MY PEOPLE, STOP THIS ENDLESS TRUMPETING AND ACT!

Photo: COURTESY

Talking (or dialogue, as my compatriots would call it) has not made its first appearance in our social, political and economic landscape today. To use an expression dear to all of us, we may say that its origins have been with us and will definitely remain with us for as long as we stick together in this geographical corner of our planet we call Kenya. 

What is evident, however, is that endless trumpeting, as opposed to action-talking-action has taken center stage in all our personal, communal and even national interventions. Everybody has become a victim of this "talking flu;" the private, the public, the religious, the non-religious, the educated, the uneducated, the aged, the youth and whatnot.

We all need some medication to cure this national cancer!

Without harking back to the usual hullabaloo about dysfunctional governments, corrupt public supremos, failed States, and so on and so forth, I think, I must point out that we, the collectives, are equally to blame for the smelly state of affairs around us.

For where on earth can a minority reign supremely above the masses, foisting their thoughts and actions upon them without a second thought, or rather without hiding from the tide of anger and dissatisfaction from the populace? Are the majority complicit in their own sufferance?

Could this be the same condition confining our young people to tireless finger-pointing exercises, blame shifting, truth evasion, and brutal massacre of progressive thoughts under the pretext of fighting for change? 

I say this with a bleeding heart. I cry not because I'm injured but because I see people with eyes, brains, energies, (and name it) reducing themselves to talking machines and professional "blamers".

For them the answer is uniform and standard: It is always the other side that is responsible for the (undesirable) condition we are in!

Listen to Karl Jaspers writing on the concept of metaphysical guilt: “There exists amongst men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am an accomplice in them.  If I have risked my life in order to prevent the murder of other men, if I have stood silent, I feel guilty in a sense that cannot in any adequate fashion be understood juridically or politically or morally...That I am still alive after such things have been done weighs on me as a guilt that cannot be expiated. Somewhere in the heart of human relations, an absolute command imposes itself: in case of criminal attack or of living conditions that threatens physical being, accept life for all together or not at all...”

The religious empires, to which we run whenever we are cornered, show well to what extent it is the unreal that governs the world, and not the real. They always try to delink the person (you and me) from the world he lives in. This explains why your local religious leader will find it easier to condemn (and even pronounce some super-natural fire upon that) small thief in your neighbourhood but still fail to decipher the nexus between the hidden hand that pushed him (the thief) to that "sinful" act. 

This selective condemnation is a child of a bigger creature nailing us to our coffins. It is birthed by our institutionalized hypocrisy.

You see, all this is founded on one solid philosophy: To keep you and me hopeful that things will change and change for good, without our input. It is escapist in its construction. It is hollow in its composition. It is unconvincing in its propagation. It is a fallacy of the highest degree!

Hope without solid foundation in action is nothing but a farce. It is a refuge for the escapists. It is a safe abode for those running away from self-screening. It is a lubricant to smoothen our emotions to hide the pain that will push us into questioning our efforts and contributions, positive or otherwise. It is a lullaby to sooth us into our continued slumber. It is as dangerous and lethal as the malaria-carrying anopheles mosquitoes.

In "Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered" by E.F Schumacher we are told: “All history - as well as all current experience - points to the fact that it is man, not nature, who provides the primary resource: that the key factor of all economic development comes out of the mind of man. Suddenly, there is an outburst of daring, initiative, invention, constructive activity, not in one field alone, but in many fields all at once. No one may be able to say where it came from in the first place; but we can see how it maintains and even strengthens itself: through various kinds of schools, in other words, through education. In a very real sense, therefore, we can say that education is the most vital of all resources.” 

You know what? This education is out there - on the streets, villages, slums, and those filthy rundown estates we run away from. It is housed in the bodies and minds of our mama-mbogas, small scale traders, cart pushers, jobless (but focused) youth et al. 

This is the untapped intelligentsia that is highly needed to infuse some new ideas into our old heads.

It is, therefore, of great importance for every right-thinking pro-change human to acknowledge that change devoid of change (and offloading) of hitherto unproductive thoughts and actions leads to nowhere. 

Are "#MaskaniConversationists" ready to embark on this journey?

The writer is an Architect. Twitter:  @mlemukol.  Email: lemoseh89@gmail.com.