In the words of Prof. Makau Mutua: Today I don’t need any crystal ball to tell you what you know, but which you deny. We are a mediocre country, and we know it. We are malignant, uncouth, corrupt, and – get this – cursed with an evil eye. But we weren’t always so little, small, and spiteful. We used to dream big. But our dreams died. Now we have nightmares – and night sweats. We’ve become a defensive, easily slighted nation. We are an epithet-riddled people. Our mouths need to be washed with soap. Our hate-dripping fingers shouldn’t be allowed near a keyboard, or keypad. Which begs the question – why have our brains shrunk? Are we “devolving” instead of “evolving?” Here are five unarguable secrets we are mediocre. First, we’ve “outsourced” our brains – and inner conscience – to mobs. We no longer think as individuals, but as mobs. We are no different from a herd of buffalo. Look – “tribal identity” is the first thing you most want to know about any Kenyan you meet. Admit it – that’s what you hear in the person’s name. Bingo – Makau must be Kamba, Githongo a Kikuyu, Ochieng a Luo. That’s how you decide into which “mobs” you will “confess” or which political cartels you will support. We’ve become Pavlovian dogs – we “salivate” on cue upon seeing our “mob.” We lose our individual agency within the tribe. Full professors become tribal bloviators. They revert to nature, and start crawling on all fours. Tell you what – the tribal mob robs us of our intellect, and turns us into morons. Our noggin becomes an empty calabash. Our heads become incubators of genocidal thoughts. That’s not as big of a leap as you think. If you doubt me, flash back to the 2008 Eldoret Kiambaa church fire. Our state’s – and society’s – proclivity for anti- intellectualism is woven around the tribe. It’s all about “eating” or looting, to be less euphemistic. Like maggots, we look to the state for pork when “ours” are in power. That’s why power is a zero-sum game. Never mind the existence of so-called devolved counties. The same folks who yesterday used to “eat” in Nairobi are now pillaging county governments.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 04:53:36 +0000
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