John Harrison - "Off the map" and the Brazilian frontier

Right now I am about to start John Harrison’s “Off the map”, an account of an eccentric Englishman on an Amazonian journey. I am decidedly not in the mood for an English eccentric, particularly not if they are, as they do tend to be, not really eccentric at all, but just opinionated Anti-American liberal-lefties with no original thought in their head. 

In Deorla Murphy’s foreword to Harrison’s “Off the Map” she writes “the Harrisons wanted to remain in touch with…life as it was lived…before technology rendered our survival skills redundant”. 

This is utter rubbish. Technology has not rendered our survival skills redundant; it has only changed what those survival skills are. These people would reduce us to hunter-gatherers, and they should be stamped on from a great height!

Harrison writes of garampeiros (gold prospectors) “they are a different breed from the Brazilians who opt to stay at home. They are sharper, harder working, more adventurous and less tolerant of hierarchies and bureaucrats” [there is more.] This goes down to the heart of what R.A Heinlein writes, saying that those who emigrate are always better human beings than those who remain behind. This description of the Brazilian Amazon frontier is most instructive.

Harrison can surely write most excellent English, but he comes across as an a**ehole. I'd not want to meet him!

A visit to Troop 55 - to the heart of America

My visit to Houston's Scout Troop 55 has “torched up a fire inside of me” to quote Mike Scott of The Waterboys. I love America – literally. I am unwilling to consider seriously her foibles and shortcomings; her drawbacks and weaknesses I will overlook. Her greatness, her advantages, I shall praise to the skies. Were I free to do so I would come to live and work in the USA and in time seek to become a citizen. But (also a Mike Scott line from the same song - "When ye go away"): I am spoken for anyway.

This has been brought to the surface by my visit to Troop 55, wherein I saw at first hand the fundamental cultural differences between the USA and the UK. And that difference is this: In the USA the healthy individual accepts complete responsibility for his or her own welfare and destiny, whereas in the UK, we are all too willing to implicitly and often explicitly cede responsibility for our welfare, our lives, even our destiny, to others – to the State. 

The whole concept of “youth work” as we do it in the UK is that we are imparting knowledge, passing on wisdom, inherently patronising young people, working – to use French – de haut en bas – from high to low. What we ought to be doing is facilitating the Scouts own growth by allowing them room to take charge themselves. This creates MUCH more work, as Troop 55’s handbook readily admits, and is quite upsetting, as it flies in the face of almost everything we do as Scouters.