Your experience with bribes and how it might be "better" than something else is also my experience in other countries. The "knowing this is what it will take" somehow gets justified in my head as, "this is just how it's done here." I love the United States and I'm fiercely patriotic. But I remember thinking that "their" system just might be better than making a request to a huge bureaucracy here and knowing I'll never hear back because the request just goes into a black hole where no one takes responsibility because there's no Land Rover, computer or Jim Beam to incentivize them.
Your mefloquine experience brings back a saying from the late 60's "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there ISN'T someone working against you". But "There is always a way around..." is a powerful and very useful concept. "Don't fret. Finagle." is the best way to deal with any sort of obstacle.
I think there's a lot to be said about "meeting your devils". I think one of the biggest faults of modern culture is this insistence "the world be safe". People are flawed. People are bad. People make mistakes. All of these happen and instead of being pleasant, we prefer "polite". "Polite" little ways of dismissing one another. Polite little gestures to "push aside" those who are being "impolite". "If a person isn't likable enough, they are wrong". I think that has become a very large danger in our world of "business first, society later" sort of thinking. So many shadows that can lurk around corners because "the truth is impolite to tell. It is better we be nice to them and keep the devil in the details." And of course, "business first, society later". Why should we be at all surprised at how bad things have become? Even worse, even in our social environments "function over form" has taken over. It doesn't matter IF a conversation is beneficial or making the world better, all that matters that it DOES function. Agreeabiity is a disease of which most people never escape. It's so hard to convince people "sure, you are talking, but this isn't going anywhere." People just imply it does because they won't dive deeper, push farther, and bite the bullet of pain and failure. Whether that failure be being wrong, or failing to communicate. Both happen plenty. But I refuse to accept the latter. If a conversation requires screaming and shouting and venting, better to do than that "be polite and civil." And most of the reason people get so violent is because they don't know how to communicate past complexities (not that I did either before my short stint at the liberal arts college experience so I can't blame them for that as much as refusing to even try).
By the way, in case this is of interest to you, a twitter account built around parodying you "@thebadstats" is in your Discord server. Obviously I am assuming you and Bret decided early on to let it be the public's space to self navigate, but after communicating with a member, I was quite disturbed to see his twitter account and hear of his past actions.
On a side note, thank you for telling your story. It's not ALL ABOUT YOU, as @thebadstats wants to imply. You are just a symptom pronouncing itself because the symptom is part of a bigger diseased body. Please continue to tell stories like these. You embody real humanity and experience in the face of modern problems. And from personal experience, I know that having a shared experience is NEEDED for anyone to know they aren't just "that one crazy person thinking they are the center of the universe".
Thank you for the story. Wish I could share my own, but I cannot. I have rejected the modern intellectual space to think independently and do the best I can using intuition to make sense of modernity.
A construction company I was part of took a project in the Dominican Republic. We were told to make sure we budgeted $100K (in cash) to pay off the officials at the loading dock or we would never be able to off load materials. It was just accepted as a "business expense".
I have had the pleasure of traveling to quite a few places that operate in a very similar manor as you describe, regarding your experience in Tana, e.g. Nigeria, Ecuador, Mexico, Curacao that I can name off the top of my head. I have been to so many places (15 countries and 49 US states) so it can be difficult to recall details of those experiences with any certainty. I think Nigeria may have demonstrated the greatest breadth of disparity in its bureaucracy and lawlessness. That place feels like a time capsule with the overlapping of tribal organization and modern cellular tech. they struggle to keep their power online.
Having lived in several overtly corrupt countries, what I find most tedious about the West’s opaque version of corruption is Western governments’ enforcement of an unworldly naiveté on their populations. Corrupt hierarchies and social systems, population psychology and manipulative compassion are understood not by all, but by broad sections of non-Western societies. Conversely, Western citizens are subject to intense, generational propaganda campaigns, that turn us into naïve children who believe our governments and institutions are motivated by compassion and are there to protect us, with no inkling that such psychological profiles, as most of the world know, never get close to the top of political hierarchies.
Having observed interactions between Westerners and locals in the different countries I have lived in for more than two decades, I have drawn the conclusion that people are generally too polite to disclose that they know that we Westerners are exceptionally naïve to the ways of the world, but they do know. They don’t mock or laugh at us, as we would not mock or laugh at propagandized foreigners either, after all, they have their own, often worse problems to deal with.
Your experience with bribes and how it might be "better" than something else is also my experience in other countries. The "knowing this is what it will take" somehow gets justified in my head as, "this is just how it's done here." I love the United States and I'm fiercely patriotic. But I remember thinking that "their" system just might be better than making a request to a huge bureaucracy here and knowing I'll never hear back because the request just goes into a black hole where no one takes responsibility because there's no Land Rover, computer or Jim Beam to incentivize them.
Your mefloquine experience brings back a saying from the late 60's "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there ISN'T someone working against you". But "There is always a way around..." is a powerful and very useful concept. "Don't fret. Finagle." is the best way to deal with any sort of obstacle.
By sheer coincidence (maybe?), the word used in Mexican Spanish for “bribe” is “mordita,” which roughly translates to “little bite.”
The “ita” at the end is a diminutive which take time to completely understand in the language.
https://principledbicycling.substack.com/p/la-mierdita
I think there's a lot to be said about "meeting your devils". I think one of the biggest faults of modern culture is this insistence "the world be safe". People are flawed. People are bad. People make mistakes. All of these happen and instead of being pleasant, we prefer "polite". "Polite" little ways of dismissing one another. Polite little gestures to "push aside" those who are being "impolite". "If a person isn't likable enough, they are wrong". I think that has become a very large danger in our world of "business first, society later" sort of thinking. So many shadows that can lurk around corners because "the truth is impolite to tell. It is better we be nice to them and keep the devil in the details." And of course, "business first, society later". Why should we be at all surprised at how bad things have become? Even worse, even in our social environments "function over form" has taken over. It doesn't matter IF a conversation is beneficial or making the world better, all that matters that it DOES function. Agreeabiity is a disease of which most people never escape. It's so hard to convince people "sure, you are talking, but this isn't going anywhere." People just imply it does because they won't dive deeper, push farther, and bite the bullet of pain and failure. Whether that failure be being wrong, or failing to communicate. Both happen plenty. But I refuse to accept the latter. If a conversation requires screaming and shouting and venting, better to do than that "be polite and civil." And most of the reason people get so violent is because they don't know how to communicate past complexities (not that I did either before my short stint at the liberal arts college experience so I can't blame them for that as much as refusing to even try).
By the way, in case this is of interest to you, a twitter account built around parodying you "@thebadstats" is in your Discord server. Obviously I am assuming you and Bret decided early on to let it be the public's space to self navigate, but after communicating with a member, I was quite disturbed to see his twitter account and hear of his past actions.
On a side note, thank you for telling your story. It's not ALL ABOUT YOU, as @thebadstats wants to imply. You are just a symptom pronouncing itself because the symptom is part of a bigger diseased body. Please continue to tell stories like these. You embody real humanity and experience in the face of modern problems. And from personal experience, I know that having a shared experience is NEEDED for anyone to know they aren't just "that one crazy person thinking they are the center of the universe".
Thank you for the story. Wish I could share my own, but I cannot. I have rejected the modern intellectual space to think independently and do the best I can using intuition to make sense of modernity.
This article deserves to be adapted into movie. I nominate David Cronenberg to direct. It made my day : )
A construction company I was part of took a project in the Dominican Republic. We were told to make sure we budgeted $100K (in cash) to pay off the officials at the loading dock or we would never be able to off load materials. It was just accepted as a "business expense".
I have had the pleasure of traveling to quite a few places that operate in a very similar manor as you describe, regarding your experience in Tana, e.g. Nigeria, Ecuador, Mexico, Curacao that I can name off the top of my head. I have been to so many places (15 countries and 49 US states) so it can be difficult to recall details of those experiences with any certainty. I think Nigeria may have demonstrated the greatest breadth of disparity in its bureaucracy and lawlessness. That place feels like a time capsule with the overlapping of tribal organization and modern cellular tech. they struggle to keep their power online.
Having lived in several overtly corrupt countries, what I find most tedious about the West’s opaque version of corruption is Western governments’ enforcement of an unworldly naiveté on their populations. Corrupt hierarchies and social systems, population psychology and manipulative compassion are understood not by all, but by broad sections of non-Western societies. Conversely, Western citizens are subject to intense, generational propaganda campaigns, that turn us into naïve children who believe our governments and institutions are motivated by compassion and are there to protect us, with no inkling that such psychological profiles, as most of the world know, never get close to the top of political hierarchies.
Having observed interactions between Westerners and locals in the different countries I have lived in for more than two decades, I have drawn the conclusion that people are generally too polite to disclose that they know that we Westerners are exceptionally naïve to the ways of the world, but they do know. They don’t mock or laugh at us, as we would not mock or laugh at propagandized foreigners either, after all, they have their own, often worse problems to deal with.