I met Dr. Erent Gabor in a restaurant. In no time I found out that talking is very pleasant with him even when eating.
– Do you Like eating?
– Yes and cooking, too. I know many recipes, as well.
– Tell us one!
– I like Hungarian stew best. My friends know I am a fan of hunting so they keep me calling to come round, to bring some venison and make a stew since they know I eat only the games I have shot. And then I take some meat, drop in one of my friends’ house, look around what they have in stock and I use what I find. I never leave out tea leaves since they give an exotic taste to anything. I know it from my farther who worked in China for a longer time. Red wine is also important while pear compote is excellent to enlarge the taste. Some pepper, onions and other spices are needed, too that can always be found on every shelf. I like fawn, deer or boar stew best, always with fresh-baked bread made by ourselves or simply with boiled potatoes to stress the contrast.
– Who cooks so well must have a Lot of friends. Are there real ones among them?
– According to a Latin saying I give to get. And this is true for everything. It is not a surprise that profit was invented by psychologists and not by businessmen since there is a big profit in human relations, too. And it depends on how valuable people one is surrounded by. I think I managed to have some really valuable friends who mean a lot to me. It is like a kid who has a number of boxes of ice-cream in the fridge but does not want to devour at once just one at a time.The big problem of human relations is that we change so quickly, we play a lot of roles in our lives and it is not easy to achieve a balance.
– If someone, you really have to cope with different roles since you have had numbers of social positions. In your opinion what futures are needed to be successful in all of them?
– Sincerity, for example. With a certain IQ one does not have to beat about the bush, people will know what our intentions are. I am sure the only way to get what you want in communication leads through open and frank conversations. I myself can get offended very much if somebody wants to cheat me. I think someone in business-life or holding a public position has to know the right role, has to know what is expected from him and has to have self control. And it also means that he has to know the surroundings as well. What I consider the most important is to help the problems be talked about and let one another give opportunities to think about in order to find the best solutions and to make decisions upon them. I feel responsible to let others know prior to voting what all is about, what we are dealing with.
– Yes, but how can you manoeuvre among different values, likes and dislikes?
– This is a very complicated story but one always has a choice: to do it or not, to accept it or not. I always consider whom I am with and against, who I can work with, and with whom I can not.
– You say it is a fight. How important it is for a man to win?
– Life is a long struggle and fight, a continuous selection. In nature and in society, too.
– And how can someone be successful in this fight?
– It mostly depends on the genes you inherited, but circumstances are also important and where you grow up. For me the most important is to live among rules that are acceptable for me. I always wanted to learn the rules of nature and cultures. For this you have to read, to learn and experience a lot. As a kid I stayed in Szabo Ervin Library not just reading, but I would take an author and read everything from him, like from Steinbeck. One day my friends took me to the Synagogue of Apostag and asked me: “Tell us, how many books are there on the shelves?” I looked around and could tell, missing only 20 to 30 books, the exact number. They were very impressed since allegedly even the Rabbi of Jerusalem could not do that.
– You spent most of your early years in the country. Your original profession is a forestry engineer. Have you got a different view of the world than people in the city have?
– I grew up on Rozsadomb but in the 60’s it was very different, there were only some small huts there. I wandered for 2-3 hours in the woods every day collecting stagbeetles, butterflies, plants. It was like being in the country. That is why I chose to be a forestry engineer and later I met incredible teachers and personalities. I admired them, tried to assimilate to them. I loved the country, which is the same as the city but in smaller quantities, because there is not only agriculture there, but also industry, commerce and everything. And agricultural co-operatives trained a certain layer of enterpreneurs in Hungary, marked by names like Demjan Sandor. People in co-operatives have certain features, like being capable of producing great results together from little money and limited opportunities.
– In the end you became a kind of a manager-like politician. How could you explain your position?
– I am interested in everything, I am a person who tries to do things that entertains him and the others and that are good for the environment, too. It is true I have 3 or 4 university It is true I have 3 or 4 university degrees in different areas: forestry engineering, economics, politology, communication and science of organization. These are parts of the universal knowledge which can be used for solving problems. And if we think about what is missing from our education it is not difficult to find out these are the accesses between different studies. Everybody is seeking specialisation, the power of integration of culture is being lost. And there is another danger, that civilisations will be melted together, will be mixed up by culture but they are not the same. Being civilised is far from being cultured. And these two things are getting far from each other.
– Do you agree that a native African in the deepest jungle can be as happy as a middle-class American in Manhattan?
– Absolutely. Consumer societies are not good for anything, but to deceive people. It is about raising desire usually for primitive goods that satisfy them in a primitive way, so people must be kept at a relatively primitive level. I was in my teens when I realised that our biggest tragedy is that we are not only biological but also social creatures, the two being just the opposite. Being a biological living means, among others, that we are driven by our hormones and these are always raising our stimulus threshold so we want more and more, newer and newer things from time to time. We are creatures constantly hunfing new achievements that make us happy for a while. One of these achievements can be a swap from coconut milk to meat or even from 1 million to 2 billion dollars, while the main thing is not more than what you produce, who you are at the final counting.
– Then what is your production?
– I think it is that I work in a kind of module system, I produce small things in the culture, in the economy and I build them together. For instance I have organized an insurance company which I invented, I found the sponsors and I chose them because I like Dutch culture.
– So one has to love Dutch painters to make a joint venture?
– There is some truth in it. And the joint venture is just one thing. Because if one establishes an insurance company in turn he has to create a non-profit insurance system as well for the people in the country, too. And that is what I call a production.
– What is a non-profit agricultural insurance system?
– That in codification we made the possibility for at least 10 farmers to make their own insurance system on the field of agriculture. Now there are more than HUF 10 billion insured at 30 places. And with the fact that we made it possible to learn about insurances we made the insurance culture of these people better. Since there is no administration, since they know and judge one another there are no thefts and their insurance is 30 to 50% cheaper than would be at a profitorienteted insurance company. On other things. I love diversity and I think making the world culture richer can be achieved by making Hungarian culture better. For this reason I brought the Godollo painting school together with Thurnout, one of the most picturesque towns of Flandria, because we have a universal message for the rest of the world and the Godollo Painting School is not the only one but for example the art of Roth Miksa. And unlike others I say that rural and urban culture are not opposites but they help each other to be complete just like national and international cultures can strengthen each other. I tried to explain this in my published writings, essays mostly dealing with culture and the organization of Hungarian economy. And on another product which is mine. In the 70’s a financial reform started in which the self accounting systems and the questions of inner decentralisation were connected to my name. I am keen on dealing with creating economic units taking into consideration the culture of a given area.
– It is not typical that pure economy is combined with cultural motifs in you.
– Where an organization is run with no agreement of a given area’s culture and if it does not form a whole completeness things can easily work against one another, there can be great problems.
– I f I see right these kinds of mediatory, organizing persons like you have a mission to try to make systems as a whole work.
– We may do that. And because I was taught for free by this country I try to use a part of my energy to do something good and useful without any profit of payment.
– Only those who have can give something. Can you afford to be so charitable?
– I have achieved a certain level, I do not like piling up things, even money and I live in puritan surroundings in a 60 c square metre flat. One thing I am rich in is that I have greatmany books and some nice objects. I like handcrafts, unique things. My ancestors were watchmakers, jewellers, good and fair businessmen in Felvidek. From them I learnt the love of hand-made articles, paintings, silver things full of great human handwork. I like Secession, Art Deco, but I also like Baroque, Renaissance or Classicism.
– Then you do not just exchange art but you also preserve it.
– I think the two go together.
– Beside your many social positions you are the vice-president of Szerencsejáték Rt. (Hungarian Gaming Corporation) which company has been a generous patron of arts. What can you do for the broader sense of culture in your position?
– I deal with strategic questions at the company, mainly in connection with joining the EU not in the field of marketing; but of communication. And maybe it is not by chance that we sponsor the fight against drugs. There is a great trouble in this field and if civil organizations can not intervene even bigger problems will occur. And it is so big a question from crime through AIDS and it is in connection with everything. And I wish parents would not meet this problem concerning their children because otherwise it is too late. We have a slogan in the campaign: “Drugs don’t make you free but a slave!” I hope we will be successful. All the more that it is a team-work and I want to avoid meeting untalented people.
Photos by Tyukodi Laszlo
Scenes: Aranysarkany Restaurant, Szentendre; Fokusz Bookstore, Szentendre