Witoubou Newmai
Causes breed issues. The issues in turn become new causes. This circular scenario is a billiard ball situation to a certain degree: “If we hit a billiard ball and it strikes several more, which then are impelled to strike other billiard balls in turn…” (Thomas Anthony Harris’ cause-and-effect analogy).
If we have to talk about the basic idea of “why issues?” we may loosely put it from one’s standpoint that it is about justice or humanity or good or right etc., etc. against their opposites.
However, as we expose ourselves to the billiard ball situation we seem to have failed to read that humanity is fast becoming a lesser concern for most of us. In other words, the ‘what-I-want’ veils the reasons to perceive counter products to the ‘collective humanity’.
As we continue to lose the capacity to perceive humanity amid ‘discords’ over this plethora of issues, the compounded situations have become extremely perplexed and taxing, and that even the talk of humanity finds no relevance or ‘odd-man-out’ situation. For that matter, even this editorial is a trite and monotonous piece.
However, this piece of thought is an honest endeavour to find ways and debates on how we can make humanity more relevant than it has been all this while. When people who are considered “thinking people” themselves are jittery and uncertain of things, this endeavour is going to be quite a task. Or, we also fear that such endeavours may become even more irrelevant with time.
As what are considered sublime principles may not be relevant in today’s time, it is time to also find ways how the reasoning about the counter products finds its place in the public menu board.
As issues overwhelm, and we sway with the situation, the sense of sanity and humanity finds it hard to be relevant.
We have also come to issue driven situations today, where to say what humanity or sanity is and is not is far more problematic than we wish. This is for the simple reason that many issues are also configured in such a very sad manner that speaking about humanity can contradict one's intents and strategies. To many, humanity is also a ‘protean’ term to be used with one’s convenience and choosing. The issue of humanity has also become a business of quid pro quo.
Who ‘gives’ today without carrying a camera? Many COVID-19 pandemic ‘humanitarian services’ we witnessed recently confirms the argument. Such a practice is a travesty of what?
How monotonous and trite the humanity issue can be, we need to talk about this “irrelevance” more for relevance, for humanity’s sake.
