by
Obododimma Oha
Societies that are dying or may soon die sometimes express this
tragedy in the behaviours of their citizens. Precisely, the mental lives of
their citizens go upside-down; citizens begin to act in ways they would normally
not act; in short the abnormal becomes normal. The right metaphor in such cases
is that many of the citizens are sick, and the sickness is the decay of their
minds. Indeed, hardly do we find everyone in a society in a stable or normal
mental health. Some can be senile due to old age. Some can have destructive
instincts. Some battle with endless stress in their lives. And some can go off
the rail, wear rags and live out their insanity. Actually, you could talk of
different kinds of insanity or different levels of mental health. Even the mad
fellow may refuse to accept that he or she is mad, that you the one that claim
to be well are plain mad!
So, you see, we could all be mad and in such a case, insanity becomes
the norm! It, then, depends on the angle from which we look at it -- that
mental wellness is the norm or mental illness is the norm. When one argues then
that the minds of many may be decaying, one is invariably looking at mental
health as normal and from that ideal situation we can identify a deviance. So,
if some are losing their minds, becoming deviant in society, we ought to be
worried, and are right to think that society may be in great danger.
One description I like very much in Peter Abrahams' novel, Mine Boy,
focuses on the eyes of the Black miners as they emerge from the mines at the
end of the day. That's very observant of the narrator and relevant to the
semiotician-reader of the novel. The narrator says that the eyes of the Black
miners are like the eyes of sheep! Like the eyes of sheep! I like the analogy.
How are the eyes like those of sheep? Maybe the look of surrender, of defeat, of loss. The
eyes of the miners say it eloquently and we need to have a semiotic competence
as a sinful and adulterous generation to be able to read those eyes properly.
The eyes say that their owners have seen hell and have lost. The eyes say that
their owners have no hope and can only surrender to the alarm or siren. The
eyes say it all and those who can read signs can read those eyes.
Are you also thinking of the old man, Daddy, who is said to fight
anyone who wants to prevent people from fighting, or who wants to separate
those fighting? You may be looking for Daddy's trouble if you want to impede
that tragic spectacle. Daddy likes gladiatorial shows and you cannot come with
your civilization and cancel his love for values of past years. Daddy's mind
only decays if he has to lose witnessing and enjoying a good fight in which
somebody breaks somebody's head, spilling blood.
Don't we have many Daddies around who think they have the right to
carry AK-47 rifles and could shoot to kill? Don't we have those who step out of
fictional pages of novels and act out the Daddy Syndrome in a most shocking
fashion? If we say that some minds are decaying or that some people are operating
without their minds, having buried their minds in the soil somewhere, I would
agree with you. Daddy is a fictional character; so, he is hypothetical. But
does reality today not imitate fiction, so that even some rulers would want to
ape the Daddy Syndrome?
Dear Mind, dear software, I know that you are the talent that Jesus
Christ talked about in that Parable of the Talents. Some minds that are buried
in the soil to spite the Maker may have started decaying there. Buried minds do
not and cannot later sprout and have vegetation. Buried by foolishness, they
decay as a reward for foolishness. So, decaying minds, I know that you have
been buried, instead of being invested.
Comments
Eze, Michael