|
I once wrote about the self-interest of man. Today, I will if I may congratulate the House Integrity Group. To my mind, their feat was not about catching a “thief“. They gallantly prevented the former Speaker of the House from pulling down the extolled office of the Speaker in the House to her rustic level. A position of such magnitude, of course, demands that whoever occupies that position should be able to handle the challenges of such office. And if for any reason an occupier finds it difficult to rise up to the challenges as demanded, it would not be in the interest of the country to allow such officer to pull down the office to his or her own level. Somebody asked me if catching a thief is not a feat worth mentioning. Unearthing a typical case of self-centredness as demonstrated by the former Speaker was monumental, but it is still pale in comparison to the effort that prevented the Office of the Speaker from being dragged, down, into the mud. What does it have to do with intelligence?
Intelligence has been described as that aspect of our mind that underlies our capacity to think, to reason, to have knowledge of the world, and most importantly to solve novel things. The rarest of intelligence is the ability to defy or overcome nature to solve limitations imposed by nature. Mankind, therefore, has come thus far, not by adapting to nature, or being limited by it, but by defying or overcoming it and its attendant limitations. For example, mankind’s emergence into life is without clothes like all other members of the animal kingdom; mankind has, however, used its higher intelligence to clothe itself. Similarly, the best dwelling nature ever offered mankind in all of millions of year was a cave; but mankind using its higher intelligence is able to house itself more comfortably. Now also without wings, but through its higher intelligence, man has defy nature and can now fly somewhat. The list is endless.
However, the most complex is how we defy nature in the course of our relationship with other members of the human race. How would a collection of creatures of self-interest come together to make their community work. Mankind, you may say, is confined by nature or by God if I may, to exist inside of a community, which ironically is populated by creatures, each of who has the characteristics of self interest. In such gathering, as it were, it would be unnatural not to put one’s interests first. And in this competitive world, it may be stupid not to. There are, however, certain common interests within this community of self-centred individuals. To advance the cause of these common interests, which will benefit everybody and less cost effective, each of the self-interest creatures would need to put the interest of the community over and above that of self. That, however, will be acting against mankind’s natural instinct of self preservation.
In all endeavours that mankind has made giant strides in, it has had to be through the defiance of nature or to overcome its limitations. We have seen examples of tremendous progress in some communities particularly in areas of common interests, when mankind uses its high intelligence to relax on its own personal interest to allow the common interest to overtake that of the individual. To my mind such defiance of natural instinct requires intelligence of a higher level. One of the most salient common interests and a good example is in the area of roads and rails. Modern living requires that we transport ourselves daily. Technology, for instance, has yet to advance to the point whereby each individual will have his or her own road that could be rolled up after the person has passed through it. For this reason, why should there be pot-holes on roads that is that common to everybody, rich or poor?
In my community there are beautiful, sometimes marbled, houses that are like islands in a sea of filth and linked by dilapidated and pot-holed streets. If I do not need intelligence to be self-centred, because I am naturally self-centred, I will definitely require a higher intelligence to overcome such natural characteristics in order to advance the cause of common interest. This is an ongoing dilemma in my community. When I tried to link deficiency in higher intelligence to the poor state of what are of common interests in my community, a fellow I was with objected. ‘We go there and even beat them in the class,’ he said. I asked, who these “them” are. He said the guys from other communities. Mm! I had not even mentioned that community yet. I was going to use it in comparison to prove a point in the future, however. Another fellow from our community came to my aid. ‘He is not talking about the intelligence to recall, which is what is tested in the class; he is talking about the intelligence to defy or overcome nature’s limitations such as overcoming self-preservation to advance the cause of common interests,’ the other fellow opined.
It appears we have a mindset we need to overcome. I don’t know how many people in my community see the unintelligence in making beautiful a place we spend less time and making filthy where we spend more time. Most people spend more time outside their houses, which unfortunately is a sea of filth and pot-holed roads. At best, we spend not more than 4 hours a day of awake-time in our paradise houses; the rest of the time at home is sleep-times – not enough to relish the beauty of our mansions. Yet, we feed our eyes all day with filth outside, while our beautiful mansions are locked up. What is the high intelligence in that? Somebody said that people in most developed communities are outgoing. Why wont they? They have collectively made the outside of their homes; surroundings and neighbourhoods, more beautiful than inside of their private houses. They have created paradise outside and who would not want to be visit paradise? In my community, what is dilapidated, rundown, low quality, shabby, and poorly finished is what is of common interest. How intelligent is that?
Sometimes, I wonder what has happened. In my community and in most sub-Saharan communities, we all watch as collective institutions crumble – the rail, the roads, public electricity, and schools. Meanwhile, we advance the cause of individuals over and above that of the collective interests as we drive our high-end production cars on the pot-holed collective roads; we, individually, generate our electrical needs with the best generators money can buy, while the collective power sector crumbles; we wade through puddles that ought to have been paved boulevards into our private marbled mansions. What intelligence is that? Mere mention of this aspect of high intelligence is off limit to other people. Others are afraid to even question that level of our intelligence publicly; though I have a feeling it is the topic at their dinner tables – not that I enjoy anybody telling it to my face. I try to figure out what other people are doing that we have failed to do. I could only come up with one basic thing. We seem to have difficulty to defy our natural instinct of self-interest to advance the cause of the collective. It is not beyond our reasoning, it is just a matter of belief.
My beloved community is a test case. Sociology students cannot have a better case study – rich community and rich individuals who would rather have islands of paved driveways that jot out into a lake of a street. Everything that represents the collective (public) holdings has been allowed to rot because individual interest has overridden the interest of the community. My mentality and those of my fellow countrymen is a puzzle. Can somebody open up our heads and rearrange it? I went through the new Murtala Mohommed Local Airport (MM2) in
Lagos
, and I almost cried. Here is a privately sponsored public project – good idea, good structure, but poorly finished. The grouting of the floor tiles is the worst I have seen anywhere in the world. A foreigner compared it with
Murtala
Mohammed
International
Airport
that was incidentally commissioned 30 years apart from each other by the same Obabsanjo. Did the former president notice the difference in the two finishing? Each time I drive around and look at the state of our public transport, I sometimes wonder what it would do to my psyche if those buses were to be a lot better. What value would it add to the state of my happiness or my worth if the standard of living of the least in the society is upped a notch higher?
Samuel Akinyele Caulcrick, the author of The Devil Must Be Laughing.
|
Authors 
Posted by Robot| 09.11.2007 13:18