The Costa Rican and Brazilian Psyche

From the group project, I’d like to share two examples of how nature affects the culture of Costa Rica and Brazil.

When researching Costa Rica, I tried to understand the formation of the Costa Rican psyche.  Costa Rica, located in Central America, is very unique in comparison to their neighboring countries.  Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua have all experienced bloody wars, genocide and political instability.  These four countries, although of course having their differences, have similar troubled histories.  So why it is that Costa Rica hasn’t had these problems?  Despite the close quarters of Central America, how did Ticos avoid this and create their own identity?

Upon digging deeper, I have learned that the formation of culture is very in tune with nature.  The four Central American countries I just mentioned have similar geographic features among them (sharing parts of the mountain range Sierra Madre), theoretically only separated by “imaginary” borders.  Costa Rica, however, has the mountain ranges Cordillera Guanacaste and Cordillera de Talamanca.  These mountains somewhat separate Costa Rica from the other Central American nations (Panama is the closest to Costa Rica because they share a part of these mountains).

Before humans even inhabited the Earth, these mountains caused Costa Rica to have its own identity.  This identity was then imposed upon humans when Native Americans inhabited the land for the first time and continued throughout human history.  The land is different, so the people are different.

Brazil is more complex but a similar way of thinking can be used.  “Giant by thine own nature” (a quote from the Brazilian national anthem), it is hard to describe Brazil as a whole because there are so much diversity in Brazil partially due to its colossal size.   Brazilians are interdependent which means they view themselves as embedded in relations with others.  Their greatest motivation is to help others.  How/why did Brazil become interdependent?

The vast array of interdependent ecosystems in Brazil has played a huge role in the formation of the Brazilian psyche.  Brazilians view themselves as equal to other people and to other objects in nature and as a consequence, their relationships are very close and naturally very intimate. 

The harmony among all things, living and nonliving, in the vast Amazon Jungle is crucial to survival.  When people inhabited Brazil, this harmony and emphasis on interdependent relationships was then transferred over, forming the basis of the Brazil mind and soul. 

I tried to be somewhat brief in these explanations but that is nearly impossible when discussing anything cultural, especially the formation of a cultural psyche.  Basically to answer the prompt of this blog, “tell us about something you learned through the group project”, what I have learned can be explained in this rough translation of a quote by Socrates:  “I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.”

To summarize Socrates’ quote in relation to this blog: “I [have learned] one thing: that I know nothing [about the world].”      

Alex
Global Supply Chain

Cleveland