We live, again, in times where we are expected to achieve for ourselves.
But where is the reciprocity to make things better in an age of communal existence?
Nairobi was, pre coronavirus ‘enjoying’ the thrills and many, many, spills of extra traffic; extra traffic atop of the extra traffic already generated by the income now at the disposal of middle classes (Kenya is a MIC, Middle Income Country, according to parameters set by the World Bank Group — http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mic — indeed they are a diverse group of countries). The price of fuel has fallen and the manner this has been communicated sends signals to those with cars — Get them out and drive. Has a bus or matatu fare fallen? No, in fact those who need to use motorcycles and minibuses are seeing price hikes and flagrant breaches of the public health guidelines on sanitation and social spacing.
Selfishness is something becoming confused with self-reliance on the one hand. On the other hand, which in some places nowadays surely does not know, nor cares, what the first hand is doing, selfishness is the survival of the fittest; beggar the rest. Then we have the extremes of not simply confidence and self-belief but over confidence and ego to the point of narcissistic behavior where everything is about self.
These points used to manifest themselves in the morning and evening standstills afflicting Nairobi, and, almost certainly, plenty of other cities across the continent and beyond. We have issues of traffic and a paucity of infrastructure.
On a far greater scale we have issues with the inability to have a sense of community beyond those having adversity forced on them feeling they need to strike back at those forcing the adversity upon them. We always suffered matatu and bus drivers being complained at by passengers when they did NOT overlap, when they did NOT push and shove and seek to break every traffic law in order to get ahead of the creeping queue to this or that satellite town. Now we witness a new set of issues with coronavirus and costs. People looking to cut costs on sanitising and the return of packing people into vehicles. Social spacing? Not in the bus owners’ bank account for certain.
In the peripheral areas, geographically and societally, we see striking back become radical action; itself being manipulated by extremists. Are our traffic and public health woes a symptom of deeper malaise that also underpins extremism? A question to ponder. One where few answers will be positive for short term political expediency we see in endless campaigning for office.
Matatus, the term usually applied to the almost ubiquitous twelve-seater minibus, have decided they have the right to break not only the law but also the sense of social norms. The chaos on the roads of Nairobi is due to a number of factors not the least un-roadworthy vehicles and poor driving standards. Underpinning this remains a social condition where we have been given signals by the leadership that being important means I can usurp the law, I can breach restrictions on public health the same as I always breach traffic regulations. Why? Because I am a legislator who is going to make laws. A civil servant going to deliver services to people. In fact, the insidious creep continues. Yes, everyone is more important than everyone else. If they lived on a desert island with no need to be mutually supportive maybe this would be true; but in a conurbation of six million people?
The paradox is there. I am important; so important I defy the very processes that brought me to power, I am sworn to uphold and where I (should be expected) offer good example. Then the roll, the role models, continues and we are lost in rhetoric of democratic process and transparency. Reflecting badly on the paucity of leadership and offering only bad example.
Back to matatus and the awful road system. People do have to make a living, transport operators included. Buses and matatus are moving more people to work than the endless streams of single occupancy cars jamming roads.
Alas, the social malaise is such enforcement of any law is now beyond the day-to-day structures. The market and the capability to exercise power have left us in a situation where respect for each other appears to have been largely lost. Everybody else is pushing and shoving and being more important, then so will I.
Selfishness has started to become narcissism. We have a social problem where we are becoming so self-centered, we are failing to distinguish our self from external objects, we are everything and everything must serve us.
Can we use our strengths, regularly subsumed in the problems we face, to address a social problem?
Are the issues laid out a result of narcissism or a cause of the wider malaise? What is cause and what is effect of the setting we now have?
Address these issues and then you will start functioning again building mutuality in self-reliance lifting us away from what is becoming a social narcissism; if this is not a paradox.
We must reinforce the decency of mutually supportive social living allowing self-reliance within a social structure of mutual respect because we know what is best and will always achieve this. Together.
Together
To end on a quote:
“Unfortunately, we live in a sea of mediocrity in all walks of life. We live amid a fracturing of civility. Everywhere we go as consumers, we’re getting people who don’t want to reach into our hearts or know who we are; they want to reach into our wallets and get some money.” Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks
