Beautifully Broken Issue #48: The Spanish Solution To America's Forever War

IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD

Welcome to Beautifully Broken Issue #48

IDEAS:  The Spanish Solution To America's Forever War

Recently, on a forum for architecture, someone asked what was weird that non-Americans noticed when they visited America that Americans didn’t think was weird. There were answers like “the illusion that Americans think they are free, or that they are the only free people on Earth” and “the idea that healthcare is expensive,” etc. I wrote:

I lived in America for a little bit and found it strange that Americans, on the whole, are not convinced that the rest of the world is real.

I wasn’t talking about the videos online where a person stops random Americans and asks them to name places on a world map (on a good day any one of the 54 countries of the continent of Africa when pointed to is labeled “Africa”).

Of course there are Americans who know geography and in America there are quite a lot of highly intelligent people but general education and knowledge is on the decline everywhere in the Anglosphere (countries where English is the primary language), despite the massive influx of information at everyone’s fingertips should they wish to learn about the world, its languages, cultures.

I’m talking about the Amerisphere—the sense when living in America that one is trapped in a parallel universe outside of which we know there are other countries but project are a lesser expression of existence or “realness” compared to America—like an amusing Disneyland version of something already found in America. For example London, England isn’t a real place, it’s a Disney adventure that one can tour like taking a time machine to a strange quaint place in the past.

When I lived in upstate New York I remember talking to a Gulf War veteran. He had no idea that Australia had participated in every American war since WW2. Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm, The Gulf War, Afghanistan, you name it. Australia is America’s most reliable ally. Even when the British and Europeans say no, Australia is there to help America out, right down to conscripting its young to fight for America (Korea and Vietnam). If you’re an American reading this you might have never heard this fact before. America has no idea because Australia isn’t a real place. It’s like Westworld, a caricature desert country filled with kangaroos and spiders.

The idea of an Amerosphere is about mental and emotional relationships—how one person sees another, how one nation perceives the others. It’s perfectly possible to understand that a country like Australia is a wealthy, thriving modern democracy on one hand, and on the other not really think of it as a real country at all, at least not compared to America. In the same way that a psychotic person might be able to interact with other humans but not be convinced of their reality, because they are, in their own ego, the most important thing in all existence, perhaps even God.

I’m not suggesting America or its people are collectively psychotic but I think that this kind of thinking arises from a sense of imperialism. America doesn’t have a land empire as previous imperial powers did but they do have a media empire, a propaganda empire designed to promote brand America. That’s a propaganda that’s backed up by the largest military force in the history of the world. It’s such a powerful brand—truth, justice and the American Way. It’s so powerful that it’s easy to buy into it even when it seems that the country and its leaders are engaged in policy decisions that run contrary to every law, rule and statute the nation is founded on.

In this sense, a country that has the greatest industrial-military complex in history, a business that generates a massive amount of wealth through weapons manufacture and sales to other nations (sometimes non-allied nations) runs a great risk when it thinks that its foreign policy decision have no real consequence. A forever war, in which America’s economy is constantly stimulated by weapons manufacture and distribution (or use), will only accelerate the world towards global conflict, at which point America’s leaders will realize that the rest of the world is actually real and that the suffering we’re used to seeing only on the television in far off places can directly impact the average citizen.

So how can America, which seems to be looking ever inwards, retreating from the world and creating a massive power vacuum in its absense, turn back to face the rest of the world and start reconnecting? How do we avoid sleepwalking into a forever war and global destruction?

As mentioned in Issue #34: Throw Peace, Not Stones: Avoiding The Next American Civil War, you can change the course of history up to a point but once the energy has tipped past a certain point, nothing can be done until human tragedy has run its course and people are so exhausted with suffering that they’re willing to talk about change. This central tenant of Taoism can be seen in the cyclical changes of the yin/yang symbol where the yang or strong force, gradually weakens until it becomes the yin or weak force, which in turn declines until the yang takes over again and so on.

We’re at the point of extreme yang now. Donald Trump and his neo-liberal government of self-serving businessmen have no opposition as they plunder America’s wealth and the left in America are weak and in decline, unable to effectively resist. In cases like this all we can do is keep transmitting the message of peace, holding open the door of change and wait for history to catch up. The goal for peace is equilibrium, a balancing of left and right that leaves the majority the stability they need to keep society stable and prosperous. In the meantime, things can be accomplished on a microcosmic level, small personal choices that, collectively, can alter the state of the nation.

To that end I’d like to propose one way that America can rejoin the world as a mature adult instead of the teenage temper tantrum it seems to be going through at present.

One way to break Amerisphere thinking (where America is mentally, emotionally and spiritually disconnected from the rest of the world) is by enhancing the education system or even improving self-education (starting of course with oneself). The absolute best way to do that is to learn Spanish.

A stupid idea? A waste of time? In America, Spanish is perceived as the language of the lower class, a racist prejudice reinforced by the perception that it is spoken by Latino people in low paying jobs. In a capitalist society this sends the signal that there’s no perceived benefit—learning Spanish won’t make me more money and won’t help me get ahead in the system. The lack of perceived benefit is the idea we must change. The benefit is immense—the growth of the national spirit is the greatest goal— transcending the limitations of mono-culturalism and mono-lingualism.

Spanish is not only the language of most of South and Central America, the seocnd most widely spoken language in America, but also one of the great European languages. It has its origins in Latin and there is no shortage of great poetry, art, music and literature that an understanding of Spanish will open up for you: Cervantes, Velasquez, Dali, Picasso, Gaudi, Goya, Borges, Segovia, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Frida Kahlo.