Yes, just back from Latin America, where I first experienced the "other" and the adventure of being an outsider, this time in Costa Rica. I will have an essay on the adventure as a whole within a week, but here I will succinctly make a few observations. First, Costa Rica is NOT Mexico or Venezuela, the two L.A. countries I know - or at least knew - best. It may be that Mexico now is much different from what I knew in the early 1980's, which in many ways I know is true from watching the Mexican soap operas. It is, now, more middle class, less traditional, and more - some will cringe when I say this - (North) American. Still, drug lords rule in the mountains and the border states, corruption is widespread at every level, and violence still reigns. Venezuela, of course, is a mess, worse than I ever knew it from the 80's and the 90's, more violent and poor, more unhappy, and more anarchic. Costa Rica cannot be described by any of the these negatives. Hard-core violence is low, power is more distributed and less corrupt, and things actually seem to run well. Very well.
This was a shock. There we witnessed the old stores of stucco painted in blue and white, the red tiled roofs, the little motorcycles, the tropical plants, the rapid-fire Spanish, but here was not the overwhelming presence of poverty, chaos and violence. Almost as a letdown, it seemed a calm place with working-class values where highways were in good repair, where garbage did not litter the streets and canyons,.where shacks did not climb up the hillsides, where erosion and foul water did not bleed out in nearly every vista. It was, instead, a land of comparative wealth, of natural beauty, of a nation that, while imperfect, had things under control, in a healthy way. It was not, then, a place for Graham Greene-style stories of violence and evil.
This first day at home, I miss the great coffee; and last night, an hour or so after our arrival in a dark, snowy, cold land, I had a shot of the best rum I have ever tasted, an elixir made in Costa Rica that almost was lost to our national security forces at the airport. With three adults going, if I had known, I would have bought the limit, but maybe it is for the best; the rum is almost TOO good.
But, to keep up my Spanish, I kept reading the novel "La Resurreccion Maya," and in that, began to look for signs of evil.
They were not hard to find. Coffee to me is a genuine drug, a legal speed that takes me to great heights and then to dark lows. I avoid it in the States, but could not resist its excellence in Costa Rica, and so for a few hours each day, I felt that I was slipping into a higher dimension, somehow separate from the common lot of humanity. But at every turn, something would bring me down. For instance, as I walked along the edge of a hotel pool, feeling superior, I suddenly stepped on black-colored bricks, which had absorbed more of the heat of a tropical sun, and so burnt my feet, making me yelp and hop like any sunburned tourist. Proud of my Spanish, I still got ripped off, either by chance or design, for 6 bucks buying coconut milk. And so on, reminding me that both my feet and my mind were made of clay.
All small-time stuff. But, as this was an eco-tour that we were on, I was reminded of the damage that evil does, not only to other humans but to our natural world. While Costa Rica has 40% of its land protected, and while they enforce environmental laws well, we were still told of the toll that greed takes. We are not talking here of poor people cutting down the forest to live - that is simply a matter of overpopulation (and, many times, of corruption that does not allow a fair distribution of wealth), but rather of beach-front properties sold to the very rich at the expense of sea turtles or small farming communities, of rare animals killed for aphrodisiac properties, or of rare timber harvested and sold on the black market. In Costa Rica, greed and planned violence have been reduced to levels that might be better than in our own nation, but still it exists.
As I talked to my son on the ride back from the airport, he mentioned the evil in this world, which made me think of the story I have been reading and of the "world in decline" that all travelogues now mention. We seem, somehow, to be in decline as a species, not in numbers but in world view. And this, somehow, has to do with evil. Not in a sociological or biological way, but in a metaphysical way. We seem, regardless of what we do, to be influenced by evil. Sometimes what discomforts us is not evil, like my walk on the black stones; but sometimes it is, like the slide towards extinction of the leather back, as the rich, often unknowingly, sit on their verandas drinking cocktails over the graves of an ancient species.
But what it is, this evil, in its fullness is beyond me. It is beyond me not only because of my limited capacities, but also because I do not wish to delve into its lair. I do not want its taint, or its smell, to distort the fragile shell of my own life. As I had to admit to my son, I do not feel strong enough to combat it, one on one. As Costa Rican progress has shown, it can be subdued with a great tribal or national effort, but it can never be banished.
Without getting too close to this core of darkness, I have come to the conclusion that it is evil that gives the world we live in its bite. When someone we are close to dies, we understand that this, what we live in, is not a joke. When we are mugged or beaten, or when populations are tortured and killed, we cannot talk of our "movie," like some pot-washed surfer dude. But it is more - it, evil, is a defining mark of our existence. If we slide outside of moral judgement, we might say that the existence of evil is the existence of opposition, something that is within us that places us in the world around us that is defined by the struggle between life and death. In this, we might say that our inner being is what defines the kind of world that we live in. We might even say that, as long as we harbor duality, we will always have impermanence - best exemplified by life and death. We might say that our existence is defined by imperfection, both within and without, which in the end is defined and felt morally as evil.
To rise above this is, then, is to rise above the very laws that define nature. While Costa Rica has done a very good thing by protecting its natural resources, we might not want to forget that earlier people defined much of nature that then was so overwhelming as the source, or home, of evil. Thus it was in many myths, and thus it was that in the Old Testament, Man was told to subdue nature. We now believe that nature is good and humans bad, but that is as human-centric as the Old Testament. It is best to seek the beauty in both nature and ourselves to keep evil at bay, but evil is something that sticks, regardless. It is, as long as we share this world, what gives our lives that bite, whether they be the bites of mosquitoes and crocodiles, the bite of bad human intentions, or the bite of death.
But, for now, I wish to go no further, but rather wish to remember the great coffee, the cloud forests, and the beaches that were as inviting as our Costa Rican hosts. FK
This was a shock. There we witnessed the old stores of stucco painted in blue and white, the red tiled roofs, the little motorcycles, the tropical plants, the rapid-fire Spanish, but here was not the overwhelming presence of poverty, chaos and violence. Almost as a letdown, it seemed a calm place with working-class values where highways were in good repair, where garbage did not litter the streets and canyons,.where shacks did not climb up the hillsides, where erosion and foul water did not bleed out in nearly every vista. It was, instead, a land of comparative wealth, of natural beauty, of a nation that, while imperfect, had things under control, in a healthy way. It was not, then, a place for Graham Greene-style stories of violence and evil.
This first day at home, I miss the great coffee; and last night, an hour or so after our arrival in a dark, snowy, cold land, I had a shot of the best rum I have ever tasted, an elixir made in Costa Rica that almost was lost to our national security forces at the airport. With three adults going, if I had known, I would have bought the limit, but maybe it is for the best; the rum is almost TOO good.
But, to keep up my Spanish, I kept reading the novel "La Resurreccion Maya," and in that, began to look for signs of evil.
They were not hard to find. Coffee to me is a genuine drug, a legal speed that takes me to great heights and then to dark lows. I avoid it in the States, but could not resist its excellence in Costa Rica, and so for a few hours each day, I felt that I was slipping into a higher dimension, somehow separate from the common lot of humanity. But at every turn, something would bring me down. For instance, as I walked along the edge of a hotel pool, feeling superior, I suddenly stepped on black-colored bricks, which had absorbed more of the heat of a tropical sun, and so burnt my feet, making me yelp and hop like any sunburned tourist. Proud of my Spanish, I still got ripped off, either by chance or design, for 6 bucks buying coconut milk. And so on, reminding me that both my feet and my mind were made of clay.
All small-time stuff. But, as this was an eco-tour that we were on, I was reminded of the damage that evil does, not only to other humans but to our natural world. While Costa Rica has 40% of its land protected, and while they enforce environmental laws well, we were still told of the toll that greed takes. We are not talking here of poor people cutting down the forest to live - that is simply a matter of overpopulation (and, many times, of corruption that does not allow a fair distribution of wealth), but rather of beach-front properties sold to the very rich at the expense of sea turtles or small farming communities, of rare animals killed for aphrodisiac properties, or of rare timber harvested and sold on the black market. In Costa Rica, greed and planned violence have been reduced to levels that might be better than in our own nation, but still it exists.
As I talked to my son on the ride back from the airport, he mentioned the evil in this world, which made me think of the story I have been reading and of the "world in decline" that all travelogues now mention. We seem, somehow, to be in decline as a species, not in numbers but in world view. And this, somehow, has to do with evil. Not in a sociological or biological way, but in a metaphysical way. We seem, regardless of what we do, to be influenced by evil. Sometimes what discomforts us is not evil, like my walk on the black stones; but sometimes it is, like the slide towards extinction of the leather back, as the rich, often unknowingly, sit on their verandas drinking cocktails over the graves of an ancient species.
But what it is, this evil, in its fullness is beyond me. It is beyond me not only because of my limited capacities, but also because I do not wish to delve into its lair. I do not want its taint, or its smell, to distort the fragile shell of my own life. As I had to admit to my son, I do not feel strong enough to combat it, one on one. As Costa Rican progress has shown, it can be subdued with a great tribal or national effort, but it can never be banished.
Without getting too close to this core of darkness, I have come to the conclusion that it is evil that gives the world we live in its bite. When someone we are close to dies, we understand that this, what we live in, is not a joke. When we are mugged or beaten, or when populations are tortured and killed, we cannot talk of our "movie," like some pot-washed surfer dude. But it is more - it, evil, is a defining mark of our existence. If we slide outside of moral judgement, we might say that the existence of evil is the existence of opposition, something that is within us that places us in the world around us that is defined by the struggle between life and death. In this, we might say that our inner being is what defines the kind of world that we live in. We might even say that, as long as we harbor duality, we will always have impermanence - best exemplified by life and death. We might say that our existence is defined by imperfection, both within and without, which in the end is defined and felt morally as evil.
To rise above this is, then, is to rise above the very laws that define nature. While Costa Rica has done a very good thing by protecting its natural resources, we might not want to forget that earlier people defined much of nature that then was so overwhelming as the source, or home, of evil. Thus it was in many myths, and thus it was that in the Old Testament, Man was told to subdue nature. We now believe that nature is good and humans bad, but that is as human-centric as the Old Testament. It is best to seek the beauty in both nature and ourselves to keep evil at bay, but evil is something that sticks, regardless. It is, as long as we share this world, what gives our lives that bite, whether they be the bites of mosquitoes and crocodiles, the bite of bad human intentions, or the bite of death.
But, for now, I wish to go no further, but rather wish to remember the great coffee, the cloud forests, and the beaches that were as inviting as our Costa Rican hosts. FK
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