Pictures and words

Hello,

This will be my last post for a while, at least a month. On Saturday I start my independent study project. My friend Cameron and I will be spending three weeks traveling around Lake Titicaca recording stories and myths. In the end hopefully we will have a sweet video with an original soundtrack. I’ll let you all know how it turns out when I get a spare moment. If it isn’t embarassingly bad we’ll upload it to YouTube.

This week I’ve been very busy wrapping up schoolwork and taking care of a few other things, so I’m not going to write too much. And for one reason or another I haven’t been able to think all week. My brain must be taking a rest before embarking on the next adventure. So instead of my usual long rambling diatribe about whatever is on my mind, here’s a bunch of photos and captions:

Cows.
(a.k.a. the leading cause of deforestation in Latin America)

We visited sand dunes in the department of Santa Cruz. They are a human-made creation: once a forest, the land was exhausted through the production of sugar cane to satiate a sweet tooth. No trees will grow again for decades.

I felt conflicted in finding the dunes beautiful while understanding they are the result of environmental devestation. Perhaps they are beautiful because they are surrounded by forest on all sides. If the whole of the earth was sand dune - which one day it may be at the current rate of deforestation - ’beauty’ would not be the right word. Boring, perhaps. Repetitive. Lifeless.


But definitely a ton of fun. Cameron does a backflip.

Heidi and Ismael - the academic directors - stand in front of a traditional Quechua ceremonial offering. In the last half-century plastic streamers and balloons have become a standard decoration. I wonder at what point a Quechua man or woman felt the need to supplement their tradition with nonbiodegradable commodities from the industrial world. At what point did humankind in general decide this was a good idea?

Ismael offers alcohol to the Pachamama, sprinkling a few drops on all four sides of the embers, one for each direction. Traditional Andean philosophy sees the Universe as a flowing of energy: from the earth to the sky, sky to the earth; from man to woman, woman to man; from day to night, night to day. In this tradition, energy flows from humans to the earth in the form of very hard, disgustingly hard, alcohol. ’Aguardiente’ - it means, ’fire water.’

The Masis. Their founder left me with one especially impressive line that I feel is a perfect summation of Andean cosmovision: ’Accept the goodness of evil so you can learn its songs.’

Music in a circle. Why do humans find truth and beauty in geometry? Why are the circle, the spiral, the triangle prominent in so many different systems of belief' What geomtries do we use in the United States and what can they show us about how we perceive the world? Think of the geometries we have created with our highways, our trains, our telephone lines, our shopping malls, our parking lots.

So many musical instruments; I could barely hide my arousal.

Cerro Rico: perhaps the most infamous mine in the world. Inside over eight million people - Bolivia’s entire current population - have lost their lives, in explosions, heart attacks, boulders to the head. Almost entirely for silver, something completely useless. Pretty, but useless.

A forest turned to sand for sugar; eight million dead for a shiny rock.

One economic theory - dependency theory - asserts that the First World was only able to become rich because of direct exploitation of the Third World. Eduardo Galleano compares it to the relationship between rider and horse. This is evident in the fact that Third World industry in Asia, Africa and the Americas were entirely dictated by the desires of the First World: we wanted novel fruit, we wanted rocks, we wanted servants and slaves. More than anything we wanted land. Not very much has changed. Now we just want open markets.

More and more I am starting to believe that for some people to be rich, others must be poor. Wealth and poverty only exist in relation to each other.

The miners pay daily tribute to a devil named Tio (not like uncle, but like ’dio’ for god, except the Quechua do not have the ’deh’ sound). Above ground, Jesus and God are sensical. But below the surface the Devil must be respected, otherwise he will take your life through rock slides, black lung, dynamite. It is not a matter of worshipping evil over good, as these are not terms that existed before colonization. It is a matter of understanding that the Pachamama has many different faces, some peaceful, some violent, some welcoming, some terrifying.

Me with a mouthful of coca leaves.

Two children, along with hundreds of workers, still try to make money off of the mine, even though it has long been exhausted of silver. These two try to sell sparkly rocks to tourists such as us that come to witness the terrible state of the mine. Poverty sells.

So does danger: Our guide chews live dynamite.

Another example of how industrialization and environmental devestation sometimes make the world beautiful in bizarre, alien ways. A friend told me that sunsets have become more brilliant because of all the pollution on the horizon.

The boys.

Ismael’s 60th birthday party. Theme: Carnaval. I dressed up as the diablada. In this Catholic country people seem to love dressing up as the devil.

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You’ll hear from me again in a month. After three weeks of traveling Cameron and I will be editing our film for probably 15 hours a day for eight straight days. After that I’m off to Peru for a week and a half to visit Macchu Picchu and probably spend way too much money on artisan crafts and CDs.

Hasta luego,

Tom

A story:

Lake Titicaca is where the Sun and Moon were born. Ages ago before the first light, bizarre ugly animals without eyes roamed the earth in darkness. Then from the deeps of the Lake, a force that had been fermenting for an eternity exploded out of the water in the form of the Sun and Moon. The blinding light killed all of the creatures instantly and Pachamama was made inhabitable for humans. The Sun sent down a son and the Moon a daughter and together they populated the shores of the Lake with the Aymara.


A myth like this has evolved over the course of tens of thousands of years. It is an extension of the land, having sprouted from the soil with the people themselves. It has changed and adapted slowly from generation to generation, passed down orally from father to son, mother to daughter, on rowboats, around bonfires. The Aymara say they have been in the same place pretty much forever – and who am I to tell them otherwise? – but more likely there has been a succession of different civilizations rising and disintegrating and forming anew, and with each transition a myth such as this changes to suit its new people and provide them with a new narrative to live their lives.


When the Incan Empire conquered the region, they did not care what you believed or how you worshipped so long as you paid your taxes and did the jobs the Incans told you to do. The Aymara maintained culture autonomy for the most part, although the Sun – the Supreme God of the Incans – likely began to take a more prominent role in their mythology. The Spanish Empire worked a bit differently. They did care what you thought and how you worshipped, and they invested a lot of effort in gently convincing their new colonies to accept Jesus Christ into their lives. Among their tactics for conversion were torture and rape. The Aymara mythology began to evolve further, adapting to accept certain aspects of Catholicism and reject others.

This abandoned mining center is still owned by one of the richest mining bosses in the country and the Aymara are unable to develop the land; as our payment to the community for our stay, we donated $800 towards the cause of buying the land back

It is impossible to tease out which aspects of the Aymara stories are Catholic and which are Incan and which are whatever else. Sometimes Jesus in the son of the Sun, other times he walked out of the Lake. Sometimes the Sun floods Lake Titicaca to punish the people and thirty-six pairs of animals are gathered on a raft. Other times the Sun lights the whole world aflame or turns the people to stone. The stories differ from community to community, island to island, from one side of the lake to the other. In the end it doesn’t matter what is Catholic and what is Incan and what remains from before – it is all Aymara now.

Indigenous women in the Andes were forced to wear boulder hats under colonial Spain; now they wear them both out of imposed tradition and as a proud symbol of their liberation and perseverance

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We spent five days living in a small Aymara village on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world. I lived with a family of four about a quarter mile from the beach. I slept on a bed of eucalyptus leaves in a room that used to be the chicken coop. In the morning I ate barley powder mixed with hot celery tea. Lunch and dinner was potatoes, soup, and bread. Occasionally we ate bananas and one night my father caught a fish from the lake. It was more bones than anything else, but it tasted nice.


It rained every night, the loudest I’ve ever heard. There was no space between the drops on my tin roof. I tried to sleep through a deafening static. The lightning split the sky like a hammer to a glass windshield. It was the most apocalyptic five nights of my night; I actually felt closer to the sky.



My father Demetrius was a really solid dude. He had face carved by a lifetime under the sun and had a voice like Kermit the Frog. Once upon a time he built the house the family lived in. He played the flute like a madman. My mother Esmerelda was also a classy lady. She spent several hours a day peeling potatoes and making fire and boiling water and cooking soup. When I first shook her hand her skin felt like hard leather. I later realized why: the Aymaran women handle scalding iron pots and pans without oven mitts. But I never once saw her flinch. She didn’t speak any Spanish, like most of the women in the village, so we didn’t do a whole lot of talking, but she laughed at me as I learned basic Aymara words from Demetrius. Maya means one, Paya means two. Uma means fire, Nina means water. I thought I was saying these words correctly, but my gringo-ness was the source of endless hilarity.

My dad

I also had a brother and a sister. My sister never once looked at me, I’m not sure why, but she let me herd the sheep up the side of a mountain with her one morning. I felt slightly immasculated as this portly teenage girl jogged up effortlessly as I sat heaving between my legs every few minutes. My brother had bleached streaks in his hair and liked to play Rock Band on his PlayStation loudly every morning. When I told him I played music he brought me his out-of-tune bass guitar and I played him Day Tripper by the Beatles. My siblings were both around twenty years old, a rarity in a community where more and more the young people are leaving to find work in the cities.


Everyone in the community had a cell phone. Many of them had electricity and a few families had televisions. They mainly wore jeans and sneakers and wool sweaters, saving their traditional clothing for special occasions and ceremonies. Despite these industrialized luxuries, they still continue the culture of their ancestors.


They have their music, a mix of flutes, panpipes and drums. The music sounds like it came from the earth, having been chiseled slowly by weather and time like the mountains themselves. In the city we have our music that is modeled after sounds we buy on CDs and the blips and bleeps of the industrialized world. But on the shores of the lake music evolved as an imitation and extension of nature. Whoever made that first melody had only heard the lake, the rain, the thunder, the wind, and the songs of other animals.


They have their dance, although for them dance and music and not separate entities: one requires the other. Legs and arms and bodies twisting are just music made visible. Dancing is always done in a circle, perhaps the most sacred symbol of the Andes. The circle represents the Unity of the Diversity. All is different but All is One. In Aymara there is no word for “equality.” It is not a category that existed because, until the arrival of the Spanish, they felt no need to label anything equal or unequal. Everyone existed as a point on a circle, each point different but no point further or closer from the center than any other. To us the circle, as in King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, is a symbol of equality, because King Arthur was reacting against the hierarchy that already existed in society. But to the ancient Aymara the circle was the truth of the world in geometric form and it was never debated. No words needed to exist to describe it.


The Aymara also continue their belief of chachawarmi, a belief somewhat similar to Yin-Yang. Chacha is the female force and warmi is the male force, each permeating every facet of the Universe. It is an example of the Andean concept of the complementarity of opposites. Male and female, left and right, up and down, day and night; all these things only exist in relation to each other. They seem like opposites, but really one needs two opposites to make a whole, like two poles on a magnet. The Aymara do not see the world in black and white but different shades of grey; the terms “good” and “evil” did not exist until the arrival of the Spanish. This concept of 2 = 1 is another aspect of the Unity of the Diversity.



Chachawarmi is not just an abstract, philosophical concept. It is played out in every action the people take although they may not be consciously aware of it. I am only able to understand the most obvious instances, such as when the men and women drink in separate circles or when the men dance in an outside circle and women dance in the inside circle. But more than this the concept informs and reinforces the gender roles in Aymara society: the women cooking and cleaning, dancing and singing, the men fishing and building, playing the instruments. It would be easy to call this an example of inequality because that is the lens through which we are used to viewing relations in the United States. But remember that the category of equality/inequality is not an objective quality, but is socially constructed. For the Aymara men and women exist to complement each other, not to be equal and therefore the same.

Perhaps my favorite way chachawarmi is expressed in the culture is through Aymara music. The Aymara use a seven-note scale for all of their melodies. They use quenas (flutes), zamponyas (panpipes), and drums. I am simplifying this significantly because there are many classes and sizes of flutes, panpipes, and drums. Some of the flutes and panpipes are four feet long. Anyway, when a song includes panpipes, two people are required to play the melody with two separate panpipes, because neither panpipe has all seven notes. One might have four, the other three; one five, the other two. In order to play a fluid melody, the sound alternates between the two players. When one listens to Aymara music on headphones, the sound of the panpipes bounces back and forth between the left and right channels. While it is only men who play instruments, one set of panpipes is the female force, and the other is the male force. It is a beautiful way to look at the world: the interplay between opposites is needed to advance the melody of the Universe.

They have their coca as well. Coca is chewed by everyone in the community during rituals and during work. Men chew with men, women chew with women. One takes a handful of coca, makes the sign of the cross, and offers their coca to someone else. It’s all about reciprocity. The sign of the cross would seem to be a Catholic import, but there also exists an Andean cross which predates Jesus. Who knows how these two symbols play out in the minds of the Aymara? Coca leaves and many other herbs are burned as an offering to the Pachamama. When the fire is lit, one takes a bottle of extremely hard alcohol called aguardiente (fire water) and pours a few drops on all four sides of the fire, one for each direction. Nowadays cigarettes and weird plastic confetti are also burned. Culture always changes and adapts; the Aymara have come to accept Jesus, plastic, and cigarettes into the traditions of their ancestors, but in ways no one could have predicted.

And so culture perseveres and transforms. It is always staying the same and always changing, the interplay of opposing forces colliding to create new growth. I learned a ton from the Aymara and their way of living and looking. I am sure that they have changed me through their words and music and faces. But how did we, the tourists, change them? We taught them Frisbee and left one behind the community. Who knows what new games will be invented with this plastic white disc? Nothing we can predict. I played “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” by Bob Dylan on the charango for my family. Will this melody be lodged in the memories of my family in such a way that it effects the creation of future songs, if even only one or two notes? What other ways have we changed them that are completely beyond our ability to comprehend?

The idea of keeping indigenous cultures in a vacuum to never change is ridiculous and impossible. It’s like when ecologists try label every new plant in an ecosystem an invasive species and then eradicate them ferociously in the cause of ecological preservation. Seeds were carried across oceans in the feathers of birds or in lucky breezes long before humans set foot on this planet, and likewise indigenous cultures have always been in the process of change long before the colonists arrived. The idea of a pure, authentic, untouched native is romantic and condescending. The Universe is always changing, never in equilibrium, and anyone that tries to fight against that change is living in a fantasy world.

I even struggle with the idea of “indigenous” as a label. Indians, Native Americans, original peoples, whatever you want to call them... how many generations does it take to be considered “native”? I was born in the United States, am I not a native? Do I need to have a bloodline here 500 years old? 5000? Do my people have to be colonized first? Any attempt at definition is arbitrary. People talk about Europeans like an invasive species that came over and destroyed the beautiful untouched ecosystem that existed here since the beginning of time. And I’m not trying to justify the genocide that took place, but that’s just kind of the way the world goes, isn’t it? Destruction is necessary for creation. In fact they are one in the same, two sides of the same coin, chachawarmi, the complementarity of opposites.

Change is neither good nor bad. It is just the way things are. Now in some Aymara schools girls are being taught to play the panpipes, a break in tradition from the male-only custom. Many Aymara are leaving to work in factories in Brazil or Argentina. They leave their communities behind but they return with money and new ideas. Jesus, cigarettes and plastic confetti have destroyed Aymara culture, but they have also created it anew.

Of course, this does not justify the imposition of change in the form of death, rape, torture, religion, and labor upon the peoples of the Americas by the colonists. Change is inevitable, but that does not mean there is not a difference between internal and external change. If indigenous cultures are going to change, which they are, we should do all we can to ensure that they have the power to choose their own direction.

“He who is not busy being born is busy dying,” – Bob Dylan

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Anyway, my experience was amazing. I’m going back to live with the Aymara for my independent study project for three weeks in April. I’m going to make a movie about Aymara mythology with my friend Cameron. I’m super excited.

Also on the way back to La Paz our bus attempted to ford a river and got stuck in the mud. We had to have a tractor pull us out. Here are some pictures:

Way too many words, Vol. 3

Hola amigos,

School is cancelled today because there are roadblocks all throughout the city. All throughout the country in fact. This is the second day. The buses aren’t running and the center of the city is almost entirely inaccessible. This happens every once in a while when Bolivians are protesting some new law or the lack of a new law. Today bus companies are protesting a new article that fines the owners of buses if their drivers are caught driving drunk. The owners believe that the drivers themselves should be fined because the owners have little control over what the drivers do once they’re in the bus. Some believe it shouldn’t be illegal to drive drunk at all. It is kind of an absurd argument, but they are certainly passionate about it.

Can you imagine something like this happening in the United States? People getting out of their recliners, turning off the TV and blocking traffic for two straight days? To change a drunk driving law? Here roadblock days are like snow days in the States. Kids cross their fingers the night before hoping the protests last a day longer. They watch the news early the next morning for the announcement.

A mural at El Alto University showing indigenous protesters taking to the streets

In 2000 the multinational corporation Bechtel – currently in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq – was forced out of the country for raising water prices. The battle took place in the city of Cochabamba where I live, as tens of thousands took to the streets. Hundreds were wounded in the riots and a 17 year old boy was killed. In 2003 the capitol city of La Paz was surrounded by indigenous activists from the neighboring city of El Alto, the largest indigenous city in the continent. Dozens were killed, including military officials, and the president was pressured to resign. It is a completely different kind of political participation here. 93% of the population votes in elections, but the elections are only the beginning of the popular political process.

Anyway, so with my day off I slept late and played charango (an Andean guitar-type instrument) for two hours. Thank you protestors. Now I am somewhat vainly trying to muster myself out of this laziness to update my blog. Here we go.

I spent the last nine days in the two extremes of Bolivian society: the first four in its largest city of La Paz, the last five in a small indigenous village of 24 families on the shore of Lake Titicaca. La Paz was neon, flashing, pungent, rambunctious, overwhelming, like having the volume turned up full blast and blowing out the speakers. The indigenous village was ambling, lazy, silent, a steady inhaling and exhaling, like the tide of the lake on the rocky beach, versus the hyperventilating bustle of La Paz’s traffic jams and espresso shots. After a few days of rest my mind is still swirling with exhaustion trying to synthesize all the very different ways there are to live in the world.

Me posing goofily with some of the young radicals being educated at the University

Some brief details on La Paz and then way too much rambling about nothing in particular

I spent much of my time in La Paz wondering around the Witches’ Market absorbing the sights and smells. Many street vendors offered an impressive array of llama fetuses. They looked like dehydrated corpses of Martians found wrinkled and stiff in the desert. Their shriveled bodies hanging in clusters from the store roofs was slightly disconcerting. Some indigenous people around the city use the fetuses for sacrifices to Pachamama. I thought about buying one and bringing it home as a souvenir, but I assumed it would look suspicious in my carry-on. At other stands hallucinogenic peyote cacti were offered to me for about $3 American. Chop the cactus up, steep it in boiling water, strain and drink for a good time, the woman informed me. I declined. I did however buy a large bag of fresh aloe vera juice squeezed from the largest aloe plant I’ve ever seen. It feels sticky and disgusting applied to my sun burnt face, and it has a vague semen kind of smell, but it seems to be doing the job.

A collection of bizarre plants

I visited the Coca Museum in the Witches’ Market to learn about the history of the most sacred plant of the Andes. The Incans used oil extracted from the leaves to remove brain tumors. It’s been found buried with mummies over three thousand years old. It is one of the most nutritious plants in the world, with more calcium than milk and almost as much protein as meat. It helps with indigestion, headaches, and altitude sickness, particularly important up in the Andes Mountains. The leaf is still chewed all across the country and used in a variety of ceremonies. They chew it like we drink coffee and tea in the United States, as a mild stimulant to start the day fresh or as a social lubricant in gatherings of friends. It is also made into tea, cosmetics, lotion, candy, cookies, and, as I later discovered, a delicious chocolate cake. I went back for the cake a second time.

More notoriously, of course, it is used to make cocaine. I saw an exhibit using a series of mannequins to demonstrate its production. Poor campesinos are used in forced labor to stomp on the leaves with a mixture of hydrochloric acid and other noxious chemicals to extract the powder. Afterwards their feet are mutilated from the concoction and many cannot walk for the rest of their lives. For millennia the plant has been used for health, ritualistic and social reasons. Now it is being used to indulge the habits of rich frat boys and rock stars in the United States and Europe.

Bolivia kicked the DEA out of the country for trying to annihilate its fields of coca through excessive and inaccurate use of herbicides that killed more plants than just coca, as well as through other more direct tactics such as burning campesinos’ farms to the ground leaving them with no livelihood whatsoever. Everyone is much happier without the DEA here. Except, of course, the United States. The Bolivian government’s rational is logical: the drug war is a case of supply and demand. As long as there is demand in the United States, there will be supply in Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Fighting the supply side will never work, especially when the supply is a plant that grows natively all throughout the region in all kinds of climates. La oja de coca no es druga, proclaims a popular shirt in Bolivia.

A 16th century church outside of La Paz

The inside of the church, complete with paintings of Jesus in modern times fighting with guns in the revolution

Later we visited the World Bank and were given a presentation by a cheerful PR type. The World Bank has a tainted reputation in the so-called “developing” world for giving loans to elites with bad credit records who are in charge of the government. The people have no say in the matter, but they are the ones affected when the country’s economy is crippled trying to pay the high interest rates attached to the loans. The loans are also given with “conditions,” meaning a country must become a capitalist country open to exploitation by multinational corporations, otherwise they don’t receive any money. Once again, the decisions are made by already rich elites who aren’t affected when the masses can’t afford to buy water and fuel because its been privatized.

Ecuador refused to pay its debt and kicked the World Bank out of the country. So did Venezuela. After the earthquakes in Haiti the World Bank offered $100 million but only under very strict economic conditions that would’ve privatized much of the country. There was such a backlash against the idea that the Bank removed the conditions and gave Haiti the money ideologically free. The Bank exists in a reduced form in Bolivia today. Our PR man told us that “The Bank’s one goal is to stay alive, and it will change its politics for the sake of staying in a more liberal country such as Bolivia.” Sounds like a parasite to me.

A Bank of the South has also been established in South America that one day will likely replace the World Bank altogether, giving the continent agency over its own finances. It’s kind of like growing up and getting your own bank account instead of only getting money from your parents when you say the right things and do all your chores. The United States and the rest of the Western capitalist world still thinks it can treat South America like an infant.

Said a friend at the sight of La Paz sprawling across the mountains: "Urbanity: cooler than anything nature could ever do." My response: "Urbanity is nature, dude."

Later that same day we visited a feminist anarchist group called Mujeres Creando (Women Creating). One of the largest, most powerful capitalist organizations in the world followed by an anti-organization, anti-capitalist art activist collective in the course of a few hours. I would’ve loved to see the two groups debate each other.

The cognitive dissonance caused by the two groups predictably set off a few arguments among the students. The next day at lunch I had a talk with some friends about the best way to change the world. Us young idealistic types do this a lot. Like most of the students on this program, they were International Relations or Political Science majors, interested in using NGOs, politics, and, most importantly, money, to help people. We need to go into struggling, poverty-stricken countries like Bolivia, Guatemala, and Haiti, set them up with clean water systems, modern technology, modern agriculture. We need to build functioning democracies and successful businesses. Business is the most important part. Sweatshops are a good thing, they say, because anything that creates jobs and brings money to a country cannot be bad. We need to help these countries develop. We need to increase GDP, decrease inflation, raise this number, lower that one. It doesn’t matter what’s actually happening on the ground, it matters what’s happening on the graph.

I have a somewhat different perspective. As someone with admittedly very little knowledge of economic systems, I can approach the subject only from an intuitive level. But I don’t think expertise in a field really makes you any more qualified to have opinions than anyone else, because everybody is an expert on something and we all disagree with each other, so expertise really hasn’t done anything except make everybody more sure of why everybody else is wrong. So because of this I had no reservations in voicing my extremely unqualified positions.

I think the only change that has any lasting effect is change that comes from within a system. We humans are obsessed with trying to control things beyond our control, and foreign aid, development projects, the World Bank – all of these things – are instances of this. These are all instances of external change, of foreigners coming into a developing country and telling them how to improve their situation to join the developed world. It is imposed change rather than organic change. Imposed change can only be superficial because society is not restructured from the bottom-up, but from the top-down, and a pyramid balanced on its point rather than on its base will always crumble.

It’s like when the United States imposes democracy on another country (*ahem* Iraq) rather than allowing that country to fight for democracy on its own. In the short term the project will seem a success because there will be the illusion of democracy, but in the long term the project will fail because the people did not invent and build it themselves but unwrapped it fully formed as a gift. Think of how different our country would be if France had won the American Revolution for us rather than merely helping us to do it on our own. When change is external, the society becomes dependent on that external change to solve its problems as opposed to taking ownership over its own internal change. External change comes and leaves, but internal change can perpetuate itself.

As the saying goes, the journey is more important than the destination, because the journey is where principles are built gradually for the support of strong actions. By jumping straight to the destination – as is the result of external change in the form of imposed democracies, imposed capitalism in Latin America, imposed charity from many NGOs – the journey of internal change is lost and any outcome is an apparition floating precariously in the air, seemingly in flight but really just nose diving to the ground.

The whole idea of “development” is an imperialist, ego-driven masturbation. Third world and first world, developing and developed, savage and civilized – these are all colonialist terms that imply only one possible course of evolution, with our own society obviously being the standard with which to compare all others. Development projects seek to force other countries into our own evolutionary path rather than allowing them to become uniquely successful on their own merits. We are striving towards the creation of a globalized, monocultured, capitalist world, and everything I have learned about biology seems to suggest that diversity always wins over uniformity.

It’s like in the 70s when ecologists decided there weren’t enough deer in the wild. Wolves were killed and more deer were introduced. Now, in the 2000s, ecologists have decided we have way too many deer and not enough wolves. Rather than allowing a system to regulate itself internally, humans pretended to understand and took action. In every system an extremely complex tangle of variables exists. When outsiders come in with chainsaws and strike dumbly and bluntly at everything between them and their goal, it is no surprise to me that things fall apart.

So what do we do then to change the world? Surrender control? Not try to help people? Of course not. But I think there needs to be more focus on solving problems in our own countries rather than solving everybody else’s. So many problems in the world exist as the result of Western capitalism, of which the United States is home base, that if we really want to help peasants in Africa and South America, we will focus on reforming the politics and economics of our own country. The United States affects so much of the world both directly through its economic policies and indirectly through the model it sets. If we change our country, the world may follow.

And I personally think the best way to do that is through art rather than politics. The tool of politics is money, and because money is the cause of so many problems, more money is not going to solve anything. Money creates so-called “band-aid solutions,” like an anemic person putting bandages on their cuts rather than changing to a diet with more iron. I think art is what fuels the hopes and dreams of a people, and as I discussed in a former post, dreams are what determine the future of a country.

When Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, racism did not vanish. When blacks were given the right to vote, racism did not vanish. When Barack Obama became president, racism did not vanish. Racism will not vanish on any account of government. Neither will any other prejudice. Something else is required. All of progresses in the fight against racism were not the triumph of government – they were the triumph of culture. Government is always a reaction to culture, and government is always many steps behind, especially when that government is full of old white men whose only interaction with the world is in a mansion or private jet. Because democracy is a slow and bureaucratic process where officials must be elected and must draft and vote for and redraft laws, it cannot keep pace with a rapidly changing culture.

Government often exists as an inconvenience, a barrier to social change. It is only helpful when it is decreasing its power in regard to social freedom – giving blacks and women the right to vote, legalizing gay marriage, legalizing alcohol or marijuana... these are all the result of government decreasing its role as it finally succumbs to pressure from a culture that has outpaced it.

I think government can be useful in battling the damage of capitalism such as through universal healthcare, social security, and other kinds of economic regulation, but I also think these problems could be solved without the use of government, by people abandoning these economic systems altogether and creating something new based on human-to-human interaction rather than bank account to bank account. We make a distinction between sex for love and sex for money, scornfully labeling the latter “prostitution.” If this is true then is not every exchange done for money rather than love a kind of prostitution? If prostitution is to be scorned, so should selling food, selling books, selling anything. I think we can strive towards something new and I think art can create dreams for this new something.

I define art loosely – any work created by people with the intention of connecting with people: a website, a piece of music, a poem, a thoughtful conversation. These are interactions that take place from one human being to another, and their effects cannot be quantified. You can sell a piece of art, sure, but I think there is also something inherently anti-capitalist about art, even that which is sold. Anything that comes from a place of truth and love is priceless, and what is priceless is subversive to a system that worships capital.

Here’s a Charles Bukowski quote I like: “The only way to save the world is one life at a time. Anything else is romance or politics.”

Anyway, if you read all that, good for you. I could ramble on for pages more but I lost track of what I was talking about a long time ago. I don’t think my friends are wrong in wanting to help the world by bringing clean water and food to those that don’t have it. These are admirable goals. I just don’t know how effective they are at systemic change which would save more lives in the long run. Maybe you need both approaches. An anemic person still needs to put bandages on their cuts so they don’t get infected. But all the good intentions in the world will not keep bad things from happening in a society that is spiritually anemic.

And please, feel free to disagree with anything or everything that I write. I’m mainly writing to see what I think, because I don’t exactly know, as I tend to think many contradictory things at once. I disagree with myself from one moment to the next. I've also always wanted to be a musician or writer. Perhaps I am just finding ways to justify my dreams over those of others. In the end I don't think any of us can claim to know the only right path because there are an infinite amount of options.

I’ll tell you all about my indigenous village stay in the next post. It’s raining now and it sounds great on my tin roof and I want to listen to my new CD and go to sleep.

Love,

Tom

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P.S. Here are a whole bunch of pictures of Tiwanaku, a massive site of ancient ruins in northern Bolivia. The city supposedly hosted anywhere between 60,000 to 100,000 people, with its peak around 1100 AD. The site shows evidence of extensive agricultural terracing, irrigation systems, massive ceramics production, a sewer system and intricate stonework. A few different societies lived there over the ages. It was suddenly abandoned sometime around 1200 AD, no one is sure why. The Incans believed the inhabitants were all turned to stone because they offended the gods, thus explaining all of the statues.

Spooky.

The Gateway of the Sun; on the Solstice the sun rises in the arch

Our guide Oswaldo, the leading archaeologist at the site

Priests-in-training would live in this underground room for a few days to be reborn... How archaeologists know this about a site a thousand years old from a society with no written records, I have no idea. The tour led me to believe that 80% of archaeology is just saying things that sound cool with no real evidence.

The ancestor of the domestic potato: this variety is completely inedible and even a little poisonous. Why and how did early humans decide to grow it for food?