The Doldrums

"This cheerless sea between them, and the calmness of the weather whose only purpose seems to be to allow evil forces to gather fresh strength, are the last mystical barriers between to regions so diametrically opposed to each other through different conditions that the first people to become aware of the fact could not believe that they were equally human. A continent barely touched by man lay exposed to men whose greed could no longer be satisfied by their own continent. Everything would be called into question by this second sin: God, morality, and law. In simultaneous yet contradictory fashion, everything would be verified in practice and revoked in principle: the Garden of Eden, the Golden Age of antiquity, the Fountain of Youth, Atlantis, the Hesperides, the Islands of the Blessed, would be found to be true; but revelation, salvation, customs, and law would be challenged by the spectacle of a purer, happier race of men (who, of course, were not really purer or happier, although a deep-seated remorse made them appear so). Never had humanity experienced such a harrowing test, and it will never experience such another, unless, some day, millions of miles from our own world, we discover some other globe, inhabited by thinking beings. We have at least the advantage of knowing that the distance can in theory be bridged, whereas the early navigators feared they might be venturing into the void."

- Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, on the colonial encounter at the Equator