This is beyond the question of bureaucratic idiosyncrasy or efforts to erect new fences at the border. Humanity has lost trust in redemption, bonding, belonging, receptivity, and re-bridging. Humanity has been brainwashed by those superiorly sitting on the “upper deck” to believe that the world is coming to an end. For me, the world ended a long time ago. The ostracization of black bodies, enthronement of racism, imbalanced international relations, imp globalization, and the chase at immigration borders are indications of the world ending.
As a growing body, the last few decades have taught me that nothing functions or exists independently: humans, objects (visible and invisible), goals, aspirations, values, morals, ethics, worldviews, identity, and society. We may differ in skin color, speak different languages, have belief/faith differences, and different traditional backgrounds and histories, and identities, yet we are interconnected in the face of humanity. As the Igbo saying goes “Onye aghala nwanne ya.” This saying emphasizes the pertinent of familial and communal bonds which implies that individuals are interconnected and care for one another.
For the sake of ‘belonging’, we installed boundaries orchestrated by our personhood which signifies that we are conscious of what happens on the “other side” of existence. This infers that we are aware and in awe of other identities, bodies, and generative postures. As time elapses, we strengthen these boundaries because we fear that our spaces will be taken away from us through revolt, repression, or reparation (r3). These boundaries function in pretense, they are for significant awareness. Then, we struggle to escape from the “emerging consciousness.” What do we do with our differences – our opinions, our perspectives? How do we meet the “chain of being” in this disturbing time without obliterating those histories?
Ostensibly, asserting myself as a “world citizen” saddled with the responsibility of existing anywhere in the universe or taking up space as an African with a similar body comes with herculean tasks, yet appearing different before the unsuspecting eyes of ‘others.’ This harbors the question: First, would I accept that I am an African (a person of colour to be specific) before pathologizing my position in a world that has treated me as an alien, or do I assert myself by holding the ground of my animation everywhere the wind carries me to? Let’s search for the answer together as we expand these thoughts.
However, looking at the recalcitrant ‘inhumane laws’ known as immigration policies employed by ‘other bodies,’ it becomes daunting to assert myself in a space of many colours – by staring at something fascinating and holding it grudgingly. This is beyond the question of bureaucratic idiosyncrasy or efforts to erect new fences at the border. Humanity has lost trust in redemption, bonding, belonging, receptivity, and re-bridging. Humanity has been brainwashed by those superiorly sitting on the “upper deck” to believe that the world is coming to an end. For me, the world ended a long time ago. The ostracization of black bodies, the enthronement of racism, imbalanced international relations, deglobalization, and the chase at immigration borders are indications of the world ending.
Centuries ago, the world and people living ‘with’ it, through their actions has proven to be self-centered, entrusting against themselves and obnoxiously expelled the cord that binds every archetypical infrastructure that made it a successful universe for everyone; home against the apocalypse. I am not going to deny the intricacies of classism during the formative stage which seems to have domino effects on the contemporary time. We have been fed with lies on religion, politics, and psychology. At this point, I would say that we are overfed. Anyone paying attention could see the ripple effects on every home and how ineptitude we have become in getting healed.
The modern age of globalization and the emergence of the fourth revolution emasculating through the annals of artificial intelligence, demographic disparities, GPS, manufacturing vaccines for the modern “Great Depression X2” known as Covid, sophisticated new technologies, and weaponry, the specter of climate change and its impact on resource system, the struggle for power between the West, South and North, coupled with the silence of the ‘other bodies’ who are either adamant or nonchalant for severe competition. This reluctance extended the ongoing conversation that the universe is not linear, it is binary, which is a clarion call for all powers to be recognized. This is not far-fetched as Robinson (2013) suggested that technological innovation makes human societies prosperous but also involves the replacement of the old with the new, and the destruction of the economic privileges and political power of certain people.
As Akomolafe (2023) asked, in the face of so much suffering, how can one not care? It takes bravery to divorce this common union of comfortable lies to establish a new form of matrimony to usurp these sufferings that has become comfortable in the minds of all and sundry. This is because we slept on it for a long time, without nightmares. Now, the nightmares have arrived, and we are showing concerns in our protests due to the emergence of the troubling time.
According to Amos Tutuola’s “The Palm Wine Drunkard,” Nigerian society sees palm wine as a tool for social cohesion and it has survived urbanization, holding up to social and cultural values. In the same vein, we must look for a modern tool to be used as a social cohesion to bridge these gaps of comfortable lies that existed for centuries. Global disruption is becoming visible, and we seem not to understand that “we are standing at the brink of an old era that would usher in a new era.” An era that will scattle time and be dynamic to human relationships.
Subsequently, eleven years ago, Acemoglu et al., provided us with an insight by warning us that the expression of these lies was comforted within the framework of geography, culture, and ignorance hypothesis perpetuated by the Western epistemologies which according to their research does not hold water. Coalescing the many lies of the world into a “welfarism” is a phoenix aimed at creating a sort of comfortable grandstanding to deny us the opportunity to ask important questions and chart a new beginning. This is not an attempt to reproduce problematic dynamics or beleaguered feminism, it is not a contestation of power relations because I am not like Frodo, even if I get the ring it may consume me. This is an invitation to seek a holistic perspective and to accommodate or make space for other epistemologies to exist. For sustained social engineering and goodwill, we need new technologies, a New God, and new ways of doing things for the gap of lies to be quenched. We must stopping becoming comfortable, lying.
©Compassion Chidozie Ogbanu 2024
This is thought-provoking and deserves our consciousness and awakening.