| The African Self Versus Other Selves |
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| Written by Ozodi Thomas Osuji | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 28 November 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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THE AFRICAN SELF VERSUS OTHER SELVES
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
Seriously, are there differences between African, European and Asian persons? This question has exercised the minds of many persons and many have offered their opinions on it. Some responded to it by saying that some of the races are superior to others. How? They cited the apparent differences of the races material developments. It would seem that the Caucasian race has the highest level of material (science and technology) development, followed by the Asian race and at the bottom are Africans. Some have contended that the races apparent difference in measurable intelligence tests and performances at standardized examinations is evidence of their inherent differences. It is said that the three races score differently on IQ tests and on standardized examinations, such as Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT). Each of these arguments can be easily refuted, so the question remains unanswered. Are there differences between the races? There are none, biologically. Genetic studies shows that the races are 99.9% the same (the less than .1% difference is in the genes that code for such minor issues as skin color, hair type etc). At any rate, all people are really Africans because they all evolved in Africa before migrating out of
Nevertheless, there seems to be a difference between the races. In this essay, I present a hypothesis that the only difference between the races is how their egos, their senses of I, their individuality, is organized. My hypothesis is that of all the human races the African’s sense of me, the ego, is the least burdened by organizational rules of behavior. As I see them, Africans appear free to do as they wish; limited only by their vague desire to be accepted by other people (the desire to obtain other people’s acceptance tends to make people behave in a pleasing manner, that is, behave in a pro-social manner). In crude terms, Africans are the least civilized of the three races. But make sure that you understand what it means to be civilized. To be civilized is to chain the ego, to reign in the self, to bound the self with rules of accepted social behavior, rules imposed by society, internalized rules that have become part of the ego-self. As it were, the African ego is relatively free to do as it wants to do, unbounded. The freedom to do as one wishes to do is tantamount to being uncivilized, for the civilized person is not free to do as he wishes; the civilized person is essentially a slave bounded in every which way is imaginable. As Jean Jacque Rousseau (Social Contract) observed, the so-called civilized human being is a person chained to living as the gatekeepers of his society wants him to live. The modern white American, for example, is a slave, pure and simple. No one can look at him and say that he is looking at a free human being. Though the white American deludes himself into thinking that he is free (he makes a lot of noise about his so-called individualism), he is totally bound by his civilization, by his religion and laws and practically does not have freedom of self expression. Upon encountering him, you have total pity for him, for what you are looking at is a slave, a person programmed to behave as some one else wants him to behave. He lacks spontaneity and authenticity. (To him, his apparent internalization of laws, and being bound by laws, is symbol of his civilization. He fancies himself the most civilized person on planet earth. He is civilized indeed; a civilized slave.) What is said about the white American applies to Western European; one is employing white Americans for one is more familiar with them. Western society has so controlled Westerners that the only freedom they now appear to have is to engage in self destructive defiant behavior, such as homosexuality. When human beings are grossly chained by society, they tend to resort to this type of defiance and, ultimately, self destroy and the civilization that has made them such pathetic animals destroys itself, along with them. Classical civilizations like Greece and Rome got to a point where they so restricted their people that the only freedom the people had was to become sexually perverted and in the process weaken their bodies (every time a gay male puts his penis into another man’s anus he is infected by bacteria, virus and fungus; every tine a lesbian licks another woman’s vagina she is infected by fungus…these people have death wish, Thanatos) hence were easily defeated by more physically vigorous barbarians. Given the rate the Western man is becoming decadent, he is going to be so biologically weakened by his deviant lifestyles that those currently called primitive races would easily defeat him. Civilization, the chaining of the human ego, ultimately, destroys the people it supposedly civilized and itself. All civilizations come to an end; they die because they over restrict the human ego. (Although I choose not to make this essay scholarly by examining what this or that person said, I believe that Nietzsche made similar observations in Thus Spake Zarathustra. He believed that Western civilization, particularly Christianity, had over restricted the European ego; Christianity has feminized the Aryan ego and made it subservient to the bishop of
THE HUMAN SENSE OF I, THE GO
Who are human beings? How do you define human beings? As I see it, human beings are those animal creatures with a sense of separation from each other and from the whole of existence. To be a human being is to have a sense that one is separated from other people and from the whole of existence. Each human being has a sense of individuality, a sense of self that is not other selves. He is motivated to make his separated self survive. The individual construes himself as apart from other people and uses his separated- self to relate to other separated-selves. The individual believes that his interests is different from other persons’ interests and defends his self interests, with or without other people’s help. Generally, the individual is rational enough to recognize that his survival is largely dependent on the help of other individuals, so he cooperates with other people in doing what guarantees his personal survival. But make no mistake about it, when push comes to shove, he would place his personal survival ahead of other people’s survival. If food is scarce, the individual would like to eat and survive and have others not eat and die. Of course, there are exceptions to this general rule; some people are socialized to see themselves as one with other people and would sacrifice for others well being. Nevertheless, one can confidently assert that it is the individual’s personal survival that matters most to him. Every thing the individual does seem motivated by his wish to survive, to live (though he knows not what he lives for). As Charles Darwin (Origin of Species) pointed out, the strongest wish in people is their desire to live at all costs. If they could, they would like to live forever and ever in their bodies, except that the human body seems programmed to live, at most, 120 years and dies.
For our present purposes, the human animal is motivated to live at all costs and would cooperate with other human beings to guarantee his survival but where necessary would survive alone. Indeed, he would not hesitate using other people to make sure that he survives. Human history is characterized by human beings exploiting other human beings. Slavery was part of human civilization. (Slavery survives in the form of industrial wage slavery.) Thomas Hobbes put it best when he said that in the state of nature, human beings are at war with each other, each doing what makes his survival possible. Each human being’s pursuit of what he construes as his self interests necessarily generate interpersonal conflict and make human lives nasty, brutish and short. In the state of nature, human beings lived in perpetual insecurity. At any time, any human being could be captured and sold into slavery, sacrificed to the gods or even killed for the fun of it. To protect their lives, human beings agreed to reduce their natural freedom and give the power to protect them to socially constituted authorities. The Leviathan is authorized to make laws that protect all people in a given group. Because of their need for personal survival, human beings give power to the sovereign to restrict their natural freedoms.
Alas, that which came into being to make sure that individuals survived have become cancerous and make laws that so restrict individuals that they are now resorting to unnatural manners of existence. Governments eventually destroy the people they are supposed to protect; this happened in all ancient civilizations. Western governments have reached this state of diminishing returns and are now the destroyers, not the protectors, of the people. In
Americans are literally drowning in laws; the laws that they think protect them are now over restricting them and will eventually destroy them.
Each human being has a sense of me, an individuated self and lives to make sure that that self is well protected. Human beings live to defend their sense of me; when they are no longer able to defend their separated selves they die. The human body must constantly be defended with food, medications, clothes, shelter etc or else it dies. People’s psychological sense of self, the I, must be defended with the various ego defense mechanisms (such as repression, suppression, denial, dissociation, displacement, projection, sublimation, reaction-formation, fantasy, avoidance, shame, pride, fear, anger, guilt, acting out, minimizing etc) or else it dies. If the individual did not defend his self, he would be eaten by predatory animals, and in the social context he could be abused and oppressed by other people and, ultimately, destroyed. Folks used to have slaves and worked them to death and throw their bodies into unmarked graves and they are forgotten. (I once visited Thomas Jefferson’s
Every human being is aware that if he does not defend his self and his freedoms that other people would encroach on him and, if possible, use and discard him. Simply stated, the human self is a thing to be defended and if not defended is abused and dies off. An undefended human being dies and is forgotten by those still alive, those who are still defending their selves.
Ultimately, all human beings will die off and the universe would forget they ever existed, if it ever knows that they existed. Dinosaurs died off and existence continues without missing them. Human beings are those creatures that think that they matter but the universe does not agree with them. Apparently, people matter to themselves but not to the universe. As far as nature is concerned, people are not special, certainly no more so than animals and trees. Natural disasters destroy human beings as they destroy other biological organisms. A recent tsunami (2004) in
The individual human being has a sense of I, a separated self and lives to defend it; his defense of his self often includes harming other people. To protect themselves people form civil societies and pass laws to protect themselves. What is called civilization is essentially the passing of laws that protect people often at the expense of the individual self. Law is that which prevents the individual from doing what he wants to do? In civilized society, the individual is socialized to toe the line and if he steps out of line he is punished.
In civilized societies, prisons and jails are built every where and police and judges are hired and used to make sure that individuals are operating within the confines of laws. The agents of social repression throw those who insist on doing their own things into jails and prisons (or kill them, as in capital punishment). By way of contrast, there were no prisons and jails in all of Alaigbo (
In
The only individuality Americans are now permitted to have is to be sexually deviant. And this deviancy would so weaken them biologically that their death is virtually guaranteed.
As it were, Western society has declared war on people and is intent on making them survive as safe robots. In this light, the white man is contemptible but does not know it. He does not come across as a human being with an individuated soul; he comes across as an animal, a well fed animal but not an animal with a soul in it. To survive, these people have transformed their society into slave society; they are now slaves, not human beings. These people are not role models for the rest of humanity to emulate; they are museum pieces to be learned from, so that folks would know what human beings ought not to be like.
To be civilized is to live within the confines of laws, to have ones ego-self restricted by laws, laws internalized as part of ones self (what Sigmund Freud called the Superego). The so-called civilized person has had his individuated self bounded by his society; so bounded that he can hardly be said to have an individuated self. Nevertheless, his social restrictions permit him certain productive outlets. In
Science is yet to be done for the sake of human good.
The civilized western mind is permitted to ask scientific questions and to develop technologies to control his external environment. Hence the amazing progress of Western science and technology. On the other hand, the Western man is not permitted to ask certain existential questions. Certain questions are off limits and are not allowed for discussion. If one asked them one would be punished. For example, questions like who are we, what is the purpose of life, what are we doing here etc are not encouraged in
Americans and Westerners in general, make no mistake about it, are well fed; they are well fed animals but not human beings, if by human beings you mean persons with individuated selves. Whereas civilized persons have their selves well bounded and can be considered well maintained robots, nothing more, nothing less, what is called uncivilized persons tend to have more unbounded selves. Africans, those considered the least civilized persons in the extant world, tend to be less bounded persons; they tend to be like free children of nature, still living from their natural selves. This gives them that child like quality Europeans comment on, upon first seeing them. They say that Nigerians, typical Africans, despite their grinding poverty, are the happiest people on earth; Nigerians are always laughing. One would expect them to be unhappy and or angry! Of course, no human being has a totally unbounded self, for even the most rudimentary human society has norms and mores that its people must internalize and use to guide their behaviors. We are talking about relative levels of boundedness.
I am an African. Africans, as I see them, tend to have relatively unbounded selves. As it were, they are more like children and still have the freedom to do as they like. The Western man is a slave, the Asian man is a relative slave and the African is freest of them all. The African is the least civilized of the human groups, which means that he is the least bounded of the races. However, this relative lack of being in chain has its shortcomings. The individual must be chained, civilized, for his mind to engage in certain activities, such as science and technology.
Most of the scientists and technologists of
It is the middle class in the West that is largely responsible for its science and technology. What is the middle class but the better paid slave laborers of the West?
Rousseau’s noble savage does not do science and technology. He values his freedom to roam the Serengeti veldt. However, as the noble savage allows his mind to be chained, to be civilized, he, too, would become able to do science and technology. By the end of the twenty second century, African minds would have been relatively bound and Africans would, in fact, begin excelling in science and technology. As the Western man self destroys, the African man will surpass him in material culture. It is always those deemed primitive that take over civilizations deemed high. German barbarians took over
The white man is dying. Civilization is killing him. He is waiting to be buried by uncivilized Africans. Africans, in turn, will become civilized and killed by civilization. Ultimately, all human beings would be civilized and killed by civilization. The human race would eventually go out of existence, and, perhaps, another variety of animals gradually evolves to take over their place, and repeats the cycle of civilization and destruction.
At present, Africans are the least bound human beings. Their relative unboundedness means that they are unable to do well in science and technology. Africans do least in science and technology, not because those subjects are difficult, but because their minds are relatively free. Science and technology is done best by slaves. As Africans are increasingly becoming slaves, that is, civilized, they, too, would do well in science and technology.
Much of what is called human civilization is really an attempt to bind the human mind into a certain manner of thinking so that it behaves in a manner the gatekeepers of society want it to behave. Consider religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. If you detached yourself from these religions and examined them as objectively as is possible, what you would find is that they are insane patterns of thinking. Not one of them is vaguely interested in the truth. In fact, they run from the truth. Without beating around the bush, extant religions are means of social control. They are means of making the human mind to think and act in certain manners, manners deemed conducive for the survival of certain types of societies. In the West, we have kings, lords etc, so the religion posits an overlord called God and people are prevailed upon to obey him and transfer their obedience to him to obedience to the king (and, now, governments). From political science’s point of view, this behavior is perfectly rational; it makes for the survival of the political system. But from the perspective of metaphysics, it does not have anything to do with God. Judaism and Islam pretty much does what Christianity does: encourage folks to worship a punitive God, so that they are able to obey a punitive society. Oriental religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism etc encourage people to extinguish their egos, and since that is impossible, to have no regard for their egos. To the extent that Orientals tell themselves that they do not have selves their rulers are more able to use them to accomplish their political goals. The Asian makes the best soldier, for he would die for his leader (the only creature permitted to have a self). Simply stated, extant religions are means of social control and have no relevance in any discourse on God. First, such discourse would have to prove that God exists before we can worship him. (One may ask: why would an entity that is so powerful that it created the universe want to be worshiped? Only insecure persons want to be worshiped; secure persons live and let live. If God exists he cannot desire our worship of him. QED) Cynicism apart, one knows that no society permits its people to over focus on metaphysics for that would mean that people would not be easily controlled.
Africans have relatively uncivilized egos. I do not mean this in a negative sense, although it has its draw backs, such as the mess African politics is in. If you observe Africans, what you see is that each African seems to live for himself and not for other people. In so far that he has social concerns, it is of the narcissistic sort.
Individuated human beings, as Eric Fromm (Escape from Freedom) pointed out, tend to feel all alone in the world and feel primordial anxiety. To reduce their existential anxiety, they tend to seek attention from other people. To the extent that a human being feels that he is joined to other people he reduces his existential anxiety. Narcissistic attention seeking behavior is a primitive way of reducing human anxiety. Consider African politicians. We can make a generalized statement that they do whatever they have to do, fair or crooked, to get into political offices, not because of what they want to do for their people but because being in office gets them social admiration and attention. They seek office for vain glory reasons. They are narcissistic personalities. They are seeking other people’s admiration and attention. They do so for their incipient selves need to feel connected to other people and getting attention is the only way they know how to feel connected to the people, hence reduce their primordial anxiety. Thus every where you find self seeking African politicians seeking power for the sake of getting social attention. They remind you of little children who do things to get other peoples attention.
In the best of circumstances, a person should seek public office because of what he wants to do for the people. If you have something you want to accomplish for society you go into politics, if not you stay out of politics. In
The current African condition is not permanent; it reflects a stage of historical development. However, Africans have now entered the race to be civilized. In a couple centuries, the African ego would be civilized enough that folks would go into politics to do something for the people and not just to steal from the people. One expects that it would take most of the twenty first century before Africans begin to produce what can be called leaders and managers of men; at present African leaders are mostly narcissists and thieves in political offices.
The human ego, the I, must be redirected to performing social service for, if left alone, serves only its own good. The ego must be trained to serve the public good, for ordinarily it serves only its own good. The un-socialized ego serves only itself. It seems to me that African egos are relatively un-socialized. Because African egos are relatively untrained to serve public good, they mostly serve individual interests. The African politician, indeed all Africans, does what he does for his personal good, not for public good. His ego is primitive and not expanded enough to see the entire society as part of itself and serve its interests. Herein lays the problem of African politics. Africans go into politics to serve their self interests not to serve public interests. Serving social interests, ala Alfred Adler, is a learned, not an inborn quality. People are born with the desire to do what makes for their individual self survival. They have to be trained to do what serves common interests. The African ego is unbounded and is gradually becoming bounded (its encounter with Christianity and Islam is doing that for it). By the end of this century, perhaps, a little longer, African egos would have been civilized so that Africans serve public good, as well as the individual’s good…this is where the Western man is currently at. Thereafter, the African century would begin. As noted, the West is going to self destroy and
(The West and East have nuclear weapons to wipe out all human beings. When they use those weapons, weapons that have swollen their empty heads and make them seem superior to other people, cockroaches would survive and in billions of years evolve to human level and then self destroy.)
I do not intend to make this essay an essay on metaphysics. However, let it be said that I believe that it is possible for human beings to not destroy themselves. In other essays, I pointed out that the empirical world began when we separated from our unified spirit self. In reality we are unified spirit self but now seem to live as separated selves housed in bodies. To unified spirit self, separated selves do not exist, or seem to exist as in dreams. Unified Spirit Self encourages separated selves, who, after all are it, to turn their nightmarish dreams into happy dreams. Thus, if we want to live on earth, we can make our existence a happy one, by loving each other. We must forgive our past evils and practice love in the present. A world where all people love all people is a peaceful and happy world. In that world, people would live out their pointless, meaningless and purposeless existence in peace. Their bodies would still be worthless and valueless, for body is nothing but meat, which is food for worms. Ultimately, it does not matter what they do, for while they seem to live in bodies they actually live in unified spirit. Human beings are spirits having physical experience. They are eternal in their spirit state but temporary in their physical state. (Helen Schucman, in her book, A Course in miracles makes similar points.)
It would be nice if human beings could have a happy physical existence but if they want to destroy themselves that, too, is fine. They do not die; they merely awaken to their spirit state. My goal here is to point out that it is true that Africans seem less civilized than other races. I have pointed that that this seeming disadvantage is actually an advantage. It is the way animals evolve on planet earth. Some animals become civilized and self destroy and are replaced by those considered less civilized. Ultimately, human beings would all become civilized and self destroy and other animals would evolve to human levels and continue the mess called civilization. Scientists tell us that the sun has enough fuel to last another four billion years before it expands into a supernova and incorporates its planets and then explodes into star dust (out of which may form other planets?). In case we destroy ourselves, four billion years is enough time for other animals to evolve to our current human level and replace us. But then again it is possible for human beings to understand their selfish egos and redirect them to serving each other, and that way they would have pleasant existence on planet earth before they die and return to the awareness of their true self, unified, conjoined, connected spirit self.
CONCLUSION
Some people are idealists. They reject what is and seek for idealized versions of them. At some point, usually in their thirties, they recognize that their imaginary mental constructs of how people, social institutions and the world ought to become isn’t going to happen. The ideal is not going to replace the real. The real is limited by the realities of space, time and matter, whereas the ideal is only a mental construct. If the ideal is subjected to the realities of the physical world, it will become imperfect. When idealism is defeated the individual begins to grow and adapt to this world on its own terms. Idealism is an escape from this world’s reality. Idealism is an escape into the world of fantasy. When idealism is discarded the individual is now really to deal with reality on its own terms. The individual is now ready to grow and quit been a child living in the world of make belief, fantasy and giving himself permission to criticize reality rather than understand it. The idealist posits an ideal standard and uses it to criticize the real; the idealist is always a social critique. When idealism is given up one does the only thing that we can do to cope with reality: study it scientifically and evolve a technology to manipulate it. Science and technology are the most adaptive approaches to the realities of this world. Religion is largely an escape from reality. I accept human beings as they are: imperfect creatures. I have no illusion that human beings can ever be perfect. As long as human beings live in bodies they cannot be perfect. They cannot become perfect for body is weak and prone to pain and such a thing cannot be made perfect.
From a realistic perspective, people, groups and individuals, are at different levels of evolution, material and spiritual. Some people are materially more advanced than others. At this point in time (2006), Europeans are the most materially advanced people on planet earth, followed by Asians. Africans are at the bottom. The difference in people’s stages of evolution has nothing to do with their biological status or their intelligence level. What differentiates human beings is the organization of that which makes them human, their egos, selves and psyches. Human beings with over organized self structures tend to do well in science and technology. However, the same over organized self structure has built into it the seeds for its destruction. I have observed Westerners and every thing in me tells me that they are civilized slaves. Let me put it this way: I would not want to be a European, for I do not want to be a slave. I am an African and proud of it. I know that my African psyche is freer than my European brothers’ psyche. However, my psyche is gradually being enslaved. Unfortunately, future Africans would become like Europeans and become slaves. Such is the human condition: the more people are civilized the more slave like they become. This process is inevitable; there is nothing any one can do about it; therefore, we need not cry over spilled milk. I hope that at some point human beings would redirect their civilization by teaching themselves to love one another, so that they would make the world a peaceful and happy place. In this essay, my goal is to point out that the human psyche can be free or bound and that the so-called civilized person has a bound psyche. This realization is not occasion to despair but to rejoice. Today’s so-called primitive is tomorrow’s so-called civilized person. Actually, nature is smarter than we are; if it had made all of us at the same level of material development, we would have destroyed ourselves. The West is alive today thanks to her discovery of so-called uncivilized persons. Its anthropologists studied so-called uncivilized persons and recognized that what the West had considered facts were nothing but deified opinions. Consider the West’s religion, Christianity. Many Westerners took the fables of the Bible as facts. But when Westerners encountered other cultures and recognized that every culture on earth has its fables on how it came into being, they recognized that Christianity, too, is as fable. This recognition helped free the Western man from his chains to the dogma of Christ. Furthermore, this recognition led to cultural relativism. Cultural relativism freed white folks from their hitherto slavery to their culture, a culture they had thought was the natural order of things, a culture that was slowly killing them, wringing the very life out of them. Cultural relativism injected living and vigor into Western civilization. That is, the discovery of Africa’s so-called primitive culture is what has saved
Cultural relativism itself is not an end but an opportunity to seek for a more scientific culture. The task of the present and future is to evolve a scientific culture, one that does not enslave human beings, as extant European culture has enslaved Europeans. The African sense of self, the ego, psyche, is relatively free but as it becomes civilized, it, too, would become enslaved. The task is to not make the African psyche excessively enslaved. If Africans permit themselves to become the robots that Westerners are, there would be no hope for humanity; the human race would cease being. The human race lives because of Africans freer egos and will continue to exist if Africans construct a new human civilization that while chaining the ego, as all civilizations must do, leaves it sufficiently free to be human beings.
Ozodi Thomas Osuji November 27, 2006
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Posted by Robot| 28.11.2006 08:16