By
Obododimma
Oha
Human life is
greatly characterised by an orientation to signs, whether linguistic signs or
other types. In the fiction of Jonathan Swift, we are even told that the
protagonist travels to Laputa where people carry a huge luggage of all the
things they intend to communicate to others, in case an occasion to gesticulate
with them or indicate them arises. Imagine such an awkward situation! The worst
punishment they inflict on themselves would be when they would gesticulate
about abstract ideas! I know that silence could be speech in many cultures and situations,
even in the Catholic monastery where talking is a great disadvantage to deep
spirituality. That is one reason Catholic monks like the profession that
requires silence, like bee-keeping. If you are given to talking in-between your
task, you can’t be a good bee-keeper, for when you are approaching the hive
with noise, the bees would be upset and sting you the intruder! So, the monks
choose bee-keeping because the silence it requires is in agreement with their
spirituality. Also, very long ago, a star led the three wise man from the East
to the crib in Bethlehem. That indicated that their lives were conditioned by
signs! What if it had been a huge serpent slithering and making for the crib? I don’t blame them; they were not just homo loquens, sign-using
creatures, as Dennis Fry say, but people who saw the link between human destiny
and signs.
Indeed, there
is that link. And people who meditate deeply may see these signs, particularly
significant ones that rise from their cob-webbed beds of history and show themselves. But these signs
we attach ourselves and lives to may be in our heads where they colour and even
displace other signs we treasure. So, we are really sites of the competition of
these signs that meet and clash. They may be the mythical clashing with those that
are real. Signs of one ideology clashing with another. Signs of religious
values clashing (like the one you see when you enter University of Ibadan and
reach Seat of Wisdom Catholic Church and the mosque). Signs of imperialism
clashing with that which stubbornly enacts liberation. Signs of sophisticated Western
education clashing with those of Afrocentrism or even shithole disconnected education. Yes;
signs clashing with signs, either out there or in our heads.
The ways that
these signs clash should interest us. One sign, especially assisted by modern
information technology, may deliberately decide to distort, amplify to shock us
and cause trouble, present situations that are in support of other
narratives (as evidence), other forms of testimonial strategy, etc. This
reminds me of one such playfulness which signs that enter our heads exhibit. One political candidate somewhere was presented on Facebook as reading a newspaper in shock
over something. That was a clever testimonial strategy. In my comment, I
indicated that the visual could even be made more appropriate and to say other
things through a photoshopping to make the newspaper become held upside-down! Even
visuals comply with the principle of le mots just; in this case, it should be
la signe juste. Appropriateness condition has to be met and the more appropriate,
the better for the massages! The comment scored a hit and the suggestion was
used. The viral version I saw later on social media had the newspaper held
upside-down!
Perhaps the
greater expression of these signs in our heads and how they affect our lives
manifested sometime in 2015 at our polling station in Nigeria. You know how people could
be overly emotional and divided along political lines during elections. I went
to our polling station to cast my vote with an umbrella that was grey
throughout. It was a hot day and I didn’t want to punish myself twice in the long
queue by exposing myself to the sun. So, I carried an umbrella. Some people at
the polling station felt that I was indirectly advertising Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) and even though I offered to share the shade of the umbrella, they preferred to stay and
punish themselves in the sun. It was more than a casual joke. So, which was more important: one’s health or
allegiance to a party? I was baffled. Of course, I kept my umbrella and voted
when it was my turn. But that taught me one lesson about how people carry signs
in their heads, especially that which reminds them of opposition, and in the
process suffer exceedingly. If you are trying to help or rescue those people,
you may be wasting your time. They may already be doomed for damnation in their
lives, which is another dimension in the signification!
I also recall
my seemingly cynical observation when Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress (APC)
chose a bundle of broom for its sign. I was told that this was because it was
culturally conscious. I am yet to see anything the party has done in favour of
culture anywhere (except the culture of poverty in Nigeria)! I observed in a Facebook
comment that that was very backward, even frighteningly darksome, that it would
have been better for the party to be a bit modern by adopting a vacuum cleaner
as a party symbol. I knew that witches and wizards as night aviators like
flying on their bundles of brooms.I It has even become their trademark! With the bundles of broom at a rally, is it
not like a meeting of witches and wizards ready to fly? You can see why I
observed that it was darksome and backward-looking. Anyway, the sign of a bundle
of broom was just in my head because I had interacted with broom-wielding witches
and wizards at an anthropology conference in Cameroon! O Lord, these acada people, sef!
Now, when I
see people in churches, mosques or political rallies, I know that their heads
are filled with conflict-ready (and conflicting) signs, signs designed for their salvation or
damnation, and that these signs may have enslaved them or may be seeking to break their bonds and replace them with another. Who deserves to be pitied
than that person who is a prisoner of signs and likes the imprisonment?
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