Co-creation

This trip has its roots in tragedy.

During the spring of 2006, my mother and I drove to the Mississippi coast to help with the refurbishing of people’s homes that had been flooded by the hurricane. It was a moving experience for me. My own personal needs dissipated and all that remained was action for the benefit of a community. But there was something odd for me about all of us Americans who painted walls and pulled down ruined drywall and raked leaves that week for middle class strangers in the south. The last time I had gone on a mission such as that one was in Honduras in ’98. The people were so poor that I did not even understand them, or myself among them. They were overjoyed at toothbrushes, and accepted a pittance for beautiful giant handmade wicker baskets and were grateful as we pulled their rotten teeth out and gave them acetaminophen for their headaches. In Biloxi, Mississippi, I was reminded of the struggles of the South.

Here’s the surface list of goals I have for this trip for those in a rush:
1) I want to become comfortable speaking Spanish.
2) I want to travel among the peoples of Central and South America via bus and boat rather than over them in an airplane.
3) I want to report on the under reported political events taking place currently in Paraguay.

So why Paraguay and why not just hop on an airplane and what is the purpose of all this? Am I not just avoiding my true responsibilities and dreams back home, or am I just a spoiled kid who doesn’t know how to properly take care of himself, or am I just on a massive messianic ego trip as I think that this travelling has any real purpose other than self-pleasure? These are considerations that I cannot refute outright, as I believe they do play parts, albeit negatively, in creating my image and identity.

I want to have a good home in my home of Michigan, and a good companion, and children if God is kind enough to bless me with them. I want to help build a healthy community that is fully aware of itself and its place in the world. I want to contribute to that community by doing or making something that is valuable, and is something that I enjoy. These desires are not so strange.

But sometimes drastic times, and drastic tragedy, call for drastic measures.
“I’ve put this off for far too long,” said Bilbo under his breath to Gandolf.

I have habits that I need to confront, quite personal ones, but I also wish to challenge my loved ones and my nation to confront habits of their own.

What does traveling to Paraguay have to do with habituation?

Habits are not substantially different from addictions in that they are both actions performed repeatedly without awareness. By awareness, I am not just referring to our ability to analytically describe a sequence of events, but rather total-human-awareness, of our relationship to our loved ones, our global family and environment, our ancestors, and also our children. In this understanding, habit/addiction could be anything from tapping one’s foot all the time, or driving in a car every day, or shooting heroine.

I think that as a society we have isolated addiction to include only specific behaviors that we find detestable and particularly difficult to deal with. Perhaps this isolation has occurred so as to limit our collective responsibility for each other: there’s us, the non-addicted, and there’s you, the addicted. Psychologists and pharmaceutical companies would certainly find this isolation in their best monetary interests. But a broader, interdependent-based understanding of addiction could teach us to come to terms with all types of character and community flaws.

Psychologists say that people have to want to change in order to change. My mother once told me that no one can force a person to become angry. The Vatican “Magisterium,” the collective ideological government of the Catholic Faith, is famous for maintaining that individual repentance and a personal relationship with Jesus, and certainly not political movements, are the only forces available for worldwide transcendence and salvation. In America, rugged individualistic willpower is the ideal force that we are encouraged to find in ourselves and that we are encouraged to grow in others.

None of these ideas are honest with themselves. They are philosophical snakes that swallow their own tail while believing that that tail belongs to someone else.

Why do psychologists explore people’s personal histories if personal motivation is the primary influence on behavior? Why does the Vatican distribute a dogmatic catechism to its billion plus member collective if individual repentance is the only path to salvation? My response to my Mother’s “You are solely responsible for your own anger” was to strike her mockingly on the back of the head, to which she replied with a slightly angry voice, “Ow, what’d you do that for?!?” Who was more responsible for her anger? Why do companies pay so much money for advertisements if everyone says they don’t pay attention to them? And why do we attempt to persuade others if we truly believe that free will always trumps outside influence?

Each of us is a negotiation between our own willpower and the outside forces that influence us. We’re co-creators of each other...not entirely responsible for the other's behavior, but not completely off the hook, either.

We have free choice and we also have things that we cannot control, even within our own minds, and sometimes even when we believe we are acting freely. This is not a new or radical idea, and on the surface, it is even a boring idea because it is so obvious. In the sine wave of life, freedom and influence play a game of catch with each other. How does it help us if we take sides over which action is more important, the catch or the throw?
But we are heavily invested in so many different varieties of our identities, our perceptions of who we are and how the world works. Out attachments to the specifics of which parts of our minds and our world are free, and which parts are not free, our habits of perception if you will…they are not so boring, and they are quite often tragic. I am a good or bad or happy or sad person, this is a free or an oppressed nation, I am an addict or a non-addict, etc. Perhaps the Judeo-Christian encouragement that we are fallen creatures is not intended to convince us that we are bad creatures, but that only through climbing can we become fully aware of who we are.

In this context, I travel overland to Asúncion, Paraguay.

My primary goal is to confront my personal, community, and national co-created habits. Specifically, intoxication, inattention, and non-confidence are the habits which most negatively affect my individual character, while convenience, avoidance, anger, and isolation are the negative habits I see in both me and the communities in which I live.

Travel is the exercise that can help me transform flabby muscles of habit into strong muscles of awareness. Like physical exercise, the discomfort of travel should shock me, and hopefully us, into growth.

I will be participating in cultures as much as possible between Michigan and my final destination in ways that are profoundly different than if I were to fly above them. The underclasses of the South are authentic in many ways that we are not. They live closer to death, because they choose to, but also because we encourage them to. I hear that the elites of Nicaragua eat at Kentucky Friend Chicken in order to distinguish themselves from the poor. But they also have true markets where the negotiation between buyer and seller is not divided by algorithms, marketing campaigns, and stock brokers.

My overland travel is also a form of status-quo disobedience, a protest against and communication about the negative social and environmental consequences of elite forms of consumption. When we separate ourselves from others in our daily lives from specific segments of our human family because we find them uncomfortable, we are setting up boundaries of non-awareness and distrust that inevitably lead to non-understanding, anger, and pain. When we refuse to even consider environmental consequences of particular actions because we cannot even fathom living without a particular convenience, then it becomes time for radical action to shed some light on our lack of awareness.

Learning Spanish is a personal goal I have for this trip because of how it will help me practically to communicate with others, but also because I believe it is a discipline that can help me confront my cat-like attention span can help transform my ability to listen. It is so hard for me, and it is so different from other forms of learning I am used to. My entire self, not just my intellect, must become concentration when I listen to others in a language which is not yet my own.

Paraguay became my final geographical destination after Fernando Lugo was elected President of that country last Spring. He was inaugurated on August 15 of this year. The political party he brings with him replaces the Colorado Party who was in control of Paraguay for 61 years, formerly the longest single active party consolidation of power on the planet. It was also the first democratic transition of party power in the history of that country.

Lugo is a former Catholic Bishop, nicknamed “The Bishop of the Poor,” who is has studied and promotes Liberation Theology. This is a viewpoint of Catholicism that originated in Latin America which supports collective and political action, in addition to personal individual faith, to more fully realize the teachings of Jesus Christ. Liberation Theology has a particular focus on Latin American poor, and recognizes the social and economic structures, even within Christianity itself, that have historically lead to oppression of their physical, social, and spiritual health. Pope John Paul II and his top-advisor-now-Pope Benedict were in the past been ardent discouragers of this form of theology, but there are some indications that the current Vatican Magisterium is willing to find at least some common ground with those who support it.

My intuition tells me that Lugo’s election is a unique opportunity for his country and for the rest of the world as well. I hope to observe and learn about his new government, and to present those observations to the rest of the world for their consideration.

How far should one go in the attempt to change one’s self and to influence others? Learning and teaching are both gambles: it is possible that effort given will have no affect, or could even backfire and have opposite affects. I am taking a gamble with this trip. I am risking my money, my time, my reputation, and perhaps even my life in order to learn, and in order to teach.

I challenge you to take part in this gamble with me. I challenge you to see the ambiguity in your lives and be comfortable with it. You are beautiful, and you are ugly, you are intelligent, and you are an idiot, so get used to it! I challenge you to become honestly aware of all that motivates you, both small and great, and envelop that awareness with the understanding that most people are probably trying to do the best they can, just like you are. I challenge you to listen closely to those who are your ideological enemies, and to hold the anger that you may find in that listening like a mother holds her wailing baby in her arms.

My teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says that the smelliest compost produces the most beautiful roses. I think then that our strongest habits, our greatest tragedies, once transformed, could become our greatest strengths both for ourselves and for others.

One last thing. I think that perhaps one single addiction, one thing that we do repeatedly that is beyond our awareness, is okay, healthy, and even essential. Descarte’s addiction was “I think, therefore I am.” He put it in writing, put lots of wordy defenses around it, and his understanding was transformed from awareness into faith. But that’s just too analytical for me and is unable to grip my entire being. Many the world over recognize a supreme being, often referred to as “he” in ancient texts. Some, like the Buddhists, have faith in ancient methods rather than personified icons, some to a humanist “we should be good to each other,” and others to a refutation of one or all of these. My personal faith that I will never give up, that I will never lose, is “love can grow.” Call me a blasphemist Catholic, but this is my understanding of God. Feel free to share it!