22 Aug 2005 |
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| Chris Ngwodo “The empires of the future,” said Winston Churchill, “are the empires of the mind.” In making this statement, the British wartime leader was prescient in recognizing the primacy of ideas in shaping the future. His contemporary, the British science fiction author, H.G. Wells agreed asserting that “human history is in essence the history of ideas.” Civilization has advanced on the wings of imagination and innovation. It is no accident that the most advanced nations of the world are those who have harnessed the intellectual capital and creative potential of their populations. In other words they have been able to use their ability to think, imagine and innovate to fashion a higher quality of life in their societies. It is for the same reason that giant multinational corporations are spearheading the global economy; these conglomerates have simply synergized the latent creative potential of a transnational pool of human resources to enable them stay ahead in terms of innovation. Ideas are the building blocks of all spiritual, social, economic and political reality. The quality of life in a society is a manifestation of its prevailing ideas. Plato conceptualized a ‘world of ideas’ of which material reality is a manifestation. In considerable agreement, the apostle Paul wrote, “the things that are seen are made of the things which do not appear.” We can trace a line of ideas from antiquity to present day western civilization. The great Athenian philosopher Socrates mentored Plato who in turn mentored Aristotle. Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia was a disciple of Aristotle and had conquered almost all of the none world by 333 B.C. and in so doing had established Greek thought, customs and language as the world’s dominant culture. The ideas of Karl Marx spawned communism, as those of Hippocrates shaped the practice of medicine and those of Freud influenced the field of psychology. The teachings of Jesus espoused a singular idea- the kingdom of God. Every invention and advancement of human civilization, from penicillin to the microchip, sprung from an idea whether it is Thomas Edison’s “two percent inspiration” or Einstein’s “thought experiments.” It is why the Wright brothers flew and with their advance in aviation accelerated the pace of globalization before the ‘G’ word was even coined. Henry Ford’s dream of “a car for the great multitudes” changed the history of the automobile. In many ways, thus, ideas have shaped and continue to shape the world. With this is mind, what happens to a society where thought is discouraged and ideas are disdained? What is the destiny of the Nigerian society in this millennium? These questions are necessary because of the present state of education in Nigeria. To begin with, our educational system retards thought and discourages imagination. Students of our tertiary institutions are programmed to simply cram from notes or handouts and regurgitate them during exams. Adventurous inquiry beyond the borders of scholarly tradition is stridently disapproved of. Freedom of intellectual debate is sharply limited in the very places that should be bastions of intellectual inquiry. So our schools are churning out largely unimaginative people that can neither initiate nor innovate. Having been deprived of the ability to dream, many graduates will take the less risky well beaten path of job hunters and join the legions of jobless youths rather than follow Walt Disney’s four magic words, “think, dream, believe, dare.” The progress of a nation is powered by the dreams of its people. Individuals and whole nations will subdue the earth and dominate material reality through their priceless ability to dream and to ask not only “why?” but “why not?” This principle is as true of entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Richard Branson as it is of the economic superpowers of the west and the Asian tigers. In contrast, Nigeria somehow has evolved a culture that is blind to the future; a system that destroys its own emperors of the future by entrenching mediocrity in all spheres of life. We have become a dreamless society. Solomon was reflecting upon just such a society when he wrote, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The gradual retrogression of our society, the recession of moral values, the decline in productivity and infrastructural decay can be traced along lines parallel to a dearth of vision. The net effect of our disdain for ideas is evident in the pervasive social dysfunction in our nation even if imperceptibly and little understood. There are six plagues in a dreamless society where thought is restrained. First, a culture of materialistic immediacy is created in which the here and now is all that matters. Success and progress are measured in terms of material acquisition rather than in terms of moral and intellectual enlightenment and service. This is reflected in the ascendancy of the ‘get rich quick’ paradigm that esteems brash and unquestioned affluence over scrupulous hard work and enterprise. As Christ said, “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” If all that matters is the here and now, then moralistic concerns about the afterlife and about leaving a transgenerational legacy which is the substance of true riches or sustainable wealth become quaint. Our sole motivation becomes acquisition and we become a people without restraint. This leads to the second consequence of social amorality. Whereas immorality is a violation of established moral precepts, amorality denies the existence of good and evil. The sole ends of self preservation and material acquisition justify any and all means that might be employed to achieve them. A Hobbesian social order; a state of nature where might is the only right begins to emerge. Thirdly, a toxic theology is evolved to rationalize social dysfunction. Human irresponsibility, incompetence and moral failures are increasingly ascribed to metaphysical causes. During the early nineties, when Defence House, the headquarters of the Nigerian armed forces went up in flames, the government described it as “an act of God.” Imagine the implications for law enforcement when acts of terrorism, sabotage and arson can be rationalized as acts of God. Fatalism describes how a society rather than address its problems, buries its head in the sand in religious denial in the self deceptive belief that ‘what will be will be’ or that otherwise easily avoidable man-made disasters are ‘God’s will.’ Fourthly, in a society where thinking has been outlawed, a poverty of ideology denotes politics and governance. Shorn of principles, politics becomes what Ambrose Bierce satirically defined in The Devil’s Dictionary as “a strife of interests masquerading as principles” and as “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” Chinua Achebe in his classic work, The Trouble with Nigeria, observes what he calls “the seminal absence of intellectual rigour in the political thought of our founding fathers- a tendency to pious materialistic woolliness and self-centred pedestrianism.” This malaise continues to afflict Nigerian politics which is defined rather unimaginatively as “a game of numbers” played mostly by demagogues and rabble rousers and won by the highest bidder. For lack of thought and ideology, political discourse is often framed in juvenile elocution and broadcast by a media whose coverage and analysis of national issues is usually superficial. Electoral contests are woven less around clear ideological issues than around personalities and irrelevant matters. Thus, it is for this reason, that the quality of governance we have had for much of our history is not a surprise. The over-arching poverty of thought in politics and in the society generally also has to do with the long period of military rule which the country underwent. The authoritarian centralized command structure of the military with its scant room for individual thought and initiative eventually became the model for government in Nigeria. The militarist imperative of following orders prevailed over thinking and innovation. Nigerian politics, therefore, is dominated by this paramilitary totalitarian philosophy and needs urgently to be transformed into a proper ideological contest. The fifth plague of a dreamless society is artistic delinquency. The fact that the home video industry has christened itself ‘Nollywood’ bespeaks an inferiority complex and an unintelligent imitation of all things foreign. Our music and our movies suffer from a depressing mediocrity. Our entertainment staple is coarse with very few exceptions. The reason for this is that creativity and imagination are seriously impaired in Nigeria. The young Nigerian isn’t encouraged to dream but to hustle and when the imagination is employed, if at all, it is usually in furtherance of some devious scheme to make quick money. Because creativity has been alienated here many artistes can do no more than regurgitate hackneyed stereotypes and prejudices. So our musicians embrace commercially viable gratuitous soft pornography in their videos, while our movies are hopelessly low concept with a lack of depth and originality. Nollywood is often cited as the biggest artistic development in Nigeria in recent times and rightly so. It also embodies the artistic delinquency of the dreamless Nigerian society. With few exceptions, the fare from Nollywood is really appalling. It is perhaps better to say that the industry is at the Onitsha Market literature stage of its evolution and hope that in so doing I am not denigrating the precursor of an illustrious literary tradition. The problem with Nollywood is that it is controlled not by artistes per se but by the mercantilist interests of Idumota market. It is why we see little other than ritualism on our video screens because fetishism sells. The collateral damage in this stems from the fact that these movies are exported and only further cement the stereotype of the Nigerian society as one dominated by witchcraft and fetish orientation. Some critics argue that this is no crime and that art must reflect society. I disagree. I believe that art in its highest expression, unfettered by crassly mercantile considerations does more than reflect society; it shapes it with ideas presented powerfully and aesthetically. This principle is a thread that runs through the parables of Jesus to Aesop’s fables to the moral lessons of African folktales. The aim of art is not just entertainment but education and enlightenment. The calling of the artiste is also largely prophetic. It is in this way that Herbert Ogunde’s powerful stage plays unsettled the British colonialists because it fanned the embers of a social awakening in Nigeria. Great classics such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, among many others were similarly prophetic. To this extent, Nollywood cannot be said to belong to the same illustrious artistic tradition exemplified by the likes of Achebe, Ekwensi, Soyinka, Fela, Tutuola, Ogunde et al. I have dwelt this long on the state of the arts because it is a subtle yet powerful force for sculpting culture. Good ideas and toxic ones alike can be projected into the mainstream through what entertains us much quicker and on a much larger scale than through what informs and educates. It was possibly a perception of this truth that made the late John Lennon declare with bovine hubris that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. Hollywood today wields as much influence if not more than the many holy books of the world. The arts are a potent vehicle for ideas because they have a way of getting past the mental defences that obstruct philosophy, sermons and education. The English language as we know it was influenced significantly by that famed bard, Shakespeare. The philosophy of Marcus Garvey found expression in the songs of Bob Marley just as the existentialism of the sixties found expression in the heavy metal rock and roll of that age. The dominance of the west and the victory of capitalism in the cold war had a lot to do with the ubiquity of its icons and ideas in the global pop culture. The hammer and the sickle ultimately proved no match for James Bond, Superman, Mickey Mouse and their ilk. With this in mind, Nollywood and Nigerian artistes in general must elevate their trade to the place of high concept entertainment that aims to remake society. Artistes and philosophers have a role to play in rousing our dreamless society and stimulating advancement with positive ideas transmitted imaginatively. The sixth plague is closely related to the fetishism and witchcraft which Nollywood has milked repeatedly. It is what I call the fear factor that pervades our society. The central element of many fetishistic societies is fear. As a psychological tool it is wielded by cults, priests and rulers to cower the people. This sort of fear remains a strong fixture in our socio-cultural space despite the apparent strides we have made in modernization and education. A comic depiction of this might be found in an individual’s readiness to swear by the bible or the Koran but his reluctance to bite a machete and swear by his own traditional gods and goddesses on the grounds that the bible forbids swearing. The average Nigerian is afraid of so many things. Afraid of death, he employs his religious devotion to whatever god he might serve to defer his appointment with the inevitable. Many religious adherents have not come to terms with their own mortality and it has to do with the fact that in our society, life has been cheapened by infrastructural decay and the general poverty of thought. Consider, for instance, that with the state of many roads and the condition of our airport runways, traveling from point A to point B is to place your life at risk. This coupled with the incidence of armed robbery and the absence of emergency health services means that one’s chances of getting wounded or out-rightly killed as a commuter in Lagos are far higher than in Copenhagen or Dublin. Life is simply too uncertain in our country; with far too many variables created by the absence of strategic planning and foresight. I submit that were we to be a thinking society, where innovation and invention are constantly elevating the quality of life and by extension life expectancy, religious devotion would then properly serve the purposes of enlightenment rather than life insurance. The fear of the future in the same way has also led to the patronage and proliferation of all kinds of prophets, shrines and fortune tellers demanding all kinds of sacrifices that range from the pecuniary to the diabolically grotesque. In a dreamless society that cannot see past the now, the future is necessarily frightening but a people with vision consistently predict the future not through some arcane practices but by inventing it with ideas that are being sown in the fertile soil of the present and we reap what we sow. The same fear factor is why so many youths are languishing in the tertiary system studying and flunking courses for which they have no passion but have been told is their passport to financial security. They are held captive by a psychological fear of the future that has been imparted to them by the Nigerian society. Many will graduate like this after a struggle, low on esteem, convinced that they are dunces, only to languish in the labyrinth of joblessness in the wider society or find an unfulfilling life in the corporate sector. Fear is probably the greatest enemy of enterprise in Nigeria. This generation is defined by its fears rather than its hopes and dreams. And above this all is the system that has made Nigerians creatures of fear; a culture which teaches people that they can only progress by intimidation, cheating and witchcraft rather than vision, industry and faith retards creativity. In the end, we have to realize that ideas rule the world and seek freedom from fear, which is also the freedom to dream and to dare. Fetishism is no match for the powers of an unfettered mind. Fear as a psychic and spiritual force impedes human potential. One lesson that we can readily learn from history is that repressive systems that use fear to shackle humanity will ultimately be defeated by more liberal systems where thought and invention are free from such restraint. It is why liberal democracy and capitalism triumphed over communism. The ease with which colonialism steamrolled African societies, shrines, gods and goddesses illustrates this point for undoubtedly the Europeans were the stronger and the Africans were the weaker. The gods of the Benin Empire were powerless to prevent its sack by the British. The empire of yesterday gave way easily to the empire of the future. Any culture that enables man to be all he can be under God will flourish. The original idea of capitalism was free enterprise rooted in a protestant work ethic that allowed individuals to dream and innovate. It explains the ascendancy of the west and the preeminence of western values over the last century. An apt illustration of the difference between African and European worldviews is in how both would regard a mountain. Confronted by a tall mountain, a European would immediately begin to marshal his mental and physical resources towards conquering its heights and eventually he would do so. Faced by the same mountain, the African would marvel at the extension of the peaks into the heavens and then devote his efforts towards constructing an altar or a shrine at the foot of the mountain which he would now rename the abode of the gods. The mountain would become forbidden territory and for generations that African’s animistic descendants would regard it with fear and awe. The African’s regard for the metaphysical is not altogether wrong; it needs to be tempered so that it becomes something that propels development rather than retard it. In the same way the western ‘can do’ spirit has to be tempered so that it ceases to be a disregard for the environment and an unthinking exploitation of ecological resources. Both a healthy regard for the supernatural and an ability to think and dream will move Nigeria forward. Truth arrived at by the synergy of faith and reason will set us free. The six plagues of a dreamless society mirror the contemporary reality of the Nigerian nation. We see in them what Nigeria is becoming and could completely and devastatingly degenerate into- a society in which thinking is outlawed, without moral values, spiritual enlightenment, or intellectual pursuits whose denizens bound by fear of enemies and circumstances both real and imagined, exist in an autopilot mode of survival worshipping a god of signs and blunders that exists to carry the can for their failures. It would be in the words of Robert Ingersol, “a republic of mediocrity” where “genius is dangerous.” Hope for a change or a reversal in this generation must initially lie with a few as with all revolutions. In every era, it has taken a handful of philosophers, prophets, writers or crusaders (at times even less) to light the fiery spark of radical ideas that eventually flares into the burning bush of revolution. It will obviously not happen all at once so we must approach this task with the pragmatic realism of evangelism, sometimes addressing one individual at a time sometimes more, but to each person there is a sphere of influence which we can best transform by embodying the idea that we want to project. It is no more really than practicing what we preach. It is the word that is made flesh; the idea that we make materially manifest in our own lives that eventually will change Nigeria. Above all we must recover the ability to dream. It is the ability to see things as they are and refuse the temptation to resign ourselves to their immutability but rather envision an alternate reality. Never mind the skeptics; dreams can come true. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” If good people will not dream and dare to shape the world for the better, evil people will do so and unleash hell on earth. Adolf Hitler’s dream of a thousand years of Nazi rule plunged the world into war. Similar dreams of global domination had inspired Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and Napoleon much to humanity’s grief before the 20th century. In contrast, Martin Luther King dreamt of an America where racial barriers would be discarded. His dream has come true. Dreamers rule the world. I believe that one of the reasons for the condition of the Nigerian nation is that the good people have folded their arms and allowed megalomaniacs to construct the reality of their own vile dreams. Its time for us to dream and dare to stand for what we believe in. There is no sense in complaining about an absence of “enabling environment,” the most important factor is the environment within- that dreamscape of ideas with which we can transform material reality. It’s why Israel has been able to turn an otherwise arid desert into an oasis and a conveyor belt for agricultural produce. For forty years, we have been content to complain about the way things are. Now let’s begin to craft solutions to the issues of life that are confronting us. The ways and means of the age to come are reserved for those who can dream dreams and see visions of a better tomorrow. It is they who will possess the empires of the future.
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