We often crave humility but preach violence and hate

Kap Kirwok

Have you noticed how we crave peace and humility but promote violence and brutality?

We preach and pray for a little humility and some tenderness in our leaders and yet, secretly, we seem to enjoy drinking from the well of hatred and arrogance. We furtively admire the braggarts and envy their swagger. We wish our leaders exercised more wisdom and yet, in the same breadth, praise them for their zero-sum Machiavellian games.

Listen to the way we talk to each other or the way the media reports news or stories. Our lexicon is full of violence. A recent news item started with this sentence: "Prime Minister Raila Odinga trained his guns on Chief Justice Evan Gicheru and Police Commissioner Hussein Ali, vowing that the Government would soon take action against them."

Training or aiming a gun…what image does that conjure?

In their book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain how the language people use in arguments is full of war metaphors. Here are examples of typical statements in heated arguments: "Your claims are indefensible." "He attacked every weak point in my argument". "His criticisms were right on target". "I demolished his argument". "I’ve never won an argument with him". "I killed his line of reasoning." "If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out". "He shot down all of my arguments."

Defend, attack, target, demolish, win, kill, shoot, strategy, wipe out…all these are words appropriated straight from armed conflict.

Potential gladiators

Let us face it: we are all gladiators — at least potentially. We seem to enjoy brutality. Gladiator comes from the Latin word ‘gladius’, which translates to "sword." A gladiator is one who uses a sword to fight. Ancient Rome, of course, was famous for gladiatorial fights. It is said the gladiatorial combat was a common practice staged by aristocrats to sacrifice prisoners on the graves of heroic warriors as part of public morning. After the death of Emperor Julius Caesar in 44 BC, it however quickly evolved from being a funeral rite into a spectacle for public entertainment.

During such fights, slaves, criminals or professional fighters would fight it out until one was killed — all for the enjoyment of the emperor and his guests.

In medieval England, there was a blood sport called sparrow-mumbling: it required men to use their teeth to bite off a live sparrow’s head.

While we do not have such public spectacles in Kenya, we see glimpses of it in the public lynching of suspected criminals by crowds — what we euphemistically refer to as ‘mob justice’. And of course, we are all familiar with the blood sports involving animals. Western Province is (in)famous for bullfighting; everywhere else everyone seems to enjoy the occasional cock or dog fight.

Either consciously or unconsciously, we seem to have made our politics the ultimate blood sport. In discussing or reporting politics, our vocabulary drips with blood. We would like to see the President and Prime Minister "crack the whip" and "wipe out" the opposition. We urge them to "crash" dissenters.

This type of language inevitably has the effect of glorifying violence, making it desirable and, ultimately, inevitable. Any wonder that many people — university students for example — seem to enjoy violence for its own sake? Any surprise our (in)disciplined forces seem to derive sadistic satisfaction in torturing and killing people?

If this secret thirsting for violence is deeply unsettling, it is its close cousin — self conceit — that is often more dangerous. It leads to a belief that other people are less important and therefore dispensable or at least not deserving of respect.

It is why, for example — wielding transitory authority and often dressed in colonial-era uniform — a Provincial Administration official will treat ordinary citizens like takataka (trash). Ditto anyone with a ‘big’ title and position.

It is why chest thumping and machismo is quickly becoming a national obsession, right next to corruption. Perhaps it is time to replace the Jogoo (rooster) with a Tausi (peacock) in our Coat of Arms.

Dose of humility

It is why we are fascinated by protocol: who invites who where; who seats next to who; what title must be used to address who; and on and on.

It is why, after he helped us pull back from the brink of civil war, we now mock former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and claim we are capable of sorting out our own problems.

It is time we all cultivate more civil and peaceful public discourse. A little dose of humility from time to time is good medicine. After all, "a man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle", as Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Fathers, once said. He was right. We do well to remember this.

The writer is based in the US

Strategybeyondprofit@gmail.com