The Cacophony of Cultures

I tend to write a whole week's worth of columns on Sunday afternoon, so if you notice particular themes running through them, then much of it has to do with the mood I am in on Sunday afternoon.  But, since my lovely bride just brought me a bunch of chocolate chip cookies, perhaps my mood will lighten up a bit going forward.

My habit is to scan through the news and look for things that set me off.  I use Drudge for the right-wingnut view, the New York Times for the left-wingnut view, and Rense for the pure-wingnut view. For seasoning, I throw in the Financial Times, the Strait Times, the Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Times of India (aka the Bombay Bombast).  Stir in Russia Today and Xinhua, boil till thick and aromatic. Then I create a mental picture of the state of the world.  And this week, that state is a pretty sad one.

What I came across, though, was an article in the Gray Lady (New York Times) about a Chinese surgeon that wants to perform a full-body transplant on a paralyzed man.  That triggered a memory about an article from Newsweek about an Italian surgeon that wanted to perform a head transplant.

The first thing that struck me is the underlying philosophical differences.  From the descriptions of what is being done, they sound more or less the same thing.  The difference is that the Italians (westerners) are changing the head, and the Chinese (easterners) wanted to swap out the body.

Not sure why, but this difference intrigued me.

Even beyond the Frankenstein movie horror images (the book used an alchemical process to create an homunculus), these articles revealed a very deep division in points of view.

On the one hand, the Westerners were transferring a head to a new host body, while the Easterners were giving a body a new head.  Do you see what I see?  The Westerners place the center of being in the head, while the Easterners view the head in context of the whole body.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?  Probably not much, but it does highlight something that I often go on about here, and that is the fundamental assumptions that we all have and that are culturally induced.

In the West, we have generally come to assume that the head is the center of the body.  This is neither right nor wrong, though I tend to see it as incomplete.  The Eastern culture sees the entire body as a unified whole.  Again, neither right nor wrong, just incomplete.  They are complimentary assumptions and lead to a whole host of viewpoints that are completely in opposition to each other.

A great example is the Indo/Malay word hati.  Now if you ask a schoolchild how this translates into English, they will tell you "heart," and in a sense, they are right...and wrong.  In fact, hati strictly means liver, while jantung means heart - at least when it comes to physical organs.

However, in English we use the word "heart" for a much more intangible and philosophical thing: the seat of the emotions and wisdom.  In the Indo/Malay languages, this concept in located in the liver.  Don't ask me why, I haven't gotten that far in my ponderings, but the fundamental cultural divide is there.

Indonesians will tell you hati-hati (be careful), and perhatian (attention), or memperhatikan (take note of something).  Maybe they will say someone has berhati busuk, or evil intent, or berhati baik, a heart of gold.  In a book, when a character thinks to himself, he is speaking didalam hati, inside his heart.  But, if someone drinks too much alcohol, they will get sirosis hati.  There is no mistake that hati is liver, and it is quite apparent that the language embeds all of the aspects of the Western "heart" in the liver.

In this same vein, the Westerners will transplant a head and the Easterners will transplant a body.  Same basic procedure, completely different philosophies.

To me, and admittedly I'm a bit of a geek, this is one of the most fascinating parts of learning new cultures.  Oh sure, we all have our unique costumes and dances, architecture and food, but the most interesting part is the profound differences in the assumptions we make about the Universe as part of our cultural underpinnings.

Many people go through life without ever having questioned the very foundations of how and why we think that way we do.  They never experience completely different viewpoints or rotate around a problem and attack it from an angle that we are culturally blind to.

It's like religion.  Take Judaism and Islam.  They both abhor pork.  They both practice mutilation of male genitalia.  They both have stylistically similar languages with dozens of cognate words.  Yet, one claims to be descended from the legitimate child of a mythical character (Abraham), and the other claims to be descended from the illegitimate child of the same character.  For this, they have warred for centuries, laying claim to the same lands, when in fact, they are hardly separated philosophically.

Little differences that underlie big things.

That's why - and readers here seem to agree - my scribblings tend to take unusual tacks.  I tend to look at problems and issues from non-standard points of view, and even to create new ones by synthesizing alternative viewpoints.  I like to view the world as both a head transplant and a body transplant, because that one simple change can lead to all sorts of new ideas down the line.

The people I know who can do this all have one thing in common: they speak multiple languages.  The thinkers I tend to gravitate towards all speak at least two or three languages.  The people I most admire are polyglots.  And the things that sets them apart from others is their ability to examine the world as if through multi-faceted eyes, seeing angles that others cannot.

It's a valuable tool not to be locked into a single cultural perspective.

I went to school with the son of the guy who invented the Weed-Eater.  He kept the original in a glass case in his living room.  He got tired of the trouble and expense of sharpening and replacing blades on lawn edgers, so one day he tied a bunch of heavy-duty fishing line to a popcorn snack can and bolted in on to his machine.

My grandfather, trying to figure out a way to clean tanker cars on trains after hauling oil or chemicals, was inspired by the heating coil he used to keep his coffee warm on his desk.

They both became a multi-millionaires because he looked at a problem from a wildly different point of view, and that fact made an impression on me.

Of course, my solution is to wonder why I need to edge, or even have a yard, at all.

Report From The Eye Of The Storm

Return with us now to the thrilling theme of "traveler versus tourist," a metaphor we here at the Far Side Global Headquarters - deep in the jungles of Borneo - have adopted for our worldview.

The reader may think of this column as a follow-on to our last screed called, "Who Is More The Fool?"  In today's edition, we will explore "traveler versus tourist" as it applies to "diversity."

As we have developed our metaphor, we have shown that a traveler enters new realms of culture and experience as an observer and reporter.  The traveler attempts to meld as much as possible into the surroundings and taste the sweet and bitter of the foreign world.  The traveler does not judge nor discriminate.  The traveler understands that the surrounding culture has developed over spans of time and he seeks to understand why.

The tourist, on the other hand, brings his culture with him.  He seeks to impose his own norms and standards on the surrounding land.  He is the evangelist, the one who thinks his way is better, or at least more comfortable, and so forces conformity in order to feel less threatened.

In terms of mainstream labels, we may think of travelers as conservatives (seeking to conserve), while tourists are liberals (seeking to liberate).  The conservative wishes to conserve what is found in any given place, while the liberal wishes to change everything to suit some "greater good."

A traveler is conscious of his tracks and tries to minimize his impact on the surroundings.  Instead, he absorbs the local flora and fauna, making deep mental records and spending great amounts of time pondering and examining the context in which he finds himself.

This is not to say the traveler accepts everything at face value or is naive.  If he finds himself in a land where ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice are the norm, he does not wait around to examine the roots of these beliefs, he simply steps quietly but quickly to the exit.

On the other hand, we have the tourist.  The tourist is deathly afraid of having any experience that is outside his zone of comfort.  He is convinced that local cuisine is filthy and infested, and so brings his comfortable McFoods with him.  He is convinced that local accommodations are rat-eaten and sub-standard, and so brings his Holiday-Innian experience with him.  He believes the locals are heathens that must be converted to whatever system of belief he holds dear.  He criticizes the local customs and beliefs as ridiculous and beneath his consideration.  To a tourist, everything is wrong but his own standards.

In the past three years, I have found myself in a very curious position, straddling the traveler-tourist paradigm.

I have been deeply involved in building a "western" style arts center in Jakarta, where the owner has wanted to bring "western" style shows to the city.  On the other hand, I have been dealing with "western" companies wanting to break into the Indonesian market with their wares.  On both sides of the equation, I have run head-long into the tourist mentality.  The locals want international shows, but are not willing to learn and accommodate international standards.  The foreign companies want to enter the local market without accommodating local styles of doing business.  The locals think that "international standard" is the way something looks, and the outsiders think that "international standard" means the way we do it back home.

It is the perfect storm with your humble traveler standing at precisely the geodetic center of the storm.

On the one hand, I want to help the locals bring these massive foreign shows, and want to teach them the styles and methods of doing it.  On the other hand, I know the mentality of the foreign shows, who expect a certain modus operandi on the receiving end.

It is a delicate situation in which your humble traveler finds himself.  I believe both sides are right.  I know how these mass-market shows operate - god knows I've helped create enough of them.  On the other hand, I know the the locals have developed their style of doing business over centuries of physical isolation from the rest of the world, being a chain of islands fairly remote from any mainland.

For your humble reporter, it is both gleefully fun and infinitely frustrating.  On the one hand, I want to help the locals fit into the international market they so desperately want to join, and on the other hand, I want to help the foreigners fit into the market they do desperately want to join.

The immovable object meets the irresistible force.  It is not an enviable position, since I have had my share of both sides railing against me.  Both sides expect me to be able to change the other, yet my personal mentality is that both sides are completely right.

Such is the life of a traveler.

It would be so easy to be a tourist.  I could force whichever side I chose onto the other.  What I have chosen, however, is to find some way to blend the two, in the hopes of making both better for the experience.

In point of fact, I am in the position of believing that the "western" way of doing shows is the right way - in its context.  And I believe that the Indonesian way of doing business is right - in its context.  When the two contexts meet, one can begin to appreciate the fun I have had for the past three years.

I must become a travelist or a tourer, but in either case I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.

Centuries ago, Marco Polo was the first Westerner to record his travels in Indonesia - specifically in the area of central Sumatera around the modern city of Medan - where he met the Batak people.  In his wake, Lutheran missionaries followed and were slaughtered and occasionally eaten by the Batak.  That is, until a fellow by the name of Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen showed up and converted a large number of Batak to Lutheranism.  To this day, the Batak have a unique church (HKBP) that separates them from all other Indonesians.  In simplistic terms, the church is western Lutheranism blended with the Batak language and sensibilities.  A new culture created from the blending of two otherwise clashing ones.

It is possible to make a hybrid culture without surrendering the more profound elements of the progenitors.  However, it is not an enviable position to be at the crux of the effort.  It is akin to hanging on to the blades of a blender, trying to maintain one's identity while at the same time trying to make the rest of the mix into a homogeneous mass.  All sides want what the other has without surrendering any part of what they bring, or accepting any part of what they want.

Your humble traveler stands at the center of the plains of Geddon, amidst the final conflagration, and tries to maintain enough individuality to report on the destruction of both sides.  Perhaps I will be slaughtered and eaten, perhaps I will find that happy medium and become a patron saint.  Either way, I will destroy something and build something else.

History is yet to be written.

But one thing I am assured of...I am a traveler.

Post Scriptum - when I first arrived in Indonesia, I had a Batak girlfriend.  One Christmas, I followed her family to the HKBP church.  When it came time for Communion, I went to the front with her.  The first priest looked at me, then asked her (in Batak language), "Does he understand (this)?"  I responded (in the Batak language), "Yes, I do."  He shot a glance at me and his jaw went slack.  Then he passed me down the line without being slaughtered.

That is what travelers do.

Living With The F-Word

One of our on-going themes around here is traveling vs. touring.  The former is changing yourself to meet the world, and the latter is changing the world to meet your expectations.  In other words, a traveler will eat live monkey brains in Nagapattinam, India, while a tourist won't even make it to that city because there's no McDonald's or Best Western.

Most of what keeps people from being travelers is fear: fear of the unknown, fear or getting lost, fear of being outside of one's comfort zone.  Other people hate the bother of going somewhere, what with all the packing and planning.

Frankly, I hate packing and planning myself.  I prefer to throw a few items in a carry-on, buy a ticket to somewhere and go.  As for the planning, well...I'll get around to that when I get back.

I remember when I set off on my first big voyage.  I left Texas heading East and returned from the West.  I was freshly 18, and hopelessly naive.  I began in Dublin, Ireland, and when I had finished, I had lived in three countries and visited more than 30 across four continents.  Took about two years and my luggage consisted of a backpack.

While living in Dublin, I saved up and bought the pack, a tent, sleeping bag, a stove, and a few necessities.  In the evenings and on weekends, I would practice packing and unpacking, setting up camp and tearing down, and hiking all over the local area with my pack to get in shape.  That pack became a part of me.  I could set up and tear down in the dark, which came in handy many times.  By the time I got back home, the pack weighed better than 50 pounds (23 kilos) and I was in the best shape I've ever been in from lugging it.

I had no idea where I was going.  I had a Eurail card that got me 3 months of unlimited train travel around Western Europe.  I knew I wanted to see Paris and Rome, but other than that I had no plan.  I had heard about youth hostels and international camping sites, but had no experience with them.  And I had a couple hundred dollars in my pocket.

First stop after Dublin was Liverpool at 3am, with no where to go and no contacts.  I ended up napping behind a pint of beer in the corner of a seaman's pub that reminded me of something out of a Hemingway novel or John Huston film.  I was utterly on my own, never having set foot this far outside my comfort zone.

Keep in mind this was before cell phones and instant messages and portable tablets with WiFi.  A trans-Atlantic phone call involved reservations at the local telegraph office and cramped phone booths with a meter over the phone ticking off the milliseconds of homesick conversations with the folks back home who sounded like they were talking into a 5,000-mile-long pipe.

There is a Zen koan that says, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  It is so true.

From that first night in Liverpool, shivering from the cold, terrified of the grizzled creatures all around me, and sucking down as much liquid courage as I could afford, a great adventure was born.

A day of travel teaches one more than a month of school.  You are not likely to slurp live monkey brains, snack on Madagaskar singing roaches or raise a toast with cobra blood sitting in the Des Moines Holiday Inn and shopping for refrigerator magnets at Mall of the Americas.  Maybe you think, "Good!  Who wants to do all that anyway?"  But that's just your fear talking.

You haven't lived until you've dug parasites out of your skin, or nearly died (or wanted to) from dysentery, or awakened in an opium den two days after your last memory.  But it's not all hard-bit.  There's dinner at Maxim's in Paris or snuff and beer with the boys in Fuessen, or tropical coral reefs in Indonesia, or Mayan temples in the jungles of Guatemala.  Or how about driving down the highway between two warring armies, or getting shot at on the Afghan border, or slogging through a blizzard at the Kremlin wall?

I imagine the afterlife as being something like Valhalla.  Souls sit around reclining on deer skin sedans, quaffing chalices of mead and ripping roasted lamb flesh off the bone.  Those souls with the best stories are given seats at the table.  The rest must stand like wallflowers and ponder the life they wasted amassing possessions that they no longer have while picking at the leftovers of more adventurous souls.

Tourists jostle and panic with mobs of humans through the peculiar form of torture called airlines.  Travelers know about the jump seats on air freighters and the best toilet stalls to sleep in and how to trade stories for free room and board.

Tourists worry about reservations and late arrivals and skycaps to shuffle their copious bags.  Travelers can carry their belongings with one hand and know where they are going when they get there.  Tourists are afraid of travelers because when they look into a traveler's eyes, they realize just how far they are from home and how they are just one cancellation away from having an adventure.  And that's what tourists fear the most: adventure.

We have developed a tourist culture.  We want it all to slide by unnoticed and unexperienced, with guides and skycaps to handle our dirty work.  We want to recline our seats and shut our eyes and wake up when we get to the next comfortable part.  We want reality to be convenient and clean.  We want experiences to be enjoyable and repeatable.  Most of all, we don't want to be afraid of anything.  Just swallow the pill and all the gritty parts go away.

And this is why aging tourists start to lament and panic.  They reach a point in their lives and realize they have no stories to tell.  Everything about their life has been mass produced and everyone they know has had the same trip and they have a 'mid-life' crisis coming to terms with the fact that they have never lived a life that is almost finished.

Tourists reach a point where they look around and realize that all they have for a lifetime of effort is a McMansion, 1.6 kids, 2.4 cars, 1.1 dogs and debt up to their eyeballs.  Their only recollections of adventure come from the NatGeo channel and the deepest emotion they've ever experienced was when the home team won the pennant back in 19 and something.  Their education consisted of an alcohol and drug-induced fog, and most of their friends (if not all) are just superficial acquaintances stamped from the same mold.

They panic.  They take cruises and go to resorts and try desperately to feel something other than fear.  They buy sports cars and motorbikes and figure that's hanging their ass over the edge, only to realize that they are in traffic jams of people doing the same thing.

Finally, they slump into a Prozac dream wishing that they had done something more with their lives than chase up careers ladders and shuffle paper and worry whether the A/C unit is sufficiently rated for the size McMansion they rent from the bank.  They vaguely remember the imaginariums they built as kids, full of monsters and adventures that they were going to meet, all of which evaporated at some point they can no longer recall.

What the tourists never realize is that it's never too late to become a traveler.

If you're reading this and thinking that you'd really like to become a traveler, then the first thing you need to know is that it's very simple and doesn't cost a thing.  You need no equipment or special clothing.  There's no training or guidebooks.

If you find yourself in a crowd of people all heading in a certain direction, go the opposite way.  If you are doing something that has a lot of rules, like getting on an airplane, pick one of the rules and deliberately ignore it.  If faced with the choice between two roads, pick the smaller of the two.  And don't worry about the consequences.  That's the adventure part.

Once you get the hang of it, then comes the Big Challenge.  Whenever you are faced with a choice, pick the one that causes you the most fear.  When you start doing that, then you know you are a seasoned traveler and tourism is far behind you.

Our culture has locked us into a tourist mindset, and I daresay that one thing is most responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves.  The dreams we follow have been manufactured for us by those who profit from our compliance.

The more we desire repeatable experiences, the more will be manufactured for us.  The more we follow rules, the more will be made for us.  The more we demand to know the outcome, the more the outcome will be predictable.  And most importantly, the more fear we feel, the more fear will used against us.

The difference between traveling and touring is nothing more than a simple choice.  There's a reason we call certain experiences "tourist traps".  That's exactly what they are.  And once trapped, we are nothing more than amusements for those who set them.

Tomorrow, get an early start and take an entirely different route to work.  It may change your life.

Another Seaside Enlightenment

Travelers have journeys and tourists have trips.  There's a reason why tourism sounds like an accident.

I have recently taken up a book that was probably one of the most influential in my life, though (until recently) I had only read it once in my sophomore year in high school.

The book is Another Roadside Attraction, by Tom Robbins.  I recently picked it up again after lo! these many long years and I have been amazed at how much of it I have assimilated into my life at far below the conscious level.

The reason it was so influential is that up until that point, books had been little more than school texts and linear stories, like Hardy Boys and Treasure Island.  I had never encountered a book that tore me lose from linear time and sprinkled the experience with a cast of completely off-hand characters.

It was a liberating experience.  It was a massive and profound experience.  It was a real learning experience. And it introduced me to a fictional character whose antics I wanted to emulate: Plucky Purcell.  I instantly recognized that the character was a traveler.

I followed up that book with yet another tour de force that also blew the standard model of life and art out the window.  That book was The Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  In turn, that was followed by A Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein.  In the space of two months during my early high school matriculation, my world was ripped asunder and the die was cast for the wheres and hows of my life.

Reading those three books back-to-back tore down my then long-held beliefs (if a 16-year-old could be said to have long-held beliefs).  Monolithic institutions like religion and government and the standard model of the American Dream vanished in once fell swoop.

It was an exhilarating feeling being freed of these restrictions.  Once again, one of my English teachers had redesigned my Universe by doing nothing more than opening my mind to the world of possibilities, a place in which travelers find their life's purpose.

A traveler can not be said to live a life without fear.  That is not strictly true.  A traveler in fact seeks out experiences in which he or she must confront fear head on in mortal combat.  A traveler sees boundaries as beginnings rather than ends.  It is the equivalent of seeing "Here Thar Be Monsters" on a map and purposely heading for that exact spot to see for one's self what monsters look like, and more importantly, what they smell like, since with all our technology, we still can't bring that one key sense to a remote location.

I have since read many influential books: Don Quixote, Poetics, The Divine Comedy.  The titles pile up like so many dead soldiers on the field of combat - the blood of those authors poured out on pulp so that we subsequent travelers will know exactly what kind of monsters lurk there, and what they smell like.

It was that same year in high school that I discovered drama, not just as a way to meet chicks while attending an all-boy Catholic school (which was very important), but because it was a way to make books come alive.  the powerful combination of living books and books that live at a key moment in my intellectual development set in stone the path I would walk in my journey.

Books, and the language that unlocks them, are amazing experiences, and ones which most tourists will never fully appreciate.  They reach parts of our minds that TeeVee and movies never do, for those media only lull us to sleep while implanting code into our limbic systems.  Books, on the other hand, engage the reader in active combat.

After all, how many books have you read while asleep, versus how many movies and TeeVee shows have you slept through?  The answer should tell you all you need to know.

Had not my mother, my first English teacher, not spent considerable effort to entice me to read, I would not be at the keyboard this very minute while sitting in Jakarta chasing a wild hare.  Had not Mr. Z, my high school English teacher, not introduce me to a book like Another Roadside Attraction, I might well have ended up a tourist.

Alas, she did and he did and here I am.

When I travel, I rarely take photographs, and much to the perplexity of those who view them, I never take photos of people standing in front of things.  I hate that.  Instead, I take my rare photos of things I had never seen in tour books and I strive not to have any recognizable people in the foreground.

I have two photos of the Colosseum in Rome.  One is of the ceiling in one of the main vomitoria of a map of the city at that time.  The other is from the catacombs beneath the floor of the structure looking up at the stands.  The former is something few people take time to notice and which you will rarely find in a photo essay on the subject, and the latter is a view that only the wild animals, slaves and gladiators would have had and one that I paid a significant bribe to security to obtain.

Tourist photos have a certain element of "see? I was there!" to them.  I figure that if I took the photo, that is proof enough that I was there.  I have no interest in seeing some beaming faces in front of a landmark.

The other day, I was in the heart of Jakarta waiting for my ojek to pick me up.  Two families, obviously (painfully) Western were hoofing it down the sidewalk (such as they exist here): Father in the lead with his map and daypack, Mother trailing with the 2.1 obligatory kids in tow.  The Fathers were red-faced and tense, while the crew were obviously exasperated.

"Where y'all from?" I asked.

The Fathers looked like there were going to avoid any local interaction, as tourists usually do, but then thought better of it.

Father 1 said, "Kannst du Deutsche?"

"Yawol, ich kann sehr viel Deutsch!" I responded.

He visibly slumped as if a great weight had been lifted.

Turns out they had been trying to get to MONAS, which is kind of like the George Washington monument of Indonesia.  However, they were stymied by the fact that the park was surrounded by five lanes of unrelenting traffic and they were afraid to cross the street with kids in tow.

I said they should go to the crosswalk just ahead and be sure to use the "force field" gesture while crossing.  Once they crossed, they should go through the train station, over the tracks (ignore all the warning signs like everyone else) and go out through the small gate at the back and you'll be directly in front of the MONAS.

The Fathers looked unsure and the Mothers looked nonplussed.  Helpfully, I said, "Or you can take a taxi and have it let you down at the steps of the monument.  It will cost you about Rp.25,000 after they take you by the long route to get extra money."

They opted for the taxi route and I hailed one of the more trustworthy cabs in Jakarta.

Tourists.

Comfort and expediency rather than full-on combat.  Their kids were doomed to be TeeVee watchers.

Or maybe that American (Texian really) standing on the street in a Southeast Asian country who spoke fluent German and knew the fast and easy way to their destination might register.  Maybe having encountered a traveler they will want to know more.

Who knows?

Or maybe travelers and tourists are destined, not made.  But how, then, do you explain my awakening at the hands of great books and great writers?  Was it simply because I saw the warnings about monsters and decided to engage them head-on rather than shy away in fear?  Or was it because I have traveler in my genes?

Read Another Roadside Attraction and decide for yourself.  Perhaps add a couple of other great titles to it as backup.  Let me know whether you think travelers are born or made.  In my present state, it's hard to be dispassionate.

Send an email to luap.jkt at gmail dot com and put "Traveller" in the subject line if you think they are born, and "Tourist" in the subject line if you think they are made.  I'll reveal the results next week.

In the meantime, enjoy some good reading...

The Great Escape

As the old saw goes, "'Merica, love it er leave it!"

I live in Indonesia.  That should give a fair answer.

I chose to live in Indonesia.  I considered my move carefully for the better part of 20 years.  I knew by the mid-80s, after having lived and traveled abroad for two years, that things were seriously wrong back in good ole 'Merica.

Being being born a Texan and raised by an historian and politician, I had a bit more perspective than most.  I knew what the Constitution said and that it was not open for interpretation.  My mother the English teacher gave me the ability to read plain, clear language, such as that used to write the founding document of the US feral gummint.  The part of me that was a seventh generation Texan just wanted to be left the hell alone to make a little money and raise a family.

Alas, that is not the direction the US has taken.  In fact, instead of leaving folks the hell alone, they are all up in everyone's business and the boundaries are shrinking by the moment.  It is to the point that the feral gummint feels perfectly comfortable telling the people what they can eat, drink and smoke, what activities can take place in their homes, and of course leaving the home subjects the individual to endless prying.  Hell, just to get and keep a job, they can legally require you to surrender bodily fluids and violate a number of rights established as far back as the Magna Charta.

The worst part?  The people just roll over and take it, then go so far as to put social pressure on others to do the same thinking, "If I gave up my right to privacy, then everyone else should have to, as well."  This mentality is akin to the lemming plummeting to his death looking back and saying, "Those bastards better jump too!"

It's a sad thing to see one's home country taken over by fascists.  Those of us who read history books saw the warning signs years ago.  Some of us tried to change things, while others bugged out early.  I gave up in 2008, and left for more favorable climes.

Since coming to Indonesia, I have had contact with police twice and both times were rather innocuous.  At home, twice a day was more the norm, and each encounter carried a 50-50 chance of going to jail for no particular reason other than out-of-control cops waving their night-sticks around.

In parts of Asia, you can still walk out on the tarmac, board a plane and pay the ticket from your seat, just like the States back in the 60s and early 70s.  The airport doesn't have metal detectors and little more than a handful of uniformed officials running around.  I feel safer there than with Homeland Security climbing up my posterior with a flashlight.

Yet Mericans don't seem to realize that they have lost more to their own 'authorities' than any 'terrorist' could ever have taken from them.  What kind of insanity is this?

There was no point in trying to change it.  The dead, vacuous stares in the eyes of the average Merican as they tell you about safety and security is enough to chase any reasoning person as far out of the borders as one can get.  I went as far as I could go without actually beginning the journey back again.

In all honesty, it's more comfortable to live in a neo-socialist country than to watch my native country devolve into Huxley-an nightmare around me.  At least here, I know what the rules are and I can avoid the pitfalls.  In Merica, there were some 50,000 laws governing my every waking moment, which meant that I could not step out of bed in the morning without becoming a criminal and subject to arbitrary arrest on the whim of some 'authority'.  At least Indonesians have the good sense to ignore innane and ridiculous laws...both the citizenry and the enforcers.

I used to get asked all the time by the folks back home why I left Merica.  Why would I choose to get out of such a haven of peace, love and freedom?  They don't ask anymore.  More often, I get asked to offer advice on how to get out.  "What should I do?"  "Where should I go?"  "What's it like?"  "Is it difficult?"

Honestly, how and where to go is as individual and the person making the choice to leave.

Is it difficult?  Absolutely.

It's not easy leaving lifelong friends and family.  It's not easy learning new languages and cultures.  It's not easy setting up house in a foreign environment.  It's not easy making all-new friends.  It's not easy breaking into the local business networks.

Locals tend to exclude you because you are a foreigner.  The ex-pats tend to exclude you because they were here first and want to protect their turf.  You have no idea who to trust and who is out to 'get ya'.  You have no idea where to go to buy basic necessities and you have to learn the numbers and names for things so you can find them and buy them.  Even then, you are likely to pay much higher prices because the locals mark you as ignorant and gullible, and they are right.

So why do it?  Because the risks and rewards are far greater than what you left behind.  Because it's a challenge that makes you feel more alive than you have in years.  Because living on the edge is what life is really about.  We are here to learn, to experience and to grow.  Moving to a foreign country is about as far into all three of those things as one can get.

Ex-patriotism is not for everyone.  There are plenty of home-bodies that abhor change and challenges.  They will go along with just about anything to get along.  Ex-patriotism turns your entire life on its head.  The most basic assumptions you make about your daily routine suddenly become the greatest challenges.  A great many people can't handle it.  One sees two types of ex-pats come here: those who run screaming for the exit after about two weeks, and the ones who stick it out and end up staying for years.  A few even become citizens after a while.

Ex-patriotism rewards those who stick it out.  You learn a completely different view of the world.  You pick up habits you thought were so foreign when you arrived.  You develop a taste for foods you couldn't even find at the market back home, if you even knew to look for them.  The unusual and outrageous become daily events.  You gain knowledge, experience and insight that would have been impossible to get even watching the NatGeo channel 24/7.

Best of all, you learn to rely on yourself and to trust that you are capable of meeting broad new challenges and adapting to new environments.  Ex-patriotism is a crash course in Self.  When it comes to self-exploration, there is no finer teacher than to remove yourself from all comfort zones and confront your fears and insecurities.

In all, ex-patriotism is a complex issue.  It is as much a running from as a running to.  The people who are willing to try it are as much escaping bad situations at home, as they are exploring new realms, both inside and outside.

At some point, most people think about what it would be like to live in another country.  Few actually try it.  But as the situation devolves in Merica, one finds more and more folks willing to take the leap.  It is not an easy choice to make and usually requires a strong push from the local situation to force one to consider it, much less actually do it.  But there are rewards equal to the risks involved, not the least of which is escaping intolerable socio-political environments at home.

Real freedom is not the choice between yellow mustard and Dijon.  It is the ability to change your situation in life and explore the inner and outer worlds.  Real freedom comes with a lot of risks, not the least of which the possibility of failure and losing it all.  The question is, how much are you willing to give up to keep it all?  Safety and security are elusive things and unobtainable without sacrificing most of what we use to define being human.

Ex-patriotism is a very real option for those finally tired of tyranny.  No place is perfect, but it is surprising how free much of the world is compared to places such as Merica.  Imagine going through a full day without once appearing on a surveillance camera.  And that's only the beginning.

It's something to consider the next time you feel panic at seeing a cop car behind you.

The Journeyer

Corfu

At the tender age of 18, I was sitting in a taverna on the island of Corfu, off the coast of the Greek mainland.  I was camping up the hill in an olive grove, and spending my days down at the beach playing in the massive waves and waterfall.

One night, I was sitting around with the group of young folks from various parts of the world, watching TeeVee and eating some magnificent mousaka, when the show “Vegas” came on.  It was very popular toward the end of the 70s and early 80s, with the character Dan Tanna running around being a PI, or something like that.  At any rate, the show had been dubbed into Greek.

I suddenly felt this wave of terror, realizing just how far from home I was.  I looked around at the kids there with me, from Germany, England, South Africa, Italy.  I had this sinking thought, “What if something happened to me?  What would I do?”

Of course, the feeling soon passed with a fresh bottle of Ouzo, but I never forgot that moment of near-panic.  At that point, I had been living overseas for over a year, and had already been through more than a dozen countries.  Why should it hit me right then?

Several years later, I was reading the brilliant book, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” by Douglas Adams (an experience that started a multi-decade love-affair with his work).  Near the beginning of the book, the main character, Arthur Dent, looks into the eyes of Ford Prefect and is nearly scared out of his wits.  As the author explains, the farther a man is away from his home, the more distant and wild the look in his eyes.  Naturally, that look in an extra-terrestrial’s eyes would be unnerving.

That passage reminded me of that feeling of being so far from home.  It’s a very unsettling feeling to know that you can’t walk home, no matter how hard you try.  Conquering that fear is what separates travelers from tourists.

A tourist will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure their trip is ‘safe’ and ‘secure.’  They’ll buy traveler’s checks and bring the credit cards and pack every conceivable item they might need.  A tourist leaves an itinerary and contact information with a friend or family member.  A tourist has reservations.

When I moved to Indonesia, I had a week’s worth of clothes, a portable water filter, a bottle opener, a multi-purpose tool, a hat, and (because I read Douglas Adams) a towel.  I carried my entire life in one checked bag and one carry-on, for what I considered to be a permanent move.

I had no itinerary or reservations, just some friends with an open spot on the floor in the living room.  I had a plane ticket with open return for nine months, and a two-month visa that I had picked up at the local consulate in Houston.

Three years later, I have a wife and family, and the last time we moved, it required a two-ton truck and five men.  It wasn’t easy.  About three months into this fool’s errand, I had very powerful thoughts about giving up and walking into the jungle, hoping cannibals would make a feast out of my carcass.  I’ve had a few things stolen, including all of my ID, but I managed and got to a point that is relavtively settled in my new land.

The point is, if you want to make the jump, you have to be willing to let go of everything.  I cashed in pretty much my entire worldly belongings.  I let go of nearly every relationship I had (those that are real stick with you, no matter the time or distance).  I cut off nearly every zone of comfort I had to follow my dream of living and traveling in Asia. 

In fact, as the title of this column says, I live pretty much on the exact opposite side of the world from my home.  If I move in any of the cardinal directions, I am going closer to home, since it is physically impossible to get further away without leaving the planet.

I think most people are tourists.  They don’t mind seeing new places, as long as it’s not too exotic and they can maintain all the comforts of home, with plenty of back-up.  Nothing wrong with that.  Certainly, there are times when I crave routine and the security of repeatable experiences.

There are a few people who are travelers, though.  They lust for the challenge of pitting themselves against the unknown.  Some relieve this feeling by bungee jumping or sky-diving.  But, for a few of us, the only relief comes in the form of increasing as many variables in life as they can, and then trying to survive them.

Some might call it insanity, and perhaps it is.  Insanity comes in many forms.  I tend to look at those who spend their whole lives chasing ‘security’ as being insane.  They use up their precious lives grasping for vapors and ghosts.  At least my insanity involves real, physical goals.  And I get some great stories to tell.

The big difference between a tourist and a traveler, is that the traveler realizes that he is just as ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ 12,000 miles from home as the person who never ventures out of their living room.  One only trades this set of variables for that set.

In some ways, I’m much ‘safer’ from certain variables than the couch potato, because I am much more on my guard being far outside my home territory.   When you are on familiar ground, you tend to relax your guard a lot more, and so are vulnerable in many ways that I am not.  And I don’t have to surrender my dignity and privacy on a regular basis here, as I would at home.

When I get on a plane here, I walk through a metal detector, and in some cases not even that.  I am just as ‘safe’ on that airplane as I am after TSA has had their way with me.  In fact, I’m safer, since I didn’t have a bunch of yellow-shirted goons with their hands down my pants.  If the government tried that here, there’d be a revolution in short order.

Recently, I read where a movie star died over a year ago, and the neighbors and friends she had known for years didn’t notice.  I read where a man drowned in San Jose, while the cops and ‘first responders’ watched and joked about it.  I read several articles about peaceful home-owners being raided and gunned down by police/SWAT for no reason, because that’s how cops are these days.  I read every day about people being groped and fondled by ‘security’ agents, in ways that would have a regular person lynched.

Germany is one of the cleanest places on Earth, and yet hundreds are sick and dead from e. Coli.  For the past three years, I have eaten at little street restaurants and food carts that are completely unregulated and have yet to get sick once.  In fact, I’m safer since halal meat is free of antibiotics and hormones, and the vegetables are GMO- and radiation-free.

Sure, I’m on unfamiliar ground, and I have to jump through a few hoops every year to get my work visa.  Sure, my daily commute to work is a world-class crap-shoot.  Sure, I’ve got hornets the size of hummingbirds, millipedes as long as my foot and a half-dozen strange lizards running around the house, but I still have my dignity and self-respect.

The thing is, there is no such thing as ‘safety’ and ‘security.’  There are only different sets of variables, and we much choose which ones we are wlling to give up worrying about, and which are important.

Even if someone has your itinerary and contact information, if you’re dead, it really doesn’t matter, does it?  You can have all the cards and traveler’s checks you can carry, but if no one will cash them or the  ATMs are down or you are over your limit, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

‘Safety’ and ‘security’ are illusions.  They can not be had at any price.  The only people who are ‘safe’ are those already dead, and those yet to be conceived.  Everyone else is fair game.  You can let TSA crawl into your pants and the plane will still crash.  You can stay in your living room and still die plugging in the TeeVee.

The way I see it, the only thing we take out of this world is our memories and the only thing we leave to others is memories.  I want to remember that I stuffed as much experience into my life as I could fit.  I want others to remember that I was willing to step outside the comfort zone and live a full life.

Many years ago, I read a book called, “The Journeyer,” by Gary Jennings, which is a fictionalized account of Marco Polo’s travels.  It left me with two thoughts: 1) People remember Marco Polo because he stepped far outside the bounds of ‘safety’ and ‘security;’ and 2) At the moment of my death, I don’t want to have regrets that I wasted my life out of fear of the unknown.

I also think about Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.”  The only time he and Nigger Jim were really safe and secure was when they were traveling on the river.  As soon as they got down on the land, that’s when the trouble started.  I often feel that way.

Maybe a child feels the need for the safety of his mother’s arms, but I long ago outgrew the need for that.