#WARAGIPHILOSOPHY: Why Live?

Between a calloused looked spinning a storm on a tall glass with a chipped pattern bottom, the ones you buy as wedding gifts for lack of imagination, a thought escaped me.

I asked a friend hoping his intoxication would have filed off his reservations and numbed his calculations for sounding intelligent. (He thinks too much)

What do you want out of life?

A simple question that I wanted an answer myself. Was it a constant thing a pristine goal that one is born to pursue, per-determined even.

Was it lots, a fatalism or chances that when we go into that evening drenched in dick-purple blood of dusk to an eternity/reincarnation/ or just lights out, we would have fit into purposes like gloves designed for us?

Or was it a morphing thing changing in its manifestation like a salty nipple to a child to a stick finger nipple to a man. changing with growing or diminishing need and attitudes.

Maybe it was with the people, left to tell if you got what they want in life. An outside thing determined by other peoples perceptions, ability or inability to see themselves in your shoes, empathize or worse still judge.

Did anyone ever get what they wanted out of life?

"Confidence"

It came out wistful, unlikely as I first thought. I'd expected better bigger. at least from him. A domineering pantheon I could add to a character in my book, a strong lurid but thoughtful character. But all he wanted was so achievable so within his reach that he had set his 'high-jump' beneath his heels.

I was wrong.

What he wanted tells a lot, its a statement of intent. A unique desire to compensate. It is history, his, or lack of. It is how he wants to fashion his life but is incapable of. His life is a dreary film  he has watched, inspiring but just for the brevity of it. His life, our life demands that confidence a monumental courage to accept the vanities we hold but do not acknowledge.

I still had four fingers around my glass of brown brandy. Fiery for its ability to make us do the wrong things and pass blame to 'Oh the spirit of wine, let me call thee devil.' My one free finger pointed at another friend.

What about you.

"Happiness"

I swung the brandy up my throat my head bent backwards repulsed, hoping, maybe the drink would jut out through the sole of my brain like spewing retch.
Simpleton, I concluded, Jolly monkey African too content with the moment to notice the clock of time winding off those tiny wheels and cogs in de ja vu. I thought of him too crass to base such a mournful span of time to a simple single emotion that was at best unachievable if not feigned. An emotion that was fleeting in its folly and tempered by its antithesis at all times. Reggae-like calling for Peace when we know how awfully conflicting the world is even in its theoretic formation as an explosive star.

But I realized it was in itself not just a childish dream for grownups but an essence that escapes those who think they are climbing the lofty clouds of self awareness. The missing piece after Zarathrustra conquers knowledge. A dark moment even after we have discovered the light bulb in all colours. We remain base animals that need more often than not to be just that. Not tombstones but rotting corpses beneath swallowed by our insignificance. We remain prisoners of the soft human desires of perfections gladly imbuing the admiration and vanity of shared stupefaction. We need to be happy the irony is we will not and thus makes it a purpose a goal worth pursuing.

My friends turned and asked me with their eyes. I had sourced writing material from them, at least I should offer something in return.

"What? Living beyond my bones"

Reincarnation, I thought, wisdom something lofty to tell humans eons from now that there once lived a fool so full of himself. Something important enough to get people to awe at the gaudy brilliance I exuded while I lived, the most intelligent man in the room, the self importance, itself the greatest vanity.

But maybe I longed for an intrinsic biological logic. Desire to see my genes re-written in another being. Engineering something entirely non existent and dependent on my action. A child not only to bear my name but my race, my essence. Siring a human being.

What if am impotent?

What do you want out of life?

Free Eskinder Nega

Everyone has A Right to expression unless they shout fire fire in a theatre full of people.

Eskinder warned that Ethiopia was staring into the abyss of the Arab Spring and for a nation that is systematic in its subjugation of human expression, they made a law to suit agitators for social change.

What in effect is their interpretation of this exception of the tenet of freedom of speech is that we should jail the manufacturers of fire extinguishers at theater door because they have written (expressed) fire fire.

We should also imprison the administration maintaining the theatre for setting up fire assembly points because they have the same effect as someone who shouts fire fire,  in a theater!

Now if the Ethiopian government deludes itself that it could stop the unraveling human history that is towards democracy and its tenets then it should look around for examples in History.

When the biggest state mechanism that is still operating on throttling civil voice, aka china took in Ai wei  wei, they made him in fact a voice of democracy. Tianamen square embodies this spirit to date and the effect of open revolutionary contempt for the Chinese government simmers to date.

What the Ethiopian government has successfully done is turn Eskinder Neta into the beacon of an African voice for the call of democracy and free speech.

It is a call that every blogger and journalist who has staked up his voice in the open space of the internet should fight for.

It’s a battle that if we lose to despots who are relishing on the precedent by Ethiopia to instigate similar bridle across the continent. Like in Kenya where CCK or whatever it is called wants to license and register bloggers and give them passes in order to converse in the internet.

This is a battle of epic proportions a battle that should allow Satta to be called a sweet potato if he is really one symbolically and behaves like one literally by locking Bwalya for 5 years.

As the Nation Of Africa we solemnly call on Ethiopia to Free Eskinder Nega

Joshua Kisemei: Let Eskinda Go: Let Democaracy Prevail 
Zakes Mda: Africans Must Speak Up for Journalist Jailed in Ethiopia
Call For Justice: Sign Petition Now!

Armed Civilians a threat to stability

The world has for a long time been a center stage for acute competition, domination and power. Initially it was a rule of the mighty against those without the physicality to challenge for power. But as civilization ‘westernization’ occurred, the rule of the intelligent usually less physical took center-stage and sought to control physical power which has worked with mixed reactions.

First physical power was so feared that only intelligent militarists controlled power (like armed generals) and they in turn feared uncontrolled civilian power. At the end of the 16^th century in China for instance Oda Nobunga sought to end freedom of civilians to carry swords for defense or decoration especially the Ikkō-ikki who sought to end Samurai rule. The Samurai in turn later in 1876 were also banned from carrying swords and a standing army and police force was created.

This fear of armed civilian continues to plague contemporary polities with a fear that governments might at a given time be unable to impose on its populace in case of unpopularity. America is abuzz with calls for gun control citing incidents of irresponsible gun use with dire consequences. While the call is undeniably justifiable the end game is de-militarization of the civilian population that will help confine power to bureaucracies and not the rule of the might. This is in hindsight with global trend of giving armies special treatment, holding them above the law and swelling their budgets every year as part of appeasement policies.

During the world war 2, after Brits were armed in case of occupation George Orwell decried their inability to see beyond Germans and realize that for the first time in history power was literally in the hands of the proletariat, when no revolution was borne.

In Kenya the Maasai Turukana, Samburu and other Northern Kenya tribes carry arms for self-defense because of the inability of the government to protect them. The area recently became the center for a world shocker when more than 50 elite policemen were gunned down by bandits. There area, Baraghoi, remains isolated to date with the Kenyan  security apparatus still unable to enter the area and secure it.

As the world reaches the throes of ultimate civilization and negation of militarism, the physically endowed and or armed parts of the populace who do not share in the luxury of the intelligent will come calling. Small arms proliferation continues to be one of the biggest threats to stability in Africa than military tyrants with more discontent being a reality in marginalized communities of Africa like Nothern Nigerians, Southern Sudanese in Pibor, Kenyans in the North  Rift, NFD and coast, Mali etc, we expect more civilian challenge to bureaucratic power.