Skepticism

I'm starting to wonder whether this trip was worth it. This type of feeling may be part of those phases that we go through reacting to our own culture when we return to it, but maybe not. You see, I've never really felt like I was a part of Canadian culture. I could identify at times with the anti-American aspects of it, until I realized that, much like the smallest-scale psychologies that make it up, a culture tends to hate in other cultures that reality which it hates most in itself. Hypocricy and the hatred of it pervade the human race from what I've seen so far.

What does this have to do with Mexico? Well, if anything significant was to be gleaned from it, from my perspective, it would only be confirmation of things already known. The thing I'm talking about in this instance is the wisdom that problems "over there" (be that across an ocean, across the US, or across our backyard fences), are rarely caused or solved entirely over there. The interconnections of our world, even before the recent acceleration in the direction of globalism, are more significant that our individualistic Western minds tend to suspect. We, and especially our corrupted ideas of the ideal or realistic way of life, reach out: at first to a known and controllable distance, but soon to a never-to-be-known and uncontrollable area do they spread, like slick gossip. Good ideas, in contrast, almost always must be consciously fought for. With that in mind, the objects of our daily fights speak volumes to our priorities. Generally, we go to work, and if our fight is anywhere, it's there--for accomplishment, efficiency, and monetary profit. When we get home, we relax, and let the media fill us with apathy (if we fought well at work) or depression (if work is fruitless, and no longer a battle). When I would hear "Affect or be affected," I used to think, "Try learning with humility instead," which should easily exceed your recommended daily intake of irony for today. Affect or be affected is an attitude that doesn't have to do with asserting oneself or being generally rebellious, but with protecting oneself from the demons of this world, and rebelling against our patterened ways of absorbing their will into ours.

"Two Countries, One World" is a pretty accurate description, I would say.

P.S. Thanks for putting up with my skeptical (looking back, pretty nonsensical) intro. It was easier to start exploring that way.