1
Witoubou Newmai
One appalling thing is that we are not sure whether naivety has been one of the reasons at all that we continue to make things difficult for ourselves. If naivety is one of the confirmed cases of our problem, then there is a strong possibility that we will be neither here nor there very soon.
This prediction is based on the argument that the world continues to lean to an “era marked more by co-optation”. We are saying this because a naïve society is easily co-opted.
Or, are we already co-opted?
This question is broached because our society is not anymore nudged by what could have been eyesores for any informed society.
One glaring sign is our society’s seeming willingness to trade, what could have been our conscience, for convenience.
Or, do we honestly believe we know something on how we should live our lives? In fact, this question is irrelevant to an uninformed society.
Today, the inability of our society to broach specific and broad requirements has brought about a great deal of anxiety.
One concern we all know is that, a co-opted society will continue to allow its sights to be complacently and naively limited to the viewpoints of those for whom co-optation is all for the sake of wielding power and interests, even as the latter groups claim to be the answer to the problems. Such a society will be gradually grafted into the ground of those powers that be. And hence, the viewpoints of the powers will also become the viewpoints of the co-opted society, too. This is also because, as it goes without saying that, when a society is grafted into the grounds of those who co-opted it, that society is not going to be itself anymore.
These grim trends seem to have prevailed in our society, too. Sweeping confronting issues, including those existential issues, under the carpet to be trampled with happy indifference seems to signal we are being co-opted.
When such is the situation today, then we are only leaving behind a negative legacy to our future generations that, this is not a society that had earned its way.
With due attention to the concerns expressed in this column, our society must garner strength to be also willing to retrospect on how the powers that be, masquerading as the truth, are most interested in consolidating authority and the intensification of building of auras around those masquerades by our society.
The concerns expressed above should be considered as an honest proposal to be examined and reflected in our approach, and the endeavour must succeed, or else be prepared to accept the obvious.
