I am not going to do a lot of editorializing.
Angola is not a rich country.
Based on the walls and bars across every opening, it is not a high-trust society.
Trash is thrown into the street and is helpfully packed into the deepest ruts and potholes.
The torrential rains are more than the streets/drains can accommodate and the very foundations of the city are under-cut by erosion.
The high point of the video is when the videographer walks past a Catholic school at the 3:45 mark.
Catholic teachings on "birth control"
At this time, the mainstream Catholic teaching on artificial (i.e. not abstinence or (in some cases) barrier methods) birth control is that it is the equivalent of homicide because a fertilized egg is denied its right to implant into the of his or her mother's uterus. It is theologically considered the equivalent of not allowing a baby to nurse from his/her mother's breasts and letting him/her starve to death.
Catholic teachings evolve...but they evolve very slowly.
For instance, it was once taught that rape was a less grievous sin than masturbation. The "logic" was that a potential good (a baby) was possible with rape that was not a possibility with masturbation. That teaching reversed when the the debate expanded to include not just the sinner and potential offspring but to also include the woman (or man) who had been violated.
In the glacial pace of the Eternal Church, similar arguments are evolving where the greater social consequences of exceeding the carrying capacity of the land are being introduced into the debates. Every person who dies by starvation or communicable diseases that are exacerbated by over-crowding is a potential "player" in the calculus of sin-and-salvation.
Religion is based on feelings and faith, not reason. Trying to ascribe logic in any form to religion or a church is pointless.
ReplyDelete"Religion is based on feelings and faith, not reason. Trying to ascribe logic in any form to religion or a church is pointless."
ReplyDeleteYet some of the most talented scientists I've worked with, men very much of a secular bent, have told me "If you don't see a controlling hand writ large and unmistakable in creation, you're willfully blind, or you're lying to yourself".
I'm good with that.
I've worked with some of the most talented surgeons in Johns Hopkins and only one was an avowed logical atheist. The remainder were firmly in the Creator-God faction.
DeleteSo, Dan it seems very logical and scientific surgeons somehow find a use and most important COMFORT in knowing God aka Religion.
I attended the funeral of the Atheist Surgeon almost a decade ago and pray somehow, he found a reason to accept God's gift.
Maybe someday Dan should read the Declaration of Independence and see if the founding fathers had a faith in a supreme creator AKA God.
Trust in that part of the world is for family, clan, and tribe. No one outside the tribe is trusted, and they are all considered fair game for fraud. Look at the situation in Minnesota as a textbook example.
ReplyDeleteThat is a nasty city. I'll bet disease and internal parasites are endemic there.
ReplyDeleteAngola suffers from the resource curse: countries with extensive natural resources have lower economic growth rates, less democracy, more corruption, and poorer development outcomes than countries with few natural resources. Angola's resources are extremely high quality crude oil and diamonds.
ReplyDeleteThe Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical and analytical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), published a 2025 report on Angola titled: 'Country Analysis Brief: Angola'. It is a worthwhile 17 page read and available free in pdf format at the EIA web site.
The original export of Angola was slaves, primarily sent to Brazil (the Portuguese colony on the other side of the Atlantic).
DeleteThe slave trade monetized the tribe-vs-tribe dynamic as every tribe attempted to gain wealth and weaken its neighbors by kidnapping and selling the strongest young people from them.
Mineral wealth is an extractive resource. Extractive resources, in general, do not have a high-value-added component. It also seems like it is rare that they incubate innovations that become products with unique attributes that command extreme premiums in the market place. Example: Brazil and Argentina produce leather that is a commodity and command less than $100 wholesale. A Hermès Himalaya Birkin can sell for over $400,000.