Reflections

An Unlikely Discussion About Bodily Remains

Posted on by Laughingnomad

This is actually kind of funny…

My husband wrote me and our three sons an email the other day telling us what he wants done with his body if something happens to him in Thailand…where he lives…where he has regular bouts of road rage…while driving…or dodging threatening cars while on his motorbike. I have to admit, drivers are worse in Thailand than they are in Mexico and that is saying something!

My husband:

I just stumbled onto a site re USA embassy procedure for a death of a US citizen in Thailand. The embassy makes an effort to notify the next of kin, coordinates wishes re transfer of the remains, organizes and disperses the personal property and forwards all the official necessary documents.

Not always a palatable subject but I do have some preferences: -no need to transfer any remains — arrange for a cremation in Thailand, ashes left under a tree anywhere.  And prefer no memorial service. – I have little personal property of any value in Thailand (beatup pickup, obsolete computers, generic TV, poorly functional gold clubs and misc shorts, T-shirts and sandals). I will arrange for local dispersal.

I am registered with the embassy and receive their periodic updates, warnings etc. It is a worthwhile feature. Statistically, most likely, I will be around for a while. But an accident –esp with my motorbike riding is always a possibility so when I saw what the embassy does I just wanted to express common sense wishes.

Also in Thailand the medical profession goes to inappropriate heroic measures to prolong life.  Shutting off a ventilator is apparently not an option so step in if I am incapacitated and veging inappropriately…

Not anticipating checking out anytime soon but just wanted to simplify any decision making……..

A friend recommended Effexor for road rage but received no comment…:))

Son number 1 who lives in Las Vegas:

Ok.

As long as we’re on the topic.

My preferences.

I want to be buried in the middle pasture at Black Butte Ranch. I’ve often thought about this. It’s the happiest and most serene and most beautiful place I can ever remember.

I dont care if it’s my whole body, but I think the BB folks would NOT be cool with something like this (full burial in public w/o permission with guests passing by with frowning faces) so it will probably have to be clandestine. So that means cremation and then plunk me under a cow pie somewhere while no one else is aware of whats going on.

Im serious. I dont want a headstone. I dont want to be in some no name cemetery.

As far as my belongings, I dont care about any of it. Disperse it, share it, trash it. It wont matter to me. My estate attorney, he’ll help with all that.

Ok. Got it? Black Butte Ranch. Cremated. Buried in the pasture, maybe a couple meters off the bike path that cuts across it. NO sign or maker. I just want to be where I can see the sisters, Mt Washington and Jeff.

K?

Got it?

Good. Im not kidding.

Afterward, hike up Black Butte, stand at the top breath the clean eastern oregon air and think, “it’s good to be alive and not under a cow pie!”

You dont all have to be there, but at least got to be one of you otherwise it wont happen.

(My day is coming, just like everyone else’s)

Then son number 2 who is married to a Thai wife and lives in Thailand:

creamate me, add the ashes to soil, grow a pot plant and my friends can smoke me.

Not a peep from son number 3 who lives in Hong Kong…yet…:))

I told my husband that in Mexico, where I am, any unclaimed bodies are cremated…no charge! :)) Of course all this is predicated on at least one of us being around to honor various wishes.:))

But all is duly noted..and recorded here…:))  Mainly so as to not drive future genealogists crazy who would uselessly be looking for headstones.

Letter To A Mother’s Adult Children

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My thoughts after nearly 40 years of thinking about this subject and watching this 21 minute speech by Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, who challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if “we don’t always get what we want,” as the Stones sing. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned, Gilbert says.  Watch the film first, when you have time, before reading my rambling or it won’t make as much  sense… my rambling I mean. He talks fast so it took a second watching for me to “get” it all.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

Suddenly, I am realizing what the answer is to the fact that so many  people I have seen all over the world, in deepest poverty, in wretched conditions, no  choices, no expectations, with or without a faith in a religion, generally seem so happy and joyful.

I’ve always thought that disappointed expectations (which is really the desire to control our lives) is what makes us unhappy. Buddhism, as my friend Jiraporn says, says just accept…in fact all religions preach surrender.  Maybe it doesn’t matter what makes you surrender, or what you surrender to…God or the 12 steps, or the gods, or nature or the laws of the universe.  Maybe there is an inherent wisdom deep in all societies that we need to surrender to be happy and the concept of God is a “synthetic” construct to encourage this…or demand it as the case may be.

Have always felt, on an intellectual level,  that the whole concept of a God seemed artificial…not in the same sense as Marx thought…but in the sense that we know we need to surrender in the face of mystery, to the need to understand.  It may be that faith in God is just as artificial as a chemical that allows us to transcend an ordinary state of consciousness.  I think that maybe this creates the bliss we feel when we do it…the bliss during a born again experience is the same bliss we feel during meditation. For me anyway. I know. But whatever, opening the “doors of perception” and letting go at times seems to be a universal need.

At the same time, it doesn’t mean that we surrender to abusing spouses, corrupt governments or poverty.  It doesn’t mean that we surrender to ignorance.  We still will explore the universe and the laws of nature and man itself.  It is just the basic attitude in the meantime while we ponder the choices we do have to improve and move life forward. The trick is to realize what improvement means and what moves us forward and what doesn’t…politically or personally.  And the ability to feel happy in the meantime. Our Declaration of Independence guaranteed our freedom to pursue happiness.  It just didn’t tell us how. Maybe they were wise.

We practice surrender when we meditate and then it becomes a habit. Just sitting down and letting go of the stimulants of the outside world  helps us to practice surrender…maybe doesn’t matter what technique we use…a mantra, a prayer…our breath. Maybe we use faith.

Letting go of the expectation that a certain outcome will make us happy (more money, a perfect spouse) makes us feel invulnerable on the inside to life’s whims. Then  “bad” outcomes can not touch  our interior…our ability to feel happy and secure. Fear of a bad outcome makes us feel more pain than the outcome itself.

When we were counseling foreign exchange students and host families when you were in high school we told them not to judge an experience as bad or good.  It is just an experience that we learn from. We don’t allow it to knock us off our feet.  Of course that is easy to say when we are not in the middle of an event. But things always work out, I always say, not just the way we expect.

Couple more things to leave you with:

“When do you know your God is man-made?
When he hates the same people you do.”

The Two Wolves
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a
battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son,
The battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow,
regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment
inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

“The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope,
serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence,
empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute
and then asked his grandfather,
“Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

These are just my thoughts.  You get to choose.

Update:  You might like to check out the comments to this post.

Resilience

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A man sleeps every night on a wrought iron bench in the park across the street from my apartment in Oaxaca Mexico.  At 6 o’clock,  he wakes and prepares for the day. He is dressed in slacks and a sweater over a white shirt. From my veranda I watch as he meticulously folds up a big black sheet of plastic that he sleeps under…carefully shaking it out after each fold…matching the corners perfectly.  He has two small backpacks that carefully hold his belongings.  He washes his face and hands from a bottle of water and then picks up several pieces of cardboard that he sleeps on and puts them under one arm.  He puts on a pair of glasses. Then he picks up a short white “stick” and unfolds it into full length.  The tip of the walking stick is red. He walks down the street toward LLano Park.   I wonder, what does a blind man do for work in Mexico…”

These stories, as Obama has said, “tell us that even in the most trying times, amid the most difficult circumstances, there is a generosity, a resilience, a decency, and a determination that perseveres…”

Their resolve is our inspiration.

Deconstructing A Childhood Religion

Posted on by Laughingnomad

This documentary shows how a “modern” articulate and caring non-practicing Muslim woman tries to come to terms with her childhood religion.  I could have substituted myself in the film, with the exception of the catalyst of 9/11, replacing the word “Islam” with the word “Catholic.”  Do we ever have a free choice of religion as an adult when we have had religion inculcated in us as a child by loving nurturing grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and the culture around us?   Where does religion stop and personhood begin. Or do they become one and the same?  Are we ever “there” in our personal “jihad” or struggle to know who we are.  What is our truth which is neither an overreactive denial of nor a blind identification with…our childhood religion?

Thoughts After Guatemala

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Who are we really?

One of the reasons I like indigenous people is the humility with which they harmonize with their surroundings and environments…but progress and modernity upset this natural equilibrium.  Which is what I think we are witnessing in the world today. Have just finished  Martin Prechtel’s (half native American from New Mexico who became a shaman in a Mayan village in Guatemala. And just started reading Bernard Lewis’s last book “What Went Wrong?” The clash between Islam and modernity in the middle east.  But that’s another conversation.

In the most remote Mayan mountain village we visited, at 13,000 feet and 7 hours from the nearest city, I met a man, looking like he was in his 40’s and dressed norteno (brown leather jacket and levis) who had spent the last 9 years working all over the States.  He was hungry for conversation. I looked at the villagers and at him, seeming so out of place, but knowing he was still essentially Mayan, and  wondered how he feels about his place in his village now.  I wondered about the younger ones too…having abandoned the traditional dress and the huipiles worn now only by the old women…huipiles that soon will only be seen in museums.

We all think about identity and the essential questions.  There are no black and white answers. Martin Prechtel was the son of a Canadian indigenous woman who taught on their Pueblo reservation in New Mexico and a Swiss paleontologist.  He felt lost but found a place and his identity in a traditional Mayan community. Then Guatemala’s generals (with the help of powerful interests including the United States) declared a brutal war on it’s own people that lasted for years and years until Prechtel’s village became paved over with tourists and false incantations for a fee.  Prechtel carried the “Village Heart” back to the “land of the dead” and wrote three books at the request of his Mayan shaman teacher who could see that the traditional world view was being destroyed from without…due to the encroachment of Christianity in cahoots with big business and progress…and guns.

“Shamans say the Village Heart can grow a brand new World House if it is well-dressed in the layered clothing of each indigenous soul’s magic sound,  ancestral songs and indigenous ingenuity. The wrecked landscape of our World House could sprout a renewed world, but a new language has to be found.  We can’t make the old world come alive again, but from it’s old seeds, the next layer could sprout.  This new language would have to grow from the indigenous hearts we all have hidden [within us.]”

Martin Prechtel, writer, teacher, speaker, musician and healer,  in “Secrets Of The Talking Jaguar.”

Study Finds Happiness Is Contageous

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A study of the relationships of nearly 5,000 people tracked for decades in the Framingham Heart Study shows that good cheer spreads through social networks of nearby family, friends and neighbors.

By Karen Kaplan
December 5, 2008
LA Times

They say misery loves company, but the same may be even more true of happiness.

In a study published online today by the British Medical Journal, scientists from Harvard University and UC San Diego showed that happiness spreads readily through social networks of family members, friends and neighbors.

 

  • A happy Universe

Knowing someone who is happy makes you 15.3% more likely to be happy yourself, the study found. A happy friend of a friend increases your odds of happiness by 9.8%, and even your neighbor’s sister’s friend can give you a 5.6% boost.

“Your emotional state depends not just on actions and choices that you make, but also on actions and choices of other people, many of which you don’t even know,” said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and medical sociologist at Harvard who co-wrote the study.

The research is part of a growing trend to measure well-being as a crucial component of public health. Scientists have documented that people who describe themselves as happy are likely to live longer, even if they have a chronic illness.

The new study “has serious implications for our understanding of the determinants of health and for the design of policies and interventions,” wrote psychologist Andrew Steptoe of University College London and epidemiologist Ana Diez Roux of the University of Michigan in an accompanying editorial. Read More

Making The Inward Turn

Posted on by Laughingnomad

When one stops moving…constantly having one’s awareness being drawn outward when traveling…integration begins… and reflection.

I have been home since the middle of June after six months in Asia…losing myself in the mundane and thoughtless but pleasurable duties of house and home.  Pruning, raking, repairing, having things repaired and replaced, banking, filing, web surfing, visiting old friends…my son, home from Thailand for a month…for company.  But I have rented the house again and will be on my way again in November for Oaxaca, Guatemala and onward through Central and South America.  Then back to the wonderful northwest I call home…the best of all worlds I have seen so far. And in the fall onward to the Balkans and then Asia again where two of my sons live. But my feelings are conflicted…giving up this comfort.  It has taken three months this time for return culture shock to abate…and my nervous system…indeed my brain…to start operating again.

In talking about the current political climate a friend  got my wheels turning.  She mentioned transmutation.  And the masses.  For some reason I am thinking strongly of Marshall McLuhan (The Medium is the Message.)

this from wiki:
The slogan, “the medium is the message”, may be better understood in light of Bernard Lonergan’s further articulation of related ideas: at the empirical level of consciousness, the medium is the message, whereas at the intelligent and rational levels of consciousness, the content is the message. This sentence uses Lonergan’s terminology from Insight: A Study of Human Understanding to clarify the meaning of McLuhan’s statement that “the medium is the message”; McLuhan read this when it was first published in 1957 and found “much sense” in it — in his letter of September 21, 1957, to his former student and friend, Walter J. Ong, S.J., McLuhan says, “Find much sense in Bern. Lonergan’s Insight” (Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987: 251). Lonergan’s Insight is an extended guide to “making the inward turn”: attending ever more carefully to one’s own consciousness, reflecting on it ever more carefully, and monitoring one’s articulations ever more carefully. When McLuhan declares that he is more interested in percepts than concepts, he is declaring in effect that he is more interested in what Lonergan refers to as the empirical level of consciousness than in what Lonergan refers to as the intelligent level of consciousness in which concepts are formed, which Lonergan distinguishes from the rational level of consciousness in which the adequacy of concepts and of predications is adjudicated. This inward turn to attending to percepts and to the cultural conditioning of the empirical level of consciousness through the effect of communication media sets him apart from more outward-oriented studies of sociological influences and the outward presentation of self

As I read this, I realize how deeply affected I was by my Jesuit education. Unfortunately, I am afraid that this time it has not worked to our advantage. In an interview a few years ago of Paul Newman, RIP,  Larry King asked how many good scripts came across his desk every year.  Paul sighed and replied: whereas there used to be 3-5 a year, now maybe there is one.  Larry asked why.  I think because they are all shooting for the lowest common denominator, he said.

There is a wonderful story on wiki about the title of McLuhan’s book:

According to McLuhan biographer W. Terrence Gordon, “by the time it appeared in 1967, McLuhan no doubt recognized that his original saying had become a cliché and welcomed the opportunity to throw it back on the compost heap of language to recycle and revitalize it. But the new title is more than McLuhan indulging his insatiable taste for puns, more than a clever fusion of self-mockery and self-rescue — the subtitle is ‘An Inventory of Effects,’ underscoring the lesson compressed into the original saying.” (Gordon, p. 175.) However, the FAQ section [1] on the website maintained by McLuhan’s estate says that this interpretation is incomplete and makes its own leap of logic as to why McLuhan left it as is. “Why is the title of the book The Medium is the Massage and not The Medium is the Message? Actually, the title was a mistake. When the book came back from the typesetter’s, it had on the cover ‘Massage’ as it still does. The title was supposed to have read The Medium is the Message but the typesetter had made an error. When McLuhan saw the typo he exclaimed, ‘Leave it alone! It’s great, and right on target!’ Now there are possible four readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: Message and Mess Age, Massage and Mass Age.”

Speaking of.

Finally…a non-threatening younger woman in high places. (sarcasm) Has anyone ever commented on Madeleine Albright’s clothes?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/26/AR2008092600859.html?wpisrc=newsletter

In contrast, I was particularly struck when Obama got out of that black limousine  in dark glasses and expensive dark suit, and walked with that confident Harvard stride to get on the plane for Biloxi Mississippi. There was something subliminally appealing (to me) with his clothes bag casually slung over his shoulder…hanging onto it with two fingers. Cosmopolitan.  But not Everyman. That shot will forever stick in my mind.

You Know You Are A Traveller When…

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Found a great thread on a Bootsnall Forum so I picked out the ones I could relate to and added some of my own.

You know you are a traveller when:

you spell traveller with two l’s. (Every other English speaker in the world uses the British spelling.)

you know what a “gap year” is. (Year between uni (university) and career in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.)

you smile silly to strangers back home and want to know where they come from

you rehearse what to say before going into the post office at home, then realize that they speak English there

you actually don’t mind Nescafe coffee anymore

your friends email, and the opening line is, “Where are you now?”

you are home from Mexico long enough to remember you can put the toilet paper in the toilet…and then you go to Asia…

going into a McDonalds means a clean bathroom and a sit-down toilet

you carry toilet paper with you at all times no matter where you are.

you have “toilet money” in your pocket just in case.

You’ve mastered ‘the squat’ and the bucket of cold water in the bathroom

the idea of a bathroom in your own private room makes you feel like you’re in the lap of luxury.

you prefer to crash on somebody’s floor or stay in a Motel 6 even if you could stay in a 15 star hotel because that’s “just not you.”

you feel guilty about 3 quick showers a day in 95 percent humidity in Asia when all you hear on the TV is news about the lack of food and water all over the world

someone asks what your favorite country is and your mind goes blank.

your conversations with friends include “when i was in…” or “oh yeah, that happened to me in……” and then the veil comes down over the eyes.

You have to fight the urge to say ‘Sawadee Kap’, or ‘Gracias’ to store clerks when you’re back home.

your backpack never quite seems to make it back into the closet

you wake up in the morning and have to remember where you are

you think a packaged tour is not travelling!

processed cheese and crackers from 7-11 sounds like a great meal especially after two months in China

you feel at home everywhere… but you feel like an alien in your own town

you catch yourself flipping your underwear inside out because you have run out of clean clothes

you can’t figure out how much something really costs without thinking about the exchange rate

you can’t figure out which way to look when you cross the street

you walk in the street at home forgetting you don’t have to watch out for the cracks, holes, telephone poles, phone booths, hanging electric wires or motorcycles on the sidewalks

you are at a party where people are listing off their accomplishments and you’re mentally listing off viruses you’ve survived, cities you’ve gotten lost in, and families you’ve lived with

a hotel (or hostel) room over 20 dollars makes you wince

When you have over US$200 in four different currencies in your wallet and you can’t even buy a coke during a seven hour layover in London’s Luton airport.

you have been listening to non-native English speakers speak marginal English for so long that you start making the same sentence structure errors and then return home and can’t switch back…”what we do today?” or “where you go?”

going days at a time with out hearing English spoken and you begin to forget English words

you return home and remember your life is not on the line anymore in taxis, tuk tuks, sangtaews , trucks, minivans with crazy drivers.

but you return home and driving a car yourself seems terrifying

you won’t eat Uncle Ben’s rice because it doesn’t stick together.

You have more guidebooks than pairs of pants.

You go to a chain restaurant at home and you still feel like a sell-out for not finding a good local place to eat.

you tell someone where you are going next and their response is, “are you nuts?” And you take this as confirmation of a well-made destination choice.

you hear the word “visa” and you don’t even think about credit cards.

your “home” is occupied by people other than you and all your worldy possessions fit into your spare room

you hear people back home tell you that they just spent 45 dollars on getting their nails done and all you can think of is how many nights in a South American hostel that could get you

you find it normal to go out alone

you can’t understand why everybody isn’t travelling

TV news at home is frustrating because of the lack of global input.

you come home from a long journey and people ask “Were you able to find yourself?” And you say, “Yeah, and I think I left it there. I need to go back.”

you eschew shiny new luggage with wheels in favor of your ten-year-old pack which carries the scuffs and dirt of three continents and which you have lovingly repaired by hand.

You look at the clock and think, ‘In Kathmandu, it’s midnight’.

you can finally understand all other English accents…Oz, Kiwi, British, Singapore etc.

you stumble off your flight to the airport McDonalds, and the value meal is the most expensive meal you’ve had in weeks

buying a full-sized bottle of shampoo/toothpaste/etc feels like a “long-term investment.”

you forget you don’t have to brush your teeth using bottled water.

It no longer makes any difference to your body when you wake up or when you go to bed

you know what time is being referred to when the ticket reads “2330”

you spend X amount of money on something (like $550 to fix your air conditioner, let’s say) and think, “Aw man, that’s enough money for a plane ticket to ___________”

you use web sites like Bootsnall, couchsurfing and rideshare and when you explain these to friends they think you are completely nuts to be meeting up with, staying with and driving with complete strangers that you talk to over the internet.

half your backpack is full of your computer, plug-ins, converters, cameras and video tapes and you only have room for two pairs of pants, three t-shirts and your toothbrush.

you hear people talk about how hard and expensive it is to travel and you think “huh?”

you feel like having a T-shirt made that says in six languages “I didn’t vote for Bush”

If anyone can think of any others it would be great if you wrote them in the “comments” section.

‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings

Speaking Of Hope

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Mexican journalist and author, Gustavo Esteva, in writing recently about the wrenching repression and resistance in Mexico and the world, draws an analogy:

    The Pot and the Vapor

In the midst of the daily struggle, an image attempting to express what has happened in Oaxaca is now circulating.

Years of fierce corruption and overflowing authoritarianism converted Oaxaca into a pressure cooker above a slow flame. [Governor]Ulises Ruiz added fuel to the fire until the pressure hurled the lid off on June 14th 2006, with the repression of a teachers sit-in. APPO [Popular Assembly] articulated the discontent brewing inside the pot and converted it into transformative action. The ferocity of the federal forces put a new heavy lid on top of Oaxaca on November 25th, but the fire continues. Small holes, that opened in the lid through people’s initiatives, alleviate the pressure, but they remain insufficient. The pressure continues to accumulate and in any moment will hurl the lid off once more. The experiences accumulated in the last year might provide ways to let the pressure escape in a more organized way, but nobody can foresee what will happen. There are too many forces at odds with each other.

Another metaphor can contribute to an understanding of what is coming. More than 35 years ago, in the final pages of La revolución interrumpida, Adolfo Gilly quoted some phrases from Leon Trotsky: “Without leading organizations, the masses’ energy will dissipate, like vapor not contained by a boiler. But be that as it may, what propels the movement is not the boiler nor the piston, but the vapor.”

What is this “real material, invisible and indefinable” that Trotsky calls “the masses’ energy” and compares with “vapor?” In contrast to this, adds Gilly, that material has “sense, understanding, and reason and because of this does not dissipate, like vapor, but endures transmuted in experience, invisible for those that believe that the movement resides in the piston and the boiler (in other words, in the organizational apparatuses), but existing in unexpected subsequent aspects of daily life.”

Oaxaca is still “at full steam”. Part of what was generated in 2006 has condensed itself into an experience and transformed into a behavior: it is in the daily attitudes of many people, who will never return to the old “normalcy.” Another portion of the “vapor” generated yesterday, or that comes up every day, propels many initiatives. And there is “vapor” that continues to accumulate, that raises the pressure and that perhaps is trying to redefine its course once it succeeds in liberating itself from everything still retaining it—which is not a boiler with a piston, but the oppressive lid of the repression that continues: political and police mechanisms blocking off the popular initiative.

The obsession to ascertain who generates that “vapor” persists, according to the prejudice that people can not take initiative themselves. It’s taken for granted that somebody, a person or a group, would be throwing rocks and hiding the hand: it would have manipulated the docile masses and would want to continue doing so. The media constructed their leaders, presenting as leaders people better adapted to the image they were creating to better prepare public opinion to the violent liquidation of the movement. The authorities did the same to organize co-optation and repression; they seem now to believe that the APPO will be paralyzed or at least disabled while those that supposedly lead the movement remain in prison. Similar attitudes have been observed in the left, inside and outside the movement. Those who think that what has happened would be inconceivable without a leading organization, now see it dissolved or weakened and want to renovate it or reconstruct it. Or else, when the absence of real leaders of the APPO is recognized, everything is transferred to the past: that deficiency would have provoked the evaporation of the spontaneous popular outbreak. The popular energy would have dissipated, like vapor not contained in a boiler.

When the question is not about seizing the State apparatuses, but about changing the social reality, the vapor, which continually condenses in experience, operates in its dissipation, spilling itself onto reality. Occasionally adapting itself in boilers and the pistons generated by the vapor itself and used for certain tasks, the vapor can not be contained in “organized apparatuses” nor be driven by “leading organizations”. For those apparatuses and organizations to be relevant and play a role, they should renounce the pyramidal structure, when a web is needed, and they must learn to lead by obeying. Furthermore, they should operate on an appropriate scale, adapting themselves continually to conditions and styles of the real men and women that are always the vapor, the impulse, and those finally determining course and reach of the whole movement.

Mechanical metaphors always fall short of the richness of real social processes. But the pot and the vapor are useful images to observe the complex present situation, in Oaxaca and greater Mexico, when what is most important seems to be invisible.

Then he has this to say about hope:

More than 30 years ago, Ivan Illich observed that, “The Promethean ethos has now eclipsed hope. Survival of the human race depends on its rediscovery as a social force.” [Deschooling Society, London: Marion Boyars, 1996, 105. (First published in 1972).]

In my view, there is nothing about the Zapatistas more important than their contribution to hope. Given the current situation in Oaxaca, Mexico and the world, we are still hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. In our context, hope is not the conviction that something will happen, but the conviction that something makes sense, whatever happens.

San Pablo Etla, Oaxaca Mexico January 2008

(Italics are mine. If the above reads a bit rough in places it is likely due to the best job that the translator from Spanish could do.)

Alastair Says It For Us

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A 25 year old Brit, Alastair Humphreys, spent more than four years bicycling through Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America, North America, and Asia. This is what he says he learned:

“That the world is a good place filled with nice, normal people. It’s not all filled with the terrible events we see on the news. I learned to trust more. I saw my strengths and weaknesses highlighted in the good and bad times: loneliness, self-pity, determination, an openness to get on and communicate with whatever kind of person I’m with, a stubbornness not to quit, a fear of failure. I came to really appreciate my friends, family, country, and good fortune.”