A global village has the world become since the advent of the technological revolution and one of its offsprings, the social media, makes the dissemination of information very easy.
An incident which happened in Calabar has it that a man, whose dignified labour was accompanied by daily drenching of his clothes in profuse beads of sweat, acquired a motorcycle. He constantly enjoyed the service from his mechanical property until on Monday, March 25, 2019, a robber stealthily assailed him and tried to deprive him of it. He was activated by the adrenaline and energetically resisted the robber. Perplexed at how resilient the owner of the property was, the robber bathed him with fuel, set him ablaze and breezed out with the motorcycle. The police and others around went after him. He was caught and arrested while a few onlookers put out the fire on the resilient man and rushed him to the hospital.
On Tuesday, March 26, 2019, a throng of vexed individuals stormed the police station where the culprit was kept in custody, sought him out and burned him alive. When it was inquired of the crowd, by a few onlookers, the reason behind their setting ablaze the man and not letting anyone rescue him, they explained that the man whom he set ablaze the previous day kicked the bucket thirty minutes ago and they couldn’t let him die without avenging his death. The sympathizers walked away dumbfounded.
Various media could tag those avengers. A few people think the robber got what he deserved. The law, however, could find both parties guilty.
When we look through the lens of Thomas Hobbes’ ‘state of nature’, we see that he described human life as short, nasty, brutish, and wicked as a result of man’s self-centeredness. We may be right to claim that these men were blameless going by what the robber did. It was for the value of human life, and to salvage occurrences like the one above, that the likes of John Locke and Jean Jacque Rousseau introduced the general will, liberalism, social contract, democracy and similar forms of government.
Rousseau said, “I give up my rights, all men give up theirs and we choose one man who also give up his and we give him our rights as we saddle him with the responsibility to defend us” (my paraphrase). This was the beginning of ‘the government for the people’.
Jacque further explained that everyone could opine but to build a lawful society, every community should have a representative. Trust must be found in this social contract, responsibility must be taken, and the leader must be for the people. Perhaps that’s why he asserted: “man is free but is everywhere in chains, hence the more power man has, more chains are bound to him”. For a man who understands himself a steward to the people will not parade himself with shoulders high; he rather would dutifully shoulder his responsibilities and avoid damnation.
The series of events in Nigeria leading to the 2019 presidential election ‘til this moment paints a picture of the brutish state of nature in the country where strength was seen to be inflicting pain on others, coveting what others own. Those who lacked the physical strength in the words of Karl Marx found solace in religion. The only difference as it relates to Nigeria is the masking of the ‘state of nature’ in the frame of democracy.
It is no news that citizens, in some parts of the country, express their anger through jungle justice. Maybe the government should officially announce to all that we are back to the ‘state of nature’ and that jungle justice is the real deal so that no one is taken unawares anymore; so that no one reposes trust in the legal system and security agencies only to be disappointed.
Patriotism is nevertheless a call we must all answer. For its sake, let every man in his corner, at his pace and time strive to attain the lofty heights of peace; work together to remind the government of the social contract and that breaching it has consequences!
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The dictionary and so many other scholars have defined knowledge in the different ways but with emphasis on it as a “noun”. In practice, elites have termed knowledge to be skill and efficiency, society has termed it running streets, labour market terms it paper qualification, and for clarity sake in this work, it is termed ‘the known’; simply put, refined information. The philosopher Socrates said, “to know good is to do good, and not to know good is to do evil” which means that what you do or not do reflects what you know or don’t know (your action and inaction reflects your knowledge and ignorance), and as the work unfolds, the components of K such as culture, education, and skill acquisition, will be illuminated.
Academically education is basically divided into formal or informal education. Here, we will look at education from both the idealist and empiricist view. The idealist (idealism) which is championed by Plato, the philosopher conceives education from the Greek word “educere” which means to “lead out”. That is to say that man is born with an innate idea, there are things which one just knows how to do perfectly well or just understands so easily as though one has done that for a long while, this school of thought explains that it is so because one has known those things already, but is unaware of the existence of such abilities or ideas, so education becomes the way to lead such abilities and ideas out, bringing it to the open where the person is aware and makes use of them. For the empiricists (empiricism) the notion of education conceived by John Locke is derived from the Greek work “educare”, which means “to train or teach”. The idea behind this notion is that man was born ‘tabula raza’ which means ‘empty/blank slate’, this literally means that man knows nothing except what he has been thought by his environment or nurture. The point here is not state which school of thought has it right or wrong because they both make salient points which is the focus of this column. This point is that the essence of education is to lead out and to train or to teach; to bring to awareness by leading out that which is unseen but exists, one may refer to such as “potentials” and then, to teach that which is unknown, good enough they both work hand in hand, flowing from the unknown to the known. Why is this the case? Simply because every good teacher with the aim of having successful students must be to teach them effectively by relating from what he assumes or is certain that they already know, and every good student, who is not a paper student, (students who read or just cram to pass exams), relates to understands something new from what they already know, think of it, it is difficult to relate with something you have never seen before, if you are able to flow easily with something new, it simply because you have been able to relate that to something you already known, hence, the implication of Socrates’ Socratic method. Education on this level is basically about everything that can be known both by interest and necessity. Such includes, skill acquisition. For whatever you want to be (interest), acquire a skill that will help you achieve that and enhance the innate idea and ability that has prompted that within you(necessity), also pick a vocation that equips and develops you better for the kind of problems you want to solve(interest). Education is incomplete if self is not developed.
Merriam Webster defines culture to be the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religion or social group. In the 20thc, the subject social studies defines culture as the totality of a people’s way of life. Humans when thrown into existence stumble on circumstances in a bid to identify the essence of their existence and become accepted by each other in the society they find themselves, they unconsciously begin to come up with means and patterns which inversely is their response to challenges in their environment, gradually these patterns discovered in the face challenges and self-actualization become a way of life and a norm which over time metamorphose into the culture of a society and is passed on to generations. As the society grows and develops there may be a paradigm shift as a result of model crisis, and just like in science, there will be hypothesis, experiment, observation, test, theory, law and the cycle goes on, but the sole aim is to solve that problem. One may wonder what this may be driving at, the point is one fundamental knowledge that must be gathered is the knowledge of culture, in knowing the culture one understands “the why” behind the norms, standards and values of a people, this one knowledge is key to any successful revolution.