The Miami Syndicate

As a little boy, the “visionary” experienced his mother’s wholehearted love and it made him the happiest child in his imaginary world. Then one night his mother was murdered and he was brutally catapulted back to the cruel reality. He avenged her death by shooting her killer that very same night. The events shaped his development for the rest of his life. As an adult he wanted to change the world fundamentally, make it beautiful and just. Because the world had become a playground for monsters. 


He believed in mankind’s potential, as an interracial mix of all the existing races, and dreamt about creating a world ruled by different standards. A single worldwide community which treated everyone justly so that nobody had to suffer anymore. A world in which famine and drought, poverty and excessive wealth were a thing of the past. An educated world, with the objective of man’s progress and evolvement, which knew no money, no perverted politics and no oppression. A society whose ethics were based on logic and welfare instead of limiting religions and doctrines. Without economic restraints. A society where everybody had a function according to his or her cognitive and physical abilities.  His vision was based on the thoughts of the greatest thinkers in history: Baruch Spinoza, Aristotle, Socrates, Newton, Einstein, Kant and many more. He continued their ingenious work by connecting and enlarging their ideas. It was a necessity in a world governed by money, perverted politics, one-sided interests and egotism. Like Spinoza before him, he composed his vision in tenets addressing subjects such as society, economy, religion and ethics. His vision, rather than a doctrine, was meant to form the basis for continual evolution. The Syndicate, an organization he was trying to establish, would unite the world’s wisest and most intelligent people to create a new world. But people sooner sold their souls to the current devil, money, than to believe in a future vision. He therefore made sure to compromise and indebt everyone so that they were all subjected to him without any hope of escape. He had to enslave them in order to free them. Free them for new ideas. The irony of his life… He didn’t judge people as stupid. In a soulless society they didn’t stand a chance of finding fulfilling tasks. In his society, however, everyone would be able to contribute fairly. But people were still the weak point in his concept. And he knew that. But what would happen once impertinence, love, stupidity, perversion, sloth and ingenuity clashed? Real life would happen! With its own uncontrollable dynamics. 


Rico lived a life of leisure. A permanent party with excursions to Havana on a Mafia yacht or visits to striptease bars. His life followed a pattern which confused everyone. The syndicate as much as his friends. His girlfriend studied Business Management in Florida and he had accompanied her. The syndicate was targeting her because she had enormous potential. But, contrary to Rico, she lived an immaculate life. Would the syndicate be able to compromise her and recruit her for their side? This part of the book is written in the present tense and from Rico’s perspective. He addresses the reader directly and insults him, thus severely criticizing society. Although Rico’s outpourings are primitive and his thoughts extremely exhausting, they are always based on enigmatic, complex philosophical and psychological concepts. He subconsciously analyses everything he does and says and is caught in an inner conflict with society’s moral values which have rubbed off on him. Simultaneously he logically questions the sense of these values. As the plot unfolds the visionary’s and Rico’s stories become more and more intertwined until the connection between them becomes clear at the end of the book. 


The extreme contrast between the two narrators’ perspectives is at the heart of the story. Moods vary deliberately to force the reader to question if everything he considers as natural is still natural from the newly acquired viewpoint. In our world the truth is only what we accept as the truth. From our perspective. For our convenience. Through our ignorance. Because we have long ago ceased to think for ourselves. We let others do the thinking for us! In this book the reader is being challenged to re-evaluate if everything he blindly accepts actually makes sense. 

There is no right and wrong. There’s no good and evil. There are only perspectives. Perspectives of political, economic and religious aspects. Is it possible to declare with certainty which of these are right or wrong? And if you try to, aren’t you forgetting that everything actually concerns human beings? Human beings who die from thirst and hunger while the powerful of this world ensure that this won’t change? Power, influence, money. These yardsticks would no longer apply in the new world. 


This novel is a thought experiment.