¿Quiénes son los tontos?

Recién, había científicos, activistas, académicos que nos llaman, a nosotros de los países desarrollados, a cambiar nuestras maneras de vida para proteger el medio ambiente. Y yo quiero anunciarles a todos de Uds. que ellos dicen mentiras. Ellos no saben de los nuestros valores. No creemos que el planeta sea conectado con nosotros ni que nos sirva.

La verdad es que el medio ambiente no tiene nada que ver con nosotros humanos. Es algo de árboles y osos polares. Son sólo ellos que necesitan la naturaleza. Para nosotros, estamos tan contentos viviendo en un mundo en el que los árboles son de plástico y los osos polares son de algodón. Los liberales hablan de estas cosas verdes y peludas para que nos emocionemos. ¡Pero pensemos!

No sólo es que los árboles, los osos polares y el medio ambiente no tengan usos estéticos para nosotros, no tengan funciones practícales tampoco. No necesitamos las selvas para atrapar el carbón dióxido. Ud. puede respirar el carbón dióxido que emiten mi cuerpo, mi carro, mi fábrica, y yo hago lo mismo para Ud. ¿Y por qué cuidamos a los osos polares? Los animales no nos cuidan y no tienen almas. No nos importa si los animales son extintos (osos marrones, osos negros, águilas calvas, etc.) ni si se multiplican (ratas, cucarachas, mosquitos, etc.). Las extinciones y las multiplicaciones demuestran una cosa: el poder de los humanos. Nuestra especie puede afectar a todas las especies del mundo. No sólo impactamos las especies animales y plantas, cambiamos el planeta. El aumento en la intensidad y en los daños posteriores de los huracanes, tsunamis, Niños y Niñas es una consecuencia de nuestras acciones también. ¡Conquistemos el planeta!

En 2050, cuando ya lo habremos derrotado y estaremos viviendo en entornos de cemento y asfalto, no nos arrepentiremos de haber dejado permanentemente nuestras huellas de carbón. Mirando a las palmeras de caucho y los cielos llenos de humo, nos felicitaremos de las acciones que hemos hecho para llegarnos aquí: en las compras de carros, ropa, juguetes; en las pérdidas de electricidad, papel, agua; en los lucros de las compañías de petro, jarabe de maíz de alta fructosa, poliéster. Nos celebraremos con nuestros niños en el estado que les hemos dejado el planeta. Para nuestras acciones, pagamos con la salud y la vida nuestras y pagará la siguiente generación con las suyas.

Son los ecologistas quienes son los tontos. Ellos no saben que creamos que el planeta es algo de otros: los árboles, osos, hippies. Los tontos tampoco saben que sólo pensemos en el presente. No nos importan las vidas de nuestros niños. ¡Vengan Los Niños!

Viajar Para Conocer Dentro y Fuera

Viviendo en casas sin puertas, sin duchas privadas, sin caras conocidas, Ud. me pregunta por qué a mí me gusta vivir en lugares diferentes. Viajo porque hay 196 países y quiero conocerlos. Me encanta conocer a las selvas en la Amazonia, al Río Mekong que pasa por 6 países y a los mahouts de la India. Me muevo porque hay miles de idiomas y quiero conocerlos. Me fascina como español e inglés representen el mismo concepto en maneras distintas. Me intriga que hayan ocho palabras para ¨primo¨ en mandarín. Me voy a los pueblitos, favelas, ciudades porque quiero conocer los cuentos de la gente allá. Las poblaciones que viven 3,000 metros sobre el nivel del mar, en el nivel del mar, en un desierto tienen sus propias historias.

Pero no solo viajo para conocer al Mundo, viajo para conocer al mundo mío, el que queda adentro de mí. Sin las distracciones diarias que me rodean donde yo vivo, puedo enfocar en la relación con mí misma. En otra lengua y otra cultura, me hablo con más facilidad porque no importan las palabras sino las emociones, la conciencia y otras cosas intangibles. Sumergiéndome en los Andes con sus montañas insuperables, sus lagos serenos, y sus arroyos transparentes, el Mundo se desparece, el ego se desparece, y me comunico con claridad. En estos momentos, me doy cuenta que el prestigio, el intelecto, el destino son triviales. Hablando con campesinos, nómadas, jefes, me doy cuenta que tengo mucho mas similitudes que diferencias con todos los humanos. No importan si ellos son indios, nigerianos ni rusos… Son las relaciones conmigo, con la gente, con la tierra que se componen una vida realizada.

Con cada viaje, conozco un poco más de otro lugar y otro aspecto de mí misma. Con estos conocimientos, me relaciono mejor con las personas, ideas, opiniones del todo mundo. Para mí, los viajes son como brillos a un espejo que poco a poco refleja dentro y fuera.

Beauty, Love, Rumi

From the Sufi mystic Rumi:

Mercy

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.

Beauty

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Self

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart,

and that depends upon how much he has polished it.

Whoever has polished it more sees more — more unseen forms become manifest to him.

The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.

There is no worse sickness for the soul,

O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.

Love

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?

When in Love, body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.

To Love is to reach God.
Never will a Lover's chest feel any sorrow.
Never will a Lover's robe be touched by mortals.
Never will a Lover's body be found buried in the earth.
To Love is to reach God.

God

I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only 'anqa's habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a "two bow-lengths' distance from him" but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.

Where Religion Comes In

At the risk of sounding fearfully reductionist, I propose that the stages to a fulfilled life are foolishness, wisdom, love, hope. Not linear of course, more a spiral. Regardless, many do not get past the first.

We all begin as fools. Children’s greatest asset and liability is their ability to be educated, resulting in spelling bee champs or child soldiers. It's just that many stay at a child’s level with respect to passively taking in information. All their lives they think in accordance with their institutions of learning then wage earning. They rarely question why they believe something; it is sufficient that the Jones do it. Their lives compose of eating baby food someone else already chewed up, or memorizing handouts someone else already made. Minds are enslaved. And if that alone is not enough to make you think this is the greatest human tragedy, it also is the thing (perhaps only matched by evil) that causes harm worldwide. To not think is like shopping at Walmart. The dollar saved comes at the cost of lives, environments, communities, workers' rights worldwide. And that "bargain" is only a placebo effect to which they have been taught equals happiness. The effect wears off almost immediately, so they go back again and again in the same futile search for satisfaction.

To move past this conditioned human condition, we must think for ourselves. To think is the thing that makes us human, expounded since Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." Descartes: "I think, therefore I am." Solomon: "Joyful is the person who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding. For wisdom is more profitable than silver, and her ways are better than gold." We need to train our own minds: to question the consequences of driving a Hummer on the Iraq War, snorting cocaine on Latin American drug violence, eating high fructose corn syrup on farm subsidies... Hence thought is not only the quintessential human quality, to know how evil exists is the precondition to preventing it.

But wisdom alone is insufficient to sustain us. A whole life is one that loves and is loved. As Fromm points out: "Even if we knew a thousand times more of ourselves, we would never reach bottom. We would still remain an enigma to ourselves, as our fellow man would remain an enigma to us. The only way of full knowledge lies in love: this act transcends thought, it transcends words." To have a passion, connect with humanity, do no harm, we must live with a heart that is open. When we are filled with frustration and anger, it is love that carries us through. Wisdom makes us see that our lives are bound up with our fellow beings’. Love calls us to fight for their lives as we would our own.

Yet as Woodstock showed, love is not the answer to all our problems. It requires hope to be sustained. To truly know and love a world that is broken in so many places brings heartbreak and despair. It then is near impossible to have your strength come from the same source that is causing you so much sadness. So how do we maintain hope? Gramsci writes while being a political prisoner: “To maintain the pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.” This optimism is more likely obtained if you believe in a moral code, an all-benevolent Being of truth and justice; not in the sense that you will be rewarded but that you are not alone in your fights and tribulations. It is the one that Thoreau wrote upon and Martin Luther King drew on in their works of civil disobedience. There is a "higher law" that decides whether man-made laws are just or unjust. There is a force greater than you, than this world that is on your side. In this comfort lies hope.

"And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." 1 Corinthians 13:2.

Anxiety Ridden Chinese

The Chinese are the most anxious people I know.

Why?

I hypothesize that it results from combining the worsts of capitalism and communism, with historical ties. Currently, China's economy is capitalist with no safety nets. Its politics are communist with no other parties or elections allowed. Chinese experience the "capitalist anxiety" where they focus on wealth accumulation and live in fear of anything that could wrong, taking wealth away. They also experience the "communist anxiety", always wondering if what they have accumulated will be nationalized.

The "communist anxiety" is a remnant from the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) where landlords were overthrown and all the country's land were collectivized. That Revolution morphed into State control of everything, where one's life was not her own choosing. For example, nearly everyone with a high school degree were sent to countrysides to be 'reeducated and reformed'. Merit-based education was banned throughout the country, taken over by propaganda-based education. In the countryside, it was illegal to raise your own chickens because they were not collective property. In 2009's market economy, where everything (economically, not politically) is to your own choosing, there is no wonder that people are so anxious to safeguard possessions against anything that might happen.

Here, my Marxist friend counters that it's not anxiety I'm describing, but materialism. People can choose non-materialistic pursuits. Yes, but choosing a path that is not the one that everyone else is doing requires critical thinking: the exact thing oppressed in schools and society. Seeing their hold on power cannot be sustained from isolation like North Korea's, the Chinese communist government opened its doors to capitalism in order to draw people's attention to material gains rather than rights and freedoms. With people focused on getting Mercedes, they have no interest in participating in social movements. Hence while it is possible to critically examine one's life in spite of hegemony, it is very, very hard.

On top of these historical, economic, political, social conditions, add in a long-standing culture valuing achievement and work ethic, and the Chinese become the most anxious peoples.

There is a deep psychological price to be paid in being the 'Economic Miracle' and 'Model Minority'.

The Nowhere (wo)man

Before Jane points out (rightly so) the bad attitude of the last post and how feeling at home is a choice rather than a pie that drops from the sky, I'm going to re-adjust that attitude myself after having vented.

I had a chance to catch up with my development/activist friends who have returned from similar year-stays/soul-searchings in Latin America, Asia, Africa. The consensus is that it'd take them a lifetime to assimilate into another culture: precondition for enacting change, and there is so much to done in the States. Hence they are going back to their most familiar, childhood communities to make change there. I agree. But I have no such moral sphere of influence. My childhood was spent in a half dozen communities: communist in Beijing, capitalist in Hong Kong, Muslim in Singapore, intellectual in Pennsylvania, WASP in Ohio... I felt no more tied to one than I did another. I have to now seek/make my own community not because that is the most effective way towards change, but because I now want to.

Pico Iyer described himself as "The Nowhere Man": an Indian who lived in America and attended boarding school in England. He savors being an Indian in Cuba, an American in Thailand, an Englishman in New York. I too feel a stronger bond to humanity than I do my countrymen, ethnic group, class because those distinctions aren't so clear for me. I am as pained by Cambodia's suffering as I am by those of middle America.

This may sound like the answer to world peace. But being in the minority, it too makes us disconnected from most of humanity. We become "Seasoned experts at dispassion, we are less good at involvement. We are masters of the aerial perspective, but touching down becomes more difficult. Unable to get stirred by the raising of a flag, we are sometimes unable to see how anyone could be stirred... Being part of no society means one is accountable to no one. If single nation people can be fanatical as terrorists, we can end up ineffectual as peace keepers."
(http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=4639)

That was the Pico in 1997. I heard recently he has found a home in Kyoto. This from a man who 12 years ago considered English to be his only home. (http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/?scp=2&sq=pico%20iyer&st=cse)

The me from one year ago is also different. I too want a physical community now, but it'll be a more difficult, limitless, stressful, and exciting search than most.

Not at Home

Grove City, Ohio: the town I spent the most continuous amount of time. I disdain it.

I went to 5 elementary schools in 3 countries and 3 languages, 4 middle schools in 2 states, 1 high school in Ohio, 1 university that was much more an intellectual than a physical home. Then there was the year in Latin America, New York, Asia...

The one Christian, suburbia HS may have been the most jarring experience.

In daily Bible classes where we categorized entire books and learned how to save people from damnation, students ask:

"Mrs. Jones, Bill asked me how I know God exists. It's not like we can see God."

"Good question Sam. Pay attention class. This is a question that nonbelievers will ask you.

(How is it that we are just now talking about this Q in 9th grade?!)
You ask Bill whether he can see the wind. No, but he feels its power. It's the same as God. You feel His effects."

(Why didn't we think of this before! Let's put up a God mill so we can measure His effects!)

"Today we are going to learn how to explain that the Father, Son, Holy Spirit are One. It's best to use examples when trying to explain complicated concepts (Ok, with you so far Mrs. J). You can compare it to an egg; the shell, white, yolk are separate entities, but together they make One egg. The Trinity exists as One. "

(Hmmm...What about egg white omelets?)

"We have to spend millions to build a bigger church with an McPlace playground, food court, salon, bookstore, latest surround sound system because we are attracting people to Jesus. For people to give Christianity a chance, they need to know Christians have fun!"

(Yeah, I say fuck the Poor too.)

I went through HS thinking I was the one who was crazy. Partly because I couldn't voice these thoughts as my family had to sign a contract that we would not interfere with the school's religious teachings. But I did learn a lot of religious things, such as the difference between Christians and Catholics. My Catholic MS and Christian HS education taught me that Catholic kids compete on how anti-establishment they are:
How many girls did you lay?
How much did you sniff?
Very Mean Girls style: How manipulative can you be to the new kid?

And Christian kids compete on how pro-establishment they are:
"I went to a church event everyday this week. Did you?"
"My parents and I have been at church everyday for the past month rehearsing for the Easter play."
"I'm a pastor's kid. We live at the church!"
"Charlene, did you make it to church last week?"
4 years at a Christian school and I never once went to a service. Being judged Monday through Friday, I needed a break on Sundays.

I support Christianity now actually. It means well: to prevent conflict. But it's as Gandhi said: "I might have become a Christian if it were not for the Christians."

Back in suburbia (where they sent their kids to war and elected Bush two terms), I realized I promised myself all those years ago that this will never be my home regardless (or because of) how well I know it. I will fly transatlantic, learn a new language, adopt a new culture before I settle on the familiar in Grove City, Ohio.

How Does Chinese Work

Many have been asking me how exactly does Chinese work? Laura's explanation is the best I've seen. Be prepared to be blown away. http://eastversusmidwest.blogspot.com/2008/07/exactly-how-does-chinese-work.html

Ok, now you see how Chinese is the opposite of the romance languages, linguistically. I want to add a bit about how it is also different in spirit. English is a language of precision. We have a noun for everything! Chinese has few nouns and lots of adjectives to construct new words. In Chinese, pumpkin=south melon, watermelon=west melon, gourd=winter melon, cucumber=yellow melon...

In turn, Chinese is a language grounded in poetry. In daily conversation, people refer to poetry and literary works thousands of years old. English's precision helps us understand what the other is talking about: biscuit v cookie, bungalow v house. Chinese's wide use of references and colorful adjectives help other Chinese know exactly what the other is saying.