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Nobody knows this is somewhere

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aconcepts
  7/11/2015 10:55 EST

In response to Locogringos "liars and thieves" post.

Caution: After you read this self examination may be required before responding.

Enjoy it while you can. Its all heading to be a mass world blur. Soon the culture blur and gender blur will take most of the intrigue out of life - just as the internet has.

Yes, everything will be easier but much less fascinating. Example - I use to travel and meet only eccentrics and adventures - those who traveled because they had to - as that was who they were. How they rolled. It was a challenge but they did it for no other reason than to fulfill their self definition. No I meet people that turn expatriation into a board game.

It's no longer much of a challenge or a need for most people. It's a choice. All the information is available online including photos!!! Wooopeee! - so the surprise, the level of discomfort and ones ability to create a comfort zone from an alien environment is so much less challenging and thusly less rewarding.

Expatriation is nothing like it used to be - and middle America, with its financial reach, who before would not risk it, that is, risk going somewhere without prior knowledge of what they may find, who wouldn't forgo the fear of the unknown, as the eccentrics and adventures did, now travel widely. Hahahaha - and I meet them all the time.

Wow I liked it much better when the eccentric and adventurer birds of a feather flocked together. They always had an opinion, were interesting and had something novel to say. Insightful, soulful. French, rather than English. Never playing the political correctness card. Now the majority of "travelers" have opinions only about visas and money transfers, and health insurance. So boring. The ugly mundane.

It's as if the eccentric and adventurers were like Timothy Leary, Howard Hughes or Owsley Stanley - now a day you get Barney Fife, Suzy Orman, or Mr. Drysdale.

As for the locals, I'll take Ellie Mae and Jed Clampet - less educated and genuine before the nuveo riche Latinos trying to be gringos. Joke. If they only new how silly they look. If they only knew keeping their simple traditional ways and agricultural ties to the land were far more valuable than the culture blur Westerns spread through the media - and through indoctrinated mid America trying to make where ever they go more like back home - thinking they know better than the "unsophisticated" locals. Those heathens - those animals!

The indoctrinated Westerners know money is better than family, they know office jobs are better than being connected to the earth agriculturally, and they know its more important to spread puritanical ways than laugh, dance and drink. That is why they leave home looking to fill their souls with something essential, yet preach only what hey have been fed between the lines - materialism. Sad contradiction of mid America indoctrination.

Rather than trying to create comfort, why don’t travelers try and change their heads instead, and see life is to be lived with risk and opinion, rather than with an illusion of safety and political correctness.

Ho humm .. back to the beautiful mundane: my coffee plantation, the flowers, old growth cypress hedges, Spanish cedar tress, the river, the workers, the butterflies, dragonflies, dogs, cats and kids. Ahh, and my Lolita. Chop wood carry water. Chop wood carry water. As faceless as a grain of sand at the beach. Nobody knows this is somewhere. How much longer can I keep it that way.

bmcb
  7/11/2015 12:02 EST

This is similar to a hipsters view on gentrification of us cities. I agree with you to some extent, I do not want to live with middle America, but increased tourism, inest mentioned and "development " will be good for the colombian people. One would hope culture is not lost/white washed along the way.

What I do is buy my house, then if it gets expensive and boring, then sell and move on. Unlike cool us cities which are finite the world is huge, and if south America goes down hill there's always Africa, which I imagine has a long way to go.

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aconcepts
  7/11/2015 12:50 EST

This is exactly what I mean:

A quote from a TED talk about addiction:

"If you have a crisis in your life, you'll notice something. It won't be your Twitter followers who come to sit with you. It won't be your Facebook friends who help you turn it round. It'll be your flesh and blood friends who you have deep face-to-face relationships with. There's a study by Bill McKibben, the environmental writer, that tells us a lot about this. He looked at the number of close friends the average American believes they can call on in a crisis. That number has been declining steadily since the 1950s. The amount of floor space an individual has in their home has been steadily increasing, and I think that's like a metaphor for the choice we've made as a culture. We've traded floorspace for friends, we've traded stuff for connections, and the result is we are one of the loneliest societies there has ever been."

So gringos come to Latin America in search of connection rather than floor space, and some limit their floor space but cannot seem to make human connections. Many just want to replicate their lifestyle in a foreign country. They don't learn Spanish and the cultural nuances of the country in which they live. The un-indoctrinated eccentrics and adventures made connection. Mid America seem incapable of making connections in a foreign land. So what is the use of expatriating without assimilating?

aconcepts
  7/11/2015 12:51 EST

A must watch for anyone interested in Western culture generally and how we view addiction specifically,

http://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2015-07-11&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_button

bigjailerman
  7/11/2015 13:32 EST

I understand what you guys are saying and I don't totally agree. I think around the world, whenever "a people" evolves or attempts to evolve to something that they feel is better or more comfortable. I believe as humans we have that drive to improve, discover explore etc. At some point it seems to go overboard on different levels.
Do you think that Colombians weren't going to construct make, better, bigger houses, use Google, travel to more accomplished countries for a better life? That is why Latin America leaves their countries to voyage out to the UK, US, Europe etc.
If we remained relatively simple, many of the accomplishments that were achieved that presently makes our lives healthier, more connected, better informed, better educated (and the list goes on) would be diminished.
I believe everything is trade off. A compromise. We all have our own internal scale, how far we will go or not to. What will we accept and what we need.

aconcepts
  7/11/2015 18:06 EST

Good and thoughtful response. "Do you think that Colombians weren't going to construct make, better, bigger houses, use Google, travel to more accomplished countries for a better life? That is why Latin America leaves their countries to voyage out to the UK, US, Europe etc."

My point is that they shouldn't. Campesinos already have what is important. And if the US is so much better why are Americans amoung the loneliest people on the planet generally speaking. BJM, are you pro indoctrination or can't you see your own indoctrination.

Westerners are indoctrinated, fed from the beginning that materialism and consumerism is priority One. And that manifest destiny crap, and the world is supposed to be like the US and if its not then lets make it that way.

Why do I meet so many Americans that want out of that culture if its a better life.

More comfortable, you mean like laying alone on your $2000 mattress with your state of the art gadgets, in a big house, a literal stucco mausoleum were you can safely wait to die? If that is what comfortable means, if it means trading an inside job for an outside job, then I'll take uncomfortable any day.

In my experience, many if not most westerners are a have-nothing-to-say bunch of winners that have lost perspective. Forgot how to live. They cry about the tiny pea under their mattress - and rather than create thought worthy content, they just opine as if their opinion was the only one that matters.

I don't see western culture and bigger is better as the answer - I see it as the problem. When people are bold enough not to blindly follow the western paradigm, then we may see people living lives of connectedness with the ground and community rather than trading that off for a home with more square footage.

Sadly the western media dopes them, keeps them thinking inside the box. Rather than being free to plant their own seeds, they now have to buy seed from Monsanto. Rather than having enough time to come to know what is best for themselves, they just hum the party line and whistle while they work their life away.

They spend their time doing what does not define them and then hit 50 or so and begin to wonder why they are unsatisfied.

That is what I see. How about you. How do you see it? Is materialism where its at? Or would you rather have more social connectedness, an relationship with the natural world such as plants and animals - or is concrete, pavement and cars, designer close and all that, is that where its at?

This is a question best asked to those over 40 who have had some time on this planet to see both sides.

I see western culture as Kardashian pathetic and pretty sad, but when you know nothing but that culture it's difficult to see what you have to give up to get you designer jeans and new car. What you have to give up is your time by doing something that does not define you, connect you to your heart. What you have to give up is your connectedness.

Not always as some Americans are connected but in my experience most are lonely.

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bmcb
  7/11/2015 20:19 EST

I don't know why this question would be best answered by someone over 40. Anyone who has left US or UK to a place with slower pace can see obvious pros and cons....ex. con - having to travel weakly to speak with claro or directv with seamingly meaningless road blocks at times. However, the pros of not going back and forth to the office, finding meaningful work, living simpler are afforded to you and I by leaving rich advanced countries to a poorer cheaper one. Most Colombians work hard long hours and do not have the luxury to debate whether to leave at 50 to find meaning.

bmcb
  7/11/2015 20:22 EST

I agree leaving to colombia is something more people should consider but will never. Many are stuck in too much consumerism, and the US could use a little less consumerism. But Colombians could use more luxury and allot of it.

bmcb
  7/11/2015 20:23 EST

I agree leaving to colombia is something more people should consider but will never. Many are stuck in too much consumerism, and the US could use a little less consumerism. But Colombians could use more luxury and allot of it.

aconcepts
  7/12/2015 11:32 EST

BJM

"I understand what you guys are saying and I don't totally agree. I think around the world, whenever "a people" evolves or attempts to evolve to something that they feel is better or more comfortable."

We all want what is best. My point is what media driven culture (like American culture) says is best - is not best at all.

Its part of what we Americans have been forced fed to belive.

Media has become our family members, Out Uncles aunts and cousins - Here in Latin America the media does not drive the culture. People do. Face to face interaction drive the culture - not all the crap/poison in the media.

American work ethnic and business is number one. We are a generous people. Unfortunately we live in a sick culture that is fed violence like rape and murder and perverted sex.

Ant enlightened person knows what you focus on id=s what you get and the US media wants us to focus on what perpetuates the media. They are completely irresponsible. The results is american think more is better and define themselves by what material goods they possess,

Many American can't even fathom that there might be a better way to define themselves beside by money.

This is nothing new in the world, however what is new is the vast number of people now holding this value.

To me, Americans, and not all Americans mond you. are a bad influence on culture. They are very poor cultural ambassadors.

The good news is that many Americans are realizing this and also realizing that they cannot cahnge the culture back home, so they are leaving it.

My point? If you leave your home and do not cure your disease before you leave home or at least shortly upon arrival, you spread it.

Do Americans that leave looking for a new cultural life actually spread their home culture?

What say you guys???

Or do you want to discuss plane tickets and internet providers???

aconcepts
  7/12/2015 11:46 EST

"Most Colombians work hard long hours and do not have the luxury to debate whether to leave at 50 to find meaning."

Maybe their culture gives them meaning.

I don't think many people go to Western countries to find meaning in their lives, They go to make money. Mexican go to the US and live 10 men to a house and send their money home so they can go back to a culture that provides meaning.

To many Americans, money is "meaning."

That is my point.

Then they find money provides a lot less meaning than they thought it would and search for meaning else where.

That is the big con, the indoctrination I speak of: that money provides meaning.

Money may provides luxury and comfort - but it does not provide meaning.

What one does with money provides meaning.

Bit if their is no culture to dictate what one should do with their money - then what is the point, besides luxury and comfort?

You live isolated in your stucco mausoleum sitting on a stack of cash,

A real nowhere man making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

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sinnombre
  7/27/2015 12:13 EST

For me , money means options , opportunities and security .

My father thinks like you .

He believes money means power. He also thinks the campesinos need to remain dirt poor to keep their customs. .

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