I have spent a lot share of time staring at the challenges and problems of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. Where is our world going? What do we want from and for our world, nation, and ourselves? Why are we wealthier but not happier? Why do we have so much more choice in our lives, but still seem unable to choose the things that matter? How can we tackle the big collective problems, such as illiteracy [amid an information explosion], hunger [especially in the developing world], crime, diseases, and environmental threats, while retaining our freedoms? This is freedom of choice and attendant responsibility thereto, freedom to live, freedom to express ourselves, freedom to free association. At least, freedom as granted by the constitutions, and UN charter of fundamental human rights…living in a beautiful time in history.
How can we rebuild a sense of community in an increasingly atomized world? The honest answer to these questions is that we don’t yet know. Only GOD knows. We live in the age of PARADOX. We fail to even ask or intentionally refuse to ask these questions. The reason is that we can’t comprehend an existence beyond the disjointed and the anxious. It’s not that life is without joy; the issue is firstly the strenuous effort required to live in the 21st century is terrific. Secondly, perhaps where life is taking us to be is rather unpredictive.
As a society, we are wealthier than ever before. When I was a child mentioning a Million Naira is staggering, whooping, and seldom. Today, saying Trillion Naira is already commonplace. We benefit from more material goods, and the huge opportunities created by new technology and our horizons have been widened enormously through international travel. But we are not a happy society. Individuals and families feel pressurized and anxious. We face worrying new threats and challenges, such as climate change. In the midst of all these, politics seems to offer us fewer clear-cut choices. Yet we all need politics because it is an arrangement to gain and control the machinery of governance to rule or serve the people. Our horizons often feel like they have shrunk to the next payday or shopping trip. We have more choices as consumers but often feel powerless to control the big things in our lives. Not only that; even the small things of our make-up say emotions, temper, mood, habits, etc. Our TVs and Cables have more channels that if stacked as pages will be more voluminous than the Oxford Pocket English Dictionary. It’s even becoming difficult to know who ‘we’ are. Society is being so stretched by uncontrolled free markets that any notion of solidarity is reaching a tipping point. Only 24 hours we stay in power, we tend to forget we have lived 50 years as paupers or peasants. We forget our colleagues who elected or nominated us for the power seat.
Let’s see the story of the baby girl that was told who was blind but can now see. She is a perfect example of many. There was a blind girl who hated herself and the world because she was blind (of course). She hated everyone, except her boyfriend. He was always there for her. She told her boyfriend, “If I could only see the World, I will marry you”. One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her. When the blind girl surgery’s bandages came off, she was able to see everything including her boyfriend. She was extremely happy and elated. The boyfriend asked her, “Now that you can see the World, will you marry me?”
The girl looked at her boyfriend and saw he was blind. The gory sight of his closed eyelids shocked her. She hadn’t expected that. The thought of seeing/looking at the closed eyelids for the rest of her life led her to refuse to marry him against her earlier promise that if only she can see the world, she would marry him. Her boyfriend left her in tears and days later wrote a note to her saying: “Take good care of your eyes, my dear; for they are yours, they were mine before they became yours”. This is how the human brain often works when our status changes. Only a very few remember what life was like before and who was always by their side in times of most painful situations.
The middle classes are beginning to feel some of the anxiety of those on lower incomes. Already their population is insignificant in my country. We virtually have the top and low-class income earners. The working class has been ignored, patronized, or even vilified, only being remembered ceremoniously on May 1- Workers’ Day of every year.
Our lives have always been complex and differentiated, but threads traditionally bound us together: from health, collapsing standard of education, and mass transit transport to a tangle of cultural connections such as we have in sports, music, and via television. These are fast disappearing. Wickedness is at the extreme. The poor cheated fellow seekers and thought that the rich got rich like that. Don’t mention bloodshed. It seems people prosper in frivolities – perhaps not lasting type. But do they care?
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