Kenyans have surrendered their souls for cheap gains

I have often written about my Kenyan society as a people whose values a moth has eaten, a population that has lost its humanity. And I have been told: “That’s harsh. What do you mean by a people whose values an insect has eaten?”

Historical figures like Joan of Arc and Socrates, as well as literary characters like Dr Thomas Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible are a rude reminder of the blemished nature of civilisation. They remind us that beyond exercising the intellect and advancing technologically, we are often dead, soulless.

If anything humanises us, it must be conscience — that profound inner imperative that helps us to separate right from wrong. To the extent that there is no self-censure and no personal ethical imperative, we are a people whose mores an insect has eaten. Both G. B. Shaw and Mark Twain have dramatised the trial of Joan of Arc before the grand inquisition in 1431.

Joan is accused of heresy and witchcraft. In Mark Twain’s story, the lass is told: “If you do not submit to the Church you will be pronounced a heretic by these judges here present and will be burned at the stake.”

Placing her conscience above her fear, Joan retorts: “I will not say otherwise than I have said already; and if I saw the fire before me, I would say it again.” Shaw’s Joan faces a choice between being burnt and going into solitary confinement for the rest of her life, “to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the water of affliction.” She does not hesitate at all in her choice. “Light your fire!” she defiantly proclaims.

GOOD CITIZEN

Joan was a historical figure. The dramatisation of her predicament obviously draws from the artist’s creativity. Yet her predicament was a historical reality. So, too, was Miller’s Proctor. Promised to be spared death if he confessed to witchcraft, Proctor found himself wrestling with his conscience.

He knew that innocent people who would not make false confession had gone to the gallows. Could he take the cowardly option and expect to sit well with his conscience? “How may I live without my name?” he asked the court trying to force a confession out of him, “I have given you my soul, leave me my name.”

The average man, however, surrenders his conscience even when it is not under any discernible assault. He trades it in for cheap gain. Christopher Marlowe’s eponymous Dr Faustus gets into a bind with the devil without any compelling reasons. He is given temporary earthly glory in exchange for his soul. Yet Faustus is a good man and even a social entertainer.

The man of character is rarely the good citizen who hears no evil, sees no evil and says no evil. W. H. Auden has written about him in the poem ‘The Unknown Citizen.’ This citizen has demonstrated that he would follow just about anything that moves. What matters is expediency. He is a systems’ man who avoids trouble. He is a good employee who never receives a single warning letter. He pays his taxes and breaks no law. He is married. He contributes to population growth.

This good citizen buys and reads newspapers. He is insured. He holds the right opinions for the right time of the year. When there is war he is for war, when there is peace he is for peace. He goes by the tide, doing socially correct things. Auden ends the poem on the unknown citizen with the words, “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.” This man is only a statistic, a member of a compliant groupthink community.

The unknown citizen and the soulless man live in different apartments on the same block. You have probably seen them in an unbridled pursuit for woolly materialism. They were possibly nurtured in what are considered good schools. They are leaders in their fields – political, religious, academic and even corporate. Yet they listen out for the right cue for the breed. The rest is the hollow tragedy of echo.

Miller demonstrates that warmth of mind and feeling is at its best when it is directed at the self. A conversation with yourself is a must if you will be a man or woman of conscience. Are we able to hear the inward voice directing us about the rightness or wrongness of things? And if the individual can lose his soul, is it possible that an entire society, a whole generation or population, could lose its collective soul?

QUESTIONS OF CONSCIENCE

The Crucible is certainly a depiction of crimes of conscience both at the individual level and at the level of society. Here is a perfect portrait of a society whose mores a moth has eaten. Miller recasts the witch-hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692-93. In a binge of mass hysteria over catching witches, innocent people were executed in phony trials. Blustery and vindictive individuals framed others before the witch hunters. Private scores were settled in public space.

John Proctor had had an illicit sexual relationship with Abigail Williams — a manipulative wench with an endless capacity for dissembling. She would later be a mega star in the witch-hunt. At the time of this liaison, Abigail was the housekeeper in the Proctor household. Proctor repented of the union and would have wanted to move on after the confession and repentance. But he found that moving on was not such an easy matter.

First there was the smitten Abigail. She still hungered for him. She would even scheme to have his wife Elizabeth killed in the witch-hunt so as to pave the way for her to have the man. Proctor, for his part, lived with a moral scar. Henceforth, all his interaction with his wife inhered on the weighing scales of conscience. For seven months after this matter had broken into the open, he lived on tiptoe. He read his wife’s every word, every motion as a statement against him.

In the play Elizabeth says to her husband: “I don’t judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought of you but a good man, John.” To which her husband responds: “Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.” Extremely frustrated, he rattles on: “No more! I should have roared you down when first you told me your suspicion. But I wilted, and, like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken you for God. But you’re not, you’re not and let remember it! Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not.”

In the end, all literature to a greater of lesser extent, addresses questions of conscience. There will be individuals and sometimes whole populations whose values a moth has eaten.

As Hamlet says in Shakespeare’s eponymous play, “To be or not to be, that is the question...” Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”

If you will live in a different block of apartments from the wild beasts; if you will survive the insects, you will need to fear your conscience first.