QUOTATION # 81.

[On Courage and Solidarity]

“It is therefore an important moment for us to re-examine our conscience as a species. A moment to take stock. 

The questions raised by the pandemic should spill over into all the other issues through which future disasters might arise, issues of climate change, surveillance, civil rights, universal healthcare, justice and poverty. 

Humanity is transformed by those who took from tragedy the highest lessons. 

….A pandemic of selfishness has eroded some of the best things the world learned from two world wars. 

We are gradually forgetting the value of international cooperation.”

Patrick Tagoe – Turkson, recycled flip flops, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

“Values of the market have taken over from values of human solidarity. And even of human life. 

Our judgments have been skewed by the measures of the money rather than measures of the heart.

This is another way of saying that we have lost our way. 

We are deep in a new wasteland. 

We got here because only one kind of voice has been powerfully heard, the voice of financial success. 

Other voices, just as valuable, have not been heard enough.”

BARBER SIGN/ NATTY BONGO HAIRCUT: S.O. Amanfo Owusa, paint on plywood, 123 x 62 cm, signed lower left, before 1995. Private collection.

“What voices are these? 

They are the voices that speak for nature, for the poor, for justice: voices easily ridiculed.

We have entered the age of catastrophes. 

They will be universal in effect because the problems of the world are now universal. The climate catastrophe will not choose one country over another.

So much bitterness has divided us of late. 

Doctrines of division have nowhere to take us. 

There is no real destiny any more for small-minded dreams. The scale of our challenges must alter the scale of our visionary response.”

BEN OKRI.



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