The following piece from the Nigerian paper, Daily Champion, was
posted to the web on AllAfrica.com at
http://allafrica.com/stories/200706270450.html and seen on
lgpolicy-list (several months ago).
Opinion
Development in a Cultural Void
Daily Champion (Lagos)
OPINION
26 June 2007
Posted to the web 27 June 2007
By Akinwumi Isola
Lagos
ISN'T it frighteningly amazing that most otherwise intelligent well
trained and patriotic Africans do not in the least feel disturbed that
virtually every aspect of our life is in crisis? We seem to be now
used to living in crisis as a normal natural way of life. Is this the
result of a skilful process of cultural brain washing and an over-dose
of the chloroform of faith? But it may well also be due to the
confounding power of phenomena to become, overtime, so completely
familiar that we really do not hear see or notice them any more.
People who live near Pentecostal churches in Nigeria or whose
neighbours use howling generators grow so accustomed to the noise that
they stop hearing it! The man, after many years of marriage, stops
seeing his wife's thin lips and the woman her husband's huge nose. Our
perception of the world can wither away so completely, leaving us with
only hazy recognition.
A random selection from aspects of our life today may force us to
perceive them anew, and make us wonder what is happening to us.
Take for example our women's hairstyles. Wearing atrociously bogus,
heavy wigs in multicolor reaching beyond the shoulder is standard
wear! No eyebrows are raised. Ladies do not care at all if we know
that they wear borrowed hair in direct imitation of white women's hair
in length and colour, and in stout rejection of the length, texture
and colour of their natural hair. We do not feel disturbed.
Another example is the language we speak. We have so carelessly
neglected the learning and teaching of our mother tongues that we are
now virtually a nation without a language! The lack of competence in
the mother tongue and a solid base has adversely affected the child's
ability to acquire other languages properly. Children inherit their
parent's atrocious English pronunciation while badly trained teachers
smother any remaining hope of progress in grammar and syntax. Our
brightest conversations are pitiful examples of code-switching and
code-mixing. Do we feel disturbed?
And what do we do about foreign religions? In terms of confessional
faith, there is nothing wrong with Islam and Christianity. But do we
feel disturbed that every religion in the world is culture bound, and
that religion has always been used as a weapon for cultural and
political domination? Islamization is used as a prelude to the real
project of Arabisation and white missionaries brought the
colonialist-tainted version of Christianity to Africa. Arabs are
physically and culturally taking over Africa and Europeans. Americans
and Asians are taking it over economically. About 20 per cent of
Nigeria's best-educated professionals now live and work outside the
country.
Our government is made to accept harsh IMF and World Bank conditions -
priviatisation, trade liberalization, misconceived policy measures
that harm the poor and benefit international traders. And to monitor
compliance our comprador politicians are now joined by the
establishment of a formal 'technocratic corps' within the ministry of
finance, the central bank and other agencies with oversight mandate
for privatization and commercialization.
Our life is in crisis! I am sure the intellectuals know this. What I
don't know is whether we all feel disturbed each to the same extent
necessary for action.
For those who feel the need for urgent action, the theme of this
conference is of crucial importance because, the way to deal with a
situation when phenomena become so familiar that we really do not
recognize or care about them again is to transfer what is being
depicted to a 'sphere of new perception"! We should in other words,
defamiliarise the issue to force attention back to it. In literary
criticism this is called foregrounding or simply defamiliarisation. We
have to force the attention of our people back to the crisis in our
life through the resources of culture which gathers language and
literary studies under its wrings. To reap the rewards of our cultural
heritage, which itself continues to suffer neglect and corruption to
such an extent that it is in danger of disappearing , the educated
elite must take its responsibilities very seriously. Reviving our
culture will involve, among other things, talking about culture,
repeating to ourselves what we already know, trying to see old facts
in new light and hopefully by hard work and sagacity or by
serendipidity, we will find acceptable solutions to our problems.
There have been many definitions of culture. Here are four of them,
from the elevated to the comprehensive:
i. "the highest intellectual and artistic achievements of a group"
ii. "the transmission of behaviour as well as a dynamic source for
change, creativity, freedom and awakening of innovative opportunities"
iii. "Share skills, beliefs and traditions" and
iv. "the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and
emotional features of a society or social group, encompassing, in
addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together,
value systems, traditions and beliefs"
For groups and societies all over the world, cultural, is simply each
group's ways of living together. The most important fact about
culture, however, is its diversity as expressed in Article 1 of UNESCO
Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity
Cultural Diversity: the common heritage of humanity. Culture takes
diverse forms across time and space. This diversity is embodied in the
uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies
making up humankind. As a source of exchange, innovation and
creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as
biodiversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage
of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit or
present and future generations.
The point being made here is that the world is a world of diversity:
biodiversity and cultural diversity. "The earth is one but the world
is not. We all depend on one biosphere for sustaining our lives " but
each group or society of humankind creates its own elaborate,
culturally rooted ways of living together. In other words God has
demonstrated His preference for diversity both in humankind and the
culture and in the ecology. He has also created a unique language for
each culture to ensure effective and independent operation. In this
regard, language is the heart of a culture. When a language dies, the
culture atrophies and dies. Language is the hub of the wheel of
culture while other aspects are the spokes operating a robustly
effective feedback system. The great mystery of the origin of language
can never be solved. The constant belief is that language is God's
gift to man. The magical properties associated with languages and the
spoken word has strengthen this belief. Only God can confer such
powers! With language the people in a community possess the tool for
creating and recording knowledge in memorable fashions to lay the
groundwork for acceptable standards in all aspects of life to ensure
sustainable development and authentic continuity. Every culture
therefore has rules laying down what is allowable in particular
circumstances. The greatest emphasis is always placed on the careful
education of the child.
It is important to note that every culture has its own myths of the
origins of man and or language. There are almost 7000 languages in the
world. No one myth can attain the status of historical fact. And in
this regard, no one myth is superior to another. However, some
cultures have been able to popularize their own myths of origin mainly
through their aggressive religious evangelism, thereby virtually
transforming a mere myths to godly facts of history in the minds of
deluded adherents who now close their minds to edifying lessons from
other cultures. A good man of God should have an open mind but should
protect his own God-given culture. Mahatma Ghandhi said:
I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to
be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my
house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
Cultural diversity is indeed the common heritage of humanity. But
still more important are the developmental dimensions of culture. It
is this humanistic potential of culture that has engaged the active
attention of UNESCO for over three decades now. " . Development in
UNESCO's view, is a means of enhancing the relationship between
material and spiritual well being" of men, and only culture can
negotiate that.
A tradition is a custom or belief that the people in a particular
group or society have practiced or held for a long time, and a custom
is something that the people of a community or society always do in
particular circumstances because it is regarded as the right thing to
do. Language is the medium of operation and control for all the other
aspects of culture like the administrative, the judicial, the
religious, the educational and other systems. When a language dies the
culture dies.
However, there is tangible cultural heritage which may be seen and
touched, like great carvings and statues, paintings and monuments,
sites and landscapes, and there is intangible cultural heritage that
has no physical form. Examples include languages, oral traditions,
literature, customs, dance, rituals, festivals and the various skills
which constitute what gives cultural identity to a people.
It is the intangible aspect of cultural heritage that sustains the
tangible aspect because it is the intangible through the stories,
folktales, proverbs, idioms, taboos, the poetry, that teaches those
valuable ideas as dignity, hope, sense of duty justice, hard-work,
faithfulness, accountability, transparency, honour and other humane
qualities.
Culture is God's own way of organizing His peoples all over the world
in cohesive groups, each with its own peculiar skills and knowledge.
God knows the minutest aspect of every culture. Religion is just an
aspect of the culture. Religion is intended to ensure that the
Foundations of culture, the humane qualities of man remain stable.
Culture it is that makes the man. As a matter of fact, if your culture
has not socialized you into the acceptable standards of right and
wrong, if you have not internalized those humane qualities of
integrity honesty, love, accountability and so on, through your own
culture, there will be no foundation on which any religion can build.
In this regard being born again really means going back to your
God-given culture to lean how to be a good person.
The important point to emphasise here is that culture has crucial
implications for development. The fruits of intangible culture, the
humane qualities of honour, integrity and so on, ensure intangible
development, which is the development of the mind. This is different
from material development. Without intangible development there can be
no sustainable development. There is the tendency to define and
measure development through methods and measures that are primarily
material: building roads, factories and dams, buying cars, ships and
aircrafts. But the truth is that these material acquisitions cannot be
sustained by material means alone. To make these material wealth
socially sustainable, the people require not just money and skill but
also those humane qualities - honesty, dignity and so on. Other wise
omo ti a ko ko ni yoo gbe ile ti a kota.
We should realize that the material aspect of development imported or
dumped on us from abroad are not accompanied by the humane-quality
aspects Many African leaders erroneously believe that they can import
globalised ideas of legal monitoring of behaviour, forgetting that
ideas about dignity, honesty and so on, do not appear in generic and
universal terms. Different peoples articulate them in terms of highly
specific idioms of value, meaning and belief as contained in terms of
highly specific idioms of value, meaning and belief as contained in
their own God-given culture. This is what the young generation of
every culture must learn and imbibe from childhood through the
intangible aspects of their culture.
But, seriously speaking, given the social and political confusion in
which we are today - the cultural void and the moral crisis - how do
we go back to our culture? To answer this question, we shall need to
do a quick review of what really happened to us and our culture.
Fortunately, the whole story is so well known.
Our history shows that the great African Empires were culturally
developed. The social-cultural communities thrived and survived by
meeting their daily needs and most especially by guaranteeing
continuity through an effective process of socialization which ensured
that the ideas, norms, values and symbols of society were internalized
by the younger generations. The intangible cultural heritage in its
various aspects, invigorated the whole system. Language and its
literature took centre stage acting like a standard setting and
enforcing agent for the whole cultural society
-To be continued
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