What I Learn when I Travel

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The locals, I know, exist on even less than I do. I see communities of square concrete blocks, corrugated metal roofs kept on with nothing but some rocks. The empty squares of hole-in-the-wall “windows” gape at me as I drive by. I wonder how the homes do when it rains. Electricity is rare; indoor plumbing unusual, climate control, unheard of — even in most hotels. People walk or take buses. Or don’t travel. The cost of gas for Peruvians is roughly the same as in the states — the price of gas is pegged to an international standard. But income isn’t. To own a car is a tremendous burden. The lines on people’s faces tell of lives much harder than my own. Stray dogs wander the streets; the spare energy to round them up and adopt them out or put them down — or neuter family animals that are cared for — just doesn’t exist.

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Appropriate Technology

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The Uros people survived the ravenous Incan Empire, the murderous Spanish Conquistadors, and now face the unquenchable curiosity of global tourism. Somehow, through all of that, they have maintained a largely intact community, with many customs and traditions preserved (though they lost their original language some decades ago). They face the Peruvian government and the hordes of tourists with cautious welcome while striving to improve their security and stability in ways that make sense for their culture and way of life.

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Alone, but not Lonely

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I sit by myself in a corner, my faded and stained khaki zip-offs and sneakers contrasting with the cosmopolitan decor. I imagine I’m an international food critic or writer for Lonely Planet as I listen to an audiobook and sip from a glass of Casa Silva. I am a foodie -- one of my few indulgences, other than kink and body work, that highlights my hedonism. I relish my private dinner. I don’t know that I would have enjoyed it more if I had to navigate the social complexities of sharing it with a partner. I would have -- at minimum -- worn different pants, lest I reflect shame on someone better groomed.

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A Letter from my Professor

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My main reservation about travel classes is the carbon footprint we create by our activities when we do these classes, particularly flying. My purpose of this email is not to make you feel guilty but instead to inspire you to make the most out of the footprint that we left behind by doing this trip. We have discussed many of the major anthropogenic impacts on this glorious reef system. In addition, many of you have taken other environmental studies classes from me. We know that there are many environmentally based existential threats to humanity. Based on what I have seen in the scientific literature, we can realistically expect to keep the warming of earth's surface temperature to about 3 degrees centigrade.

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The Inca will have the Last Laugh

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In Qorikancha, a temple/museum/cathedral, I learn that the Spanish built the Church of Santo Domingo over-top the Incan Temple. Two earthquakes brought part of the church down. The masonry stone and arches crumbled. In the aftermath of the quake, the foundations of the Incan temple stood prominent and proud among the rubble.

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Interviews with the Other

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I’m jaded. I’ve moved, on average, once a year for the last ten years. I’ve spent four of the last ten years living abroad. Some of the students have asked me how many countries I’ve been to and it took me more than a minute to figure it out. I’m still not sure if I’ve remembered everywhere I went in Europe. Does flying through connecting airports count?

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Lost Valley

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The corollary to urban/suburban life, at least for me, is that I find it hard to live sustainably in other ways. I must drive most places and there’s nowhere here for me to grow even a tiny fraction of what I might consume. I’m highly dependent on the grid—everything in my apartment is electric—and limited in how I might reduce my impact. The convenience of urban life is also the temptation of urban life—I am highly, highly dependent on Amazon delivery, far more than I have any reasonable need to be.

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Lost Connections: Part Two

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Part One

The second half of Lost Connections is where Johann Hari really starts to shine. It is not incidental that the pages I started to lose through wear and tear are all after page 160, when Hari starts to propose solutions to the causes of disconnection that he discusses in the first half.

Reconnect

When we medicate our moods, we're treating symptoms. We feel down, depressed, lethargic (or perhaps we can't sleep). We frame our depression, as a society, as a problem with brain chemistry. If depression was primarily a problem with unbalanced brain chemicals, then it would be possible to treat by somehow bringing those chemicals back into balance.

But depression isn't a brain problem--or at least, the amount that it is or could be a brain problem is so minute that it makes more sense to fix problems in our lives and lifestyles than it does to guzzle down meds. We are disconnected in all the ways that matter--from our own histories, from our world, from each other. To reconnect is to find a way out of depression.

Kotti: We Built This City or Reconnecting to Other People

A group of wasteland refugees huddles together in broken housing on the west side after the Berlin Wall goes up. They re-build, brick by brick, the shattered spaces still reeling from WWII. The community grows and modernizes. The wall comes down and suddenly, these wasteland remnants find themselves in the middle of the city. Prime real estate. Their rent gets raised remorselessly, year after year. Nobody even knows who owns these buildings. The poorest denizens of Berlin are being squeezed out of homes they've had for decades.

One woman posts a sign in her window that she can't pay the rent any more and that she's going to kill herself. Come collect her things.

Her community rallies around her. Sets up a blockade of the street. Mans it for two years, night and day. Conservative Turkish house wives dressed in niqābs work with blonde single moms in mini-skirts to keep the cops from dismantling their blockade.

The people of Kotti find a way to solve their problems, some of them, some of the time, just by coming together. The nuclear families that are falling apart, struggling to survive, finding themselves crushed under jackboots of a much more subtle nature, connect with their neighbors.

"Taina told me that in modern society, if you are down, you are made to 'feel it's only in your house. It's only you. Because you didn't succeed--you didn't get a job where you earn much more money. It's your fault. You are a bad father. And then suddenly, when we went on the street, a lot of people realized--hey, I'm the same! I thought I was the only one...It was what a lot of people told me too--I was feeling so lost and depressed, but now, okay...I am a fighter. I feel good. You come out of your corner crying, and you start to fight.'" (Chapter 15, p. 178, 2018).

 

 

Lost Connections: Part One

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Enter: Lost Connections, By Johann Hari.

I connect to this book. It might have been more useful to me as a manual about a year ago, or even two years ago, but chances are good that I wouldn't have had the resources--mental, physical, spiritual, environmental--to put anything into practice. Funny how that works. Tragic.

Solid read. The author wrote this book as a personal project--he shares his own experiences with the escalator of psych meds he started as a late teen. I appreciate that kind of passion in an author. He traveled all over the world, talked to experts in a variety of fields, looked at the social psychology of depression, its prevalence (or lack thereof) in different cultures. He distills his findings (which he does not claim are comprehensive) into two main sections, which I will briefly cover.

Photo taken by See.

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When Scientific Rationalism isn't Enough

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I grew up without religion. My mild curiosity in second grade led to a trip to Easter and Passover services, respectively. My parents then allowed me to go with our neighbors--Jehovah's Witnesses--to one Sunday service. When I showed danger of being converted, I wasn't allowed to attend again. There was no Hebrew School, no Bat Mitzvah until I was an adult and on Birthright. We celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah, both in a secular way (that is to say, I got a lot of presents as a kid).

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Made by Hand

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In my other blog I talk from time to time about the process of making something while engaging in all the contiguous steps needed for the entire enterprise. In the course of that linked post, I discuss all the inputs that go into the butchering and breakdown of a sheep, from rendering pieces of flesh into jerky to tanning the hide. In that process, we collect our own tanning materials and even flint knap the cutting tools we use in the butchering process.

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