Exceptions are not the RULE
Or when inspiration is toxic
I read the first few pages of Chude Jideonwo's 'Are We The Turning Point Generation' a while back.
Of course, by admitting that I read only the first few pages, I am owning up to the fact that I did not get and do not have the full picture of his thoughts. But in the pages I read and can remember, Chude kind of admitted to being cured from the perception that a people could rise above their leaders.
He places governments and systems on a high pedestal in determining how far a nation will go in the long run.
It is pretty evident that he believes what he wrote just by looking at the work he is doing with State Craft Inc which has worked on both President Buhari's campaign and the President of Ghana, Nana Addo's, campaign.
While reading a bit of the book off the Okadabooks app, I agreed with a lot of what Chude was saying; especially, when he makes a distinction between the 1% (just read that as few people, can’t remember the exact percentage) that will beat the odds and rise above it all and the 99% (look how large that is) who will basically be locked in the system.
The system was not (is not) meant to be a bad thing but I think we can all pretty much agree that Nigeria's system sucks right now. What that translates to is a lot of people struggling on a lot of fronts. Ever so often, even in this terrible system that we have right here, there is a win that blows our minds and becomes fodder for the inspiration mill.
I like the inspiration mill, really, I do. All those glorious stories of beating the odds; making millions from 5 naira, or maybe building a car from scratch with knowledge gotten only through YouTube videos, or perhaps getting a 5.0 G.P.A from a federal university. Awesome stuff these stories, really, really...really.
The inspiration mill is meant to show you that people do indeed beat the odds, or at least I hope that is what it's meant for. To show you (us) that it is possible; that you (we) can do it too.
I like that as a message; YOU CAN BEAT THE ODDS. Even with not-so-great lecturers, you can excel at your studies, even in an economic downturn you can make your millions, you can dream bigger and those dreams can become reality.
I cannot deride the inspiration mill even if I had that as my intention in this article. It is vital, cause the 1% who have the potential to beat the odds may not be aware of the possibilities or the ability that they have and they need to be told. They need to be told because they need to excel and rise and create a wider space; a better system.
This is my main issue with the inspiration mill sometimes; in trying to inspire, we can do the society at large the big disservice of projecting the system as a 'non-problem', we can be dismissive or flippant about the very real effects of a bad system.
I dwell a lot on the poem that Ben Okri wrote for the Grenfell tower victims, a part of it reads;
“The poor who thought voting for the rich would save them
The poor who believed all that the papers said
The poor who listened with their fears
The poor who live in their rooms and dream for their kids
The poor are you and I, you in your garden of flowers,
In your house of books, who gaze from afar
At a destiny that draws near with another name
Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation
From its secret shame
And here it is every name
Of someone burnt to death, on the stairs or in their room,
Who had no idea what they died for, or how they were betrayed.
They did not die when they died; their deaths happened long before
It happened in the minds of people who never saw them
It happened in the profit margins
It happened in the laws
They died because money could be saved and made.”
It is a reminder, for me, on our powerlessness in the face of bad systems or plans that we may not even be privy to. He starts of the poem like this;
"If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell tower." Everyday I extend it to this; “If you want to see how the poor die, come see systems that take no account of their lives.”
Systems, good systems are vital and important. It is not okay that people have to fight against a system that really should work for them.
It is great that people are consulting open resources online and getting needed knowledge and really everyone should do it but it is not great that we are forced to do that not as an addition to current educational pursuits but, practically, as a neccessity to learning anything useful to the current job market.
The system is a problem, if not for you, then for ten people beside you. When you are flippant about it while you try to inspire, even as you give some people the needed inspiration to beat the odds, you also give yourself and other more fortunate people the permission to rise up and out of the mess of a system and leave millions of people behind without doing anything about it.
As S.I Ohumu so eloquently puts it in her essay on Performing Poverty;
"We have an imperative, a mandate, to help. People are having a tough time. They have been having a tough time since birth."
The system in Nigeria is a problem and deriding peoples very real struggles and contentions with it really does not make that statement any less valid. It is insulting to assume that the people who are not 'excelling' in your own view, are not doing anything to beat the odds.
Exceptions are exceptions, they are not the rule and the inspiration mill features tales of exceptional people and events and they are great but so are the people winning everyday battles in 'ordinaryville'.
