What troubles Africa?

Politics is not my game. But even with my level of ignorance I know that that place is havoc, one I tend to mostly forget about until I see movies that remind me that there's a dark continent somewhere on this earth that has been made into the big mess it is today because a group of blonds decided that borders have to be drawn. (OK I know that not all Europeans are blond)

I've lately been very sensitive to putting labels and defining people or actions. I don't want to theorize but it's precisely that act of defining that enables people to think they're better than others. I know that labeling is useful in many cases, but so are drugs and knives and even guns. What to do?

I remember the controversy over Alexander and how I insisted on clarifying for those who called him gay that labeling a person based on an act he or she does is a very modern way of looking into things, relatively speaking, and that at that time, Alexander was merely a man who engaged in homosexual activities, which is a long stretch from calling him gay. (I read Foucault late in life, but it was quite a read) We have labels for everything. You scream once, you're hysteric; you worry a little, you're obsessive compulsive; your mind drifts off a bit, you have ADD; and the list goes on. I know that defining helps limit the problem, contain it, and as such, treat it, but in doing all that aren't we also inflating the problem?

I don't have answers I never do. It's always questions but never answers.

I'm lecturing. My favorite pastime :) Occupational hazard so to speak.

On a lighter note: Kidman is gorgeous.
"I'll be honest with you," she says, "I don't know how honest I can be with you." Don't you just love this line? Or "vengeance is a lazy form of grief." I tell you. That woman is amazing. Yeah yeah I know she didn't write those lines, but still...