Thinking About Thinking

Trevor Cole photo

By

Paul Oluwafemi David

Africa carries darkness like a baby

Man was brought to a place where beauty challenges him to be more than what he declares for himself. He opened his eyes to vast collections of stars and heavenly bodies that will take him billions and billions of Carl Sagans to even understand or group heavenly bodies to their various classes and patterns. Man is blessed with everything that makes his mind to be extraordinarily sharp. I know God really created man to be a creator of wonderful things that will make angels to be jealous.  I remembered watching Troy and couldn’t recover from its philosophical blunt honesty. Evil comes into play when man refuses to think about the consequences of his actions.

If you’ve been reading your genesis account of the fall you will come to agree with me that it wasn’t thinking that led to the fall of man, it was ignorance. I believe that people can fall when they refuse to think on their actions leading to a butterfly effect as studied in the sciences. Man has always been complaining about what he should’ve understood in the first place, he was meant to understand that he stands at the center of decision making that will affect both light and darkness.

In physics we’re thought about the interconvertibility of energy and mass, I really believe in this equation so much that it made me curious about the life of the physicist that wrote it.You either thinks or sink like the huge Titanic that went down the ocean floor because of ignorance. I live a life of faith watching my fellow men make serious mistakes that will matter in a macroscopic level that Karl Heisenberg took seriously in his uncertainty principle. It’s true that man has been making tough decisions that demands applause, but it will not matter when he loses focus and become a neutron without a charge needed for getting a deflection from the direction of good and evil.

Good and evil exist in this world; we cannot deny it or run away from it thinking all will be well without our conscience and prudence.

Why are you here?

What is your role?

Are you meant to think?

Is thinking really evil?

I will continue my radio activism with a story of all the elements that have contributed to leading us to the twenty first century through bumps of mistakes and accidents that later became success stories. As an African I wasn’t given much chance to fail more to connect the dots together and burn like all the greatest have burnt. Africa doesn’t encourage failure, we frown at it, hate it, belittle it, run away from it like it was evil and a thing of disgrace. Failure is the only road where the ending peaks with light, where the path itself lights the way to shape our minds into a remarkable tool for world development.

I met nothing like textbooks on our shelf when I was born, I met only plates with no greatness about it, I’ve always love to read, I loved books to the extent of emptying my purse to read and understand how the world works in general. There are paths, roads, junctions where a man becomes so certain about an idea that he will never look back to families, to friends, colleagues until he has witnessed victories with the epiphany that light has brought on his part. The world has many illuminants who have studied how the world works; they have burnt the candle in the night to see a new horizon meant for thinkers and scholars. I read about how the most intelligent people in the world disagreed with average minds, this was so true if you’re paying attention to the sages as they roll the pages of light to leave shadows behind. Philosophy cannot teach us anything when we refuse to walk towards light to burn and never to return back the same way.

The word PHILOSOPHY came from two Greek words PHILO meaning LOVE and SOPHIA meaning WISDOM or KNOWLEDGE. Permit me not to invade your privacy without warning you about the damages that ignorance hangs around on its shoulder. Wisdom comes from the kingdoms of work and years of experiences gathered at the angle of elevation. A man who cannot think is worth nothing to religion and science. This is an era where our youths should be thought about the power of thinking, about the power of failing, about the power of ideas, about the power of imagination, about the power of faith, about the power of meditation in an attempt of shaping their minds into what will make them to contribute meaningfully to their respective societies as a whole. The fall of man will come rushing at us like thunder when we fail to teach our kids about selfless service, about individual contributions needed to make a nation to be great.

I’m proud to be a Nigerian, to be born here where many world changers was born like you and i. Developments comes from a developed mind that has daily brushed its nerves with wisdom and knowledge. I have read about what the co-discoverer of the d.n.a said about Africans not being intelligent, I believe this to be untrue looking at the likes of black men and women changing the world with their ideas and imaginations. It takes thinking to shape anything and make it better; it also takes thinking to bring it down. We’re in a century of wonder where kids gets to tell their parents about history and cosmology because of what nature has exposed them to through men of books .Aristotle did classified animals as SOLITARY or GREGARIOUS ,we must define the world with our mind by using our minds to its peak capacity.

What will the world benefit from your existence?

As a scientist I strongly believe in faith and reason, it’s not enough to claim to be a light with shadows leading your mind, Christopher Columbus discovered America because he summoned the courage to leave darkness and see the edge of victory at dawn. Thoughts have help man to break boundaries, to break limits, to cover grounds and make a huge difference in the course of time. Africa needs to fail, to fall and become better with new ways of standing up from 999 times of failure to reach the 1000 that made all the difference of a lifetime. Physics had Copernicus, Aristarchus, Kepler, Galileo, Planck, Einstein, Bohr in the realm of atomic metarmorphosis.chemistry had Boyle, Lavoisier, Dalton, Mendeleev, Wohler and Pauling in the road of chemicals. Medicine had Semmelweis, Lister, Pasteur and Mendel in the realm of biological metarmorphosis.Mathematics was not left alone without the interventions from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient India, and the Greece. Light came through stages, it came through phases.

Africa is the giant of the world with the second largest population made up of over 1.2 billion brains according to the 2016 statistic. Africa shouldn’t be afraid to set new goals, budget new funds, create new ideas that will inspire the youths to think and use their mind in a way that will make other continents to come to the realization that we’re a number that the world must take into consideration in setting new technological breakthroughs. The whites are so used to treating our continent like trash and garbage because we’ve not come to the realization that countries that becomes developed, underdeveloped and developing choose it based on their schema (mental structure). Algeria is Africa’s largest country by area, Nigeria is the largest by population, this should inspire every Nigerian to start to the realization of the main reason why God told them to subdue the world under their imagination and creativities.

Nigeria is among the most blessed countries in the world, I wake up every day to hear them conquer religion and science without getting tired from moving forward like the greatest countries have been doing to become developed. If we’re the largest by population we should also be the greatest with brainstorming, innovation, industry, building a pattern that the world can follow or at least mimic to reach new heights of light. No country can shape its environment under the ruler ship of darkness and ignorance. I strongly believe that Nigeria can rule the world with a paradigm shift in cognition and schemata. Our leaders should start to cultivate reading culture in the habit of our youths instead of the money culture where youths drop out of school in chase of fame and names that cannot last beyond burial ceremonies. Building will not last like libraries because it has made minds to be free chasing their dreams and purpose. If our youths can be thought the reading culture, shown the value of information, shown the best building in the world(library) and thought religion the right way it will not be far before darkness starts packing its retardation into the pith of hell.

LIBRARY is derived from the Latin word LIBER meaning BOOK, it means that every family must start with a culture of books, a culture of faith, a culture of hope, a culture of perseverance, a culture of conviction, a culture of honoring the Gods and loving work as an hobby.china,Assyria,Egypt had started circulating information or keeping them in papyrus, parchments and clays to pollinate ideas .i feel so sad when I watch what our modern society has transformed into today.in our present age kitchens are given the highest decorations than the mind, something must be wrong with this, buildings without libraries shouldn’t be called homes.

It was during the 15 century that the first printing press began by Gutenberg where most Africans are busy chasing monkeys in deep forest without really thinking about thinking. A man that hates the library will never go far in life, he will never read about the sciences, about the arts and the commercial parts that make the word to go around in a triangular chain reaction. Every Nigerian should’ve a library attached to their buildings; architects should frown at constructing buildings without libraries, if your house has no kitchen and has a library you cannot be starved because you will find creative ways of feeding yourself with the vast knowledge and wisdom at your disposal. It’s okay if you’ve a single room, crowd it up with books, read every day, don’t miss a day without reading and nothing will be able to make you a slave. Anthony robins is among the uneducated people lecturing educated people because he found a way to miss the dining table for personal study before he began his career as a writer, his mentor told him to miss food but not study. Today history listens to the story of Robins and writes it with respect.

What culture are you raising in your kids?

You have to know that the culture of money never helped any world change, it was mind culture that made them see the world differently and shape it into what it’s meant to be with faith and religion. I would be so happy if our leaders and giants can start training our kids like the Jews, the Jew culture will catapult our nation into an empire of innovation and oration where the young and the old aren’t just strolling with the crowd but disagreeing with the errors, follies laid down to us by our forebears who lived and dinned with ignorance. Nations that fail don’t think, don’t dream, don’t imagine any worthwhile flash of inspiration. If the Jews can make so much a difference, I see no reason why we should lay on our beds waiting for peanuts and Paris fund to develop a country that’s already a potential threat to the world if the leaders will set the youths on the right path to discoveries. If you buy a big car and you are an idiot you will need another man to help you drive it, if you carry a big body without a functional mind you will need disease to help you nurse it.

I feel pity only for citizens who cannot think and shape their environment with creativity. Developed countries will kill to rule over underdeveloped and developing countries. Whites don’t seek freedom for the blacks they seek for another way of colonizing them again using thoughts and ideas. In about 1564 Spain had made a way to build a library, university of layden open a floor for its readers in 1610. The culture been practiced by our leaders will not help push the nation to its height, we need smart engineers, smart lawyers, smart doctors who will not allow money to corrode their minds into a stagnancy of ideas and brainstorming. If the truth must be told parents aren’t helping in this area of intellectual shift that will lead to the change we all seek for the next generation and this current generation. It’s a shame to see our so called scholars lose their shred of imagination through becoming too African in their thinking. Nothing much can be done by a mind without power and audacity, most of these scholars travel abroad to accept everything a white man throws at them without even questioning its authenticity in the long run and short run. We can either choose to make things better for ourselves or make things more complicated. We have a baton of creativity unused and harnessed for the shaping of our environment, we’re lagging behind to be colonized again; we’re gradually losing much blood that will lead to our demise in the soil of time.

Dreams are what wake a man up into its destiny, into its purpose. Albert Einstein did contributed to time because he believed in his mind and refused to allow any average mind to  discourage him about his BIG FLASH of inspiration. I have read this man up and I believe he believed in the unification of science and religion. Our own Nnamdi Azikiwe was very instrumental in the fight for Ghanaian independence, in the enlightment of Africans and the global world at large. Obafemi Awolowo was also a friend to zik of Africa and he never left his mind to float his ideas on the soil of time before the world agreed about his intellectualism and his era of schorlaship.My mentor professor Wole Soyinka also did his part in the area of drama and  literature to get a Nobel prize that many whites are dying to get. These people are icons on African soil, they are celebutants that we should imitate and buy into their idea of beauty and wisdom.zik is a wise head who wish for the education of citizens.

We are Nigerians, intelligent breeds of people, world changers and the world should be scared of our name, they should quiver at the mention of our name. South Africans got a feel of this, they got afraid when they saw how Nigerians are succeeding in their endeavors, this made them to begin a xenophobic attack on Nigerians. I will be happy to see this happen in my lifetime see the world quiver at the rise of a Nigerian. Most of us forgot about history, about what happened to the Jews all over the world, it’s a fact that the Jews has laid their hands on everything in the world, in the area of medicine, physics, chemistry, economics, geography, sociology, psychology .Name it, you’ll find their prints on it.This made the world to be afraid and begin a global genocide to wipe them out from the soil of time. Adolf Hitler used eugenics to commit genocide of over 6 million Jews; the plan was for the termination of the Jews using eugenics as defense mechanism.

Today the truth is still here, the Jews are still here conquering in every sphere of human endeavor, conquering the world with their hands tied behind their back. Jews are thinkers, and they’ve never shy away from the power of imagination. The experience the Jews went through made them strong, stout, sturdy and convicted about putting the safety of the world and their nation as a whole. I respect Israel so much that most of my friends believe it’s fanatism, well, it may be fanatism; it’s also jingoism. The Jews have always been fighting with enemies from the genesis of time without losing focus and direction. Jews are the people of books, people of library, people of thoughts, people of wisdom who rules with discipline and integrity. The Jews did a remarkable thing with their God giving talent, with their individual potentials to defend their nation from war and external attack. If culture is a way of life of a particular group of people, their posture determines their future, it determines where they’re setting off to. Culture isn’t enough for us as Nigerians; we need a solid posture that will create a pathway for the mechanism of action instead of tradition. Tradition cancels out thoughts; I’m not a fan of tradition that’s not serving man for the greater good of the world and the nation at large. African is good traditionalist, we bow down for stupid cultures that are not serving us well, and we carry it to the heights of barbarism without really thinking about thinking.

Thinking about thinking is the real thinking, it’s the posture we need to inculcate in our youths, it’s the only culture that should be passing on to the next generations of our kids. Africa carries darkness like a baby; we pamper it, guide it, nurse it, and nurture it without even challenging its destructive habits. I’m tired of darkness, tired of raising gloom, tired of being named shame, ignominy and embarrassment. I declare a war against darkness on the African soil, a war against ignorance, a war against tradition, a war against cultures that is regressing us back into the global community of developed countries. Gone are the days when people don’t think about thinking, when people hawk religion without understanding it, hawk tradition without understanding it, hawk cultures without understanding it, hawk mythologies without understanding it, hawk fables without understanding it.wisdom serves men, knowledge serves men, light serves men.

If we continue to raise darkness, to carry it everywhere we go as our label, we’re going to destroy what God has placed under our care. Hawking ignorance takes the world back to the dark ages, it takes the world back to the middle ages where wisdom and understanding is despised and ridiculed as an agent of mass developments. Teach your kids solid ethics and faith, teach them how to think outside the box instead of inside it, teach them to be curious, to see the world in a new perspective, in a new dimension, in a new frame of reference that made men of intellectual freedom. Teach your kids about disagreeing with you; teach them about love, about light, about hard work, about integrity, about conviction about faith and religion that serves humanity in general. Don’t cage their minds, put it in prison, create boundaries for it, create limits for men and women without limits and boundaries, raise their imaginations through intellectual activities, through habits that stimulate a strong faith and religion, through a strong impulse for intelligence and idea creation. Progress and development will not hurt the world, faith and religion will not destroy the world, innovation and creativity will not hurt the world. Knowledge attained with conscience changes the world from its shame. The giant three nationalists of Nigeria, Awo, Zik and Ahmadu Bello fought for the independence of Nigeria because they are free men of books, of education and wisdom.

We should learn how to run away from values and cultures dividing the world, segregating words into hell. I will leave you with this story I stumbled across while doing my personal study about the great literary icon in Africa, Chinua Ahebe.in a chancellor’s lecture which was held at Amherst united states on February 1975 (pardon me, I’ve not been born then), the great Chinua Achebe challenged Joseph Conrad intellectually because of the way he saw Africa, Achebe called Conrad “a bloody racist” whose frame of reference about Africans spells nothing but evil and disgrace. Many African scholars would’ve kept quiet in such a lecture without uttering a single word to defend their continent. In fact the effrontery of Achebe on Joseph Conrad’s “HEART OF DARKNESS” raised a ripple effect after the lecture, many renowned English professors walked up to him saying” HOW DARE YOU”. From the story I learnt that Chinua Achebe is a man of his word, a man of the people, a man who understands what patriotism means. Africa cannot grow faster than its heroes, faster than its masters, faster than its lords who’re at the center of decision making. I so much love Achebe and his proverbial invocation of wisdom, Achebe is African, he should be thought to our kids .History belongs to glory makers, if Nigeria will survive the huge global change coming ahead in the future it will directly depend on the amount of information that is on our disposal when things fall apart as they always do. We’re not preparing for the future, we’re still crawling in the area of science and technology, we’re still keeping up with the jonsers.

Africa was the center of focus for colonization, we’re raped blind by the whites because of what we failed to know or prepare for. Africa didn’t prepare for attacks; we just believed all will be well with all our minds folded together with ignorance. Our youths should be immersed in good literatures of our heroes and heroines who never amassed money to make a difference in their lifetime; we need to tell our kids that information only becomes power when it makes you a leader versed in maneuvers and schemes. Think about thinking, love nature, love wonders and never believe in impossibilities, never count your darkness in the night, never give up a flash of divine inspiration from your maker. Read good books, study the past and the present, align it together with the spirit of service .You’re a very intelligent human being, the white knows this, they know your education will put things in order.

There are glories vast beyond the past, victories vast for stories to convey, imagination vast for information to convey. Many animals have died, many have gone into extinction, but you’re still here, still living, still breathing, still shaping your emnviroment,still winning days to your senses, still controlling everything that the almighty creator leaned at your feet.

How did you do it?

Why are you still here?

The answer isn’t a complicated one, you’re still here because you’re still thinking and changing gears for urban development and civilization, you’re still here today because of your ability to adapt to tedious environmental fluctuations.in the book BUSINESS AT THE SPEED OF THOUGHT, we’re made to know by Gates that man isn’t the biggest nor the fastest, yet he’s still here because he has the ability to THINK ABOUT THINKING. You’ve not gone into extinction because of the only thing that exemplifies you from the populations of other animals, YOU CAN THINK. That is the most powerful thing that makes you a dangerous instrument, you’ve no match, you’ve no end, even when you die you wake up again, you cannot die, you’re immortal, you’re a god created to last forever. Civilization hangs on your shoulder, illumination hangs on your mind, that’s why you’ve to engage in critical thinking that produces results for enemies to see and believe in your idea.

Of all the characteristics of animals like movement, reproduction, nutrition, irritability, growth, excretion, reproduction, competition and adaptation, death is what makes you the most powerful, the most potent among other animals. Think about thinking, we’re the lucky ones even after death, even before death, we don’t die we just think and think to an higher energy level,echeleon of immortals who cannot be stopped. Nikola Tesla once said “Of all the things in the world I loved books the most”, Ben Carson also said “The doors of the world are open to people who can read”,Wole Soyinka also said “Books and other forms of writing materials are terrors to people who wish to suppress the truth”, Malcolm x also said “You’re not a complete human being without education”, Albert Einstein also said “Strive not to be a man of success but a man of value”, John Kennedy also said “Don’t think of what your country can do for you, think of what you can do for your country”,Ben Okiri also said “Our future is greater than our past”. Make sense with the infinite network in your head, you’re a king, a queen crowned by God to rule over earth with your heart, be careful of the people you’re learning from, choose them wisely, life has meaning, has value, has purpose, has direction when we believe in God and our gifts, life has impact when share our lights around to places like Africa where darkness is carried like a baby everywhere.

William Carlos Williams once wrote “unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line, the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadlines: without invention nothing lies under the witch-hazel bush”, the great American historian Joseph Campbell also wrote “Follow your bliss”. This is the time to think about where we’re going in Africa, where we’re heading towards with a new heart of innovation and civilization.

Think about thinking, we’ve not gone into extinction because of God and our mind, the last time I checked we’re still here with our beautiful mind.

Paul Oluwafemi David

Paul Oluwafemi David is a Nigerian Scientist, Philosopher and Poet, he is a student doctor at the college of human medicine university of Nigeria Nsukka. His poems have been published in AFRIKANA, AFRICAN WRITER, PRAXIS, PRIDE, NANTYGREENS, KALAHARI WORDS, TUCK, BANGALORE, MUSE and THREE DROPS. He’s working on some collections of poetry at the den. He can be reached on facebook via www.facebook.com/davidfirstnapaul.