I've been asked several times in the last few days why I have a hard time coming back to the U.S. from Guatemala. Here is the response I've given over the past few days.
What drives me craziest is the hyper-rationality. Everything is planned out, built up, regulated, but in ways that are over done. So you have incredible wealth, buildings, cleanliness, but it papers over the reality of poor people, hunger, and a stupid-ass distribution of well-being. This, in a country that has several times over what it would take to have everyone live well. I can excuse the weirdness, the tragedy of Latin America paired with the incredible beauty, because when things are bad, you expect that kind of a swing, or a range of possible responses. But we have SOOOO damn much, and we have squandered the opportunity to make all peoples' lives better. so we have this "System" which we claim is fair, which we think "makes sense" and has to be this way, but in the end, in my opinion, is even more dehumanizing than violence and poverty.
I love the U.S., and especially the potential of the U.S., but lament what we have done with that potential, the resources, and our lack of understanding of how our country is connected to the fate of others. I do not hate America, but I am fantastically disappointed in what we have done with what we have, and the fact that we see this as being the only way in which life can be lived. so my returns are jarring, they render me judgmental when I don't mean to be, they remind me of my complicity in a system which is responsible for giving me the luxury to contemplate my complicity.
Thus, as I say, there is more that doesn't make sense to me in the U.S., than in Latin America. I can't blame things for being bizarre in Guate. Here, we have no excuse, except for greed and being too lazy to consider the needs of others.
Okay. you asked. off the soap box.
1 comment:
Thank you for writing this blog post.
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