There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. It is hard to face this. But all our phrasing - race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy - serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

The operation of the transnational migrant-labour service between Ressa o Garcia and Johannesburg had, for five decades, carried with it a faint warning as to how, when recist thinking, steam technology and political power were brought into alignment, they carried within them the potential for crimes against humanity and, in its most extreme form, genocide.

Today many blindly follow their clergy, their ideologies, their political leaders, and the press. Many get their life guidance from television and rarely have original thoughts about their experiences. Others may have many opinions based on the latest studies but generally have not worked out a deep vision. They are informed, but they haven’t thought deeply enough.

A society is like an individual: in the face of a dark night it can either become defensive and avoid the challenge of new life, or it can reform itself and discover in the darkness where it has gone wrong.

Maintaining a diversity of cultures and political systems leaves open more potential trajectories for civilisation; the same is true, to an even greater degree, for ensuring that civilisation doesn’t end altogether.