Reading Pico Ayer on a Ruteada

Word of the Day: Ruteada- a non-express bus

The hope of a Global Soul, always, is that he can make the collection of his selves something greater than the whole; that diversity can leave him not a dissonance but a higher symphony.

The newly mobile world and its porous borders are a particular challenge to a uniculture like [Japan], which depends for its presumed survival upon its firm distinctions and clear boundaries, its maintenance of a civil uniformity in which everyone knows everyone else, and how to work with them.

I had the surreal experience of reading Pico Ayer's "The Global Soul" while taking the 6 hour bus ride home last Thursday morning. There was a weirdly dreamlike aspect to reading about airplanes and nonplaces* and jetlag and all the vestiges of the modern world while driving very slowly past tin roofed houses, donkeys and bone dry cornfields in the sweltering heat. Mas tiempo que vida (there's more time than life) meets the runway. I've never been quite able to adapt to mas tiempo que vida, which was what put me on that particular bus in the first place: rushing home to give a class, trying to treat Nicaraguan public transportation as my personal helicopter to no avail. Just one aspect of the bi-culturalism that I've developed, although no where near as complex as the author's (born to Indian parents in England, raised between California and England, currently based out of Japan) or the many other "global souls" he comes across.

In so many ways, Nicaraguan towns like San Miguelito are the antithesis of the modern non-place. They are in a sense, receptacles of nostalgia, serving as a home to return to, accompanied by traditions to give one roots. Every tree, house, street corner holds a special significance for those in the know. Yet unlike the non-place, they are unevenly integrated into the capitalist framework of the 21st century. And so the citizens must look elsewhere for sustenance.

I wonder how much that will change. The tourism trickling into Rio San Juan challenges the "firm distinctions and clear boundaries" described by the second quote, just as it tries to bank upon the nostalgia stored up in its landscapes. But a greater challenge looms on the horizon with the "Great Canal" project. (Great articles here and here) San Miguelito will be irrevocably changed if the project goes through as planned, linked to the outside capitalist world at last, but at terrible cost.
Is there a "middle way" to enter the modern world?

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*Places such as airports, conference centers, malls, etc. that are designed to be virtually indistinguishable and interchangeable.