Thought Picnic: The Barrier to Confiding in our Guardians

My troubles in me

As I sat on the train on my way back to North Wales this evening I began to think about things that have happened to me that probably would not have become big problems further on in my life if I had someone who could help to talk to then.

Some might wonder if my childhood was as idyllic as I have so painted it in many blogs before, what could have left me tongue-tied on more personal and emotional issues that I have now acquired the knack for writing about now.

Under their noses

Indeed, I had an enchanted childhood, we lacked for nothing materially and we had much freedom and the support of extended family and servants for the convenience of my parents and ourselves, we had it good.

However, within that somewhat safe setting, we lost our innocence and were exploited by those who were supposed to care for us and somehow we never seemed to pluck up the courage against threat and fear to approach our guardians to put a stop to the atrocities.

Unresolved emotional baggage

In the end and I think I speak for many, we have carried humongous emotional baggage into our adulthood where many are still trying to get some sort of normalcy in their lives and existence hoping the situation if we have learnt the better of our past does not become a vicious cycle of the failings that we then pass on to our wards.

It goes without saying and people of our parents’ generation probably thought children had no emotional problems, we could be seen but not be heard, we were to listen but never to engage in discussion, we ran errands but our latitude for initiative was constrained to a modal expectation of the best behaviour we were to acquire even if we had no example of such character.

Tradition gave voice and truth to the older, it gave honour and absolution to the community leader and if the child ever did have a voice that got heard, at home it was trouble and in school it was radical – in both cases curtailment came through corporal punishment, the child was moulded by stripes and pain – a cuddle or a kiss was a sign of weakness, whilst encouragement if any was never effusive for the fear that the child might become big-headed.

Fear for respect

I was however taken aback but the resonance of a tweet I sent on the train which read thus – “When our parents confused our fear of them with our respect of them, they lost the many times we could have confided in them.”

Our fear of our guardians was supposed to be a moderating influence on our behaviour, the fear of rebuke and harsh discipline apparently made us think of the consequences of our actions the inference was our fear was a sign of respect but what that also did was it raised barriers to interaction and conversation where it was necessary, we have internalised much hurt and abuse until when we have the independence to give voice to what could have festered for decades.

Break that chain

It is interesting that this issue is not just identified with cultures I am quite familiar with because even in Spain lenticular printed posters are being put up that reveal at a child’s eye-level what adults would not see at their eye-level, information about who they could call if they do need to confide in someone.

Sadly, everywhere somewhere a child cared for by someone does not necessarily have the sympathetic ear of that person on the deeper issues of life – questions, concerns, troubles and fears – we must break that chain and refuse to allow the damage we have experienced become a generational heirloom handed down to those that follow us.

Nigeria: The Age of Irreverence Is Upon Us Like A Rash

Culture shocks

It took reading a rather long blog full of very interesting snippets of history titled the Culture of Disrespect for it to occur to me that a seismic shift in values and customs had happened in our society that many had not noticed.

Over the last few months, anyone caught in the amber of some bygone age of interaction between the powerful and the self-important erudite set has lamented the spate of uncomfortable feedback emanating from social media forums.

That time is going fast

Those used to riding rough shod over the masses who had never had to be accountable to anyone and could with impunity be criminal without consequence having never been questioned or withstood by those they term lesser in status and influence have run the gauntlet of abuse, ridicule, rudeness, discourtesy and disrespect – the mystique and mystery that once redounded unearned adulation by reason of sycophancy and fawning had been torn away.

The age-old niceties of deep courtesy and obsequiousness that allowed for patriarchal and sometimes feudal systems of control and subservience had been consigned to the bin of the unnecessary, ushering in what I would call the Age of Irreverence.

Not by default anymore

What the Age of Irreverence meant was that people no more earned respect by default by reason of status, age, wealth, connection or position but by reason of what you did to affect your community for the better.

Much more is demanded of leadership and even more is expected of them to perform with people ready to call out bluster, bombast and bull shit. The people, many though not all, quite well informed today and poised to pounce on any sign of weakness or hypocrisy, do not have the patience to be taken for a ride.

The expression of the angry young Nigerian

It appears leaders are in for a rude shock, they engage to their peril and disengage to even greater opprobrium and that is just what has become the times – only their paid sycophants have sold their consciences for a lie in the face of manifestly undeniable facts.

That is not to say courtesy, respect and reverence no more matters but leaders will just have to work harder for it and carry their audience honestly and truthfully with them to be offered such adulation.

Like another blog suggests, the young Nigerian is angry and social media offers the forum to vent their spleen and join cause with others in what might look like an onslaught or barrage of abuse. It will take more sophisticated skills of communication to placate the passionately angry and they are increasing in numbers in what might become a formidable movement.

Taking no prisoners

Those who portend to take themselves too seriously will be cut down to side, the haughty will be belittled and the proud are in for a crashing and catastrophic fall.

It is all coming together now and only the savvy will be able to withstand those they label the opposition or as one Presidential adviser put it in his risible and lamentable Jeremiad - the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria – have arrived to be the Kings and the Queens of the Age of Irreverence.

The art of the good insult

They will not suffer fools gladly and will use smarts, wit, abuse, insults, irony, sarcasm, satire and much else including data, facts or rumour in their arsenal to express their displeasure in ways that will make even the slightly old-fashioned like myself flinch – I hope for myself, I have not misread the signs of the times.

The sophisticated might well attempt to elevate the art and the finesse of a polite put-down, maybe a Shakespearean insult or even the subtlety of damning with praise – God knows, many are really deserving of what they see on Social Media and long may it continue until things are set to rights; for the highly fed and lowly taught need to experience a comeuppance that will clip their wings.

We have come upon by accident or by design the glowing Age of Irreverence and it will soon reach a street near you.