An Open Letter to Mark Manson

Dear Mark Manson,

You don’t seem to know much about social problems, culture, or Brasil (I’m going to stick with our own version of our name here). But thanks for you insight. I’ve just read your open letter and kind of felt the need to reply to it. As I’m one of 190 million people you addressed, it seemed fair to do so. I hope it gets to you somehow.

On your letter, you state that our people are the source of our problems. Our culture is the source of everything we complain about. Then, you call for an internal revolution. To chose to view things in a different way, set new standards. If only it was as simple as that.

You argument comes out like one of a child saying that we should all love each other to achieve world peace. See, there is no problem in saying that, but one would only say such a thing because they don’t understand how complex our world is. Your biased analysis of our culture, based solely on you own experiences, don’t seem to be enough to grasp what our culture is and what the real issue with our problems is. Your point of view seems, ultimately, to leave aside the notion of how complex the development of a country’s culture and problem solving both are.

I’d like to share with you with you a few thoughts on that.

First of all, we should be aware that problems are always going to exist. You don’t just go about solving problems of social nature. You just manage them. It is much like cleaning a house: dirt is never going to go away. On the exact moment you finish polishing every surface the dirt has already started settling down again. What can you do is to manage it, to maintain it at levels that are healthy enough for you to live with.

Social problems are just the same. No internal mindset change will solve any social problem. The real issue is to build structures that allow us to deal with them on a collective way. And as Uruguay ex-president José Mujica wisely said once, we do not have (yet, I hope) the structure to manage the world we’ve built. And that is what seems to bother us too much, but we fail to acknowledge. We still have not figured out a good way to deal with our collective problems.

Second, the issue of culture. I’m going to disregard the part where you bring forth a few vague and disconnected examples based on your own experiences and impressions. It is not sample enough to create a whole judgement on what our country’s problem is. There are whole books by sociologists and historians dedicated to tackle those problems— you should read them.

I’m going right to the point where you say we should change our culture.You don’t change cultures. Cultures are living complex structures that are product of history and social interaction between several kinds of people. Oh, and it has not been confined to the boundaries of countries for a few decades now, if you missed it.

The bottom line is: it is not that simple as you say. Your analysis seems a bit shallow when you put such matters in the picture, doesn’t it? Your simple words seemed to raise a great number of applause, but in the end it doesn’t contribute to anything. They seem to be quite honest and heartfelt, but they don’t carry anything more then your own feelings — and certainly not any contribution for any viable action. Culture change is not individual and cannot be designed. It is made on the political sphere, where people meet.

I would also ask of you to remember that you are a single person. Writing a letter to a whole country stating that you know its problems carries a certain air of arrogance, don’t you think? And it sounds a bit silly since you don’t seem too qualified to do so. I’ve seen people study their entire lives and come up with less certainty than you have delivered. But once again, there was a famous guy that said that the more he learned the more he figured he knew nothing.

As for us, in Brasil, I just wish we walk towards ways of identifying our own problems and build ways to manage them collectively. And as you are new here (four years is not enough to get to know a whole culture, believe me), you can sit and watch a bit before coming to strong conclusions, how about that? A bit of our history and sociology may come in handy too.

Anyways, your letter, as weird as it sounded to me, raised some interesting discussions. And that’s already something good. I just hope people will dive a bit deeper now, shall we?

Warm regards,

Gabriel (just a regular Brazilian person)