A famous epigrammatic nugget of wisdom appears in The Leopard, Lampedusa’s great novel about a noble Sicilian family’s fortunes: ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.’ I thought of the novel as I was driven up to Gstaad during last week’s heatwave. Disembarking in Geneva, I felt I was back in Nairobi, circa 1970, on my way to Mombasa and a romantic interlude among the elephants and wildebeest. The old continent now looks like Africa, especially in airports and public spaces. But things will have to change if we want things to stay the same, I told myself again and again. (…)
Am I going all Ayn Rand on you? God, I hope not. She was too awful a woman, an arch capitalist and a man-eating cougar if ever there was one; not the most attractive of females. She did for selfishness what the saints did for altruism, and then some. But she had some very good points…
