In advance have a beautiful weekend. Aujourd´hui nous allons continuer avec notre nouvelle epic “The fallacy of the Middle-Class: Overcoming social resentment”. Before starting, let me clarify something and reassure you again what is my ultimate purpose with these writings: I am trying to make corporate strategy beautiful. I am not looking forward to be hired by the BBC, or the DW or France 24. All I am trying is to write better day by day, and improve the quality of my work. Writing is the base for anything you want to do in life, including documentaries, movies, youtube videos, research, business, etc. That is why books are essential. If God wishes that my quality of work can be seen as potential documentaries, that is a whole world apart. But my core is always to create and design the new corporate strategy for the next generations.

Eleonora Escalante Strategy is trying to make corporate strategy beautiful. In my start-up, we are always creating new ideas, new concepts, new manners to understand our business purposes, government programs, international cooperation advocacies and entrepreneurial endeavors. I consider myself as a corporate strategy artist (regardless my recent love for painting). I am someone that is building new concepts that come from my skills evolution that arise from thinking, from experience and the constant exercise of developing intuitive faculties. Let´s refresh what is corporate strategy? “Corporate strategy defines the scope of the firm in terms of the industries and markets in which it competes”. Corporate strategy decisions include not just to define what are we going to do to sell and make money, but also how are we going to grow our enterprises (organic growth, diversification, vertical integration, mergers, acquisitions, new ventures and adjacencies, divestments, and finally how to allocate better our resources when we have different businesses in our companies). Remember, please that corporate strategy is related to what we do? to the purpose and content of our firms or organizations, and it answers the following question: What business or endeavors should we be in?

Let´s begin with our today´s content. We will stick to the outline that has been prepared for this trimester.

First, let´s review our buzzword and then apply it to this saga. We will begin exploring the basic definition and term differences between purpose, objectives, rationale and philosophy. I believe many of our current issues in the world are based on our lack of understanding. Even the most educated ones, have certain part of the knowledge. But not all. We have to constantly remind ourselves of the conceptual terms to define things and issues. The seduction of available information at one click on the Internet, has pushed our brains to be “extremely work-shy”. We have sacrificed the quality of our philosophic standards and long term views; and instead we have replaced for the “wishy-washy” quantity and short term realizations. Since the tactile screen I-phone appeared in our markets and the era of the Giga-Internet mobility started, particularly during the last 12 years, we have tried to put everything inside the Smartphone, including our frames of reference or conceptual mental maps. And that is not correct. We have become mobile dependent, and we need to rehabilitate our brains with personal due diligence.

Purpose of “The Fallacy of the Middle-Class: Overcoming Social Resentment”. What is a purpose? Purpose is more than an intention. It is an aim to reach a goal. We strive for a purpose when we set up a final target for which something we act, do and promote.

So, the purpose of this epic is: “To create a true-hearted personal awareness that our social-economic condition differences must not be a cause for social resentment or destruction in between us”.

Objectives. The term objectives are a set of  particular or specific deliverables that are going to help us to prove our purpose. These are usually a group specific goals, based on observable phenomena, presented factually, or content based on intellectual responsibility, that help us to cognize toward the purpose.  For this saga, we have conceived the following objectives:

1. To introduce an integral concept of the Middle-Class on a general global perspective. We will use a general world-wide perspective, and may exemplify with specific examples of societies.
2. To understand the situation, needs and wants of the Middle-class not just economically, but in all the relevant contexts.
3. To provide a framework of reflection when we are analyzing the competitive strategy of social groups, in this case the middle class: The Middle-Class as the aspiration of the poor improvements and efforts. The Middle-Class as the educated execution human capital of the wealthiest.
4. To corroborate that the integral well-being of the middle class is the key success factor for healthy pacific and sustainable democracies.
5. To establish a clear understanding of the connection between the Middle-class state of affairs and the development of societies at all contexts.
6. To analyze why is the Middle-Class living a fallacy? Under the current premises of wealth generation the Middle-Class is not being groomed to sustain its social conditions, and the urgency to change this is relevant.
7. Lastly, we pretend with this saga to overcome social resentment between people of different social conditions.

Rationale. The rationale of any study or something that we do are the set of fundamental reasons, the basis or the bottom line of our purpose. It is an exposition of principles or reasons of our job. So, the rationale of the saga “The Fallacy of the Middle-Class: Overcoming Social Resentment” is extremely simple. The reason why I am writing about this is not just to learn what is the Middle-class, but to offer a message of peace. Beyond our religious beliefs or ethical values, I am always trying to provide new frameworks for Corporate Strategy.

In that sense, our Middle-Class well-being (social, economic, talent development, education, happiness, etc) is the most crucial social segment for our world businesses survival, and the most important social group that has to be satisfied in their quest to prosperity.  Every single impoverished  that leaves the social condition of poverty (low class) lands into the Middle-Class. If the middle-class is sick, an full of issues or problems, or it is not complete, it will end up destroying the poorest that are arriving. When Middle-Class societies are vulnerable, it is not possible to sustain democracies, and it is extremely hard to create new enterprises that are sustained by the Middle-Class. As I explained it on my last post: The hypothesis for this saga: “Those societies with successful and ample middle classes are right now the smartest most flourishing, happiest, balanced and wealthy societies on earth (not just economically but also intellectually, socially and politically). Meanwhile those kingdoms or incipient democracies with higher inequalities, with huge gaps between the rich and the poor (and of course with fragile and reduced middle classes), are societies without any future.

Given the latter explanation, the rationale of this saga is handled by the following principles:

1. Intuitive discovery of the Truth
2. Promoting Peace in between people
3. Understanding how can we apply and practice our ethical virtues when we write (Humbleness, Meekness and Peacemaking, Mourning, Hunger for righteousness, Mercy, Courage under Suffering, Purity of Heart, Love Faith, Hope, and Integrity)

Philosophy of this saga. In the most simple definition, philosophy is the “investigation of causes and laws underlying reality”. It is an inquiry into the nature of things based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods. It is based on a thoughtful critique process and analysis of fundamental cognitive content, beliefs or thoughts as they come from our mind to be conceptualized and formulated. When we try to philosophy we don´t rely on machines or numbers. but in the whole integrity of our cognition. Data analysis is about 10% of philosophy, but is not the main tool for making sense of our problems and solutions. And that is why we define philosophy as the integrity of our knowledge pursuit.

In consequence, as a corporate strategy artist, our philosophy of writing is always to throw new logical reasonings on how to think about our society most critical necessities. Our civilization knowledge is limited, even in the abundance of information through the Internet. so we need constantly to re-investigate our premises. My aim is to provide pure raw material of thoughts about the Middle-class, and why do we need to consider it for further research and decision making. Those who don´t understand the Middle-Class difficulties and contexts are not able to make correct decisions when it comes to leading in the private, NGO, cooperation or the public sector.

Not all of us have been lucky to be born in the Middle-Class. In our process to overcome our human feelings of indignation or aggrieved internal afflictions when we compare our social condition of living with other social classes, resentment is the first “feeling” that arise. Those who are worst or better than the Middle-Class hold an ill-will or social resentment that is felt as a result of real or imagined grievance that comes with comparison.

Societies who don´t permit economic transformations (through education and hard work) from poor to rich, or societies without social and economic advancements paths are constituted with people who are resentful. Resentful people (at the low, middle or high-end classes) become usually the wretched decision makers. And once they arrive to leading at decision making positions, it is remarkable that their decisions won´t be taken under a philosophy of peace, but out of the accumulated resentment that is inside their hearts. By reading this saga, and understanding the situation of the middle class, everyone of us will be able not just to open our minds to the knowledge of what is the Middle-class, but also we will be more merciful and conceptually clear, logically consistent and careful about acknowledging our words and judgements beforehand about anyone who belongs to the Middle-Class, aspires to be Middle-Class or uses Middle-Class people as a workforce for their wealthy enterprises. The Middle-Class is the key to annihilate the gap between the rich and the poor. We are valuable. We are needed. We are a blessing for societies healing.

This is it for today. Next week we will continue with our third outline subject: What is the middle class? Thank you for reading to me. Until then, stay tuned.

Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY.  Nevertheless, the majority of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine.  I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy