Shiny Happy Cubans

In a series of economic reforms relaxing state control these last months, Raul has just graciously allowed his people to buy personal computers, mobile phones and DVD-players for the first time! Not that most of them can afford such toys (40 average monthly salaries for a PC), but hey, at least they're legal now. Only one PC model is available to Cubans, at only one store in Havana: the Intel Celeron 80 GB with only 512 RAM and a CRT monitor, made with Chinese parts, for what must seem like a ridiculously high price to Americans. The US trade and travel blockade still in effect, for some absurd reason. Strange, it seems it would be a much sneakier and potentially effective way to get Cubans to massively embrace and demand capitalism faster if the US opened its doors widely to influence the Cuban society from the inside. Particularly opening the doors to internet, which is available for Cubans only via satellite now, as they cannot connect to American undersea fiber optic cables because of the embargo. If the Cuban government were even open to such change, that is. Only 2% of Cuba's citizens have Internet access, in restricted official areas, but it can also be obtained unofficially on the black market as a piggyback to an official line. The country boasts free education for everyone but restricts access to information, making the whole concept of education questionable. People have barely enough to eat but basically everyone is employed, no homeless people or beggars. Everything is subsidized and cheap but the supply does not always meet the demand. Health care is universal, and although Michael Moore paints an idealistically warped picture, in the end Cuban limited supplies and antiquated equipment kind of average out against a few Americans with excellent expensive coverage vs. 20% or so too poor to have any coverage at all. WHO ranks the Cuban health system 39th in the world, and the US system 37th. Between them is Slovenia :) and I know Slovenia’s not bad. After Cuba come 151 more countries, including developed countries such as New Zealand and most Eastern European countries. Between those who decry the Cuban health system and those who glorify it, my conclusion is that it must be relatively okay.

So, the US is built on the idea of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as inalienable human rights. “Life” is easy. “Liberty” is trickier, especially since it was a slave-owner who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But we all agree that Cubans should be free to pursue happiness, right? And obviously, a change to a democratic government will solve their problems and make them free and happy. At the risk of being accused of too much relativity – that is not so self-evident to me.

Yes, there are severe limitations on individual liberty in Cuba, and dissidents will be persecuted and incarcerated. The society is structured strictly from the top down, and elements opposing that rule must be removed for such a system to endure. How about happiness in the daily life of the people, families, communities? I’ve read many comments by visitors, reporting that they’ve met Cubans who seemed generally content and relaxed and happy with their lives. Well, these visitors could be deluded, for all I know. Or they could just be observing one segment of the society, the one with relatives in America perhaps. There is no “average Cuban”. Another segment has different priorities. This webpage was particularly interesting for an inside look, a Cuban's estimation that most Cubans would honestly say Fidel "is doing an okay job". There are many conflicting reports from this interesting and complex country. Hard to find an article from either side that does not sound biased.

Maslow, at least, observes that security of body, health and resources come much before personal freedom in the hierarchy of human needs, and that makes sense. In Cuba, your most basic needs will be taken care of, and that’s more than could be said of some countries. The system is conceived to satisfy that primitive level. But what determines human happiness, our subjective sense of well-being? Clearly there are people in Cuba who are very unhappy with the way the country is run and who transcend the way of thinking that is provided for them to exist at. And there are also people who have found a life of relative contentment for themselves on their individual scale, while surviving the conditions such as they are. Suppose that happiness can actually be quantified, then there is a funny catch called “hedonic adaptation”: people tend to adapt to whatever change the current situation brings, positive or negative, and return to their baseline level of happiness. Even after traumatic events, most people do not spend a life in misery but instead return to their previous levels of happiness after a while. It seems only natural: if we as a species were not able to bear harsh circumstances that we have no control over, with a great deal of acceptance, we would soon kill ourselves agonizing. I guess the trick is to recognize when something can and should be done about it.

I don’t think a change to democracy and market economy will automatically make people happy (think Americans with 57 shopping channels, Prozac and no friends). I believe in freedom of information before anything: if that is missing, there can be no talk of freedom of choice. And yes, I prefer the chaos of free market over planned economy with an autocratic ruler who takes care of me and tells me what to think – but that’s just because I trust in my own intelligence. So I can also imagine that there are people who would not know what to do with a democracy, especially if they had been living under Fidel for several generations. Just like there are people already living in "free countries" but who want nothing more than to cede their decision-making ability to a God-king. So democracy really begins with broad education. Not air conditioning and microwave ovens, but education, free thought and emotional well-being of communities are the most valuable possessions of any society, and its greatest loss when absent.

A system that is not viable will change, and it’s already happening. Isolation from the world is unsustainable in the long run. As far as I know, no one has yet come up with a working model for a perfect society. Each stage of human development has to deal with its own problems. And if being happy is to be the goal, it seems that regardless of where one lives, it is not just the society itself that provides the definitive measure of happiness, but rather the individual has to figure out their space under the sun for themselves.