When the Dutch daily de Volkskrant published my essay, On Optimism and Pessimism, in ’94, the country nearly had a collective seizure. The Dutch—those famed merchants of tolerance – reacted with the fury of a drunk whose precious Schnapp was watered down. The outrage was instant, the denunciations plentiful. I was accused of blaspheming against their sacred cow: the puncturing of the illusion that Western modernity, dripping in chrome and gadgetry, represents the pinnacle of human existence. I was called all sorts of names, none of which were endearing.
Even as the world now moves at the speed of algorithms, the psychology of the West remains as stagnant as the canals of Amsterdam in mid-summer.
The technologies are more modern. The gadgets are faster, the skyscrapers taller, the bombs deadlier—but the mentality? The same old smug obsession with self-worship, and entitlement. The same unspoken mantra: Why pay for it, when you can kill for it?
Sartre once asked: “What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises?”
The gag Sartre spoke of was not rope but ideology. Today, it is GDP, Wi-Fi hotspots per square kilometre, and the number of Teslas plugged into charging stations. Europeans measure African humanity by economic indices – never mind that the IMF designed those indices to keep Africa on its knees.
In my original article, I recounted my experience traveling to Düsseldorf. The place sparkled—steel towers, Mercedes limousines, glass shopping palaces filled with things no one needs. And yet, the streets were cemeteries of joy—dead eyes, hunched shoulders, grim mouths. Prosperity without happiness, progress without soul.
Now contrast that with a dusty West African village: barefoot children laughing as they play with their self-made toys, women humming as they balance water jars, and elders weaving wisdom into folktales.
Yes, poverty exists; no one denies that, but so does resilience. Westerners cannot comprehend that joy is not a consumer product.
As I tried to tell my European colleagues and friends, happiness is culture, survival, and being human. The Germans I saw on the streets were soulless automatons.
The European mind, trapped in hubris, mistakes material abundance for fulfilment. He believes he can buy happiness at the supermarket checkout. He does not realize that the same machine that delivers his comforts—consumerism—also hollows out his soul. And, that is a tragedy.
The modern European is addicted. His drug of choice is insatiable consumerism. He craves convenience. Dishwashers, elevators, washing machines—gadgets that promise liberation but deliver spiritual slavery. Each shiny object alienates him further from the joy of labor, the dignity of effort. The Westerner is not capable of thinking of happiness sans invented gadgets. And that is his tragedy.
He becomes a junkie in perpetual withdrawal, chasing the next upgrade, the ultimate status symbol. His temples are shopping malls; his priests are brand logos. The holy sacrament? The newest iPhone. Why would a normal human want a coffee-making machine with more electronics and buttons than a spacecraft?
I’ve sat through gatherings where people babbled for hours about the specs of a kitchen gadget – yet not one person asked about their neighbour’s health, their mother’s garden, or their community’s well-being.
This is the tragedy: a people who have replaced fellowship with fetish objects.
When the emptiness becomes unbearable, the Europeans flee to “exotic” Africa or Asia on a package holiday. He arrives to find people smiling without gadgets, laughing without antidepressants, and he is shocked. His one-track mind cannot fathom joy without electronic devices.
European culture is steeped in tragedy. From Greek drama to Shakespeare’s Hamlet to Hollywood’s endless apocalypse porn, the West is addicted to doom. It revels in the myth of the “great man” who must conquer all that he sees.
Could this be because tragedy justifies empire? If the world is a battlefield, then conquest becomes destiny. If life is pain, then domination is salvation. Even the European religion glorifies agony: a half-naked man nailed to wood as its central image. Of all the symbols in Christianity, Europe chose not resurrection, triumph, or joy, but suffering. A Jesus nailed to a cross with a crown of thorns is the emblem of his Christian religion.
The Western media continues this fetish. Newspapers scream death tolls and disasters. Catastrophe sells. The good news—festivals, breakthroughs, artistry—is hidden in the back pages, if at all. Europeans are kept in a constant state of fear, primed to accept wars, invasions, and imperial interventions as “solutions.”
Africa chose differently. Our survival strategy has been optimism—not as denial but as resistance. When a colonial army razed a village, survivors sang. When drought cracked the earth, elders told stories of rain. This is not naïveté; it is armor—spiritual fortification at its best.
Take Ubuntu: “I am because we are.” This philosophy places community above greed. Where the Europeans hoard, the Africans share. Where the Europeans privatize, the Africans collectivize. Optimism is not blindness; it is defiance against a world that tried for centuries to erase us.
It is why Africa continues to smile while the West, with all its material wealth, continues to pop Prozac like groundnuts.
Open The Guardian or The New York Times. What do you see? Death tolls, nuclear leaks, serial killers. Disaster as daily bread. This is not accidental; it is cultural. Europeans need catastrophe the way fish need water—it validates their tragic worldview.
Meanwhile, African stories of triumph—clean-water projects, festivals, art, innovation—are ignored. Instead, Western reporters parachute in to film starving children with flies on their faces and then fly out to collect their Pulitzer Prizes.
The script is always the same: Europe as saviour, Africa as perpetual victim.
Even in leisure, the contrast is glaring. European football is a commercial war machine: riots, tribal chants, billionaire owners. African football? A barefoot game in Lome beachside or Kisumu street corners, a rhythm, a dance, a communal joy.
Music? The West gives you algorithmic noise, which is lifeless, soulless, and auto-tuned. Africa gives you highlife, Afrobeat, soukous—alive, participatory, irresistible. One is a product. The other is a pulse, irresistible and heart uplifting.
A Dutch student was perplexed when I laughed at her question of whether I had read a Western travelogue predicting Africa’s doom.
I laughed because for centuries, Westerners have predicted our demise. Yet here we are—alive, singing, laughing—while their societies drown in loneliness and suicide.
The truth is that Europeans see Africa through catastrophe because they need Africa to be a catastrophe. Without the African foil, their tragic self-image collapses.
The world is torn between two psychologies: European pessimism—grim, tragic, obsessed with death—and African optimism—resilient, communal, joyous even in hardship.
Tell me: who is truly civilized? The lonely billionaire weeping in his penthouse or the child laughing in a mud hut?
Until Europe stops measuring life by dollars and corpses, it will never understand Africa’s stubborn refusal to die. Unless Africa stops internalizing Western predictions of doom, it will continue to surprise, adapt, and thrive.
The stage is wide enough for both tragedy and joy. But let us—Africans—refuse to be written only as corpses in someone else’s tragic play.
Let us continue to be happy, to sing, even in the dust. Nkosikelele Africa! Sankofa all the way!
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Polemicist-General of the Pan-African Republic)
My Mission: Stultitia Delenda Est – Stupidity Must be Destroyed!
I am an unapologetic Pan-Africanist who is unconditionally opposed to any form or manifestation of racism, fascism, and discrimination.
I thank you for reading my articles and watching my podcasts. I will continue to make them free, and I will not accept advertisements.
Your support is invaluable. If you enjoy my articles and podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it if you subscribe (https://femiakogun.substack.com ) to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, well-researched, thought-provoking articles and podcasts like this one.
Alternatively, you can donate here:
https://buymeacoffee.com/panafricandigest
Or https://ko-fi.com/PanAfricanDigest
Or patreon.com/PanAfricanDigest
Follow:
🔗 Subscribe to my Substack
📣 Follow me on Telegram
📺 Watch on YouTube
🖊️ Find me on Muckrack
🐦 X: @FemiMayegun
🔗LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/femiakomolafe
You can chat with me on my Substack here: https://tinyurl.com/y6yueb7d
