A last one from that magazine I mentioned yesterday. In Africa, they write, the maxim is not the cogito "I think, therefor I am" but "I am because you are".
Nobody really says things like this in real life of course. I mean, just how likely is it that you will hear someone actually soliloquizing the cogito, and I wouldn't expect anyone in Africa to do anything similar.
I do have some personal experience with the source of African wisdom. I once shared a ride with two africans on a hot day in the Netherlands. They were complaing about the heat, and we asked them if it wasn't very hot in Africa. "In Africa", they replied, "people just go to the beach on such a day".
In the Netherlands, you cannot be further from the coast than about 170 km. In Africa, it can be more than 10 times as much, 1700 km.
Posted by mduvekot at September 26, 2004 09:29 AM