I think therefore I am, said Socrates, and he was right. Obviously times have changed, and today’s thinkers, people like Gene Roddenbery and Gnome Chomsky, are more insightful on the whole, but Socrates’s motto is still worth celebrating, as our capacity to think is what separates us from the animals.
Not that animals don’t think. I am certain that dolphins feel love, especially for the handicapped, and they’ve proved that monkeys can be taught to speak, if you wire them up just right and stimulate certain pain centres. I’ve seen footage of a rhesus monkey saying ”Oo ee aw ogh oo ee!” which was quite clearly the start of Hamlet’s solenoid from the play called Hamlet.
But on the whole I am proud of my God-given ability to think, the product of a million years of evolution. I don’t want to sound vain, but I think a great deal, about many things.
For example, I think that Princess Diana of Wales was a candle in the wind. I think she did more for humanity than anyone in history. I think Madiba probably did almost as much, but he was fighting apartheid (which died anyway in 1991), and also they’ve proved that Africans don’t have a genetic understanding of democracy and non-violence, so he was probably frustrated by having his good work undermined by that.
The candle in the wind and Madiba are my heroes because they didn’t hate anyone. Of course there are some things they did hate, like tyranny and paparazzi photographers and apartheid and the Queen, but these are good things to hate. I think everyone should have good things to hate, which means they should hate bad things.
Me personally, myself, I hate people who make generalisations about foreign cultures. That’s why I hate the English: Brits are always making sweeping statements about everyone. And the Afrikaners — I really hate them. Not the ones you meet, the ones with educations and a sense of humour, I mean the other ones. Stupid crunchies with their sideburns and their religion.
Not that I think religion is bad: I think one should try to embrace as many different faiths as possible, to give you a balanced view of spirituality and God. Except for Islam, which they’ve proved is based on violence. And Judaism, of course, which isn’t really so much a religion as a lifestyle. A bit like Buddhism, really: anyone can join as long as you have all the accessories, like that little book the Jews tie to their heads. Which reminds me, I think that set of miniaturised classics they’ve just brought out looks absolutely stunning.
And speaking of Afrikaners, I think all those crunchie dentists who’ve taken the chicken run to London are unpatriotic racist cowards. They’ve refused to see the good in South Africa, like the Springboks and Cyril Ramaphosa and the Waterfront in Cape Town, and they dwell on the bad, like the way blacks are genetically inclined to corruption.
Obviously living in a democracy means we’re entitled to live wherever we want, and my neighbour is moving to Toronto, because of the affirmative action. It’s getting so bad that he’s going to have to downsize to a Volvo before he leaves. But I think living in a democracy also means you have a responsibility to support that democracy, even if you haven’t voted for it, or it doesn’t necessarily give you proportional representation. And that means supporting its sports teams.
I don’t believe in pointing fingers, but Trevor Manuel is setting a very bad democratic example by supporting the All Blacks and not the Springboks. I know he’s switched sides now, but that also doesn’t set a very good democratic example. (They’ve proved that he’s Portuguese and I don’t need to tell you about the Portuguese.)
But what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, what’s been burning me up, is how much I hate Clyde Rathbone, that lily-livered, chicken-running pseudo-Australian. I think South Africans take sport far too seriously, and so everyone is missing the point about Rathbone: it’s not that he isn’t playing for the Springboks that’s so offensive. It’s that he is a repulsive traitor, who should have got his face mashed in at Kings Park last weekend.
And did you see how reluctantly he shook hands with the Springboks afterwards? Precious fairy. Some people just don’t understand sportsmanship, that’s what I think.