We Are The System
We are a society that has no regard for rules, integrity, due process, principles, or quality and will always find itself in continuous decay.
Hi friend, I hope it’s not too late to say Happy Father’s Day. Yes, I had to because it is the only day in a year dedicated to fathers unlike the 2000+ days in a year dedicated to women/mothers. Check out this Twitter thread to see people talk about their father and the sacrifices they have made. Fathers are really Super Men. The older I get, the more I have come to see how much my father has sacrificed to see his kids succeed. While this is not a letter about fathers, I think it is only right to celebrate fathers because of how we have treated them for so long because of the inability of most of them to express their love and affection in words even though their actions speak really loud. See this Twitter thread and have some laughs about how some fathers responded to lovely messages from their children on Father’s day.
Like I always ask at the beginning of every personal letter I write, How are you doing? (Like really, How are you doing? Feel free to reply to this and be sure I would respond.)
WE ARE THE SYSTEM
Most of the problems we are faced with as a country can be linked to the kind of system we run. Beyond the fact that we have leaders that are clueless and cruel, the fundamental issue is that our system is faulty. I am not talking about the Federal or Presidential system we run as a country but I am referring to our core, root and foundational belief system as a society.
We are a society that has no regard for rules, integrity, due process, principles, or quality and will always find itself in continuous decay. We are in a system where individuals are bigger than institutions. We are in a system where an individual can disregard the rule of law without any repercussion as much as he/she is in the ruling caucus. We are in a system where people look away from injustice in as much as they are not directly affected by it. We are in a system with no regard for due process, a system that rewards cutting of corners, a system that is only concerned about results and not how it is achieved, a system that disregards basic principles that govern the human society, a society that rewards corruption. We are in a system that has normalized bribe collection and allowed it to eat deep into our core fabrics. We are in a system that has been deeply infested by nepotism. We are in a system where a person can openly game the system without any consequence whatsoever.
While we like to blame our leaders, I strongly believe that they are a reflection of the society, that is, they are a reflection of us because we’re the society and they emerged from our midst. Also, we are largely responsible for bringing these leaders to power and often fuel their action as a result of our indifference to their acts when we get a little bit of dividend from them or are not directly affected by their actions. Most people tend to speak out only when they are directly affected by injustice not because they don’t like injustice. We fail to understand that, there’s a length to how much your money can help you in a dysfunctional system.
We keep lamenting about the system but we fail to realize that we are the system and until we look inwards as individuals, things will keep getting worse. Until we get to the point where an individual is not bigger than an institution, we will not make tangible progress. In as much as the system continues to reward the political class and makes it a way to escape from poverty, we will continue to be in this mess and will get into a deeper mess than we currently are in. We can’t have such a system and expect our leaders to be any better.
While we want a change from the top, we need to look at our immediate community and fix things from the grassroots. We need to look into our basic tenets and fundamental principles as individuals and how it affects the whole society/system as a whole.
P.S: This is not an attempt to absolve our government/leaders of their wickedness and cruelty but a call to look deeper into the cause and not just the effect/result we see right now.
Elections are coming and we will have people come to us with different promises. I want us to look beyond our current realities because whatever we do in this period will determine the trajectory of the country and our lives for the next 4 to 8 years. I hope we do better and hold ourselves to better standard.
In my attempt to get back to reading as I wrote about in my last newsletter, I picked up a book by one of Nigeria’s foremost authors, Teju cole. Teju Cole in his book titled “Everyday is for the thief”, which was first published in 2007 started out with the character’s experience with corruption at the Nigerian Embassy in the USA while trying to travel down to Lagos after a long time away. Throughout the book, he highlighted different experiences with the decay in the system. As someone that grew up in Lagos, I could relate to most of the character’s encounters.
In other news
I am currently working on a case study to be published on Medium, hopefully, I get to publish it by the end of this week.
Also, a new SWC interview drops this week, watch out for it.
I spent the weekend listening to Nina Simone and also got to watch a documentary about her life and times on Netflix titled WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE. It gave an insight into how she started out in life, how she got famous, how she got involved in the civil rights movement, the impact on her career and marriage, other things in between, and the latter part of her life. I really enjoyed watching the documentary as it gave me more insights into the lyrics of some of her songs.
I also saw a documentary about the true-life story of a crypto exchange founder who possibly faked his own death to finesse people of their hard-earned money and life savings. You should check out Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King
Lastly, I compiled all the necessary link about me into one place. You can check out linktr.ee/tunmiseafape anytime to find a link to my portfolio and other essential projects. Do well to check it out and share when needed.
Parting word for this week
One thing that has held me back more than anything is hesitation because hesitation leads to procrastination. I’m a very critical person and can be excessively rational about things. One thing I have learned is that being too rational doesn’t really help. Sometimes you just have to say “fuck it” and do things. In the words of Nike, JUST DO IT.
If you got to this point, Thank you for taking out time to read this, and feel free to drop a comment. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram to keep the conversation going.
Kindly subscribe in order to be a part of my journey as I promise to share more