Sunny Days in Heaven
Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven


Tuesday, December 30, 2003  

Heart of Darkness

The Belmont Club makes this impressive observation about Africa: Thomas Barnett pointed out that Africa, in common with dirt poor countries of the Third World, has been detached from the stream of civilization. It remains on the planet only by polite pretense; but in practice under another sun, with different laws of gravity. Even arithmetic is different there, and the starvation of a hundred thousand counts for less newspaper space than the sexual scandals of a Hollywood actor.

I finished this book, Africa : A Biography of the Continent
by John Reader
, some time ago which details both the natural history and cultural ones.

An interesting fact is that life for humans and other creatures has probably been the harshest there since it is the birthplace not only of humanity, but most of all its viruses, bacteria, infectious agents, diseases, and so forth adapting, evolving, crossing from species to species along with every attempt of the human and animal bodies to overcome them.

Suffering, misery, and death have haunted that continent from the beginning; and such weakness and desperation for survival led to either outside exploitation or internal tyrannies.

One wonders if that other planet will ever prosper and become healthy.

posted by Mark Butterworth | 2:19 PM |

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