Here are some thoughts on going out for a few beers in Colombia:
The other night a few mates and I went out few a few beers at my favourite bar, El Rancho. The beer is draught, which is hard to find in Colombia, and the glass sizes are 500mL or one litre, depending on what sort of mood you're in; the danger of glasses this big is that you can go out for '3 beers', and end up pissed, but the plus side is that when your boss asks you why you're not at all with it the next day you can reply: 'I have no idea why I feel like this - I went out last night, but I only had 3 beers!!!'
Anyway, the point of this post isn't to talk about glass sizes in El Rancho - it's to talk about the little kid that came around selling chips, nuts and smokes, and the thoughts that this generated.
At about 11pm, a little kid (no older than about 10) came around to our table with his tray of things for sale; I was hungry, so I bought some chips from him, and didn't give it a second thought. A few minutes later my friend Johan (a crazy bastard from the Caribbean Coast, but a top guy) asked me: 'Do you have that in Australia - little kids walking around alone, selling stuff in bars at 11 at night?' Obviously my answer was no, cause that doesn't happen in Australia, but it made me realise something that I've been aware of for a while now, but have never really expressed - I've become desensitised to extreme poverty and social injustice.
The first time that I witnessed extreme poverty was in Brazil in 2001, and it really gave me the shits; but a total of 10 months in Brazil (spread over about 3 years), and another 3 months in Colombia have meant that it is so normal for me to see such extreme poverty every day that it fails to have the impact on me that it once did. If I can become so highly desensitised to something in a total time of just over one year, then I can only imagine the level of desensitisation that must take place in the mind of a person who has lived their entire life in a country in which extreme poverty can be seen on every street corner. When you see this sort of shit every day the only way to deal with it is to accept it as normal, because if you cried a tear for every person you saw living in utter shit then you'd never put down your box of tissues. Desensitisation seems to me to be a natural defence mechanism that the human brain generates so that it can continue to function, despite the challenging circumstances that it is forced to confront. Humans have an amazing capacity for survival and self-preservation, and this sort of reaction to situations that present fundamental challenges to a person's conception of what is fair and just is an example of how we - often subconsciously - defend ourselves from the world around us.
The most dangerous result of this type of desensitisation is that it can succeed in normalising states of existence that are clear violations of fundamental human rights principles. If something becomes too normal it also eventually becomes acceptable, and the result can be a level of apathy that leads to a failure to act. I am constantly reminding myself that what I am seeing might be normal, but that doesn't mean that it's okay, and if I do nothing or say nothing then I am no better than those who actively work to maintain conditions of extreme poverty because such conditions advance their own self-interest - in fact, I am worse than they are, because I can see it, disagree with it, have the opportunity to act, and still do nothing. That is why I do things, because this situation is shit, and if nobody does anything about it then it's never going to change - somebody has to do something, so why the hell not me?
The bottom line is that these people are people. They are all humans, and the only thing that differentiates them from me is that I was lucky enough to be born into a relatively wealthy family in a rich country - one sperm the other way and I could just as easily have been born into some Colombian slum, or a Brazilian favela, or caught up in the middle of some fucked up civil war in Africa. I got lucky, and what I choose to do with that luck is a decision that only I can make...
Right, that's enough for now - Funky Colombian Monkey, when you do my archives please file this post under 'moralising and sociological bullshit' ... Haha...
