PERSPECTIVE
Rising above the bustle brings the obvious into view
Where freedom has been fought for and won, it is ironic that choices are so often reduced rather than expanded by the very environment that is meant to guarantee them
There’s a lot to be said for trying to get above the bustle to exploit the advantage of seeing things all the more clearly for just what they are. On a recent flight to Johannesburg, a brief glimpse of the landscape on a banking turn yielded an unexpected insight into what it means to be free to choose and, in a sense, to be uncomplicatedly human. Far below, the unmistakable geometry of peri-urban settlement registered as a neat patchwork of lines and squares, of dusty fields and ruler-straight roads cleanly intersecting at junctions and nodes of habitation. Here was a picture of the landscape brought to order and made useful by a plan; the stamp of authority. But it was the subversive element in the outline that was at once arresting and thrilling. A tracery of footpaths, defiantly at odds with the regular geometry, evoked the truer human presence. The paths cut corners, snaked across open ground, converged on junctions of their own, revealing people’s daily choices in determining ...
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