Reflections on Society Archives

Time with the Glaciers of Patagonia: Finding Humanity’s Place in Nature’s Power and Majesty

Visiting Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, I was struck by how interesting I find glaciers. They remind me of nature’s majesty and subtly. Millions of bits of snow and ice slowly pack one by one until they become a landscape-shaping force. Even through nature’s slow, subtle works, all-inspiring entities emerge. Glaciers go on to reshape the landscape around them.

Every few minutes, its mass creaks with white thunder and whole towers of ice fall into the water, demonstrating how the glacier’s powerful yet slow flow builds overtime. A glacier can seem like a static entity, but the entire walls of ice falling out of nowhere into the lake below challenge this assumption. They really flow very, very slowly as they slide down the mountains. All that pressure eventually causes the ice at the very bottom to snap off. The ear-cracking thunder removes any notion other than that these glaciers are powerful forces working their way through the valley they inhabit.

In Torres del Paine National park, I hiked within the dusty leftover basis on the retreating Grey Glacier. Glaciers move tons of earth and leave the lakes, rivers, fjords, islands, moraines, and much more in their wake. For example, massive glaciers during the Ice Age produced or reformed Long Island and most of New York City, and significantly reshaped the Eastern United States.

Seeing towering walls of ice the size of skyscrapers fall suddenly into the water, humanity’s contribution to the world looks small in comparison. Natural entities like glaciers that are bigger, bolder, and older than us emerge naturally.. We can only experience the eons of time glaciers have existed in the ways they mold the landscapes around them.

At the same time, humans have had a pretty significant impact on the glaciers. Climate change is slowly melting many glaciers around the world, piece by piece. Our decisions too can accumulate into massive impacts on the landscapes around us.

Nevertheless, this glacier is still here. No matter what humans do to it, we can never get rid of the impacts its ice has had on the landscape. Maybe this will be the route of humanity as well: slowly creep into a massive force that slowly wither as well once we reach our zenith until we dissipate out leaving an impact on the landscape around us. Specific societies will most likely go that kind of route: wither until it becomes unrecognizable as it transitions into whatever comes next.

Nature produces massive emergent forces like glaciers and humanity, and those same patterns of physics will eventually take them away. Our lives will most likely only ever be one towering column of ice in nature’s system that also eventually falls into the water below.

The Importance of Singleness

One of the most common mistakes I see US Americans making about dating is to assume they must be with someone. US society has subconsciously taught us that to live a successful life, you must have found someone, and this can cause people to rush into relationships without really examining whether that person is a good fit for them.

Someone once told me that as an adult, she had only been single for a handful of times, and that these were the worst periods in her life. The longest was a two year period after breaking up with someone before finding someone else. She lamented how bad she felt about being single. She had internalized the societal messages that you are supposed to be with someone and had assumed that during these periods of singleness that she was doing something “wrong” in need of correction. She wished she had better used these opportunities rather than spending her time immediately rushing into a relationship.

Our single periods are precisely that: opportunities. Opportunities to learn about yourself, who you are, and what makes you happy in life. When we view singleness as an issue in need of correction, we fail to learn from that time what we can.

We should be more comfortable being single. Some people might want to be single their whole lives, and that’s fine. And some people might ultimately want to be in a long-term relationship, and that is fine too. But, periods of singleness are excellent opportunities to become comfortable with who we are and what we most value in our lives. They are an asset, not a liability.

The mindset that we ought to find someone can make us do one of the worst things in a relationship: settle. By viewing not being hitched as a problem to be solved, it turns whatever potential partner in front of us to a potential “solution.” Is this person “good enough” to be someone that we can use to meet this requirement? That can produce a sense that if they check certain boxes, they are good enough to be the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with.

But, if we are fine being single, the question becomes more open and genuine: Do I enjoy spending time with this person enough to spend the rest of my life with them? If you are comfortable being single, you can always move on and continue your single life until you find someone who you do want to spend your life with.

If you need to find someone, then your threshold for what kind of things you cannot tolerate must be much lower. This can lead to people staying in relationships that are not a good fit – or even with people who mistreat them – because they feel like the psychological or social cost of leaving is that much higher. Relationships built on such a premise are also much more likely to become unhappy, have problems (like abuse, adultery, etc.), or to end in divorce later (cite).

Spending your whole life with someone is no small matter, so it should be taken lightly. And trying to force your way into a relationship only disrespects and lowers the effectiveness of the process. Ironically, the best way to take the question seriously is to make it only one option in the first place.

Dust to Dust: Tales of an Interplanetary Lawn Serviceman (A Short Story)

He had passed the interview and now had a job. His mind wondered on the rocket ship as it was speeding through space. His other colleagues weren’t really talking, so he was alone with his thoughts. He was glad to finally find work. Now he could pay his bills and afford school for his daughter.

He was an Interplanetary Lawn Serviceman. Or, that was the job title they had given them. Some wealthier person in her nice home on a distant planet had hired them to cut her lawn and trim her hedges. Why did she need to fly them several millions of kilometers away just to do that? He didn’t really care enough to think about that. He was just glad he was going to get a paycheck.

As they entered the planet’s atmosphere, he was struck by how large its sun was from here. This planet must have had a much closer orbit than his. He had never seen anything like it. It covered the three quarters of the sky in a big radiating ball of yellow.

They landed on the surface and prepared to dock. He immediately felt the heat. Covered in a thick suit, the several thousand degrees only felt like a 100 or 110 F (40s in C), like he was sitting on a tanning bed, but that was still very hot for his body.

In front of him was a large home. It looked like all the others he’d expect from the suburbs of hiis home planet. A large panel house with a garage, and a little street connecting it to the other homes in the small neighborhood. A small patio with a few plants desperately clinging to life sat there. In the back was a nearly impeccable green lawn, an almost perfect square. Kept nicely despite subtle coats of brownish planetary dust.

In the horizon lay a barren hellscape of dust and sand. Some of it had melted in the heat, leading to small streams of molten sand flowing into molten lakes. These had carved out little dunes around them. The shifting sands ended harshly at her lawn, where, except for little sprinklings of dust, formed an impeccable boundary between the planet and this suburb. The suburban town looked like an oasis of order within the oozing planet.

His manager motioned to get to work. His one colleague started mowing the lawn, while another took care of the hedges and plants on the patio to try to keep them alive. He took the special blower he had been given and blew the planetary dust back into the wasteland.

After a few minutes of this meditative work, all the dust he so meticulously blew off her lawn started falling into a lava stream crevice. At the edge of the property he started to feel the same wind that must have swept them up, trying to suck him down the ravine as well.

Out of nowhere a windstorm stood in front of them: a wall of brown dust. His manager was sounding the warning. They were all to get into the rocket ship as soon as possible. He managed to turn around, but he could barely move. He shouted as the ship boarded and took off without him. Unable to take any steps towards it.

Then suddenly the wind flipped in the other direction. The vortex had gotten closer. It launched him straight towards the house. The rocket ship taking off spun out of control in this new current and careened hundreds of kilometers into the horizon. Fate unknown.

He crashed into a big glass window, clearly built to enable the residents to look out at the planet’s beautiful barren landscape even during a fierce storm. He tried knocking on the window, desperate to get their attention, but the wind trapped him. Where were they? He managed to move his hand up to the window. An extra strong blast of wind smashed it into the glass, shattering it. His body forced through the window and landed harshly against the wall on the couch.

His hand was broken, but magically his suit was fine. Any exposure of the elements to his skin would instantly kill him. He climbed against the wind to round the corner of the hallway. Once he entered the hallway, the wind knocked him over and right into the wall in the bedroom.

That’s where he saw her. The owner, lying there dead on the bed. She must have died in her sleep, and judging by the age of the corpse, it must have been a months ago.

Why were they servicing a dead lady’s lawn? He didn’t have much time to think about that, though, as the house collapsed above him. He had punctured its seal against storms like these, and now the wind crumpled its foundations.

The accountant skimmed through her report. There was an unforeseen weather event. The rocket ship and crew and equipment all got destroyed. The potential of this was nothing the company hadn’t already accounted for and insured. The filing for that was pretty routine.

The house had been destroyed, however. This was more complicated. They now had to contact the owner to try to see whether she would like a change in service. After many attempts to reach her, she had not responded. The latest crew was sent to knock on her door and ask her in-person. Her account still had autopay, set up to her bank and brokerage account, so they would supply a service to as long as she continued to pay.

She didn’t know this but wondered even if something happened to the lady, how much interest was accruing from her stock portfolio in this account. The lady probably could fund the considerable money for these lawn service fees in perpetuity.

The accountant noticed a few reports from this planet: it seemed to be getting hotter with more extreme weather. She would log this in the book for her manager to review. She had already done it a few times with the other cases, but she knew he was busy. He would get to it when he could. If the planet gets too close to the sun, their insurance will no longer cover the trips given the increased expense associated with extreme weather, and they will have to withdraw from the service. Usually there is a lag of several months, but eventually their insurance figures that out and demands they pull the service to the planet. That forces her manager to finally act.

Meanwhile, she looked at the rocket ships planning to go out in the coming weeks. Each one for a different lawn. Would they have been more efficient if they pulled into one visit? Probably, but the cost to have them come on their chosen day according to their schedule ultimately goes to the owners of the homes, and they don’t seem to mind. The company not only gets more revenue from single trips like this and can use that to hire more lawn service workers and build more rocket ships. This leads to its stock price going up. She wonders, though, what it would be like to be on one of these ships.

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)

What is It Like Teaching in Sao Paulo, Brazil? A Reflection on the Issues Facing Brazil Today

I recently spoke with Sao Paulo teachers. To protect their actual identities, I will refer to the first one as Gabriela and the second woman as Ana. They taught me a lot not only about life as a teacher in Brazil but also about societal forces affecting regular people in Brazil. Here are their perspectives on life as a teacher and Brazilian society overall:

Working as a Teacher

Ana teaches middle school reading, and Gabriela English for middle schools and high schoolers. Most schools in Sao Paulo and Brazil overall have two or three sessions throughout the day: one in the morning (say from 7:00 am to 12:00 pm), the second in the afternoon say from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm, and sometimes a third night session after 7:00 pm. Students attend one session each day.

To make ends meet, most teachers, however, teach both in sessions at two different schools: teaching the mornings at one school and then going to another school to teach evenings, which seems to amount to 11 hour days (plus lesson prep and grading). Ana knows a teacher who teaches three (night shift too).

Gabriela teaches a morning session at one school five days a week and then an afternoon session two days a week. Thus, she said she works about 35 hours a week, which is a bit more manageable.

As a teacher, Gabriela said she makes about $3000 Real (about 600 US dollars) a month. They both teach in a poorer neighborhood in a black suburban community. They said that sometimes the students and others in the community express concern on their behalf that they do not make a lot of money.

At the same time, their students will see that they can afford certain things like a car or the ability to travel to other countries, and think, “You are wealthy. I thought you didn’t make a lot of money.” To their students, that seems like a lot of money, but to them, they are not paid a lot relative to their level of education. They can still almost afford things like international travel and cars if they budget their money well, but that is significantly less than many other college-educated professions. From this depiction, I got the sense that they would fit into the lower middle class.

Despite this, they said that some days they love teaching and feel like a champion, and other days, they can’t wait to leave and go home. They see their students everyday for a year or sometimes multiple years, which gives them a long-term vantage point on their students’ learning.

The Worrying Creep of Authoritarianism in Brazil

They felt that democracy is fragile in Brazil. Gabriela’s father was born in 1966 and grew up under Getúlio Vargas’s dictatorial regime. Brazil eventually became democratic afterwards, but leaders like Jair Bolsonaro speak nostalgically of the regime. When the current president Lulu (or Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) beat him in the last election, Bolsonaro still tried to agitate his followers to reinstate him after he lost the election.

Even during the election, they felt Bolsonaro used his power to try to cheat and maintain power. For example, in the remote rural provinces in northeastern Brazil where Lulu’s base is, a special service busses people the far distance to the polls on election day. They said the federal police under Bolsonaro pulled over these busses and insisted on seeing everyone’s papers in order to waste time. That way, by the time the bus of people got to the polls, they were closed, preventing them from voting.

They said that as teachers, they see some of the parents of their students start to advocate for family values and other ideas that they worry about. These movements they see as connected to the above authoritarianism. This can come up when they discuss certain issues in the curriculum like sex education and racism in Brazil.

Sex education can make many parents skeptical, but it’s important for students to learn. They don’t just teach about sex but also about how teenagers should treat the changes in their bodies. They also teach how to be treated properly and respectfully in relationships, including how to identify abusive or violent sexual acts. In situations where a family member is sexually abusing a child, that behavior is often depicted within the family as normal and okay. The school is most often the place that teaches the kid that this behavior is wrong and unacceptable. The sex education curriculum is the best defense against such behavior, even though that can cause a pushback against families where such behavior is normalized.

Afro-Brazilian Experiences of Racism

Gabriela, herself a black woman, said that many people in Brazil act as if racism is not a thing, as if this place is a racially just society now, but there is a long history and structural racism until this day. Slavery was awful in Brazil, lasting for several centuries. Brazil was one of the last countries to end Transatlantic Slavery. Then once they were set free, it wasn’t like they had a place to go or got any resources.

Gabriela’s family came from the backlands, a word for a desert-like wilderness area without a lot of infrastructure or resources. Her grandparents moved to Sao Paulo. Many black people from there moved to Sao Paulo several decades ago in the second half of the twentieth century to build the railroads that connected Sao Paulo with more remote parts of the country.

These people usually lived in eastern Sao Paulo where their existence as poor black people from rural communities were considered a “problem” by many Sao Paulo residents. Yet, the city needed their labor to construct the railroads, so they tolerated their existence somewhat. After the railroad was completed, many remained in eastern Sao Paulo. This resulted in a huge boom in Sao Paulo’s population: both because these railroad workers chose to stay and because the trains made it easier for people to migrate from the countryside into the city. Most people in Sao Paulo have parents and/or grandparents in some rural part of Brazil who migrated in the second half of the twentieth century.

People in Brazil often talk about the US history of racism. For example, Gabriela said that people who want to argue that racism does not exist in Brazil will point to the fact that Brazil never had legalized segregation like in the US South.

She also said that she and other black people loved the shows “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “Everybody Hates Chris.” They, especially Fresh Prince, had a formative experience for her and other black millennials. The show was the first time she saw really successful black people navigating high society. It taught many Afro-Brazilians that black people could be successful. The controlling nature of Chris’s mother in “Everybody Hates Chris” also reminds her of how many Latina mothers are.

The group who dubbed Fresh Prince in Portuguese here in Brazil became famous here. They retranslated the language (or codes if you want to use more academic linguistics terminology) that the various characters spoke into parallels in Brazilian Portuguese.

They explained that central parts of the city tend to be wealthier and the outskirts or suburbs of the city tend to be poorer (where there is less infrastructure like subways or other public transit). Structural racism is very prevalent in how people from the poorer suburban areas are more likely to be black.

This is the opposite of the US where based on redlining and white flight, the suburbs are often wealthier and whiter, and communities in the city nonwhite with less wealth accumulation. Gabriela likened it to how when the black slaves were first freed, they had nowhere to go, so they went up into the hills around the community and built homes for themselves there. She surmised that was how favela’s first formed (poorer black neighborhoods in the hills surrounding a city).

Conclusion

In this conversation, I found it fascinating learning how societal dynamics are similar yet different between the United States and Brazil. There are many overlaps in the stories – such as structural racism, overworked yet underpaid teachers, and troublesome authoritarianism lingering under the current in politics – yet Brazil has some stark differences in how these manifest.

I find it particularly interesting learning about the history of Black peoples and racism in Brazil. The many parallels yet contrasts with the experiences of African Americans in the United States taught me a lot about how racist historical forces influenced both, giving me a case study to view what is unique to the United States or to Brazil or what experiences seem common for Black peoples across the Western Hemisphere.

You can learn a lot by visiting other parts of the world and then once you are there, talking to people and listening to their stories.

(If you find discussions of people’s experiences in other cultures around the world like this interesting, please let me know, and I will be sure to keep writing these.)

Reputational Lag: How Our Concepts of Things Often Lie in the Past

When I lived in Chicago, I did some anthropological research into what neighborhoods people considered “unsafe”. I asked a lot of people what neighborhoods they thought had high crime rates. What I noticed was that the present crime rates of the neighborhoods people mentioned were usually not that high. Instead, people would list neighborhoods that had crime rates ten to twenty years ago. As if people’s conceptions of what was safe and unsafe was really based on past decades.

I call this “reputational lag.” Something’s reputation tends to be based on what it was like (or people think it was like) a few years or decades ago.. People recall their past conceptions of the thing, even if it has substantially changed since, and thus, reputations tend to lag behind like this. This can be the case for “safe neighborhoods”, which companies are the best to work at, the best places to visit, and many other things.

Try to be aware of when you formed your perception of a place. For example, just recalling that the last time you thought of a place was when you lived there or visited it a while ago can help you realize that maybe it has changed since.

Have a similar awareness when talking with others: listen closely to when and how they experienced whatever they are talking about. Are they there now or a long time ago? Did they directly experience it, or is it a second- or third-hand account? This helps think through how to evaluate their opinion.

You can use this information to become more aware of what’s around you and to better think about what factors might influence people’s opinions about the world.

What Is Power: Three Understandings of Power in Society

I have spoken to two friends who each have offered an interesting take on what it means to be in a position of power in society.

One friend said that he sometimes thinks of power in terms of who has to bear the consequences of mistakes: Those who are powerful in society (whether through wealth, status, clout, etc.) only have to suffer from their own mistakes; whereas, a less powerful person is someone much more they likely will have to suffer from both their mistakes and the mistakes of those who have power over them.

I find this to be true: the more marginalized in society can often be disproportionately hurt by the bad decisions of others, whether that be governmental policies, managers/employers, or whoever.

Another friend added that the powerful are often shielded from their own mistakes. The wealthy can often afford to make more mistakes with their money and still have more resources to try again, for example. Often those with lower incomes have less leniency to take risks and make mistakes. And when the extremely powerful make mistakes, governments or society itself can often swoop in to save them, considering their success necessary for society to keep going. The less powerful usually get no such luxury.

So, power can offer protection from the mistakes of others and also a cushion from your own mistakes: a type of protective layer if you will.

In addition to liking both of these definitions, I also see power in terms of being forced to understand the perspectives of others in order to be successful in your endeavors in life. Those with less power are often forced to have to understand and consider the perspectives of those with power over them in order to meet their own goals.

The powerful can remain ignorant of what those with less power than them think. They don’t have to consider others’ perspective to be successful in what they seek.

And many with power don’t: they never cultivate the skills necessary to listen to, learn from, and incorporate the perspective of those with less power than them, because they don’t have to. In some cases, overtime, they don’t foster the skills of listening or empathy, becoming used to dictating to others who listen to them.

For them, listening is a choice, in contrast to those with less power for whom listening is often a necessity. Thus, the powerful’s listening skills can atrophy over the course of their lives because they do not choose to cultivate it.

All of these definitions have merits, approaching the similar aspects of what it means to have power from different angles. Each demonstrates the nuances of how power shields people from the harmful impacts of others and oneself like a protective bubble. And from each, there is something important to learn.

No matter where you are in life, it can be important to choose to listen and do what it takes to learn from the perspectives of others. Like the first definition implies, this includes thinking about how your actions may hurt or otherwise negatively impact those around you. If you are in a position where you are not doing that regularly, that could likely be because you actually have a type of power in that situation. If you are not intentionally listening to others and incorporating them into your life, then you should start doing so, before those skills atrophy.

Why Is Life Not Working Out for Me: A Reflection on Andrea Hirata’s “Rainbow Troops”

I recently read Andrea Hirata’s “Rainbow Troops.” It is a fantastic coming-of-age novel about a poor boy growing up in Belitung, Indonesia and about the role individuals, society, and the world overall play in producing poverty. To wrap up the novel’s themes, the main character, In its final pages, reflects on how fate, effort, and destiny influence the direction of people’s lives:

Many of the poor from his island, in particular, give up and blame their poorness on fate. God or the divine must think they deserve to be poor like this. They may be tired, and giving up is the path of least resistance. Working hard can be like picking fruit while blindfolded: you don’t know what kind of fruit you will end up with, but at least you’ll have fruit.

I found this to be an interesting and honest reflection about resilience in the face of difficulties in life. Everyone struggles with succeeding and failing in life, but those without as many resources often lack the ability to safeguard themselves from their mistakes and the mistakes of others (see this more detailed discussion how that happens). This can make it significantly harder to continue to persevere in life choices like education that may prove useful for one’s long-term development. They often cannot handle the risk that they may fail.

Instead, they frequently must choose the safest option professionally: whatever will give them enough money to eat and have a place to live right now, even if that job pegs them into a lower income track. Thus, they narrow themselves to what has worked, even if it may not be the best option for them. Because of this, giving up or blaming yourself can seem like very practical options.

But blaming fate or blaming yourself both ignore the potential role society might have played to put them in this more marginal position in the first place. Societies often act to exclude certain people, relegating them to the status of poor or supposedly undeserving. But it takes time, energy, and emotional intensity to realize that and to determine how to best take action to address it, and those who need such action the most unfortunately often do not have it in them to work through that.

(For a more full discussion about the travails of the socially fortunate, you can read that here.)

The Elitist Fallacy and Why You Should Watch Out for It

There is a surprisingly prevalent but flawed type of argument you may hear people make that I call the “Elitist Fallacy.” The Elitist Fallacy is a way to falsely position one’s skills, approach, and/or discipline as crucial in a given situation.

This is how the argument goes:

1) X Skill is crucial or necessary.

2) I cultivated X Skill through Y Practice.

3) Thus, Y Practice is the only and/or best way to develop a needed skill.

People more often invoke this kind of reasoning implicitly rather than explicitly, especially since when you see the argument laid out like this, you may easily spot its flaw. Just because someone developed a skill one way does not mean it is the only way to develop that skill.

The first two premises may be true: X Skill may be important, and the person in question may have used Y Practice to cultivate X Skill. It is wonderful that they were able to develop that skill in that way. The error comes in assuming that since this was the way they did it, it is thus the only way to develop that skill. There could be many other ways that work for other people, and if you are to present your way as the sole or at least best, you must carefully explain why the others do not work as well as it does.

People often invoke this argument to sell themselves as the sole or best person to hire to invoke that skill, and disciplines often foster it to institutionalize their way to teaching the skill or conducting that type of work as the only important approach so that they receive more attention, money, and/or following..

But, it falsely elevates one’s experiences to rank of the sole experiences in a given matter, making it elitist. As such, watch out for it in others and try to be aware if it creeps into your own assumptions.

Do you assume your path to understanding is the only way to develop a particular skill, and if so, do you have explicit justifications as to why? Try to engage with others around the world who do something similar to see whether they had a completely different way of developing that skill in their context.

What Is the Point of Money?

Many spend their lives acquiring money, but what really is money?

For many scholars, money is the ability to do something – whether that is to eat a sandwich, own a nice necklace, have someone provide a service for you – turned into a quantified unit. By this definition, money has incredible value. It literally is the ability to do or have things, but there are still some limitations to that value.

First, the capacity to do what? At the end of the day, money is a tool, a way to meet other goals. Capacity makes a very poor goal or purpose in itself. People who pursue money for money’s sake are attaining the ability to do things without a sense of what they want to do in life in the first place.

Second, as quantified capacity, money becomes less valuable the more you attain it. Everyone has the capacity to do things with their time and energy. Your salary has a certain amount of capacity as well. When you work, you trade the ability to do whatever it is you could do with your time and energy during that time for the capacity latent in your salary.

Often, this trade may give us even greater capacity, allowing us to do things we otherwise could not do with the time we have. You can use that capacity to meet your needs and pay for the things that you want, and thus help you live a better life. Such a trade may be worth it for you.

But after you have so much stored, gaining more may no longer add much value to your life and in some cases, may decrease it. Billionaires, for example, have enough to meet an entire life’s worth of needs and wants (and often the needs and wants of dozens or hundreds of more lives after that).

In such a situation, they do not have enough time left in their life to enjoy the capacity that they would gain from making more money through work. Each day they work, they lose one more day they have spent doing anything else (spending time with family, relaxing on a beach, or whatever makes one happy). Some ultra wealthy still work because they feel their job gives them a sense of meaning in their lives, but from a certain perspective, they are sacrificing their capacity to keep working.

Billionaires are an extreme example, but this applies to a certain degree to everyone. There is a time to build a base of capacity for ourselves by earning money, but the more one builds up, the less useful any new money we gain becomes. Eventually, that can switch and trying to attain more money after that is actually counterproductive.

You should evaluate for yourself how much of this thing called money you truly need and when the money you would gain is no longer worth what you would have to do to get it.