Are we born good or evil?
As a little child we were taught about being good and evil but the path we follow totally depend on us, because no one is wicked, sadistic, murderer, thief… No one is born kind, wise, mature, honest, just, right. Nothing is defined in advance, except our genetic and physical constitution. Everything else is about social and economic environment, family education and choice.
Family and environment
The environment is the family in the broad sense or simply the society in which one lives, in which one evolves and with which one regularly interacts during one’s life. This environment “imposes” gestures, codes, habits, realities, a way of thinking and seeing the world (the paradigm) that can sometimes be in opposition or even at war with the one that is transmitted to us in our homes (family or country of origin).
Influence of environment
The question of the influence of education is similar to the impact of the environment, with the difference that it is people with “authority” over an individual who teaches him how and what to think, how to say things and what to say, how to do things and what to do. But education (of the family or of its “clan” group) can be, when it is failing, neglected or non existent, that is, without follow-up, beaten by the education of the “street”. To put it another way, education or the way of doing things, talking and thinking that the individual will acquire by himself from other groups of people that he has chosen to attend. Because unlike the family, you can choose your friends and associates.
To the question how does one become a “villain”(We talk here about fiction but it can also be about real life), the track to follow is in one of the three categories “educational” above. Because it is this information or misinformation that can make the individual take regular, repetitive and persistent decisions that will lead him on a path other than that which can be considered “the right way”. Darkness of the “dark side of the force” is a slow but steady process between trying to go back and (self) correct. But without firm, regular and palpable help, the good intentions of the person who comes to help will be useless and futile.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Read also Importance of Mythology
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––
But we can say what we want and find all the reason we don’t want , the question of good and evil is not a simple thing and the Ancient Jamaanu is trying to say it through one of his characters. Often, initially, the goal of a person who wants change is always or sometimes commendable. But depending on the opposition he is going to encounter, he can either stay in what might be called “the good”: what is good for the interest of the community, or sink into “the evil”: what is bad for the community.
An African term, called Ubuntu, says “I am because we are”. It sums up well what a society, a group of groups, whose ultimate responsibility is to ensure that everyone feels good, is to value while keeping his own specificity without having to renounce, to fade, to diminish or to be silent. what he thinks for others, to please them or to be like them.
The specificity of the individual in African society has always been emphasized to such an extent that; before the invasions of Africa, societies were in a near perfect balance, in a fairness and equality almost perfect (but perfectible) that we did not ask the question of giving more power, right to women, for example. They could claim the same rights as men without debate or quarrels because it was so. And it is because the African society has gradually stopped being “WE” with the destructions related to foreign invasions, that it has become more and more “I”, unbalancing the patient and long work, on many thousands of years ago, made by our ancestors well before the erection of the first pyramid.
African Fundamentals
We have to go back to the fundamentals that define us, as Africans, but also as human beings. In the middle of that humanist marathon, we need to constantly ask our soul: “am I right and just as I want others to be?”. Because the “Evil” isn’t just the other. The evil forces could be any of us but sometimes we don’t even acknowledge it as we should.
Recent Comments