Me, Myself and… Us?

Ministers threatening their fellow ministers to jail and “impossible situations” for exercising their freedom of choice! For having an opposing opinion and vote. Politicians campaigning for the “Yes” vote and, rather than explaining why they feel the proposed constitution is better and discussing its merits, insulting their opponents. Now surely people, they are taking us for fools. And the fact that they can do so alludes to the fact that we have been fools, to allow this continual desecration of how our nation is run.

Yes, our nation. I think that too many of us too often forget that it is ours, that we all have a responsibility towards it if we are going to claim it. We do not live in bubbles. Policies affect us even though we may not be sensitive to the manifestation of this in our daily life.

It often saddens me when I talk to my peers and their goal in life is simply “to make that money.” They want high-paying jobs (profession and company/organization is unimportant, as long as it is high-paying) so that they can live in mansions, drive expensive cars, join exclusive country clubs, drink themselves under the table and be seen as being able to do all these things. My father believes that my generation will be the one to enable a change for the better in our country. That we have the proper ammunition and education and consciousness to remove the existing antiquated mentalities and shameless corruption. I don’t know anymore. My generation seems predominantly concerned with the accumulation of personal wealth.

I’m not saying that we don’t all (don’t we?) wish to be financially comfortable. But there is more to life than earning for the sake of earning. You can make an impact on the world… and earn.

People apparently forget just how interconnected everything in life is. You can plunder public resources and funds, increase your wealth ridiculously and live the kind of luxury that the average mwananchi cannot even fathom possible. A recent article in a Kenyan newspaper interviewed a woman living in a Nairobi slum. They asked her what she thought the highest-paid Kenyan earned and she replied, KSHS 10,000. She added that if she were to come across such cash, she wouldn’t even know how to begin to budget it. She had this simple request for the government, to make her life easier: that they reduce the price of maize meal and paraffin. Meanwhile, minutes away in the same city, the gluttons are spending those 10,000 shillings on a night of drinking and general excess. It is insulting.

They plunder and plunder and steal and steal and build and buy and flash and boast… not realizing that the same people whose livelihood they are ruthlessly snatching are not going to just disappear. The illusion that they are raising their own personal standard of living may one day shatter when the people all around them decide to react to these injustices. They are creating great insecurity as they work on their individual financial security. What goes around indeed has a tendency of coming back around. But this kind of foresight seems almost extinct.

Now it’s sad if this is considered idealist but: being that we live among our fellow people; being that we interact with other people; being that our actions affect others — when we contribute to the greater good, we ensure better conditions for ourselves as well. But myopia pervades.

Eastern philosophies’ ideas of the greater Self constituting all our individual selves are notable here. Yoruba beliefs similarly revere the connectivity between all life forms. Where is our knowledge that was amassed over centuries? Where are our guides that are specific to and applicable to our unique contexts? Where is our desire to unearth these ideas and wisdoms? I will not presume that ancient is better, but I appreciate that it may help inform the present in ways that may allow for better decisions and better ways of being. Just as we do not live in bubbles, we do not live in time-free zones. It is the past and the future that make this current time the present. We can create a heaven for ourselves that will steadily deteriorate into a hell for our children. Can we call for consciousness?