The following will come as a surprise to the majority of people who have come to know me. In general, it’s an admission of a personal transformation that recently took hold of me. I’ll try to keep it brief so that it isn’t a burden to read. Feel free to comment below—actually, it would be much appreciated if you would.
Starting with the end of the summer and continuing through fall quarter a shroud melancholy fell about me. It wasn’t especially severe—no more serious than the average person’s passing “down” time—but it was considerably different in outlook. That time wasn’t a time of destructive, negative thoughts for me. It was a time in which I gained a special, maybe intense, appreciation for life; the melancholy came from a sense of inability to fully appreciate life under the weight of life’s brevity.
I anticipated that my time in South America would leave a lasting impression on me. In order to fully experience and understand my time down there I took a vow of sobriety (I drank once this past quarter—the occasional glass of wine and pisco sour with dinner were exempt—and in the past seven months I’ve drank 3 times) and “chastity”—for lack of a better word.
Traveling in/through Latin America for anyone of Latin America or of Latin American descent is a shaping experience. An entire continent of unknown people with whom you share intense connections in all dimensions: history, language, culture and religion—a continent of unknown known people. It’s the perfect setting for self-discovery.
The ultimate manner in which I was personally affected was entirely unexpected. My first realization (which set off a chain reaction of realizations) was the degree to which we all suffer from simple-mindedness. When you’re transplanted from one set of people to another you realize how incredibly plain some people are. Simple-mindedness is but the root of closed-mindedness, hypocrisy, ignorance and uniformity. In the end it leads to posturing, artificial, fake people. Both liberals and conservatives share these faults; they’re equally ignorant and close-minded.
My disparagement of liberals opened me up to a new reality in which I’ve become increasingly socially conservative. No, I’m not a “sexist homophobe”—far from it. I’ve grown uncomfortable and uneasy with the tag of “Liberal” that’s all. These are but a few of the reasons: Modern society is threatening the family—the backbone of civilization. Today in our “throw-away” society everything has become disposable, automatic and replaceable—including marriage (look at our rampant divorce rates). No one sees the value of sacrifice, effort or repair anymore. There’s more weight and truth in tradition than most people are willing to admit. Lastly, women in Latin America without having to recur to abstract rejection of “patriarchy” embrace their femininity and find in it an incredible source of power and confidence—in the US it seems as if women go out of their way to imitate men.
Quite fascistically, living in a homogenous society where I knew no one but fit in perfectly was incredible and allowed for an enormous amount of introspection. In a manner of speaking, for three months I saw myself through a mirror and that mirror was Latin America. I realized lots of things, questioned my beliefs and scrapped a fair number of them. I would say I'm a lot more Latin American now—that's simplest explanation. I've become more conservative on social issues but at the end of the day my belief in social democracy has never been stronger.
I recently took an online quiz and although a caricature there is some truth in it.
Democrat 67%
Socialist 58%
Anarchist 58%
Communist 50%
Fascist 50%
Republican 33%
Green 33%
Nazi 17%
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