"There is no way to live with the illusion of being made happy by the things that one owns, especially in a country like Ecuador where a comparative handful of people own everything, without developing and armor of blindness that makes one not only insensitive but contemptuous of the overwhelming poverty through which one moves. Perhaps worse than the contempt is the hypocrisy of pretending to be outraged while living a life devoted solely to the consumption of things that almost the entire population is on able to enjoy. I am thinking of a recent dinner party in one of the more modestly priced French restaurants where each of us ate sixteen dollars worth of food while talking about the corruptions of the world and the plight of the poor Ecuadorian Indians, most of whom live in the absolute feudal degradation that arrived in the 1540s with the Spanish conquistadors. Talk about engaging in an orgy of unspeakable acts. Our sin was not in enjoying good food but was much more complicated and suggestive the whole disintegration of our moral sensitivities. How could we have left that restaurant stuffed like pigs and half-drunk on Chilean wine and French Brandy and not vomited the whole thing up in self-loathing when we encountered the barefoot citizens of Quito ransacking the garbage cans in deserted nighttime Avenida Amazonas? How strange and awful; we know that living this way is gross and unnatural but we keep on doing it."
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers.
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