August 27 slightly delayed blog

Luana and I spent the weekend at a massive campout for Seventh-Day Adventists. I can't tell whether the experience was more or less weird than it sounds. In any event, there was no doubting that the double mattress in our room was like heaven last night compared to the camping setup. I slept about twelve hours last night and would have missed my first tutee in the morning, had she not arrived forty minutes late. I was nonetheless energized, having eaten my first of undoubtedly many fried egg sandwiches this morning. Each one -- two eggs on fresh French bread -- costs the equivalent of 10 American cents.

Okay, so on my way home from work on Thursday, I ran into Mara, one of my intermediate English students, who was headed to a friend's house nearby. Having left work early due to yet another cancellation, I tagged along and met her group of friends, all of whom are around my age and fun to talk to. After the cursory cultural exchange moment -- Brazilians always ask whether we Americans understand the complexity of the country beyond Ipanema, Carnaval, and the jungle -- they invited me (and Luana as well) to the campout that was going to take place this weekend. They said that it was really more about meeting people than about religion, and since we didn't have any plans for the weekend, it seemed like a good option. Luana wasn't feeling great and thought that Adventists were especially strict, so she didn't really want to go. I'm completely ignorant about Protestant denominations -- are Adventists even Protestant? -- but Mara and her friends were definitely not hard-core conservative types. So I eventually subdued the dissent and convinced Luana that in any case, it would be worth it to get out of Itabatan for a few days.

The bus left from the Adventist church in Itabatan on Friday and made it to Moroba, in the neighboring state of Espirito Santo, in about four hours. Luana and I sat across the aisle from the local pastor, Robismario, who was probably the most immature adult I've ever seen, seriously. When one of the adults was walking through the aisles to give out candy to pious or well-behaved kids, Robismario earnestly waved his hands in the air indicating his interest in the candy and snatched it at the first opportunity. When someone threw candy in an up-for-grabs lottery, Robismario naturally towered over his neighbors and won the candy. He had to be pleaded by the adolescents nearby to share some of it. Oh, and on the way home (I'm getting ahead of myself), Robismario broke tradition and refused to allow the bus to stop for lunch. This led to a near-mutiny, which the more responsible adults quelled by holding a vote. The pro-food coalition naturally won and the adults convinced Robismario to allow the bus to stop. Once at the restaurant, those had voted against stopping -- because they either weren't hungry or wanted to support Robism‡rio -- stayed in the bus. Robismario, of course, was among the first off the bus and in line for food. Ha!

I don't want to make a generalization about Adventists, though. Mara and her friends were a lot of fun and were the leaders of the pro-food coalition. Like they had said, the religious stuff was a very minor part of the whole experience. For them and the hordes of young people at the campout, it was a chance to meet new people outside the bounds of small-town life, and especially to find like-Godded romantic partners. Which brings me to the part about the whole thing that struck me the most about the whole weekend, which was how incredibly good people looked, despite the fact that we were all sleeping in tents on a dirt out in the middle of nowhere. People dressed to impress. I mean, there were showers, but they were in outdoor shacks and without any hot water, yet everyone (except Luana and me, who haven't been weaned off hot water) took showers every morning. Then they went back to their tents, slipped into their Sunday dresses and suits, whipped out the pocket mirrors, hooked up their electric hair straighteners to stray outlets, and went to church. It was really amusing and impressive to see people in high heels hiking across the campground. Being my lazy self, I brought my camera but only took a few lousy pictures.

The religious activities at the event primarily involved half-singing along to the two theme songs, which I presume are exclusively Adventist songs. But seriously, there were many small events and services, and these two songs were very well-represented. On Sunday morning, Luana and I went to find a place to sit after packing up our tent, and we ended up in church. At one point, a youth trio -- they were called the Trio Life -- went up to the stage to sing. There was a problem with their backing track, so another lady took the stage to entertain the crowd while they fixed the technical difficulties. She ended up singing what she called a crowd favorite, which was of course one of the two theme songs: "Jesus Amem." By the time she was done, the Trio Life went up, the backing track played, and sure enough, it was an alternative arrangement of "Jesus Amem." Nobody in the audience seemed to find this as funny as I did.

There was a truly passionate and profound sermon, which was given by a pastor from Rio Grande do Sul, a state in the extreme south of Brazil. It was about optimism, about enjoying the good things in life and not complaining about the bad things. It related the story of a parishioner who was always complaining to a group of followers of Moses from the Old Testament. The followers were crossing the desert in search of Canaan, and the only ones who survived were the ones who avoided complaining ... or something like that. I can't quite tell since my Portuguese isn't that great and my knowledge of the Old Testament is much worse. Anyway, I can't agree more. Complaining is completely futile and completely counterproductive. Similarly, being optimistic isn't just a convenient personality trait, but a vital component of success and personal growth. One of these days I'll finally get around to writing the complete Logic of Optimism essay, though I imagine the same message is to be found in most motivational speeches, self-help books and great success stories.

Speaking of writing, I've been itching to write my review of Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate. I'm only about a hundred pages into the book, but I think it's really fascinating and at the same time completely unsurprising. It's incredible how many popular psychology books rehash the same famous studies and findings. What's generally annoying to me about the book is that it is so one-sided: Pinker makes it clear that it is a Nature-Nurture book and that he's on the side of Nature. Of course, he acknowledges that nothing in human behavior is completely determined or completely unrelated to biology, but wherever there is room for debate, he chooses to err firmly on the side of determinism and mechanism instead of creativity or flexibility. He also does a bad job of dismissing connectionism, which is really what the Luana model is about and which is much simpler and more elegant than Pinker's metaphor of the mind as a giant toolbox with all these tools that sometimes work together and sometimes don't.

Okay. More later. I have to go to class now.