The
Law of Cultural Immortality: Why Some Smaller Cultures Prevail in Midst of Larger
Ones By Agharowu E.E. (Honsbira).
Abstract.
The paper about to be
read/heard is cross-disciplinary; this means that a discipline will be taught,
using the findings of another different discipline.
The
problem major in a multi-people, multi-cultural settings, especially settings
invaded by the influx of modern politicking, bickering and fact-tearing, owing
to exploration, location and extraction of minerals, especially petroleum, as
in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, are many, the claims of aboriginality and
ownership of land, being chief.
The
problem does not stop here. In the bid to convince the outside environs of the
veracity of such claims, ethnic nationalities are prone to tickle and
masturbate the egocentricities of neutrals by never-failing stances of
landlordism, backed up with the claims of aboriginality and displays of actions
to show cultural superiority and immortality.
In face of the accusations and
counter-accusations, eyes can no longer see from the clouds of lies and
insincerities attendant on as toward-the-sky determinism to rise above dickenharry.
Because
the onlooker – the neutral – cannot see
from the clouds of reasoning from both the truth and the lies, he becomes a
victim of ambivalence and stupidity out of the inability to judge between
wrongs and rights as these affect his sociology, taking those steps which he
ought not to take and being careless in issues in which his intervention is
necessary. Miserable ones!
Thus,
this paper is an attempt to provide the professional thinker the wherewithal of
teaching the student, the onlooker at cultural crises and the world entire how
to determine which culture is older, which is likely to stay longer, which is
engaging in more cultural borrowings or
cultural donating, and which is displaying cultural vigour unjustifiably.
Introduction
It
must be repeated that this thesis is a cross-disciplinarity. A
cross-disciplinarity is a discourse on a discipline that employs the contents of
another discipline to build up itself. Such works as the structural
functionalism of Talcott Parsons (1951), David Easton’s Systems theory(1953),
Olomu’s Application of David Easton’s Systems Theory(1991), Honsbira’s
Application of David Easton’s Systems Theory(2012), Honsbira’s Factosynthesis
(2012), Honsbira’s Interbehavioural Line(2012) etc are cross-disciplinarity.
That is not all. Such works as Duality of nature, Butterfly Mechanism/Effect,
Quantum Physics of David Bohm and Julie Redstone, the actions of Purucker,
Eccles, and of course, Lord Kelvin (in Honsbira in US-CHINA Education Review, 2112:
432) whose lore and yore initiated Honsbira (2012, Teacher@Davidpublishing
.con) to propound the methodology of using Algebra to teach History in the classroom
are, too, cross-disciplinarity, some, even para-disciplinarity. See Honsbira’s
Application of Quantum Physics of Bohm in Niger Delta Crises, Online).
Thus, this paper shall propound
theories on culture, using the aura of some distantly-related theories of the
Physical sciences – Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Sociology Anthropology and the
rest. By doing so, it shall be essentially cross-disciplinary.
Since
the beginning of the last 30 years, there has been a problem of incessant and
atavistic ethnic and tribal groupings, owing to struggle for cultural and
economic ascendancy among the people of the world. In fact, within this period,
the Isekiri, the Ijaws and the Urhobos of the Niger Delta have known no peace.
While some are full of cultural practices, closely-packed and entertaining,
others feel these are proud and down-rightly, arrogant – especially when like
peacock, the culturally rich flaunts its cultures during cultural shows. When,
in most cases, the people with dearth of cultural colours are the larger
groups, and so more in number than those to settle disputes concerning cultural
clashes, the truth, and so, the real solution evades. The revolts become
conflagrations.
In order to draw the attention of
governments of regions collapsing under the façade of cultural struggle, and to
highlight the truth of cultural peculiarities to the world government and
community with the view to combating cultural crises, The theory of cultural
immortality is hereby put forward.
Definition of Terms
To
do justice to the issue of culture as well as its divergent manifestations, it
is imperative to define the various terms associated with this topic. They are
i. Methodology ii. Management iii. Strategy iv.
Strategic Management v. Language
vi. Culture vii. Ethnicity viii.
Multi-ethnic Polity ix. Ethnic Conflict.
Methodology,
according to Ifiedora (1983), is the way of delivering the goods to the
students – in other words, it implies the method of teaching the students.
Management is the act if running and
controlling a business or similar organization. It is the process of getting
things done by a person through other persons in such a way that the whole
process includes the top management. Taking the clue from the above, the act of
running a school is management.
Strategy derives from the Ancient Greek
“Strategos,” and this means the way of the General, generalship or the act of
the general. Strategy is a war machine and may be defined as the way of
manipulating the business environment to out-do the rival (KAZMI, 2010). As
competitions (healthy and unhealthy) prevail in the business landscape, each
business unit needs to adjust and readjust its focus and locus so as not to be
kicked out of the way. This adjustment and readjustment is “strategy.”
Strategic
Management? Strategic Management is that branch of Management that deals with
strategizing. It moves beyond the frontiers of Management for resources to
enrich Management (1990).
Language? There are two meanings of language:
language as a general concept and language as a specific linguistic system,
e.g. “Yoruba.” Language in this context as a tool for communication may be
defined as a way of communication which makes humans able to associate or
dissociate. This meaning of language shall be used in studying the languages of
the Yoruba and that of the Ancient Egyptian in a functional or scientific way.
Political and linguistic link mean how the political realities of two or more
people are related to the other.
Culture
is given by various authorities as the way of life of a given people in
relation to those of others.
Ethnicity is the peculiar feeling of a people
making it to feel equal, if not better, than those of other ethnic groups.
A
multi-ethnic polity is a political system comprising three or more ethnic
groups.
Ethnic conflict is a larger form of cultural conflict, though it may be equal to it in a sense (Nayef Al-Rhodan in Cultural diversity online). Ethnic conflict in some cases result from cultural vigour, the desire in a given culture to always remain strong all the time, in some cases, at the experience of the others. Ethnic conflict takes place mainly in cities as well as in cities (Crahan et al 1997).
Aim(s) of the Study
i. The aim of this paper is to help put
Government in a position to decide cultural issues
justifiably.
ii. Make the partakers in cultural crises see
the truth of cultural superiority in other.
iii. Teach partakers in cultural conflicts to
see cultural richness as unavailable in school
classrooms or in battles for cultural superiority, but a thing inborn and longly
practiced.
Objectives
By
the end of this discourse, the reader/teacher should be able to;
i. Write down the various reasons for
cultural superiority and its opposite.
ii. Give adequate guidelines and suitable
procedures for approaching the crisis consequent
upon struggle for recognition as cultural superiors.
iii. Effectively abate the problems of ethnic
and cultural struggles.
In
addition, one goes into the textbooks containing the histories of the various
people to ascertain the extent of cultural borrowings and cultural indebtedness
and so, the source of ethno-cultural aggressiveness.
Theoretical Framework
It
is often said that the Isekiri, the Ijaws and the Urhobos of the Niger Delta
are culturally homo-humans, and in homohuman homologous series (Honsbira, et al
1998), yet the truth remains that while some ethnic groups are culturally rich
(Ikime, 1982; Ijaw organization Abroad, 1989) others are not so, gleaning
cultural ingredients and arsenals from their neighbours or those
uncircumjacent. Thus, the take-off point of the paper is the undeniable fact
that all the peoples of the Niger Delta (and of the world) have some forms of
culture or the other; and while some of these are rich, others are not.
Problems Associated with this
Research
i. Fund:
Aside from the enormous time and energy involved, the fund needed for going round the nooks and cracks of the
various parts of the Niger Delta is enormous still.
ii. Theoretisations:
Academic giants – professors, doctors, Award winners etc – do not take kindly to “un-recognized and
“unidentified” writers propounding theories. In
fact, the more some of their theories are genuine, the more they tend to be brushed aside for amateurism.
iii. Insincerity:
Resulting from the struggle, which has become the regional culture, the various groups shrink from the
corridors of truth to abysmal falsehood. This results
in the evasiveness of facts and respondents in the fields of research.
Isekiri Cultural Immorality
What is Civilization?
For the single fact that the total and
particular understanding of all centres of civilization can be separated from
one another as a matter of their differences, we can expect that their
historical foundations can also be determined on the bases of this
differentiation. This is differentiation in the face of actualities and a hunt
for similarities through a hunt for differences. “Civilization is the act of
living together peacefully in a large group.” (Adetoro: 1973)
Workability of the Rule
For
the seed of this essay to be fully gathered, following are essential, in a
further bid to unleash knowledge into the study of culture.
a. The
meaning of culture must be properly known
b. Cultural
phenomena like symbiotic realism must be known, things like cultural vigour.
c. The
rule that all cultures are related (Honsbira@writing.com) must be known
d. That
cultures, however close, cannot be identical must be known
e. Rule
of inter-cultural morality must be followed.
f. The
user must realise that for this rule to work, full sincerity is a sin qua non.
Discussion/Experiment
a.
Persistence
of Isekiri Culture Since 30 B.C.
That Isekiri personality persists and
predominates among those of other peoples owes much to a number of factors.
One, Isekiri is a mixture of peoples; and diving deeper still into the realm of
the chemical sciences, it is a compound. The expertise with which nature, using
the hand of Isekiri itself, wove together the Aborigines, the Lukumis, the
Ijebu and all others, together with the Isekiri to found the Isekiri, has
produced, as an effect, a distinct cultural civilization.
Also, there is the blend of
heterogeneous religious practices that found their way into the cosmology of
Warri by 1480 AD. The invisible hand of men, mixed with the Egyptian religion
of heterogeneous deities with the Edo religio-cultural phenomenon to produce a
religious potential, whole-heartedly connived at by the Ijaw of Kalahari and Nambe
origin as employees of the Warri monarchy (1480 AD).
In addition, one Isekiri god stands in
place of one Egyptian god. And if the Egyptian gods and what they did, combined
with the social studies of the Egyptians, constituted a social system, called
“The Cradle of Civilization”, one thing is then clear: the Isekiri
religio-cultural syncretism produced a unique cultural indestructibility for
the Isekiri.
Three, as a cause of the undying
nature of the social essence of the Isekiri, is the proliferation of the
Isekiri mode of dressing and nutritional character to other parts of Nigeria
(South-South and South East geo-political zones: Ijaws, Edo, Igbo, Urhobo etc.
must be mentioned). Yes, that all these do not only dress the Isekiri way, but
also in some cases, have Isekiri-like dishes and sing Isekiri songs, adds extra
weight to the cultural immorality of the people.
All the above have produced further
effects: position, place, thoughts, hypothesis and theories, maybe, law! The
law, well understood (Anderson 1991), can help to give a sense of identity,
giving rise to cultural vigour.
b.
Isekiri
Cultural Immorality
There are over 300 ethnic groups in
Nigeria, each having its own common race, culture, tradition, language and
history to brag of. Isekiri is one of these. But while others, like the Hausa
and Igbo, the Effik, the Edo etc, are large enough to determine the wide nature
of their culture and tradition, Isekiri, small as it is, is too small to have
done so. Yet it does! Why is this so? Why does the Isekiri shine and reign
among the other peoples, like solitary star through the dark? The shining and
glowing makes others seek to know why (Nadef-Al Rodham 2007) in the bid to tilt
the balance of dignity to their own favour or make it equable (Nadef-Al Rodham
2011).
The Isekiri is culturally an undying
people. But for a culture to survive, somebody must decide that a particular
part of it should remain for a particular to tarry. And since that somebody is
simply everybody, in Isekiri, the culture must be imbued with life, time after
time. This is explained via the law of cultural immorality of Honsbira
(Honsbira in Honsbira and St. Ifa, 2008) and strives for cultural
differentiation (Berckson 1020).
I.The First Laws of Cultural
Immorality
The older a culture, the more the
numbers of cultures paying tributes to the culture.
The Second Law of Cultural
Immorality
The more the number of
tributes-paying cultural tributes to a main culture, the greater the tendency
of the main culture to ink the tribute-paying culture.
The Third Law of Cultural
Immorality
The greater the tendency of a
culture to ink other cultures, the greater its tendency to survive.
General Law of Cultural Immortality
If
there are two or more cultures struggling for hegemony/survival (Hall et al
1996), the culture with the greater or greatest number of constituent cultures,
which in most cases, is the oldest of these cultures, will ink each of the
other culture in the short run, absorb them or part of them in the long run and
armed with these, dive into the realm of cultural immortality in the very long
run” (Honsbira in Honsbira and Olomu (2008: 162).
Result
In
the bid to validate the validity of this observation, the following students of
culture were interviewed: 1. Socialist 2. Political Scientist 3. Sociologist 4.
Theologian 5. Philosopher 6 Historian 7 advocate of Nadef-Al Rodham.
Procedure of validation
a. A
2-hour lecture was delivered to an audience consisting of these professionals
among others
b. A
further two-hour question-asking and question-answering session was given
c. Al
last, each of the five processionals were asked to score the paper, taking
leaps from each person’s acceptance of rejection of the paper, fully, or in
part. They gave their evaluation in percentages, like this.
Socialist = 100%
Political
scientist = 79%
Sociologist = 97%
Theologian
= “Good or bad, all will soon fade away.” (Give him 50%, therefore!)
Philosopher
= 68%
Historian
= 98%
Advocate
of Nadef-Al Rodham = 100%
Total
Percentage = (100 + 79 + 97 + 50 + 68 + 98 + 100)%
592 %.
592/6
= 84.5714286%
= 85% App.
Waiting
for the nod or otherwise of global scholarship, the submissions of the above
scholars of culture seem to validate the validity of the Honsbira’s Law of
Cultural Immortality.
Conclusion
The
issue of cultural supremacy and their uncertainties in multi-cultural settings
is a serious sociological issue that has baffled and blind-folded many social
workers, historians and the philosophers alike. Not knowing what to say or do
in events of cultural conflicts and the attendant submissions and
counter-submissions in fields of cultural wrangling, they are in want of
solutions in its instance of rawest immediacy. But this can be bypassed by the
identification, consolidation and implementation of the Laws of Cultural
Immortality.
Bibliography
Abiola, O. (1978) A Text-book of West African History. Ado-Ekiti: Omolayo Standard
Press and Bookshop.
ADEKUNLE,
OJELABI.(1971) A TEXT-BOOK OF WEST AFRICAN. IBADAN:
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE.
Adetoro,
J.E. (1973) A History Course for
Secondary Schools Book One. Ibadan: Macmillan.
Anderson,
Benedict. (1991) Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Agharowu,
E.E. (Honsbira) and Olomu, A.O.O. (2011) A
History of Sapele In Scientific Perspective. Ad 700 to the Present Day.
Sapele: Glad Printers.
Agharowu, E. E. (Honsbira a). (2012) Using Mathematics to Teach History: A case
Study of the Nana-British Relations. A thesis Published in the American/China
Educational Journal, teacher@davidpublishing.org. Available also at james_omos@yahoo.com.
Agharowu
E. E. (Honsbira) (2012 b) Application of David Easton’s System Theory to School
Management. A Thesis Lectured in Ebrohimi Literary Society, Ebrohimi.
Agharowu
E. E. (Honsbira) Warri problem, a product of Quantum Physics, Honsbira@writers.com.
Agharowu
E. E.; Olomu, A.O.O. and Amatesiro T. (1998) (Honsbira) Warri Crises Before the
Three Judges. Sapele: Glad Printers.
Andrew,
Thomas. (1961) We Are Not The First.
London: Souvenir Press.
Barzilai, Gad. (2003) Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Bayo,
Akinsele, et al. (1981) The Treasure of
Chief Nana. Benin City: Clanok Associates, & Dawson Lane. National
Commission of Museum and Monuments.
Berckson, I. B. (1920).Theories of Americanization a critical study,
with special reference to the Jewish group. New York City: Teachers College,
Columbia University.
Mora, Necha. (2008).
Bohm, David: A new theory of the relationship of
mind and matter, Philosophical Psychology, vol. 3,
no. 2, 1990, pp. 271—286, doi:10.1080/09515089008573004.
Budge W.E.A. (1969) THE GODS OF
THE EGYPTIANS. London: Dover.
Coton,
W.F. (1979). West Africa in history.
London: George Allen and Union.
Crahan,
M. E., & Vourvoulias-Bush,
A. (1997). The
city and the world: New York's global future. New York: Council on Foreign relations. ISBN
0-87609-208-3
Cultural Diversity, Online
available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_diversity).
De
Negri, Eve. (1976) Nigerian Body
Adjournment. Lagos: Nigerian Magazine.
Easton,
David. (1991). Oral History of David Easton: An Autobiographical Sketch, in
Malcolm Jewell et al. eds., The Development of a Discipline: Oral Histories
in Political Science.
Eccles, J.C. (1994). How the Self
Controls Its Brain. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Gunnell, John G. (2013) The
Reconstitution of Political Theory: David Easton, Behavioralism, and the Long
Road to System, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.
Elder,
E.O. Irim. (2005) The Roots of Our
National Unity. History Lecture Printout, University of Calabar.
Gardiner,
A.H. (1961) Egypt and the Pharaohs. Oxford: The Clarindon Press.
Gardiner,
A. H. (1932) The Theory of Speech and Arid Language. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
God
checker Inc. (1999 – 2007) Saunters and
Ramsey Peter, Online.
Ifiedora, Ifiayinchuku Tony. (1982) Lecture Note on History 101 (Methodology of Teaching History),
Department of history, College of Education, Warri, Delta State, Nigeria.
Ijaw
Organization Abroad. (1998) The Warri
Crises, Online.
Ikime, Obaro. (1982) Landmark in Isekiri
History. Benin: Isekiri Workshop.
KAZMI, AZHAR. (2006) STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND
BUSINESS POLICY. NEW DELHI: TATA McGraw-Hill.
Kuper,
A. (1990) The Invention of Primitive
Society. London: Routledge Transformation of an Illusion.
Manfredi, Victor. (2005) Philological Perspective on the Southern Nigeria Diaspora. Boston:
Boston University Press.
MASSEY, GERAAD. (1901) ANCIENT EGYPT: LIGHT OF THE WORLD. London: (FISHER UNWIN)
Nayef-Al Rodham
.(2007) Symbiotic
Realism: A Theory of International Relations in an Instant and an Interdependent
World .Berlin:
LIT Verlag.
Nayef-Al Rodham .(2011)
The
Politics of Emerging Strategic Technologies: Implications for Geopolitics,
Human Enhancement and Human Destiny (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Olomu, A.O.O. (2011)
Application of David Easton’s System Theory in Managing Small and Large
Classes. Proceedings of the International Conference on Teaching,
Learning and Change 2011ISSN: 2224-946X.s.
Parsons, Talcott.
(1951) The Social System. Routledge:
London.
Purucker, G. de. (1973) The Esoteric Tradition. Pasadena, California:
Theosophical University Press. 2nd ed. first published in 1940.
The Warri Crisis, the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing, but the Truth.
Urhobos Historical Society Washington DC, Peace Summit on Warri Crisis. WASHINGTON, DC, PEACE SUMMIT ON WARRI CRISIS: Ijaw Background Paper. COUNCIL
OF IJAW ASSOCIATIONS ABROAD (CIAA McKee Road, #133F
San Jose, CA 95127
Phone:(408)729-6384. E-mail: IjawAssocs@aol.com.
San Jose, CA 95127
Phone:(408)729-6384. E-mail: IjawAssocs@aol.com.
Yoruba
Leaders Forum 6th Pan Yoruba National Congress Cultural Centre,
Ibadan.
No comments:
Post a Comment