The Media Bus

Media is the Bus for all social crisis; Bigotry is the engine oil; Prejudice serve as petrol; the full-lights are Sentiments. Seats in the bus are often Cultural or Religious Diversity; Audience gullibility is the perfect tire. The Bus always have different drivers and that's often the Power that be and they are also the owners, so you've got nowhere to lodge complain whenever you are jammed by this Bus. The Bus uses different roads like Islamophobia, Terrorism and Politics to get to different Bus-stations and the most accessed ones are Stereotypes, Imperialism and Framing. Don't forget it is a commercial bus that follow only the map of the owners, its Tickets are cheap for everyone and it is big enough to accommodate numberless passengers... Mind you, whenever i choose not to enter that Bus that means I've gotten a better reliable transportation to the Truth.

In my Opinion!!!

We have intentionally put ourselves in a social predicament! We now live in a dilemma, a situation whereby the mass conveniently believe there is no any other choice than to accept the detriment of a particular problem, not because it can’t be resolved but because resolving it is a problem that could consequently leads to other problems. A social mess whereby abnormality becomes the new normality and amorality now dictates the ideals to the multitudes. What an awful social setting where people have no concern for integrity, personality and identity because they are over-zealously in search of a fleeting popularity, faddy political position, dirty money and other sham life, regardless of where, how and what is the source; be it from scamming, stealing, killing, lying and sundry other illegalities and amorality. Such social problem is becoming so critical to the extent that, preaching against any of those dishonesty and unlawfulness in religious houses is insurmountable; they are easily condoned than condemned. We are witnessing a social challenge where parents do not only encourage and support these illegalities, they are now boldly proud of their fugitive and culprit progeny. A social challenge that has turned criminality to a talent and criminals are now like celebrities or monarchy chiefs with sufficient cultural backings needless to be remorseful, shameful or apologetic.  Scammers now receive social hailing and mass ovations. They are now the new role models for the upcoming youths, because the aim of most teenagers now is not to beat them but to join them. Crooks would now cite poverty as their sound justifications to their atrocities. Kidnappers would blame their outrage on the government incapacities. In my opinion, these are nothing but offenses that can’t be curbed neither with constitutional enactments, legislative nor judiciary laws.  They are sins that can’t be easily controlled with spiritual lecturers and religious scriptures. They are social challenges that are becoming the new custom, legacy and tradition in which anthropologist would not be able to prevent. The only medications I strongly think can treat these social syndromes are governmental, parental and self-reorientation, governments and parents need a lot to do in reshaping the minds of the young on what is right and wrong, the importance of fidelity, integrity and identity should be informally educated and no matter how the condition may be, scamming and stealing from people is never a reasonable panacea and every reasonable mind should know that there can never be an acceptable rationales for cruelty.  

Our Family, Our Friends, and the Associates we make are our “Social Properties” that should be well-managed just like our “Tangible Properties” for a long-lasting usefulness. If otherwise mismanaged, these social properties are also vulnerable to damages like the tangible properties. For instance, love can be stolen just like an unlocked car, friendship can worn-out like an engine, and intimacy can deteriorates like a botched construction, so as family affection can get lost, just like a bunch of key. The Yoruba people refer to associates and friends as “Nightgowns”, if one’s nightgown gets lost, you can end up sleeping in cold even if you have a wardrobe full of expensive clothes.  One of the best ways one can be good to himself is by being good to people around him…

Pioneers are not just extraordinarily wise, what is special about them is the dialectic ability to understand the past, the analytic comprehension of the present and a pragmatic foresight to presume the needs of the future. Achebe is truly a pioneer, because he managed to book a suitable permanent room for our genre in the house of literature. He is a warrior who fought for our representation and against imperializing our culture through his writings. We are lucky to have him from us.

I remember when I was younger, back then I always have this hallucination on the reasons why we all have to live at all, when it’s not an everlasting chance! I became myopically confused when both formal education and religious lessons taught me contradictory views about the reasons why we live, though I was quite comfortable to believe the later view. But then, even as my age develop my belief on the reasons why ALLAH has created us could not exonerate me from childishly fantasizing and internally wondering about life and how seemingly meaningless its display itself when people I know or I love get to vacate it; the reason for LIFE and DEATH still mystifies me. Talking from my obligatory believe on religious purpose of living, I found no humanly reason for our existence, we are not actually on this surface and under the sphere of earth for our own self purpose. We are actually dancing to a TONE knowingly to us or not, acceptable or not, we believe in it or not. We are here because this TONE orders us to be, so as we are going to leave when this TONE orders. What bugs me is that, since being here is not my decision and I won’t, can’t and never been told whenever am supposed to evacuate, so what is the essence of me being joyful of it, or anything that comes my way in it (life)? I can’t help it; I keep asking myself again and again the reason why things that brings us happiness leave us with sadness? Or are there anything called HAPPINESS, JOY, and LAUGH at all? Maybe those words are used to express sham feelings and moments. Because in a real sense nothing tends to be real in this life and maybe I am being childish and my thinking and reasoning are juvenile, but what I keep deducing from realities is that life itself is not REAL.

I gathered these meaningful and thoughtful quotes about tolerance, and i thought it worth sharing. maybe it can help anyone out there reflect on how perseverance is an important key to togetherness:
**Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. 
**Tolerance comes of age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.
**The highest result of education is tolerance.
**Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.
**Toleration is the best religion.

Our dignity and heritage are at stake if we believe them

I am not an addicted reader, not because I don’t like reading, but because I seldom have free access to books that interest me; books that contain stories of my origin, my history and my heritage. Perhaps because I am from Africa, where most of the books that are sold in local bookstores tell foreign stories and the few that contain my historical stories are mostly written by foreigners that know less or nothing about them. It is not as if I was lazy or I couldn't understand the literal composition of those books, but I chose not to read them because I am aware of the consequential gravity of subscribing to stories of me written by other people. I should be cleverly doubtful of those stories, because it seems too abnormal to me, why an outsider could be telling an inside story to an insider, it is never logical. Because if such stories are not manipulated, contorted, and twisted to the writer’s self-interest, it would practically be the presentation of an image seen through an opaque glass or I should say the portrayal of illusory. Anecdotally, I believe there are motives behind such illusive storytelling; part of their motives I can sense, is that they have inherently enjoy misrepresenting and stereotyping Africa for most of the flaws that were actually spawned by them or their ancestors. 
Chimamanda; a prowess novelist from Nigeria said in one of her eloquent and never-boring presentations that the detriment of our grossly twisted stories is not only limited to the consequence of stereotype and imperialism, the loss of dignity, heritage and historical legacy but it is more detrimentally harmful when those twisted stories are inherited by successive posterity. She might be right or wrong, or there might be some analogical fallacy in the way I interpreted her voice. I've gotten some insistent reasons that convince me that our dignity is at stake just like our heritage is, especially when I remember where I grew up, where elite are those that their four years old kids can speak fluent English and not their mother tongue. This is part of what mystify me if the shameless sagging our girls roam with is actually an African thing or as if the popular doggy bling-bling jewelry in the necks of our youths is really an African male fashion. I am not also sure of how we should combat the cultural inferiority constantly battling with the African originality in our entire social and societal atmosphere. The kind of inferiority and unoriginality that made Akin; my Facebook friend wrote his name as (Her-kin), purposefully to get international friends. If it is not inferiority, maybe Her-kin (Akin) is just subscribing to the over-colorized globalization and westernization. As if any of the duo can beneficially reduce the price of bread in his local market; that is if they are not actually the cause of the hike. Maybe it’s futile to complain about cultural imperialism at this moment when the unitary aim of the entire world is to globalize. Because I can remember how I disappointed a black friend of mine that annoyed me for cheerfully greeting with “Whats up Nigger?”, “You are not in vogue” so, he responded. To him, Nigger is of course not offensive, because that is what they call black people in American movies, and the more effects those Hollywood characters have on your socialization is what determine your modernization. Maybe our gullibility to their stories of us is truly part of our culture, because people in Japan, Thailand, China and Malaysia do watch Hollywood too and they still value their cultures more than their surnames.