Let It Be

(First published in the Bali Advertiser, Feb. 24, 2010)

“Essence may be taken as the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is.”
              -- “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690), John Locke, in what may be the earliest use of a phrase that was to become much overused in the early 21st century

I have never been a glass half-full or glass half-empty sort of a guy. What’s always mattered more to me is whether the glass is supposed to be half-full or half-empty, which is a fine distinction of perspective over volume. I am quite certain I would be happier with a quarter-full glass than with a half-empty one, as long as someone had explained to me that the glass was intended to be only one-quarter full.

This may at first seem to be a sad way of looking at things, a subservient approach to life that is good for wage slaves and other beasts of burden willing to accept anything as long as someone has told them the “right” thing to do in a given situation. But with another subtle shift, such a view can reach the almost enlightened position that if things are not necessarily as they are intended to be, then things are intended as they are. It seems a better approach anyway than always arguing that a half-empty or half-full glass should be something more when there is no more water to be found.

Such is the flawed viewpoint that I would offer up as a solution to those that bluster and fulminate against this and that on this island paradise. Recently a reader sent an e-mail asking me to highlight the need for drivers in Bali to be more disciplined about using the left lanes on divided and four-lane roads when traveling at less than overtaking speeds. And it’s true, traffic would flow smoother and be more orderly if slower vehicles kept to the left, and if nothing else, the reader would be happy, if only for a little while.

Because not long after some miracle of traffic management competency, I’m certain he would become fixated on something else that wasn’t just quite right. I’m not suggesting he is an extraordinary whinger; I just think that, like me, he would soon find another aspect of life in Bali, or of life anywhere really, that he felt wasn’t as it was intended to be, and he would expend time and emotion thinking and worrying about something – that in all likelihood -- he would never be able to do anything about. My apologies to him, but I don’t think an article from me is going to have any impact on the chaotic state of Indonesia’s road traffic. I am a writer; not a wizard whose incantations on paper can magically order the universe just so.

At one time or another, I have been able to get myself worked up about the return of candy instead of coin when making purchases; street vendors who push unlit carts along the road at night and who can’t be seen until it is almost too late to miss them; neighbors in our apartment building in Jakarta who swept dirt from their units into the hallway as if sweeping debris from their kampung garden out into the gutter; people in Singapore who still don’t let those on an elevator or train exit first before rushing an opening door -- despite 20 years of courtesy campaigns by their government telling them not to do exactly that; all the perennial complaints of every Jakarta resident -- the clogged roads, the poisonous air, the corrupt cops and officials, the lack of walk-able sidewalks and wide-open green spaces; and on and on down the list of things that aren’t done according to a cultural imprint that tells me how things are supposed to be.

Sadly, none of my fulminations ever did a bit of good in rectifying any of these half-empty situations. In evolutionary terms they were wasted energy and therefore the way to extinction – a prospect I am not ready to entertain just yet. So, the only option is a complacent acceptance of the things I cannot change, through whatever trick of logic makes the unacceptable acceptable.

The flaw is that there are things that really do need to change – such as the use of plastic bags for every little purchase – and where the concerted effort of one individual or group may be enough to convince a society and culture to change the way that things have always been done. Yes, Virginia, there are windmills worth being nobly tilted at, even if the chances of victory are slim.

But to expect and hope for a magical descent of discipline and the logical application of driving rules on Bali (or Java) roads? That’s folly of the highest order.

Copyright © 2010 Lee Roy LeRoi

Looking Life Straight in the Eye

(This column was first published in the Bali Advertiser on Feb. 10, 2010)
“She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir.”
       – Esther Summerson of Mrs. Jellyby in “Bleak House” (1852) by Charles Dickens

Travel is supposed to enlighten the mind, and someone once said that a person can never truly understand his own country unless he’s viewed it from the outside. True as those sentiments might be, it’s been my experience that travel and living outside of one’s native land are the surest ways to bring home the point that we are all eventually going to get what we deserve – diddly-squat.

This is not a popular notion, and maybe that is why there always seems to be so many angry sojourners in other lands. People cherish the thought that they are owed something simply for being born, and to be confronted by a contrary harsh reality is annoying, especially if it comes after the illusion has been established that fair skin, money and a permanent address in the northern hemisphere open all roads.

There are plenty of alleged and “framed” drug smugglers rotting in prisons in this part of the world who were rudely relieved of that belief, including no small number in Bali’s own overcrowded Kerobokan prison. But I’ll spare everyone the lecture about the idiocy of messing around with drugs in any country where it’s widely proclaimed that doing so can result in your death.

No, let’s look at another form of idiocy, that of the global do-gooders, who -- in the same belief of a cultural bullet-proofing -- see every crisis as an opportunity to get involved and bollix things up completely. Yes, there are plenty of organizations that do good things in the aftermath of earthquakes, typhoons and other disasters. But these have the expertise needed for the job at hand, and what’s just as important, know and follow the rules and laws that govern their work in countries where they operate.

Other groups just show up in the belief that their presence and well-meaning hearts will help. So, when I saw the headlines about 10 Americans caught trying to smuggle Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic, I immediately suspected that it was likely a church group attempting an ill-planned “rescue” attempt and that not a one of them knew a thing about Haiti or disaster work.

Verily, reading the story in several news accounts revealed that it was so: A church from Idaho sponsored the trip to sneak children out of the earthquake zone to Haiti’s more stable neighbor, where an orphanage would be set up so that other nice Americans could have their pickings of the litter. But, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The group was caught at the border, and the 33 children – many of whom weren’t actually orphans -- were placed with an NGO’s facility in Port-au-Prince. The 10 Americans were arrested and put in jail, where they protest their innocence of anything other than trying to do what’s best for the children. Their assumption is that this matters more than their contravention of Haitian law and accepted practices for dealing with orphaned and misplaced children in disaster zones. They also seem ignorant of any awareness that what Americans from Idaho think is best for children from Haiti may not be what the children, their parents and Haitian society want or need, even in the midst dysfunction and chaos.

Living in another country where well-intentioned people are frequently driven to do “something” by concern about government inaction in areas of staggering poverty, poor education and inadequate healthcare, I often look askance at the multitudes of non-profit yayasans claiming to work for the betterment of Indonesians. No doubt I run the risk of besmirching some organizations that have got their cultural formula right, but too often Western solutions are proposed where Indonesian solutions are needed, with the result that programs with laudable goals aren’t managed in a way that will have lasting results. Indeed, in many cases, problems can be made worse by making it more difficult for anyone to do anything to help, as appears to be the result of the Idaho church group’s “rescue mission.”

Those that would do good here would do well to note the experience of these Americans and re-examine their own efforts to give Indonesia’s less fortunate citizens a hand up. It is only a trick of birth that has given we of the developed nations greater wealth and opportunity, and we don’t necessarily have any more of a clue how the world works or should work than those born in poorer nations.

In fact, it could be argued that any farmer knee-deep in muck and staring at the back end of a water buffalo has a better grip on reality than most soft-hearted and well-meaning vagabonds.

Copyright © 2010 Lee Roy LeRoi