The First Authoritarian

              Dictatorships troubled so many nations and ironically the immensity of its existence calls for the urgency of its removal. Dictatorship and its constant threat to rights imbues the conscious and practical oppressed to react and or rebel and as the saying goes ‘a cornered dog shows its teeth’. However, in the socio-political climate I lived in it is as seems that showing one’s teeth in dire struggle against the pincers of dictatorial rule is frowned upon. An interview with African female activists in Al Jazeera came into my head when she said that being an activist, a person who fights for an ideal and for the people is first hated by the very people whom she is trying to educate and to liberate. This is the typical allegory of the cave of Plato where liberation is seen as alien to the prisoners. The light is too bright for their petty eyes to relish. It is hard to saw or unshackle the chains of these people who will bite you for doing so, for comfort trumps struggle. History has shown so many dictators fall whether by peaceful means or the popular violent ones. But the first struggle is a struggle coming from achieving a perspective, a mindset, a goal. What good is a praxis when it is absent of a theoria? What is theoria when there is no praxis? You can carry a gun, or write against the system but can be not convinced of the urgency, the need and the rationale to do so. We do not talk of rebellion as an impulse, but as a human activity, willed from individuals to serve a cause. Defiance is the first step of action to take and it starts first with a thought, a thought that one knows better or one rejects the status quo and later on thinks on what is better. Defiance not in terms of rowdiness, but defiance which stems from careful thinking, observation and deliberate judgment to the world that has pinned down the possibilities of others by stripping their humanity. Defiance starts first as an idea where one is convinced that the world he or she is in at needs to be altered. Thus we can say that from there, there can be “a ruthless critique to everything existing”. Critique then is the language of defiance. Critique is the first praxis of defiant individual for he negates, challenges the world by subjecting himself to it and not to be swallowed as a mere parcel of the broken objectivity. The point therefore is to change the world!

              Although the presence of a condition agitates other conditions to arise; however, the arising of these other conditions can be put to halt by cultural conditions as well that numbs the growth of what ought to occur as a response to a given. Above mentioned is a scenario in the socio-political field where no individual is divorced upon. Even to the apolitical, one cannot escape the fact that the political climate gave him or her the avenue to exercise his or her individuality. I am more meticulous with the very first instance of defiance and that is defiant coming from thought. The first liberation is a liberation of thought and although it be something that can be realize coming from an adult with a presumed capability of understanding, but it cannot be undone that the susceptibility or openness of an individual to thoughts and to critical thinking is a matter of how one was reared. Yes, a child can be taught to think, not what but how. We think of political figures as parental figures and in a macho state, a father figure. But how father and mother appears to an individual in any analogical relationship to it has its first impression on the child’s experience with one. The typical father and mother are authoritarians wherein they presume moral authorship that cannot be questioned and if we dare question it means punishment. We think of the parents as the providers and we treasure their providence and neglect their flaws. It is an acceptable statement that all human beings err and I am not being a sourpuss to all errors committed. Moral ascendancy and authority cannot go hand in hand with a totalistic and authoritarian attitude. All the worse when we see the parents as the source of morals themselves with all the wrong doings they have done and this by childhood we are all scarred by the notion that since they are our elders they have the monopoly of authority. A home can be democratic but not to the point that we have spoiled children. Spoiled kids are those who are impulsive of desires without careful reflection of possibilities. Yes! It is possible to make them think, choose and interact. A child can see error, analyze it and the best of exercise is to tell in all decent manner to his or her parents what the errors are. A democratic home addresses the complaint of each individual and thus we have a dialogue going on, other than a monologue of parent’s wrath. In a typical family set up, a democratic way of management is farfetched and it is easier to be one sided and authoritarian because it does not undergo the long tedious process of dialogue and communal troubleshooting. When children talk back, they are quelled by their parents without even assessing the weight of the clamor. When children defy their parents in a decent manner, it opens the doorway that there are voices that are in need to be deliberately taken into consideration.

              The typical family shuts up the child and children have the most innocent of lenses of which an error seen is the purest in all forms coming from all sincerity and imagine to shut this sincere attitude. Although, this is not yet defiance, but the sincerity of the child expressing the thoughts which confuses him or her is the very disposition we need in order to have a critique, a judgment that is pristine also. Let us imagine ourselves in all out sincerity defy. However, continue to cut this attitude then we have grownups who see sincerity, defiance as something to be abhorred. Since, they have not practiced free voice, dialogue in the home then they see every attempt to have dialogue and to raise their voice in the broader social context as something to be abhorred. They imitate the dictatorial attitude of their parents and that is to shut up free voice and rest their comforts on a monologue. A dynamic and efficient family works as a unit and that is to troubleshoot together thus requires active participation from all members. So too is society. But the majority growing up in a dictatorial home made them allergic to sentiments coming from others because their sentiments were shut from a very young age. Is this a form of negative envy? Since they did not relish that kind of ‘privilege’ then they want that others do not also? Although be it a testament that one can say because of their parents they are still alive up until now, but how one could be reared, there could have been better. But what they saw best is that they are here and now without thinking that there is something better and this something better is the very thought that make us want to change the world. But when they were children, the idea of better coming from their thinking was cut off, thus they only see the better coming from a presumed provider – an authoritarian, a dictator who tells them what to think, to accept and to do.

              In reflection, even though how alcohol tore my home when I was young but they never failed to give me a kind of rearing that lead me to think and to question. My parents during my early stages admitted their faults and listened to my protestations to their actions not anymore for the good of the family. They admitted that me, my sister and my brother are right and they are wrong and that is the kind of parents we grew up, the ones who are open for dialogue. But they have reared us in a manner that we also need to think, to carefully deliberate on things we need to air out, because giving free speech the tone of absolute freedom leads towards a spoiled child. Gladly, there was guidance. Our moral framework, conception and judgment were given a rubric on how to function not just to blatantly say anything. The home in all its traumatic liquor aroma left me with a childhood to reminisce that there can be a dialogue and authority is not an assumption. Everybody is the authority with all out sincerity, we just employ people to act as the representative of the general will, but when that representative malfunctions, then it is our duty to replace it if it refuses correction. We could have chosen better parents, but they made it work worthwhile. We can overthrow people from office, but it would still be the same if the same system is at work. The root cause is not the face, neither the party, but the spirit that turned rotten. We have a crisis of culture which then finds it expression in our politics. Anything can be at fault and it is the duty of each other to correct each other. We protest for we see in all out sincerity the errors of the system and if they cannot see coming from their side, we will make them see. We defy the status quo because in all out sincerity we know it is wrong, that there is something better if only we can have a fruitful dialogue. Criticism is an integral part of our society and makes us reflect on the conditions we are in with the constant desire to change it. But to those who quells criticism, they are victims of a father figure that they failed to question. If only the first people we encounter in our infancy educated us to be decent, sincerely defiant and critical people, because the older the people are the less receptive they are.