For many long years now I have been
wearing spectacles with clear lens. Every time the lens shattered, I would
hurriedly replace them. If it so happened that at the time I am broke, I would
send a myriad SMS’s to friends and enemies soliciting their intervention as I
believed I can not do without clear lens. Today, they shattered, and
surprisingly, my reality looked much clear. I had peace of mind. I was no
longer worked up over what earlier had looked imbecilic. With a shattered lens,
I now could understand why the apocalypse of our providence[1] lies in our
inability to separate bounded and rider reality from our obtaining providence.
Our obtaining
apocalypse of our providence is such that we need to re-interrogate our own
existence in today's global context.
Who are we? Is
a question, which lately depresses me. We are neither white, oriental, nor
black. We are indistinguishable as our reality is a messy mosaic of other
people's reality and aspirations. Take our conceptualisation of the institution
called marriage. We first marry within our ancestral heritage, then later walk
under the arch to marry within the rider's ancestral heritage or what in this
backwater country I exist in, they call statutory marriage (sic)!
The other
question is: what exactly do we seek as a people? Whose reality are we going to
continue existing in? Ours or theirs? Inarguably, the answer is theirs. Period!
We see it in the four walls of concrete we call places of education and
learning. We even see it in the aspirations of the persons that stand on the
podium of these four walls. Their aspirations are mere recognition by
them first, and then us.
If we seek to
change our despicable and imbecilic providence, it is now and not tomorrow that
we should start walking into their world. We can only walk into our world, if
and only if we can change the global context to suit our own pursuits. Which we
do not even attempt to do, anyway.
Fact is, the
bounded, anachronistic and dual reality in which we exist does not really
provide understanding and solutions facing most of our people wallowing in an
abyss of poverty and despondence. This reality does not help that child dying
in a neighbourhood near you as you read this article.
We are poor as
countries; the children are dying, not because we lack technology, fiscal
resources or human capital. Neither are we poor solely because of explanations
provided in liberalist, Marxist, development or imperialist theories.
We are
socio-economically and politically poor in today's global context because we
seldom take time to interrogate the inconsistencies and variance in our
providence. We are also poor because we exist in the rider's bounded reality
that we still do not understand! And even if we so proclaim we do, we always
still run to the village (as a scapegoat) when it suits us.
The tragedy of
our providence lies in our inability to realise that we are poor simply because
our existence is dualistic and anachronistic!
It must be
understood, that the predominance of a particular rider reality in thought
(political or developmental), in our ignorance and understanding is so inbred
that what ever knowledge we claim to seek within the bounded reality is in the
end ultimately a part of that reality.
Consequently,
whatever human development or progress sought, acts within the reality, and
will inevitably simply lead to the perpetuity of that reality.
That reality is
a foreign reality. If we can not change it now, let us start thinking and
acting within that reality. After all, the knowledge we so claim to acquire
within the four walls of concrete we spend years in is foreign! How come in our
providence we have never come across the dictum - to catch a thief, one has to
think like a thief.
Today, the
backwater country I exist in is at the crossroads, and yet many of its
population do not seem to think so. A country's fiscal resources have and are
still being appropriated for the preservation of political hegemony, and a
people continue on with their miserable existence like the god of Jesus has
come to visit.
People I once
respected as independent-minded, people who have the written word on
development dialectics on myriad pieces of paper, are today hopping around like
monkeys. They are even defending individuals and policies that rape the
existence of the children.
It is in times
like this, that I sometimes believe there is truth in what we are sometimes
called. We are all hopping from a rider reality to a dualistic and
anachronistic reality whenever it suits us. The consequences of such behaviour
are seldom considered. Do we really realise that we are killing the children?
Children have
been dying of hunger and curable diseases, have been mis-educated. Yet, like we
did then, and we are doing now, we sit back and marvel at the ingenuity of the
rape of the children. I am not an anarchist, but surely if it be that we were
in the reality whose providence was a colonialist, many would stand on the
watchtower of reason and dissent.
That Africa and
this backwater country I exist in, is today in an abyss of despondence, is
indicative of the fact that we did not and still do not take time to unravel
our own reality. What horse have we been riding? What horse are we going to
ride?
In retrospect,
the tragedy of our providence (why we are killing the children) lies in the fact
that we have no known reality at all. And this is whether socially, politically
or economically. We exist in a vast emptiness of reason, thought and realism.
We want to be riders, but we do not even know what a horse is or even what it
looks like! Is it white? Is it oriental? Or is it black?
Pax vobiscum.
[1] Providence is here used to mean the prudence
and care exercised by someone in the management of resources (which includes
the population).
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