I'm onto my third Mma Ramotswe book, Morality for Beautiful Girls. I suppose there are people out there who don't know how good these novels are. I'm in danger of boring people to death singing their praises, which, I suppose, they find a refreshing change from all the other things I bore them about.
Since I've always considered myself a bit of an existentialist - I say 'a bit' because I've never quite been able to understand what Monsieur Sartre was talking about - I was interested in Mma Ramotswe's take on the subject.
She was musing on morality and deploring the modern inclination towards individualism, which led people to devise their own personal code, which of course just means selfishness.
She was particularly perplexed by these 'existentialists', who live in France and feel the need to be 'real'. Therefore the real thing to do is the right thing to do. She realises that she has met many existentialists in her life without knowing they were such. Her former husband, for example, who beat her and had other women, (obviously existentialist women). It is a good life, she thinks, being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, non-existentialist, people around one.
Mma's faith is in the morality of her forefathers and the 10 commandments. But what are we to do, who have no god and whose forefathers kept changing their minds?
Mind you, she got Sartre's character right, the old hypocritical goat.
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