The Task Before the Incoming President
Moses Ebe Ochonu
Toyin Falola
Moses and co:
Have you considered the possibility of audio instead of text? Asking folks to read is tougher than asking them to listen.
Text, like the conferences we hold, is part of your Generation X. The Millennials processed shorter text; Generation Z began to dislike even books. And now the Gen Alpha, the students we teach, don’t want to read. This is why Tik Tok, WhatsApp, and Telegram are all popular.
I don’t know who your target audience is, but if the Gen Alpha, you have to rethink a project that requires a considerable investment in time.
Try audio, 15 minutes maximum, as an experiment.
TF
PS: I copied Farooq, but I don’t have the email address of the third person, the medical doctor.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at
http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPoQ_VTCgw%3DKS0tTmLFTtNRH6iGELWAziDj1CiC%2B8rfi8g%40mail.gmail.com.
Moses Ochonu
On Feb 18, 2023, at 8:02 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/PH0PR06MB9004530233247C1466AC24D5F8A69%40PH0PR06MB9004.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.
Toyin Falola
The three of you won’t get tired! Any time you don’t do anything for money or power, but for a larger cause—to elevate the lives of people you will never meet and see—God Himself has a way of replenishing the energy.
This is what works for me.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/0CBCEA0C-F443-4962-832A-F58B943FEC65%40gmail.com.
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Ahmadou Hampate Ba's ''The Living Tradition'' in the UNESCO General History of Africa Vol. 1 and Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language develop relatable conceptions powerfully in terms of presenting and elaborating on ideas from classical African thought.
Their ideas complement others on the metaphysics of language, as in Christianity ( Genesis: "Darkness was upon the face of the deep until 'God said 'let there be light' , '' John: " In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God'' and Pentecostalism's emphasis on the Bible as the manifest and dynamic Word of God, representing a creative force available to the Christian through the Bible and their own faith driven speech);Hinduism on AUM as the sound through which the cosmos was created, a sound humans may take advantage of by chanting it; Jewish Kabbala, and particularly various Hindu and Buddhist thinkers in whose works the metaphysics of language is very highly developed, as in the writing of Japanese Buddhist thinker Kukai, as described in Ryuchi Abe's The Weaving of Mantra: Kukai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse , Shingen Takagi and Thomas Eijo Dreitlein's Kukai on The Philosophy of Language and the Hindu thinker Abhinavagupta, as in his Paratrisika Vivarana: The Secret of Tantric Mysticism ( translated and edited by Jaideva Singh), where he is described as correlating linguistic analysis and speculation with consciousness, integrating grammar, psychology and philosophy.
Orientations on the primacy of sound may also be critically correlated, as ontologically different but analogically correlative, with the scientific understanding of relatatable phenomena as a primary quality of the universe, as in radio astronomy.
Abiodun's verbal renditions of parts of his book project the force of the oral as complementing the written through his superb Yoruba recitations and majestic English translations, suggesting to me that the book needs an audio complement of the entire text for his arguments about the value of orality in Yoruba and African discourse to be fully actualized. I pray he is able to do such a book.
Between Abiodun and Ba, these ideas are centred on the notion of expressive forms, in general, and language, in particular, particularly the spoken word-perhaps on account of its intimate link with human individuality in the embodied self, the self being understood as shaped by divine orientations, as in Yoruba ori theory and Igbo chi theory-as carriers of a force underlying cosmic creativity, endowing each existent with unique creative power, àṣẹ, in Yoruba, ike in Igbo, the latter as described by Achebe in ''The Igbo World and its Art.''
A technique of making ideas more widely accessible is to rework them in terms of conceptions that are readily creditable, at times taking them from the religious/spiritual to the secular, the latter being M.H.Abrams' description in Natural Supernaturalism: Romantic Poetry and the Critical Tradition, of the mode of development of a broad sweep in Western thought, such as from the philosopher Hegel on Geist( mind/spirit) to Romantic theory and poetry.
Along related lines of reworking, one could see orality as dramatizing the primal means of human communication, the human voice, and therefore touching wellsprings of possibility, of emotion and thought, beyond the translation of thought and speech into written text, facilitating greater individuality of apprehension and response, a creative possibility also demonstrated by visuality as perhaps the primary cognitive mode of human beings, strikingly potent in the transformation of visual cognition into various ranges of knowledge, as Babatunde Lwal's summations on Yoruba oju theory of perception in ''Aworan: Representing the Self and its Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art,'' may be restated, a presentation integrating and going beyond Western philosophies and sciences of perception, though without their analytical detail.
Such an understanding of the primacy of the senses, particularly hearing and vision, may help explain the potency of social media's integration of visuality in still pictures and film, with oral and written verbalisation, in text of varying lengths, even the miniscule, as in Twitter.
Expressive power, generally, particularly speech and language , dramatizes human reflective power, consciousness of self and other and the need to relate with this dynamic.
This foundationality in turn evokes question of the proximate and ultimate source of this capacity-evolution or creation or both?.
This is an explanatory progression adapting Abiodun's chapter one, reworking its mythic form and theological expressions in terms of philosophical questions, leaving one free to enjoy and further distill value from the imaginative dramatizations, poetic force and explanatory sparkling of the chapter.
In a different but related context, Abhinavagupta develops his metaphysics of language in relation to concrete experience, such as the erotic, demonstrating the significance of his exalted metaphysics and spirituality in daily life, as I try to demonstrate in ''Abhinavagupta, Ijeoma Diamond and the Metaphysics and Spirituality of Erotic Sound'', ( Facebook, Blogger) where I correlate his ideas with a Nigerian woman's Facebook post on the various kinds of sounds women make during sex, evoking Abhinavagupta's superb dramatization of the notion of the sacred as permeating all aspects of existence, of the cosmos as a dramatization of primal originating deity, the flame and the heat of the flame, power and the possessor of power, images he uses in his Tantrāloka, Light on the Tantras , in evoking what may be described as the dialectic between cosmic origination and its expression.
( Guide to getting a free copy of Mark Dyczkowski's translation of Tantrāloka chapter one, my favourite translation; Christopher Wallis' sublime free translation of the opening verses of chapter one, where Abhinavaguta correlates his parents with cosmogonic deities and his birth through their passion as enabling the beating of his heart with the rhythm of cosmic core-as Singh superbly translates the invocation of the same idea in Paratrisika, Baumer expounds on it , Sanderson explores it in depth in writing, doing the same in careful detail meant for a general audience on YouTube-Wallis opening each section with superbly beautiful chanting of the poetic Sanskrit lines, most melodious even if one does not know their meaning).
Thanks for this opportunity to think briefly on this subject.
toyin
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/PH0PR06MB9004E6C47D6BE103BF25A03CF8A69%40PH0PR06MB9004.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
Here is a link to the latest edition of THE CHAT, with myself, Farooq Kperogi, and Osmund Agbo. Read and engage. Feedback welcome.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPoQ_VTCgw%3DKS0tTmLFTtNRH6iGELWAziDj1CiC%2B8rfi8g%40mail.gmail.com.
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates (https://updatesonnews.substack.com)
Michael Afolayan
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CABTLsgikA_ZqX-EGe%3DzPD3HWHPcsiK_Lh3SH%3Dx3GihPAaW39Lw%40mail.gmail.com.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
4U2 understand = For you to understand :Here we are again, election time, and once again we are at or near the precipice:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
You and Chidi probably know these two lines that rhyme:
“And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine”
In some situations, there are certain things that a Nigerian national cannot say ( speak less of what a Non - Nigerian or a non-formerly Nigerian citizen cannot say ) - so for instance there are those who believe that Obadiah Mailafia paid the ultimate price for “ speaking truth to power”
Anyway, Nigeria is a free country, and social media in the country and in the Diaspora is not under surveillance as happens in some other countries where freedom of expression is a crime ( high crime & treason) and paranoid governments keep some of their potentially dangerous citizens under constant surveillance with the help of e.g. Israeli-made surveillance gadgets such as pegasus software, their ultimate destination to the gallows, after some torture time under lock and key.
And of course schizophrenic the so-called “ Nigerian-American “ megaphones can blow hot and cold in American mixed with Nigerian English , spout any nationalistic or patriotic sense or nonsense that they like about their motherland, without fear of reprisals, any fear of the crime of wayward or mismanaged thinking to be followed by punishment, and that’s why we learn in Mishlei 28:1 that “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion”
You and I know that these days, a mere six days to Nigeria’s date with fate, whatever is posted to this series has to be a matter of national urgency, since they have no intention of landing at Aminu Kano International Airport, unless their man that they have been praise singing takes up residence at Aso Rock, in which case they hope for some red-carpet treatment and welcomed home - away from the United States, with open arms. Ask them. That’s the way it is. The last time that I was a little worried was when Okey Ndibe was arrested at Lagos Airport But they let him off the hook and he was eventually singing “Rest Enough” ( from The Cry of My People)
It is the Scholastic Polonius ( according to Hazlet, “a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent" who nevertheless advises Prince Hamlet: “ This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. “
BTW, if Loudmouth got arrested at Lagos Airport during the last days of Presidential Brother Buhari in office / on seat, I wouldn’t shed a tear. As Bob Marley said, “Freedom came my way one day” - he didn’t say, “ I went looking for trouble one day” or “ With my Big Grammar, I went looking for trouble each and every day”
At first, I thought that you had definitively posted what below the surface would turn out to be one of your heavy metaphysical-cum-cosmological topics to the wrong thread, that it should have started a well-deserved thread all of its own and then like a denouement of enlightenment from you, discovered that like the proverbial hammer your subtitle “ Orality powerfully complements scribal literacy” hit the subject right on its head, the head of the trinity comprising doctors Agbo, Kperogi, and Ochonu.
If they had this oral conversation, then why go to all the trouble of transcribing it for us the long-suffering semi-literate masses?
Like Chomsky, Ochonu, in his case, clearly elitist & well-pleased with himself, speaking in the majestic plural tells us who the big grammar is specially reserved for: “ our targets are folks in our generation and higher who still read and who, for good or ill, still dominate and shape both the discourse and practice of politics in Nigeria.” Who are not dead yet and “still read” So, what about us the poor semi-literate who don’t read, can’t afford to buy books and have no access to well-stocked libraries, financed by tax-payers money?
Think of how effective all of the Toyin Falola Conversations have been. We ( all of us) are after all the people of the Oral Tradition ( just ask the ultra-Orthodox and the orthodox Rabbis and they’ll tell you all about the Written Torah and the Oral Torah
Fast backwards, and I'm trying to imagine how much more effective it would have been to have listened to Jesus - Sermon on the Mount - live and direct by video , audio or even from the akashic records being made digitally available to believers and sceptics alike. And which do you think that Dear Pastor Adeboye would have preferred, to listen to the voice of the living word made flesh or the King James Version?
Just as I like listening to music - more than reading about it, so too, being very much an oral kind of person, ( but not in the psychoanalytical categories of the oral character and the anal character I am an amateur psychologist but don’t do it for a living although through the every written word here and outta here, the narcissistic character ( a different breed of cat) is under constant observation - the stream of consciousness when it will appear will be found to be too basically psychological and that’s why I would have loved to have listened to instead of reading or reading about these two interviews for example, “ Farooq Kperogi: The Man Behind the 'Angry Keyboard'“ and “Thinking is a burden”
It’s significant that the leading contenders for the office of President of Nigeria, will not be battling it out at some formally staged debate to be broadcast/ aired on national radio and tv as they do in the USA - which we like to ape, and in the UK and Kenya too (I followed all the debates that preceded Uhuru Kenyatta winning that first presidential election and thought that he was hands down the best debater ...
Should presidential debates be held in Nigeria this time around, we should of course expect the usual platitudes - Atiku will pledge that he will wipe out corruption, Obi will boast that he will hit the airport tarmac running, Tinubu will try to convince the electorate that he will transform Nigeria to become an economic powerhouse, that the rest of the world should reckon with ( which reminds me that by the way in today’s DN, based on
https://ourworldindata.org/search?q=World+population
the prognosis is that by the year 2100 Nigeria’s population will exceed that of all of Europe put together - in other words a huge market - and hopefully a great exporter of finished goods, at a time when oil will probably no longer be a major currency. Hopefully, before that time, these things would have come to pass
Until then here’s something interesting to listen to :
The Future Is Now! The Emerging Science of Human Improvement | Nathan Lents
Cornelius Hamelberg
Correction:
It’s amazing, how one thing can lead to another. I mentioned the outspoken and now dearly departed Obadiah Mailafia and the Wikipedia entry about him took me to facts that Cornelius Ignoramus was not previously aware of about Ahmadu Bello University…
Absolutely unconnected with Obadiah Mailafia, I may have inadvertently mentioned a mysterious entity as “the narcissistic character ( a different breed of cat)”. Well, here he is defined: the narcissistic character, a definition that defines him beautifully
Now, as to some of the characters under our purview, the leading contenders for the political heavyweight crown, namely the President of all Nigerians, this question may arise:
Could a narcissistic character ever want to be the elected ( or unelected) President of Nigeria? I may be wrong, but I doubt that he would because I think that a narcissistic character is not going to be willing to stoop so low as to be begging all those that he deems to be his inferiors, to please vote for him
The Prophet Moses on the other hand is described as
the most humble man who ever walked on the surface of this earth.
Furthermore, he at some time
pleaded with the Almighty that he was not eloquent.
This suggests that it’s not necessarily the most eloquent devoid of other qualities such as integrity, that gets the job or that gets the job done; that the Almighty doesn't necessarily choose the most eloquent as His prophet or His puppet. Moses' elder brother Aaron or as in the case of Islam, Imam Ali - alaihi salaam / Ali ibn abi Talib - Amir al Mu'minin of Nahjul Balagha fame were eloquent and the Almighty addresses both the Prophet Moses and his brother Aaron, in the Torah
If there was indeed going to be a debate in which the presidential hopefuls would be fighting tooth, nail, and claw, it would have been interesting to hear/witness what e.g Omoyele Sowore would have been saying, the sort of things we should expect that he would have been saying if his trial for alleged revolutionary vocabulary had gone ahead, a trial that would have awarded him the opportunity to state orally, not only in writing. his message to the people of Nigeria
For the amateur super sleuth Sherlock Holmes types in the department of cloak and dagger skullduggery, the faculty of investigative journalism, hearsay and gossip, still reading & listening and interested in the oral tradition: some covert listening devices
I don’t much like some of what he says here, but for lack of a better word for all of the above you could join me in reading Blah - as in blah blah black sheep, better still like some nonsense but not by Edward Lear:
Baba black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,
Three bags full;
One for the master,
One for the dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/73df1a3c-e089-413d-98b8-faafc3b23926n%40googlegroups.com.