We have started the work of planting organic coffee. A friend suggested that I should build a cabin for tourists who would like to visit an organic coffee farm. I think tourists would need something more to do in the local area than just visit a farm. However, El Triunfo natural reserve is nearby, which has the highest cloud forest in the world. I have not been there yet but I hear that the visit requires a lot of hiking as there are no roads up to the reserve.
I am happy in the local community. People are friendly and there are no great dangers. There is beautiful nature everywhere and many places to hike in the mountains or swim near a waterfall.
My friend’s idea sounds like a very good idea, but I see two reasons that could hinder its realization. Both have to do with the nearby town: the garbage thrown everywhere and also the drunks thrown about everywhere. Nobody wants to travel so far just to see these sights.
The first problem of the garbage could be easily solved. Most of the people have their houses clean, only a lot of garbage accumulates in the streets. Citizens could help the municipality to collect and recycle garbage with just a little will. Also, they could organize themselves, independent of the municipality with a more local organization in each neighborhood.
The second problem, the drunken issue, is much more difficult and really requires changing very fundamental aspects in the structure of society and perhaps in human nature. Although they could clean the garbage from the streets, there would still be drunks lying everywhere. They come into town after their harvest and waste so much money on alcohol. They remain here drinking for a week or so until they run out of money. They are not that violent when they are in town but many are violent at home. Many beat their wives and also rape members of their family or rural community. My psychiatrist friends tell me that 45 percent of Mexican women have been sexually abused. In the rural communities of Chiapas this figure rises to 60 percent. Of course most of these crimes are committed by drunk men. So, when you see one of these men lying on the street or in the bars, there is a good chance that he is a rapist.
Throughout the world alcohol is the ugliest and most common vice among humans. It makes everyone insensitive and foolish. I have friends who drink alcohol and I say the same to them. Although they are very intelligent and sensitive people, I say that the poison takes away a little of those qualities. A recent study I read in The Guardian reveals how any amount of alcohol consumed reduced brain gray matter density. There is no safe and harmless use of alcohol: a little poison poisons you a little and a lot of poison brings degeneration and illness.
Last year a friend sought help and confessed that he was an alcoholic to his friends on Facebook. I was so amazed at mutual friends who were so insensitive to his problem, probably because they themselves were on the verge of falling into alcoholism and needed to make arguments for themselves and project them onto our friend. “There is no problem if you want to chill out and have a nice cold beer or a glass of wine.” I read so many responses like that. They were so comfortable in their intellectual vanity and fine wine that they couldn’t understand that some people must give up the bad habit altogether. Although their wine does not make these cultured people so insensitive to littering in the street, but it does make them insensitive and unable to see the suffering of a friend and give bad advice. Alcoholism plagues all social classes and it is an addiction and a fatal disease just as much for those who like caviar as those who love their Coors.
My Mexican friends tell me that most Mexican men are alcoholics. I have found it hard to believe but the experience of living here among these problems is confirming this uncomfortable truth. What we see is the decadent and self-destructive machismo that is really taking the whole of society down.
I believe that strong women would have to carry out that position against the abuses of machismo and alcoholism. Not so far from here, in the highlands of Chiapas, some brave Zapatista women grew weary of violence and abuse and took steps to prevent alcohol in their communities. Not only that, they made a revolution against the sexist and drunken state!
Alcoholics anonymous imposes absolute abstinence for an individual. If a whole society is alcoholic, then doesn’t it stand to reason that the whole society should abstain as well? This is a mere fantasy for a materialistic society with a shallow outlook. Only in societies where there is a strong spiritual and/or moral base is a “dry law” possible. For many contemporary minds it sounds limited and religious, but Quakers and Amish do have much higher levels of mental health than the outside world. The Zapatistas imposed this law for very pragmatic reasons without having to resort to religion. It got the men off of the sidewalks and back to work. As a matter of fact, it was the women who insisted on this law in the Zapatista communities of Chiapas. I don’t think that this cultural revolution would have been possible without this step.
Why do such terrible things happen in this relative world while our deeper understanding knows that dharma protects all? Dharma is the moral order of the universe. It is the hidden force that works to make us whole and give us what we need to expand in this existence so as to find the eternal beatitude. “Those who protect dharma are protected by dharma,” said Anandamurti. Is the reverse true as well, that those who don’t protect dharma aren’t protected by dharma? A reckless life with no discernment only breeds chaos. Actions based on unbridled desires will certainly not have very tame reactions. I would say that even the ignorant that go against dharma are protected too, although they may have to undergo reactions from their ignorant actions to put the universe and themselves back into balance once again. Essentially, dharma holds all beings together within a supreme being. When we go against this natural order there are reactions and imbalances in the body, mind, and spirit.
Take, for example, this so-called Narco War. Is there some sort of karmic reason or cause, some negative actions that society has committed that have reverberated back this nightmare? It would be hard to say what the deepest cause may be but one thing is certain and that there is very little dharma in the people to protect them from these dangers. Mexico is now called a “Narco State”, but before that it was a “Drunken State”. Mexicans are on the average poorer and so many families go without proper food and care because the head of the household is out partying with friends and prostitutes. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of men I have met who have been honest and responsible with their families. It is seen as a privilege and even virtue for men to have their extra-marital affairs and drunken rampages. This just sets off a whole chain of lies and deceit that undermines the whole society. This form of egoism only breeds other forms of vice. If one can lie to the family, then why not lie for so many other reasons as well? Machismo permits this indulgence while the families pay the price. This is true at all levels of society and not just with the proletariat.
The family is the nucleus of the society and so much depends upon its health and integrity. Without a balanced family feeling towards one’s near and dear, it is very difficult to find balance and equilibrium in the emotions. These complexes make spiritual practice very difficult. One tries to be in the present but is locked into past complexes. The foundation for this emotional stability is always with one’s family and/or immediate society. Here, the most popular macho attitudes go directly against what is most essential for human beings. Pairing this emotional insecurity and lack of firm identity with a heartless, materialistic culture where everybody is cheating and lying to everybody else is the perfect recipe for social disaster. Some parasite would be attracted to this weakness.
If I were Satan or somebody really important in an intelligence agency, I would certainly exploit people’s weakest points to make them submit to my malicious will so as to enslave their entire society and steal their natural resources and exploit cheap labor. If all of the advertisement bombardments of beer and boobies still left a few alive and kicking with a little independence and creative vitality, then I would see how to get them hooked on crack. And this is precisely what is happening. Mexicans are poor and crack is just cheaper and quicker than beer. Even in rural communities it is appearing and there are goat-herders smoking crack!
Alcohol must be the greatest and most wide-spread vice for humanity, at least until crack catches up. Alcohol is a poison that does no good for the body nor the mind, except for the preparation of medicines for extracting the essence of medicinal plants. Slowly or rapidly, it always degrades the mind and directs the intelligence towards the senses, thus gradually making one more unconscious. Negative microvita or mental-energetic viruses feed more and more off the minds that vibrate with alcohol as alcohol has become such a perfect medium to inject degenerating tendencies while the mind is in a stupefied state. It is just all too easy for the shrewd and ambitious to take advantage of the situation. They probably even feel justified in exploiting people in such a miserable state because they obviously don’t deserve any better because they are seen as brutes. Alcohol only makes the poor poorer and the ignorant more brutally ignorant. Imagine how this country, or any country really, would be if men loved and cared for their families as much as they love their 6-packs.