By Allan Tacca
Dictionaries define “wisdom” as the ability to think and act using a combination of knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. So we are talking about quite abstract qualities of mind, deployed together.
Especially in our time, it has been possible for one to accumulate a huge stock of information and technical skills, becoming an ‘expert’, without necessarily acquiring wisdom. Man’s capacity for wisdom seems not to have changed much over the last 5,000 years.
If, for example, we look at an advanced country like the United States in its current troubles, we would think that (given the facts and figures available to them) Americans would never again return to their wanton consumption, to the over-valuation of leisure, and to the ugly gas-guzzling road-going monsters that symbolise American freedom and also expose American vulgarity.
We would be mostly wrong. When economic hardships ease, and Americans are able to borrow again, the old habits will very likely return. There will be exceptions of course, but these would not be enough to prevent the next cycle of serious economic mistakes, widespread pain and condemnations.
The greed, selfishness and cynicism that afflict rich countries and are implied in the current economic crisis are in place even in the poorer African countries. But Africa also has its special problems; most notably, that range of undemocratic and marauding tendencies that go under the general name of bad governance.
Bad governance and the slow wisdom of man could conspire to bring back into vogue the phenomenon of military coups. Some months back, the army seized power in Mauritania.
The African Union and the so-called international community went into full voice to condemn the coup; some Western countries cut off aid, but no one drove tanks to the gates of the military junta. From a distance, the Mauritanians seemed a little nervous, but not entirely unhappy with the military action.
A couple of weeks ago, following the death of Guinean President (Gen.) Lansana Conte, an army captain led a bunch of soldiers to take control of the country. The usual condemnations started flowing, and I think the African Union has suspended Guinea’s membership.
Unimpressed by foreign calls for the restoration of the constitutional order, a lot of Guineans seem to have cautiously welcomed the coup. One of the soldiers made two instructive remarks before the media. He said that Conte’s government had spat in the face of the Guinean people.
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