THE AFRICAN ARORIS-“THINKERS” ASKING: AFRICANS, CAN WE ALL SURVIVE IGNORANTLY?
By Mashood Adediran
If philosophy is the love of wisdom, and music is the food of love…play it on. Are we Africans playing our music philosophically? I don’t think so. We are George Bush, playing our music ineptly, ignorantly and dumbly. We need a change, a change with immediate effect.
As a race, are we not shame, that we Africans are the most destitute in the world amidst plenty? With the history that we are enslaved, colonized, and today freed and independence, are we not shame, that with all our education we are still thinking abruptly, and with colonized mentality and still not free. As a race, where are our thinking faculties? Do we think, reason and sense? If we do, Is it not time to show the world that we are, and to start showcasing our intellect, our knowledge and know-how that if we can produce Barack Obama to become the president of the United States of America, as the first African-American president, Yes! We can. If we can, can we start demonstrating that we are a race and still racing and with values. But what is still disturbing today even at this age of Obama is that we Africans don’t appreciate values but money, money, money.
Money! I alarmed. What is money? If not but an “instrument of exchange”, is it not why we don’t produce meaningfully, that we Africans are poor today and in depression, and a good reason why our scholarship, intelligent and knowledge so bankrupt and deficient. C’mon Africans! A quarter of century years ago, when I started Mashood Adediran Institute of empirical Understanding and sciences (MAIEUS), I was dismissed by my friends and colleagues as nonsensical. Today, it seems I am the most fundamental. In the history of psychology, under James and John Stuart Mill…”although the writing of Locke, Berkley, and others proposed empirical views concerning the source of knowledge, and while careful observation was instrumental in many of the conclusions reached, these philosophers did not achieve a science of the mind, what they did achieve was to lay a foundation of issues and questions that would later be investigated”. Are we Africans investigating?
And under John Locke “whereas Descartes had viewed reason as the route to truth, John Locke popularized the empiricist view that the only source of knowledge was that could be learned from sense experience while reason could be used to organize what was in mind, nothing could be there that had not first gone through the senses”. Then, Africans, I asked, where are our experience, our senses? Intuitively, can’t we think cognitively? If we Africans can think cognitively, this is our time to demonstrate and showcase our knowledge that in a state of African depression, we too have the ability and capability to stimulate own African economy. Yes! We can. We Africans are not poor; we are the richest, but the interruption of the Western European roguery, invasion and burglary in Africa that interfere with our African development, a good reason for the need to re-stimulate the African economy for reconstruction and rebuilding. Can we Africans? No! Instead, we Africans are applauding the election of Barack Obama as he sets his goal and ambition to restructure and rebuild the American failed economy that he inherited from George Bush, while we neglecting ours.
If we are capable to appreciate good leadership is it not time to start to put our own leadership in a sound atmosphere, an atmosphere where we can elect a leader that can be candid, wise and truthful to the African people, that in a state of depression, as we co-exist today in Africa that we too need to stimulate our economy. Today, and on the world stage, it seems that we Africans are not as wise and virtuous, knowledgeable and scholarly as to turn things around.
Many will still wonder how United Kingdom, England so economically strong and successful without knowing that historically that Great Britain used to be the poorest European nation not until they burglarized the gold mining of Ghana (popularly known as the Gold coast), and militarily occupied and steal the gold of Ghana.
Back in England, the British government and the Bank of England with the new loot declared to the world that England is backing the fiduciary issue of coining money with gold, making the British government to mint enough money to start investing in the British economy. And they started investing in their artisans, merchants; banking and businesses, and with development and discoveries they started developing factories and industries; Science and technology.
If one asks me why we Africans are still poor in the 21 st century, I will adhere and conclude that we are not knowledgeable. Sincerely speaking, if we Africans are knowledgeable, tell me, with all our resources, how we can be poor, I demanded. The reason why we are still poor is nothing but inability to economically think beyond a reasonable doubt…historically.
Economically, a developing economy, so depressed as that of Africa is the most empowered to mint money for their national economic development. What is money? I asked. Is it not an instrument of exchange that must first be accepted by the people issuing the money before it can be internationally accepted and recognized?
Why are we Africans seating on all these resources, depressed and poor, why? I can only conclude that it is because we are senseless and we don’t utilize our experience. No wonder, that John Locke definition of knowledge is “the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and the repugnance of any of our ideas”. What an idea dictating today is within reason and experience is now demanding the Africans to start using our gold, oil, diamond and other natural resources as a fiduciary and to mint enough money for African economic development. So we Africans can promise a better life for the Africans as to demonstrate that we Africans also schooled and not so ignorant. Then, we need to start to showcase pragmatically that we too can develop our society, recognize our own money before it can be recognized internationally, also with an understanding on how to control it and create wealth in the African society. This is “charity begins at home”.
If we can demonstrate, economically, then we can start reroute to scientific and technological renaissance pragmatically, the need of time is African renaissance. The showcase that Africans are also thinking, economically…making choices for themselves. That first thing first, that if knowledge is the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and the repugnance of any of our ideas. Then, I asked, from the grass-roots, where are our forums for stimulating our perception and connecting agreement and disagreement as to see the repugnance of our ideas, where?
If we love to earn an academic degree and we don’t participate in discuss, intellectual debates, and dialogue, wonderfully! At the forum is the theatre for dialectics, where “thesis” and “antithesis” meet to display their ideas.
If you want to be like Obama, then step out and participate in the African ideas for the future. Join us to play…philosophically once in our life time, and become an African Obama and Obamaist and not George Bush, because we Africans can not survive ignorantly., and a good reason why The Royal society of England urged its members to communicate in the language of artisans, countrymen, and merchants (rather than) that of wits or scholars.
“The master of the unscrupulous servant praised him because he did it with wisdom.”
Maieus@yahoo.com
March 3, 2009
