“Only the brave dare look upon the gray– upon the things which cannot be explained easily, upon the things which often engender mistakes upon the things whose cause cannot be understood, upon the thing we must accept and live with. And therefore only the brave dare look upon difference without flinching.”
—Richard H. Hungerford.
“I do Mathematics and Physics in the first place. I live a life of a hungry philosopher. I am the product of the universal machination, ethereal and effervescent. If you think you know me, you have just merely skimmed the surface. I am not religious in the normal sense and I believe that the universe is governed by the laws of science; the laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break these laws. I don’t know anything; but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough”
— George Amaron.
Behold, I reflect:
Co-efficient beauty of a world run dow
Administrated fate of a race wrecked at dawn
From whom and whence had these
Heralded our novel nests for wrecks?
Benefactors beaming dark
The bright beam of abuses and sacrifice-arks
Beneficiaries boast as sick healthiness
Get back at the joint greatness for which preachers were hung
On the trees of life forbidding full kungs
Kings of traumatic tragedies
Arrived with drums of elegies
Their early banishment glued zero repentance
And to this clear peril we gave no assistance
And shall we imply that we implore
Even when we rely not on its luck or lure?
Frisked I have never been
By the eerie defenders of fraud or hate- links.
From a non-alcoholic, yet intoxicating liquor of a maverick American Physicist, Richard Feynman, I recollect drinking the elevating gin of some esoteric muses; and beyond his own displayed intellectual spirituality harnessed and accrued the philosophy of physics that the summarized interpretations and operations of literal or of numerical physics of philosophy stood for in electronic circuits or mechanics, motion or gravity, etc., the Pain of which he patiently bore in stressful solitude with innate dignity, the gain of which this and that metropolitan city, I and other grandly investigative minds are, and shall forever be, this challenger-thriller in worded tether does momentously appear in my mental theatre as an African scholar: “Thought is the wave on the ocean-bosom of ancient depth; and though it be in Mathematics or Geography, or Logic, Astronomy, politics or Biology, the goal has historically been the same: the place of the central mind disintegrated into this and that school and scholar in the beginning remains the profound contemplations of signs and hiddens, facts and figures that realities and mysteries from differing facets of existence may wear the garb of attributes and functions that improve Man’s all.
Man is naturally a thought manufacturer, thought processor and thought store-house: he asks questions about existence and essence and turns a philosopher. He pours out from the depth of his imaginations and is called a writer. He observes the fluidal imports of plants and rivers, and assesses the morphological structures of animals and organisms, and is addressed a scientist. He studies society and criticizes its regulations and is tagged a sociologist or a lawyer. And where ever he goes his deep questions and contributions dictate by what name he is identified and addressed. From wherever he comes, his hands sketch out in writing, what his mouth effuses from the grand chambers of his soul.
Man is inherently a scholar. The question he asks, the answers he finds, the critiques he writes, all combine to demonstrate and corroborate his nature- wedded instincts, intuitions, soul, body and all, to some liberating body of knowledge others must believe and use. Essentially, man learns to live, that he may conveniently live to learn.
Scholarship is at the core of all that God urges that the world should be. Deep thinking is on the teeth of those eternal hills the plight of all planets, continents and nations must scratch hard to reach. Coordinated presentation in speech or in writing thrives best in being endowed with the best of the world in mind. The scholar is higher man thinking, explaining and doing higher things for the higher good of man. The scholar is the proof that God is alive, or that God is dead. The scholar is the change-margin between man’s prosperity and ruin; between man’s violent wars and blissful pence, and between his despairs and hopes. The scholar is the delegate of God on earth, the harbinger of earth’s concerns to God.
The scholar is the reservoir of beauty in thought and man’s last hope in actions that highlight, copy and pertinently and rightly paste for logical conception, as food for thought, and for collective good that is unbounded in the world and beyond. Logical conception is the function of the scholar’s mind; its operation is the chronological action that stem from the rays in his soul. If that which he conceives as thoughts is dwindled in almighty action – and if he insists (and we perceive his insistence to be right) – then the scholar bears his own name without rights. The scholar is one whose thoughts show in all his manifest relations, actions and organizations, sorrows and joy, beliefs and unbeliefs, and in all that his mind eclipses to ponder and to remake as he traverses the vast universes of ideas.
In the scholar’s mind and conferences, classrooms and books dwell creation’s preponderant prototypes and posers for markers of good and goods; and if he is true to, and worthy of his calling, he sees and knows that nothing exists here or elsewhere that his mental wonders ought to abandon for reasons of laziness, impossibility, realism, or for fear or fears that fans failures into the planet of man. No traditions, no injunctions can ever cow his holds, he is the African the scholar!
The scholar is the difference or the balance between the known and the unknown. Because he lives, probes and reports to the joint globe of man, taboos have stopped to boo the innocent postures of man; and when the laws his forebear writes ruin with fun, his radicalism, heroism and logic writes another patterned after the superiority of depth that positively redefines and progressively prospers our all.
The scholar, beyond the creative critiques of Fredrick Engel, is the angel we lack in the unjust wars we fight and the just quarrel we avoid, in the penurious policies we adopt and the rightful reason we resent, in the rotten cultures we keep, and the salvaging ways we hate, in the ignoble stands we take and the noble instincts we kill. Scholarship is man’s mot trustworthy promise in the deadly den of possible mar; egg-headedness pays no creature than man through the mystical depth he uses for the mystical redemption of the mystifying miseries of the world.
The graphic description of the emphatic roles of the scholar is abided in the collective hope of the soul. Here every human organ, every human name and naming, every human topic and concept, every human realization and culture, etc., must be defined and identified by nothing other than its spiritually coherent health of use and principle. In this awareness, man is not Mr. X or Mrs. Y; man is Man in all the good and evil every Dende and Dindinrin, Jack and Robinson may be capable of, in the conflicting contact of joint existence, and the shallowness of individuals’ vain pursuits. “Neighbours” “friends” “lovers”, “angels”, “reformers”, “critics”, “dictators”, “tyrants”, “exploiters”, “imperialists”, etc., refer to no one but to the elevated possibility of beauty, and to the decayed certainty of crimes and inhumanity in every creedal region regulated by the moral and immoral arms of the collective m
It was to this cryptic paradox of ageless doxy the ancient Lai of boorishly impaired poetry had dotted its nuisance dotty as nothing but a greedy lie. See how varieties of generations’ reactions had confirmed and invalidated the debated papers of infallible classroom Zeus, and made valid the rubbished submissions of non-protesting altar-bards? Observed natures and structures crawled into facts shelves arrange as volumes in contents and interpretations of seas and oceans, valleys and mountains, rocks and powdery sand sealed the basis of the knowledge in mortals’ breasts in markets and temples, offices and battle-fields. The first man to swim was not humiliated by the first man to fly; everyone, by the dream of his heart is free to crawl or run its entwined best to the address of his feasible but invisible ambition, for the attainment of the uncommon opposites; or should a man deny the absence of logic because his passion finds stimulation in law? Does the accountant’s ignorance of theology make him less human before this chronically icarian priests of ruin?
The one sphere your kingdom’s heir airs in the open air implies no decking for any differentiating superiority if we search beyond the popular province myopia. Every invention was once an observation breathed into conundrum, and then into a theory; and from the first stair to the last ease-filled step, we must find the relative agony and average fulfillment of finding things out. My way cannot be yours; in my practice and quest for intellectual laurels, expect no clinching though occasionally I smarty pose like you on the other track as you creatively run. Can the University of Cambridge, or the University of Oxford, or Harvard University deny being the continuation of the founding principles of the 1193 destroyed Nelanda University in Asia? Can the first University in the world historically from African represent nothing in the laboratories and libraries and academic cultures of MIT, Imperial College and Salamanca University in Spain? Theories and principles, schools and perspectives are manifestations of man’s various stages of development in thought; man was, is, and forever remains a stakeholder in the work of pondering and reporting and preserving and living by the tested outcomes of man’s thoughts.
Africans have been massively involved in the timeless search for truth and realty without appearing less relevant in those fragmented facets of the nativity that spell their Africaness, and in those inevitable duties that permeate their humanity through the widely acclaimed works and thoughts of Nurudeen Farah and Obotunde Ijimere,Tewfik and I.M Aluko, Okot P’ Bitek and Amilcar Cabral, Yaw M. Boatangand Kwesi Brew, Sheikha El-Miskeryand Benard D. Dadie, Modikwe Dikibo and Yusuf Idris, Mugo Gotheru and Bessie Head, Sly Cheney-Cokerand Taha Hussein, Dauda Muideen and Jack Mapanje, Kenjo Jumbam and Naguib Mahfouz,Thomas Mafolo and Mazizi Kunene, Jonathan Kariara and Alex LaGruma, Amin Kassam andBonie Lubega, Walter Rodney and Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka and Ali Masuri, Tajudeen Abdul –Rahaman and David Ananou, Denis Brutus and Antoinne Bangi, Saburi Biobaku and Joseph Ki-zerbo, Ferdinand Oyono and Richard Wright, Chinua Achebe and David Diop, Niyi Osundare and Kofi Awonoor, Seydou Badian and J.P. Clark, Akin Oyebode and Sekou Toure, Kenneth Kaunda and Camara Laye, Cyprus Ekwensi and Lepold Sedar Senghor, Amos Tutuola and Obi Benedict Egbunna, Steve Biko and Cheick Hamidou Kane, Julius Nyerere and Obafemi Awolowo, Nelson Mandela and Mankind Olawale Oyewunmi, Okey Ndibe and Sir Seretse Khama, Femi Osofisan and Desmond Tutu, Olympe Belly – Quenum and Jomo Kenyatha, Amaa Aidoo and Chimamanda Adichie, Ayikwe Amah and Zainab Alkhali, Farooq Kperogi and Babatunde Fafunwa, Jubril Aminu and Moses Ochonu, Uche Nwora and George Ayittey, Tai Solarin and Helon Habila, Valentine Ojo and Michael Orimobi, Wale Fapounda and Seun Lawal, Leye Kolade and Fela Anikulapo, Akin Iwilade and Mayowa Awosika, Taiwo Agboola and Babatunde Timothy Taiwo Adebisi, Femi Falana and Tunde Oseni, Kayode Folorunso and Oluyi Isaac, Sola Ayorinde and Sola Ogunyele, Seye Olanrewaju and Seye Ayanfunso, Ben Okri and Elechi Amadi, Femi Ademiluyi and Odumegwu Ochukwu, Adeola Goloba and Wasiu Bakare, Bemigho Awala and Bayo Kolawole, Olumide Akinbile and Samuel James, Biodun Olaosun and Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Hope Eghagha and Biodun Awonusi, Khaya Dlanga and Rotimi Inyang, Tunde Oseni, Grace Allele –William and Sage, Joseph Omoregbe and C.S Mommoh,etc. Continue reading “The African Scholar by Mankind Olawale Oyewumi”
The United States faced a debt-ceiling crisis in July 2011 which resulted in a downgrade of its credit rating by rating agencies such as Standard and Poor’s, Fitch among others. In a similar vein, the Eurozone is presently battling unsolved debt woes, deepening fall in its manufacturing sectors and a decline in economic confidence. This indicates that the Euro bloc is on the brink of recession. World leaders including those outside the Eurozone now recognize the economic threat facing the European economic bloc.
