Morality and Abstract Thinking: How Africans may differ from Westerners

Morality and Abstract Thinking

How Africans may differ from Westerners

by Gedaliah Braun
American Renaissance

A public service billboard in South Africa. Note old tire and gas can.

I am an American who taught philosophy in several African universities from 1976 to 1988, and have lived since that time in South Africa. When I first came to Africa, I knew virtually nothing about the continent or its people, but I began learning quickly. I noticed, for example, that Africans rarely kept promises and saw no need to apologize when they broke them. It was as if they were unaware they had done anything that called for an apology.

It took many years for me to understand why Africans behaved this way but I think I can now explain this and other behavior that characterizes Africa. I believe that morality requires abstract thinking—as does planning for the future—and that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.

What follow are not scientific findings. There could be alternative explanations for what I have observed, but my conclusions are drawn from more than 30 years of living among Africans.

My first inklings about what may be a deficiency in abstract thinking came from what I began to learn about African languages. In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. “You can’t say that,” they explained. “All you can say is that it is ‘up’.” “How about right at the top?” “Nope; just ‘up’.” In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.

Racism, Guilt, Self-Hatred and Self-Deceit: A Philosophers Hard-Headed Look at the Dark Continent..

Light on the Dark Continent

Fascinating observations of an American who has lived in Africa for nearly 30 years.

Reviewed by Jared Taylor
American Renaissance

Racism, Guilt, Self-Hatred and Self-Deceit: A Philosophers Hard-Headed Look at the Dark Continent, by Gedahlia Braun [AmRen]

“Almost no one, black or white, left or right, ever says anything but rubbish about race.” So writes Gedahlia Braun in a remarkable book that is anything but rubbish. Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit is one of those rare books so full of insight and good sense that they are a pleasure to write about. Since the subject is race, this book has not found a commercial publisher, but it can be ordered directly from the author.

Dr. Braun has lived in Africa with only brief interruptions since 1976 and in South Africa since 1988. This book, in the form of a chronological journal, describes how contact with the dark continent quickly dispelled his liberal views and led to startling but plausible conclusions that most Americans—even readers of AR—are likely to find surprising.

AIDS in the “Witchcraft Paradigm” of Power: AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa, by Adam Ashforth

“Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa,” by Adam Ashforth:

Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy in South Africa; By Adam Ashforth [*Amazon**Kalahari*] “In communities where a witchcraft paradigm informs understandings about other peoples’ motives and capacities, life must be lived in terms of a presumption of malice.” -- AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa, by Adam Ashforth

How does democracy fare when the people governed insist they live in a world with witches? If the government of a people afflicted by witchcraft refuses to punish witches, how does it avoid becoming alienated from the perceived needs of its people or, worse, seen as being in league with witches? In Soweto, South Africa, the constant threat of violent crime, the increase in black socio-economic inequality, the AIDS pandemic, and a widespread fear of witchcraft have converged to create a pervasive sense of insecurity among citiens and a unique public policy problem for government.

In “Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa,” Adam Ashforth examines how people in Soweto and other parts of post-apartheid South Africa manage their fear of 'evil forces' such as witchcraft. Ashforth examines the dynamics of insecurity in the everyday life of Soweto at the turn of the twenty-first century. He develops a new framework for understanding occult violence as a form of spiritual insecurity and documents new patterns of interpretation attributing agency to evil forces. Finally, he analyzes the response of post-apartheid governments to issues of spiritual insecurity and suggests how these matters pose severe long-term challenges to the legitimacy of the democratic state.