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Of
all the bullshit wisdom parroted by people who’ve traveled in Asia, the one
that makes me want to shake them violently and slap them in the face until they
start making sense is this desperately wishful idea: that the poor locals
possess a superior attitude to life that makes them happier and more content than
a (not poor) westerner. Strike the mystical gong. “They know what’s important. They
have mastered the art of living. They’re free of our petty neuroses and
material shackles. They take joy in simplicity. They don’t need the
material things we have. They’re happy because they’re poor – not like
us, always chasing the next rainbow yet never satisfied.”
Every
time a destitute Asian cracks a smile, some westerner is convinced she saw the
face of Buddha. In your country smiles are flukes; here they’re the face
of oriental genius. It can’t be, of course, that these are normal humans with
normal human pain using humor or positivity to deal with suffering, the
way we do. Or that it happens to be a naturally sunny person, a single easygoing
individual, apart from any grand collective philosophy. Or that it’s someone
just having a good day. No, no, no. Their material situation is worse, so their
spiritual one must be better. Because, y’know, the universe is balanced and
fair.
This
is the wishing away of hard truths, and such an insultingly easy mental leap:
they’re poor, and have to work hard all day every day until they die, and will
never enjoy a fraction of what I get to enjoy; but since large-scale misery does
not exist, they must be very happy. In fact, since I have more than they do
materially, let’s bestow upon them more than I have spiritually – let’s
make them geniuses. (In the process, I will become a juvenile intellectual
cliché and write off my own culture’s entire spiritual wealth as worthless.) I’m
materially wealthy, but I can’t make them that – shit, I have only enough cash for
this backpacking trip - so I’ll make them spiritually wealthy instead in order to
make the world fair.
The
world must be fair; that it is unfair is impossible. I will ignore the endless
thousands of sad, tired, angry faces I see all around me here in Thailand or
wherever. They don’t factor in. And I will ignore that they work from sunup to
sundown. Who needs time for yourself when you’re already happy? And I will
ignore the corruption and hustling and violence and drunkenness and
hair-trigger-tempers behind the obviously fake smiles. Those are statistical
deviations. And I will, of course, ignore the fake smiles, the ones so
desperate for my tourist dollar. I will imagine them as real ones, even though
I know better. I will ignore that I am traveling and free, and that they aren’t
and never will be. That’s all just noise, you see. Their world is beautiful, at
whatever cost.
But
of course liberal guilt is fake, condescending, and embarrassing. These people
feel about poverty and hardship the same way you would: badly. They deal with
it however they can, and in a variety of ways. Some smile, some don’t. Some
would kill you for ten cents, others would share their only meal with you. Just
like anywhere. I am Israeli. My country is tense. My society is tense.
We have problems that keep us up at night and make us cranky and hostile to one another. We
chase money, we’re westernized and materialistic. Yet a lot of people smile,
everywhere, every day. Not because they’re middle-eastern geniuses, but just because
it’s part of Israeli mentality. A good part. I wouldn’t recommend Israel as a master
course in the art of living, but I wouldn’t recommend a tour of Thailand
either. I would just recommend that you open your fucking eyes, be honest, take
the bad with the good, and cut the nonsense.
Alright, a final batch of photos from Chiang Mai:
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| The guard goose returns! |
5 comments:
Razi, I think that this idea is a mixture of some truths. I agree with you, but I think that some cultures that were never exposed to the west and are still hunter-gatherers DO want to keep their lifestyle - South American natives, some African tribes etc. This misleads people and they come to the conclusion that poor/wearing loincloths=happy. But yes, it is bullshit...
Agreed.
Even though I do think that at least here, in India, people tend to take it easy on things.
For example, when the train in india is 8 hours late, people just sit on the floor, open a rug, and wait.
When the train is late in Israel, people panic and you get newspaper headlines such as "a nightmare in the train station".
Living in 3rd world countries suck, for 90% of the people. But I do think that there's a healthier perspective about life in the far east.
Kfiri, that is different, and I'm glad you brought it up, because those examples are not POOR in the sense that I mean: theirs is not a money-based society in which they're the ones without it.
Eyal: there is perhaps a different perspective in the far east, not necessarily a healthy one. What you describe is stoicism or fatalism, as the case may be, which is not without its horrors. This placid acceptance of late trains, for example, is also related to the (needlessly) placid acceptance of corruption, human rights abuses, etc. IMO, it's just a *different* attitude, with its pluses and minuses.
Oh dear! I just wrote a thesis on the subject; it said it was too many characters, then the computer timed out and I lost it all. Now I don't have the patience to even try to recreate it.
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