12,742. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1029

RUDIMENTS, pt.  1029
(spreading foundational myths)
I always figured to be learning,

as much as I could, just sopping

up information, because I always

found that it eventually comes

back out as something else  -  or

it did for me anyway, A further

story or development, some sort

of writing, etc. So even in my

darkest moments I was always

driving myself on to some new

bit of this or that. That left me

fairly wide open in all my travels

around, to see all sorts of other

environments. One thing I

noticed immediately was how

most people, or kids of my

age anyway, so willingly dove

from 12 years of a very pedestrian

high-school-completed 'learning,'

right into another four years of

perhaps less pedestrian but little

less stupid, 'college.' And then

they claimed they were educated

and finished, with a title and

a specialty about something that

would tie them down for another

50 years. The recompense being?

Money, home, family and goods.

That all may be well enough, but

it's not 'Education,' in the same

way being a 'priest' is not religion,

except for the noose around your

neck; one being a priest-collar,

and the other being a secular

niche, a career, and its payback.

That was too limiting for me.

-

One time I read a book  -  this

was back in the seminary days  -

and it was an odd little title I'd

found on the seminary library

shelf; I never could fathom why.

It was titled 'Britain in the Sixties.'

The 1960's it meant, and that

decade had just barely started

at the time I located the book.

It was boring as all get out and

nearly impossible to read unless

you were way into production

levels and diagrams and codes

of National Distributions and

products and shifting populations

and all that. It was great stuff

for anyone with ideas of a

future career as a diplomat

or an economist or maybe

even a British Lord, but we

were, at this point supposed to

be setting out to be priests. In

my own hoped for case, an

African bush-country missionary

priest. (Nothing to do, by the

way, with the otherwise famed

'missionary position'). Take note.

-

So I started studying, instead,

little bits of 'Africa' as best I

could; it still in so many was

often uncharted, except for

when and where it could be

exploited. That always came

first. It wouldn't be too long,

maybe a decade or two after

this, that pace of human

development was destroying

Africa and, as much as possible,

de-rationating its new classes

of 'people.' Making cities and

places which had never existed

before, nor been thought of or

needed, either. And all that

was then; by now it's much

worse, and deadly, all  -

humans, by 2050, are expected

to have forced more than a

million species into extinction,

and filled the oceans with a

greater mass of plastic than

there is of fish. In Africa, the

arrival of mobile phones (and

I guess this is a good thing),

allowed the networks to be

constructed without expensive

landlines, which means also

the onerous work of poles

and wiring. That's kind of

a switch. (no pun). A new

landscape with nothing

on it? People there were

being re-structured and, as

I said, being placed into

'classes' of population they

never even knew existed.

-

Most of the roads in Africa

were built by colonial powers,

for the extraction and transport

of natural resorces, so they

connect villages to capitals,

and capitals to ports, and

hardly take in account any

of the desires of a community

to travel or trade over the

next hill. Only half of the

population live within a

mile of a functional road.

In the present day, what that

means is that deliveries of

blood to rural healthcenters,

say, are slow and unreliable.

Refrigerated medicines go

bad before they arrive.

(What's happening there

now is a bold new future

of drones, delivery by, and

'droneports,' where large

cargo drones ban be loaded,

charged, launched, and

repaired! Plans are underway

for mapped-out, 50 mile drone

routes (and 'flying robots')

to connect populated but

remote areas in Rwanda,

Uganda, and Tanzania.

Plasma, vaccines, urgent

medicines, crucial documents,

and exchanges between mines,

government offices, oil and gas

installations, ranches and

conservancies. Quite a

different world indeed,

being envisaged. Britain

is the Sixties, looking barely

forward then, is here replaced

by 'Africa in the Forties,' 2040's.

A mere two decades hence, at

best. If we survive.

-

Tanganyika was where I'd had

my sights set on being; some

dumb imperialist-kid thinking

crap about trading life for Jesus

by bringing that word and teaching

to some far-off bunch of natives,

not so unlike the colonials here

in America and their ideas of

converting those heathen savages.

None of that worked out real well

here either, unless you were an

alcohol salesman on a reservation.

It's a funny thing how people think

only their way is the proper way,

for everyone else too. Propogating

one set if gibberish to replace the

other isn't ever enough though. The

older ways of these Africans and

natives also has to get belittled and

destroyed  - Nature Gods, spirits of

the hills, transformational magics,

etc. All the thigs they've develped

and lived by  for a thousand years

running out of their Olduvai Gorge

cultures and all that. What does

the Westerner do? Comes in and

ties them down, shackles them to

production and product, mining

and enslavement, all so a stupid

book like 'Britain In the Sixties'

cam make its forecast. Note: they

left out th Beatles and the British

Invasion, from Carnaby Street to

Lucian Freud and David Hockney,

(artists).

-

The Russkies came in, as Soviets 

then, and shut down Tanganyika 

for good, (for God as well), for

a while anyway, and then, with

Zanzibar, the two places became

Tanzania. I was out of that loop by

then, but any kiddie-boy ideas I'd 

had of going there for the rest of

my life far out in the bushman's

paradise I was (evidently) intent

on ruining with Western ideas of

religion, was over. I little thought  
of it again, actually, any of this 
'spreading foundational myths' 
stuff, as I assimilated myself

back into this 'American' culture,

which ended me up where it did,

and in all my goofy places.