I've always thought myself to be a "down to earth" type of guy. That I am aware of what's really going on. Present. Understanding with the environment around me. Im now starting to believe otherwise.
I feel detached from everyone else. In my own world of thoughts. Aren't we all in our own little worlds in our heads? Yes, we share many things in common with others. We like the same books, bars, dishes ect.. but we all experience it in our own individual way.
I thought myself to be in tune with the world around me not because I've lived many lives, but because I have talked with people from all over. I have traveled far and wide. Stayed in 5 star hotels, flown first class as well as stayed in shitty hostels, campsites and taken 15 hour local buses in the third world. But that doesn't make really understand what is going on. It only makes me formulate my own ideas of what is going on.
We never really know... anything. Now everything feels more subjective.
This thought came to me when a couple weeks ago my flatmate asked me to go join her for a walk around the center. For a Sunday stroll. I had gone out drinking the night before so I joined her a little later. By the time I arrived, she had sat down in this lovely traditional Portuguese terrace where they had the typical dish of the day and soup of the day. This restaurant even though it looked well kept, with the white and blue Portuguese tiles on the wall and and big wooden tables, it was in the area of intendente of Lisbon. I would soon find out that this was the area where the crack & heroin addicts and whores of Lisbon hanged.
I say it in the past tense because there are way less than before... Little fun factual backstory:
In 2001, Portugal had around 1% of their population addicted to heroin. Yes, heroin. Not weed, not booze... the worst of the drugs. That brought all sorts of troubles. The way they fixed it? They decriminalised all drugs (including heroin) so that addicts instead of hiding in dodgy dens and shooting up, they could legally go and shoot up at the park or at the beach. Yes, it doesn't sound safe for the kids... isn't it better that they remain hidden and chased after? No!
After this new legislative reform what happened was that people started doing drugs in beautiful places, out in the sun, without having to fear for the police. Very quickly and abruptly , drug consumption (specially heroin and crack) started to fall. People didn't want to do drugs. And no, its not because "now that its legal it's not cool". What experts concluded was that, they didn't feel the need take drugs. They were "back" in society and realised a few things. Like, that they live in a beautiful place and could do without drugs, if they wanted to belong and feel part of a community, they shouldn't be a heroin addict.
Because ultimately, people don't want to be hooked on heroin. They do it because they feel depressed, trapped, excluded etc... When they were "accepted" and could be themselves (and shoot up) in the beach and not in Joan's mad house of crackheads, they realised they were better off not doing drugs. That its not part of who they are. It was just a face.
A couple years earlier -in the late 70s -Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander published his paper "Rat park". A study into drug addiction made with rats. Prior to this experiment, the general consensus about cocaine and hard drugs was that they are so addictive that rats will literally drink it until they die. Experiments where something along these lines: They placed rats in a cage with two water taps. One normal, the other with cocaine. The, in some ridiculous high percentage of the cases (like 98%) the rat took the cocaine water until it died. Then comes Alexander and says that "yeah, of course it takes the drug water. It's trapped, bored, isolated and with nothing else to do but take drugs." So he went and built this huge "rat park" and placed many rats together where they could run around, go up and down tubes, eat different types of foods, run on hamster wheels and all chill together. Then he placed the two different water taps inside rat park and saw that very few rats were taking the cocaine water. This shone a great load of insight into human psychology and drug addiction. People do drugs because they feel lonely, depressed and with no other way out. Not because there is something inherently wrong with them (well, except for some few rare cases).
Then we saw this same experiment play out in real life in Portugal, and the same results happened. Drug consumption drastically fell. That was one of the best laws that Portugal ever implemented and almost eradicated the use of hard drugs (Where did I get these facts? Im not sure if it was either in one of Malcom Gladwell's books, or in a ted talk... You can fact-check-them yourself and you'll see that they are legit. I'd start by googling "rat park" or "Portuguese drug use over the years").
I say almost eradicated for what happened at the terrace. When I got there and my flatmate was talking to two guys in these communal big tables. One from Brazil and the other from Cypruss. The Brasilian was working in a bar for minimum wage, but was happy to do so, because he was in Portugal (part of Europe) and not in his home country where he would earn a fraction of what he was earning here. The other was quite a wierdo in the best sense. You could see it already by the way he was dressed and the piercings on this face. If she wouldn't of sat with them, I wouldn't have thought of talking to them... But hey there we were.
I ordered the delicious soup of the day and a piece of Portuguese quiche. We all got talking, but soon after the Brazilian left. The Cypruss guy was quite clever to my surprise. We talked about philosophy, ideology, the meaning of life and went down that rabbit hole. We then laughed at astrology, tarot card, fortune tellers and laughed at the people who take those "signs" so seriously. We discussed how the whole world was unifying and morphing into the same. Not only that there are less wars, but that we all drink Coca-Cola, wear Levis, and watch Friends... How millions of cultures are disappearing and we are all becoming one. Humans. More unified, but more vanilla. One white chick from california... thats what we are becoming.
We also spoke of how intercultural our societies are becoming. How families now are composed of a father from Finland, mother from Cuba, kids that grew up in France in an international school and then moved to Singapore... How less and less there are true nationalities, and when they ask us where we are from we have to tell them a bit about our life story on where we have lived and to what type of culture we identify with. It was a really good chat, pealing at layers and layers of depth, not arguing, not debating, but simply trying to understand each others perspectives.
The funny thing about this encounter was, neither me or him (nor my flatmate) had anything in common. He came from a different background, had completely different aspirations, had a normal job (so normal I don't even remember what it was) and we shared almost nothing (except for drinking coca-cola, and a few Netflix series). When we talked about societies, fairness, and what we would do to make things for the better if we held political power to make changes, we both came up with very different answers.
Then... a crack addict came and started asking us for money. She was around 30 years old, with some white hairs, skinny as a spagetti and unwashed. Probably living on the streets. Her clothes were dirty, worn and torn, her appearance not looked after. The the Cypruss guy casually says "Ignore her, she's here every day. She's a crack addict."·He said so casually, not batting an eye, not changeing his tone of voice. "There are lots of them here. This is the part of Lisbon where all the drug addicts lived. It used to be all heroin houses and brothels around here. Do you see that little road?" As he pointed to a road not 30 meters away. "That's where they all are. They come here to beg, then they go shoot up. Im here most days, I see them all the time.
It was then when the whole conversation we'd been having took more seriousness. Here we were, relishing in conversation over what we want to do with our lives and how everything/everyone is crazy... with good hot food that has been served to us. Meanwhile, there are others roaming the streets, begging for money - for drugs! I didn't feel "sorry" for this woman, it was something different. More like some sort of sadness. You could see she had those eyes of having seen things, having done things too. You could also see that she was once a pretty girl that life had battered. Why was she doing this to herself? I will never know...
I don't know shit about life. I don't know anything about anyone. I can only imagine, and trick myself into thinking I understand... I think of my own brother, how he sometimes does some random unexpected thing, and I've known him literally all his life.
The world is fucked. It is beautiful... But its fucked.
I am so happy I am who I am, that I am where I am and able to live the life I live...
I believe there is more good than bad. That things don't happen for a reason, they just happen. We then in our heads justify it, give some significance that matches what we already believed. And now... I also believe more than ever before--- I don't know or understand anything.
And that's fine. I am happy. Possibly the most happy I've been in years.
I just got accepted to do some super cool travelling job --- but I'll tell you about that in some other blog. I'll also be going to Mauritania driving through Morocco, Southern Sahara and then if there is time possibly Sudan... In September Japan and in October I am thinking Bali...
Yeah, life is awesome.
Again, I am not quite sure what the point was in all of this... Maybe there wasn't one... But I hope you enjoyed learning about rat park.
This pic was taken 10 min after leaving the terrace. I have long hair now...
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