Indeed, knowledge always speaks, but wisdom listens

By Ababu Namwamba
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During an important battle in the War of the Three Kingdoms, in the third century AD, advisers to commander Ts’ao Ts’ao discovered documents showing that certain of his generals had conspired with the enemy, and urged him to arrest and execute them. Instead, he ordered the documents burned and the matter forgotten. At this critical moment in the battle, to get upset or demand justice would have reverberated against him: and angry action would have called attention to the generals’ disloyalty, which would have harmed the troops’ morale.

Justice could wait - he would deal with the generals in time. Ts’ao Ts’ao kept his head and made the right decision.

The Ts’ao Ts’ao move, in the mid of such immense pressure, is a special rarity. Indeed being slow to anger, and biding your time before you act, is a hallmark of wise leadership. Arthur Schopenhauer acknowledges this: “To speak angrily to a person, to show your hatred by what you say or by the way you look, is an unnecessary proceeding - dangerous, foolish, ridiculous and vulgar. Anger or hatred should never be shown otherwise than in what you do...It is only the cold blooded animals whose bite is poisonous!”

In the words of Robert Green, angry people usually end up looking ridiculous, for their response seems out of proportion to what occasioned it. “...they are so sensitive to slight that it becomes comical how much they take it personally.

More comical still is their belief that their outbursts signify power. The truth is the opposite: Petulance is not power, it is a sign of helplessness. People may temporarily be cowed by your tantrums, but in the end they lose respect for you. They also realise they can easily undermine a person with so little control.”

However, Green advises, the answer is not to repress our angry or emotional responses. For repression drains us of energy and pushes us into strange behaviour. Instead we have to change our perspective: we have to realise that nothing in the social realm, and in the game of power, is personal. “Once you train yourself not to take matters personally, and to control your emotional responses, you will have placed yourself in a position of tremendous power.”

President Uhuru Kenyatta has quickly established a reputation for being easily irritable and prone to public tantrums. Look how he has carelessly waded into the typhoon raging over the Standard Gauge Railway tender.

He has branded as “brokers” and “noisemakers” anyone advising caution on this crucial project that was designed in 2006, first tendered in 2012, and now allegedly gifted to the Chinese under his watch. This is a mega project priced at hundreds of billions of shillings, to be paid for by the Kenyan taxpayer through a special levy.

But Mr President does not want you to raise any query, as is the case with his other troubled pet, laptops. But by rushing headlong to defend a transaction embroiled in so much controversy, Uhuru has blown any option of an excuse should this turn out to be some Anglo-Leasing reloaded. Green warns that “anger only cuts off our options, and the powerful cannot thrive without options...” And in his 1513 masterpiece, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli cautions: “But men of little prudence will do a thing for immediate gain without recognising the poison it bears for the future...the man who does not recognise ills at their inception does not have true wisdom, and this is given to few.”

This blind-rage trait of the President is a God-send for political rivals, who can exploit it to devastating effect. In the 4th century B.C. words of Sun-Tzu, “If your opponent is of a hot temper, try to irritate him. If he is arrogant, try to encourage his egotism...one who is skilled at making the enemy move does so by creating a situation according to which the enemy will act; he entices the enemy with something he is certain to take. He keeps the enemy on the move by holding out bait then attacks him with picked troops.”

Indeed it is true that knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.