Tonight in the Pelourinho I was accosted by a large, hostile, one-armed Brazilian man demanding money from my friend. Threatened me, pushed me a bit, and cursed me out in Portuguese, and luckily, I’m too ignorant too grasp all the nuances of what he said he would do to me and what I deserved and how I would receive a “gift” from him if he came across me again. It left a bad taste in my mouth… I lived in Bangladesh for 6 years, so I’ve grown accustomed to every kind of solicitation conceivable, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give money to someone threatening my friends, no matter how many limbs they’re missing… that sounds heartless, but it’s true. Once you know your way around enough 3rd world con-men, their novelty wears off, you see through their tragic air, and appreciate the method in their madness, the game they're projecting through all their shit talking… Sympathy becomes harder and harder to trigger… We all grow numb to poverty, if we’re constantly overwhelmed by it, but I hope in time to find a way to navigate the pitfalls of unhealthy charity and stupid generosity, and replace them with something that actually makes a difference. But who am I kidding, this is all just blowing smoke and words to conceal the fact that I had no money to give and refused to give cash I didn't have to an angry poor crippled man who threatened to hurt me… Talk about something to dwell over and sleep on…

Quote for the Evening:
“Here there is a cosmopolitanism which is not the expression of a comprehensive and generous philosophy, but is merely a symptom of moral inertia…
There is no doubt…that there is a vast disparity between the different strata of the population. This lack of homogeneity is probably the cause of that instability… The decadence of our people presents a deplorable mixture of the savagery of the new-born races with the degeneracy of the races that are now becoming exhausted. There is general confusion. The currents of immorality flow trough our people without meeting obstacles in any of our institutions. Such a nation as ours is ready to receive the worst evil that can befall in the world; arbitrary and despotic governments. If society is a creation of suggestion, what can you expect of the feelings, the ideals of the uncultured masses when their imagination is being bewildered by the spectacle of he most brazen degradation in the governing classes? What reaction will not be caused in dull intellects by the scorn of those leaders for an ideal, for superior things, and their love for position and graft? And it isn’t the government only. It is all of them: the subservient judiciary, ready to plunder private property, the public servants, the military, the clergy, all of them are sliding down a dangerous incline…”
Jose Pereira da Graca Aranha Canaan, A Pessimistic Novel of Ideas
1902