Bogota Journal: ¨There Is No Such Thing As Society¨´

Well, so said Dame Mararet Thatcher, who now is likely somewhere in hell roasting marshmallows with her best friend forever Augusto Pinochet.  Or maybe they're being barbecued together from the same pitch fork.
Neo-liberals roasting on an open fire.  But it´s nowhere near Christmas right now and really it could be that God is more merciful than I am and if I make it to heaven in the afterlife maybe I´ll even meet them there?  Who only knows and really it's quite enough work getting through this life without worrying about what comes after.  But here I digress.

 The fact of the matter is that there is indeed such a thing as society, or the perpetual gathering and interacting of persons.  I see this constantly here in Bogota. Yes, the social infrastructure here is more fragmented than what we are used to in Canada, and people here really have to struggle to survive.  In place of a strong social safety net (they do have one here but I don't think it's very strong) they have a stong family unit.  Actually one well educated professional I met here expressed surprise and bewilderment when I mentioned to her that I have never been married, never wanted to be, and never had kids, never wanted any, and this is actually quite normal and accepted in Canada where some fifty percent of the people live alone.  Not so in Colombia.  Like in other Latin American countries the family is central to everything.  If you are on your own then you are really on your own and God help you if you're in a jam.

Still, I find the people here, once they get over their initial reserve, incredibly warm and friendly.  And generous. I think that human selfishness is not the root of human nature though it certainly exists there.  I also believe that we are for the most part naturally generous and want to reach out and help and care for others.  Fear and a sense of helplessness often get in the way, as does living in a society, if you can call it that, that glorifies selfishness and individualism.  And if you happen to live in a country that has been traumatized by conflict and war then it's going to be all the harder and more complicated.

I spent yesterday with a friend who lives here.  We ended up visiting the park, Simon Bolivar and the nearby botanical gardens.  The park is big, but not really that impressive.  The trees are kind of small and scattered but the grass is so vividly green as to be almost blinding.  There is a lake with waterfowl and other birds and we saw an elegant white egret.  For the botanical garden there is a small entrance fee but it is more than worth it.  It is huge with towering trees and flowers and paths everywhere.  It is also a welcome refuge of silence from the relentless racket that is Bogota.

Later my friend and I went to his home where I met his two daughters, teen age and pre-teen.  It is a very humble place, small, with only the basics but clearly a loving home.  My friend told me that there is a coded hierarchy of social strata used to code neighbourhoods.  He lives in a poor area and said that it is a two.  One would be very poor.  Pasadena, where I am staying, he said would be a five or a six.  Six is at the very top.  This all strikes me as a bit odd.  My neighbourhood is nice and quite but nothing fancy and really not much different from a middle class or working class neighbourhood in Vancouver.  Yet, he calls Pasadena exclusive, which is a term that gives me pause.  Since this neighbourhood is exclusive, then by default it excludes anyone who cannot afford to live there.  And it is the same thing with a lovely house in an adjoining neighbourhood where I visited some folks last week.  A beautiful sumptuous home in a quiet, code six neighbourhood.  It isn't that much different in Vancouver, though, just not officially stratified.  For example we have the ostentatious palaces in Shaughnessy Heights and Southwest Marine Drive in Vancouver at one end of the scale and the Downtown Eastside (aka the poorest postal code in Canada) on the other.

That said, after our visit yesterday it is further reinforced to me that in Canada, compared to much of the world, we live like kings.  Even though we need to do a lot more to look after our own poor and homeless, and yes we do have the resources, just lack of political will, on the balance of things we have very little , apart from our horrible winters, to compain about.