John Comaroff Lecture (related to the Odyssey)

For the majority of his lecture, John Comaroff mused about his studies on crime in South Africa, calling crime the "obsession of the age." As he reflected that the line between "friend and enemy, citizen and alien" has been blurred, he noted that the South African society is one that lacks any sort of underlying trust--even in its own government. I found that this "custom" of mistrust directly contrasts with the Greek culture in the Odyssey, where most homeowners will take in a castaway regardless of the ever-present threat that betrayal presents. Additionally, he addressed an interesting phenomena: the South Africans have an obsession with heroes specializing in crime detection. Just as the Greeks obsess over the Gods in every action taken, the South Africans obsess over "Sherlock Holmes types" for the very same reason: both are the major forces that combat morally unsound acts. Ironic to this comparison, Comaroff touched upon the idea that, in South Africa, modern detection arts and divining arts have always been conjoined in citizen's mental constructs of the "conjectural paradigm," the art of reasoning backwards, giving detectives a divine connotation. It is for this reason that the South African citizens often place more trust in a single man than in the entire arm of government that supervises him, a strong insight into their current rationality on crime.