Never has it been more important to do what is right. Moral conscience is something we need to learn.
As our world descends into an abyss from which it may not return, it becomes clear that the only solution to repairing environment damage, fixing political and economic systems, and ensuring equality before the law, is to do the right thing, and the right thing would be the good thing.
Some would point out that good is different for everybody, and that one man’s meat is another man’s poison. And so we come to moral conscience. …
I scored very high on the Asperger’s Syndrome test — twice
It’s true. I struggled for most of my life because I did not understand other people. They made no sense, whatsoever. I spent a lifetime in confusion trying to figure them out. I made numerous errors of judgement, and I simply could not understand why, if I had all these genius scores in IQ tests, wtf was wrong with me.
I also didn’t believe for a moment that I was autistic, particularly so as, according to the definition of autism, autistic people couldn’t learn and they didn’t make friends. I most definitely did make friends, and I very definitely did…
Writing is easy — you learnt it in your first year of school. Thinking is quite another matter.
It’s nearly three in the morning, and my mind is busy. When my mind is busy, I write. I pour out on paper the thoughts that pour in from somewhere else — I know not where. It strikes me that writing has more to do with the way we think than anything else. When there are no thoughts, it’s difficult to write. When our thoughts are not clear, it’s difficult to write clearly. When thoughts are not original, then everybody else has written it already. Thoughts, I think, have a great deal to do with the quality of our writing.
All great writers are thinkers
…
I say no, and I’m going to tell you why I reached that conclusion.
Believe it or not, I was thirteen once. I was also fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, and I even managed to get to seventeen and eighteen. I grew up without television (it was banned in South Africa), and talk of sex was not something that was polite to talk about.
So why is it that when men approached me with their dirty suggestions, I knew instinctively that it was not a good thing. …
Yes, I know, you’re entitled to have a vacation in a far away land and you’re entitled to drive a car and you’re entitled to have your say. We get it!
There were three things that struck me in America when I first arrived…
There were three things that struck me when I first arrived in the States in 2003. All three of them shocked me. The first was that the country was technologically behind the UK in terms of the internet. The second was the ignorance of Americans about the world outside America, and the third was the sense of entitlement.
Everybody was entitled. They were entitled to be listened to. They were entitled to drive their cars. They were entitled to feel safe in the streets. They were entitled to earn as much as the next man. They were entitled to be…
People misunderstand ethics — they’ve seldom thought about it.
Most people think of ethics as moral rules that come from the bible or some other holy book. That is simply not true. Ethics evolved alongside humankind. They are not the result of feeling empathy or compassion towards other people. They are simply those rules that elders and chiefs of early humankind put into operation for the survival of the tribe. In other words, ethics are simply rules that have evolved over a period of time which safeguard the interests, well-being, and survival of the community. …
As writers, we can change our world
A couple of weeks ago, Google kindly emailed me to tell me I was running out of space. It also invited me to purchase some more cloud in the cyber sky. Instead, I began to go through my photos and emails and started deleting. Yesterday, I went through thousands of emails — more than a decade’s worth . I joined gmail in the days of invite-only.
I have different folders in my gmail — those where I keep one email for friends I had met through the years — the type of friends we meet in a cafe in a…
Sometimes I’m only too human and I fuck up. Oh, dear. So last week, I couldn’t get my bank app (I truly struggle with bank apps because of the way my brain doesn’t work) to transfer money. So I asked for help from the particular bank. Yet, somehow, I still managed to transfer the money into a closed N26 bank account in Germany while typing in my Portuguese iban. I have no idea how I did that, but suffice to say that I know there ae many things I struggle with, and apps are one of those things.
So I…
The idea of being un-British or un-French or un-Russian or un-African is not a thing elsewhere in the world. Only an American can be un-American.
To Americans, it seems to be the greatest insult on earth to be called un-American. That statement implies that being American is something special, and not to be American is undesirable. To do anything that an American would or should not do means that one is letting the side down. An American would then be guilty of a great misdemeanor, for no worthy American would do certain things.
How to be un-American
Probably the best way of trying to…
Ayesha is reborn as Ashley in the 21st century.
Notes:
As the story flits through many countries and cultures, words are used that are not commonly used outside those countries. Here is a list of those words and their meanings.
Nogal is an Afrikaans word meaning rather. It can sometimes give an ironic accent to what is being said.
Lekker braai is Afrikaans for nice barbecue. It’s used colloquially by all language groups in South Africa.
Sangoma — African shaman.
Muti is the name given to medicine prescribed by a Sangoma. It is believed to carry magical powers.
Mandla is a Zulu name and it means power.
Baruti means teacher in Arabic.
She is a…
.jpg){kind=link}