In The
Republic Plato writes, “A ship's crew which does not understand that the
art of navigation demands knowledge of the stars will stigmatize a properly
qualified pilot as a star-gazing idiot, and will prevent him from navigating”. These
words written circa 380 BC ring so true and in so many dimensions about our
society, and especially our disdain for knowledge and evidence as a basis for
public discourse and action.
The dominant cultural momentum in our society
is at odds with reason and evidence. Anti-reason stretches from pop culture to the
pseudo intellectual universe of university lecture theatres. Contempt for
thought evidence and reflection defines the ubiquitous lassitude buttressed by
FM radio, television, inept journalism, mediocre public education, scarcity of
public intellectuals and most of all a slothful and ignorant public. In a
letter to Colonel Charles Yancey in January 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “ If
a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it
expects what never was and what will never be”.
The dearth of public intellectuals is
exemplified by fact that ours is a society where issues of great moment are
framed and led by the political class. Our so-called intellectual class, the
kind that writes newspaper columns, lives not by challenging popular opinion
advanced by politicians, but by pandering to it. And in the words of Plato
these mercenary intellectuals trick themselves out as philosophers. I use the
word intellectual to mean someone who lives for ideas, which suggests that he
or she is dedicated to the life of the mind. Few academics and almost no politician
in our country today could qualify as intellectuals by this construction.
I have watched in disbelief when every time sticky
issues confront us; ranging from the legacy of Dedan Kimathi to the post
election violence, corruption and devolution, the Kenyan public gets paralyzed
by the tranquilizing combination drug of “move on and focus on nation building
and national reconciliation”. Furthermore, I am always stunned by the how
little the general public understands and integrates the history of our
so-called independence struggle and the contemporary political economy.
I always get
blank stares whenever I suggest that we are society differentiated more
sharply by class rather than ethnicity. In my view tribalism was invented in
1966 to blunt the nascent but portent threat of land based political agitation
posed to KANU by Kenya People’s Union (KPU). Jomo Kenyatta’s characterization
of Bildad Kaggia as a renegade who sided with Jaramogi Odinga to challenge him
annihilated Kaggia politically and instituted tribalism as a virulent antidote for
a proletariat, class grievance-based politics. Today tribalism is used as a
platform for polarization and political mobilization to advance competing
economic interests of establishment right wing versus anti-establishment more
left wing. But the slothful credulous citizen is sold the bill of goods about
their turn to eat every election cycle.
Related to this and of even greater concern
is that we are for the most part disinterested in the process by which truth is
discovered, the canons of evidence-based reasoning – especially the embrace of
open inquiry, in which process unexpected and even uncomfortable facts could be
unearthed. In my view the places for free, critical and dispassionate public
debate are lacking. Therefore the culture of the future will most likely be
dominated by tyranny of unreason, characterized by single-minded men and women
of parochial persuasion.
The surge of unreason is at odds not only with
rationalism but also with what I think were the fundamental tenets of liberty.
The flight from reason and fact-based action is capable of inflicting vastly
greater damage to freedom and democracy, the essential foundations upon which
to build equitable and sustainable economic growth. A conversation about our
collective fidelity to reason, fact and the pursuit of truth is especially
critical as we begin to enter the ceremonies of 50 years of independence, at
which point we will drown ourselves in uncritical self-congratulatory pities of
our great accomplishments.
Never has there been a more critical moment for
us to harness, in addition to other tools, our collective intellectual resources
to confront the reality of our most urgent challenges, including deep and
worsening ethnic division, a ponderous constitution, unbridled corruption and
moral decadence, poverty and rising inequality, mediocre public education and
deterioration of state capability. Kenya must face the painful truth about what
the disdain for reason and critical thought has cost us.
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