From the Arab Spring to the Wall Street, and to Moscow, the common denominator has been people rising spontaneously against tyrannical tendencies; economic and political woes.And the various governments totally powerless to stem the build ups; because, unlike before, when the means of news dissemination was mostly or exclusively television or radio or print, which were each singularly vulnerable to state clampdowns, the emergent parallel media of blogs, websites, and the general world of internet has made suppression much more difficult or impossible.Nationals now find themselves sharing, though one physical space, the geographic country, but effectively inhabiting different countries within that same country or space, depending on the medium of information embraced; those run by government apologists or those run by activist citizens.The incompressibility of the internet and its broadcast capability should be good news to any well meaning citizen of the world.It certainly is to me.Many a time, I have been at cross paths with a few individuals who find what I write throw them out of their comfort zones; for as many different reasons as the number of people that care to challenge.Sometimes the critique is humorous, other times, less so.And sometime, a song and dance is made of it with a few even demanding, just as would have been the case in Tunisia or Libya or Russia or similar tuffs, that the materials written be temporarily suspended or stopped or customised to moods and preferences.In global village voice, I saw the guy who set himself on fire protesting censorship and tyranny and the entire nation followed him to make Tunisia boil.In Russia, erstwhile conformist and pusillanimous writers fled from conventional media into the refuge and labyrinthine space of the web where governments and powerful or influential individuals, no matter how much they try, are totally neutralized rather than neutralize.For those of us in or from Africa and other places, this is the best gift we ever can hope for.Individuals within groups or tribes or governments can become so powerful or influential. Even the local journalists become scared of being seen to air opposition views or merely differing views.Now, oppositions can climb into the world of ether and unstoppably rain down their own views and perspectives unbothered by comfort zones.The world is changing for the better and the pace cannot be stopped.Tolerance of others views and styles is the only path left for those who wish to thrive.Because thriving demands that all views and styles come to the market to trade and the highest bidder, not the highest suppressor, bags the quarry .When people want to insist that others must see things their own way, sing only in tunes they can dance to, and speak only the words they understand or approve of, what you get in the fullness of time, when such self or group centred demands reach over a particular threshold, is either a stifling orthodoxy(conformism) or an Arab spring.I have never personally been happier than now; the limitless space of the internet no longer imposes a limit on the volume of what a man chooses to write nor does it have to pass through the subjective pruning of an editor or the whims of a censor or reader.And legalisms, if it comes to it, pleasantly lack arbitrariness.Those who find a particular internet piece relevant will read all of it and demand more, and those who dont, will delete.Tyranny comes when you not only delete (robbing self of possible, just possible wizening up) but want to demand that others delete or the writer quits.This is a common human tendency, but seems particularly worse or banal with the African psyche.Comfort of thought rather than rigor of thought monopolizes our styles and approach both at home and at work.And yet rigor, properly embraced, does generate its own lasting comfort.But comfort, not stiffened by the right dose of rigor, is a spineless and ephemeral delusion. But this is not a problem, if such comfort would solve our myriad problems from malaria to maladjustments.Africa can easily become the world of deleters, even within its own elite; intolerant as they often are to each others styles and voices.But I hope such intolerance no longer leads to sanguine battles triggered by selfish elites parading as paragons, as has happened in the past.This is unlikely though, thanks to same internet.In the past, everybody in a tribe or group could be herded down the same news lines by the main purveyors of the day and so whip up same or monolithic sentiments.Today, internet percolates between and within groups; you can say it force feeds across fault lines disallowing all but the most anachronistic, from monoliths and therefore, herd missteps.The fault lines that demagogues would traditionally exploit to rally their troops have become re-contoured by the new tectonics of the internet.In every group, a few always dominate the majority by their rhetoric or sophistry.This is natural phenomenon.What should not be natural is the few usurping the thinking capabilities of the many such that dissenting thinking, or outputs to such thinking, are penalised in de facto or de jure manners.And before you know it, comfort comes to reside only in thinking the same way, speaking the same way and writing the same way!When you find yourself, having, for lack of a mental space, to goose step behind a Fuhrer, the future is not difficult to imagine.It is this tendency that usually leads to self or group autolysis.Why, it ought to be asked, should any one( no matter their other concerns) want to be accomplice to such self extinction'Yet, it happens all too frequently because most of our African tyrants or leaders of thought are surrounded by pumpkin heads, groomed for the purpose or groomed by poverty and want.Or simply by the desire to want to belong.How Im scared to have such friends in such high places!Our duties as citizens is now reduced to merely ensuring that our different governments take care of power supplies; literally speaking.Dr. Fadipe can be contacted via fadipeb@cwdom.dm
Click here to read full news..
