Wednesday, November 27, 2013
FROM THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN TO ACCRA STAY BY PLAN. WATCHWORDS, MAXIMS, ANECDOTES AND SLOGANEERING GHANAIANISMS.
The beautiful ones are not yet born is a phenomenal modernist novel written in 1968 by the Ghanaian scholar and essayist, Ayi kwei Armah. The novel generated controversy upon its publication. It stirred literary debates all over the world and spawned volumes of criticisms which greatly enhanced the Image of the then emerging African literary tradition. The novel which dealt with graft and corruption, moral decadence in post colonial Ghana and the 1966 coup that toppled the Nkrumah’s’ regime was hailed in the west as one of the most profound African novels ever. The New York times admitted that the novel was in the first rank of recent novels anywhere and literary critics and academics poured volumes of articles on the literary merits of the piece.The novel was said to have heralded modernist innovations in African literature and Armah was recognized as a writer of genius.
The misspelt title of the novel, The Beautyful ones are not yet born itself was a cause of controversy. Most literary critics propounded that, the beautiful ones symbolizes the few morally upright people who inhabit the world of the novel as against the corrupt ones.
The origin of the title which for decades remained a cryptic labyrinth impenetrable in the literary world due to the silence of the author, and this caused quite a significant writers and literary fans to ascribe their own meanings and prejudices to the numerous symbols in the novel and the origin of the title.
In this article, I will illustrate how Ghanaian colloquial expressions and watchwords, anecdotes and slogans furnished one of the most illustrious sons of the soil a title for his most critically acclaimed novel.
In one of his essays written recently purporting to provide authorial insights to the understanding of his novel, Armah explained how he mysteriously came across the maxim which eventually adorned the title page of his classic work.
The misspelt title of the novel, The Beautyful ones are not yet born itself was a cause of controversy. Most literary critics propounded that, the beautiful ones symbolizes the few morally upright people who inhabit the world of the novel as against the corrupt ones.
The origin of the title which for decades remained a cryptic labyrinth impenetrable in the literary world due to the silence of the author, and this caused quite a significant writers and literary fans to ascribe their own meanings and prejudices to the numerous symbols in the novel and the origin of the title.
In this article, I will illustrate how Ghanaian colloquial expressions and watchwords, anecdotes and slogans furnished one of the most illustrious sons of the soil a title for his most critically acclaimed novel.
In one of his essays written recently purporting to provide authorial insights to the understanding of his novel, Armah explained how he mysteriously came across the maxim which eventually adorned the title page of his classic work.
One day I went to Accra from the Legon University campus, where I had been living with an Egyptian friend while re-planning, drafting and polishing the book, and there I saw a minibus with the slogan painted on it: "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born".
I knew at once I had my title. It was an uncanny kind of serendipity. Just when I was ready for a title, here was a perfect suggestion. No other words, no other image, could express my theme as precisely as the driver's slogan. Even the misspelling brought a positive contribution, suggesting a deeper meaning than the flat word "beautiful". I was curious as to where the minibus driver had found the words. I looked forward to seeing him again one day, and asking him to let me photograph his bus and slogan for my book cover. I intended to find out from him where he had encountered the enigmatic Osirian figure, the Beautyful One, if indeed that was the inspiration for his slogan.
I wondered if he, or the owner of the vehicle, might be connected in some way with a Masonic lodge, since it seemed altogether unlikely that he had come upon the words by simple accident. I asked a skilled photographer friend, the Barbadian scholar Orlando Marville, to accompany me on a search, but though I talked to people at the bus station who had seen the vehicle on its routine trips, I never saw the minibus again.
Still, I had had the incredible luck of finding the perfect title for my theme; I was naturally interested in having the jacket blurb express it as accurately as possible. Had I been close to the publishing process, I would have wanted the blurb to reflect at least some knowledge of the cultural background.
I knew at once I had my title. It was an uncanny kind of serendipity. Just when I was ready for a title, here was a perfect suggestion. No other words, no other image, could express my theme as precisely as the driver's slogan. Even the misspelling brought a positive contribution, suggesting a deeper meaning than the flat word "beautiful". I was curious as to where the minibus driver had found the words. I looked forward to seeing him again one day, and asking him to let me photograph his bus and slogan for my book cover. I intended to find out from him where he had encountered the enigmatic Osirian figure, the Beautyful One, if indeed that was the inspiration for his slogan.
I wondered if he, or the owner of the vehicle, might be connected in some way with a Masonic lodge, since it seemed altogether unlikely that he had come upon the words by simple accident. I asked a skilled photographer friend, the Barbadian scholar Orlando Marville, to accompany me on a search, but though I talked to people at the bus station who had seen the vehicle on its routine trips, I never saw the minibus again.
Still, I had had the incredible luck of finding the perfect title for my theme; I was naturally interested in having the jacket blurb express it as accurately as possible. Had I been close to the publishing process, I would have wanted the blurb to reflect at least some knowledge of the cultural background.
For decades, Ghanaians have expressed their deep philosophical yearnings in short catch phrases and slogans. The maxims expressed mostly have affinities with political, social, religious and economic thoughts and concepts. They are witty in nature and striking. They range from the philosophical to the farcical. Some are extremely humorous and may bother on the nonsensical, mostly written in incorrect idioms and expressions, the bulk been direct transliterations derived from local languages / parlance and inverted English proverbs.
How those phrases and witty maxims originate is uncertain, but mostly, it is associated with the place where the phrase or maxim has been inscribed.
Most of the inscriptions carrying or propagating the thoughts of the typical Ghanaian man is mostly found in front of plaques hung high above stalls and local inns which also serve as signboards.
The most famous practitioners of the art are the commercial drivers. They are the unrivalled masters and since they are mobile, traveling from one place to another, they are able to effectively disseminate their crude and unschooled ideals and philosophies to all and sundry.
Initially, they used acrylic paints and wrote their elaborate statements of life - it could be on any topic or issue at all but has the pervasive notability of expressing issues of grave importance in appealing style and calligraphic simplicity. Now, the trend is fast changing or rather has been superseded by stickers. The stickers, I realized is maneuverable and could be changed so easily. Unlike the paint which has to wear of by itself, the stickers could be changed at anytime, in case the philosophers find cause to bring another provocative or profound maxim to bear in the national psyche. The stickers also has the knack of been flexible and could execute the thoughts of the local philosopher in just seconds! It could also adorn the windscreen where its visibility to the public is greatly enhanced.
The simple maxims have varied themes. They could make an intelligent comment on life in general or make a sharp reference to a practice that is endemic. It could also express desires and wishes. Most are didactic in nature and the majority in Akan language extols the virtues of good friends and philanthropists, women. The ones that engender reverence most and are deemed as sacred are the ones that invoke a quality or aspect or nature of God in relation to humans.
The lessons that are at times derived from the expressions with selfless devotees who might have been some of the best writers of the land had they the opportunity to pursue education to the highest level.
Majority are semi literates but they are unabashed should petty mistakes be pointed out to them. They are content to learn and hear that their erratic watchwords or slogans have been understood by the public.
I began counting and gleaning meanings and purports of the slogans that adorn the bonnets and windscreens of our commercial vehicles years ago after reading The beautiful ones are not yet born. I was jostled to take notice of a practice that has the potential of feeding the illiterate masses or the village simpletons with less or little education food for thought. Arming them with little philosophies that will remind them of some simple fact about life which in the end reinforces their believes and worldview or their determination to strive harder.
How those phrases and witty maxims originate is uncertain, but mostly, it is associated with the place where the phrase or maxim has been inscribed.
Most of the inscriptions carrying or propagating the thoughts of the typical Ghanaian man is mostly found in front of plaques hung high above stalls and local inns which also serve as signboards.
The most famous practitioners of the art are the commercial drivers. They are the unrivalled masters and since they are mobile, traveling from one place to another, they are able to effectively disseminate their crude and unschooled ideals and philosophies to all and sundry.
Initially, they used acrylic paints and wrote their elaborate statements of life - it could be on any topic or issue at all but has the pervasive notability of expressing issues of grave importance in appealing style and calligraphic simplicity. Now, the trend is fast changing or rather has been superseded by stickers. The stickers, I realized is maneuverable and could be changed so easily. Unlike the paint which has to wear of by itself, the stickers could be changed at anytime, in case the philosophers find cause to bring another provocative or profound maxim to bear in the national psyche. The stickers also has the knack of been flexible and could execute the thoughts of the local philosopher in just seconds! It could also adorn the windscreen where its visibility to the public is greatly enhanced.
The simple maxims have varied themes. They could make an intelligent comment on life in general or make a sharp reference to a practice that is endemic. It could also express desires and wishes. Most are didactic in nature and the majority in Akan language extols the virtues of good friends and philanthropists, women. The ones that engender reverence most and are deemed as sacred are the ones that invoke a quality or aspect or nature of God in relation to humans.
The lessons that are at times derived from the expressions with selfless devotees who might have been some of the best writers of the land had they the opportunity to pursue education to the highest level.
Majority are semi literates but they are unabashed should petty mistakes be pointed out to them. They are content to learn and hear that their erratic watchwords or slogans have been understood by the public.
I began counting and gleaning meanings and purports of the slogans that adorn the bonnets and windscreens of our commercial vehicles years ago after reading The beautiful ones are not yet born. I was jostled to take notice of a practice that has the potential of feeding the illiterate masses or the village simpletons with less or little education food for thought. Arming them with little philosophies that will remind them of some simple fact about life which in the end reinforces their believes and worldview or their determination to strive harder.
Mind your own business, God will provide, No hurry in life, Fanta too can booze, Unless God, Cry your own cry, To be a man, Life is hard are some of the slogans that comes to mind now.
I found out recently that these slogans have a particular appeal to the underprivileged in the society. Those on the fringes of the social structure. Street hawkers, idle youths, prostitutes, Drivers' mates, market women. The slogan has the energy of reasserting their sense of belongingness - they are fond of reciting it to their peers.
I found out recently that these slogans have a particular appeal to the underprivileged in the society. Those on the fringes of the social structure. Street hawkers, idle youths, prostitutes, Drivers' mates, market women. The slogan has the energy of reasserting their sense of belongingness - they are fond of reciting it to their peers.
Just like how The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born inscribed on the bonnet of a simple rickety commercial van impressed upon the imagination of one of the foremost writers of our generation, another phrase, more potent and defining the present hurly burly and, confounding economic hardship; which upon been spotted on a rickety minibus quickly found its way to the hawkers and is now ringing in all quarters of the city.
ACCRA STAY BY PLAN.
In a disorderly filthy environment, where every day is a nightmare to the common man on the street, where survival is now the highest priority as there is danger of starving to death should one be relegated into poor circumstances, where poverty is rife like the very air we breath, and apathy, corruption, intolerance, indiscipline, moral decadence, national hypocrisy is the norm.
A society that has traded its very soul to the devil, and will fornicate in splendid mansions while the bulk are left shelter less and to gape and wander at night clubs just to "burn the Night away", where banquets runs into millions and women and children have barely enough to eat, a society that rides in latest fancy vehicles amidst ruins, and wastes and filth, and the leaders are not only deaf and dumb, but blind and insensitive,ACCRA STAY BY PLAN.
In a disorderly filthy environment, where every day is a nightmare to the common man on the street, where survival is now the highest priority as there is danger of starving to death should one be relegated into poor circumstances, where poverty is rife like the very air we breath, and apathy, corruption, intolerance, indiscipline, moral decadence, national hypocrisy is the norm.
the humble suffering folks have devised a humble means of surviving. It is the plan of the masses. If the leaders are failing to plan well for their betterment, they will by guided by their slogan and will silently be planning the silent demise of their tormentors!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
THE ABSENCE OF ALPHABETS - THE CURSE OF ILLITARACY
An analphabetic society, a society riddled with high rate of illiteracy, its borders and dimensions defined by superstition and myths modern and ancient. is a huge ponderous monster of a hulk, slouching in sloth, a hurdle formidable and impenetrable. A gigantic giant dull and stupid, a society without a niche in the fanciful world of romance, its idle pen contributing not a paragraph worthy of being called artistic to the literature of the macabre or the supernatural. Yet with a large number of dreamers, idealists, men with uncouth and bizarre imaginations and fanciful concoctions bordering on mediocrity and nothingness. Men with superstition as their sacred creed ignorance as their doctrinaire brand.The tower of ignorance their temple of worship. The tangible world appears intangible to them. Their corporeal bodies they are apt to deny and replace it with an immaterial one that can not be seen. The real world of science and rational thinking to them is unreal, a mere shadow. The world of matter real and substantial, tangible, indisputable evidences scatted before them is something they quickly over look as they imagine their very bodies to be immaterial. The natural world is filled with monsters vicious and atrocious, ghosts and witches able to wreak havoc and mischief, nature spirits and in animate objects vested with immense powers. Rivers are imagined to have eyes and ears, mountains and dark forests houses some of the most terrible creatures of the world. Natural phenomena becomes the outlet in which the gods unleash their vindictive anger and punish weak and erring humans. A person denied education and left to rot in the pangs of ignorance quickly finds an alternative in subscribing to the unproductive and retrogressive, poisonous and decaying mental idling exercise of believing in and entering the dark “unreturnable” crypt of illusion, of unreal entities and ideas childish and improvable only mentionable which succors vain ideas from vaporous brains.
When the number of the uneducated rises it becomes a serious social menace which few people are able to see. Mostly, it is treated as a minor social issue and before long, it gains strength as ignorance itself is a disease and begins to sap the brains and the thinking capabilities of its victims and though they may look healthy and strong outwardly, they are in effect dead souls without hope of regeneration. The very people who are known to be the forces responsible for the growth of the society becomes the stumbling blocks to its progress and development. They assume the status of different species in the social setting speaking in a different language and acting contrarily to the societal norms. They become vulnerable and with the fierce capabilities of zombies they are poised to bring to fruition any destructive idea that some one may conjure should it come to their doorsteps. They feed on rumors ravenously and lies, hearsays quickly becomes their means of dissemination of information. There is no border line between fact and fiction. They decide based on their volition whether to accept information as factual or not. No commonsensical approach is adopted to analyze it in the commonest of situations to establish its veracity or meaningfulness. Every situation is interpreted based on some ones whim and hardly can an error be identified and corrected. Information are misunderstood and misrepresented. Good policies become ineffective in their midst as the application itself is something out of their reach. The uneducated masses without a concerted effort to continually and systematically address them with current issues lives in a time capsule. They walk and interrelate with all the forces and factors of the society but they are in actual fact a different species on their own. With wide staring eyes but hardly can they see. They appear comfortable happy to move about but every minute there are things that goes on around them, information and ideas that they are forever separated from, not privilege to hear yet they are not cursed with deafness.
A society that fails to educate its citizens educates them in high sounding illiteracy, in superstition and dire ignorance. The very society they draw mediocre sustenance becomes a huge prison of vicious proportions. The country itself becomes the slave master and enslaves its people. It becomes a detrimental force that holds its own people in eternal darkness of retrogression. An agent sponsoring the destruction of the people.
Politicians and policy makers, educationists and social commentators always inundate media houses with the bizarre fact that more than 85% of the population is immersed in illiteracy. In effect, they tell us that literacy rate has dropped woefully and points a bleak picture for the future of the nation. They present various schemes and strategies to combat such an unfortunate social menace. A brief response will come in to change the educational structure as has been the tradition and that resolves the problem of high rate of illiteracy? Some of the policies they implement to resolve the problem itself becomes a problem, augments the already worsening situation and plunges more people into the very situation they were trying to resolve. The well intentioned idea becomes another issue that will require years of resources to understand its negative effect in the social system.
Illiteracy and ignorance is very broad and addressing such issues should not be undertaken in a miniature conference room somewhere far from the people. How can you resolve the problem of an uneducated person if the solutions you propose he is not even privileged to see or hear? how do you create or make an impact when you broadcast ineffective jabbering of confused and confusing impracticable theories and policies to yourself away from the humble folks who people the countryside? Those who need it badly.
Where do the policy makers and educationists educate their children? Abroad of course! How do you see the effect of the experiment you set in place if your kids are not allowed to partake in it? Who should sacrifice his efforts and his life for a system that is not well grounded? only meant to see if it can work better than a previous system thought to be ineffective.
We do not combat ignorance and illiteracy by employing battering hammers, axes, tridents and halberds and hitting it until the tower of ignorance crumbles down. Neither can the numerous erection of nice educational structures in any way address the problem of illiteracy.
The fact of the matter is that we should come to the realization that there is a crisis situation in our educational system. The educational system is unjustifiable and too elitist. Most of the problems we are facing now was generated by the same system. The people we are apt to point as unable to receive education or received but a little of it is the working of the educational system.
Too much emphasis is laid on impracticable theories and the syllabuses riddled with numerous obsolete ideas that has lost touch with reality. Modern teaching techniques and tools of learning are missing in the educational system. Ancient notes that served in the past are as vibrant as ever. They are tossed to desperate students who need certificates badly to devour and enter the job market to manage businesses and firms but not to create one.
The mode of entrance itself is another contributing factor and how we perceive education. We are yet to approach the modernist interpretation of education as training and nurturing of talents and not only imparting systematic knowledge to a select few. Everyone is capable of receiving knowledge and utilizing it. Modern research in neurology and cognition points out in unequivocal terms, that each and every one of us has his way or approach of learning and acquiring knowledge and understanding issues. Assuming a monotonous way of teaching, a one dimensional approach thinking that everyone will understand it as it is, is a futile self-deceiving method and approach that mars the progress of tuition.
The educational system priority is to concentrate on the select few who are thought to have distinguished themselves and deserve better. What is the justification in educating a select few and the majority left to wander outside the precincts of education and to howl and be at the service of the educated ones.
Another factor that seems to endorse illiteracy as a natural phenomena we must contend with and not waste our breath is the intellectual narcissism and elitist and self-satisfying attitude of the few who are intellectually endowed. They come to view their education as a special privilege that separates them from the people. They view their education as giving them a special place in the society and according them distinctive classes.
Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise. When one is fortunate to receive education and sees it as a special tool that he must clinch to never letting go for others to benefit, then by virtue of his erroneous and selfish attitude, that single persons inability to spread his knowledge and experience deprives hundreds and thousands of people education. It is when we dissociate education from the limitations of the particular to that of the universal that we can boast of achieving meaningful educational success.
It comes as no surprise to see people who claim to have acquired good and quality education to succumb to the whims of those they claim to be dancing in superstition. Erroneous ideas are so potent and seducing that when one is not cautious may yield to its illusions. Most of the times it is the so called uneducated ones who control affairs because naturally their ideas reaches a larger number of people than wig wearers with their spectacles beneath their noses chanting their qualifications and explaining the nature of events to them. Rumor brewed by their fellows possesses more truth than a well conducted research approved as accurate. Those they accord much respect to is not an honorable minister with his material convoy nor a professor hidden in a crypt on campus but remote ancestors that they have dim recollection of. The men of artistic predilections that the educated ones accord great respect and reverence as heroic figures are but pigmies to giants in their estimations. Those they hold in high esteem and dread are not sources of knowledge but entities that elicits their irrational side and incites their fears.
So in effect, when a systematic approach is not taken to carefully address the issues of illiteracy and a concerted effort made to salvage the lots who were not able to acquire education it will continue to be a factor of our retrogression. A sword of Damocles hanging in the hall of academia. If those who acquire knowledge make it a habit of imparting it to those who are less endowed, and the education system cleared of all the erroneous methods and education deemed not as a special privilege but a basic human rights that symptoms of progress will eventually rear its head.
When the number of the uneducated rises it becomes a serious social menace which few people are able to see. Mostly, it is treated as a minor social issue and before long, it gains strength as ignorance itself is a disease and begins to sap the brains and the thinking capabilities of its victims and though they may look healthy and strong outwardly, they are in effect dead souls without hope of regeneration. The very people who are known to be the forces responsible for the growth of the society becomes the stumbling blocks to its progress and development. They assume the status of different species in the social setting speaking in a different language and acting contrarily to the societal norms. They become vulnerable and with the fierce capabilities of zombies they are poised to bring to fruition any destructive idea that some one may conjure should it come to their doorsteps. They feed on rumors ravenously and lies, hearsays quickly becomes their means of dissemination of information. There is no border line between fact and fiction. They decide based on their volition whether to accept information as factual or not. No commonsensical approach is adopted to analyze it in the commonest of situations to establish its veracity or meaningfulness. Every situation is interpreted based on some ones whim and hardly can an error be identified and corrected. Information are misunderstood and misrepresented. Good policies become ineffective in their midst as the application itself is something out of their reach. The uneducated masses without a concerted effort to continually and systematically address them with current issues lives in a time capsule. They walk and interrelate with all the forces and factors of the society but they are in actual fact a different species on their own. With wide staring eyes but hardly can they see. They appear comfortable happy to move about but every minute there are things that goes on around them, information and ideas that they are forever separated from, not privilege to hear yet they are not cursed with deafness.
A society that fails to educate its citizens educates them in high sounding illiteracy, in superstition and dire ignorance. The very society they draw mediocre sustenance becomes a huge prison of vicious proportions. The country itself becomes the slave master and enslaves its people. It becomes a detrimental force that holds its own people in eternal darkness of retrogression. An agent sponsoring the destruction of the people.
Politicians and policy makers, educationists and social commentators always inundate media houses with the bizarre fact that more than 85% of the population is immersed in illiteracy. In effect, they tell us that literacy rate has dropped woefully and points a bleak picture for the future of the nation. They present various schemes and strategies to combat such an unfortunate social menace. A brief response will come in to change the educational structure as has been the tradition and that resolves the problem of high rate of illiteracy? Some of the policies they implement to resolve the problem itself becomes a problem, augments the already worsening situation and plunges more people into the very situation they were trying to resolve. The well intentioned idea becomes another issue that will require years of resources to understand its negative effect in the social system.
Illiteracy and ignorance is very broad and addressing such issues should not be undertaken in a miniature conference room somewhere far from the people. How can you resolve the problem of an uneducated person if the solutions you propose he is not even privileged to see or hear? how do you create or make an impact when you broadcast ineffective jabbering of confused and confusing impracticable theories and policies to yourself away from the humble folks who people the countryside? Those who need it badly.
Where do the policy makers and educationists educate their children? Abroad of course! How do you see the effect of the experiment you set in place if your kids are not allowed to partake in it? Who should sacrifice his efforts and his life for a system that is not well grounded? only meant to see if it can work better than a previous system thought to be ineffective.
We do not combat ignorance and illiteracy by employing battering hammers, axes, tridents and halberds and hitting it until the tower of ignorance crumbles down. Neither can the numerous erection of nice educational structures in any way address the problem of illiteracy.
The fact of the matter is that we should come to the realization that there is a crisis situation in our educational system. The educational system is unjustifiable and too elitist. Most of the problems we are facing now was generated by the same system. The people we are apt to point as unable to receive education or received but a little of it is the working of the educational system.
Too much emphasis is laid on impracticable theories and the syllabuses riddled with numerous obsolete ideas that has lost touch with reality. Modern teaching techniques and tools of learning are missing in the educational system. Ancient notes that served in the past are as vibrant as ever. They are tossed to desperate students who need certificates badly to devour and enter the job market to manage businesses and firms but not to create one.
The mode of entrance itself is another contributing factor and how we perceive education. We are yet to approach the modernist interpretation of education as training and nurturing of talents and not only imparting systematic knowledge to a select few. Everyone is capable of receiving knowledge and utilizing it. Modern research in neurology and cognition points out in unequivocal terms, that each and every one of us has his way or approach of learning and acquiring knowledge and understanding issues. Assuming a monotonous way of teaching, a one dimensional approach thinking that everyone will understand it as it is, is a futile self-deceiving method and approach that mars the progress of tuition.
The educational system priority is to concentrate on the select few who are thought to have distinguished themselves and deserve better. What is the justification in educating a select few and the majority left to wander outside the precincts of education and to howl and be at the service of the educated ones.
Another factor that seems to endorse illiteracy as a natural phenomena we must contend with and not waste our breath is the intellectual narcissism and elitist and self-satisfying attitude of the few who are intellectually endowed. They come to view their education as a special privilege that separates them from the people. They view their education as giving them a special place in the society and according them distinctive classes.
Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise. When one is fortunate to receive education and sees it as a special tool that he must clinch to never letting go for others to benefit, then by virtue of his erroneous and selfish attitude, that single persons inability to spread his knowledge and experience deprives hundreds and thousands of people education. It is when we dissociate education from the limitations of the particular to that of the universal that we can boast of achieving meaningful educational success.
It comes as no surprise to see people who claim to have acquired good and quality education to succumb to the whims of those they claim to be dancing in superstition. Erroneous ideas are so potent and seducing that when one is not cautious may yield to its illusions. Most of the times it is the so called uneducated ones who control affairs because naturally their ideas reaches a larger number of people than wig wearers with their spectacles beneath their noses chanting their qualifications and explaining the nature of events to them. Rumor brewed by their fellows possesses more truth than a well conducted research approved as accurate. Those they accord much respect to is not an honorable minister with his material convoy nor a professor hidden in a crypt on campus but remote ancestors that they have dim recollection of. The men of artistic predilections that the educated ones accord great respect and reverence as heroic figures are but pigmies to giants in their estimations. Those they hold in high esteem and dread are not sources of knowledge but entities that elicits their irrational side and incites their fears.
So in effect, when a systematic approach is not taken to carefully address the issues of illiteracy and a concerted effort made to salvage the lots who were not able to acquire education it will continue to be a factor of our retrogression. A sword of Damocles hanging in the hall of academia. If those who acquire knowledge make it a habit of imparting it to those who are less endowed, and the education system cleared of all the erroneous methods and education deemed not as a special privilege but a basic human rights that symptoms of progress will eventually rear its head.
HEROES AND MONSTERS
Is resonating epithets to the ideals of equality, fairness and justice a somersault cloud of seemingly heroic dimensions a true perspective founded on a genuine base to soar in the air of injustice and transcend and traverse the dark expanse of parochialism, fundamentalist and bigotistical interests, sectarianism, greed and corruption, social injustice, inequality, and class consciousness? Is the glowing tribute paid to communalism, socialism and egalitarian principles and of fairness in the society a clarion call from the depths of the souls of the mutterers a genuine motivation based on their desire to seek for the betterment of the society or just a means to an end? Traditionally speaking. Is the rallying call for the common good of the society a realistic vein in which a true blood of patriotism flows, a pillar with a conscience to serve and safeguard the interests of the people or just deceitful words cloaked in rhetoric of ambiguity to wrestle and pick in broad day light the power of the people which lays in the streets of lawlessness gasping for breath. Is the overused words of equality and fairness and economic progress a cabalistic word invoked from the lowermost echelons of political chicanery to mould and fashion just a hero of well meaning intentions to salvage the masses or to create monsters out of monsters, vicious dictators, vain leaders whose corrupt souls draw sustenance by hankering after the very ideals that binds the society together and destroying it?
When fierce idealism and its inseparable handmaid revolutionary zeal in a moment of frenzy and sudden illumination and awareness is able to identify, capitalize, and use as a tool and a base the humble efforts of the humble folks - vociferous in outlook - shrill like a clarion, restless and fearless until it has upset and jostled a corrupt and unjust system or even reduced to rubble edifices of oppression and suppression and if it fails to turn things around, even its unsettling effects are felt every where and its noble pursuit reenacted elsewhere, always serving as an inspiration and a cairn for those who cannot tolerate or condone injustice and would rather speak out bold and clear.
In its early manifestation, it seizes a vociferous person from the crowd and prepares him for a mission comparable or synonymous to that of a messianic one. He becomes fierce and bold all of a sudden, endowed with a rare intellect which churns out wise and decisive aphorisms which expresses the common aims and ambitions of the common people. Such a person becomes filled with deep philosophical insight into the social and political vagaries that had been bent and twisted to satisfy the egotistical cravings of the selfish few. By an uncommon faith or frenzy the prospective hero comes in the nick of time and speaks in the language of the masses. He is able to capture in a moving and sympathetic vein the woes and tribulations of the people. He encapsulates their yearnings and aspirations. A new lease of life is given to their suppressed voices. The masses will discover a personality who is poised to represent them, an unselfish plain looking man, selfless personality who epitomizes their despair transformed to blithe hope. They see in him visionary tendencies and peculiar familiarity with him which shows and portrays in unequivocal terms a person who is their own flesh and blood, a person with a humble beginnings, a rising star who they can identify with it. A wonderful personality who exhibits all the parralles and leitimotives of the epic hero. He gains mythical status and he is seen and regarded as a son of the gods sent to deliverer the masses from the pangs and terrors of monsters who prey on the flesh of the people. He leaves amongst them and is privy to their privations and the filth and squalor they have been entangled in. A hero who understands their situation more than any one else. The hero embarked on a messianic mission all by himself utilizes the basic tools of the people and hits hard on their vulnerable spots frequently. He weeps and mourns with the crowd and wastes no time to point out the perpetrators and orchestrators of their suffering. He will continue to paint a bleak picture of the suppressors. He will augment their atrocities and narcissistic apathy, indifference and flaunting self forgetfulness. The failings and weakness of those wielding the mantle of power are exaggerated and demonized by the hero. A catalogue of their treacherous betrayal and hankering after the material fripperies of power and grandeur but not the welfare of the people is presented to the eager masses in clenched teeth and a call for justice is insinuated. The masses are unconsciously incited to rise up against their oppressors so that the power they invested in their leaders which was much misused and abused to the disadvantage of them could be taken back and given to .i.e. he the new blameless man of justice who is at the forefront of the battle to bring sanity to the system which has been soiled with corruption, abuse of power, mismanagement imbued with overriding ego for personal aggrandizement to the detriment of the masses whose voices are not heard in the political arena and the one that will cry out from the depths of despair drowned in the pandemonium of vicious arguments based on no cogent philosophy and meant to defend the indefensible.
A new era dawns or seems to hang in the precarious horizon. The atmosphere we are made to understand is rife for a radical change of the society. In other words, revolution is in the air and resonating epithets given to the efforts of the people. Their very voices are deified. It becomes the voice of the lord. And the words they utter must go a long way to wreak wonders, move entrenched mountains of deceit and corruption into the sea and institute equity and fairness in the system.
The masses are enamored when they are depicted as gods in fetters. They seethe with anger when they come to the realization that the power was theirs and they consciously gave it out to be used to serve them and they have every right to take it back and even punish those who were given the power and could not manage it to the benefit of the society. All things being equal, the masses are made to understand that the stage is set for them to take the reigns of power from the selfish few.
At that critical and seething period, the real intentions of the hero do not come to light. His genuine motive as to why he is vociferous and unrestranedly radical in calling forth a rapid re arrangement of the social system and invoking retributive punishment to those who held the reigns of power is as obscure as it is opaque and unknowable. Because those who were entrusted to safeguard the interest of the people have abused it, their image automatically assumes the timmings of demons who were doing a dance macabre in the forest of the night, and fed on the flesh of the innocent people, their constant pleas and ululating anquish went unheeded. Their viciousness and demented self-satisfying arrogant aloofness and alienation from the people they were supposed to serve becomes a factor that seals their doom and brightens the chances of the supplanting hero.
In the blindness of the masses, they fail to recognise the fundamental issues that defines and informs human actions and judgements. They fail to recognise that they ousted a fallible human from their midst but did not invoke a devine entity but another man from their midst with all his failings and frailties. They fail to face a bitter reality that certain positions change the very nature and thinking of men. And the unrecognisable irony is that they are engaged in a sphinx like riddle as they clamour for a change which enjoins them to appoint a different person to a position that will automatically make his ideas,supreior to everyone, wielding immence power. And the very heart wrenching issues that made them cry out finally will no longer be heart wrenching to the hero again as he is given a special attention and his jugement alone becomes the accepted one possessing virtue and validity. The position blinds the eyes of the hero and he is not burdened as before to really think like how the disadvantaged lots are burdened.
But in as much as the people are seperated from the hero, its becomes a golden opportunity for him to show his heroism, turn his iniatial exhuberance into enleavening one and his ideals into visionary and impacting one. He is given the opportunity to demonstrate the spirit of fairness and justice that orchestrated his rise and to exhibit the elements of “Massism” by the masses. He is hailed as a true leader if he fulfils the will of the people and leaves a lasting legacy. Such heroes are rare.
He becomes a repulsive and the most hated personality with all the vestiges of evil attarched to him if he is found to be a contrary element the masses yearned for. He is quickly seen as a dreadful pestilence who stands in the way of the ideals that defines the aspirations of the people. He is branded a dictator of mephistophelian proportions, a demagogue saucy and overbold. He becomes a gale of gall that blows over their freedom and quickly they give horns and tales to such an unfortunate anti heroes and social antagonists. They become monsters and the people once again in mythological frenzy generates another hero to rise up and go and battle the fierce and terrible monster and to overcome, defeat it, destroy it completely.
When fierce idealism and its inseparable handmaid revolutionary zeal in a moment of frenzy and sudden illumination and awareness is able to identify, capitalize, and use as a tool and a base the humble efforts of the humble folks - vociferous in outlook - shrill like a clarion, restless and fearless until it has upset and jostled a corrupt and unjust system or even reduced to rubble edifices of oppression and suppression and if it fails to turn things around, even its unsettling effects are felt every where and its noble pursuit reenacted elsewhere, always serving as an inspiration and a cairn for those who cannot tolerate or condone injustice and would rather speak out bold and clear.
In its early manifestation, it seizes a vociferous person from the crowd and prepares him for a mission comparable or synonymous to that of a messianic one. He becomes fierce and bold all of a sudden, endowed with a rare intellect which churns out wise and decisive aphorisms which expresses the common aims and ambitions of the common people. Such a person becomes filled with deep philosophical insight into the social and political vagaries that had been bent and twisted to satisfy the egotistical cravings of the selfish few. By an uncommon faith or frenzy the prospective hero comes in the nick of time and speaks in the language of the masses. He is able to capture in a moving and sympathetic vein the woes and tribulations of the people. He encapsulates their yearnings and aspirations. A new lease of life is given to their suppressed voices. The masses will discover a personality who is poised to represent them, an unselfish plain looking man, selfless personality who epitomizes their despair transformed to blithe hope. They see in him visionary tendencies and peculiar familiarity with him which shows and portrays in unequivocal terms a person who is their own flesh and blood, a person with a humble beginnings, a rising star who they can identify with it. A wonderful personality who exhibits all the parralles and leitimotives of the epic hero. He gains mythical status and he is seen and regarded as a son of the gods sent to deliverer the masses from the pangs and terrors of monsters who prey on the flesh of the people. He leaves amongst them and is privy to their privations and the filth and squalor they have been entangled in. A hero who understands their situation more than any one else. The hero embarked on a messianic mission all by himself utilizes the basic tools of the people and hits hard on their vulnerable spots frequently. He weeps and mourns with the crowd and wastes no time to point out the perpetrators and orchestrators of their suffering. He will continue to paint a bleak picture of the suppressors. He will augment their atrocities and narcissistic apathy, indifference and flaunting self forgetfulness. The failings and weakness of those wielding the mantle of power are exaggerated and demonized by the hero. A catalogue of their treacherous betrayal and hankering after the material fripperies of power and grandeur but not the welfare of the people is presented to the eager masses in clenched teeth and a call for justice is insinuated. The masses are unconsciously incited to rise up against their oppressors so that the power they invested in their leaders which was much misused and abused to the disadvantage of them could be taken back and given to .i.e. he the new blameless man of justice who is at the forefront of the battle to bring sanity to the system which has been soiled with corruption, abuse of power, mismanagement imbued with overriding ego for personal aggrandizement to the detriment of the masses whose voices are not heard in the political arena and the one that will cry out from the depths of despair drowned in the pandemonium of vicious arguments based on no cogent philosophy and meant to defend the indefensible.
A new era dawns or seems to hang in the precarious horizon. The atmosphere we are made to understand is rife for a radical change of the society. In other words, revolution is in the air and resonating epithets given to the efforts of the people. Their very voices are deified. It becomes the voice of the lord. And the words they utter must go a long way to wreak wonders, move entrenched mountains of deceit and corruption into the sea and institute equity and fairness in the system.
The masses are enamored when they are depicted as gods in fetters. They seethe with anger when they come to the realization that the power was theirs and they consciously gave it out to be used to serve them and they have every right to take it back and even punish those who were given the power and could not manage it to the benefit of the society. All things being equal, the masses are made to understand that the stage is set for them to take the reigns of power from the selfish few.
At that critical and seething period, the real intentions of the hero do not come to light. His genuine motive as to why he is vociferous and unrestranedly radical in calling forth a rapid re arrangement of the social system and invoking retributive punishment to those who held the reigns of power is as obscure as it is opaque and unknowable. Because those who were entrusted to safeguard the interest of the people have abused it, their image automatically assumes the timmings of demons who were doing a dance macabre in the forest of the night, and fed on the flesh of the innocent people, their constant pleas and ululating anquish went unheeded. Their viciousness and demented self-satisfying arrogant aloofness and alienation from the people they were supposed to serve becomes a factor that seals their doom and brightens the chances of the supplanting hero.
In the blindness of the masses, they fail to recognise the fundamental issues that defines and informs human actions and judgements. They fail to recognise that they ousted a fallible human from their midst but did not invoke a devine entity but another man from their midst with all his failings and frailties. They fail to face a bitter reality that certain positions change the very nature and thinking of men. And the unrecognisable irony is that they are engaged in a sphinx like riddle as they clamour for a change which enjoins them to appoint a different person to a position that will automatically make his ideas,supreior to everyone, wielding immence power. And the very heart wrenching issues that made them cry out finally will no longer be heart wrenching to the hero again as he is given a special attention and his jugement alone becomes the accepted one possessing virtue and validity. The position blinds the eyes of the hero and he is not burdened as before to really think like how the disadvantaged lots are burdened.
But in as much as the people are seperated from the hero, its becomes a golden opportunity for him to show his heroism, turn his iniatial exhuberance into enleavening one and his ideals into visionary and impacting one. He is given the opportunity to demonstrate the spirit of fairness and justice that orchestrated his rise and to exhibit the elements of “Massism” by the masses. He is hailed as a true leader if he fulfils the will of the people and leaves a lasting legacy. Such heroes are rare.
He becomes a repulsive and the most hated personality with all the vestiges of evil attarched to him if he is found to be a contrary element the masses yearned for. He is quickly seen as a dreadful pestilence who stands in the way of the ideals that defines the aspirations of the people. He is branded a dictator of mephistophelian proportions, a demagogue saucy and overbold. He becomes a gale of gall that blows over their freedom and quickly they give horns and tales to such an unfortunate anti heroes and social antagonists. They become monsters and the people once again in mythological frenzy generates another hero to rise up and go and battle the fierce and terrible monster and to overcome, defeat it, destroy it completely.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
THE SCHOOL MASTER ILLITERATE. ALMA MATER, CERTIFICATES AND DEGEES. A PIECE OF PAPER OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE OR CRIMINAL RECORD?
Life becomes a bitter experience and an impenetrable labyrinth – a path full of monstrous hurdles, and obstacles for those who hover outside the precincts of the academic walls in desperation, in an effort to acquire higher education, and of course join the bandwagon of paper heroes and elites, and acquire the envious epithet of a graduate. When they learn too soon that, their cherished dream of becoming intellectual adventurers and carving niches for themselves as members of the high profile achievers see no daylight, fail to materialize.
Some of the “failures” would savor defeat and accept their fate, that they were not destined to reach the enviable and the most important pinnacle of the academic ladder. But would never fail to curse their fate and heap blames on themselves for displaying much irresponsibility and recklessness at high school and neglecting their books – idling in lassitude and failing to grasp what would have propelled them to become some bodies in the future. They would continually curse themselves especially if their endeavors in other areas proves unsuccessful.
Some too armed with the weapon that failure rather propels them to success, would venture again to remedy the situation. It doesn’t matter to them if it takes them years of repeated attempts to get to the university. They would make all effort to garner the required grade by continually writing the exams until their granddaughters will by pass them to the university and they would still be there armed with pessimism that they will finally make it. They become obsessed with sanguine hope and optimism and continually recites their slogan that education is not a race – they will get there. They will also get to the golden campus where complexity is the order of the day. Where education becomes a real vibrant entity and a tool. Where their maturity would be assured and they would shed their childhood idiosyncrasies. For the university is for the matured student and different from high school. At the university, teachers become lecturers, headmasters are referred to as chancellors and dormitories become halls. Everything there is complex. The prospective academicians who will finally come to the conclusion that getting to the university for complex impracticable theories is really tough and difficult and that all the years they spent trying to get there was a sheer waste of time and that they were building castles or lecture halls in the air will finally give up their pursuit.
Some too simply refuse to accept defeat. They do not humbly carry their crosses to be crucified by the exams council. They simply refuse to die. Their assertion is that they have come far – abnegating everything to pursue education and to face frustration at the dying moment of their academic endeavor and sacrifice is but a high price to pay, the culminating point to relent ignominiously is something they can not endure. Their poor grades which threatens to be their doom and gloom is reflected on a piece of paper and for them to be relegated to the doldrums of conundrum is just too great. How can they struggle through thick and thin been pursued by pharaoh and his militant charioteers, crossing red seas of academia bearing in mind the promise of reaching the promise land of education only to be told that their eyes will see the hill of knowledge, the towers of legon but their feet will never step there? This is unfair. They will exclaim. The educational system is unjustifiable. Education for all is the policy of educationists but it seems that every level in the ladder is designed to sieve out the few – for they are deemed to be the best to further their education to the next level and again to be sieved. It continues like that until only few people come out getting any meaningful education. The majority are left out to rot in the lowermost echelons of dire ignorance.
Aware of the structure, they refuse to fail. If A’s and B’s is what they need to get to the university, then it is very easy for them to get that. They will resort to unconventional means to get the A’s on papers to enable them enter the university. Either they will produce fake results or bribe officials at the top hierarchy or capitalize on the vicious influence of relatives in high places to get there. Fraudulent means are employed to enable them pass through. When they are caught, they step out but when the authorities fail to detect their academic maneuvers and nefarious adventures, they go with it. They come out with their sham degrees for privileges and opportunities.
Necessity is the mother of invention. It is embarrassing and humorous to see how the academic brains are outwitted all the time by people who do not qualify. It is about time they see the uselessness of the pieces of papers they offer to students as degrees and certificates.. What does it denote? Excellence? If it is meant to show the expertise, the academic exploits and the capabilities of the earner, the holder, then it might as well pass as the criminal record, the evidence of their vicious craftiness. It is a living symbol of their charlatanism and chicanery and crooked propensities. If the emphasis would be laid on certificates alone and not the ingenuity, the creative resourcefulness and the scintillating talents of the people, then the educational institutions will always churn out half baked intellectuals, idle nincompoops full of the rhetoric of theories without having the requisite knowledge of implementing those abstract ideas.
Falling standards of education and the shallow mendacity of students are a glaring example of how they are obsessed with passing their exams and not making any effort to acquire knowledge. There seems to be a huge gap between education proper and the acquisition of knowledge. most students deem it less important to strive towards academic excellence but rather channel their energies to using vicious means of getting the required grades. And the interesting thing is that nowadays, it is not only exams or thesis that will qualify a student in academia. Money and the secret weapon between the thighs of the womenfolk. The ladies will parade campus for years exhibiting their new found status, partying and reveling, indulging in toyish, coquettish and childish activities which has nothing to do with education and eventually get a depraved lecturer without moral scruples for an evil deal. The certificates that has relegated hard working and earnest students to the gutters, the golden fleece that was portrayed to be the ultimate, the symbol of academic excellence and intellectuality is finally debased by been rewarded for cheap sex. Very soon the young men will also offer themselves for cheap sex to garner the certificates because the gay men are gradually penetrating the walls of academia.
Modern myths place so much emphasis on certificates that it becomes necessary to invent one. And that is the norm of the day. Most holders of seemingly excellent certificates made it themselves. Some simply go to the corrupt institutions and buy the papers. They are able with their fake certificates to reach high places and job fulfillment and they cause a lot of damage before they are caught, if they are even caught at all. When people bemoan their inability to enter the university, it is for nothing but the loss of the papers.
How do the populace understand and interpret education, knowledge and mental development and certificates? Certificates exist to certify, to guarantee that a person has indeed been trained in a field or has acquired a certain amount of knowledge or training and there by his or her proficiency in the area mentioned in the paper is indisputable. Yet, in recent times, people acquire the certificates without the requisite knowledge. people have come to accept the fallacy that certificates are the passports to success in life and as long s they acquire it, they will be successful.
Alma mater. The fact that certain people attended certain schools, their success in the job market is assured. Ones alma mater and certificate is all that is needed. At times if one is fortunate to have attended a prestigious school, the only thing to do is to mention the name of the school and you are met with smiles and whether you qualify or not, your desires to some extent are satisfied. This also gives the clue that when one is able to get a good school, and which schools are the bad ones, who are responsible for its upgrading? If certain schools are devoid of educational materials, lack amenities and the curriculum is meant to impart half knowledge to the students, why not raze those schools down since they rather impart ignorance and churn out mediocre persons. With a prestigious school as your alma mater, you are assured of great success.
Some of the “failures” would savor defeat and accept their fate, that they were not destined to reach the enviable and the most important pinnacle of the academic ladder. But would never fail to curse their fate and heap blames on themselves for displaying much irresponsibility and recklessness at high school and neglecting their books – idling in lassitude and failing to grasp what would have propelled them to become some bodies in the future. They would continually curse themselves especially if their endeavors in other areas proves unsuccessful.
Some too armed with the weapon that failure rather propels them to success, would venture again to remedy the situation. It doesn’t matter to them if it takes them years of repeated attempts to get to the university. They would make all effort to garner the required grade by continually writing the exams until their granddaughters will by pass them to the university and they would still be there armed with pessimism that they will finally make it. They become obsessed with sanguine hope and optimism and continually recites their slogan that education is not a race – they will get there. They will also get to the golden campus where complexity is the order of the day. Where education becomes a real vibrant entity and a tool. Where their maturity would be assured and they would shed their childhood idiosyncrasies. For the university is for the matured student and different from high school. At the university, teachers become lecturers, headmasters are referred to as chancellors and dormitories become halls. Everything there is complex. The prospective academicians who will finally come to the conclusion that getting to the university for complex impracticable theories is really tough and difficult and that all the years they spent trying to get there was a sheer waste of time and that they were building castles or lecture halls in the air will finally give up their pursuit.
Some too simply refuse to accept defeat. They do not humbly carry their crosses to be crucified by the exams council. They simply refuse to die. Their assertion is that they have come far – abnegating everything to pursue education and to face frustration at the dying moment of their academic endeavor and sacrifice is but a high price to pay, the culminating point to relent ignominiously is something they can not endure. Their poor grades which threatens to be their doom and gloom is reflected on a piece of paper and for them to be relegated to the doldrums of conundrum is just too great. How can they struggle through thick and thin been pursued by pharaoh and his militant charioteers, crossing red seas of academia bearing in mind the promise of reaching the promise land of education only to be told that their eyes will see the hill of knowledge, the towers of legon but their feet will never step there? This is unfair. They will exclaim. The educational system is unjustifiable. Education for all is the policy of educationists but it seems that every level in the ladder is designed to sieve out the few – for they are deemed to be the best to further their education to the next level and again to be sieved. It continues like that until only few people come out getting any meaningful education. The majority are left out to rot in the lowermost echelons of dire ignorance.
Aware of the structure, they refuse to fail. If A’s and B’s is what they need to get to the university, then it is very easy for them to get that. They will resort to unconventional means to get the A’s on papers to enable them enter the university. Either they will produce fake results or bribe officials at the top hierarchy or capitalize on the vicious influence of relatives in high places to get there. Fraudulent means are employed to enable them pass through. When they are caught, they step out but when the authorities fail to detect their academic maneuvers and nefarious adventures, they go with it. They come out with their sham degrees for privileges and opportunities.
Necessity is the mother of invention. It is embarrassing and humorous to see how the academic brains are outwitted all the time by people who do not qualify. It is about time they see the uselessness of the pieces of papers they offer to students as degrees and certificates.. What does it denote? Excellence? If it is meant to show the expertise, the academic exploits and the capabilities of the earner, the holder, then it might as well pass as the criminal record, the evidence of their vicious craftiness. It is a living symbol of their charlatanism and chicanery and crooked propensities. If the emphasis would be laid on certificates alone and not the ingenuity, the creative resourcefulness and the scintillating talents of the people, then the educational institutions will always churn out half baked intellectuals, idle nincompoops full of the rhetoric of theories without having the requisite knowledge of implementing those abstract ideas.
Falling standards of education and the shallow mendacity of students are a glaring example of how they are obsessed with passing their exams and not making any effort to acquire knowledge. There seems to be a huge gap between education proper and the acquisition of knowledge. most students deem it less important to strive towards academic excellence but rather channel their energies to using vicious means of getting the required grades. And the interesting thing is that nowadays, it is not only exams or thesis that will qualify a student in academia. Money and the secret weapon between the thighs of the womenfolk. The ladies will parade campus for years exhibiting their new found status, partying and reveling, indulging in toyish, coquettish and childish activities which has nothing to do with education and eventually get a depraved lecturer without moral scruples for an evil deal. The certificates that has relegated hard working and earnest students to the gutters, the golden fleece that was portrayed to be the ultimate, the symbol of academic excellence and intellectuality is finally debased by been rewarded for cheap sex. Very soon the young men will also offer themselves for cheap sex to garner the certificates because the gay men are gradually penetrating the walls of academia.
Modern myths place so much emphasis on certificates that it becomes necessary to invent one. And that is the norm of the day. Most holders of seemingly excellent certificates made it themselves. Some simply go to the corrupt institutions and buy the papers. They are able with their fake certificates to reach high places and job fulfillment and they cause a lot of damage before they are caught, if they are even caught at all. When people bemoan their inability to enter the university, it is for nothing but the loss of the papers.
How do the populace understand and interpret education, knowledge and mental development and certificates? Certificates exist to certify, to guarantee that a person has indeed been trained in a field or has acquired a certain amount of knowledge or training and there by his or her proficiency in the area mentioned in the paper is indisputable. Yet, in recent times, people acquire the certificates without the requisite knowledge. people have come to accept the fallacy that certificates are the passports to success in life and as long s they acquire it, they will be successful.
Alma mater. The fact that certain people attended certain schools, their success in the job market is assured. Ones alma mater and certificate is all that is needed. At times if one is fortunate to have attended a prestigious school, the only thing to do is to mention the name of the school and you are met with smiles and whether you qualify or not, your desires to some extent are satisfied. This also gives the clue that when one is able to get a good school, and which schools are the bad ones, who are responsible for its upgrading? If certain schools are devoid of educational materials, lack amenities and the curriculum is meant to impart half knowledge to the students, why not raze those schools down since they rather impart ignorance and churn out mediocre persons. With a prestigious school as your alma mater, you are assured of great success.
THE SECOND CLASS CITIZEN AND THE UNJUST GOD
Our society is reeking in the corrupting pangs of social injustice and inequality. The ideals and values set on humane principles, which serve as columns for the healthful progression of the society, and social structures are fast crumbling into debris of filth – desuetude. The cohesive elements in the society have been obliterated and people with consciences attuned to communal bond, classless and egalitarian predilection are now hostile, separate and unequal. Intellectual narcissism and the corrupting influence of dishonest politicians and public officials, manic elitism and self indulgence, cancerous egoism, individualism and blind subjection, self worship and blatant atheism and renunciation of social values and ethical mores, materialism, greed and the lust for money and power have plunged the society into an abyss of low, poor, diseased, despised decaying masses governed by selfish manipulative conscienceless demoniacs.
Our arc proclaims in banal hypocrisy freedom and justice. Is there freedom in a society riddled with ignorance, cursed with illiteracy and visionless leaders? Where is justice if the instruments of justice is been controlled by few manipulative egotistical men devoid of conscience and pity, who thrive by corrupting and abusing, cheating and stealing, killing and destroying?
They trample on the rights of the poor, instigate vitiating policies to atrophy their humble visions and suppress their voices. They lock the poor and the vociferous behind bars in a bid to dampen and debilitate their spirits. They are thrown into insane asylums and vilified as rabid dogs. Writers who are pro truths and anti lies
Are hardly published. Their irrepressible voices expressed with ink on papers clamoring for justice are not allowed in the public domain. In these, the weak, the cowardly, the vulnerable is seduced by their capricious whims, or forced to compromise. The poor and the weak are thrown out of the social arena. He is relegated, demeaned, made to apologize for his poverty and squalor and condemned to perdition. To be judged by an extremely unjust and insensate god. To burn in an ever blazing hell fire!
Social inequity, class distinctions, racial superiority, tribalism, parochial mendacity and intellectual dishonesty is evident in the superstructure of our society yet we are constantly been bombarded with documents professing to show us that we are protected by a system in place set by governments. These mythical documents in the name of constitutions and conventions, laws and statutes which the citizens with which it was meant for knows nothing about the hypocritical fictitious articles that the betrayers constantly refer to. If anything, it justifies their meanness and suppression of the truth and destruction of the poor.
They are full of seemingly high-sounding ideas. They organize conferences and litter the media with fallacious arguments and fruitless deliberations on how they can bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. When none of them is even ready to adopt a single child on the street! They discuss and pledge to their diseased souls to initiate a policy that would ameliorate the sufferings of the masses. They concoct in their idle brains hypocritical policies of education for all but knowledge, opportunities, and privileges for few. They are distant from the masses. They who claim to be leaders, serving in the interest of the people, the society. They alienate themselves from the people. They cheat, dupe, manipulate, conceal vital information from the public, abuse power, amass wealth, corrupt, lie and plunge the society into dire ignorance, chaos and anarchy. They will humbly approach the people canvassing for support and pleading with the masses to give them the mandate to literally solve all their problems for them. They are apt to admit in hypocritical obsequiousness that the real power, the authority is in the hands of the people. Those who wield the ultimate power are the people. As long as the power they hold start diminishing, and it becomes imperative for them to secure their positions so that they can still continue to cheat and manipulate and enrich themselves, that is when they grow vociferous, singing resounding epithets and publicly admitting that it is the people who actually hold the power. When they delude the masses and eventually their cheating propensities and selfish ambitions catapult them to power, the real owners, those who wield the power becomes clear. It is realized too soon that the authority is in the hands of but a few treacherous self seekers. The masses are totally obliterated. They sink with their malleable interests and humble ideals into oblivion to resurface at election time. That is when they matter most.
When they assume power which no one actually endorses but their own inhibited lust to revel in servitude and to eat the crumbs of power that falls at the feet of the Whiteman mans table. No black man wields power. Real power lies outside the Blackman’s domain. Lobbying and ingratiating pleas to the Whiteman to be the mediators of the people. To be the link of manipulation and exploitation. To render and expose the land of the people to the Whiteman. They beg the people to give them their consent, their approval for their own enslavement. They lead the masses like sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered at the labyrinth of doom.
Our arc proclaims in banal hypocrisy freedom and justice. Is there freedom in a society riddled with ignorance, cursed with illiteracy and visionless leaders? Where is justice if the instruments of justice is been controlled by few manipulative egotistical men devoid of conscience and pity, who thrive by corrupting and abusing, cheating and stealing, killing and destroying?
They trample on the rights of the poor, instigate vitiating policies to atrophy their humble visions and suppress their voices. They lock the poor and the vociferous behind bars in a bid to dampen and debilitate their spirits. They are thrown into insane asylums and vilified as rabid dogs. Writers who are pro truths and anti lies
Are hardly published. Their irrepressible voices expressed with ink on papers clamoring for justice are not allowed in the public domain. In these, the weak, the cowardly, the vulnerable is seduced by their capricious whims, or forced to compromise. The poor and the weak are thrown out of the social arena. He is relegated, demeaned, made to apologize for his poverty and squalor and condemned to perdition. To be judged by an extremely unjust and insensate god. To burn in an ever blazing hell fire!
Social inequity, class distinctions, racial superiority, tribalism, parochial mendacity and intellectual dishonesty is evident in the superstructure of our society yet we are constantly been bombarded with documents professing to show us that we are protected by a system in place set by governments. These mythical documents in the name of constitutions and conventions, laws and statutes which the citizens with which it was meant for knows nothing about the hypocritical fictitious articles that the betrayers constantly refer to. If anything, it justifies their meanness and suppression of the truth and destruction of the poor.
They are full of seemingly high-sounding ideas. They organize conferences and litter the media with fallacious arguments and fruitless deliberations on how they can bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. When none of them is even ready to adopt a single child on the street! They discuss and pledge to their diseased souls to initiate a policy that would ameliorate the sufferings of the masses. They concoct in their idle brains hypocritical policies of education for all but knowledge, opportunities, and privileges for few. They are distant from the masses. They who claim to be leaders, serving in the interest of the people, the society. They alienate themselves from the people. They cheat, dupe, manipulate, conceal vital information from the public, abuse power, amass wealth, corrupt, lie and plunge the society into dire ignorance, chaos and anarchy. They will humbly approach the people canvassing for support and pleading with the masses to give them the mandate to literally solve all their problems for them. They are apt to admit in hypocritical obsequiousness that the real power, the authority is in the hands of the people. Those who wield the ultimate power are the people. As long as the power they hold start diminishing, and it becomes imperative for them to secure their positions so that they can still continue to cheat and manipulate and enrich themselves, that is when they grow vociferous, singing resounding epithets and publicly admitting that it is the people who actually hold the power. When they delude the masses and eventually their cheating propensities and selfish ambitions catapult them to power, the real owners, those who wield the power becomes clear. It is realized too soon that the authority is in the hands of but a few treacherous self seekers. The masses are totally obliterated. They sink with their malleable interests and humble ideals into oblivion to resurface at election time. That is when they matter most.
When they assume power which no one actually endorses but their own inhibited lust to revel in servitude and to eat the crumbs of power that falls at the feet of the Whiteman mans table. No black man wields power. Real power lies outside the Blackman’s domain. Lobbying and ingratiating pleas to the Whiteman to be the mediators of the people. To be the link of manipulation and exploitation. To render and expose the land of the people to the Whiteman. They beg the people to give them their consent, their approval for their own enslavement. They lead the masses like sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered at the labyrinth of doom.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
DOGS LICKING THE ROTTEN SORES OF JOB. ADVERSITY, FILTH, POOR MEN AND POVERTY ERADICATION
It is a common habit and practice of unsuccessful men, failures, the less endowed and the susceptible to attribute their lots to a strange inescapable hand of fate. The numerous disappointments and misfortunes that dock their steps and impede their progress and success in life is attributed to or supposed to have being wreaked by a vindictive force or entity. Or ascribed to be the handiwork of a jealous god of love, or the machinations and manipulations of a devil who will culminate his ruthless and brutal assault on immature brains, by eventually dragging them by virtue of their irreparable and unpardonable indulgences in sinful acts to the eternal flames of hell fire.
The less credulous, less superstitious with refined predilections, enlightened, endowed with analytical propensities, cynical in their outlook and may have in their intellectual aberrations and purposeless wanderings for personal gratification around the academic walls encounter the hulking Thomas of Cartesian doubt theory and taught that they are rational animals will quickly refute such traditional passive acceptance of such abstract believes and idiosyncrasies and replace it with philosophical concepts gleaned from the speculative thoughts and wanton judgments of philosophers who were oblivious to their fates and pretended to be unaware of the fallacies, inadequacies and the erring nature of their senses, and gave with authority prescriptions for the depraved world to follow in a bid to make it better at least.
Those armed with academic riffles, and taught to analyze with logical tools any idea or concepts they may encounter, would quickly reduce to the doldrums of simplicity and primitivism bordering on illiterate precociousness, such claims about the determinants of the success of life. They will wrestle with their hither to unproven theories, and come to the conclusion that to be successful is to stir ones capabilities, seek for quality education, strive hard. They are full of high sounding ideals and intelligence, creativity and capability in its latent state should be given immense efforts and decided impetus to awaken the dormant instincts in us and we are sure to hit upon the threshold of success. Those who believe that their fates are irrevocable are relegated with dismissive terms like fatalists – they believe that their very existence is predestined and predetermined by an invisible hand and whatever ill that will befall them is determined already.
Is adversity, poverty and squalor a boon or a curse? Most people will accept without qualms the injunction of the old adage that a heart that is schooled in adversity naturally becomes ennobled. It attains a sublime level and becomes capacious and absorbing and well adapted to deal with unsavory situations that would have broken the heart of optimist and snapped the mind of the thoughtful.
Poverty with its ugly and filthy semblance of abstraction is a portentous wretch, a hooligan with the mask of anarchy and chaos, a cruel master who takes everything from its victims and leave them to languish in hunger and sorrow and to continually curse their fate and to repent for having been born into this unjust world of woes and tribulations. Poverty is such a potent adversary of the human race that not even the hardcore fatalists or the promulgators of determinism able to accept it as his presence in our midst predestined. It is a bitter pill to swallow. Where poverty rears its ugly head, all theories and beliefs die. There is a unanimous concussion that it is a destructive disease that must be eradicated in the society with immediate effects.
But then it becomes easy to sing about the virtues of poverty. It is the majestic conqueror and chastiser who sublimates the faith of the religionist. Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. And in certain religious prescriptions, men are enjoined to renounce the material fripperies of the world and live in perpetual penury coupled with rigid asceticism for that is the only way that can ensure their spiritual growth. To attain spiritual ecstasy, men with religious fervor are made to live like mendicants. Certainly it would be difficult for rich men to enter the kingdom of God. It is only when they renounce the world and give their worldly riches to the poor that they will enter the kingdom of god.
Even though most people are apt to admit that to be poor is synonymous to living in hell, they are still ready to point out the good qualities of poverty. Biblical Job epitomizes the quintessential example of “from riches to rags and from rags to riches” Many people have since the dawn of history being awed by the phenomenon or abstraction called poverty. How can one come to terms with the fact that some have more than enough – able to satisfy their desires by just mentioning it and like a magical invocation or spell cast they get it at once. And some too have barely enough to eat and life to such unfortunate products of fate a bitter struggle for survival.
There are many people who wouldn’t hesitate to admit that the present successes they have chalked in their various endeavors came as a result of hard work and perseverance. They will bring to bear childhood memories riddled with numerous escapes and adventures in poverty. They will relate with nostalgic pride how because they were born into poor homes they were spurred by enthusiasm and determination to overcome that monster of eternal retrogression. They will tell you that they were once poor but now they are rich and that they prefer riches to poverty. But they are always quick to acknowledge the fact that poverty one way or the other helped them to see and understand the world better and guided them to make the right decision that resulted in their material success. So poverty served as a deep philosophical inspiration and motivation for them one time but still a dangerous force to reckon with. Others too drunk with religious frenzy will tell you that it was when they renounced riches that they were able to attain inner peace and fulfillment. To be rich they will tell you is fraught with pains and agonies. They will tell you it is not easy to maintain that status as one has to constantly live in strife guarding the money with alacrity. Scheming on how one can properly invest and maintain balance so as to retain it.
So the issue of poverty and riches from all indications a complex subject to handle. One intriguing thing about the two is that they are abstract concepts and this also make the two concepts analyzable. Depending on how one understands and view the two, it is a matter of attuning ones mental faculties to any of them and utilizing them to ones benefit. So this leaves us with the faint notion that there is nothing like poverty or riches but how one can identify the potency even of evil concepts with negative aura and using it to ones benefit. Again we are left with a new concept. That is utilitarianism. There is nothing like good or bad but thinking makes it so. If in the cause of application of any of the concepts or ideas one becomes successful, then it is good. But if it turns out to be the opposite, its effect far from beneficial, then it becomes bad.
There is a strong argument and social reality that seems to refute the argument of poverty been an abstract concoction of idle gluttons. Governments efforts worldwide to eradicate and when it becomes impossible alleviate poverty seems to belie any argument that there are beneficial elements in poverty. Once they have identified poverty as making the world a bitter place to live and the earlier they eradicate or alleviate it the better. That is absolutely commendable. That governments have detected that they are there for the people and they have realized that there is so much disparity, there is inequality and injustice in the world and would act as bulwarks to protect the weak and the poor. Assist the less endowed and empower the powerless. That is certainly an exceptional idea and policy that we must encourage and see to it that it comes to pass. Job regains his former status Amen.
I will urge all those who believe in the supreme qualities of poverty as giving them inspiration to stop singing praises about the diseases because governments have recognized that the disadvantages of poverty far outweighs the advantages and are ready to combat it. They will call job to rail against poverty and curse the day the canker was born. Why should job be appointed minister of poverty affairs. Because he knows everything about the wretch. Job stayed with it for long and he is reputed to be the greatest poverty stricken man on earth and as if that was not enough he was also inflicted with sores all over his body!
But there is a secret one of the companions of job whispered in my ears. I had wanted to keep it to myself but for the benefit of the poor and powerless in our midst who will soon become rich men by the courtesy of the generous policies of governments, I will reveal it. The companion of job said. If government cannot eradicate illiteracy, inequality, injustice, social vices, corruption, nepotism and tribalism. If governments cannot protect the interest of the weak nor guard their meager share, if governments cannot curb vicious and exploitive policies of egocentric men, self seekers and selfish men. When there is uneven distribution of social amenities and the bulk are engulfed by horrendous deprivation and left to languish in disadvantageous positions? With all these social dilemmas entrenched and towering like the tower of Babel. Surely governments can alleviate poverty. They can do it and we look forward to that day when every one would be equal and there wouldn’t be class distinctions. Where we shall all be entitled to the same social privileges and opportunities. The day that poverty would be completely eradicated from the surface of the earth.
The less credulous, less superstitious with refined predilections, enlightened, endowed with analytical propensities, cynical in their outlook and may have in their intellectual aberrations and purposeless wanderings for personal gratification around the academic walls encounter the hulking Thomas of Cartesian doubt theory and taught that they are rational animals will quickly refute such traditional passive acceptance of such abstract believes and idiosyncrasies and replace it with philosophical concepts gleaned from the speculative thoughts and wanton judgments of philosophers who were oblivious to their fates and pretended to be unaware of the fallacies, inadequacies and the erring nature of their senses, and gave with authority prescriptions for the depraved world to follow in a bid to make it better at least.
Those armed with academic riffles, and taught to analyze with logical tools any idea or concepts they may encounter, would quickly reduce to the doldrums of simplicity and primitivism bordering on illiterate precociousness, such claims about the determinants of the success of life. They will wrestle with their hither to unproven theories, and come to the conclusion that to be successful is to stir ones capabilities, seek for quality education, strive hard. They are full of high sounding ideals and intelligence, creativity and capability in its latent state should be given immense efforts and decided impetus to awaken the dormant instincts in us and we are sure to hit upon the threshold of success. Those who believe that their fates are irrevocable are relegated with dismissive terms like fatalists – they believe that their very existence is predestined and predetermined by an invisible hand and whatever ill that will befall them is determined already.
Is adversity, poverty and squalor a boon or a curse? Most people will accept without qualms the injunction of the old adage that a heart that is schooled in adversity naturally becomes ennobled. It attains a sublime level and becomes capacious and absorbing and well adapted to deal with unsavory situations that would have broken the heart of optimist and snapped the mind of the thoughtful.
Poverty with its ugly and filthy semblance of abstraction is a portentous wretch, a hooligan with the mask of anarchy and chaos, a cruel master who takes everything from its victims and leave them to languish in hunger and sorrow and to continually curse their fate and to repent for having been born into this unjust world of woes and tribulations. Poverty is such a potent adversary of the human race that not even the hardcore fatalists or the promulgators of determinism able to accept it as his presence in our midst predestined. It is a bitter pill to swallow. Where poverty rears its ugly head, all theories and beliefs die. There is a unanimous concussion that it is a destructive disease that must be eradicated in the society with immediate effects.
But then it becomes easy to sing about the virtues of poverty. It is the majestic conqueror and chastiser who sublimates the faith of the religionist. Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. And in certain religious prescriptions, men are enjoined to renounce the material fripperies of the world and live in perpetual penury coupled with rigid asceticism for that is the only way that can ensure their spiritual growth. To attain spiritual ecstasy, men with religious fervor are made to live like mendicants. Certainly it would be difficult for rich men to enter the kingdom of God. It is only when they renounce the world and give their worldly riches to the poor that they will enter the kingdom of god.
Even though most people are apt to admit that to be poor is synonymous to living in hell, they are still ready to point out the good qualities of poverty. Biblical Job epitomizes the quintessential example of “from riches to rags and from rags to riches” Many people have since the dawn of history being awed by the phenomenon or abstraction called poverty. How can one come to terms with the fact that some have more than enough – able to satisfy their desires by just mentioning it and like a magical invocation or spell cast they get it at once. And some too have barely enough to eat and life to such unfortunate products of fate a bitter struggle for survival.
There are many people who wouldn’t hesitate to admit that the present successes they have chalked in their various endeavors came as a result of hard work and perseverance. They will bring to bear childhood memories riddled with numerous escapes and adventures in poverty. They will relate with nostalgic pride how because they were born into poor homes they were spurred by enthusiasm and determination to overcome that monster of eternal retrogression. They will tell you that they were once poor but now they are rich and that they prefer riches to poverty. But they are always quick to acknowledge the fact that poverty one way or the other helped them to see and understand the world better and guided them to make the right decision that resulted in their material success. So poverty served as a deep philosophical inspiration and motivation for them one time but still a dangerous force to reckon with. Others too drunk with religious frenzy will tell you that it was when they renounced riches that they were able to attain inner peace and fulfillment. To be rich they will tell you is fraught with pains and agonies. They will tell you it is not easy to maintain that status as one has to constantly live in strife guarding the money with alacrity. Scheming on how one can properly invest and maintain balance so as to retain it.
So the issue of poverty and riches from all indications a complex subject to handle. One intriguing thing about the two is that they are abstract concepts and this also make the two concepts analyzable. Depending on how one understands and view the two, it is a matter of attuning ones mental faculties to any of them and utilizing them to ones benefit. So this leaves us with the faint notion that there is nothing like poverty or riches but how one can identify the potency even of evil concepts with negative aura and using it to ones benefit. Again we are left with a new concept. That is utilitarianism. There is nothing like good or bad but thinking makes it so. If in the cause of application of any of the concepts or ideas one becomes successful, then it is good. But if it turns out to be the opposite, its effect far from beneficial, then it becomes bad.
There is a strong argument and social reality that seems to refute the argument of poverty been an abstract concoction of idle gluttons. Governments efforts worldwide to eradicate and when it becomes impossible alleviate poverty seems to belie any argument that there are beneficial elements in poverty. Once they have identified poverty as making the world a bitter place to live and the earlier they eradicate or alleviate it the better. That is absolutely commendable. That governments have detected that they are there for the people and they have realized that there is so much disparity, there is inequality and injustice in the world and would act as bulwarks to protect the weak and the poor. Assist the less endowed and empower the powerless. That is certainly an exceptional idea and policy that we must encourage and see to it that it comes to pass. Job regains his former status Amen.
I will urge all those who believe in the supreme qualities of poverty as giving them inspiration to stop singing praises about the diseases because governments have recognized that the disadvantages of poverty far outweighs the advantages and are ready to combat it. They will call job to rail against poverty and curse the day the canker was born. Why should job be appointed minister of poverty affairs. Because he knows everything about the wretch. Job stayed with it for long and he is reputed to be the greatest poverty stricken man on earth and as if that was not enough he was also inflicted with sores all over his body!
But there is a secret one of the companions of job whispered in my ears. I had wanted to keep it to myself but for the benefit of the poor and powerless in our midst who will soon become rich men by the courtesy of the generous policies of governments, I will reveal it. The companion of job said. If government cannot eradicate illiteracy, inequality, injustice, social vices, corruption, nepotism and tribalism. If governments cannot protect the interest of the weak nor guard their meager share, if governments cannot curb vicious and exploitive policies of egocentric men, self seekers and selfish men. When there is uneven distribution of social amenities and the bulk are engulfed by horrendous deprivation and left to languish in disadvantageous positions? With all these social dilemmas entrenched and towering like the tower of Babel. Surely governments can alleviate poverty. They can do it and we look forward to that day when every one would be equal and there wouldn’t be class distinctions. Where we shall all be entitled to the same social privileges and opportunities. The day that poverty would be completely eradicated from the surface of the earth.
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