Climate
change, pathological tyranny, wars on terror, epidemiological diseases, abject
poverty, financial crises, pervasive corruption, joblessness, oil prices and
nuclear warfare are but a mere handful of woes facing mankind in this new world
order. Ironically, never has our kind been so technologically advanced and
endowed with such an assortment of discoveries, breakthroughs and age old wisdom
that we should be the envy of all other species; yet, never have we been so
comprehensively bewildered by the sheer magnitude of our problems that we fittingly
pity ourselves.
Hilariously
we continue to pretend as if we have an impregnable handle on matters, casting
policy upon policy and praying ever so profusely that our troubles will give
way at any moment now. More alarming however, is that we have sincerely begun
to believe our own delusions, isn’t that something? It is abundantly clear that
the world is full of problems, profoundly complex and indelibly imbued. Those,
within our ranks, who suffer from long-term memory spasm, will best be reminded
that it was a mere fortnight ago that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Gaddafi, Bin Laden,
Mubarak and Hussein commanded over millions of hapless followers.
Even
with the dismemberment of these ‘flagship’ dictatorships the world doesn’t seem
to have urged closer to the Promised Land. Unemployment, in particular, seems
to be the chief whip in Pandora’s Box. It has triggered the Arab Spring in
Middle Eastern countries and the many Occupy movements in Western financial
centres. Many peripheral European states are a mere hiss away from concomitant
collapse of fiscal viability, employment and domestic factor markets. In not so
distant a future, Africa may become the ‘poster boy’ of civil disobedience when
the lulled volcano of societal unrest blows through the lid.
Africa
has not created or redistributed nearly enough of its wealth to its people, so
much for the richest continent! Africans remain the most indigent of people in
the world, our countries remain underdeveloped and our infrastructure leaves
much to be desired. Our continent is disproportionately crippled by tameable
diseases, famine and lacks clean drinkable water. So ingenious we are that we
have inadvertently built the largest tinder box in the world. In no time, a
populist will strike the matchstick that will set ablaze the home of all humanity.
Don’t
you see? We are moving at an accelerating pace towards Armageddon, but we are
too timid to acknowledge it. Already the roads we have traversed so enthusiastically
over the preceding few decades have led to this abyss. Indeed, we are at the
convergence of socio-political liberation and socioeconomic malaise;
no-man’s-land. Greed has won the better part of the last decade, causing almost
all of human suffering as our leaders plunder their way through public
resources to advance their narrow selfish interests.
So
the story continues with the few reigning over the many in the name of politics
and economics. How is it that the ‘glorified’ capitalist system has been
allowed to reward so few with magnum appropriations of resources and yet
condemn so many to utter misery and despicable poverty? Inequality has reached
new low points and the disparity between the haves and have-nots has only but
widened. Many who have ascended to greater heights suffer from acrophobia and
battle to look down, lest the masses pull them back into the void. One of these
good days our ineptitude and complicity will reward us with a well baked
concoction of civil war, irrepressible crime and class targeted violence.
Brothers
and Sisters wake up! The world is burning from beneath your soles.
