It’s been a rather disconcerting past year and a half of compulsive addiction to the BlackBerry mobile device (the “intolerable blackberry”, my brother christened it for he couldn’t stand to own one) and an unbearable past month since the goons of the underworld decidedly retrieved it under a rather objectionable and bewildering circumstance. The local but passable phrase “the owner don collect am” would be in order for I never owned it in the first place, just been merely using it while awaiting its rightful owner – the goons. It’s been a harrowing experience of undeniable addiction to a seeming mobile technology, internet, news and information overload, the withdrawal symptoms of which is by no means finite, containable or conciliatory. Come to think of it, I just aided the economic sustenance of a reprobate and somewhat improved the national GDP of our dear country (at least money changed hands, a pecuniary raise for the goons) as unintended as it was. A smile? I thought so too. The new owner – whether the goon or the buyer - even had the ominous audacity to chat with some of my messenger contacts under a false pretext. However, my quizzical mind couldn’t but be encumbered by the seeming happenstance; delving beyond the ludicrous but inescapable reality that stood before me in a circus – like convolution in the duskiness of the night.
The constant battle between good and evil, between God and devil, between right and wrong, between yes and no, between sense and nonsense, between positive and negative in the human mind is an all but never ceasing or relenting contest; the constellation of which transcends beyond the physical and the choice of which rests wholly on the individual, however guided by the society. The mind yet is the most powerful weapon an individual may possess in all ramification and all seasons to adjudge his actions. As posited by Earnest Holmes in his book - The science of the Mind, “The first great discovery of man was that he could think, plan and execute.” He continued that “he (man) realized that conditions did not make themselves. Everything in (his) man's life was run by man himself.” He thus founds his actions on the decisions and conclusions he has made about his society whether subliminally or not, but still mostly instituted and influenced by the society he inhabits. His moral justifications for his actions are thus based on this as such. Martin Luther King Jr. would say “Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.”
In the present society, the majority is deluded and beclouded by their self centred and narcissistic bidding; an aberrant in our supposed moral codes often premised on religious sentiments (a discourse on morality and religion will be represented in a later blog or essay). This thus impinges inexorably on the already thin line between right and wrong; the rueful result of which is the present order we find our distressed society.
For the goon that took off with my mobile device, that battle between right or wrong still wages on in his mind however ebbed for he probably would have rationalised his decisions earnestly before acting them out. His rationalisation may be described as faulty or fallacious depending on who is reading. However, what remains constant is that the society in which he resides is partly responsible for those rationalisations of his. The society makes him, guards and guides him in a seeming path of right and wrong. But the society itself has gone delusory with the thin line between right and wrong fading out, what then becomes of the individual? He subscribes to the next “accepted” and assumed right or wrong - after all he is a feeling man - which may be fallacious.
Let’s consider a society, in which an individual may exist but is cataclysmically barraged with wrong notions inextricably substituted with assumed and specious right notions; he may be compelled to fall into the assumption of the wrong but supposedly right notion as the right notion. This may be the origin of the problem for even though man is a thinking being, his thinking is often times influenced by the exigencies of his society.
Let’s also consider a society in which its leaders and decision makers are themselves corrupt in ways beyond comprehension or reprehension, what justification will then desist a growing child or even a weak thinking man with a weak strength of character from falling into the same profligate and mendacious trend? Think Madam Etteh – former speaker of House of Representatives. Think Alaimesigha – former Bayelsa State Governor who is constantly but foolishly celebrated by his kinsmen at every chance they get. Think Soludo. Think Obasanjo – who raped political morals beyond imaginable conditions. What then will be the choice of the individual in the face of these daring circumstances blaring through his feeling consciousness?
I do not attempt to suggest what should be right or wrong neither do I attempt to propose a constellation of panaceas to right all the wrong of the society for by so doing I maybe alluding to a higher moral ethic which itself may be fallacious. However, I couldn’t help but ponder on the premises on which each individual bases and judges his actions whether good or bad, right or wrong. Will it make the society any worse or any better if there were to be no choices between good or bad, right or wrong? The truth is we may just be on our way to an irredeemable obfuscation of our dear society.
Thank you.
Foye.