Reaction to Theroux’s Africa report

by philg

Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, summarized in an earlier posting, made me think about Africans and foreign aid.  It seems that there is no reason to feel sorry for Africans, despite their living in material conditions that would upset a middle-class suburban American.  It is true that an African life is shorter than an American or Japanese life.  Yet if the purpose of life is indeed the pursuit of happiness the Africans are at least as well off.  Most people in most rich societies spend a great deal of their time working at jobs that they don’t enjoy, all so that they can spend a few hours per week having fun.  What is our Western definition of fun?  As portrayed in films and beer commercials, “fun” for the American male is hanging out with friends, drinking beer, and having sex, preferably with a series of different young women.  African guys manage to engage in these activities nearly every waking hour by Theroux’s account.  And even the old guys manage to have sex with lots of young women because so many of them start working as hookers from age 14 on up.


Partying hard and dropping dead from AIDS at age 40 doesn’t sound ideal.  But it is really worse than sitting at a desk until age 70 processing insurance forms or programming in C?

27 thoughts on “Reaction to Theroux’s Africa report”

  2. Yes, and option #3 (travel around the world taking photos while only writing about and teaching C programming) sounds better than either. Not that I have anything against beer or sex, but anything can get old after a while.

  3. And somehow in your “analysis” you failed to take into account the fourteen year old girl who works as a prostitute, the mother whose child dies of AIDS, or the mother who is dying of AIDS herself and does not know what will happen to her children once she is gone.

    Although it is useful to challenge broad assumptions, I’m troubled by your choice not to go any further than you did, and ending your thought process with the “idealized” view of males, young and old, drinking beer and having sex with many young girls.

    In fact many of your postings follow this same pattern — seizing on a bit of data and drawing incredibly broad conclusions from them. Java is the SUV of programming languages. Loft apartments are better than other styles of domiciles. And I’ve only been reading for less than a month!

    Are you really this shallow?!?!

  4. Ah, the fun those savages are having! Good lord, Philip, you really ought to get out of your airplane and meet actual humans. Setting aside the insanely broad and, dare I say, racist notion that all African men are promiscuous drunkards, you might stop and wonder if it has always been thus. You might wonder about why any person, North American or African, would drink to oblivion or use sex like a drug. Read up on colonialism.

    Take “African” replace with “inner city poor” and see how assinine you are.

  5. It seems to me that this post needed a big-fat disclaimer at the beginning saying something like “assuming that Paul Theroux’s book is accurate (which I have no personal experience of)…”. After all, the whole argument is based on the assumption that the description of black Africa in the previous post is true, a point which seems to be challengeable. (Incidentally, I’ve seen more than a few people in the comments section of the other post making the same argument than Philip, albeit in less inflammatory terms)

    As for this blog in general, I’ve always taken it as Philip’s way to “think outside the box”, tossing around ideas without any regard for conventional wisdom (much like what people do in brainstorming sessions). Obviously, 90% of the time those ideas will turn out to be absurd (“the box” exists for a reason, after all), but from time to time he’ll hit the jackpot and come up with something genuinely insightful. Hence “an interesting idea every three months; a posting every day”.

  6. That so funny, jokes about AIDS versus the hardship of computer programming. So fucking funny I forgot to laugh. Have you had anyone you know die in your arms from AIDS?

  7. It doesn’t sound that different from the life of a white male in western countries during the fifties. 3 martini lunches, bottle of scotch in the desk, a secretarial “pool” who do all the work when they’re not targets for sexual harassment and rape, and you die in your forties of cirrhosis, but its been a good life. Obviously Africa just needs their own Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinham to screw things up for the males.

  8. Hey at least with programming you might strike it lucky, start a company, lose the company and then get a nice settlement from a lawsuit and then have enough money to spend the rest of your life travelling around the world taking photos. I wonder how many Africans get the chance to do that?

  9. I suggest that the reason Africans don’t get ahead is that the tribal and extended family ties guarantee that no matter how hard you work, you will still not have any money, because everyone in your clan has an equal claim to the money. So you work hard, and your cousin Jimmy gets money from you and sits around drinking beer and chasing women. Very demotivating.

    I have also seen this behavior in the Philippines, where it is called “being a crab” – if you have a number of crabs in a bucket, none of them will get out, because as soon as one crab tries to climb out, the others all grab on, pulling the crab back in.

  10. Owen — you are describing the life led by a small minority of American males in that period. You’ve read too many John Cheever short stories or something. Most men of that era did not work in an office.
    Paul J., does that mean we shouldn’t call him on it when he says something inbcredibly racist and stupid? Somehow I mknow a lot of people who manage to think outside the box without using denigrating stereotypes.

  11. Of course not, Cassford. By all means correct Philip if you have data that shows that he’s wrong. I was mostly reacting to the “you’re so stupid/I can’t believe you’re posting this/what’s the point of this blog?” kind of complaints that I see sometimes here.

    As for the charge of racism, I’ll repeat that, as far as I can see, Phil is just extrapolating some conclusions from Paul Theroux’s book, without passing judgement (so far) on whether it’s factually accurate or not. Have you read the book (or the summary of it below)? Do you think that Theroux is also a racist then?

  12. “Most people in most rich societies spend a great deal of their time working at jobs that they don’t enjoy, all so that they can spend a few hours per week having fun.”

    Philip, you’re starting to sound like Tyler Durden. Be careful, or pretty soon you’ll be plotting to blow up the headquarters of several large corporations.

    Not that that’s such a bad thing.

  13. I think that this blog is what I call the “spitballing of society” brought to life. This is most apparent in grad schools and consulting companies where overeducated and relatively powerless individuals come together. If you have ever done a presentation of your own hard work in that milieu you find that people throw out random comments that are totally useless in advancing the work you are doing and provide no useful insight but make the commentor seem intelligent and provocative. If the comments can be wittily self-referential while doing it, then its even better. 😉

  14. There is plenty of migration from Africa to the US, but very little the other way. That’s all you really need to know to tell who’s better off.

  15. Paul, exactly what kind of “data” does one need to provide in order to “prove” that living in poverty and dieing of a painful, incurable disease is better than living until 70, having plenty of food and opportunity for pleasure? It is opinion, not math.

    One point he makes that you could provide data for is his idea that “Most people in most rich societies spend a great deal of their time working at jobs that they don’t enjoy.” That’s just wrong, if you go by the surveys out there. CompterWorld surveys of job satisfaction among US technology worker consistently show that the majority are overall satisfied with their situation.

    Is Theroux a racist? His writing often gets very close to that. His The Happy Isles of Oceania) is considered by many readers to be “insidiously racist, misogynist, and crassly exploitative of foreign cultures and peoples.” Having read a fair amount of his work, I’m not so sure. He definitely writes some small-minded, racist things and trades in generalizations. Does that make him racist? I dunno.

  16. Yeah, this post needed a disclaimer:

    “Warning — irony ahead. The words you are about to read might not be a literal representation of the author’s opinions, beliefs, and values.”

  17. Forget the man made misery…visit Africa for the natural wonders of the Okavanga and the Namib..

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