I left too early!

It was around Christmas time that I started thinking about what I was going to do after my trip in Perú. I had gone down to South America to decide if I wanted to stay in academia or if I wanted to go into some sort of conservation work. I realized while I was there that you had three options if you went into conservation work in SA: you were either unsuccessful, and wasted your time, you were moderately successful, and put a band-aid on a gaping wound, or you were very successful, and were assassinated. I decided that I didn’t even have the skills to be the leader of a movement, so I decided to join the wave when it comes, but to not try and get involved at the moment. I decided instead to apply for a master’s degree.

I found out a few months after my application that I was accepted into the masters program, but that I did not get the scholarship. The idea came into my head that it would be really important to go back to NJ, get a job so I could earn money to help pay the cost of the program that my dad is helping cover. I guess that is the responsible thing that ‘adults’ are supposed to do, and I am doing it. However, I feel it was a mistake. I left Perú before I was ready.

I was not ready to leave Perú because I was still discovering myself and the country around me. I was still growing, on a personal level, every single day. I was loving the direction I was going with my development in the experience of travel. I was not done practicing Spanish yet, I am a lot better, but I would have loved to stay more time to really lock it in. I wanted to do more volunteering at the Green Point vegan cooking school, I loved my time there and I wanted to go back to keep learning. I have great friends, and even people I consider family, in various places in Perú now and I wanted to see them again. As much time as I spent in the jungle I do not feel that I saw as much of the jungle, especially in Pacaya Sameria, that I wanted to. Also, finally, I yearn for more Ayahuasca ceremonies.

With Ayahuasca, normally, the first ceremony is an introduction to the plants. It normally is some pretty visuals, a strong purge, and an eye opening experience. Great stuff. However, people normally do not get into really deep things on the first go. I, however, had profound experiences with the medicine. I opened doors into my psyche and into my life that I had never known were there before. However, I just cracked the doors open. I want to keep learning from these powerful teachers. I never really had a spirituality before that ceremony, and now I cannot imagine my life outlook without the spirituality I found. Ayashuasca gave me so much on our first meeting, I marvel at the thought of what else she may have to teach me. Imagine my shock of being back in NJ, working at a gas station, preparing for a master’s program.

I left Perú over a month ago, and every day since I left I have been playing with the word ‘regret’. I don’t think it is exactly the right word, but it’s the only one that comes to mind. I’m not saying I regret the masters, I think it is a great opportunity and I am still looking forward to it very much, but I definitely ‘regretting’ putting financial gain above the fantastic personal development I was encountering during my trip. I am still finding ways to continue my development every day, and I will into the future. But make no mistake, first chance I get I am going to Tarapoto again. ❤

Think twice, speak once.

This is an extension of my idea that people are victims of their culture and an ongoing series I am writing regarding how we, citizens in society, interact with political culture.

This idea is something that I have observed for many years, but never thought to articulate until I was speaking with a like-minded friend; I’ll refer to him as Tom, because that’s his name. Tom is a carpenter; he always hits the nail on the head. He always measures twice and cuts once, as the old proverb goes. You get the idea. Well, I had just introduced Tom to my idea about people being victims of their culture and he said that he felt exactly what I was talking about, and began to tell me about his personal struggle to fight certain elements of his culture that he finds disagreeable. I won’t mention his here, so I will keep it all about my own.

The struggle to fight his societal imprinting  that he brought up relates to your first thought in certain situations vs. your second thought. For instance, if you see someone of a certain cultural group and automatically associate them with a negative stereotype and feel inclined to behave in a prejudiced manner with them then that was your first thought. I will openly admit, it happens to me all the time. I have very little, if any, control over it right now (need to keep practicing my mindfulness meditation!). But I really think some terrible racist/misogynistic things in some cases; these are my first thoughts. They are the result of the influence that my racist/misogynistic culture has on my thought patterns. What is important here is what comes next. Do you just go off your first thought, or do you move to a second, or even a third thought?

Tom’s idea of the second thought is what you know to be true, despite what your culture would have you automatically think. “Actually, that stereotype is just that, a stereotype, and it is totally unfair to pre-judge this person, I should treat them like any other person instead” could be an example of a second thought after recognizing that you just had a pre-programmed racist thought. For me, thoughts like this are usually my third thought. Normally my second thought is “Jim, shut. the. fuck. up. What the hell are you thinking? How are we not past this by now?”, then I move on to what I know I should be thinking. I am not being hard on myself, I just get frustrated about how much control my societal upbringing has on my current thinking, even though I know it is wrong. I am constantly fighting to get my initial reactions on the same level as what I know to be true.

Today I had a beautiful first thought moment. I saw the cover of the newspaper this morning and it featured two men kissing during a PRIDE parade festival. In the past, when I have seen two men kissing it has made me feel uncomfortable; it has struck me as something odd. My second thought for a long time has been “Why is that any different than a man and a woman kissing? Love is love. Get over it! It’s fine!”. But today I did not have that first feeling of discomfort. I was just so immensely happy to see that there was love, even homosexual love, being featured on the cover of a small newspaper in a conservative part of town. I was proud of the newspaper for publishing that image on the front page, and I found myself overjoyed with seeing these two men kissing!

So, if there is a lesson to be learned here it is this: If you find yourself thinking things that you have been conditioned to think, but know that they’re inappropriate, fight against them! Eventually you can begin to change the cultural imprint on your brain and begin to think thoughts that you can stand behind the first go-’round. The important thing is to reflect on your thoughts enough to know when you are having a bad first thought so that you can go around your culture to what you know instead to figure out what your second thought should be.

Thanks to Tom for bringing this idea to my awareness. Thanks to all you for reading, and, as ever, for thinking!

Heartache and recovery: My Brexit reaction

(Song referenced in the sub-title with lyrics on screen, just so less is likely to be missed)

Upon arriving to work at 04:45 Friday morning I read that the UK had indicated they wanted to leave the EU; this came as a huge emotional shock. At the time I viewed the result as a major victory for hate and fear (I still do now, though Greenwald recently published an article and connected the Brexit with an idea which I have been trying to articulate for many months. Now the picture looks more complicated. See my recent post about it here). Victories based off of lies, fear-mongering, and toxic nationalism sting me to the core because I know what good people are capable of showing. Needless to say, my spirits were feeling pretty crushed. Being in that state at 05:20 in the morning that is a pretty poor way to start off your day.

Well, I went outside and the sun was just coming up, the sky was purple and dotted with the fluffy pink clouds of sunrise. There is this one tree I can see from where I work that catches the sunlight from the back before I can see the sun and it gives the appearance that the leaves of the tree are glowing. Many birds were out singing that crisp early-summer morning and while listening to them sing I began to ground myself in the day ahead and in the world around me. (Never mind this is all in the context of a gas station parking lot…).

I began to breathe. I mean, I was breathing the whole time, but here I began to really breathe. If you have ever practiced yoga or meditation you will know what I’m talking about. I was breathing in all of the beauty around me. I was still feeling troubled by the news, however. I knew that my head was filled with worry and sadness, and that just wouldn’t do. I began to sing out songs from Edward Sharpe. I know I write a lot about them, and I know it is probably beginning to sound pretty hokey, but they have some powerful messages in their songs. Their music represents such a powerful representation of a ‘peace and love’ ideology it really functions as medicine for my soul. As I sang I began to reflect on the words and the meanings, I began to feel the words. Customers started showing up slowly and I radiated them with positive energy. I could feel them respond and give it right back to me, it was wonderful!

By around 08:00 I was feeling incredible. My spirits were high, and I was even feeling high myself. I had a great full feeling in my chest and I could not stop appreciating all that was around me. As the day grew hot the feeling inside me grew and changed into a deep feeling of great contentment and subtle bliss. This feeling lasted me all through the day until I fell asleep that night.

So I got a bombshell of bad news in the morning and I managed to turn my feeling of despondency around just by appreciating the beauty around me, practicing mindful breathing, reflecting on beautiful music, and connecting into the universal love of humanity. Believing in the power of ‘peace and love’ and using its tools can be a powerful thing. I guess these practices help me sleep at night too 😉 ❤

What do Bernie Sanders, Trump, and Brexit have in common?

Today Glenn Greenwald with The Intercept put out an article that I want to comment and expand upon. Please find it here and read it if you want some context for what I am about to say. Also read it simply because it is fantastic…

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The British journalist Tom Ewing, in a comprehensive Brexit explanation, said the same dynamic driving the UK vote prevails in Europe and North America as well: “the arrogance of neoliberal elites in constructing a politics designed to sideline and work around democracy while leaving democracy formally intact.”

-Excerpt from the Greenwald article

The constant failure of the neoliberal ideologies and policies of the establishment and the subsequent disillusionment of the public is something I have been trying to articulate to people for many months. My efforts have usually come in the form of trying to explain to people how much Sanders supporters and Trump supporters have in common. Greenwald and his sources -pay special attention to his first hyper-link– lay out the idea so well. Here they are discussing the reactionary responses of the Brexit and Trump’s election successes, but the overarching idea is critical: the establishment is failing everyone outside of it –cough, the 99%- and the societal implications of the disenfranchisement of the masses is taking its tole on society.

In 2008, [the establishment’s] economic worldview and unrestrained corruption precipitated a global economic crisis that literally caused, and is still causing, billions of people to suffer – in response, they quickly protected the plutocrats who caused the crisis while leaving the victimized masses to cope with the generational fallout. Even now, western elites continue to proselytize markets and impose free trade and globalization without the slightest concern for the vast inequality and destruction of economic security those policies generate.

-Another bit of insight from Greenwald

Both Sanders and Trump have based their campaign on the very popular opinion -an extreme majority as far as I can tell- that the government is not working for the people and that things are getting worse and worse in many ways. I mean, this conclusion is obvious, isn’t it? The ideal situation for the neoliberal elite would be to have a few, super powerful, super rich people at the top of society and have everyone else toiling beneath them to promote their egregious societal positions. That obviously creates terrible conditions for the people outside of this selected elite, and very comfortable positions for the elite. There’s almost no way that this would not piss off a ton of people! We have it in the USA, and they most certainly have it in the UK.  The critical point needs to be focused on how people respond to this outrage against the establishment.

In the U.S., the joyful rejection by Trump voters of the collective wisdom of the conservative establishment evidenced the same contempt for elite consensus. The enthusiastic and sustained rallying, especially by young voters, against beloved-by-the-establishment Hillary Clinton in favor of a 74-year-old socialist taken seriously by almost no DC elites reflected the same dynamic. Elite denunciations of the right-wing parties of Europe fall on deaf ears. Elites can’t stop, or even affect, any of these movements because they are, at bottom, revolts against their wisdom, authority and virtue.

-Again, from the Greenwald piece linked above

In the USA the angry people have largely fallen into the Trump and Sanders camps. Let’s be clear, as it was stated in Greenwald et al.’s analysis, the same applies here, the strife and calamity that the establishment inflicts on the people is at the base of these movements. Both Sanders and Trump campaign on the basis of changing America (notice how Hillary does not focus so much on change, but wants to more-or-less continue what’s already happening? That is why she is referred to as ‘the establishment’ candidate). Anyway, while Sanders and Trump have a very legitimate anger and motivation behind their campaigns, their understanding of where that anger comes from differs in critical ways. Sanders and his supporters largely recognize that it is the fault of the establishment. Trump and his supporters, however, mix the blame on the establishment and other marginalized groups within society. They are advocating hate and fear as a path to a resolution to society’s problems. So while you have the various far-right organizations in the UK attacking and scapegoating immigrants for the problems within Britain, you have Trump in the USA spurring racist nationalist feelings as he unjustly blames immigrants and migrants for our problems. It is all very similar. What it comes down to is what you feel is the best solution to the issue. Sanders and Trump both, supposedly, advocate for the dismantling of the current power structure (though it is very unclear if Trump would actually take any steps to do so). While Sanders advocates for a fairer, more just America and a more just world, Trump seems to just want to play the “make America great” game in the most devastating and crushing way his individualist capitalist mind can conjure.

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So, while the Brexit vote was a massive victory for hate and fear, just as a general election win for Trump would be, it is more than that. The rise of far-right in support of Brexit, the nightmarish loony toons who support Trump, and impassioned Sanders supporters with tears of frustration in their eyes all are manifestations of the same injustice inflicted upon the people by a tyrannical establishment. It is our rampant, cyclical, culture of  ignorance, fear, and hate that transform the anti-establishment anger we see into the UKIPers and Trump supporters of the world. It is a feeling of wanting to better the country and the world for all people that have many rallying behind the left-leaning Sanders and Corbyn.

As Hayes put it in his book, the challenge is “directing the frustration, anger, and alienation we all feel into building a trans-ideological coalition that can actually dislodge the power of the post-meritocratic elite. One that marshals insurrectionist sentiment without succumbing to nihilism and manic, paranoid distrust.”

-The final excerpt from Greenwald for today

I cannot stress this enough, we need to combat this terrible destructive culture of ignorance, fear, and hate with intellectual criticism, understanding, and love! As Greenwald points out, the establishment is acting so horrendously it is damaging itself so much that it seems on the verge of collapse. What will replace it, however, depends on the people. What kind of world do you want to live in? A world re-constructed on the basis of an irrational hate and fear of others? or a world based on rational thinking, peace, and love? It’s an obvious answer to me. Spread the love! ❤

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I was planning to do a lot more of this type of heavily article integrated post when I started imagining this blog, and I am sure a lot of you are probably happy that I haven’t, however, I could not miss this opportunity here. Let me know what you think! As ever, thanks for reading and for thinking!

 

Just because something is illegal does not make it wrong.

It is an argument that gets spouted at me all the time during discussions, “It is wrong because it is illegal” or, conversely, “It is OK because it is legal”. To me this is an obvious fallacy, if it is to you too then you can stop reading, thanks for visiting! However, if you are like so many people who think that because something is illegal means that it is bad then stick around.

This flaw in this logic has two prongs: how many illegal things are not ‘bad’, and how many ‘bad’ things aren’t illegal. We’ll take a look at the first right now. The first obvious example of an illegal thing that is not bad would be psychedelic drugs. This may not be the best example to make the point given their cultural taboo that results from their illegality, but I think that is something we can overcome for this discussion. We will take for granted here the knowledge that psychedelic drugs (MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, DMT, to name the prominent ones) have enormous medicinal potential. We can even expand this argument to include marijuana because of the similar absurdity of its federal illegality. The United States government considers these drugs to be Schedule 1 which means that they are defined as as follows:  “Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence.” This is very clearly an outright lie, and has even been openly admitted as such. Every one of the drugs mentioned has an incredible medicinal potential, and their potential has been known in the western world for decades. Yet here they are, illegal in the most severe category of drug classification.

Moving on from this example, we can take a much more serious example. If you look in the history of the United States you will find periods when it was illegal for black people to vote, for Asians to vote, and for women to vote. Saying that something is wrong just because it is illegal is akin to saying that it was not an injustice to deprive these groups suffrage  because it was somehow “wrong” that they should be able to vote. I suppose you could argue that we have corrected some bad laws, and that our laws in general aim us toward the common good. That is certainly the way it is supposed to work; our laws should direct us toward the common good. Unfortunately, in our un-democratic society laws get passed (or not) not depending on good or bad, right or wrong, but based on the politics of the rich and powerful, not the common people.

Keeping with this idea of laws not being passed for the common good, and moving on to the second prong of the logical flaw, we will look at legal things that are bad. Just yesterday our House voted to allow the continued selling of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia. Cluster bombs have been outlawed by 199 countries, pose a massive risk to civilians, and represent an indiscriminate killing apparatus. In the hands of Saudi Arabia, a country who we know is actively targeting civilians and ‘soft targets’ (which is bad, and recognized as such through a ‘war crime’ designation), the continued potential and realized humanitarian crisis is immense. It is illegal to give military aid to countries who are suspected of committing war crimes, however all the USA has to do is ignore the reality and fail to officially name them as such and they may continue. In fact, in this case, the USA is even concerned about giving the bombs a bad name by making them hard to get! I don’t think there is any question in the heart of any caring, loving person that these weapons should be illegal. However, the US House can’t even seem to make them illegal to sell to Saudi Arabia, presumably because it would be bad for business and hurt the friendship between the two war-hungry nations.

In another example, we can look at the Panama Papers and the Snowden-NSA leaks. Glenn Greenwald, once again, hit the nail on the head when he said the “scandal is what’s been legalized“. In the case of the Panama Papers we have the example of the legal tax evasion of billions of dollars by the rich and powerful around the world. In the NSA leaks we have a massive, suspicionless, government spying program that was collecting troves of data about hundreds of millions of American citizens. I am sure some readers will have objections to the badness of these acts, to which I send you to a TED talk of Greenwald talking about the importance if privacy, as well as Greenwald, Snowden, and Chomsky discussing the importance of privacy all together in a -wonderful- longer segment.  For the importance of the tax evasion I direct your attention to Owen Jones’ The Establishment: and how they get away with it chapters 5-6 “Scrounging off the state” and “Tycoons and tax dodgers”. In short, the rich use tax funded public services to build their wealth (see: socialism for the rich) and then fail to pay anything meaningful back, and even fight to destroy the system that helped them so much. This, all the while, leaves the common people to foot the bill, all the while they are exploited by these organizations and left to wallow in the devastation left in the wake of their unaccountable activities.

I could keep going, but I think I have made my point. I will just list a few more things that could easily be discussed here so I am not accused of picking out the exceptional cases:
Fracking, nuclear power and nuclear arms, glyphosate (ROUNDUP) usage, GMOs, our direct support for rainforest deforestation, the economics and methods of our corn farming systems, the production of meat, dairy, and eggs,  our forced ignorance and lack of action regarding climate change, civil forfeiture, life sentencing for teenagers, for profit prisons (read: actual slavery within the USA in today’s time), nearly everything about campaign financing, most of the activities of the DNC this campaign season, restrictive voting laws that are in place today, refusal of genuine asylum seekers and their deportation, giving aid to numerous other countries that commit human rights violations, our drone warfare program…

Thinking that a group of super powerful, super rich, mostly old white men are the grand arbitrators of what is right and wrong is a dangerous paradigm to align yourself with. However, that is exactly what you are doing if you think that the US congress, senate, president, or supreme court can tell you or anyone absolutely what is right or wrong. It is not just the job of other judges, lawyers, nosy journalists and political science professors to get in the mix and think about what is good or bad; it is our job as citizens within a democracy to do so as well!

I would like to finish off with a quote from Glenn Greenwald from an Intercept article I referenced earlier in this post:

“Proving that certain behavior is “legal” does not prove that it is ethical or just. That’s because corrupted political systems, by definition, often protect and legalize exactly the behavior that is most unjust. Vital journalism does not only expose law breaking. It also highlights how corrupted political and legal systems can be co-opted by the most powerful in order to legally sanction atrocious and destructive behavior that serves their interests, typically with little or no public awareness that it’s been done.” (emphasis by me).

Again, thank you for reading! Please, if you want to investigate any of these ideas further please check out your local and alternative book stores! You can also checkout a nice spattering of democracy-related internet media sources at the bottom of this post of mine!

 

How I sleep at night or how my day went bad in an hour

On my trip, when we weren’t exploring jungles, trekking in the mountains, or swimming in the world’s highest lake, we were in hostels. In these hostels we would often talk with other travelers. Often times the subject would be things that I have written about here: the politics of how to improve the world (read: democracy), cultural misappropriation, exploitation, environmental issues, and the like. You, dear readers, know by now that I have some thoughts on these issues and that I am not timid about expressing them. Well, in one such conversation as I was going on to a group of friends someone asked me “Jim, how do you sleep at night?”. Just yesterday, Naroa expressed to me that she was amazed to see that I had so many things to write about on my blog! She wondered where I was getting the inspiration for my content. I feel it would be good to respond to such comments on a day like today. You see, today I feel like I could just break down and cry. From what I have seen on my facebook newsfeed and from various news sources in the hour since I have been home has just been too much. So much in fact that I have vowed to myself to close down the browser for the rest of the day after publishing here.

Here we go.
I came home to find the usual stream of people on my facebook talking about how they want to fight violence with violence and increase gun rights in the United States. I read this article by The Tab (not a high quality news source! but the content here is simple enough) which reports how quickly someone can walk into a gun shop and buy the same assault rifle used in all these killings (hint, it’s 15 minutes). People are actually arguing that the solution they want to end mass shootings, and the society they want to live in, is one where people feel they need to carry guns around (and do!) to protect themselves and their countrymen from other gun carriers and fellow countrymen who want to kill them. How sad is that?! What a dismal thought? Could we not aim to live in a state of peace instead of a state of fear? In a state of love instead of a state of hate?

I got to read about how Clinton and Trump want to bomb ISIS over the Orlando shooting even though the shooter has no real connection to ISIS. It is bad enough that a single homophobic attack is being used as warmongering propaganda by our two front running candidates for the presidency. It is also really troubling that they are not taking strong stands to distance this crime from Islam, and are even using it to further inflame Islamic relations in the country (at least in the Trump camp). Clinton is there out there talking bad about radical Islam while a new report just came out that states that a Saudi Prince claims to have given 20% (an estimated $42.4 millon) to Hillary’s election campaign. Saudi Arabia, of course, being the most religiously radical country in the world, a violent, oppressive regime, and a constant source of funding for violent extremist groups like ISIS. Hillary does not seem to have an issue with them when they give her or her foundation money, or when she can make weapons deals with them. Sickening. And she is supposed to be the better of the two front runners!

Speaking of violent oppression in the middle east with United States support… An excerpt of The Assassination Complex by Jeremy Scahill and the staff of The Intercept was published that states that most people killed by US drone strikes were not intended targets, and that the way people are put on the ‘kill list’ is severely vulnerable to human error. We in the USA don’t really talk about the drone program and tend to, as the article suggests, “Trust, but  don’t verify” what the government and the media tell us. The drone program is horrific in any terms, is in violation of international law, could (and should!) be considered a war crime, and is also probably against US law. Hillary and Donald want to at least continue it, Hillary talks a lot about increasing all types of air support in the region. Finally, it has been reported today that the heavily USA-backed Israeli state has cut off water to Gaza during this holy month of Ramadan and in 35C (95F) heat. This would be bad enough even if the USA was not paying them billions of dollars in aid every year while they continue illegal occupations, lead campaigns to end peaceful free speech, and commit humanitarian atrocities. It just makes it all the worse that Hillary wants to support Israel and Netanyahu more than we already do (which is a lot! we give more aid to Israel than any other country) while the “bad guy” candidate is actually taking a progressive stance and saying that we should be impartial and work towards a solution to the conflict. Fucking hell, when Trump looks better than the alternative I don’t know what to say any more.

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So, back to the start, “How do I sleep at night?”. Well, to be honest, in these days after the Orlando Massacre I am having trouble. I am helped by beautiful music (as I started this paragraph “Life is Hard” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros came on. Ed Sharpe is probably the most important music group in my life right now and their music is really helping me in these times, check out their stuff!). I also get to sleep knowing that I am doing the best that I can to be a positive change in the world and by recognizing that I am not responsible for changing the world in an instant, and that as long as I am working towards what I believe to be best that is all that I can expect from myself. Keep trying to spread political empathy to the politically privileged of the world through knowledge, break down their barrier of ignorance to allow them to accept that there is desperate need for change, and in the moment of realization offer an ideology of peace and love for all to be the backbone of whatever solution we come to.

As for how I come up with ideas of what to write about… if you clicked on any of those links I provided and read through any of the content I would be shocked if you didn’t have something that you wanted to tell the world too. Now to finish by quoting the Ed Sharpe song that just came on “I feel the love, I feel the power, it’s getting weirder by the hour./ The world is fucked up but I want to stay!”

With hope, and lots of love. -Jim

Opening the doors to personal growth

Often times I feel that I am quite sure of a valuable bit of knowledge or critical piece of ideology, but I struggle to make the decision to implement these bits into my mind or my lifestyle. This certainly has multiple factors: mental inertia, abject laziness, lack of self confidence… However, I have found that once I started opening the doors of my mind and letting these beneficial bits come in, they come more and more easily. I want to share a little bit about what doors I am able to open now that I wasn’t before, and how I developed and still practice this skill.
When I was applying to colleges (or should I say, uni’s) I decided, with a little inspiration from my dad, to look out of the country. My initial idea was that I knew there were other ways of life, and other perspectives of the world, than what I had learned growing up in the USA. I knew there had to be, but I did not know what they were. When I arrived at my place of learning I was immediately surrounded by dozens of such ways of living and alternative perspectives. The American in me was shocked in some cases, scared in others, and in many ways I was very uncomfortable and I seemed to even take action, though not realizing it at the time, to hold on to my previous identity and ideologies even though I saw much more pleasant ones around me. After about 2.5 years there I started coming around. My friends and my lecturers had sprayed some GT-85 (or WD-40 for US folk) into my rusty doorknob lock and I began to jiggle the key.

Once I got the door open I found a vast empty room. I had a few things to put there that I had learned in the previous 2.5 years, and there were plenty of things that I decided to bring over (many of which I am subsequently trying to clean out again). But I could clearly see that the room, my potential for personal growth, was largely empty and wanting to be filled. There were also some other doors in this room, but they come into the story later. For me the most important thing for finding good quality ideas and practices to put into that room is by shutting up. You may laugh when you read it now, but being quiet during conversations is one of the most beneficial things I learned how to do in my early stages of trying to fill and explore the room. If someone says something you disagree with, but you’re not really sure why you disagree, or you haven’t heard their specific argument before, don’t rebut! Just sit and listen. Then, go home and investigate on your own, ask questions to other people you think might know about the subject. Then, begin to form an opinion that you want to argue for in a discussion.

With this method I began to open another door and explore and develop an appreciation for the immense value of reading, which I somehow made it out of high school lacking. Start with the wiki page of an event, philosophy, or idea and move on from there into the world of essays, journal pieces, forums, and other online media. I rarely used books, however, they came later. Then books were too long, too involved. I did not yet know that they were long and involved for a reason. Reading is so powerful because it really is like shutting up in a conversation. You can’t interrupt an author, you either read or you stop. If you want to get the idea, you can keep reading. But what makes it even better is that you can have the discussion with experts, people who have spent years of their lives working on these topics or have personal experience with them. Reading is a wonderful thing to let into your life. The benefits are known by many, but only understood by those who read regularly.

Through reading, discussion, and, critically, door-opening practice I entered new areas of thought previously unknown to me, social ideas like privilege and social injustice come to mind. I had known them beforehand, but they were strictly an abstraction, I had not let them in where they could influence my behaviors and ideologies. I could let bits of unpleasant information just slide off of me, like rain drops bouncing off my oily coating of privileged security. To me, opening the door of my mind is letting myself get wet in that rain of knowledge; letting it soak me to the bones. Opening my mind is using agitating discussions, writings, and thoughts to scrub off that coating of protection. Don’t get me wrong, I am still working on these ideas, and I am not yet where I know I could be, but I am moving there.

With these feelings of community I have been developing over the past years with the disenfranchised people of the world (Despite my high social privilege, I consider myself one of them still. Such is the state of our world…) and with this feeling I have entered another personal growth state. It took time, and inspiration, and it was initially very uncomfortable given my cultural upbringing, but I have moved into the place where I understand now that I should be basing my life on the energies of peace and love that exist within me. These ideas have always been taught to me. I have known them for a long time. I had never let them in before recently. Now that they are here I am continuing to change my life to incorporate them into my ideologies and actions. So far, nothing but beauty and light has come from it.

So, here’s to keeping an open mind, engaging in healthy debate, and aiming to move towards the truth. Peace and love to you all.

P.S.: It seems wrong that I should post this post when I am without adding a point about the horrific Orlando massacre. My love goes out to everyone effected and involved. No doubt the media will use this moment to instill hatred and fear within the people. I will respond to this by radiating more messages of peace and love. Hate perpetuates hate, and violence perpetuates violence. We have to put an end to this viscous cycle with a massive wave of love and respect. From the people, yes, no question, but also from the policy makers in the government. We cannot expect to keep actively being the global bully, oppressor, and murderer and expect the world to live in peace. The onus is on the people in power to de-escalate the violence to zero while providing mental health services for the victims of the past horrors and social education that promotes understanding, respect, and peace for all.

Hint: the answer is democracy

When it comes to all the problems and injustices in our country and in the world at large people love to argue and discuss about what policy or what politician/CEO caused the problem or is failing to do something about it. However, it is sort of crazy to think that swapping out a president or passing a single law will fix the country or save the world. Individuals could help, but most people would agree that in recent years most new hopefuls on both sides really fail to make the strides we hope of them, in fact they tend to just end up supporting the problem we hoped they would alleviate. This is largely due to a neoliberal ideology shared by the elite which enforces the established power structure (ie. de-regulate the wealthy and powerful minority, oppress and further impoverish the weak majority). And as we know, this has lead us to many of the terrible conditions we see today from war in the middle east in the name of oil, GMOs being used nearly world wide despite the environmental and health risks, the destruction of vital rain forests around the world, the polluting and killing of the oceans, fracking and the like persisting in countries where it poisons water and causes earthquakes, and a massive nuclear proliferation that many analysts claim to be the number one threat to the global human population next to, the last in my incomplete list, the catastrophe of climate change . Its a good thing I have a solution that I really believe could fix all theses problems! Its radical, so you’ll have to stay with me here, please don’t unsubscribe from my blog because you think I’m some sort of crazy person, but I think democracy is the solution.

Surprise surprise, democracy of all things. Do you remember learning about it in school? I do. I was taught that we (in the USA) have the greatest democracy on the planet. That’s still the argument I hear from a lot of people today! I don’t think it’s true, but even if it was true, just because something is the best does not mean that it isn’t actually terrible. If you have 10 broken down rusting cars in a junk yard but one of them has chrome rims or something then you could pick it out and call it the best. However, its still just a broken down rusting car in a junk yard. That car with the chrome rims, that’s American democracy. Keeping with the analogy, I tend to think that once a car doesn’t run anymore it is not really a car, but a hunk of scrap metal, right? If it loses its fundamental function then it loses the justification for calling it a car. Like, call it a car by form then, sure, but there are plenty of other justified things to call it now that denote its brokenness and worthlessness. The point is that we are not living in a democracy! We have some ideas about democracy, and we have even implemented some of them, but there is a lot that would need to change before we could call our current system a democracy of the people.

So, what we, more or less, know to be the best system of making decisions and solving problems is democracy. (If you disagree, I would love to hear about it in the comments section.) The more we have, and the higher quality of it, the better it works. Unfortunately in the world around, the state of democracy is not great where it exists (like a junkyard car), and this is well known and understood by many people. Here I want to focus on the United States, where I see a population who largely seems to believe that our form of democracy works and is OK as is, with a few notable exceptions. However, any look at the evidence shows that the amount of democracy is not as high as it could, or should, be and the quality is abysmal. Like, really, really bad.

We can start by looking at why so many people feel that the government doesn’t work for them and that it instead works for special interests. Because that’s how it actually is.(check the video out!) So now we can see that our government ignores the people of the bottom 90% of wealth, and listens to the top 10%. The government does not represent the people, which sounds very strange for a democracy, right? There is a word for what we have: plutocracy, a government ruled by the rich.

Our government strips our rights from us as a matter of common policy, we know this. So we have groups like the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, and many more. These groups fight to defend our rights and in doing so try to support America’s democracy. That’s right, our condition is such that we need these organizations to try to get some power back to the people of a democracy where the people ostensibly hold the power! In a true democracy these institutions would no longer need to exist. In a democracy the people would be able to, with their collective voices alone, strike down any institution that claimed the authority to take away their rights and freedoms. They would not need any organization to fight for them. Why are ‘rights’ called ‘rights’? Because they are innate, not something to be given or taken away. It is clear that any institution that aims to strip our rights from us is doing so for nefarious reasons. Democracy is a threat to tyranny, and our institutions of power will do everything they can to impede it without destroying the illusion of democracy that grasps the people. (I began my discussion about rights and how our government takes them away from people to subvert democracy in a previous post).

Yes, the key to maintaining this faux-democracy that we currently have is by keeping the people uninformed, scared, and comfortable. Uninformed so they do not know that there really is something terribly wrong, and if they do catch on, so they will not know what to do about it. Scared so that even if they get a sense of something being awry, they fear the repercussions of taking action against it. And comfortable because people who live their lives in privileged comfort will not stand up to destroy the institution who maintains that comfort, no matter how tyrannical or horrific they may understand it to be. Also comfortable because if you are comfortable you do not have the motivation to stand up and fight, your instinct is to stay still and behave in the hopes that they won’t take your comfort away. And it works, to a large extent, unfortunately. But, there will come a time when the natural cycles of the climate and the earth are so irreparably damaged and/or we are so close to the MAD of nuclear annihilation that we will wish that it had been us in charge the whole time instead of the people there now who are willing to bring us to the edge of destruction in the name of greed and power. Suddenly the comfort will be gone, or meaningless, and we will wish we had spoken out, fought to have a real democracy and we will wonder why we didn’t know about this terrible storm brewing until it was already upon us.

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I’d like to conclude this post with a series of links where you can go to follow ideas about democracy, how our government is taking it away from us, and what we can do to get it back.
Obviously, DemocracyNow!, they discuss may topics about democracy in the USA and abroad. The Intercept is a brilliant investigative news outlet that practices “adversarial journalism” that challenges the standard narrative of the government in the intention of keeping an informed electorate. Truth Dig is a place to get a deeper analysis of the news, often commenting on themes of democracy (or lack thereof). Tom Dispatch is a fantastic source for alternative view points that counter the main stream narrative. Represent Us is an interesting grass roots action plan to end the corruption in the USA and repair our democracy. The United States has a Green Party that supports action to move us toward a real, healthy, functioning democracy. ROAR Magazine is a leftist publication that largely features essays written by emerging front-line experts in the fields of social movements, war, democracy, human rights, the environment and things like this. And finally, Noam Chomsky who is said to be the world’s greatest political academic and dissident. He has written extensively about democracy, rights, systems of power, corruption, tyrannies, and social movements fighting to take back power. I cannot recommend highly enough that everyone read and listen to Chomsky; you will find him dotted about in many of the sources listed above.

Further, please go to your local bookstores and alternative bookstores for more information! Knowledge = Power = Books
Thank you all for reading, and thank you for continuing to be critical!

Update 1, 6 June 2016: I wanted to include this quote from Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? I think it is relevant to the discussion above.
”

A companion story in the New York Times reports that “two-thirds of Americans support the United States joining a binding international agreement to curb growth of greenhouse gas emissions.” And by a five-to-three margin, Americans regard the climate as more important than the economy. But it doesn’t matter. Public opinion is dismissed. That fact, once again, sends a strong message to Americans. It is their task to cure the dysfunctional political system, in which popular opinion is a marginal factor. The disparity between public opinion and policy, in this case, has significant implications for the fate of the world.

We should, of course, have no illusions about a past “golden age.” Nevertheless, the developments just reviewed constitute significant changes. The undermining of functioning democracy is one of the contributions of the neoliberal assault on the world’s population in the past generation. And this is not happening just in the U.S.; in Europe the impact may be even worse.”

My visit to the hospital in Tarapoto

I just read this account of getting ill in Colombia and the medical treatment there, and thought I would chime into the discussion about another time I got ill in Perú. (Not the time in Lagunas that I already posted about, however).

When we arrived in Tarapoto it was really hot. Like, ~35C (~95F), with a lot of humidity. I knew that we had to be careful with the heat, and we only really went out in the mornings and late afternoons/nights. The midday was just for sitting around Yunta Wasi, our little hippie hostel, sharing stories and drinking maté. Around my second day there I started getting this terrible headache whenever I moved. I treated it with ibuprofen, but I could not seem to shake it. We went down to a pharmacy to ask for advice and explained my symptoms. The “pharmacist” declared that it was obviously a parasite, gave me some anti-parasite meds and some more ibuprofen. She told me to take the pain meds until the symptoms went away for two days, then begin with the anti-parasite meds. Well, after the two days was done and I began with the anti-parasite meds my headache came back with a vengeance, along with a massive fever. I knew I had to go to the hospital the next day.

Tarapoto is the last major city before you are in a place that you can only travel by boat. It is pretty out-there, and we had no idea what to expect from the public hospital. When we were going to leave for the hospital I was feeling like death, and knew I would not survive the 20 minute bumpy moto-taxi ride there, so I took another ibuprofen to cut my fever and off we went to the hospital (s/.8 each way). Upon arriving I had to wait like 45 minutes to be seen for triage. The nurse told me that because I did not have any symptoms right then, because of the meds I had taken a few hours before, I could not be admitted. I had to come feeling like death to get seen. So we went home, and waited. I literally laid in bed judging periodically how shit I felt, and whether that level of shittyness was good enough for admission. It didn’t take long, however, and we went on our way back.

I got admitted pretty quickly. I couldn’t remove the wet rag I had from over my eyes because the light hurt so much. I was literally crying due to the pain. I also had a 39C (102F) fever. I got sent in right away to see a doctor. In fact, it seemed like I had at least one doctor in that room and about 3-4 nurses attending to me. They were talking to Naroa a lot, and I remember being very confused about what little I understood. The doctor was writing prescriptions for me, tests, meds, IV fluids, and Naroa was having to go to the hospital pharmacy, or one out across the street when the hospital one was out of stock, for the medicines, test kits, bags of IV fluid, even syringes! It was really pay-as-you-go medicine. But, they got it done once Naroa delivered the supplies for them to use. We mentioned to the doctor what the pharmacist had told us and he laughed and said “no way” and told us to always make sure we are speaking to a real pharmacist as most people behind the counter in pharmacies just work there and do not have any knowledge about medicine, but often pretend to.

After they got me all hooked up and got all my blood samples taken they sent me to a multi-bed room to wait for the test results. It was a strange place. The room was full when I got there, but all of the other men there looked like they had been involved in a horrific car crash: broken bones, faces all swollen and cut, head bandages and other dressings that could have done for a change were scattered among them. The men were groaning in pain, even really unable to get up to go use the toilet unassisted, unless they were lucky enough to have a friend or family member there (out of 6 only 2 did). There were no chairs for visitors to sit in in this room, and it was strictly forbidden for them to sit on the end of the beds. There was a nurse that would come around and threaten to call security for non-patents on beds. The floor was disgusting. There were dried puddles of spilled fluids of unknown origins, dried blood spatters and the like. When I vomited at some point the only attempt to catch it was a nurse who literally kicked a small waste bin near-ish to my bed. Luckily I have pretty good aim, but there was no effort to move it away after I was done or to clean the floor where I had missed. In other words, it was not exactly suitable for a visitor to sit on the floor either. The bathroom had no toilet seat (typical in Perú), no hand soap, and no toilet paper! They expected me to go make both kinds of test samples but gave me nothing but a couple little cups. Needless to say, they only got my first sample. We learned after that night to bring toilet paper everywhere we went in Perú (pro-tip, do this). Overall, my time spent in this room was very surreal, troubling, and culture shocking.

I was treated with the full force of undeserved white, male, USA born privilege that I encountered in other places in the north of Perú. I had doctors and nurses checking on me every 10-15 minutes, even doctors coming from other parts of the hospital to ask me how I was doing, surgeons and pediatricians even! At this point I was mostly OK, just waiting for test results. The other men in the room, groaning in agony, rarely got a nurse’s attention much less a doctor’s attention. I had people coming to me just to chat. They all came to attend to the gringo. However, as many medical professionals I saw that day, they never found out what was wrong with me! All the tests came back negative. They told me, however, that it was just dehydration and that I had to drink at least 3 liters of water per day. No way, but I drank the water anyway. (I found out what it was later on in the trip; a hyper sensitivity to DEET).

I was admitted to the hospital at about 7 PM, we left around 2 AM. In total it cost s/.180 (~$55USD), not including the 4 taxi rides. On the way out of the hospital we saw a young boy sitting in the same triage chair I had been in 7 hours earlier, with a gash on his face that started under the corner of his left eye that went down to the edge of his nostril. Deep. The image is scarred in my mind now, not just the view I had into his body through this wound, but also his expression. I was amazed because he wasn’t crying and didn’t even look scared. He just sat there looking like it was another night for him. I still wonder what happened to him earlier in the evening, and what is going on now in his life.

When we left we realized that we hadn’t used 2 or 3 bags of the IV fluid and many of the medications and syringes that Naroa was told to buy for me. When we asked we were told to just put them on the table in the corner, someone would be able to use them. I hope the hospital didn’t just sell them back to the pharmacy, but really gave them to the other poor people who where there. s/.180 was a relief for us, we expected it to be more expensive, but upon reflection we realized that in 7 hours in the hospital we spent 6 days’ salary of the construction workers we met a few days later working in the forest where we volunteered. Many of the people of the city surely get paid a lot less and/or find a lot less work. s/.180 would not have been so trivial for them. Also, if I had been alone I have no idea how this pay-as-you-go medicine would have worked. All in all the hospital in Tarapoto works, but we’re not sure how well, or for whom.

How we got sick in a remote village, and got cured <3

After our fantastic 4-day trip into the Reserva Pacaya Samiria we arrived back in the small, isolated, village of Lagunas. The 4 friends we had traveled with had plans to head north late that night, to Iquitos, while we were going to take the boat back up river to Yurimaguas the following morning.

Things didn’t quite go as planned.

A few hours after arriving back Naroa fell ill. It seemed to be some sort of extreme food poisoning, but no one else had any symptoms and we had all been eating the same food for the past 4 days! Either way, I knew that we would not be traveling in the morning, especially not on a shaky 7 hour boat ride. I needed to get to the port to re-schedule our boat tickets, but I spoke so little Spanish at the time that I would have been hopeless. However, someone came to my aid.

When we were there, Marlodis was a 26 year old single mother of 3 with another one 7 months along the way. She is unemployed and is living with her relatives (the operators of the tour agency we took to visit the forest). It was she who agreed to go with me to the port to help me change the tickets. After taking a moto taxi to the port at around 10:00 PM she began jogging around to different places, looking for people to inquire with and finding no one. She then took me, walking, back towards town, guided by nothing but flashlights on the dark road, to knock on the door of the ticket salesman. He was asleep, of course, but showed no annoyance when we came calling in the middle of the night (keep in mind that this village wakes up around 4:30AM). After a short conversation he agreed to honour our tickets on any day we became fit to travel. When we met our friends back at the port it was 11:30 and I knew that Naroa was still ill back in the hotel and that I needed to get back to her. I offered to share the taxi back with Marlodis, but she said she wanted to wait until the boat came for the others (scheduled between midnight and 2:00AM). Ok, I headed back and found Naroa ill as before, or even worse.

After a long night we were very concerned about dehydration. Lots of fluids were lost that were not able to be replaced! I went out around 5:00AM into the market to find salt, sugar, and lime to make a rehydration mixture to sip. I arrived back feeling uneasy, made the mixture and Naroa was recovering enough just to start to drink when I began what she had started the night before. I spent all day going through the awful cycle of laying in bed building a fever, violently purging my body of that fever and everything else in the bathroom, and going back to bed feeling better for 20 minutes before it would all start again.

News had spread that Naroa was ill and people began to show up at our room to check on us, people from the tour company, people we met in the street when we arrived 5 days earlier, the hotel staff, our tour guides, and, of course Marlodis. It was around 7:00AM when Marlodis came to the room with breakfast for us and discovered that I too was ill. She told Naroa that she had stayed at the port until 5:00AM with our friends (it is very common for the ‘slow boat’ to be up to 12 hours late, this one ended up being 14). She said she only left because she had to get home to prepare lunches for her kids before taking them to school. Upon arriving home she made us breakfast and headed over. We were very thankful, well, mostly Naroa, I only heard the discussion through the bathroom door in between noisy bouts of evacuations. Naroa told her to go home and get some rest! She looked exhausted.

She came back just after mid-day with a tea for me to drink. I was skeptical as at this point I couldn’t hold down sips of water or my rehydration fluid. She told us the tea was medicinal and made from local forest plants. Coca leaves, cotton leaves, pompa de oregano, and a special type of medicinal lime local to the area. The tea smelled strong, not as bitter as some other medicinal plants I had, but not a gourmet tea blend either. The taste was equally strong, but surprisingly pleasant tolerable. However, the effect on me was incredible! It felt like a soothing layer of velvet coated my stomach and worked its way down into my intestines; truly an awesome wave. From the time of the first sip I did not vomit again (if I remember correctly). By the time I was finished with the mug I was able to rest more comfortably and was not really needing to go to the toilet any more.

The next morning she brought us breakfast and a second cup of tea for me, and then lunch later on! By this time I was barely able to stand or walk, but I managed to make it out of our hot stinking room to the fresh air outside to try my hand at eating tomatoes. We were sitting and talking with Marlodis and she explained to us that she was doing all of these nice things for us because she understood that when you are ill all you want is to be with your family, and that because we were so far from our families that she had to be our family. She also said that if her children ever travel she hopes that they will find someone like her to take care of them when they fall on hard times. After this she invited us to dinner before our boat the next day.

At dinner I managed to eat rice, salad, bananas, and my final dose of tea (she told us 3 cups is the maximum dose, beyond which it begins to harm you). Naroa was eating more or less normally by now. Marlodis studied cosmetics earlier in life and so did Naroa’s nails and her hair while her 4 year old daughter did three of my nails 😀 I gave Marlodis a little English lesson at her request, and I helped her son with his environmental science homework. It was a wonderful family evening. The next day we met her in the morning to formally thank her. Naroa and I had discussed how we wanted to formally thank her. We thought that considering her circumstance (unemployed, very poor, single, and with a baby on the way) that money would be the best thing we could do to repay her for her kindness. We wanted to give more, but we did not want to offend or make it feel like a service to be paid for, it wasn’t. We decided on s/.50, more than she would probably earn in a month, but only about $15USD. She nearly refused, but we told her that it wasn’t for her, but a gift for her children, to help buy them school supplies and clothing for the new baby. She finally accepted.

All the while we are saying goodbye, there is another man called James from the village who is in some way related to local tourism, calling his friends in Yuri to make sure we have someone to pick us up at the port because we were “still too weak and ill to find transportation, and needed something comfortable”. I think he was on the phone for about 30 minutes for us, not an insignificant expense! He only told us what he was doing after he had done it. All we could do was express our profuse thanks to everyone we encountered from the boat ticket manager, James, our guides, the hotel owner, and Marlodis of course.

So we made it back to Yuri, and then back to Tarapoto via James’ expertly arranged transport. Back in Tarapoto we went back to Yunta Wasi, our little hippie house of a hostel where we told our friends about our incredible experience and ended up sending most of them down river to see the jungle and the kindest people you could want to meet! It took us another 3-4 days just sitting in the hostel to regain enough strength to continue our travels, in which time we just sat and marveled in the experience we had just had. Our minds were opened beyond what we had ever imagined possible about traditional medicine, the capabilities of human kindness, what it means to be a part of a community, and the kinds of lives people live out in remote villages in the forest.

I had planned to spend 2-3 more months in Perú than I did. In that time part of what I wanted to do was spend at least another week in Pacaya and spend another week at least with Marlodis to help with the baby that was for sure born by then. Unfortunately I had to leave too soon, but I fully intend to make it back to that part of the world to see my Peruvian family once again. ❤