What's Your Heart of Darkness?

I think it's pretty easy to say that America's modern day Heart of Darkness is the Middle East, or maybe still Africa. Those do both make a lot of sense; I know almost nothing about Africa besides the bits of (awful) history that relate to Europe or America. But I think that a heart of darkness isn't something so easy to own up to. Unless you've gone on your own Marlowesque trip, you're probably more like the narrator: looking at what seems to be a beacon of civilization, all glowing and pretty, until you realize... it's really not. 

I find it easy to admit that I know very little of African history and culture. That's definitely bad and something I should fix in the future, but I don't think it's my heart of darkness. If I had to talk about my own heart of darkness, I would say... anyone living under the poverty line, period. (Which is, well, a lot of people.) Maybe that's a bit unspecific, but it's true. I don't understand, at all, what that's like. My biggest problem right now is which college I'm going to get into, not whether I'll get an education at all. And that's sort of what I mean by the narrator's description at the beginning of the beacon of civilization-- I am almost always so absorbed by my own life, with my nice neighborhood and good school and constant access to food, not to mention a thousand other things, that I forget that there are people without those. I forget that so much of what I have is built off people living in a 'heart of darkness' and that I'm really only here by chance. Even this post is more of an exception to the rule; I am going to go back to all my mundane worries as soon as I hit publish. I suppose that's pretty horrible, but that's the way it is.