‘IGNORE-MANIA’

Certain
postulations, theories, principles and philosophies surfaced during the days of
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides and Aristophanes. During this
philosophical era, questions were raised and answers demanded. Answers were
provided and veracity questioned. Man had an insatiable yearning to know what
was true and what was untrue, what justice was and what was unjust, what was
conjectural and what was factual. ‘Re-theorization’ if I may, was the amendment
made when a rational question re-appraised an illogical statement. The
intellectual discourse table wasn’t filled with stake and cheese, but with
illustrations, empirical research and examinations, because the philosopher
didn’t live by beef and pork alone.

What
makes a thirsty man unwilling to drink according to Socrates must be the
principle of reason within him; a distinct element in the soul which is
rational. What prompts him to drink must proceed from appetite or desire, another
distinct element in the soul which is irrational; appetite. So while one man
drinks because he is thirsty and needs to quench his thirst another refuses to
drink not because he is not thirsty, but because the content of the water will
reduce the strength of his guts.

Contemporary
Africa plus the world at large should be applauded for fore-running a philosophy
that needn’t be scrutinized before its viability is proven. Philosophies, which
like unwritten laws, have grown prehensile roots, sapping from every individual
man of a nation’s citizenry. A philosophy where you reject knowledge,
information, consciousness, especially of something you need to know about,
because-‘what you do not know cannot kill you’-an escapist and defeatist
approach for rejecting knowledge. Every individual is contented with the way
they are (a state of not wanting to know). “Don’t tell me about what is
happening in DR Congo, I’m not a Congolese. It’s their business not mine”,
people say. It was nobody’s business whether a Cairo mother was finding it
difficult to get a day’s meal for her four-year old during the global food
crisis.

Vladimir
Putin, the Prime Minister of Russia, is the UN Secretary of States to some. Fidel
Castro is the present President of Russia to others. What more illustrations on
the need to know at least a little of everything can be given when it’s been
concisely stated that ‘my people perish because of lack of knowledge’?

A
trace to the times of great literati shows us the effects of this philosophy.
Written artistic works of great value had themes that were punctuated with this
plague -ignore-mania.