Manifestations of mental slavery (1)

Mind slavery, mental slavery, mental serfdom, is an unsung epidemic.

An epidemic whose effect is worse than any physical epidemic. Its effect on the society is one which we can not begin to quantify, or properly qualify.

‘Tied down by themselves’

Mental serfdom, lack of independent thought, holds down many individuals, many families,  whole ethnic nationalities,  and whole countries. In the end it also holds down the planet and its inhabitants. Yes, it holds down all 7.7 billion plus of us on this planet as a collective. In so far as a majority of us here are enslaved to others people’s thoughts and ideas. This planet is currently reeling under the weight of many erroneous views and and consequent  erroneous  conduct. And we are holding ourselves down by the set of behaviour arising out of our wrong views. It is a tragedy.

But we jump ahead of ourselves.

This piece, the first part in a series of posts on the myriad manifestations of mental slavery, is addressed first to the individual.

Living in (mental) bondage

Let us take an aspect of our lives in Nigeria. One person is today struggling to save enough money to build a house in his village. Not because he is rich enough to do so, or because he already has a house of his own where he us based, no. He wants to take the illogical  step of building a palatial, unnecessarily big house in his village,  where he visits few times a year, and spends at most a cumulative 50 days in a year, just because many of his neighbours, relatives and others known to him have done exactly that.

Meanwhile this same person lives in an uncomfortable 2 bedroom flat for the remaining 315 days of the year in the city. In an environment devoid of flowers, proper sanitation or other aspects of real good living. Whereas, all these things -landscaping, gardens, orchard,  and enough living space full of natural air is provided for in his village home. Where he spends only holidays like Easter, Harvest, and Christmas.

‘Short enjoyment of palatial village homes’

At the end, when our ‘enlightened’ man retires to the village after living well below the standard he could have lived, in the city, he lives for a few years in his palatial home in the village, and passes on. What then becomes of the house? Will the children feel inclined to live there?  No. They have probably been sponsored to live abroad and love living abroad. Coming back to stay in the village is probably far away from their minds. 

The house falls into first, less than pristine maintenance (since its usually too big and too expensive to maintain), and later, outright disrepair, or, rented out to ungrateful and uncommitted tenants who will not hesitate to run it down. The owner would have cheated himself of the quality of life he could have lived. He would not have enjoyed up to 30 percent of the value of what he has invested.

And the reason for this?  because they are gripped with the idea of “building a house in my village”  so people will know they have arrived. Not because they want  to rent out to people, or stay there, or put their relatives there.

The stronger the bondage of this illogical idea, the more the individual will  go into illogical errors: build a house that is totally out of proportion to their genuine needs, install gadgets that probably are not necessary in the village environment, and majority of which will never be called to use  and have more rooms than necessary.

We have heard of former rulers installing themselves in 40 bedroom mansions. Their children are not living with them. So what is a 40 bedroom mansion useful for? If this is not a manifestation of madness, what qualifies to be so regarded?

It’s even a bit understandable when the individual can comfortably acquire two residences. Then the sensible thing is to build first,  in the place of residence, a useful and moderate house, maybe 3 rooms  before building another one, an occasional residence at best, for the village. That way, the individual can be assured of living his life in relative comfort.

As already agreed,  mental prison is not given to routine prison break. So this attitude of Nigerian elites has continued ad nauseum. Those who can not yet acquire such houses still continually think that way. 

And there is no strong will being exerted anywhere to stop it.

Examples of this incomprehensible attitude is so common  that every other person must know someone who has fallen into the trap and is struggling to get a palatial house built in the village, even when he is living in a tight accommodation day in day out in the city.

‘Multiple fallout’

Nor is this the only evil this particular manifestation brings about.  The civil servant that steals  more than he needs just to make sure that his house in  the village is the most striking around is even wallowing in worse slavery of the mental kind. This is  because whereas the regular mindserf works himself to the bones to build a house he does not need, thereby wasting or misapplies valuable energy, at least he is being punished by his sins. Sin of voluntary subjection to another.

‘Punished BY  your sins, or FOR your sins’

But the situation of the public official who does the same thing not through hard work but by mind boggling theft of public funds and resources is in a different, dangerous position all by himself.  Because here, he has demonstrated betrayal of trust, manifested in stealing and appropriating to himself, what he does not need, but which others need desperately.  He builds a house of 15 rooms and installs a swimming pool, a cinema, an underground bunker, numerous sitting rooms etc which he would never be able to utilise up to 20% of the time.

This is bad but it gets worse, because the resources being the thus wasted in what is unnecessary, is stolen from those who are in  dire need of just basic things , and for which these monies are meant to be spent. These helpless people, so heartlessly  betrayed by those expected to utilise common resources to help them, languish in all kinds of elementary lack. So that another would enjoy unearned opulence.  It’s obvious that in such cases,  it’s much worse than the person whose main punishment is possibly a shortened life from living in untidy surroundings while working to build a  a mansion he does not know need.  Such a person is punished by his sins.

But the civil alservant or public official who uses our commonwealth to build for himself what he does not need,  has the inviolate laws of the almighty to contend with.

 Apart from seeing the structure thus acquired headed for run down, he must also have to wait for the result of the infarction against the Laws of Creation.   For the Almighty can not be mocked.  thus such people are punished by their sins, and also punished for their sins by laws that are just and unrelenting.

‘Born free, but living in chains’

So, as a result of mental slavery, which is voluntary slavery, not forced, millions of men and women live a life that is unworthy of a rational creature. A rational creature that lives the sad fact that: man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. As postulated by Jean-Jacques  Rosseau.

‘Liberation comes hard’

This is why our greatest Liberation fighters are not necessarily the guerillas in the bush who engage in gun battles with the decadent enemy. Our greatest liberators are our teachers. The militant orators,  the clear minded masters of mass psychology who understand the elaborate con game of the mind, and have spent years advocating a change in our thinking.

To liberate ourselves,  we must go back and study their works, and learn from it.

Consequently,  the only escape from mind prisons in which we live has only one prescription: go read up on the masters have freed themselves, and have tried to free us with their writings.

We can start this Liberation war from apprenticeship to the writings of  Marcus Garvey,  Malcolm X, Bob Marley, Louis Farrakhan, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba etc.

Now this is not to say these icons of mind freedom will teach Liberation from the particular mind slavery identified here. But the clarity of their thought, their advocacy for inependent reasoning and unrelenting   fidelity to only facts and iron logic in their reasoning process, is a good foundation for anyone who wishes to regain his freedom.

Other manifestations (and much more serious) mind serfdom abound, and we shall be examining them in this column. This one is just the first of such.