Is that true in your live? Finding that what you said or believe is just another "opinion"? That opinion is a grey area, it is bound to be neither correct or wrong. An philosopher named Jacques Derrida proposed "Deconstruction"- a philosophy points out the problem of free speech democracy: There is no absolute meaning since all opinions are meaningful.
I don't oppose opinions, because diversity in voice makes a society whole. I am angered by how pathetic people think about African development. Let me start with some background of African history.
Pre-colonial Africa was a developed place, the infrastructure of this content was construct in units of villages. They had school for a selected group of children, a very developed trading system, rich culture with solid arhitecture, religion, market system, and way of life etc. Sure that they had no good medication to fix malaria and high rate in children death, and domestic violence was a problem, not to mention many of the negative and positive aspect of village life, but all in all, they had a developed life for centuries, one that is different than Western society.
In 19th century Europeans went to explore Africa. Found that it is a continent with rich resources, they believed it is good to give a helping hand to shake things up. The church was with them, many missionaries went over there to spread Christianity and brought education, basic western medical knowledge that breaks the miserable in children death. It also have many negative impact, maybe horrible too much damage in the traditional art, culture, religion, harmony among tribes, economic development, trading system.
Now I will tell you what I think. It is just my opinion, it may mean nothing to anyone, but I still need to say it because what I saw the Western mind did to African angers me everyday I go to my contemporary African history class.
The western economist went to develop Africa because they wanted the resources there, they want to bring it back to Europe and benefit THEM, not the Africans. Here is my question: Most people can see through this and say "that is selfish of the Europeans". If the economist was a part of their political leaders, which the church has strong influence in, why didn't the priest point out that the selfishness in this development goal is simply Anti-Christ?
That is my first question. No one living can answer this question, and the damage is done.
So now we see that Africa countries are not in peace with themselves. So many of them (with the exception of 2 Sub-Saharan Countries) are poor and eternally destruct. We have all that logistic to read. I found that numbers are better than report in this area because the reports by UN, NEPAD and such are written in the perspective of Western minds, not local African people.
In class, we talk about how important it is to address and fix the problems caused by colonial and post colonial political development. We all try to give opinions about why to fix this and that, how rulers of African countries should put money in this, encourage education, factories and agricultural expense etc. As a Christian, I know these opinions can be helpful but not enough. Even we become experts in educations and social development it still won't be enough. This is because none of us can predict what WILL happen in the process of correction. As we make mistakes, thousands of lives in Africa will be ruin. Our knowledge is not enough, if it was Africa might have been better than the situation it is in now. Our opinions are meaningful in our education, but meaningless in helping an African teenager in Rwanda whose family is wiped out during the genocide in 1990's. Our efforts in this class suddenly became so insignificant in comparison.
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