Recreating our socialisation order

Man, upon creation, was said to have been charged with the responsibility of obedience to some set rules and regulatory guidelines by which all would expectedly be easy and well.

However, in the process of time, man opted for ‘self-independence and assertive autonomy’ and like a notorious drunk groping in a dark alley, not only did (and still does) hit his rather fragile body frame against all manner of quite avoidable bumps and falls, but ultimately ends up in an intensive care unit…gasping for a breath of survival.

Having drifted from the rare opportunities of Divine favour, the excellence of purpose, effortless skills of achievement and ease of benevolence, what habitually ooze out of this mere dust called man are sheer pollution vis-à-vis corrosive vices of wickedness, hatred, greed and other vanities.

In some identifiable forms, either out of pride or pretension, the average man has continued to strive to be different from the rest of the stock and like that Greek philosopher, obviously demonstrating the height of human hypocrisies, took a hurricane lamp in the day time on a street in Athens seeking the truth (that is, ironically seeking what was not lost).

In reality, everywhere one turns is the truth of what to see, say or do directly stares at all humanity; at all times and in all places.

As if man, is not yet done with the devastating consequences of doing things in its own perverted ways then comes the latest siege of advanced moral decadence in the colony of vices. Take the normlessness and outright madness of the confraternity of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) trend for example.

Before now, man’s behavioural sexuality was created on the Adam and Eve healthy order and not on the current hellhound disorder of ‘Adam and Steve/Eve and Helen’ destruction.

It is in the onerous bid of striking a balance between foreboding vices and needed virtues along the course of individualised dispositions and abiding idiosyncrasies between individuals and among nations that birth the deluge of human excesses.

No less important are the sharp issues of life like power intrigue and excessive accumulation of material possessions. Put aptly, absolute power corrupts absolutely and set against the vainglory often pursued by man, human excesses respect no bounds where moral bankruptcy contends with corrosive corruption.

Contrasting both the events and eventualities of the societal realities prevailing in this part of the world truly reflect the whole emptiness and needlessness of human excesses.

First, these vicious practices breed pride and pomposity, daydreaming and dysfunctional ambitions. It can only be vanities by destructive arrogance that prompt anyone to go borrowing (and wait for it…to celebrate the demise or the so-called remembrance anniversary of one’s departed ones) or any-other- merriment’ just to live up to some silly social rating.

On deep reflection, is it not idiocy of no comparable range that makes anyone to go into the marital madness called ‘polygamous acquisition (that is, multiple wives with numerous disoriented children)’?

Wrongful still, by the time this typical riotous family setting penetrates the larger society; its mostly untrained products end up as avoidable societal dregs, skilled in anomie, criminality, deviance and moral bankruptcy.

Bordering on the hollowness of human excesses on the society-at-large, such manifest in individuals who are bent on living on the fast, false but very slippery slopes and characteristically, they are the compulsive fraudsters, habitual rogues, career criminals and those who perpetuate themselves in power and misuse of state’s institutions.

Assailing human excesses demands fundamental and deep-rooted approaches, one of which is the complete overhaul of the socialisation process. So thoroughgoing and holistic should be this act of reordering the ways things are done; such as sound parental upbringing and obligatory necessities through diverse agencies like educational outlets, religious bodies and demonstrable leadership codes as well as induced fervency of consensual building and nation-building. By inference, education is supposed to be all-embracing towards complete literacy, numeracy and the total liberty of man’s spirit, soul and physical being.

For a well-balanced socialisation process to be in place, leaders and citizens alike, right from the formative age, have to be made to attune to requisite civic obligations and expected responsibilities that gravitationally pull respectable nations on the hallmarks of selfless service, altruism, good governance, transparency and accountability.

On the heels of this deliberate inculcation are the resultant effects of well-nourished family values, striving corporate setting, abiding conventional ethics and solid constitutional frameworks. If properly nurtured, a coexisting nation can be equated with a tree system that has a healthy, symbiotic linkage: a bountiful growth of the trunk, branches, leaves and seeds.

Same goes for a nation with a healthy family value package that can affordably dictate the required pace for its environment-human and otherwise and in the inevitable cases of adverse events; such as occasional frictions or benign or malignant tumours can be duly excised.

Moreso, with the existence of high standards of honour, integrity, hard work and merits as yardsticks of measuring achievement contrary to sheer idiocy, godfathers’ covering, corruptive tendencies as astrictive requirements; such a nation and people would be the better for it.

Pertaining to the utmost needed change-dynamics, no nation can experience a fundamental turnaround until those in the saddle of power focus on specific goal and targets and having been empowered with such visionary pursuits, the soul and essence of the society would be so resolutely regulated by this awakening consciousness.

In fact, leaders just have to be proactive over being reactive and as path finders of hitherto, uncharted routes; they are usually the light rays while their followers fine tune the channels and footprints of their tracks.

Indeed, this is one striking reason why certain nations would hardly forget some of their precursory leaders and inclusive in this exclusive listing are the United States (George Washington and J F Kennedy), Germany (Karl von Bismarck), Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew), South Korea (Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tea Woo), South Africa (Nelson Mandela).

Beneath the above-highlighted realities lie the spiritual dimensions of human excesses. In the days of yore, especially in the era of combative ideological warfare between the Western and Eastern blocs, both fiercely engaged each other that human excesses were as a consequence of accumulation of excessive riches as against daring godlessness.

While the West reasoned that this vice persistently prevailed because of the vacuum created by the communist advocacy of ‘decreed-godlessness’, the East countered that it was religion, the alleged opium of deceit and degenerate oppression, which gave rise to human excesses, even on a global scale. That it was futile ‘spiritualising’ what was a straight case of cancerous tumour that only required intervening excision!

In their own skewed logic, apologists of materialism often contend that so long as equity and equality are common features, dealing with human excesses can as well be reserved for another day or generation.

If only they would learn from history and connect this air of emptiness with the attendant powerlessness and imperfections of all human systems…from the reputed Adamic fall to our contemporary age-of-just-anything suffices.

Beyond the atheist/agnostic loose contentions about the Creator and the consequential godliness and weighing human excesses on the spiritual gauge, it leaves to reason that the more mankind ridicules the authority and primacy of the Most High so too would humanity continue to grope in thickening darkness and negative stagnation.

In a similar vein, the controlling principalities and powers over and above human excesses can be tackled with the strong virtues of conscious righteousness, good neighbourliness and deliberate adoptive measures in this regard.

Wonderfully, considering the universe as a whole unit, what readily come to mind are pure amazements, as there seem to be no limits to the works of nature on the one hand and the glaring signature of its Creator on all things animate and inanimate, on the other hand.

Is it the body of the oceans, firmaments of the galaxies, the ecosystem, the freely given air to breathe or the shocking patience and long-suffering tolerance of the Ultimate Judge over mankind and its continually evil deeds that ought to have attracted instant severe repercussions?

Hopefully, a world without the wickedness, compounded torments and avoidable miseries of human excesses would be a convenient and better place to inhabit.

In addition, with a new lease of fellow feeling and altruistic leadership in tow, humanity in entirety might finally wake and live up to the original essence of its creation…in safety, security, sanity, satisfaction and superabundance.

• Omolade, gokeomolade@hotmail.com