GKC: On Reading — Following A Star

THE highest use of the great masters of literature is not literary; it is apart from their superb style and even from their emotional inspiration. The first use of good literature is that it prevents a man from being merely modern. To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as […]

GKC: On Reading — Following A Star

Project 5782 | Day 16

Depravity!

Scripture Portion

Job 34.21-22

²¹ For his eyes are on the ways of a man,
and he sees all his steps.
²² There is no gloom or deep darkness
where evildoers may hide themselves.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

Quote from Reading

“Contrary to the ‘myths to live by’ created by Alex Haley and others, Africans were by no means the innocents portrayed in Roots, baffled as to why white men were coming in and taking their people way in chains. On the contrary, the region of West Africa from which Kunte Kinte supposedly came was one of the great slave-trading regions of the continent – before, during, and after the white man arrived. It was the Africans who enslaved their fellow Africans, selling some of these slaves to Europeans or to Arabs and keeping others for themselves. Even at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans retained more slaves for themselves than they sent to the Western Hemisphere.
“This pattern was not confined to West Africa, from which most slaves were sent to the Western Hemisphere. In East Africa, the Masai were feared slave raiders and other African tribes – either alone or in conjunction with Arabs – enslaved their more vulnerable neighbors. As late as 1891, it was reported that ‘Manyuema slavers had demoralized surrounding tribes, destroying crops, and famine reigned everywhere.’ Even in the early twentieth century, Abyssinians were still raiding other Africans and carrying off slaves. It was 1922 before the British had gained sufficient control in Tanganyika to stamp out slavery there. Arabs were the leading slave raiders in East Africa, ranging over an area larger than all of Europe. The total number of slaves exported from East Africa during the nineteenth century has been estimated to be at least two million.”

Sowell, Thomas, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Encounter Books: New York, 2005, pgs. 120-121

Provocative Language

“We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the subhuman world – the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! We must not – and incidentally we can’t – become beasts.”

Lewis, C.S., The Four Loves: An Exploration of the Nature of Love, Mariner Books: New York, 2012 edition, pg. 52