It’s Sunday afternoon. I am seated at Gusttimo Café which has arguably become my best coffee stop in Nampodong. I love the place for its quietness, soft couches and you guessed right – for its mild coffee. I’m not a coffee person as such so I come over for the place – and this computer! No, I not telling you to feel affection for Gusttimo; I’m already jealous about the place.

In absence of friend(s), like now, here is where I do my reflection about life, arts, economics, religion and politics… oh talking about politics; I just had an interesting engagement with Thomas Frank’s What’s the matter with Kansas. The book is in fact staring at me as my fingers bang the keyboard. Frank, I think, is a sober writer, my reservations about his language of critique notwithstanding. Never mind, this, according to The New York Times, was year’s (2004) most prescient political book. I think Frank is compelling, another critic of economic rationalism even among the dire-hard conservatives and what blindness of certain political creed can lead to (at least in Kansas). I just vowed to look for his other book, One Market under God.

 Still on politics, when a friend recently asked what was the single most problem in contemporary Africa, I said ‘political leadership’. I think I rushed into answering perhaps informed by the recent wrangling in the Kenyan coalition government, crisis in Ivory Cost and allegations of unfairness in the Uganda’s just concluded election. Well, before I could correct my answer or give another perspective, a follow up question came flying: “And what would be the biggest Africa’s problem 20 years later?”

 I am convinced that moral problem is world’s biggest problem not 20 years later but in fact right now. In Europe, Asia, America or Africa, the problem is elementary. To many, including my good Korea friend, economic problems is here to stay for decades. Well, whether they see the link between morality and economy or not, I understand such a perspective. No blaming. The world has been telling us our enemy is economic stagnation or a collapse of the same. Presidents supposed as economic architects have carried the day in elections. The messages have been clear: we have to work for the economy, sacrifice for it and die for it if we necessary. My professor calls it economic rationalism. Though, my understanding of the viewpoint of radically economic minded persons came rather recently, an example from Frank’s What’s the matter with Kansas did not come as a surprise.

 I quote: “In 1996, when he was but a congressman, Brownback said: “Mr. Speaker, as I travel my district in eastern Kansas and talk to people back home, I ask them, do they think the biggest problems we face as a nation, are they moral or are they economic? Are they the problems associated it the economy or problems associated with values? And I will get in almost every crowd 8 or 9 to 1 that will say the problems are moral rather than they are economic we are facing. They are problems with family and a disintegration of the family.””

 The family becomes the fundamental institutions from where life’s philosophy is shaped, values instilled and, in fact, economy played. Of course such a family must be informed by authentic worldview – one that identifies its mandate of creating and engaging cultures, be steward in using resources and redeem sources of moral failures in the society. Cultures with strong family ties, with great respect for justice and with inspiration to advance as one people, have always progressed in once aspect or another. Korea, perhaps, offers an example in economic advancement, though with a share of economic development consequences such as radical consumerism and the internet. Still, no doubt that the family is the centre of moral factory and its protection and structure reinforcement could be the way of thwarting the real enemy.