My thoughts on how the world works

I just returned from a two-day trip to San Jose, the capital. At one time it resembled a pleasant 18th Century European city, since the inhabitants were all Europeans with European upper-middle-class culture, architecture, and values. The hostel I stayed in was once the home of these elegant people.

But San Jose is no longer elegant; it is a slum, to put it bluntly – a run-down version of Los Angeles. Everyone in Costa Rica wants to live there, because this is where all the money is – all the jobs and all the business. Hell must be like this: someplace everybody wants to be – but everybody hates, once they get there. I ought to know: I lived there for five years when I first came to Costa Rica nine years ago, and I was desperate to get out of there – but like everybody else, found that hard to do.

This brings up an interesting question: how do people adapt to living in such terrible conditions? The answer is obvious: they have to turn themselves off, so they can stand the pain. And they also have to make sure that everyone around them is also deadened. They have to lose their sensitivity – if people around them can feel their pain, this makes them feel theirs also. The cardinal rule becomes: no pain! And pain-killers of all kind are in constant use.

The most potent of these are human mass movements and identities. People have lost their original identities (along with their original hunter-gatherer societies) and they seize these new identities with a passion typical of the mass – where force of numbers compensates for all else. The major benefit, which is usually obscured, is the loss of social pain. People will gladly go to war over this – to inflict pain on others, so they won’t feel their own.

Instead of recognizing their pain, they deny it – and declare if someone is in pain (of any kind) that is their fault. It even gets worse: they are only happy if they are causing some else some pain – and the more pain the better.

This is the down side to mass movements: the worst badness that can be imagined. There is also an up side: all the benefits of large-scale societies – such as this blog you are now reading. The question that immediately comes to mind is this: do the advantages of our present way of life outweigh the disadvantages? The answer is clearly: no.

But immediately people will object: they have no choice – no other way of life is possible, so the present way must be accepted. Things cannot be changed. And they are right: things cannot be changed – but for a reason they do not consider: people have become powerless, and society has become all-powerful.

To put it another way: society (or the world) no longer cares about people. As far as its concerned, they don’t even exist.

In San Jose, I had been on the receiving end of this, as it was dished out by an expert: a woman who was supposed to be helping me solve my residency problems. Women are especially good at this: they have superior social skills, and can be vicious with a vengence. When I remained calm, she redoubled her efforts – tearing up my financial records with enthusiasm, so they made no sense. When I came home, I was dead – exactly what she wanted.

Which brings up one more thing: the difference between American bureaucracies and Latino ones. I also had to renew my passport on this trip. The American consulate make that easy: everything was smooth and well-organized. But renewing my Costa Rica residency was entirely different. Its bureaucracy was so senseless it made me wonder how Costa Rica had ever survived.

Which brings up one more thing: friends in the software industry, where I spent 20 years – ones who are well-acquainted with it, have remarked to me personally that it is like a third-world country – where nothing makes any sense.