A Two-Week Immersion With Central America & Dismal Lessons Learned — I can’t save the world. What, then, should I do?

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Globalism, economics, politics, imperialism, colonization; in experiencing the discrepancy of core and periphery societies, what ought we do with one of world history's biggest problems?
Originally appeared on Medium.com

Introduction

The resounding note of experiencing Central America and being immersed in a culture that appears to be quite distinct from my own is that the world is vastly more interconnected, interdependent, and commonly bound than we might suppose.

Though the geographical and cultural differences are so apparently obvious — a common summation of any cross-cultural experience — there is a disturbing mutuality that weighs on perceptive eyes.

Conclusions concerning the stark differences amidst collective consciousness, however, are less decisive.

Part One — The Question Resulting From Seeing the World

In a region such as Central America, there is, at once, an austere beauty; a romanticized visualization of assumed primal simplicity and exotic landscapes.

Lake Atilan, Guatemala | Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

Rarely, however, do we recognize the overt emphasis on the grasping toward supposed modernism, industrialization, and the economic, political, and structural trappings of civilization that have vastly determined the current state of this area and demographic.

Even more rare is the acknowledgment of why such dispositions of imperialism in Central America have been so forced.

The reality is that not only is Central America rife with suffering, the complexity of the global situation is disconcertingly overwhelming.

As I heard from a variety of voices — many of whom exist at the expense of economic and political globalization — the narrative arc of the region became tangible; economic interests of powerful nation-states tend to (as they always have in history) control areas of desirable natural resources. The result is an immense loss of autonomy, culture, life, and sustainability.

Phenomenologically, having an experience such as this, forces one to now understand the world with more complexity and insight. When you see the depth of the world, not only does romanticism fade, it is now impossible to see the world the same; the experience is now added to your constructed perception of reality.

In so doing, one must ask:

What ought we do once we have seen such a stark, complicated, and dismal reality?

Longo Mai (Costa Rica) | http://www.sonador.info/en/ | (Photo: CAVU/Cole Gangaware 2009) — *Longo Mai (Costa Rica) |* http://www.sonador.info/en/ |
*(Photo: CAVU/Cole Gangaware 2009)*

The course of the experience had me meet folks like Willy — a Guatemalan who contemplates a time when Guatemala did not exist. Being a Mayan, he fought (quite literally in guerilla warfare) to help his indigenous ancestry survive. Being up against a power funded by the United States, he eventually resorted to migration making money as a chef at Whole Foods which drew him to the attempt of suicide. He eventually returned to Guatemala where he attempts to maintain the heritage and economic vitality among a country that has anything but those things.

Or, there was Ixquik Poz, a Mayan tribal leader who is actively watching her ancestral culture diminish toward extinction. Or, Longo Mai, a cooperative movement in rural Costa Rica that has attempted to provide sanctuary for people forced to migrate because of civil war and give economic opportunity to people who refuse to work in slave labor conditions for the corporate behemoths that run pineapple farms (an excruciatingly difficult labor for a product unused in that area whose prime market is, of course, the United States).

Part Two — The Hopelessness of Core & Periphery Societies

The most drastic confrontation of this kind of experience was the exposure to the disparity that is, historically, noted as core and periphery societies.

A region (usually a nation-state) accumulates a distinct amount of power through industry and military development and is able to manipulate “periphery” societies by controlling trade, resources, and technology.

An area with expansive natural resources becomes a mine for raw materials. An industrialized, “core” society is then able to turn those raw materials into processed goods that, eventually, the periphery society becomes dependent upon but cannot produce themselves. These periphery societies also tend to not have the influence or power, especially militarily, to push back against the core society.

Hearing stories of occupation, military involvement, and economic control is akin to witnessing this pattern of human existence play itself out even into our contemporary situation.

The tension of these experiences is that, by happenstance of birth, I exist (and benefit from) membership in a core society.

Being transparent, the initial response is defense; trying to justify how it might not be so black and white of an issue; how I am not the cause of the problem and, as an attempt to grasp at strawmen, maybe the problem is one of perception or misunderstanding.

However, the honest response of guilt follows.

Then a sense of helplessness.

Then a desire for upheaval and change.

Then one of uncertainty.

Again and again through the immersion, I was left contemplating if anything can be done at all. The situation, it seems, is hopeless; especially as one contemplates the unflinching consistency of this reality throughout world history.

While desiring to act according to a potential solution, I find myself nihilistically embracing that there may be no solution and, therefore, no hope. This simply is how the world is. Yet, this experience now resides within my being and, as it is now added to my mental cognition of the world, I am required to take it with me. I can ignore this information, I can justify an alternative narrative toward the information, but, alas, I now have to work with it in the mental domains of my soul.

Part Three — Package Deals & Ironic Justice

The most emphatic contemplation, therefore, came from my reflection on my social location. First, there was a dominant confrontation that my life and existence are drastically different than many living in the same world.

Second, I am forced to recognize that the socio-cultural world I know — as a core society — is vastly responsible for the discrepancy between my known world and those who call Central America home.

Third, I acknowledge that I am not only complicit in the ongoing discrepancy, but am a beneficiary of such discrepancy. In fact, my lifestyle is quite dependent on the existence of the core-periphery relationship.

What can I do with such a dissonant experience?

At current, I’ve simply resorted to accepting my place — both the socio-political construct within which I am implicated and the component of my single, limited life in the midst of it.

Yet, within the noble desire of change, I can’t help but remain convinced that this state of existence may be unchangeable.

For example, there is a special irony reserved for moments of learning about the complexity and devastation of the coffee industry and how it affects the person I was currently interacting with while drinking coffee and using a computer with high-speed internet in air conditioning.

Or, in learning about the history of the banana trade — especially of how such a crop got forced into a geographical setting for profit — while having a list of items to be later procured at a large metal building called a grocery store where the list includes, you may have guessed, bananas.

And by bananas, we, of course, mean the one genetic strain of bananas that has been cultivated because of its superior economic potential.

By not doing these things, I recognize the problems would not be solved. Me getting rid of my computer or avoiding air conditioning wouldn’t change the situation. Yet, wailing to a perceived injustice while benefitting from a model of civilization which is greatly enhanced by undermining periphery people groups is, as I said, slightly ironic.

This experience also happened to coincide with the arrival of the U.S. vice president who issued controversial statements on immigration (possibly not controversial to U.S. citizens, but it was not taken so kindly to by residents of various Central American countries).

The timing only emphasized the astounding uncertainty of how an entire nation-state can be built on the products and productive control of labor in another part of the world that has led to violent conflict and the extermination of whole tribal realities in order to maintain such control. All the while, we travelers depended on products and particular labor forces to uphold our daily agenda and lifestyle full of immense expectations and needs while interacting with those tribal realities and people groups.

I continuously reverberated with the sense that I do not want the experiences of suffering caused by such a high standard of living and affluence afforded to a very small percentage of human beings throughout history and in our current moment of time. Yet, I also desperately cling to the desire for such a lifestyle that coincidentally results in said suffering.

The label ‘hypocrite’ is, in my opinion, too simple. Rather, there is an acknowledgment of how our culture has created a standard of living that is a package deal. We can feel immensely sorry for the actions of our nation-state. We can rail against the machine of war and empire. We can even denounce the experiment of industrial capitalism and revert to Marxist language that has yet to offer any different realization of history. Yet, I do not think we would choose the other option.

Our culture made a deal that our nation-state paved the way for and continues to provide. I may respond to this immersion in Central America with the utmost hope that the world can be healed of injustice, but if pushed to choose, I cannot help but guess that our society — myself included — would choose our ease and comfort over universal flourishing.

Especially because the economic and social realities, in order to pull off such a world, would require us to look more like the stone age.

I happen to like high-speed internet and a proliferation of exquisite groceries. In fact, I don’t know that I (or most of us) would survive without the world as we luxuriously know it.

A standard of living that has reached an unknown pique in all of history exists by accumulation and control of limited resources; from electricity to capital to food. This means that the accumulation is at the expense of others and results in incumbent suffering. It’s part of the package deal.

Is there a logical possibility that we could alter the experience of world history? Of course. But the meagerness of a life that does not cause such discord would be so undesirable, so difficult, and so unfamiliar that we may not want to give ourselves an opportunity to imagine a different script.

Part Four — Small Hope Through Small Answers to Big Problems

This is the conflict that follows an immersive experience. How do I now navigate the world with this information?

I could stop buying bananas, but I know that won’t change the macrocosmic endeavor of global trade. I could rid myself of all civilized trappings and live off the land as an agrarian homesteader — but I will then no longer be able to interact with society (I use a road system to see family that is paid for by tax dollars and I subscribe to available electricity that is ultimately afforded by the existence of a nation-state which includes the necessary ailments that make such a nation-state possible. The list of the necessary elements inherent to our level of living is almost infinite). I would also then be removed from the very places I might desire to improve. How could I experience such stories and realities without transportation or the internet?

Alas, Luddite barbarism might not be the answer. It might not, at this point in history, be possible, either.

Ultimately, I have resorted to acceptance that I cannot save the world.

The first causes of these problems are too tantamount to reality and, quite honestly, I don’t think we would want a world that is supposedly “saved” (and I don’t know that there is an agreement on what that actually means).

In my utmost desperate honesty, I begin to consider that the world isn’t ending; it may already be hopelessly dead.

Yet, life continuous. What ought one pragmatically do?

Is there a mean between the trappings of progressed civilization and a non-destructive lifestyle?
Can we enjoy the benefit of dental services and highways and strawberries in December without needing a holistic development of infrastructure that requires someone else to be worse off?
Can we allow particular compromises or is the package deal of civilized progress always going to be at someone else’s expense?

Here, in these questions, I perceive the echo of the voices of wisdom obscured by the vibrations of human nature’s drift toward development and progress. I look to the land, to the trees, and to the fragile contentment that not only seems more satisfied, but more capable of producing a world worth living in.

The subversive notion of the authors of Genesis or of Diogenes or Laozi or the seemingly abhorrent call of prophets like Isaiah who appear to have believed that another world was possible; yet not without a vibrant turning around of the vehicle which has given us the impression that it has taken us so far. I hear the call of the early monastics who rooted their lives in the wilderness to defy the incompatibility of a good world with our current one. Fascinatingly, despite America’s adamance of being a Christian nation, it has been the very people of Central America that may be uncovering the frustrated message of ancient Judaism and Jesus — that this isn’t working.

That the way forward may come by looking backward.

What, then, am I to do? What does collective repentance look like amidst our dreadful wandering?

First, accepting that the state of the world won’t change all at once and that it won’t happen simply because of me. As Mishnah states, I won’t be the one to finish the work.

Second, learning to work the intercultural muscles of empathy and listening; of putting myself in a position to see the world as it is and defying my human tendency toward egocentric perception.

Third, passing this disposition to all I can — most importantly through attempts to tangibly show a different way of life.

Can I move a small community to embrace a different way of living in the world and, at least, acknowledge that a deal has been made and it might not be the best deal?

Can I start creating a world in the small place that I am that looks just a little bit different and then hand that world to the next generation to take it even further than we were able to?

Can I bring a bit of this ancient vision to the small place where I am?

I wonder, as well, what might happen if every small place of geographic proximity could bend our ear close to the voices of the world and of history, if we could look and see a different possibility of living, and if we could consider that the way things are aren’t the way things ought to be. If every remembered place would be willing and able to put our feet to the ground where we are, then the vast conglomeration of people together can do what no policy or non-profit or fad-like movement can.

Small, local places living within their means, sharing their gifts with the world, and being content amidst the universal humanhood of our shared interdependence in the story of the world.

Then, I wonder, we might have a chance.

Yet, I don’t know that we are willing to choose this. Millenia has gone by and the trajectory has not changed. What makes me think we will be any different? In fact, what makes me think I will choose any differently?

Unfortunately, the more I see of the world, the less hope I have for it. However, hopelessness turns to hope when I see a seed sprout into life or hear the chattering of birds in migration or lose myself in the laughter of children.

Hope may be, by default, small.

I can’t save the world, but I can bring a little goodness to the small place where I am and allow this overwhelming obstacle to focus my vision to what is right in front me with the small, fragile, short life that I have.

The only thing I might be able to do is to act as a small, insignificant signpost for other small, ordinary people to continue to move in a different direction.

I can put my hands in the soil and my feet on the earth.

Which might be all the hope I am able to muster.

It might also be all the hope we actually need.