The Flower at fall

Be the butterfly that beautifies the blackness,

Be the sunshine that shimmers,

Be iridescent,

Shine,

Be the colour of sunset,

Be the lavender sky,

Be the clover that brightens the blackened bough,

Be strong as the ship that shelters from stormy seas,

Be the light,

Be the time of timeless tunes,

Be music to the mind,

Be the sound of sweetness,

Be sweet,

Be the help in helplessness,

Be the friend in the foe’s face,

Be the flower at fall.

Be you!

Men Who Love Dragons too Much

It is mostly society’s fault that our ideas and definitions of beauty are not independent as I would argue that they should be. But how do you blame society without blaming the individuals, the men and the women who make up society? I would explain what society means, at least to me, and how I think it is capable of influencing everything about personhood with a real life example. When I was an undergraduate, my first semester in the university was a time I kept mostly to myself because I was new and I did not know anybody. I only related with my brother whom I lived with and my few friends with whom I got admitted. I usually would not speak to any other person including my neighbours and even in church so much that some church members thought that I was mute. It was not bad, I realize now that I have never really loved the company of others, I don’t hate it, sometimes, I prefer the company of others to the company of myself, but I don’t love it. That first semester, I did okay academically. And then, as time went by, and as people kept on complaining that I was way too into my shell and I needed to come out and have some fun, I began to open up and to let others in and to enjoy the company of neighbours and to enjoy going to church not because of God but because of the people I would see when the service is over. I let society in and society began to influence my decision to stay home and laugh at my neighbours’ jokes even when I knew that I had lectures in an hour and I needed to get prepared, or to stay outside and criticize the government or argue about how a scientist is smarter than a lawyer and other thing that I would not do if I was still inside my beloved shell. It told on me academically because my result at the end of that semester was the worst throughout my years in school. So yes, that is what society can mean and can do to you. I can’t blame my neighbours and church members because it really had nothing to do with them, I wanted to get out more and have some fun. Society sits down and waits for you then, through others, it dissolves your own ideas and puts its own instead. That is why the most beautiful lady most men can imagine is probably extremely light in complexion. We automatically tend to become softer when confronted with a very light skinned lady because we have been subconsciously programmed to prefer the light skin, this softness is almost inexistent when we are dealing with a dark skinned lady, because in our brains, there is really nothing special about her; she’s just another lady. It is hard if you look at this from the perspective of the dark skinned lady, it is hard to notice these walls that have been built around you because you are a certain way and decide to do nothing about it; which is why I now feel that I cannot blame anyone who decides to change her complexion to a lighter one with the use of skin lightening creams. It is only a side-effect of society’s preference for one colour of skin over the other. There’s the first dragon for you, the light skin.

I read on Bella Naija last night that the University don who sexually harassed a young lady in the university of Ilorin some days ago had said that he was ‘set up’ by his colleagues, who had been jealous of his ‘stardom’. That is funny because there was evidence in form of an audio clip where he was saying things to the unfortunate girl who was complaining, nearly crying, pleading with him, ‘stop it… I don’t want it… I am on…’ and things like that. The man said, ‘it is sexual harassment and not rape,’ in defence of himself. I feel it is funny that he could even make a statement in the first place and then I feel he is stupid for saying it is not rape but harassment, they are both forms of sexual assault and he should be ashamed of himself because without things like sexual harassment, there would be no such thing as rape.  I am a graduate student of that university and so I feel like I have a right to say this, I don’t just think he should be relieved of his job as a lecturer, I think he should be stopped from lecturing anybody anywhere for the rest of his life. And a wall should be built around him so that he has no access to any other young lady to harass. I feel very strongly about sexual assault because it is also a dragon in society, the rate of underreporting of sexual assaults is the highest among crimes because of the way society perceives it, almost always, the response to a rape victim is ‘you should not have dressed like that… you secretly wanted it… you probably enjoyed it… it is your fault.’ My thesis is on this dragon called sexual assault and so for the next year or so I would be doing some research on it. With people like this one who boastfully say things like, ‘it’s just harassment not rape,’ I guess I have got my work cut out for me.

*This title, Men who love Dragons too much, is the title of a book at the Hogwarts library which Harry consulted as he was about to go up against a dragon at the Triwizard Tournament, it was unhelpful. Here, it depicts how we have these things that are unhelpful to us but continue to exist because society wants it to.

Till next time,, Keep dreaming!!

This Celebrity Obsessed World

I have been wondering about Celebrity obsession and what it really does to and for us. I have tried to consider what it does for us but I can find nothing else except entertainment: the few chuckles here and there, the occasional rush of excitement when a celebrity couple breaks up, the banter, the cheer, the comedy at the expense of the real lives of other people. There is nothing more as far as I know. But how about what it does to us? Isn’t that much more important?

I have been wondering about anorexia. Anorexia is a mental disorder in which patients starve themselves or use other techniques such as vomiting to induce weight loss. Now the exact causes of anorexia are unknown however there are psychological and social factors that contribute greatly in the development of the disorder. And of course, the biggest culprit is the twenty first century and this obsession. An interesting statistic states that the incidence of anorexia (incidence of a disease means the new cases of that disease) has doubled since 1970 and this rise in new cases is a side-effect of a genuine increase in number of persons affected and not merely an underreporting of cases before 1970. Plus, over 90% of patients diagnosed with the disorder as of the year 2001 are females.

We live in a celebrity obsessed world; this is the reason the Kardashians is a thing, it is the reason Big Brother is a thing, it is probably also the reason a vile Donald Trump may become the next president of the greatest country in the world, United States of America. This obsession of ours is why a 14 or 15 year old child would want to ‘watch her weight’ and watch what she eats because she wants to maintain a figure. A figure she does not even have in the first place. Sixteen year old girls take pills for this same reason; they do not want to get ‘fat’. And here, ‘fat’ means something completely different to them than what fat really means. The celebrity obsession has turned childhood, especially for females into this hustle to be perfect, to be an exact replica of your favourite reality star because to them that is what it means to be happy, that is what contentment looks like. These stars do not show us when they cry and so we think that they do not cry, and that is perfection, isn’t it? A life where you are always smiling, where you are posing for pictures, where everybody wants to take a selfie with you, and the few times you are unhappy, you unhappy for stupid reasons like person A did not show up for your party. Everyone would love that life; but not everyone realizes that that life is false. And that is the problem.

I have been wondering about make-up, too and while I have no problems per se with make-up, I feel that standards and self-esteem are very important things. The big companies that produce these things and their advertisements and billboards showcasing their products, feature these celebrities we are obsessed with and it convinces these little girls (these vulnerable little girls again) that they need make-up to be good looking, that they are not beautiful (definitely not as beautiful) unless they wear Dior eyeliners and Avon shadows and NARS lipsticks. But these things are lowering their self-esteem because even with those expensive products, they will never, ever be beautiful enough to catch up with the standards that have been subconsciously engraved into their consciousness. These standards of beauty, they can never meet.

There is no foreseeable solution to this obsession of ours. The damage has been done already. But the future is always a place we can look to with hope. And hope is one thing we can always have no matter what. So let’s hope that at some point in the future, by some miracle, we shall be cured of this obsession that does way, way, way more to us and our little vulnerable children than it can ever do for us.

The Trolley Problem

The Fat Man

Trolley Problem

 

I have had some time on my hands lately and so I have been studying things that I find interesting; among which are Thought Experiments. Thought Experiments are experiments that are carried out in thought only. They tend to give you a moral perspective and tend to allow you see things through a separate point of view from which you would normally see them.  I intend to write some about one particular thought experiment called ‘The Trolley Problem’ I heard about it for the first time while reading John Green’s The Fault in our Stars in 2013, it was touched on a little bit.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment in the field of ethics.  It is basically explained as follows:

There is a runaway trolley speeding down a train track. There are five people tied up and unable to move on the same track and if the trolley is unaltered, it kills the five people; you are standing at some point away from the track, next to a lever which, when you pull, changes the course of the trolley to another lane where you notice that there is only one person at risk.

You have two options: a) Do nothing and watch the trolley kill the five people stuck on the tracks or b) Pull the lever, kill the one person on the other track and by so doing save the life of the other five.

What is the right action to take?

Most people would choose option b which is to pull the lever and kill only one person instead But since there is already wrongness in place as at least someone is bound to die whatever the situation, moving the lever would mean participating in the wrongness and indirectly killing someone instead of the first situation where no one is killing anyone and things are just happening by nature’s cruel hands.

Now, here’s another angle to the same problem: The Fat Man.

Now say the trolley is speeding down a train track just as before and there are still five people unable to move, just as before. In this situation however, you know that the only way to stop the trolley is by creating a wedge with something heavy in front of the trolley before it gets to the five people. You notice a fat man standing just next to you, he is heavy enough. Do you a) Do nothing and watch the five people die or b) Push the fat man unto the track thereby killing him and saving the lives of the other five?

Most people who would pull the lever and kill just the one person in the first example, would shudder at the thought of pushing the fat man unto the tracks, they do not approve of this course of action even though it is very similar to pulling the lever in the first example.

There is a difference though and that difference is your intentions. In the second example, your intention is to harm someone to save five people; however in the first example, you are not intent on killing anyone per se; the death is a kind side effect of you pulling the lever. But the principle still remains the same: by pulling the lever or pushing the fat man, you are directly participating in an event that would lead to the death of someone. By doing nothing, you are not participating; you are just watching a very, very horrific incident take place.

 I do not know what I would do.

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is a short play, ‘a tragicomedy in two acts’ written by Samuel Becket. It is basically about two friends, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait for the arrival of a third person, Godot. Godot never comes. For me, Waiting for Godot is among the most profound plays ever written simply because of the wide range of interpretations that could be drawn from it in terms of philosophy, politics, religion, existentialism and so on. I also think it is a great play because there exists the danger (or enjoyment) of given the book meanings that it does not have; for example, there are schools of thought that imagine that by Godot, Samuel Becket was referring to God and religiosity. Samuel Becket has denounced these claims and of the common misunderstanding of the book he had said, ‘why people have to complicate a thing so simple, I can’t make out.’ But that, as far as I am concerned, is the point of fiction. In many of the stories I write, I try to leave some space for interpretations and the best answer I have when I am asked why my story ends so abruptly is ‘look, I am done. Put your own ending to it if you think my ending is horrible; whatever will help you sleep better at night.’

There have been many insinuations and conclusions that have been made as to who or what Godot in Samuel Becket’s play represents, some people, as stated, have imagined Godot as God and the fervency of Christ’s people representing the wait for His second coming by Didi (Vladimir) and Gogo (Estragon). Some others have attached political undertones to the play with the appearance of Pozzo, who is some sought slave master, and his ‘servant’ Lucky towards the end of the first and second Acts, how society’s ruling class is considered to be impassive and inclined to keep the masses beneath them using whichever means is necessary; and then there is the existentialist angle where the whole play may seem to suggest the immense pointlessness and waste of time that human existence is.

However, I see Godot as perfection. Throughout the play these two men who seem to be good for each other, who seem to complement each other wait for this Godot individual because they feel that their existences, both individual existence and group existence would be better for it. They feel that they would become more than they are when Godot arrives. Quite simply, they think they need Godot, but do they really?

Growing up, perhaps even up till this moment, I imagine love and perfection as having a link that is inextricable. Loves comes with perfection and that is that. I imagine that compatibility is something that comes naturally; there is no compatibility once you have to adjust something. Two people being in a relationship, for example, must be compatible – perfect for each other; there can be no abrasion of parts, there can be no removal of parts there can be no change of habits because once there is, it becomes forced-compatibility and forced-compatibility is not compatibility.

I still think this way, though now I know it is not an accurate line of thought because perfection never comes, it is not achievable it is not rational it is false. This is why I think Godot in Samuel Beckets Waiting for Godot is perfection, because he never arrives and his existence, as far as I am concerned, is questionable. The dictionary defines perfection as freedom from fault or defect: flawlessness. Every human is flawed; Vladimir and Estragon are flawed, they bicker on and on about the same things, they contemplate suicide and assure themselves that they would come with a rope with which to hang themselves tomorrow but they never leave and so this tomorrow that they speak of never comes. They laugh at themselves and with themselves they laugh at things that are not funny and gnaw at carrots and turnips and bones. But see, we all do; every single one of us, we are flawed in our own different ways; we are all crooked. W. H. Auden wrote one of my favourite poems called ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ the penultimate verse goes:

‘O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your Crooked heart.’

Waiting for the perfect person to come is like waiting for Godot and even though I would try to convince myself by saying things like people must be perfect for each other and when there is abrasion or adjustment or change there is no longer compatibility, the truth is compatibility and perfection are just figment of our imaginations.

Till next time, Keep dreaming!

To everyone including myself.