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1、1 ADELAIDE INSTITUTE PO Box 3300 Adelaide 5067 Online Australia ISSN 1440-9828 Mob: 61+401692057 Email: infoadelaideinstitute.org Web: http:/www.adelaideinstitute.org July 2015 No 882 _ Why We Write By Alex Kurtagic I write because the future is not what it used to be. I know, because I have lived i
2、n it. My parents had overseas jobs during the 1970s and early 80s, and, consequently, I spent part of my childhood and early teenage years in Latin America. Venezuelan schools at least at the time taught their students that the countrys population was racially diverse, going from White to Black, wit
3、h eight shades in between. Schoolbooks stated that these ten shades of skin color each with a designation and a definition were the result of intermarriage between three original populations: the native Amerindians, the Spanish Conquistadors, and the Black slaves. The educational narrative was matte
4、r-of-fact, but prevailing attitudes on the ground suggested a tacit ordering of social status that loosely correlated to skin pigmentation: whites were at the top, blacks at the bottom. Not surprisingly, whites were wealthy and in positions of authority, while millions of their dark-skinned counterp
5、arts were poor and lived in slums. Skin pallor was a valued asset among women. There was no obvious racial hostility in the air, however, beyond the occasional playground taunt: outside the most rarefied of gated communities, racial diversity was ubiquitous in everyday life and accepted as a fact. S
6、ome years ago it became fashionable within the Western media class to use Venezuelas larger and better-known neighbor, Brazil, as a paradigm for the future. Anything Brazilian was, accordingly, promoted as fun, colorful, sensual, and exotic. The desire to one day “tour South America” became a fashio
7、nable memetic consequence among British women. This highly idealized image of multiracialism the image of the tropical paradise, like Cuba but with more money however, was wildly at variance with the reality that I had experienced decades before, when conditions there were much better than they are
8、now. It is a clear case of bait and switch: the future that is being prepared for us by our government, academic, and media class is far from paradise. Living in the future is extremely frustrating: you have to endure frequent power outages and brownouts; the bureaucracy is at a permanent standstill
9、, unless you have friends, relations, or money to grease the necessary palms; your property is constantly at risk of being stolen by burglars, muggers, and pickpockets, unless you keep within gated communities and protect your car and real estate with alarms, bars, cages, armored doors, and combinat
10、ion keys; nothing works as it is supposed to: the infrastructure is grim, out of date, derelict, broken, vandalized, gone, not yet built, or altogether out of the question; your money evaporates in your hands, frequent prey to high inflation and hyperinflation; 90% of your fellow citizens are poor;
11、governments are so inept and so corrupt that a revolution and a spell of military dictatorship usually Communistic in ideology is always just around the corner; if you live in a city and there are hills, these are covered by slums and shantytowns; low cunning, scams, shirking, and an ethos of short-
12、term selfish advantage prevail over intelligence, honesty, hard work, and long term benefits; roads are poorly maintained, cracked, potholed, badly illuminated (if at all), and extremely dangerous, particularly at night: cars are often roaring rust-buckets and their drivers more unbelievably selfish
13、, childish, and aggressive than you thought possible; motorists who drive with their windows open are likely to be mugged or to have a water bomb thrown at them while waiting at a traffic light; it is tradition for university students to be attacked on the first day by their older peers with eggs, p
14、aint, beatings, and haircuts; military service is always mandatory; industrial labor disputes in lead to intimidation and goons tailing managers on the motorway; and the prevailing attitude anywhere and everywhere is that you are guilty until proven innocent, a liar until proven honest, an idler unt
15、il proven industrious, and a scam artist until proven a man with real talent and desire to work. The future, in short, is a highly dysfunctional place, where mediocrity has triumphed over excellence, and crushed and suffocated the latter, until its expression either becomes impossible or only lasts a few seconds before it is stolen or vandalized by a human marabunta of smirking idiots, ruthless desperados, and pett
