Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Hitler Is Not In Hell (Poem)

To be human, is to be part of a group. For instance, what is the meaning of the term "social?" According to Max Weber, even if you are alone in your room, thinking  alone, but in the process of that thinking even when alone, you take another human being into consideration as part of your thinking, then you are not yourself alone, and what you are doing is something that is social, by taking others into consideration.

And when you relate this to the French Sociologist,Emile Durkheim, especially, his seminal work on Suicide, one fundamental insight of the book is that even committing suicide is a social event and process. Why? Because even though there are different types of suicides (anomic, altruistic and egoistic), yet all of them can be explained best by the nature of the relationship of the individual to the society or others, whether the other is family, society, or community.

This whole idea of people being individualistic or this or that seems to suggests a not so deep reflection about our humanity. It is much ado about nothing. In terms of how this same logic of reasoning about being individualistic and independent being used to legitimize American capitalism, Professor Stiglitz calls that ERSATZ CAPITALISM, where the cost of the running the capitalist system is shared by all in society, but the gains are privatized by individuals (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?_r=0)

In this respect, many private or individualistic individuals underestimate how their survival, thriving and flourishing is contingent on being part of a society, but they naively assume they are just themselves for themselves.

We only come to understand ourselves as being part of a community (broadly defined). Even people that hate themselves, do so because they come to understand themselves through what Hegel would call "categories of mediation." For instance, if someone says he or she is Fulani, Kanuri, Igbo, Yoruba, Tiv etc. (all Nigerian ethnic groups), all these are categories of mediation that the person  can use to understand himself or herself, but they transcend the individual. Individuals will be born and they will die, but the category of Fulani, Kanuri, Igbo, or Yoruba etc. through which the individual understands himself or herself will continue to exist because they transcend the individual. Such category of mediation will continue to exist even after the person is dead.

 In brief, "categories of mediation" are categories that we have to go through to interpret and understand who we are as part of a larger whole or as human beings, notwithstanding our extravagant sense of individuality. Let that most individualistic human being identifies himself or herself and I will show him or her using insights from the social sciences how his or her so-called individualistic identity is socially and historically constructed and his or her understanding of himself or herself is a product of that i.e., some categories of mediation that transcend him or her. Anything less than that is an illusion, an attempt to persuade us to think that the person just drop from another planet. On the contrary, the person was constructed by a social and historical process if not processes. I know this sounds deflationary for those who think they operate outside history and outside the "social."

On another note, no human society can exist without taking "social responsibility" seriously. In my assessment of what I read a few days ago in this forum, even while away from home, this is exactly what Professor Falola was trying to do when he intervened. You cannot have a thriving community without social responsibility. This is a social fact. People who deny that have a simplistic view of how human society or community is created and how it thrives or flourishes. Is this constraining? Yes. Can it be misused? Yes, but the issue can never be avoid in any serious human or social community. To take social responsibility seriously means we have to understand it is not just about me or you, it is about us. It is "Ubuntu."

  It is true the modernity erodes this way of thinking but any society, not just the U.S. that in the name of modernity ignores social responsibility, will end up undermining itself sooner or later. We should never take seriously those theories that construct a nice picture of the individual who is just self-made. "Leave Elegance" to the tailors. Do not believe an idea simply because it sounds elegant. "Leave elegance to the tailors." This was what Paul Samuel said, while quoting Albert Einstein in the documentary "Trillion Dollar Bet" i.e., the original version produced by NOVA, which is no more available online. It sounds nice to say that I am just for myself or I do things just for myself, but for us in sociology, we consider such statements as not a reflection of sincere and thorough understanding of how society functions. Personally, I will never like to be in that situation because I would be in a risky position of becoming a danger to others, since I am just doing things for myself. In strict theological terms, it is a kind of idolatry where the the self becomes one's idol. Some of us what to deconstruct that self.
 

America is an individualistic culture on the surface but even Alexis de Tocqueville discusses how your freedom is only within certain parameters (that you never set), and when you cross those parameters, even if you do not lose your legal standing or rights in the courts, people in the culture, society, group etc. will punish you and ostracize you, thereby making your life miserable. What then is freedom under this circumstance since the boundaries and parameters are set by others, sometimes others that transcend you, i.e., the categories of mediation we use to understand and agenda the world, understand ourselves and others..

To be human is to be part of a group, and even being eccentric is not that individualistic because if the society does not recognize the category of being eccentric, the person will suffer. Let us just accept in humility that we are social products and without social responsibility, no community will survive, thrive and flourish.

Samuel

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 1:57 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:

Not to please me o!

I know that you are in poetry

to please yourself only

On Sunday, 1 November 2015 20:38:02 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:

Mazi,

You have the right to interpret the poem (any poem) the way you choose to and I have the right to write the way I choose to. Unfortunately, you sounded as if I am in poetry to please you.

Ndewo.

 

CAO.

On Sunday, 1 November 2015 16:07:33 UTC+1, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:

Dearest Chidi:

Whatever happened with

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

You stand accused of upsetting my Sunday afternoon with the title of your poem.  And the liar wants to justify himself, that "It is a possibility in fiction, especially, poetry" - like fictional paper money (naira) being presented as legal tender or a promissory note.

Your words are clear enough: Hitler you say,

 "is not in hell"

 I hope that I am not deliberately misunderstanding you.

Am I not supposed to be disappointed in you a Biafran exonerating Mr. Hitler, poetically?

You want to spoil our friendship? However, I'm not about to unfriend you here and now – there's hope for you yet – or is it another case of – as Wordsworth opined,

"We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

 But thereof come in the end despondency and madness"

If you can't create a worse place for that son of a devil then we have to agree that it's a very unpleasant possibility in your wordy poetry that "Hitler is not in hell". The question then arises, Where is he then? Do you want to tell us that he is in heaven? Want us to believe   - the blood of Jesus etc. - that he is in Purgatory?

It's not merely the case of e.g. John Milton saying that "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven"

Or is it John Dryden talking about one being "Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell"?

This reminds me of sitting cross legged on the floor in the Imam Ali Mosque in Stockholm many years ago (1988) in a semi-circle around Sheikh Hassan of Iraq, listening to him holding forth on forgiveness. I could not resist whispering in the ear of Ahmad  who was sitting next to me : "So there is/ was a theoretical possibility that Allah (Subhanahu-Wa-Ta'ala) could forgive Saddam ( since Allah (Subhanahu-Wa-Ta'ala) can forgive anything except shirk ?"– Whereupon Ahmad got up and went and sat alone at the far end of the masjid, until Sheikh Hassan's lecture was over.  After which I approached him to ask why he had separated himself.  He was still visibly very angry when he answered: "If Saddam will not go to hell, then who else in this world could be a candidate for the fire?"Chidi, if only you had been by my side on that occasion you could have told Ahmad, here is Saddam's supplication:

"Daily in my dwelling

I do penance

To cleanse me of uncleanliness.

After remission,

I will hurry to heaven

To dwell with Divinity

And be drenched

With the dewdrops of divine mercy."

Here is another of my favourite poets: Yehuda Amichai

Pray for us.

Cornelius

We Sweden

 

 

On Sunday, 1 November 2015 08:25:08 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:

Mazi,
It is a possibility in fiction, especially, poetry.

CAO.

On Oct 31, 2015 5:13 PM, "Cornelius Hamelberg" <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

Eternity continues with the next line: If the devil is not in hell, do you think that maybe he escaped by just paying a fine?

On Thursday, 29 October 2015 11:08:08 UTC+1, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:

By Chidi Anthony Opara

 

Humans say

That hell is my home.

"Hitler is in hell", they say,

Hitler is not in hell.

I dwell in the dwelling

Between heaven and hell.

 

I was prodded to pomposity,

My ego swelled

And exploded,

Its contents soiled society.

I took tutorials

From savages who invaded Africa,

From crooked clergies,

From immoral Imams

And from rogue royalties,

I shared unholy sacrament

With those surrogates of Satan.

 

Daily in my dwelling

I do penance

To cleanse me of uncleanliness.

After remission,

I will hurry to heaven

To dwell with Divinity

And be drenched

With the dewdrops of divine mercy.

 

(Poem presented as social service, all rights reserved)

 

--

Chidi Anthony Opara is a

...

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Samuel Zalanga
Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive #24
Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023

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