‘The more complex and functional a formal economy within a society, the more dysfunctional the family, and by extension, the society tends to become.’

I formulated the above proposition on my way walking to work this morning.  It explains, for me, why life in Panama amongst Panamanians seems so much more cordial and becoming than life back here in the States which, by comparison, seems more socially gruff and mean.

In both types of societies (‘advanced’ and ‘third world’), you benefit and suffer.  But it seems that in the ‘advanced’ economies, you experience greater prosperity while suffering a diminished sense of community.  And in the ‘third world’ you experience a more openly enriched community while suffering from comparatively less prosperity. 

Oh, it’s possible in either society for any single individual to experience all graduated combinations of prosperity and healthful community.  There’s no inviolable law or rule that deems ‘ all suffer this while enjoying that ’.  But the overall tendencies for the populations, as a whole, hold, I do believe.

Hence…

My advice to those who’d rather diss prosperity: Gather up some wealth, all wealth at hand, and replant into a ‘third world’ tropical paradise.

My advice to those who’d rather diss community: Get your ass to America and thrive.

But my advice to  either group, regardless of staging: Get a blog, create virtuality,  and keep your dreams alive. 

(And thusly, blogging, I believe, is another great reason that internet access needs to be made available to everyone in the world who wants it, affordably and without political restraints.)

I’m in the process of “collecting raw data”: blog data.  And that’s a strange thing since it puts me in a meta-blog mentality.  I must become the quintessential blogologist and observe the accepted protocol of sampling: obtaining a large enough, representative sample through random collection techniques.   So while on the one hand, I read the random blog I encounter as I normally would, on the other hand, my objective is to capture, in a sense, harvest the blog info for later analysis, for what’s called “data reduction”—and that prior to “statistical analysis”.

“Capturing” consists of saving the randomly-encountered posts in Word, graphics and all.  I now envision remaining in this “collection mode”  for at least a couple of days. 

Meanwhile, aside, I will continue with my own blogging and commenting as before.  Even anthropologists, dutifully immersed in a culture to study it, need to take and, hopefully enjoy, their meals.