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Showing posts from June, 2017

BE THE OPPRESSOR THAT YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

It's sad that I was the only example of power you knew. When you were fighting for power you were inextricably also fighting for the right to oppress because that was the only manifestation of power and authority that you saw through me. This broadly applies to struggles and movements in any situation. From a bird's eye view, we can see passionate people excusing the inexcusable in the name of liberation. We can see the dreamers and visionaries become butchers and mercenaries. It's not difficult to see how that slippery slope turns into tumbling and free-falling. Living an experience creates an indomitable passion in our hearts and it's passion that drives us to push through unimaginable horrors and it pushes for devotion to the cause beyond logic. Passion however gives us an incomparable blind-spot to alternative opinions. We acknowledge the power of constructive dialogue until the moment where we are the affected and the advocates. At that poi

Social Impact Disillusion

There is no quicker or more effective way to get disillusioned than to work for a social-impact organisation. Organisations which presumptuously claim to change lives have been known to take no prisoners in ensuring that we are assured that we are a broken people. 1. You engage in tons of activities which are all flash and no substance. You engage in report after validation after stakeholders meeting after conference after sensitization after luncheon after dinner after report launch after research after report... You thought you were going to be a world changer. Ha. The organisations organise marches,press conferences,benchmarking,consultative dialogues and the list continue. When you do question the efficacy, you shall be educated to NGO precision on why all these things are needed before an effective intervention. The elephants in the room hire you for your creative youth and out-of-the-box ideas until you DARE suggest change. That's when you're taught a

Political Apathy is a Zero-Sum Game

"I don't like politics so I just keep off it." I love how from that statement, politics sounds like a mutually respectful relationship that will leave you alone if you're not interested. I need to learn to read political posts I am not comfortable with. We find ourselves, through our upbringing, politically swayed towards one side of the divide,unknowingly. Sometimes, what we think is rationale is post-justification of our choices to make them sound well thought out. I thin k you should learn to do so,too. A lot of what we think we know is a lie based to perpetuate the status quo. We need to more effectively communicate the connection between politics and people's everyday struggles and only then will we have a more civically engaged populace.  That's one of the most complex tasks for political communication. This isn't just to the lower income cadre as commonly perpetuated in the wrung out and fossilised school of thought that p

Let's Learn from Social Media Discussions

Online discussions are but controlled keyboard bar fights. We are not seeking knowledge but rather affirmation. This is why we block/unfriend people who hold opinions contrary to what we believe in. There are special exceptions who we don't need in our lives but more time than not,it's an ego trip. The worst part about having passion is that it blinds us to external logic. We go out in defence of our cause and can't for the life of us understand why people don't understand it like you do. We seek to spread our wisdom to lesser mortals and uplift their way of thinking. We don't ever think we are wrong and our friends are always a click away at the comments section to ward off any alternative thoughts. who told you,you could have those? We are in an online bubble and in all our bubbles we are king. We ask people not to take our social media presence as representations of who we are but take it as an affront to our dignity when someone expr

Religion and Education as a Tool for Oppression

Two of the most potent tools for oppression are education and religion. It's a subtle way of placating the masses and a tried and tested tool, worldwide. Rtd. Dic. Moi was passionate about Kenyans being Christians/religious and hired Malkiat Singh to be one of the primary pacification tools of the regime through his inaccurate and overtly misleading books. His insistence on increasing our educational capacity but concurrent rigidity in having control over the content worked t o his advantage and had us educated thoroughly without any particular substance. His success is also visible in the way people defend his legacy of wanton looting and repression. I hear people talk about how he provided free milk for primary schools. How is it 2017 and people still think that this milk was free? He was spending taxpayer money to buy milk. We had milk as part of our national budget. Moi pillaged this nation, tortured, killed, maimed and made us an economic wasteland but was alw