Culture Inspires and Secures the mind of the Child for the Future

There is beauty and power in being who you are. There is respect in indigenous creativity and innovation. 

It is only when we teach our children about their cultures and the greatness of their ancestral past which they must draw inspiration from to rebuild their heritage before we can secure the future. The effect of the hatred of our cultural patterns and ideologies is what we are experiencing today. We have lost everything that defines us willfully ignorantly. The most disturbing is that, despite our knack for foreign beliefs and ideologies, we are still backward. If we believe our cultural values were barbaric, hence our passion for foreign cultures, why then are we still backward and stagnant?

We said our traditions were 'evil' and replaced them with 'pure' ones from Arabia and Europe, how come we are more brutal and destructive now with the 'pure' foreign beliefs and cultures? How come the world now study us to understand poverty and pestilence but continues to study our ancestors to understand greatness and mysterious organisation of ideas like the Nubian and Kemetic pyramids, the Great Benin Kingdom and its Queen Idia mask, the Amazon of Dahomey, Great wall of Nwanemutapa Kingdom, Ife bronze, Dogon of Mali and others? Those ancestral 'evil' days were surely better than the modern 'pure' era.

We were not backward in our ancestral days. That is a fact. We were only peacefully gullible. Our ancestors accepted foreigners with open minds and arms, partly due to their limited exposure and partly due to nature's over-convenience, so much so that their hospitality was used and turned against them. They dealt with a better prepared and well armed Arabian and European contemporaries. That a thief stole from you or a rapist was able to rape your daughter at gunpoint proves that the thief or rapist was better prepared and well armed for the heinous crime while you were innocently ignorant. That was the fate of our ancestors. 

After the robbery and rape, rather than sit, put our brains to task and map out plans to get out of our quagmire and secure our lands despite our modern education, we accepted and over-subscribed to the robber and rapist's definition of us. We accepted the robber and rapist's beliefs and ideologies wholeheartedly. While the robber went back to his land, modified his belief, never allowed dogmatism to reign in his mind, embraced science and technology, we continue to passionately defend his belief in our land and refuse to think out of the box. We continue to breed children in that line of mental incarceration so much so that we prefer to run and escape to the land of those who robbed and raped us, even if the sea will consume us, than build our own land.

African migrants trying to cross into Italy. They are youthful, vibrant and energetic but they prefer to risk their lives on the sea than use their youthful energy to make revolutionary changes in their countries. That is a sign of a conquered people.

By our mode of thinking and actions, we have accepted that we are a conquered people and we are helpless and maybe, hopeless to do anything. When solutions stare us in the face, we turn our eyes away. As long as it is not foreigners who are proffering the solution, we will block our ears. Whatever foreigners in Europe or Asia say is all we love to hear. What does it cost to think, map out sustainable plans and be resolute to build our land so that our descendants will not suffer like us again? Currently, we are already creating a future in which the innocent children of today will have to live in slavery tomorrow. What does it cost to embrace our heritage and creatively innovate our way out?

Culture and Science: A Wake-up Call for Africans

Each time I am in a position to explain the idea of culture to the children and young ones with impressionable minds, I usually think of the most simplest method that can be easily understood by them. It is in the quest of thinking of such a method that the idea of blood and physical appearance struck me. I am a strong believer in culture and I take special interest in science and technology. These are three formidable pillars of societal development and advancement. Culture builds the mind, science advances the mind. Culture is the foundation of a house, technology aids the design and aesthetics.

Culture is our physical appearance while science and technology represent the blood cells. In other words, science and technology are universal like the blood cells in humans while culture represents our physical appearances and differences. Every human being on earth possesses the blood cells; no one has a pink or yellow blood, it is the same RED BLOOD. However, we all have different physiognomy. This is instructive in itself. Science and technology, beginning from the existence of the first humans till the modern era, can be tapped and developed by any serious-minded society. They have been advanced by different people of different ages; from the first great Nubia-Kemetic civilisation in Africa to the Greco-Roman and Persian civilisations, down to Asian civilisations. Science and technology like the blood cells, belong to all humans but culture like the human physical appearance is unique.

Physically, it is not usually difficult to know a Chinese, an Arab or an African. What does this tell us? It shows that they possess certain things that are naturally special to them. This is what culture stands for. The Europeans and Asians understand this fact and they have continued to maintain their civilisations but how about the Africans? The Africans are the only set of people on earth today who exist in a state of confusion. They fight desperately to destroy their physical appearance literally and culturally. Some bleach their skins to beat the snow of Europe to the game while some simply tell you their cultures are 'archaic'. Then you ask, what happens to innovation? Everything in life has its phases. Innovation is the only concept that makes all things to be relevant.

Africans, rather than be ingeniously culturally Innovative, would prefer to be culturally enslaved by others. That is why they try to be more Royal than the Queen, holier than the Pope, more Jewish than the Rabbi and more Islamic than the Grand Mufti of Arabia. Can you ever hate your skin and love yourself? The result of hating your skin is bleaching. If you love the skin, you will do everything possible to improve it and that will build your beauty and uniqueness. It is the same with your culture. If you love your culture, you will separate the stones from the grains. You will be creative and innovative in building it than condemning it. 

Can you ever compare a bleached skin to the natural pink skin of any European? Meanwhile, the African blood is also contaminated. The average African does not understand or has refused to understand the power of science and technology in the globalised world. He remains attuned to miracles than surgical procedures. Whilst others build their health system to be medically fit by being scientifically and technologically creative, the African is religiously innovative; building the largest religious edifices and procuring private jets for heavenly spiritual evangelism.

If Africans are really serious about the daily lamentation of being underdeveloped, then we must begin to bring our minds back home. Europeans or Arabs will not build our homelands for us. They are also fighting for their survival and progress and they do not care who is enslaved or trampled upon for them to keep rising. Culture is a formidable foundation. It tells us who we are and how we must remain relevant. In its history, we learn where we began from and understand how we will be able to formulate implementable policies that will get us out of our quagmire. 

Culture is not static, it must grow in line with human creativity without losing its essence. This is the reason why cultural innovation is vital. Rather than lampoon what we have, we should put our brains to task and improve it. Pointedly, science and technology must not be joked with. If we do not dust ourselves off and begin to invest massively in the scientific and technological revolutions sweeping the world, we will remain a conquered people.