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WHERE ARE THE GOOD MEN?

good-men

I do not feel compelled to write anything about this subject, I only sense an urgency. I also do not believe that anyone has a complete answer to the stated question, but we all know in part and till the day we breathe our last, we will always know in part. All we do is to strive towards more understanding to improve the quality of our lives and decisions. However, responsibility places upon us the need to share with others the little things which we understand, have applied, and have made our lives better by. We communicate these things to help others in the choices they face, and to strengthen their wills to resolve for the best in the face of constraining choices. It is with such careful assertion that I contribute to answering this key question, especially because it seems to be a predominant issue with a lot of women, particularly those who extol virtue and value.

Every time I encounter this question, it is easy to claim that there are more women in the world today, so what does one expect? When there is disproportion in numbers, absolute pairs becomes nearly impossible. So with more women, it follows systematically that there will be a problem in finding men for each woman. This is however a simplistic argument, as no one has ever tried to explicate on this argument in any society or at any time, and to come up with satisfactory recommendations on what must be done. If so, I would be the first to suggest that cloning be used. When parents have a female child, they should promptly clone the male who would be an acceptable mate, and spare the female the horrors of searching for her partner. I guess if such a suggestion were to be carried out, people will be mistaking other men as their mates, since most clones may come from the same source of genetic composition cloned over and over. Let me wisely abandon these thoughts for those more creative in mind projections to make such future permutations.

While I agree that good men are getting increasingly hard to find, I do not subscribe to the thought that they are of a dwindling population or have become an endangered specie. I believe that certain conditions have arisen in our world to create a warping of perspectives on family and relationship issues. This has subsequently led to the acceptance of certain views that has refocused human advancements on individualism and intellectualism. These have become the defining concepts of the modern day. It is the ear of the glorification of self and intelligence, where everything must be explained in factual and tangible terms, and must be accepted and approved of by the individual to be taken as true. While this has led to major advancements in human societies, in terms of research and development, it has created a gulf in the fabric of human relationships. The emphasis on self and personal power and achievement has weakened the structures of mutual dependency on which families and communities were built. So we see the gradual disintegration of families and society into seeming irreconcilable fragments. Success and morality are now personally defined, reducing the possibilities of objective discussion of differing opinions, which is a hallmark of group settings.

The combination of the Hippie movement and the sex revolution of the 1960s brought with them the demystification of sex and its appurtenances all on the platter of ‘freedom’, although this also could be traced back to Freudian writings. Freedom was now defined as the unrestricted capacity to do what one deems fit, except of course that which is prohibited by written laws. Freedom was no longer the liberty to do what is right, but what was right in ones own eyes. Of course sexual conservativeness was promptly thrown out of society’s window. Young people especially caught the bug and began experimenting with their sexuality, and this gave rise to the unconstrained sexual behaviour. Much of youth culture centered on music and sex, and the ability to identify with this registered one as a modern being. More discreet copies as homosexuality, pornography and hard core came ad free flowing information, and many assumed political dimension.

Though these all brought to the fore the complex nature of the human personality, it also gave a covert authority to act out our sexual behaviour freely without recourse to any value or virtue. Sex was seen as a natural response of human engagement, so why repress it in the mind or confine it to relationship arrangements like marriage. Silently also women, who enjoyed the new status of the feminist movement and the ‘free woman’, were empowered in the new sexual liberation. In the late 70s through 80s, the number of young unmarried females who practiced sexual freedom far outstripped the males who were perceived to be the dominant specie in all facets. The result of this was that males became more driven by the large pool of ‘sexual resources’ they could draw from. If a man can sleep with at least one woman a day, why commit to one? On the other hand, I believe, more women prefer a steady partner although there are exceptions to the rule.

Today, what we see is that we are living out the effects of a generational shift in ideology. More and more men find pleasure in remaining ‘uncommitted and unresponsible’ to anyone, whilst still having their sexual needs met. Truthfully, men are in possession of a powerful sexual drive that takes a high sense of self control to deal with. But with more and more choices of sexual escapades, that virtue is hardly practiced. So we are faced with a situation that overfeeds the male libido and provides the right parameters for non-commitment. Women are also not left off in this wave of the free sexual choices. While many still traditional virtues of sexual conservatism, others have given into the pressure or given up on their values. Some argue, have premarital sex or multiple sex partners doesn’t make you a bad person. But I wonder if one cannot control sexual urge, what else can be controlled? In all this, I still ask if good men are a fallacy? Indeed no one can claim to be all good, for that is a quality reserved to the divine. We all struggle with weaknesses, which are meant to be conquered and controlled.

Good men are those that hold worthwhile values, and respect a woman and understand commitment. They know that sex is an honourable thing, meant to create a lasting bond with a partner. They understand the role of a family as the unit of society, and are poised to establish one, contributing positive offspring to their communities. They aren’t supermen, but they are willing to work hard to provide for their families, to educate their children, and to uplift moral excellence in their immediate spheres of influence. In my goings in a complex society like that which I live in, I have found that they abound and are fully guarding of their ways. I have found also that they are in more supply than their opposites, and this is what leaves me wondering how comes they then seem to be in short supply? Am I living in a dream land or am I interpositioning my idealisms into our tangible reality? Whatever I think, I still find the truth to be that which society refuses to believe as true. There are good men, they far outnumber the not-good ones, and they are getting hooked with mates all around us. Some women agree that there are indeed good men, but when I asked the same question on my status message on Facebook, below is what a few conclude about them:

1. In a far faraway island.
2. …in d tombs.
3. In their world of pleasure.
4. They are now women
5. Lazy, dead, gay, or married…
6. They are on leave of absence
7. What do you need them for?? Absolutely nothing.

The above shows how negative the perceptions have become, and to this end, many women are giving up on the idea of finding a good man. Standards have been lowered for anything acceptable and they assume that the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the expedient. Another evidence is that many women now settle for a man through which they can at least have a child. They don’t care about the outcome of the union, they just need a child. In a restaurant in New York, with a few friends, one of them resignedly stated that she was traveling to Europe for holidays, but then whispered to me that she was going there to get pregnant. She has given up hope on finding a man who is willing to settle down. How true that this pervades society, but how false to give credence to the seeming extinction of virtuous men based on these perspectives.

While I may not convince anyone about good men, it remains an undeniable fact that they abound, as every time one of them gets married, the saying arises again: “one good man down”. While every man getting married is not necessarily a good man, most good men have marriage as a major goal in their lives. Usually, when a man in his thirties tells you that he is not planning for marriage yet, often times it may be attributed to a lack of responsibility and accountability. Even when such men want to get married, they usually will not want to be accountable in their relationship with their wives. However the bigger question for me is if good men are still in plenty supply, how do we find them? This is what will form the basis for another write-up. I will simply state it here that good men can be found, and there is what attracts and repels them, just as there is what attracts and repels virtuous women. Anyone who seeks a good man must be poised to understand what it takes and be willing to subject oneself to them. Trust me, they are all around you.

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THE ‘DEMIGODIFICATION’ OF PUBLIC SERVICE

I promise this wont be long. Let me start by explaining what public service means. From there you can extrapolate what it is not, as these days I spend little time dealing with negatives. Public service is a service that is performed for the benefit of the public or its institutions. And a public servant is someone who performs such service. So in deconstructing these words I find that the public comes first before the nature of the service.

But let me ask. Have you ever been to an office which is supposed to be rendering public service, and the people there act as though they were servicing the public? This is fast becoming the definition of public service; a service by high-minded individuals, who display unauthorized power over a given setting to frustrate the public. Somehow the service has become of more importance than the recipient and the public servant has suddenly become the public master.

Today in Nigeria, it’s as though any opportunity people get to assume a position, no matter how little, they become power drunk. Even the very security at the gate of a rich man, can display amazing levels of arrogance, not to talk about the cashier at the teller, or even the customer service person waiting to help you. Even taxi drivers, who depend on your change for survival, tend to throw their services at your face. I once went to a bank to do some transaction and some well dressed lady saw me standing in front of her. Yet she received a personal call and talked for some minutes before turning to me without a word of courtesy. I felt like slapping her, except for the fact that would have reduced me to her standard as well.

Everywhere you go people seem to become demigods with the little in their hands. And I ask what then it is with the highest public officials in the land? Little wonder we have the quality of life we do. People don’t care about serving others, but to lord it over them. You walk into an immigration office to get your passport; you are literally crawling on your knees begging to be attended to. What about the airport, the custom officials treat you as though you were a petty thief (because they surely worship the bigger ones), and ruffle and shuffle you as though a piece of thrash. Policemen are the worst. Having a baton or a pistol in their hands automatically transmogrifies them into tin gods itching to snap a finger at you. The men who are meant to protect us have become the greatest threats to our lives on the road. Our public servants have become the broken spokes in the wheels of governance that a simple process has become an excruciating wait for hours. 

If we were to quantify in figures what waste we experience due to sloppy public service and high-minded exertion of personal incompetence in our public institutions and even the private enterprises, we would be staggered at the huge cost of inefficiency. In every hour of service, we probably lose 30 minutes due to people trying first to show themselves as demigods and impress you beyond measure, while for the remaining part one is till subjected to unsatisfactory service. 

We need to rid our system of such nonfeasance and malfeasance or even ‘over-feasance’. We need to come to a point where we know that we are first responsible to the person standing in front us and do everything within our capacity to help. This is what creates an efficient system, when public servants become responsible to the public and know that their role is to enhance the quality of people’s lives and play down their personal deficiencies.

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Uncategorized

IS THERE HOPE FOR THE REST OF US?

 

african-art-clayYou may wonder who the rest of us are and who in particular I am referring to. Well, I am one of those who stubbornly refuse to append derogatory terms such as Third World, Underdeveloped Countries, Developing Countries, or Poor Nations, on those countries that do not fall into the exclusive club of ‘Big Boy’ nations. The rest of us are a collection of those who are wondering what to do to escape the crippling implications of a global financial game gone sour. As it was in the beginning, when we rarely had a voice in deciding how global business was done, so it is now that we seem not to have a voice in how we can protect ourselves from the current meltdown in the system.

A few weeks ago, the world gathered at Davos World Economic Forum to discuss and determine the shaping of a post crisis world.  I previewed some of the events and was particularly drawn to the comments of the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown who observed that the crisis is going to hit the Third World countries real hard. Of course in the light of the current global situation, all other discussions bordering around developments in our part of the world was flickering in the background, as more pressing concerns about financial cooperation between big nations were dominant. However, his statement was one that shuddered me a bit to the realization that we stand again on the threshold of history to strongly negotiate benefits for our common destinies or trade it away for continued beggarly policies.

Clearly, no one seems to be telling us in plain terms, what this worldwide clutter spells for us. We have been a people termed as the periphery, in other words, those who sit at the sidelines or watch global events from the stands and have no meaningful inputs, while the center determines the rules and allocation of profits to everyone. But in the words of Chinua Achebe, all we see today is “Things fall apart and the center cannot hold”, therefore creating much despair regarding the future of the economies of developing nations. Some ask the question what the heck is our business with the American financial collapse? We are not in America and our money is not controlled by them so what concerns us? Really! What concerns the edge of the water with where the stone is cast? It is called ripples. That is what the edge of the water feels as a result of where the stone is cast. The point is this water has been troubled, and we will of necessity feel the ripples in our part of the world.

A major consequence for us is that being primarily an exporter of raw materials, we are hard hit by the fact there is a growing less demand for our produce. China that emerged as an economic savior of late is presently crawling with a clog to their manufacturing wheels due to fewer demands for their goods from the West. China has had to call of the execution of some projects in different locations in Africa and all such countries looking up to such benefits will have to rethink how to survive the downturn of events. Also the prices of these exports have also dropped as a consequence of falling demand, meaning less and less profit for countries dependent of such export for income. Who knows, we may soon return to the age of protectionism as even the advocates for this who are usually protesting at Davos, where somehow nowhere to be found. Probably because every country was going to act as their advocates

Secondly, I am wondering how much aid money will be drafted to help out with our development process. Many of our leaders are used to going cap-in-hand seeking for support to deal with their local problems. While I do not question the effectiveness of aid money when used properly, It is however reliant on the goodwill of the provider and of course the capacity of the giver for continued giving. I don’t have to explain much as now “charity begins at home” has become a watchword for developed nations who are struggling to meet the need of their internal needs. The US at the moment is looking at over a trillion dollar deficit, and their national debt is screaming in the ten trillion dollar range. Do we expect that it will still be gracious in committing its scarce resource to help developing countries? That may amount to political suicide for any administration. Even Non-Profit organizations like the Clinton Foundation are already trying to cut back on their activities due to shortfalls in their budgets. Similarly, the United Nations and its subsidiaries, which carry out most of their activities in Third World countries, depend on dues from these large economies and of course there will be cut backs in such functions.

We are still at the early stages of the effects of this crunch on developing nations. Maybe this is why our leaders seem not to be progressive and proactive in extracting oil from these hard rocks of time. I am yet to hear of continent wide efforts at dealing with the implications of the crisis on Africans. What is African Development bank, African Union, ECOWAS, SADC, NEPAD, e.t.c doing? African leaders were not even present at the Davos forum except for a few African Development Bank officials and South African representatives. I wonder what in the world we hope to benefit by staying back and watching things spiral out of control without an attempt to seek out solutions for our local economies from such gatherings. In fact, our Mayors, Businessmen, Financial officials and even the Central Bank Governors should have been present to gather technical information to map out indigenous solutions to protect their people from the dire consequences of a collapsing system. We have been at the receiving end of the present system. If we are not careful, we will fall behind again if new systems birth or evolve from the present one. We must be actively engaged in any negotiation for a global financial mechanism to ensure that we our interests are considered and provided for. So I ask this question: Is there hope for the rest of us?

 

 

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