meant drastically reducing
public budget spending,

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so slashing public sector workers' wages,

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shrinking civil service,

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cutting unemployment benefits
and other social assistance,

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raising taxes.

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My mother had been working
as a history teacher her whole life.

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The austerity for her meant seeing
her salary cut by 30 percent

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all of a sudden.

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And there were many in a situation
like hers or worse.

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The costs of the crisis were put
on the shoulders of ordinary Latvians.

NOTE Paragraph

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As a result of the crisis
and the austerity,

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the Latvian economy shrank
by 25 percent in a two-year period.

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Only Greece suffered
an economic contraction

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of a comparable scale.

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Yet, while Greeks were out
in the streets for months

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staging continuous,
often violent protests in Athens,

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all was quiet in Riga.

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Prominent economists were fighting
in the columns of The New York Times

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about this curious extreme
Latvian experiment

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of this austerity regime,

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and they were watching on in disbelief
how the Latvian society

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was putting up with it.

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I was studying in London at the time,

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and I remember the Occupy movement there,

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and how it was spreading
from city to city,

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from Madrid to New York to London,

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the 99 percent against the one percent.

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You know the story.

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Yet when I arrived in Riga,

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there were no echoes of the Occupy here.

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Latvians were just putting up with it.

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They swallowed the toad,

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as the local saying goes.

NOTE Paragraph

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For my doctoral research,

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I wanted to study how the state-citizen
relationship was changing in Latvia

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in the post-Soviet era,

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and I had chosen the unemployment office

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as my research site.

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And as I arrived there
in that autumn of 2011,

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I realized I am actually
witnessing firsthand

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how the effects of crises are playing out,

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and how those worst affected by it,

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people who have lost their jobs,

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are reacting to it.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I started interviewing people

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I met at the unemployment office.

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They were all registered as job seekers
and hoping for some help from the state.

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Yet, as I was soon discovering,

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this help was of a particular kind.

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There was some cash benefit,

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but mostly state assistance came
in the form of various social programs,

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and one of the biggest
of these programs was called

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"competitiveness raising activities."

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It was, in essence, a series of seminars
that all of the unemployed

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were encouraged to attend.

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So I started attended
these seminars with them.

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And a number of paradoxes struck me.

NOTE Paragraph

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So imagine,

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the crisis is still ongoing,

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the Latvian economy is contracting,

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hardly anyone is hiring,

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and there we are,

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in this small, brightly lit classroom,

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a group of 15 people,

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working on lists of our personal
strengths and weaknesses,

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our inner demons that we are told
are preventing us from being

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more successful in the labor market.

NOTE Paragraph

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As the largest local bank
is being bailed out

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and the costs of this bailout are shifted
onto the shoulders of the population,

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we are sitting in a circle

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and learning how to breathe deeply

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when feeling stressed.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Breathes)

NOTE Paragraph

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As home mortgages are being foreclosed

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and thousands of people are emigrating,

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we are told to dream big
and to follow our dreams.

NOTE Paragraph

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As a sociologist, I know
that social policies

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are an important form of communication

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between the state and the citizen.

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The message of this program was,

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to put in the words
of one of the trainers,

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"Just do it."

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She was, of course, citing Nike.

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So symbolically, the state was sending
a message to people out of work

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that you need to be more active,
you need to work harder,

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you need to work on yourself,
you need to overcome your inner demons,

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you need to be more confident,

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that somehow being out of work
was their own personal failure.

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The suffering of the crisis

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was treated as this
individual experience of stress

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to be managed in one's own body

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through deep and mindful breathing.

NOTE Paragraph

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These types of social programs
that emphasize individual responsibility

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have become increasingly common
across the world.

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They are part of the rise
of what sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls

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the "neoliberal Centaur state".

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Now, the centaur, as you might recall,

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is this mythical creature
in ancient Greek culture,

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half human, half beast.

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It has this upper part of a human
and the lower part of a horse.

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So the Centaur state

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is a state that turns its human face

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to those at the top of the social ladder

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while those at the bottom
are being trampled over,

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stampeded.

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So top income earners and large businesses

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can enjoy tax cuts
and other supportive policies,

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while the unemployed, the poor

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are made to prove themselves worthy

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for the state's help,

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are morally disciplined,

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are stigmatized as irresponsible
or passive or lazy

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or often criminalized.

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In Latvia, we have had
such a Centaur state model

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firmly in place since the '90s.

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Take, for example, the flat income tax
that we had in place up until this year

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that has been benefiting
the highest earners

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while one quarter of the population
keeps living in poverty.

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And the crisis and the austerity has made
these kinds of social inequalities worse.

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So while the capital of the banks
and the wealthy has been protected,

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those who lost the most

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were taught lessons
in individual responsibility.

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Now, as I was talking to people

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who I met at these seminars,

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I was expecting them to be angry.

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I was expecting them
to be resisting these lessons

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in individual responsibility.

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After all, the crisis was not their fault,
yet they were bearing the brunt of it.

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But as people were sharing
their stories with me,

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I was struck again and again

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by the power of the idea

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of responsibility.

NOTE Paragraph

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One of the people I met was Janet.

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She had been working for 23 years

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teaching sewing and other crafts
at the vocational school in Riga,

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and now the crisis hits

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and the school is closed
as part of the austerity measures.

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The educational system restructuring
was part of a way of saving public money.

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And 10,000 teachers across the country
lose their jobs and Janet is one of them.

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And I know from what she's been telling me

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that losing her job has put her
in a desperate situation.

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She is divorced, she has
two teenage children

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that she is the sole provider for.

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And yet, as we are talking,

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she says to me

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that the crisis is really an opportunity.

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She says, "I turned 50 this year.

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I guess life has really
given me this chance

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to look around, to stop,

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because all these years
I've been working nonstop,

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I have no time to pause,

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and now I have stopped

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and I've been given an opportunity
to look at everything and to decide

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what it is that I want

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and what it is that I don't want.

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All this time, sewing, sewing,
some kind of exhaustion."

NOTE Paragraph

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So Janet is made redundant after 23 years.

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She's not thinking about protesting.

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She's not talking about the 99 percent
against the one percent.

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She is analyzing herself.

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And she was thinking pragmatically
of starting a small business

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out of her bedroom

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making these little souvenir dolls
to sell to tourists.

NOTE Paragraph

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I also met Ivars
at the unemployment office.

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Ivars was in his late 40s,

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he had lost a job at the government agency
overseeing road construction.

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To one of our meetings,

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Ivars brings a book he's been reading.

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It's called "Vaccination Against Stress,
or Psychoenergetic Aikido."

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Now, some of you might know
that aikido is a form of martial art,

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so psychoenergetic aikido.

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And Ivars tells me
that after several months

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of reading and thinking and reflecting
while being out of work,

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he has understood

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that his current difficulties
are really his own doing.

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He says to me,

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"I created it myself.

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I was in a psychological state
that was not good for me.

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If a person is afraid to lose their money,

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to lose their job,

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they start getting more stressed,
more unsettled, more fearful.

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That's what they get."

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As I ask him to explain,

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he compares his thoughts poetically
to wild horses running in all directions,

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and he says, "You need to be
a shepherd of your thoughts.

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To get things in order
in the material world,

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you need to be a shepherd of your thoughts

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because it's through your thoughts
that everything else gets orderly."

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"Lately," he says,
"I have clearly understood

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that the world around me,
what happens to me,

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people that enter in my life,
it all depends directly on myself."

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So as Latvia is going through
this extreme economic experiment,

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Ivars says it's his way of thinking
that has to change.

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He's blaming himself for what
he's going through at the moment.

NOTE Paragraph

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So taking responsibility
is, of course, a good thing, right?

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It is especially meaningful

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and morally charged
in a post-Soviet society

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where reliance on the state
is seen as this unfortunate heritage

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of the Soviet past.

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But when I listen to Janet and Ivars

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and to others, I also thought

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how cruel this question is --

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"Where is your responsibility?" --

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how punishing.

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Because, it was working as a way
of blaming and pacifying people

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who were hit worst by the crisis.

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So while Greeks were out in the streets,
Latvians swallowed the toad,

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and many tens of thousands emigrated,

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which is another way
of taking responsibility.

NOTE Paragraph

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So the language,

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the language of individual responsibility
has become a form of collective denial.

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As long as we have social policies
that treat unemployment

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as individual failure,

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but we don't have enough funding
for programs that give people real skills

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or create workplaces.

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We are blind of the
policymakers' responsibility.

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As long as we stigmatize the poor
as somehow passive or lazy

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but don't give people real means
to get out of poverty

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other than emigrating,

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we are in denial of
the true causes of poverty.

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And in the meantime,

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we all suffer,

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because social scientists have shown
with detailed statistical data

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that there are more people with
both mental and physical health problems

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in societies with higher levels
of economic inequality.

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So social inequality is apparently bad
for not only those with least resources

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but for all of us,

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because living in a society
with high inequality

00:12:59.622 --> 00:13:03.135
means living in a society
with low social trust and high anxiety.

NOTE Paragraph

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So there we are.

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We are all reading self-help books,

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we try to hack our habits,

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we try to rewire our brains,

00:13:09.947 --> 00:13:11.115
we meditate,

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and it helps, of course, in a way.

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Self-help books help us feel more upbeat.

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Meditation can help us feel
more connected to others spiritually.

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What I think we need is as much awareness

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of what connects us
to one another socially,

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because social inequality hurts us all.

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So we need more
compassionate social policies

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that are aimed less at moral education

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and more at promotion
of social justice and equality.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)