Internet: Today's agora for the learned and not-so-learned is a petty, abusive wasteland

The village wise man has been telling us that the Internet is the modern-day global agora. That is to say the marketplace of the present day. It is a school without standards. Anyone can walk into any classroom and claim to belong there. In the olden days, our man Orende says, the Greek fellows were the wisest of humankind, with the man called Socrates being the wisest of them all.

They say that it was an oracle which said Socrates was the wisest of men. The Oracle at Delphi. When the Greek people said that they wanted to find out who the wisest man was, the Oracle said the wisest man was the one who knew that he knew that he did not know. And that was only Socrates. The rest did not know, but they liked pretending that they knew.

These Greek people met regularly in this agora place. They assembled to listen to wisdom from Socrates and other men of great learning. They were truly men of ideas. And so, this agora thing was at once the place where the people met. When they were not in this place, they were just citizens. But when they met here to float ideas and debate them, they became the agora, our wise man Orende says.

Now, more than two thousand years later, the learned and the no-so-learned meet in the new agora, called the Internet. They are the new agora, mostly pretending to discuss ideas, but mostly just saying bad things about one another, the wise man says. Like in the olden days, daily life is spent in this agora. Only that it is abusive. Insolent.

Everything goes. Religion and sex. Commerce and industry. Politics and economics. War and peace. They are all here, and much more. You can buy and sell anything and everything. You can pray and worship. You can have all the benefits of amorous and salacious living online. And yes, you can shock and awe, as they do in war, right here online.

Mr and Mrs Know It All

Unlike in the olden days, there is no pantheon. I went to the dictionary quietly, after pretending that I understood what Orende meant by "pantheon". I didn't want to ask because these days everybody in this republic has become a Mr and Mrs Know It All. When you say that you don't know, they laugh at you loudly. The daftest of them laugh loudest. Plus, I did not want the Orende man to know that I was checking online. I found out that it is not some big snake, as I had thought.

Pantheon, they said, were the most learned and refined fellows. Eh, pantheon! But the pantheon was not just about refinement and learning. It was a godly thing, a society of gods, in fact, a dozen set of deities, led by Zeus himself. They kept a godly aristocratic distance from ordinary mortals, but also communed with them on a need-by-need basis. They did not go to the agora, to meddle and mess around with ordinary mortals. That would be an ungodly thing to do.

So, you can just imagine, ordinary mortals meeting in the agora, floating ideas and feeling good about the twists in arguments. One idea in the head of another idea. No sooner is it born than another idea stands next to it, telling it that you are wrong. And when the people mess up and refuse to agree, or when they annoy the pantheon, then trouble begins - such as the trouble that befell a small town called, the City of Troy. You know how Troy was invaded with a wooden horse. But, I will tell you about that some other day.

Anyway, so Orende was telling us about the present generation, where you cannot even tell the difference between the people who have been to school and those who haven't. He was saying that the agora of today is a school without standards.

That even people who pretend that they have read too many books go there - not to discuss big ideas about the republic but to just show off their latest abusing capacity.

You see, Orende was saying, a man will say how he is very learned. And because he cannot advance a hypothesis and explore its validity, he just goes out there in the agora, to say something outrageous about someone else. He begins by bragging. He says that he is very learned. He calls himself a learned friend. "I am a learned friend." Then he unleashes. "Oh, I practise in Australia. I am better than you. Don't joke with me. I am more learned."

Then the other learned one unleashes back, "Oh, any major case you have litigated in Australia? Practising in Australia alone doesn't make you a great lawyer. A frog in Australia cannot be an elephant in Kenya. You are just a small Australian frog."

Enhe? These are the new kinds of ideas, in the new agora. Matusi tu. Another one chimes in, "Eish, wachaah! You have not even been in court to litigate against a hen! What do you mean?" Not to be outdone, another msomi shoots from another corner, "Eish! Where were you when I was in Harvard? Were you not just across here in Bujjagali in Uganda, roasting potatoes for Uncle Yoweri? Then you crossed over with fake makaratasi, which are just useless papers?'

You see, the great Pericles must turn in his grave, never mind that he was buried in 429 BCE. That is to say 2,451 years ago. This man, whose name says he was surrounded by glory, spent all his life trying to bring glory to Greece. He lived in the age that people who have been properly to school call the Golden Age of Athens. It is also called, in Orende's big books, "The Age of Pericles". Now this Pericles was an orator, a statesman and a soldier. He promoted philosophy, the arts and literature. He loved to listen to people, and to find out the flaws in their arguments. Then he would attack not the people, but what they said.

In the Age of Pericles, people loved learning. The true aristocrat must be a man of letters, not just a man of money na matusi. Even his enemies chose carefully the bad things they said about him. For example, some said that his great speeches were written for him by a woman they called a consort, that is to say some kind of mpango. She was called Aspasia. Anyway, about the mpango thing some other day. The big thing is that those who went to school did not do the kind of things our pseudo-schooled people are doing.

Academies and academicians

The people who went to school were called academicians, and the school the academy. Wewe ngoja kwanza! Let me explain. The academy was not hizi vitu watu wanaitanga ati Academy - oh, academy this, or sijui what academy, hapana! The academy was a true school of philosophy. The great thinker called Plato began the academy in 387 BCE, that would be some 42 years after Pericles.

The academy was accessible only to learned people. The arguments there were for the learned and refined. At the entrance were written the words, "Only mathematicians and philosophers may proceed beyond this point." For, it was pointless to admit people over whose heads the things that were discussed in the academy flew. You see, things that change the world are supposed to get into your head and brain through your five common senses. But some people's senses are impenetrable. Dense. Opaque. Murky.

What you see, hear, touch and feel, smell, and taste is supposed to be processed in your head. But your head must be penetrable. When your head has done the right thing, it is supposed to contribute to society.

But if your head becomes just another common head that abuses people in the common village market that is called social media, then you have become very useless. Bure kabisa. You are supposed to find a different agora, the agora of the intellectual pantheon. Orende says that in the future, he is only going to talk to mathematicians and philosophers. We are reaching out for our dusty books, from Socrates to Sartre!

Dr Barrack Muluka is a strategic communications adviser.