Mental Fight by Ben Okri

Author:Ben Okri [Okri, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800244245
Publisher: Head of Zeus

II

How healthy is the human race?

When the foot is swollen, the kidney ailing,

The neck stiff, the spirit troubled,

The heart irregular, the head stuffy,

The thoughts narrow and negative,

But the whole taken together

Generally quite functional,

Can we say that the body is healthy?

So it is with humanity.

Here’re some of the illnesses of the race:

Tyranny and starvation, religious and tribal wars,

Repression, poverty, alienation, indifference,

Genocide, xenophobia, illiteracy,

Bad governments, epidemics, and selfishness.

We must face the fact that

Given the whole picture

The human race is not that well.

We have also, it cannot be denied,

Accomplished great feats. We’ve

Journeyed to space and spied on

The solitude of uninhabited planets.

We’ve created mighty secular

And religious structures,

Made fabulous technological inventions,

Found cures for nasty diseases,

Solved some riddles of human genetics,

Probed the mysteries of the weather,

Shed light on aberrations of the mind,

Unleashed the possibilities of communications,

And tapped the awesome ambiguous

Power of nuclear energy.

Yet because of our pollutions,

Earth’s fragile balance is askew.

Humanity dies in refugee camps,

Goes mad in slums,

Is brutalised by evil governments,

Perishes in festering wars.

Yet hatred boils away

For reasons of history

And for different interpretations

Of the same sacred texts

That teach us universal love.

We are amazing: so

Much gold has been revealed

In the human spirit.

So many wonderful philosophies

Of such startling simplicity

Have been dreamt up and shared

Amongst us, and yet we still live

As if in Plato’s cave,

Watching shadows

Of suffering go past

As if they had nothing to do with us.

And yet we live as if these thoughts,

These dreams, and these philosophies,

Had never been written,

And never been beneficial.

I contend that the human race

Has not yet reached

The true exalted condition

Of civilisation.

Sure, the quality of life’s been enriched

For many over the past centuries;

But true civilisation is much more

Than the financial

And technological progress

Or the well-being of parts

Of the human race.

What we’ve called civilisations

Are merely stages on the way

To true world civilisation.

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