Congo

Article

Congo is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 28, 2021 and December 22, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “South Korea and Taiwan were poorer than Honduras or the Congo”; “treating river-blindness in war-torn parts of the Congo”. It most often appears alongside COVID, US, Alexander Hamilton.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: June 28, 2021
  • Last seen: December 22, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

June 28, 2021 · Original source
There was nothing predetermined about this. These countries started with nothing. In 1950, South Korea and Taiwan were poorer than Honduras or the Congo. But they managed to break into the ranks of the First World even while dozens of similar countries stayed poor. Why?
December 22, 2021 · Original source
I’m not saying doctors are generically cowards. My father is a doctor and he’s one of the bravest people I know. Every time there’s a typhoon or an earthquake in some terrorist-infested country on the other side of the world, he hops on a plane to go there and treat victims, sometimes before the rubble is even cold. If this was something simple, like treating river-blindness in war-torn parts of the Congo or containing an Ebola epidemic in Nigeria, I’m sure doctors would be all over it.
Still, I do want to stress the “facing the Devil” aspect, where this is a difficult moral battle. I know that’s a weird way to frame a prescription decision. But CS Lewis is a leading expert on devils and he was very clear that moral battles generally don’t happen in war-torn parts of the Congo. They happen in ordinary decisions about whether to do slightly unusual things that we worry might affect our social status among people we respect.