A Recompiled Essay: March 6th 2009

A Recompiled Essay: March 6^th 2009

PLIGHT

OF THE

INTELLECTUAL

By Gbujama J.M.

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GRIEVIANCES

Political appeals for state reconfiguration are minute objections compared to grievances against the intellectual, with struggles for power; as the Gethsemane pretext goes before the ambush; they are starting to complain about you. There can be no reconfiguring if mortals remain a commodity, particularly in early childhood, serving as preferred value of gender and prohibitive overrides against every objective of cultural lineage and natural inclinations. Children for the most part are often evidence of origin and are an essential record in a collective growth process; thus a nation without children or of less concern to distinguish - is a fool’s paradise. This is the obvious destructive lacking of war never to be encouraged. Then again, there is a philosophy guided towards generational transformations and not simply the hypnosis of new shoes, but that of legitimacy - a truth defined as that which gives authority; for vagueness only begets vagueness.

Subsequently, is the idea that the state must remain; a spiritual, philosophical, scientific and social outgrowth - not - a second rate lackey of medical science. While of great import to the individual and society and to organizational policy, medicine cannot ignore the statistical death records that exist from excessive culture shocks for instance, in the use of convenient technology parallel with island mountain metaphors, underground base imagery or distant space stations where a single touch determines mortal fate. A control mechanism exhausting limited cerebral input yet expecting both clinical and sanitized performance. There is little reason to substitute the already vexing problem of policing with the ambulance or prison system for the asylum, gun for the needle, marital confidant for the psychologist's chair or medicine man. Despite altruistic claims these approaches are often reserved for matters of gravity and as with all, parity is severely affected. This is quite relevant in the development of intellectualism in that pluralist government by way of sympathy towards complex theories such as Kandeh's Reconfiguring State Authority is incomprehensible, if not radically simplified. There is the President in stage who remarked to his historian: why didn’t you vote for me, as was the contradictory, if I was busy doing that, you would not be president.

Therefore, were examinations made of the path the intellectual takes the world over, misfortune is discovered; that Rousseau died under mental scrutiny as did the Marque de Sade, while Kwame Nkrumah in exile. The pacifist thinker M.L. King on a hotel balcony, Gandhi under fire, Biko in prison, while Charles Darwin spent his last days on habitual strolls, defending a barrage of criticism more-so than in exaltation. It must be accounted that despite his Theory of Evolution he was not simply a confused and twisted Oliverian settling scores against the oppressive aristocracy with theories of man and monkey; on the contrary, his father was a physician and his grandfather the author of the bible on zoology, proving that there was in his lineage, medical and scientific respect for existence. As well, by way of religion and philosophy even though Jesus was in outright dissent of intellectuals, he was really opposed to their methodology, suggesting empathic heart think so to speak, not mind think - for he was one himself.

And his earthly reward?

IMPRESSIONS

One must consider this role to liberalize a discredited mode of governance really an issue of struggling with the very perception of despotism in government. The French have suggested government destroyed by way of anarchism - that the people should know that their form of government destroys individual lives. Yet, this far-reaching solution is usually undertaken by the inept. Consequently, common misapplications are met in dealing with the extremes of freedom and oppression and the existence of order and chaos. Opposite to the idea of freedom is not necessarily oppression but chaos - in migration, marketing and settlement. While order in and of itself can be oppression; the latter being very socially subjective, particularly in the expansion of police, security and court systems in rural areas. This is in no consideration of any of the predatory systems mentioned but that of a cultural system of cleansing, either way by modern or traditional means - that stampedes the very process it seeks to correct.

Generally, the era of the African intellectual in government has dwindled, Afrocentrism - a belief of Africa as center of the world, is manifested differently and challenged by techno-cultural adaptation, inter-continentals, consumerism and most of all traditionalism. This is perhaps the only legacy of multi-ethnicity, a more kaleidoscopic reality in view of cultural norms. Yet, despite the need to separate government from private wealth, because of this dwindling, there is need for cautious approach to whatever methods are employed in the wooing of government. The probability remains of these very elements becoming laboratories of extended experimentation, amalgamation and doom; reconfiguring perhaps - a formula for more confusion? For example, the effects of affordable film production on the status quo, the impact of Nigerian films for instance (and this is an industry aspect not a Nigerian problem) is most charismatically pertinent, as for the same reasons why there came many West Africans to the United States with names like Purple Haze or American Steve as quintessential markers. Reconfigurers must consider how these films affect voter-ship by way of persons understanding or misunderstanding their own very culture. Will the pool of leaders come from such industries if not to underestimate the power of stardom as happened in the USA, from Reagan to Schwarzenegger? Such choices made in representation marginalizing proficient politicos? Will these film stars and footballers be the future mayors and parliamentarians of West Africa given liberalized and historically uncommitted polities?

Again by way of impressions is the production Narnia for instance, not claiming any relevance yet of considerable impact on political and mythological imagery; being the kind of film production James Baldwin surely would not have passed in weaving his insightful commentaries on Hollywood into prose discourse, much like opinions on the film Carmen Jones (1954). Again, what possibly does that have to do with Black life is less than its superstitious bearing, to leave it at that, as an Irish spun fantasy surely destined to dazzle all children. Yet sadly it is the kind of film at what time grown up, the child would be disappointed to have ever admired. If ever a tribal native wandered into a distant colony settlement then coined a name for it; that name would have most likely been, Narnia. With spirited animals in part, cameo appearance of Santa Clause, as well as the noble Lion and Phoenix, Narnia seems a fashionable awakening of a commercial trademark, government seal, university crest or sovereign Guinea. The fable is a fantasy that oddly connotes the struggle for some manner of historic standard using political characters that do not develop into their cause, such as a little girl weeping for a lion she barely knew. Further added is the necessity of a royal promise; a cynicism expressed even by C.S. Lewis himself in poetry - like a metropolis of financial corruption:

O oysters said the carpenter

You’ve, had a pleasant run!

Shall we be trotting home again?

But the answer came there none

And this was scarcely odd

Because they’d eaten everyone

Without doubt the most impressionable Narnia character signifying a European political mania with a creature extinct to its continent - is the Lion. Panther Leo Europea found in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal is claimed to have vanished in AD 100 Greece. Whether this is believable is dubious, considering that even for West Africans, Lions are rare. Nevertheless, it is perhaps this admiration for the mighty Lion that feeds the adolescent appetite; this being, no commentary on cinematic symbolism which from an African perspective is another example of derogatory faith of literary trust in the mythos of legitimate modern origins. It is a war filled, mythological and destructive world nonetheless, most likely interpreted in the eyes of African tribes of the colonial past as the spatiality; the sorcery craft of British expansion, Rhodesia and the North American continents; those inexplicably altered states. However, there is an implicit difference between corruption and disruption in these examples of which the distinctions are subtle existents. Certainly, to make such distinctions there would have to be some paradigm of order from which to base the appearance of the fractal on intellectual thought.

COMPOSITIONS

When the fractal is origin of that which is considered order, then it is termed as corruption. When the fractal appears as a result or outcome of order it may be termed as a disruption. This is relevant in that organizational and individual compositions even if politically considered different, government versus individual responsibility, still rely on similar notions of order. For example, reference is made that the contemporary nation-states of Mali and Ghana are not the past empires. This is significant in regards to what was colonial and the development of the modern African State in relation to catholic compositions. Two reasons for any given impresario; first, many West African nations simply do not fit the example of settlements in which there was Roman Catholic colonial surrogacy, like Haiti for example or Ireland. In Sierra Leone, for instance, the earlier territory MendeLand in the provinces, along with the post-colonial or central government in Freetown had to often balance the cross border pull of the history of ancient Empires and traditionalism - on the catholic influence. Therefore, result of a stout Muslim presence, there came little complaint from Freetown about Catholicism. Inharmoniously, while the decay of Europe is ancient, the decay of Africa on the other hand is often modern; and while the Catholic aura from Europe is multiplied by the Vatican proximity to Ancient Roman ruins, the African village is surrounded by unfinished structures. The question may then be asked of the better means of civilization and its paths, depending therefore on interpretation; on whether or not a people’s integrity lies in grandeur or simplicity, whether in the pyramids of Egypt or the simple spearhead of a Kalahari bushman; whether on the ornate gold of the east western Akan, or as in the case of the rural Mende, a simple country cloth, centuries of crop rotation and generally acclaimed, system of government. Therefore, what is roused in the composite formulation of the intellectual is often not only history but a continuum.

Continentally, there is often the ponder of implicit standardizations to consider such as the name Stanlake Samkange, as being compositions that do not only suggest institutional origins - but further argued a systemic unification or less ambitious, an encounter of the institutional. However, the key here is the consideration of systemic standardization. In such examples it is the particular insistence of the designation Stanlake Samkange that suggests disruption more so than the implicit fact of bearing such an alternative. Such insistence indicates that results were consequence of institutional orders thus were disruptive – not fractal in origin. Quite recently and unrelated, the relationship between corruption and disruption is best exemplified in the idea of the homosexual marriage. In such cases, the fractal (homosexuality) is origin of considered order (marriage) and therefore is corrupt. This example may intensify by attempts to foster progeny and becomes disruption. In the first example, there are obviously less complications without the progeny, placing social and religious objections to be the obscurer of the more implicit objection - that of biology. However, the political ramifications of the latter contradict arguments of cellular zygote formation in male-female unification, thus leaving a hypothesis of cell reproduction cloning as the remaining option common to both true and science fictional projections. However, this may not be a concluding option either, since no matter how far removed; there is a disruptive implication in the idea of unicellular origins. Notwithstanding, even if to explore this notion further in respect of the unicellular origins of living things, the fractal (multi-cellularism) in this case would contradict the very idea of the exploit of unicellular origins (cloning). Therefore, only multi-cellulars rightfully considered; since it is multi-cellularism that allows for further consideration of the fractal (Stanlake Samkange) and thus an implied standard; which in some manner qualifying theories of awareness as being essential in defining existence.

TESTIMONY

Still, what is this plight, this dilemma of the intellectual in reason? Conceivably it is that there must be an attentiveness; that in the absence, the use of ancient African history as distraction has been witnessed, to off-set the contravention of basic rights by invading legal group-systems, postulating as regulators, yet facilitating a chaos of destabilization to socio-political modules and cultural paradigms that underlie. As result, the rapid construal of projectiles designed to overcome a once perceived status of non-development have introduced a conflict of progressive value in a re-commercialized integrity. Notwithstanding, is the technological outreach and constructions of new forms of modernity claiming to destine a Borgean envelopment of purpose, whereby at least theoretically, still not conceiving in like regard, the long-term tempo of cultural development. It is a mechanism set in place perhaps by modernity’s dependency on itself; therefore money is accepted long distance by wire or by road transport – the result of boundless production. Perhaps these are the questions writers and state reformers particularly in rural Africa should bring to query; dealing with the recent saturation of the market place with a high proliferation of images and whether any resource of intellectual production can realistically fill in the gap or close the need for content; the latter of which given very little, was celebrated widely in African, western and political literature in a most excellent form. Also to consider is whether a failure do so can aptly be termed a political and cross cultural affront that weakens the resolve and clarity of the consuming populace; specifically referred to as the issue of standards of productiveness. For instance, as a writer in contact with many written forms it was peculiar how it was that after reading countless works by fictional, academic and professional authors, it was late in experience the brilliant work Kossoh Town Boy was met, up till now poorly introduced as comparable station to for instance Camara Laye’s The African Child, due to the politics of market and social restrictions. These are the types of intellectual gaps urgently in need of response, refilling and revisit - gaps most pertinent to research and its developments.