Technically, political or moral equalization in the particular context of Ghanaian politics is about the two major political parties’ massive robbery of national wealth in turns and about mutual defense of their kleptomaniacal, generally irresponsible behavior, tendencies upon resumption of political power. In fact, Ghana’s duopoly is an eloquent expression of arctic kleptomania in a revolving door of mutual thievery and mutual justifications of each other’s kleptomaniacal proclivities. The allure of money and other indispensable institutional resources that could have been invested in education reform, cutting edge educational technologies, educator remuneration, fighting the scourge of environmental pollution, putting up modern educational infrastructures, and so forth, have ended up in the sickening hands of brazen agents of political corruption who only know how best to direct the compass of state coffers toward their kwashiorkor stomachs, resources frittered away in the forlorn faces of Ghanaians.
It is the nirvanic dream of these immoral political Komodo dragons to suck the state coffers dry until they can fall sleep. Moreover, it is a given that the effects of political corruption are not dissimilar to the effects of anoxia. Tissues die for lack of adequate oxygenation. Similarly, societies die for lack of adequate oxygenation of the institutional tissues of a body politic. In this context, agents of socialization are negatively threatened by the pathogenic impaction of social decay upon national evolution through the imprecations of political corruption and other immoralities. The sickly soul of social decay then invites dwarfs to come in and offer expert advice to the leadership of the Bank of Ghana in respect of the management of the insalubrious exchange-rate conduct of the Cedi. As if that is not enough articulated trains of strange ghosts with eerie names, “ghost names” you may call them, steal into the room of the National Service Secretariat (NSS) and stealthily inject the long thieving hand of political corruption into its coffers, eventually getting away with tens of millions of Cedis until fate catches up with that dangerous leprotic hand of public corruption.
One evident, or not-so-evident, illation threading through the entire analytic landscape of our serial essays is apparent lack of popular moral outrage against the encroaching parturition of social decay and public corruption. We have already advanced a few moral arguments in favor of passage of the Freedom of Information Bill (FOI). The subtexts of our moral arguments are such that we intended them to bolster a standing preoccupation of ours, a public perception as well, that information on social issues of enormous import to public interest is frequently quarantined from public inquiry. Aside that, even if that information is eventually released for the masses to make informed decisions on happenings likely to affect their lives and that of the country it is always open to question. Even so, when that piece of information has finally been made available for public digestion it turns out that the same information already had undergone adulteration through the divisive colors of partisan politics.
All is not lost yet. There are great prospects for the country if only the people would change their attitude for the better and if only their government is disposed to share pertinent information critical to the people’s survival, development, and collective aspirations. Unfortunately the government has not been noticeably forthcoming in the sphere of relevant information dissemination. Moreover, the lack of scientific and technological information, in particular, and of general critical information is why many Ghanaian citizens probably gravitate towards the magnetism of superstition and scientific ignorance. It may also explain why many Ghanaian citizens readily ascribe the causation of cholera and Ebola, to name but two, to miasma, paranormal infrastructures, and sympathetic magic through parapsychological manipulation of poppets, effigies, etc. Yet others are also quick to ascribe phenomena lacking ready scientific explication to unverifiable instances such as paranormal consumption of human flesh, an experience William B. Seabrook painstakingly detailed in a couple of influential books, by witches and wizards.
The late Seabrook, a White-American cannibal, occultist, explorer, journalist and author described his terrific experience of consuming human flesh in a book. For illustration purposes, Seabrook on one occasion physically consumed a cut of human flesh and later described the gustatory experience, referring to the taste as veal-like (See his book “Jungle Ways”). “In his 1931 book ‘Jungle Ways,’” writes Brian Palmer, “American adventurer and journalist William Buehler Seabrook provided the world’s most detailed description of human flesh. Seabrook noted that, in raw form, human meat looks like beef, but slightly less red, with pale yellow fat. When roasted, the meat turned grayish, as would lamb or veal, and smelled like cooked beef.” Further, Palmer notes elsewhere regarding how the cut of human flesh felt on Seabrook’s palate: “It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal.”
Where exactly did Seabrook experience his episodic cannibalism? France! Again, Palmer writes of Seabrook: “In his autobiography, Seabrook claims to have obtained the body of a recently deceased hospital patient in France and then cooked it on a spit. His description of man-eating in ‘Jungle Ways’ came not from his experiences in West Africa, he said, but in Paris (See Brian Palmer’s article “What Does Human Flesh Tastes Like? Veal”). We bring this up as a metaphysical juxtaposition between anecdotal evidence on paranormal consumption of human flesh and physical consumption of human flesh without the exegetic trappings of superstitious absolutism, of which the latter is construed as emblematic of Seabrook’s experience. Was Seabrook sane? Was Seabrook a wizard? What would religious folks in Ghana have made of Seabrook’s out-of-the-ordinary gustatory experience, an embodiment of wizardry or an occultism? What if Seabrook were a Ghanaian? What would the general Ghanaian public have made of Seabrook’s inquisitive nature to appreciate the diversity of human responses or emotional attachments to the abnormal? What is the scientific evidence for paranormal consumption of human flesh?
Let us look at other facets of the story. Elsewhere, Seabrook made a bold yet controversial observation making witchcraft another strand of scientific inquiry into the natural world. This should not surprise anyone given his inquisitive predisposition. The element of surprise is there nonetheless, which is something that cannot easily be buried after perusing his controversial book “Jungle Ways.” Seabrook also believed Einstein’s provocative scientific theories could open up explanatory vistas into the bizarre world of occult experiences, of witchcraft and wizardry readily come to mind, through the rigorous formula of scientific rationalism (See Seabrook’s other book “Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today”). That said, calling witchcraft by another name, “science,” is as provocatively preposterous as it is metaphysically misplaced, for in the modern parlance of Western psychology witchcraft has never meant any concept other than the physical or scientific practice of magic.
Magic is none other than illusion. Nonetheless, it is still understood that magic is a paranormal or supernatural phenomenon in much of Africa. And probably in much of the world, too. A powerful argument, however, could be made that belief in witchcraft and other paranormal infrastructures, superstition generally, tend to enjoy intellectual and philosophical de-emphasis in societies with advanced inventories of scientific and technologic knowledge. This is not to deny the fact that such belief systems do not exist in these societies. They do, as a matter of fact sparingly. A salient fact worth bringing up points to the revelation that belief in superstition in these societies generally does not usurp the primacy of scientific rationalism and enlightenment. In this context, it may seem that an inverse relationship exists between scientific and technological advancement and acceptation of superstitious beliefs, for science and technology on the one hand and on the other hand superstition, two major metaphysical dichotomies characteristic of the evolutionary complexity of human existence, have never been the best of companions.
Yet the two have lived side by side in all societies and throughout the long evolutionary journey of human history. This acknowledgment does not prevent Wole Soyinka from writing: “Not one of these, or any religion known to humanity, can affirm in any testable way the eternal verities of whatever ‘truth’ they espouse.” This candid statement goes to the heart of our critique of superstition and of its usurpation of the human faculty. Ideally we do not need a crystal ball for intellectual affirmation of contrarian views as critical as Soyinka’s sharp remarks. Experience indicates that superstition indeed poses a serious challenge to progress in many important ways. Let us consider one relevant example: A Ghanaian actress who regularly plays witch in movies particularly so well suddenly becomes suspect in her church. Her church and her fellow Christian brothers and sisters eventually shun her company, yet her self-righteous pastor has no problem gullibly accepting her tithes and her contributions to offertory on God’s behalf, money made mostly from her acting out her witchery role so excellently, so convincingly.
No doubt these self-righteous men and women who call themselves Christians lack scruples. The other irony is that the same self-righteous Christians, religious chameleons and moral skeptics, troop to the National Service Secretariat and steal millions of dollars thinking that stealing is a minor sin compared to the greater sin of playing wizards and witches in African movies. These self-righteous Christians and their friends from other major non-Christian religious rubrics, becoming government appointees and stealing at the slightest opportunity as moral thieves. We should quickly add that the preceding snippet of film criticism does not endorse movie over-glorification of superstition and scientific ignorance, however. Our argument is rather against sheer display of moral hypocrisy on the part of religious folks and self-proclaimed religious politicians as to the metaphysical rigidity of religious and cultural pontifications and the formers’ antithetical posturing against the technocratic dynamics of development sociology, developmental psychology, and developmental economics.
On the other hand the situation is markedly different from the standpoint of other social-cultural contexts. The wizard and witch characters in the Harry Potter films and books are widely celebrated for their artistic finesse and cultural influence, although Moslems and Christians have criticized the films and books for their satanic and occult connotations, so with the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Yet J.K. Rowling, best-selling author of the Harry Potter series, and the celebrity characters of the serial film versions of her books have used part of their vast wealth and fame to advance society. Michael Jackson’s philanthropy is public knowledge. Together, these facts account for the sharp contrast between African and Western understanding of paranormal abstractions. The question is also one of a philosophical contrast between metaphor and literalism. Africans’ appreciation of paranormal abstractions is culturally literalistic and Westerners’ largely metaphoric. Then again, one invokes the motifs of paranormal abstractions for entertainment and advancing society. The other borrows the same motifs for holding society back and destroying relations.
Yet why Western magic sends man to the moon and beyond and back again, and African magic, witchcraft allegedly, imprisons man in the frigid claws of ignorance and superstition is a metaphysical question A.B. Crentsil’s classic track “Anyen” more than adequately answers. On the contrary, it is quite difficult to fathom why most African Christians, principally Charismatic or Pentecostal, would have wished if “Anyen” had taken the strict metaphysical or exegetical trajectory of Obuoba J.A. Adofo’s “Ofie Nipa See Woa.” On the other hand no one can argue against the metaphysical force of Crentsil’s rationalization. His is a profound metaphysical metaphor for Africa’s scientific and technological lack. Adofo’s merely reinforces scientific ignorance of the natural world. Yet both truthfully share a subtextual overlap with the penetrating question of self-destruction. This overlap extends to experiences such as political ethnocentrism, ethnic nationalism, political wars, and the like.
However, on the question of superstition, Wole Soyinka for one does not distinguish between the claims of religious “truths” and the paranormal certainty of Uri Geller’s illusionistic displays, especially telepathy and psychokinesis. Soyinka maintains: “…no less improbable than the bending of forks through sheer willpower, as advocated by the ‘para-psychic’ Uri Geller, or the reliance of one American president at least, and his wife, on American witchdoctors, otherwise known crystal-gazers.” Regrettably, while American universities like Morehouse College, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s alma mater, are putting all the necessary instructional mechanisms in place to ensure their students acquire coding skills before graduation, our society on the other hand is preoccupied with the comics of superstition and misplaced politicization over the duration of senior secondary education, as they prepare students to meet the competitiveness of the innovation economy (See George Alexander’s article “’Unintelligent Blacks’: Tim Cook and Charles Barkley Should Talk Inclusion”).
Nevertheless, it may again seem that superstitious beliefs, like witchcraft, constitute particular instances of the problem of mental causation where immanent derivations directly correspond to material or non-material actualities. Among other things, it does also mean that the human mind harbors the creative fuel of neurological plasticity, an innate capacity for electrically manufacturing diverse quanta of ideas and through human agency an impression that those ideas actually exist, provable or not. Placebo effect works somewhat similarly. Such gross miscomprehensions of the operational attitude of the human mind and its attendant neurological complications may possibly explain the likelihood of superstitious absolutism, rather than scientific rationalism, accommodating some of the ailments subsumed under functional disorders, organic diseases, psychosomatic disorders, structural disorders, and emerging diseases infectious diseases like Ebola.
Yet, because scientific rationalism cannot always sufficiently account for all the mechanisms underlying some of these major ailment categories, religious folks, including scientific illiterates and their literate contemporaries, readily point to paranormal magic, witchcraft in our case, as the primary causations of these ailments. Besides, rather than investigating the promise of cloning (See Dr. Lewis Thomas’s provocative essay “On Cloning a Human Being”), tissue engineering, and cryogenics, primarily cryopreservation, and the possibilities of drug discovery for effective disease management, our society led by religious fanatics and political Komodo dragons chooses to remain trapped in the autocratic dogma of cultural and religious trivialities. Still, we cannot overlook paranormal magic as an essential symptom of derealization or bizarre delusion.
Regrettably, while innovative thinkers such as Louis Pasteur (and Agostino Bassi, Friedrich Henle, Girolamo Fracastoro) worked so hard at deposing the longstanding autocracy of spontaneous generation via the magic wand of scientific rationalism, biogenesis, thereby ushering in a seemingly endless vista into the wonderfully strange world of microorganisms, germ theory, our African Christians or religious magicians continue to deploy, from the vantage of their archeological captivity, the extinct vocabulary of holy water and fasting and psittacine tongue-speaking through divine demonization of Ebola and other micro-organismic diseases. In fine, as an aside, we argue that our institutions of learning should consider accommodating the following in their curricula: Environmental sociology, ecotheology, environmental engineering, ecological economics, environmental economics, natural resource management, environmental management, pollution control, environmental justice, and environmental protection.
From now on Ghanaians in general and national policy makers should have to look closely at the National Sanitation Day from the viewpoints of the larger questions this essay raises. In effect, environmental cleanliness belongs to science and technology and mathematics and engineering, not superstition and ignorance!
We shall return…
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