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Every where there is a gathering of human beings, the people there tend to
try and exercise power and influence on each other for one reason or the other.
Each individual seeks to exert some influence in the social stratosphere in which he
is living. Man being a social being always seeks for some level of acceptance with
the people he is living with. Unfortunately, not everybody is good at behaving in a
way that is commendable to human society or socializing very well. This is
dangerous as it leads to a situation where people avoid mixing with such a person
and the individual is isolated from his immediate community. As a result, the
individual finds it difficult to exercise power and influence and gain great wealth. No
matter how many brilliant ideas such a person has, he will not be listened to
because in the first place, people stay away from such an individual and ignore him
or her. As life or society is a game of power, the person becomes crushed by the
powerful forces in human society and the individual will tend to feel that life is
unfair. To avoid being discriminated against, an individual must learn to behave in a
courteous and socially acceptable way in public as his very life and survival may
depend on it. One thing I have observed is that people judge other people on first
impression. That is they form opinion of people based on how such a person
presents his or herself to them. When in a gathering of people, an individual must
exude confidence and boldness and must sound as assertive as possible. This gives
his fellow human beings the feeling that he has a lot of power and that he is very
intelligent and powerful. Life itself is an art. What I mean by this is that we have to
project a make-believe impression of ourselves when in front of people so as to gain
recognition and power. If we act too naturally and showcase the bad side of us, we
will be underrated and cheated by people around us. Like an actor in a movie screen
we have to take up different characters in front of people. The worst mistake
anybody can make is to behave strangely as that will result in isolation and
persecution. People easily notice a person that is strange and they tend to believe
that something is wrong with such a person. In an attempt to understand a strange
person, people will come up with all sorts of bizarre ideas and myths about such an
individual and the person will be stereotyped.
The quest for money and power is very important in a gathering of human
beings. In most major cities of the world people run around from morning to evening
looking for money to make themselves comfortable. In fact, I have come to the
contribution that the average human being is greedy and covetous and if not for the
existence of law and police in a society, nobody will be safe. The quest for money
always results in bloodshed, hate, animosity and sheer violence. If you put between
10 to 20 people in a place for some time, there is going to be crime in such a place.
Somebody is bound to steal something. The quest for money leads to prostitution as
spreading your legs for some one seems to be the easiest way to get money.
Fortunately or unfortunately, money and sex are two powerful forces in human
society. You can basically define society with these two concepts. One major
problem I believe women have is that they are usually in a position where they are
defined by their sexuality. To women this may seem modern or fashionable but it
often leads to disaster. When women are defined by their sexuality, they are often
used for sex, treated like prostitutes and they do not make any meaningful
contribution to human society.
On the other hand, I have observed that women use sex as a weapon to get
money and power from men and men try to use sex to dominate and humiliate
women. This relationship is complex and I think both sexes should realize that they
both have different qualities and try to understand each other better. One thing I
have noticed is that politics is not only apparent in a formal system of Government,
it is also present anywhere there is a gathering of human beings. The most effective
way to emerge a leader is to give people the impression you have ideas of your own
and that you can help them to solve their problems.
In a certain group of people or any social gathering where people stay for
some period of time, one thing you will notice is that people tend to divide
themselves into different groups. Some people will make only 3 or 4 friends in the
midst of 20 to 30 people and then not talk to anybody else. Anybody seen as weird
will have no friends and then be discriminated against. This will sooner or later
result in conflict and social disorder. This is because when the isolated person takes
note of this, he will start fighting back and will try and do anything possible so as
not to be ignored. This could result in acts of extreme violence by the individual
which could be seen as crazy but is just an attempt by the individual to make
everybody understand him or herself better. There is no worse crime you can do to
a human being than to isolate him. Such a person starts feeling frustrated and
angry with the world around him and in some extreme cases it could lead to
insanity.
One reason we are not making progress in Africa is that we are too traditional
and we think in a group. Most Africans are so close to their families that they do not
travel and are too afraid to be different. In Africa, if your father is something, then
you must be that particular thing. You cannot initiate a new idea or chart the court
for a new way to do things. The average African leaves in his father’s shadow.
Most societies in the world (no matter how civilized) sprang from a primitive
past. The tragedy is that this primitives inherent in our past still hunts us up till
now.We still have a fantasy for primitive things like cannibalism, violence, belief in
spirits and worship of idols, rites, rituals, wild sexual orgies and ultimately the
enslavement and subjugation of women as mere sexual objects. I will take Nigeria
as a case study. In Nigeria of today, women are being exploited at a very high level.
A lot of sexual harassment is taking place in schools and at various industries and
places of work. The average lady who is looking for a job finds out that she has to
succumb to sex in order to keep her job and even continue having sex with her male
employees. I believe part of the reasons why this is happening is that in the
primitive past of most cultures (including the local Nigerian cultures here), women
were treated like objects to be acquired after winning a power game. (this may be
after wining a war). For example due to the primitive nature of ancient societies,
soldiers that conquered a country simply took the women of that village or country
as their wives without any delay. Women were seen as reward for winning a war.
The present modern civilization we have is very young (less than 500 years old) and
the primitive ideas of the past have not left the mind of many young man. As a
result, most men still see women as mere objects or reward for conquest. The
primitive desire to dominate women is still there and so it manifests and showcases
itself as sexual harassment or exploitation. After all the man is head of a company
and is now rich and needs to have 1000 wives like king Solomon of old.
Besides, nature created the male sex drive to be wild and without restrains or
boundary. Culture may try to tame this but it does not always work. The average
male is sexually attracted to at least 4 women in a day. Nature did not create men
with the ability to resist sex. This creates a problem because no matter how civilized
a society is, the men will hunger for sex and try and exploit women for it.
Apart from this, nature designed the average male to be extremely aggreisive
and with a large tendency towards violence. Biological research has shown that the
brain of the male is conditioned to aggressiveness. Now culture may try to stem this
violent tendency but it does not succeed. In fact in my former University (Babcock
University) there was a lot of fighting in the male hostels no matter the rules and
regulations the authorities imposed on the students. The basic male instinct
towards violence and sex is glaring when you get into slums and ghettos where poor
people live. There you see a lot of street fights between different gangs and
sometimes even rape. In fact, it is due to the primitive and violent tendencies in
human beings that the police and other law enforcement agents exist in every
society in the world. A society without any law enforcement agents will send human
beings down to a primitive and unjust society.
This attitude and trend is also very noticeable in a country like South-Africa
where there is a lot of crime, violence, rape and xenophobia (i.e.dislike and open
violence against foreigners). The men there fight and get violent at the slightest
provocation and the women are raped anyhow. I believe the men there are merely
expressing their violent, primitive instincts. We human beings have a history of
hating and persecuting anybody that is different from us and this primitive attitude
is embedded in most cultures of the world. It stems from a primitive past in which a
warrior that wanted his people to be great, he invaded the next village and killed
the entire population of the people he invaded to ensure total conquest and glory to
his mother land. In time, the people that were conquered grow to hate their
oppressors and then the conquerors also despise the people they have ravaged.
This results in hatred and cultural discrimination that goes on for centuries. In fact
history is just the record of one war after the other and many races of the world
have been wiped off the face of the earth because of these wars.