This is my first post about Colombia, my native country. I would like to write about one of the issues most concerning me, mentality. By mentality I mean an attitude, the standard thought that gives rise to the standard action. I've always dealt with brutal honesty, so please expect nothing else and know I'm sad and grieving over these facts.
Later on I'll describe how mentality in Colombia slows economy down and prevents social, cultural and
financial paradigm shifts.
Every citizen is proud of his/her country and often has a favorite nation to be disrespectful with. I don't need to mention any examples, they're all over, even approved by the local national governments. In Colombia, every colombian thinks our country and our people is our enemy:
* Every other colombian is about to piss you off, rob you, hijack you or assault you. This implies you have the justified reaction of not wanting to talk to anyone, right? Well, maybe not right.
* Everyone is not trustworthy, except the one distrusting. I will call this "The colombian paradox".
* Everything happening in the life of a colombian is the fault of the government, the major, etc...
* Everyone thinks he/she is smarter than the rest. This is where conflict really reproduces as a bunch of rabbits.
As colombians, we share the global common denominator of fighting for whatever we can. That is, sports (soccer, most of all), politics, money and religion. The difference is that while fighting we may kill each other, despite almost all of us have the same government, the same national soccer team and guess what, the same religion (a different saint or virgin, though). We are the top of the top in complaining, we share the same complains by billions and yet we kill each other. We see in the other what we erroneously think we don't have ourselves, the worst we do have.
I don't really think all colombians are fools. We have nobel prizes, world renowned scientists, artists and much more. The problem is not our intellectual coefficient, our problem is that we reflect as society our inner resentment, envy, pain and repression from many years of war. As colombians we have no sense of belonging to our country, no matter how much we scream when Colombia's national team scores a goal. We can only unite under a flag of particular set of damaging institutional beliefs, while we battle against each other for having different, equally harmful, dogmas about politics, soccer, etc..
A society unable to rely on itself as a base for economic and social constructs, is sentenced to being identified as "third world" and keep poverty and violence at the root of all dysfunctions. As usual, media plays a huge role in this trend. Popular tv channels sell violence and perversion all the way during peak hours. They profit from violence because that's all they care about and that's what we are.
You may identify global descriptions here, not a surprise. I would like to be wrong, but in Colombia violence is extrapolated, in every sense, in every action. Right now I can only think of extremely religious countries as being equally or more violent. We've made soccer a religion, politics a religion and we are among the most religious catholics in the world!
Scarcity is our real flag, we can only see scarcity because we don't live in harmony. Unconvinced of the importance of giving and sharing, one is always struggling to get something and keeping it from others and suffering is inflicted from whatever viewpoint you take.
We'll be in that day in which chaos will make evident, what inner peace couldn't: that we all depend on each other and that the only way out is collaboration, tolerance and understanding.
Ok, enough said. In my next post I'll move on to outline the less common positive aspects of mentality in Colombia, hoping that you enjoy that one much more.
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