Shooting Civilization 3-10-11

Anderson, South Carolina

Perhaps one of the most poignant indicators of dis-ease in our world is the number of people who have become placeless, homeless in a macro-sense; citizens who no longer have a homeland. Massive struggles for power and influence have ignited dozens of international wars and civil wars involving at one count one hundred thirteen political jurisdictions. A number of nations are entering their second decade without functioning central governments. For some, piracy and anarchy have replaced any rule of law.

Uncounted millions of people have fled their homelands for the promise of safety on the far side of their borders. Reality for these refuges is often years of abject misery confined to disease-ridden concentration camps. Media and political attention fades; they become the forgotten. Reality for those caught in the snares of refugee camps in Thailand, Sudan, Rwanda, and dozens of other lands is nothing more than a wakeful nightmare.

For decades Mexico was one of the grandest places to visit and work; the highlight of my year was several weeks working in Mexico, its hospitality and serene lifestyle nothing short of overwhelming. Even the poorest of mountain villages offered an abundance of graciousness making me feel like a pauper in my own land. There was always time for friendship, dining, and just flowing with life on the simplest plaza at sunset.

El Paso has become home for the most poignant of refugee groups, dreamers who would make a better world for their people if they did not have to flee. The northern desert states of Mexico once held great economic promise for those who would see their people given opportunity to enter the world of economic choice. Factories, highways, power plants, and other infrastructure promised to provide abundant good paying jobs for millions of Mexicans. In the past five years much of the region has become nothing more than a theater of war, running crimson with the blood of tens of thousands who would dare to make the world a better place; business owners, mayors, political candidates, police officers, even newlyweds. Stunning in this unnamed war are the demographics of victims of senseless violence. Those who have the vision, will, and wherewithal to improve life for millions are the very ones being extirpated. Images of Kristallnacht, Cambodia’s killing fields, the dust of Darfur recur. The collective ‘we’ learns nothing, it seems. Many of Mexico’s best business leaders have fled to the relative safety of El Paso, making desperate bids to operate their companies remotely, convening daily for group support, while facing logistical nightmares.

Not long ago I again experienced the gracious wonder that is Mexico, basking in timeless hospitality, where all were present and accounted for, not caught up in frenetic busyness. There’s perhaps no greater joy than being lost in the mindfulness of timeless hospitality in the Latin world. Alas, places still perceived of as safe mere weeks ago have become theaters of war, driven by inconceivable greed and violence. Two weeks ago our long-standing mission has decided to cancel the medical caravans we made across Mexican deserts for forty-three years, citing untenable security issues. No longer can we take our trucks and deploy field hospitals. Thousands of Mexicans will never have the opportunity to receive life saving and life changing surgery and medicine. It’s a very sobering reality to be forced to capitulate to a measured fear for one’s safety.

Greed has taken the community of mankind to unthinkable places, places where fourteen year old boys, instead of working on their forward pass in soccer and building dreams, are now working as hired guns for drug cartels. Seared into the consciousness of the world is awareness of a boy in Mexico hired to behead the competition in the drug wars which are consuming the dreams of Mexico. At least four victims have lost their heads to this boy, ultimately over money.

Amazingly, a surreal industry has arisen in Mexico, construction of elaborate mausoleums for drug lords, runners, and hit men cut down in the mayhem. A glossy monthly magazine known the world over presented an extensive photo essay on the misfortunes of Mexico; presenting photo-evidence of these elaborate cities for the dead. Even in death, thugs are attempting to present evidence of their importance in life, believing he who dies with the most toys wins. Reality says he who dies with the most toys is still dead.

Tragically we have become prisoners of our own egos on both sides of the border. South of the border self-importance is seen as coming from exercising power and influence over ‘turf’, controlling a vast flow of illicit drugs, money, and immigrants to the north. Trappings of the material world, yachts, German cars, grand houses, and now even cities for the dead have thousands of Mexicans scrambling to make veritable fortunes in drug trafficking and extortion. More than thirty thousand have died in what has become a chronic civil war over drugs and money. There’s no evidence of any thought for political or social reform among these combatants. A grand culture and nation are at imminent risk of being lost to the future.

North of the border is the largest concentration of illicit drug users in the solar system. Millions of Americans have become total prisoners to their addictions, willingly destroying their lives and any possibilities for their future. Has America become little more than a concentration camp ourselves, held captive by our own addictions? Illicit drugs represent only the tip of the iceberg of an American penchant for addictive behavior. Alcohol is a legal addiction on which the entertainment, travel, hospitality, and sporting industries are built. Alcohol destroys as many if not more lives than illicit drugs. The collective cost of alcoholism to the American economy is certainly comparable to the catastrophic costs Mexicans are experiencing in their drug war. The true cost of the American ego addiction to ‘bigger’, fueled by over buying up-scale houses, fast cars, breast augmentation, speculative investing, lotteries, even casinos is now manifesting itself in the larger economy.

While Mexicans shoot each other with breath-taking regularity, using American-made fire arms, millions of Americans are routinely shooting up with heroin, cocaine, meth, and most anything else they can get a hold of. Every time I see children taken away from an addicted single mother by state authorities, holes are being shot through any future possibilities for her children.

Does paying $900 for a Super Bowl ticket or paying a now vilified and unemployed comedian $2 million a week for thirty minutes of ‘work’ do anything to bring about economic, political, or social transformation that might give alcoholics or drug addicts any reason to take pause and consider the possibilities of another way of living life? Is our present crop of ‘heroes’ doing anything to challenge the American penchant for addictive behavior? Is it even possible to challenge alcoholics and addicts to seek recovery from addiction when the larger culture is no-less addicted to a wide array of things?

Is it possible a cure for our diverse addictions on both sides of the border actually stems from learning to be content with what we have, to give up our ceaseless striving for more, bigger, more intense, brighter, louder, faster? Has the answer been in front of our noses for twenty centuries? Can we learn of the true wealth and satisfaction coming from simple living with those we love and who love us? Can we learn to live simply so others can simply live – even Mexicans caught in the cross fire of American cravings?

I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every kind of circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.