Only fools measure things. True luxury is not having the slightest idea how much you have, how much you spend, or how much you earn. But now they’ve got it into their heads to measure culture. They’ve invented some nonsense called “social return on investment.” SROI. It sounds like some skin disease you caught on a cheap cruise.
The profit from culture is zero. Its usefulness is the death of beauty. A museum that serves some “useful” purpose is just a warehouse with better lighting. But we want statistics on epiphany. We want performance indicators for wonder.
In Portugal, the measure of excellence has always been the “more or less”. Our national precision compass is “it’s about a quarter of an hour away.” It’s a huge relief. But no. Now we want to turn this country into the Switzerland of feelings. We want to evaluate the GDP of saudade. Put equity in an Excel spreadsheet. Social justice is now quoted on the stock exchange, and the market swallows everything with the rationality of a shopkeeper.
Everything must be evaluated. Everything must prove its economic worth. There are no longer free persons. There are “consumers of cultural experiences.” The word “experience,” incidentally, is one of the greatest ironies in this whole affair. When you start measuring “experience,” affection, solidarity, it’s because affection and solidarity died a long time ago.
Measuring the value of a theater with statistical data is like trying to measure longing with a plastic ruler. It’s cheap. It’s crude. And it’s proof that we no longer know how to feel anything without first asking permission from the Court of Auditors. Culture is being suffocated by people who know the price of everything and the value of absolutely nothing.
Cultural institutions should tell all these managers to get lost. But they don’t. They’re stuck. Too afraid of losing the last miserable drops of a budget as dry as raisins. So they bend their backs and march to the piper’s tune. They accept the pie chart. Everything adds up on the spreadsheet. Efficiency is total. In a country of soulless accountants.