If you could kindly tap the ❤️ at the top or bottom of this newsletter it will make it easier for other people to find this publication. Ahéhee'! བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ།! 謝謝! Thank you! ขอบคุณ! شكرا ! תודה! Спасибо! धन्यवाद! Merci y Muchisimas gracias!
First off, I want to thank you all for being patient with me as I took a week off from writing to focus on un-teaching. I’m still here in Vietnam, where I have been hosting American students (and their teachers as it were) who have come to learn about the American War (They don’t call it The Vietnam War here) and how it effected not only the people of this breathtakingly beautiful country but how too the land and water here were altered by war. I applaud these young souls who, to be honest, are more interested in buying cheap knock-off Travis Scott sneakers from Ho Chi Minh City’s Ben Thanh Market than they are in learning about the uninhabitable world they are inheriting because of their parents’ generations ongoing, deplorable neglect.
To be fair, they show up as best they can, in the way their culture has raised them. They, like there teachers, are glued to their phones most of the time and are troublingly uninterested when we speak with people who have suffered directly from the aftermath of Agent Orange. Yet, I still tip my hat for what effort they to manage make. Showing up, as they say, is half the battle. And, for myriad reasons, westerners are beginning to see how true this statement actually is, how crucial learning from outside the “developed” worlds cushy bubble is. Whereas in 1994, around the first year I began international travel, only 10% of Americans held a passport, now it’s closer to 40%. And even if the only reason one travels is to find a cheap tailor and buy fake Gucci bags, the world will still have its way with you on some level. Travel changes us. In ways not always recognized for several years after one returns home.
I can certainly attest to this myself. I first visited Vietnam about ten years ago. Then, The War Remnants Museum was known by a different name, “The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes”. It’s safe to assume that due to pressure from both those intimidating nations, Vietnam opted to tone this accurate title down a bit. Nonetheless the information presented inside is still the same. Returning to this museum a decade later, with American students, after reading countless books since my last visit about what the heck happened here, and also visiting the Địa đạo Củ Chi Tunnels where Viet Cong literally lived in massive underground networks of secret corridors that trace the country for two decades effects me in profoundly deeper ways than it did back then.
Of course, I never heard any of the stories told at The War Remnants Museum growing up in Illinois. In fact, I heard very little at all about the American War in Vietnam. To this day, even my uncles who served in that war as teenagers seldom, if ever make any mention of it at all. I knew we lost, but the details were never explained. It shook me to the core years ago, upon my first visit, seeing images of civilians mutated by chemical warfare. And after traveling throughout this lush green land, meeting many people who have been kind to me even though my people are responsible for the deaths of many of there loved ones, it breaks my heart to think that my own government seemed to not have cared much for how their actions would not only destroy the people here but the land, the water, the animals, countless cultural artifacts, seeds, and more, but would also terrorize the minds of their own people as well. And as America loses another war, pulling out of Afghanistan after destroying another peoples world, and enables the genocide of yet another ancient and beautiful people in the middle east, I can’t blame these kids for not being more engaged. The leaders of the West have done little to motivate concern of any kind much less earn anyones respect. The West’s agenda is clear, to be rich and powerful, to own and control everything. No surprise then, that the students I work with now are beginning to climb up the same tree. Western “education”/“culture” is teaching them to do so.
What has struck me most this trip however was a visit I took to the Ho Chi Minh City site where on June 11, 1963, Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire as an act of protest against religious persecution. It was this single act that arguably caused the world to begin truly caring deeply about what was going on in Vietnam at that time. Here in the blazing June heat, nearly 60 years to the day after this unforgettable event, we recollected those fires of protest, the selfless act of passionate dedication to a cause bigger than ones own greed. In the midst of the hottest June on record, where, due to global warming and continuing unregulated human consumption an unprecedented heat wave is killing people the world over, and not only people but monkeys in Mexico have been reported to be literally falling from trees due to the intense heat, I can’t help but wonder, are these animals also protesting? Are the beaching whales serving as Buddhist Monks now, trying too, like Thích Quảng Đức, to spark us into action?
We seem to have become numb. If we saw a monk light himself on fire today, in protest of the genocides now ensuing around the world, would we even shed a tear? Little now makes us feel deeply, much less truly act. As long as we have super phones, high speed internet, air conditioning, fancy tennis shoes, an insurance plan and some snacks, we remain relatively passive. Oh we may bitch a little on social media, but no one is going to head downtown and set themselves on fire. Hell, we won’t even vote for a third party. Has the heat simply gotten too intense? Has it melted our ability to feel strongly enough to act? Are we already past the threshold, living in post-apocalyptic times, so blinded by the overwhelming madness ensuing that we now go about our days all but oblivious to the severity of it all, unconcerned for the wellbeing of even ourselves, much less the wellbeing of children, the earth, and monkeys?
As a father, I have to look deeply into this. Into the current human condition. Into the curious phase we seem to be passing through where everyone knows what kind of mess we are in, yet few do anything at all to change their lifestyle in such a way as to not aid in the continuation of this life killing era. I want to offer my daughter hope. Of course, I want her to have fun and play freely. Yet what do these things even mean in a world where most of my countrymen will probably be ok justifying voting for one of two enablers of genocide come November?
The fact is, we still haven’t dealt with the messes we made in Vietnam. The land is still covered with Agent Orange. Bombs still litter the landscape of South East Asia, still killing farmers as they go about their daily chores. We haven’t cleaned it up. And we just keep making more messes. With no plan whatsoever to clean any of it up! And we wonder why our children numb themselves on social media. We wonder why they are depressed.
Ours is a culture of forever adolescents. Uninitiated bullies who do whatever they want and don’t clean up after themselves. We still get involved in every war we can. We still haven’t honored any of the treaties. We still don’t take climate change seriously and we refuse to tell the whole truth. And we wonder why our kids don’t show us any respect.
Travel my friends. Travel as much as you can. Eat with the locals and talk. Laugh and share. You will learn quickly that Palestinians are lovers too. So are Jews, Vietnamese, Russians, Chinese, El Salvadorians, etc. We have been told so little of the story that I dare say that, even with all our incredible gadgets, and access to information I’m starting to wonder if those from the so called “developed” world have literally de-evolved as a result of too much opulence, to the point where we know far less than arguably any generation before now.
The world is not what is shown on television. The world is not what is seen on social media. The world is not a podcast or a course one takes in prep school. The world is a monkey falling from a tree, dying from heat. The world is a monk, setting himself on fire in an effort to keep true culture alive. The world is what you feel when the air conditioner is turned off, what you hear when the show ends. The world is that uncomfortable feeling you get when you see a homeless man begging you for a meal, the feeling of awe you get when you see the Northern Lights. The world is looking at us, through the eyes of bored adolescents who are dying for elders to love them. The world is wondering, did you solve the riddle? Did you ask the right question???
#mayallbeingsbehappyandfree