The word Order presages the very existence of mankind and the concept of creation. It is the backdrop against which the world was created for He could have created everything in one single day, in reverse or without any apparent sequence. As biblical history would have us believe, He decided to do it in seven days creating mankind on the sixth day. For evolutionists, this is an unacceptable and disputable explanation for the inception of the world. However, even the theory of evolution suggests order as well, no doubt. Gradual development from lesser forms of life is nothing but primal order.
Order is of course that immutable feature of human living however fallible it may be sometimes. It is the only order that we fulsomely comprehend and precariously revel in. Order in the last sentence refers to instruction, command or directive. And for the rest of this essay, the word order will refer only to orderliness and sequence to events in our sadly conformist world. Apologists for conformity may disagree.
For what it’s worth, order makes us rather human. It’s a social part of our culture that can’t be ignored or eschewed. It’s a culture imparted on us at the very beginning of our lives, the very beginning of eternal time. And no, I’m not referring to the afterlife here. That’s just another expected conformist order to social living; another fallible excuse for our “godly” and mostly pretentious mode of living in our society.
Think about it. The living realities in the present society that we are accustomed to is but premised on a fallible front that everything revolves around religion and religious order. And that’s the bane of our existence. Disagree with me if you wish, I have opined before that if life was lived without the encumbrance called religion, one would live a richer life. But of course the society will never allow that.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe that whatever religion one has a bias towards makes one more moral or virtuous. It may help lay the basis but this is debatable. Even the philosopher, Francis Hutcheson, thinks “morality is entirely relative to the sentiment or mental taste of each particular being” and not on religious pedestal. No doubt, religion could be one’s sentiment but that doesn’t suppose the moral dictates of other sentiments. My conclusion: One can be a perfectly good human without religious precepts. Unfortunately, the meaning of good is subject to each person’s sentiment or bias.
A discounted Order of Reality
Whilst I’m no Claude Monet or Renoir of the Impressionistic art fame, I’ll try to paint you a fair picture. Now, if I hadn’t turned out as a Pharmacist, a doctor or an engineer, maybe I’d have honed those drawing/painting skills I learnt in my nursery class. Those caricatures I used to draw back then could have transformed into a beautiful work of art hanging on some rich man’s wall right now.
So back to the picture I wanted to paint, rather compose, for you. As a young child growing up, the most important lesson one learns and quickly too, if one is to survive, is order. Deviate from this simple ethos and get burnt. Alas, the world believes the only way to effect effective living in a young but forming mind is through order and order. Order, the dictatorial mandate, often precedes and enforces Order, the sequential but circumstantial conformity to living.
This sequential order continues through adult life as one is made to believe that the only route to happiness in life is through order. From primary school to high school to the university. Graduate, get a job and get married. Have children, raise them as you were raised and the cycle continues. In school, whether primary, high or university, the rule and teaching is the same. Conform or get out. The rather comical “Teacher don’t teach me nonsense” lullaby by Femi Kuti would find its way into one’s vocal cavity as one scribbles this. But Eze does need to go to school.
Are you wondering what I may mean by conformity in this context? It’s exactly the way you were raised and taught in school if you grew up in Nigeria at least. I would remember a particular occurrence back in Pharmacy school at Great Ife. It was the first day of my Second year in Pharmacy school and It was a dispensing laboratory practical class. Having heard rumors about the need to dress formally to the class, I would don on one of my best shirts and pant trousers at the time to go with my newly acquired boot shoes.
I would get to the practical class only to be turned back by Dr. Oladimeji that I wasn’t properly dressed. Dr. Olad, as he was popularly called, would continue that he doubted if I would ever succeed in Pharmacy. He even advised that I should start looking at other options or departments. Why? Because I didn’t have a tie on and my shirt was a little inappropriately tucked in. I made it a point of duty to have a strong A in the dispensing practical exam just to prove him wrong. And I did prove him wrong; I had that A in that course and others at the time. My point: because I didn’t conform doesn’t make me a airhead.
The relevance of the above point goes beyond the circumstance within which it was narrated. It extends into every facet of social ordering. Every phase of one’s life is timed and predetermined by one’s society. This sometimes places undue stress on a member of such society in a bid to conform and form a larger extension of the same society. The implication of this is a world lived on a probable wrong premise of importance of social order.
Life is a choice, they say. But any reasonably thinking person knows better in the small cocoon of life he resides in and the extent to which he understands the world. Those so called choices are clearly limited by societal impositions and expectations. I would write sometimes back that it’s a possibility the precarious world we live in may prefer that we don’t understand it. It may just want us just to pass through it altogether with its endearments, entreaties, evils and evolutions.
Another viewpoint to order and conformity will be its relevance in the concept of work culture. Work, no doubt, is an integral part of living. One may find focus and a life time in it. However, one questions whether man works to live or lives to work? Would one find or lack purpose otherwise or is it just another conformity to social ordering? There’s a huge difference between both.
As one puts pen to rest, the words of Olufemi Taiwo from his book “Africa Must Be Modern” pervades one’s consciousness. He writes “Our identity is not defined by what we are but by what we are not”. I haven’t heard any more modern and sagely truth in a while.
Foye.