I’m sitting on the upper terrace in my (rented) home in Estoril, gazing out at the ocean. I imagine what those early Portuguese sailors thought as they looked at this same scene, having almost no idea what was out there in the big, scary Atlantic. And how despite not even being capable of measuring longitude, or having a reliable compass, or any way to really keep time, nevertheless put to sea, in ships no longer than a WW2 vintage PT boat crammed with 60 men they had no hope of feeding long-term since they lacked refrigeration or a way to control the onboard rat population.
And how despite the peril, they clenched their determined jaws, and headed off to find gold and en route slaughter vast numbers of coastal and island natives with the back-up plan – should gold be hard to loocate – of some day returning with more men and more ships and enslaving whatever natives they had not slaughtered on the first go-round, and then establish colonies that could perpetuate the enslaving and the raping and the torturing for centuries.
This is why education is a bad thing and ignorance is bliss. First paragraph happy, second paragraph not as much.
I’m sitting on the upper terrace in my (rented) home in Estoril, gazing out at the ocean. I imagine what those early Portuguese sailors thought as they looked at this same scene, having almost no idea what was out there in the big, scary Atlantic. And how despite not even being capable of measuring longitude, or having a reliable compass, or any way to really keep time, nevertheless put to sea, in ships no longer than a WW2 vintage PT boat crammed with 60 men they had no hope of feeding long-term since they lacked refrigeration or a way to control the onboard rat population.
And how despite the peril, they clenched their determined jaws, and headed off to find gold and en route slaughter vast numbers of coastal and island natives with the back-up plan – should gold be hard to loocate – of some day returning with more men and more ships and enslaving whatever natives they had not slaughtered on the first go-round, and then establish colonies that could perpetuate the enslaving and the raping and the torturing for centuries.
This is why education is a bad thing and ignorance is bliss. First paragraph happy, second paragraph not as much.