LET'S TALK ABOUT IT!

“Five minutes after your birth, they decide your name, nationality, religion and sect, and you spend the rest of your life defending something you didn’t even choose”…Unknown

Who art thou… human?

I once told a wise man who inquired of me the story of my life that I sincerely didn’t know where to start from as it was apparently and stereo-typically uneventful, ‘spare me the strategic demand for pity young man and start from wherever comes to your mind’ he gracefully said, with his tone and expression simultaneously garnished with a mixture of transient and obscure sarcasm. Fair enough I said to myself, at least there is a justification for my prior admitted imperfectness.

There is a Yoruba adage which says if a kid stumbles, he keeps looking forward, but if an adult falls, he looks back from where he came. This analogy emphasizes the imperatives of our knowledge of history in our lives, just as we unconsciously trace back our steps when we make mistakes, so is it important to consult our historical facts when we are lost or when we falter.

 If the history that we know are the ones handed down to us by our predecessors who are human and by implication are as imperfect and somewhat vulnerable to corruption as we are, is there perhaps a tendency that there exists some anomaly either by mistake or sabotage of truth?

 Now the real question is, what is the content of the history that we are consulting and how has it influenced the present position of our lives?

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, it goes to his head. But if you talk to a man in his language, it goes to his heart"...Nelson Mandela

Secrets

Except you are the Head of your organization, I’m sure there are loads of classified information that you aren’t privileged to know. At some point the suspense is so great that you want in at all cost, but then you realize it’s a caucus thing. Same thing happens all around us everywhere, everyday and every time.

"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead"...Benjamin Franklin

If indeed rumours have elements of truths then we should beware of government, fortune 500 companies and even local retailers because from the level of senior government officials to the neighborhood newspaper vendor are high networks of clandestine activities ranging from elitist policies that favour the rich and famous, while the low cadre citizens perish from societal intimidation and actual physical poverty and hunger.

Criminals are given soft landings, oil companies are allowed to degrade environments, drug companies experiment on the down-trodden, the law enforcers are aware of our vulnerability and we are constantly robbed, and even our very own community members are used as spies against us, can you even believe that?

"Live fast die young and leave a good looking corpse"...John Derek

Living fast…dying young

Different parts of the world presently live in different ages ranging from the rock age, agrarian, manufacturing, information / Jet age down to the wisdom age which is basically an exploitation strategy by the developed nations by virtue of their position of vague world power.

It’s a world of fast foods, faster cars, fast time, fast money, fast life and by implication fast death when we stubbornly alter the Eco-system and violate the true nature of things and it doesn’t only injure our minds, but also hurts our health.

What are we doing about the cancer causing foods and preservatives?, yet billions of Dollars are allocated for cancer research centers. What are we doing about oil companies that have caused almost irreversible environmental degradation that has destroyed lives and livelihoods? What are we doing about the high end drugs that are still basically poisons that cause severe side-effects or better still aggravates the disease to be cured? Why is there money for war but no money for food, infrastructure, healthcare and education?

Think about it, there is definitely a bunch of insecure guys out there joyfully exploiting us and creating a tendency of truth for the speculation that to adequately cater for the imminent population explosion, we indeed may require another earth.

"The war against terrorism is terrorism"...Woody Harrelson

Maybe we are all terrorists?

 

There was this heavy rain in my neighborhood sometime ago, but after the rain had long stopped the flood wouldn’t go away, this of course was unusual. It was later found that the local block maker had blocked the drainage so that he could amass enough sand for himself to make blocks. This selfish act that inconvenienced majority of people may seem trivial, but if the local block maker was in a higher position, he’d definitely do worse.

The recent anti-corruption campaign in Nigeria is a very huge eye opener and serious revelation of an illicit culture that has been secretly nurtured for as long as our forefathers lived.

Can you imagine a great country with limitless potentials being made to roll in the dirt shamelessly for ages due to the greed and insatiable corruption of a bunch of ignorant people that have failed to realize the power of empowerment? Rather, they steal and waste the useful resources of a blessed nation.

They over-bloated contract sums, yet they didn’t execute the projects, and if at all they did, they used inferior materials and workmanship to build mediocre projects for the sake of formality and with the intent to deceive people, while they live luxurious lives at the expense of the lives of the citizens.

The most horrific is the move to ridicule and compromise the national military by diverting funds meant for hardware, jeopardizing the lives of the military and the citizens, creating world ridicule and wasting the lives of true heroes. Common, if these are not acts of terrorism then what is? As sensitive as it is religious crisis and even the sects’ attacks are of our own making either by commission or omission.

As complicated as the world may seem, apparently it gets better especially as we try to understand ourselves in proportion to the world and how we compliment the two dimensional perspectives. Technically our imperfectness is not an excuse as it clearly outlines the superiority of a higher power whom I like to refer to as God.

It feels more empowering when we talk about it rather than pretend like it doesn’t exist. For instance how did we get here? From homosexuality to religious fanaticism, diseases, terrorism, natural disasters with undertones, hurtful inventions and covet over-ambitions that will probably annihilate us.

Thank goodness for admittance of love and affection, our vulnerability to music and entertainment, even an ogre gets excited in his privacy. Perhaps if we kept talking about it, we’ll one day prophesy positivism and at least see some good in ourselves and ultimately, in the world.

Thank you.

Akin Abimbola (akinzogee@yahoo.com)

SOURCES:

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