Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 9, 2021, 3:45:50 AM12/9/21
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It's 4:35 am. Around me is the cocoon of night. Darkness everywhere.

But it is not a fully welcome darkness. It is partly the darkness of deprivation. 

A dim roar in the distance echoes in my mind the sound of the expensive generator I have just put off, in guilt at wasting precious fuel in breaks from work when I am resting.

That distant roar indicates that someone with the necessary economic resources is powering their own home throughout the night using a generator, as I too had tried to do by leaving on my family's generator from before midnight to after 4 am, in the name of completing an urgent  job, having planned to run the generator throughout the night even though I hate noise, particularly when working, the roar of the mechanical beast penetrating even the closed windows of my study. 

Who am I?

I am a person who glimpses that ocean spoken of by an inventor of calculus, the discover of why the planets orbit the sun, of why humans don't fall off the face of the Earth  as the sphere revolves in the cosmic void, held aloft by unseen forces which his work enables us calculate precisely.

 Isaac Newton.

"I do not know what I may seem to others, but to myself I am nothing but a child playing with pebbles by the seashore, and from time to time discovering one shinier than the others, while the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me."

The greatest scientist of all time, as his biographer Richard Westfall describes him, was not being modest. 

Newton was convinced that human knowledge is limited to the appearances of phenomena, not their essential natures. Space and time are made possible by a cosmic intelligence beyond human grasp, claims he makes in the conclusion to his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.

Before time, the creator of the cosmos created knowledge, understanding and wisdom, and hurled them to Earth where they torment human beings with their incessant demands, evoking possibilities continously unfolding in an endless horizon, as Rowland Abiodun's account of a Yoruba creation myth in his Yoruba Art and Language may be rendered.

Knowledge implies a grasp of the particulars of existence, while wisdom represents knowing why things are the way they are, an understanding gained beyond silence, beyond noise, beyond the machinery of intellect, knowing dropping like a ponderous object hitting the ground, like dew descending at daybreak, making the heart miss a beat as the nakedness of being is exposed in brief insight, if I may adapt images from Abiodun's account, his verbal explanation of that story in a conversation and another majestic Yoruba creation story, "Ayajo Asuwada" translated by Akinsola Akiwowo in "Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge from an African Oral Poetry."

The ocean of truth referenced by Netwon is  the  understanding of why things are the way they are.

Newton's disciple Immanuel  Kant was dismayed that in spite of all human efforts, no individual and no body of knowledge could claim knowledge of the details and structure of the world and the relationship of this complex to  an originating intelligence, as he states in A Critique of Pure Reason.

That is the ocean of truth glimpsed by Newton that convinced him he was no more than a child at play with toys as reality remains unpenetrated.

The quest for that reality is my life's work but the merchants of darkness whose misssion is  to dissolve the creativity of Nigerians in their acidic deprivations are conspiring against me.

How may one best weave together complex chains of thought, creating a matrix that the Infinite may shine through, like a diamond mounted in a ring, if one cannot shape those ideas in visible forms in these days where recording has replaced recollection? 

How does one record if you can't see what you are recording or hear it beceause there is no electricity to power the devices that enable  such information capture?

That is why the darkness in which I write this is comforting, as the low sounds of crickets animate the darkness, a symphony of fraternity between all creatures on Earth, but is also a problematic darkness beceause I cannot, at this moment, move from the pre-electrical age of civilisation to the electrical age by switching on a light, a journey of centuries traversed every time one flips a light switch.

I am compelled to remain, for now, in  the pre-electrical age of centuries ago beceause the people who have run this country, Nigeria, for decades, are convinced that Nigeria does not belong fully in.the 21st century, so primitive conditions, such as regular power outages, remain a part of most Nigerian's experience.

Like a camel smelling water from a vast distance in the desert's expanse, I can smell the salt of the great ocean, hear snatches of it's awesome roar as being and becoming clash, form and reform in the life and death of galaxies and  fireflies, ceaseless permutations emerging from that which is Nothing beacuse it is uitimately unknowable, as one cannot empty the waters of the ocean into a hole on the sea shore, as a child trying to achieve that was so told in a story by Augustine of Hippo.

In darkness or in light, in deprivation and enablement, the journey continues, the moth fascinated by the candle flame even as she seeks to plunge herself into it, so as to feel that utter heat in a union of body and flame even as one vanishes, consumed by the transformative fire.

 We salute Farid ud din Attar for this marvellous image from his Parable of the Birds.




Nimi Wariboko

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Dec 9, 2021, 7:36:03 AM12/9/21
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This is beautiful, simply beautiful. But ultimately sad; sad, indeed. Alas, it is the sadistic truth about Nigeria. Oh no, “Kant avec Nigeria,” to play on Jacques Lacan’s “Kant avec Sade.” Kant expected us to obey the law, do our duty, without any regard to any consequence. Nigerian leaders do their duty of governance without regard to any consequence. Theirs is pure “I-don’t-care attitude.” Punish Nigerians without any regard for consequences on their well-being. Governance is no longer dependent on the Good, but the Good itself is made dependent on (poor, primitive) governance. 

Lacan demonstrated that Sade’s characters pursued sexual pleasure for its sake, to pursue jouissance irrespective of incentive, the idea of pleasure arising from pleasure is also the incentive to action. The point is that just as Kant expected the citizen to obey the law for its own sake, Sade’s characters pursued sexual pleasures with the same rigorous logic. If Kant’s command is “Just obey,” then Sade’s “Just Enjoy.” And Nigeria’s? “Just punish.” 

As Sade’s characters pursue sadistic pleasure Nigerian leaders pursue perverse pleasure (punishment) for its own sake. The idea of bad governance arising from bad governance is also the incentive to action called more bad governance. Bad governance is a “pure means,” pure mediality. 

This is the deep structure of Adepoju’s thought in the piece, the ocean of truth before him as he played with the pebbles on the shores. He talked about darkness; can we interpret the darkness as the creative void from which a new Nigeria can emerge? Let us find the edge of the cloth of Lady Creativity in the dark and copulate with her and release new seeds for a new Nigeria as Achebe’s Okonkwo managed to find the edge of the cloth of his lover in the night and did his thing. Darkness is never an insurmountable obstacle to creativity. Let us arise in the darkness to usher in the light for our children and grandchildren. 

Thanks to Toyin.

Nimi Wariboko 
Boston University. 

On Dec 9, 2021, at 3:45 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 9, 2021, 10:12:12 AM12/9/21
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Edited 2

Great thanks for that magnificent response, master of imagistic thought fed by literary networks suffusing philosophical thought.

That Achebe reference comes to my mind from time to time.Youve used it superbly.

 Your evocation of creativity in relation to eros in the figure of copulating with Lady Creativity resonates intriguingly with multi-cultural understandings of creativity in terms of eros, from the Greek Sophia, who gives her name to philosophia, the love of wisdom abbreviated as "philosophy" to the Yoruba Osun, seductive sorceress behind the Ifa multiplicity of wisdoms to the Hindu Tripurasundari, erotic force and wisdom cayalyzer.

I very much like your play on the implications of darkness as both a negative and a positive potential,. particularly as it suggests to me the idea of  correlating  the spiritual implications of this idea, in which ultimate cause is described in terms of darkness,  being beyond human understanding, with it's social possibilities, reflecting in the darkness of deprivation on how to rise above that inadequacy.

In writing this and my first response to power outages in Nigeria, I feel the darkness sensitive with creative potential, although ideally the darkness should be a matter of choice, not compulsion

Thanks for your  analysis of much of the attitudes of Nigerian govts to those they are supposed to lead 

Great thanks

Toyin


On Thu, Dec 9, 2021, 14:32 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Edited

Great thanks for that magnificent response, master of imagistic thought fed by literary networks suffusing philosophical thought.

That Achebe reference comes to my mind from time to time.Youve used it superbly.

 Your evocation of creativity in relation to eros in the figure of copulating with Lady Creativity resonates intriguingly with multi-cultural understandings of creativity in terms of eros, from the Greek Sophia, who gives her name to philosophia, the love of wisdom abbreviated as "philosophy" to the Yoruba Osun, seductive sorceress behind the Ifa multiplicity of wisdoms to the Hindu Tripurasundari, erotic force and wisdom cayalyzer.

I very much like your play on the implications of darkness as both a negative and a positive potential,. particularly as it suggests to me the idea of  correlating  the spiritual implications of this idea with it's social possibilities.

In writing this and my first response to power outages in Nigeria, I feel the darkness sensitive with creative potential, although ideally the darkness should be a matter of choice, not compulsion

Thanks for your  analysis of much of the attitudes of Nigerian govts to those they are supposed to lead 

Great thanks

Toyin


On Thu, Dec 9, 2021, 14:29 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Great thanks for that magnificent response, master of imagistic thought fed by literary networks suffusing philosophical thought.

That Achebe reference comes to my mind from time to time.Youve used it superbly.

 Your evocation of creativity in relation to eros in the figure of copulating with Lady Creativity resonates intriguingly with multi-cultural understandings of creativity in terms of eros, from the Greek Sophia, who gives her name to philosophia, the love of wisdom abbreviated as "philosophy" to the Yoruba Osun, seductive sorceress behind the Ifa multiplicity of wisdoms to the Hindu Tripurasundari, erotic force and wisdom cayalyzer.

I very much like your play on the implications of darkness as both a negative and a positive potential,. particularly as it suggests to me the idea of  correlating  the spiritual implications of this idea with it's social possibilities.

In writing this and my first response to power outages in Nigeria, I feel the darkness sensitive with creative potential, although ideally the darkness should be a matter of choice, not compulsion

Thanks for your two line analysis of much of the attitudes of Nigerian govts to those they are supposed to lead 

Great thanks

Toyin


Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 9, 2021, 10:12:23 AM12/9/21
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Great thanks for that magnificent response, master of imagistic thought fed by literary networks suffusing philosophical thought.

That Achebe reference comes to my mind from time to time.Youve used it superbly.

 Your evocation of creativity in relation to eros in the figure of copulating with Lady Creativity resonates intriguingly with multi-cultural understandings of creativity in terms of eros, from the Greek Sophia, who gives her name to philosophia, the love of wisdom abbreviated as "philosophy" to the Yoruba Osun, seductive sorceress behind the Ifa multiplicity of wisdoms to the Hindu Tripurasundari, erotic force and wisdom cayalyzer.

I very much like your play on the implications of darkness as both a negative and a positive potential,. particularly as it suggests to me the idea of  correlating  the spiritual implications of this idea with it's social possibilities.

In writing this and my first response to power outages in Nigeria, I feel the darkness sensitive with creative potential, although ideally the darkness should be a matter of choice, not compulsion

Thanks for your two line analysis of much of the attitudes of Nigerian govts to those they are supposed to lead 

Great thanks

Toyin


On Thu, Dec 9, 2021, 13:36 Nimi Wariboko <nimi...@msn.com> wrote:

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 9, 2021, 10:12:26 AM12/9/21
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Edited

Great thanks for that magnificent response, master of imagistic thought fed by literary networks suffusing philosophical thought.

That Achebe reference comes to my mind from time to time.Youve used it superbly.

 Your evocation of creativity in relation to eros in the figure of copulating with Lady Creativity resonates intriguingly with multi-cultural understandings of creativity in terms of eros, from the Greek Sophia, who gives her name to philosophia, the love of wisdom abbreviated as "philosophy" to the Yoruba Osun, seductive sorceress behind the Ifa multiplicity of wisdoms to the Hindu Tripurasundari, erotic force and wisdom cayalyzer.

I very much like your play on the implications of darkness as both a negative and a positive potential,. particularly as it suggests to me the idea of  correlating  the spiritual implications of this idea with it's social possibilities.

In writing this and my first response to power outages in Nigeria, I feel the darkness sensitive with creative potential, although ideally the darkness should be a matter of choice, not compulsion

Thanks for your  analysis of much of the attitudes of Nigerian govts to those they are supposed to lead 

Great thanks

Toyin


On Thu, Dec 9, 2021, 14:29 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 9, 2021, 2:07:19 PM12/9/21
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

Shortly, before I surrender this computer to my security man who is here and wailing to switch everything off. 

Re- Your existential angst is worse off through the awareness that you are not alone in this, being but one in two million souls living involuntarily in the natural but unwanted perpetual darkness even after “God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.'

You are not alone and there’s strength in numbers. For sure, it is a shared angst, going back to the type of situation with which our primitive forefathers were familiar, the life they lived in the jungle, as hunters and farmers long before the age of the electric current. I guess this is what Patrick Wilmot meant in that 1981 Nigerian Guardian article in which he pleaded with Nigerians to start dancing mathematical rhythms, mathematics and not weak grammar rhetoric as the language of science - the surest pathway to constant electricity, always.

I quite understand and sympathise with your frustration at having to live in such primitive 21st century conditions in what is otherwise generously, altruistically, patriotically and realistically referred to as Modern Nigeria. My Better Half, our son and I, we , got used to the less than “ roar of the mechanical beast” which we kept on at night to maintain the gentle hum of the refrigerator 24 hours a day, come rain or shine, even during the daytime when it was more of a continuous hum of the  mechanical beast , snoring like a percolating coffee-pot.

You are not just another helpless creature your fate predetermined by the environment in which you live when in fact you could at least to some extent change that environment for the better, or you could extricate yourself from the inordinate, involuntary suffering and stop being just another cry-baby, no matter the length and poignancy of your mantras bemoaning your situation and your trying your utmost very best to get us to start feeling sorry for you. The choice is yours. Of course, you are free to wait for another ten years for some succeeding governments to start doing something about it, or, instead of just sitting on your hands and complaining to those who are prepared to listen in the USA- Africa Dialogue Series, since it’s a two system country, you could take the bull by the horns, move to the more affluent quarters in Ikoyi or to the precincts of Aso Rock, become neighbours with the President of Nigeria, give him an occasional call, drop in for dinner when he’s in town as and when it is convenient

Your third option is also open and I intuit this as the best immediate solution to this your problem that has been lurking in the cellars of your subterranean mind for sometime now and that’s why I intuit the longing in your soul when I read these words penned by you : “ I am a person who glimpses that ocean spoken of by an inventor of calculus ..” etc.

No Freudian slip or slips there, it is manifestly clear that you would like to cross that ocean , and you could swim, row your boat or paddle your canoe across, or fly over the Atlantic, in this early 21st century , cover the old Middle Passage by air on a first class ticket to the United States of America where Nimi Wariboko having already discovered the talent that you are , could take you under his wings – as someone took me under his wings when he asked me ( here in Stockholm) “Who do you know? “ and I told him , after which he introduced me to some very relevant people…

Adepoju, believe you me, with or without electricity, your bunny lies over the ocean

Some Sly & the Family Stone

Biko Agozino

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Dec 9, 2021, 2:07:21 PM12/9/21
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Sleeplessness may be a sign of poor time management. Early to bed and early to rise makes a boy healthy, wealthy, and wise. Try doing all your urgent work during the day and go to bed during the dark. No need to do 'I pass my neighbor' shakara with noisy generator at 4 am. If you read and write two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon and two hours in the evening, that is full time work and you can go to bed by 10:30 pm for eight hours sleep and wake at 6:30 am, then repeat. If you can't sleep, drink some water and off you go like a baby.

Kant was wrong to assume that only rich white men like him were rational while the vast majority of the poor are happy to be led by the nose like slaves. On the contrary, history shows that poor people engage in reasoning all the time and struggle against injustice everywhere.

Biko

Gloria Emeagwali

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Dec 9, 2021, 2:07:33 PM12/9/21
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Here are some silly, non-poetic
questions that I would like to ask:

Who controls the marketing and distribution   of generators in Nigeria?

 Who are the suppliers, and from what country?

What is the connection between 
these suppliers and the Nigerian
political elite? 

What have been the links between the comprador cadre of importers and the Shagari -Babangida-Abacha-Goodluck-Buhari  administrations?

What is the nature of the connection between the rentier elite of generator suppliers and the military?

Just asking .......


Professor Gloria Emeagwali 
CCSU


On Dec 9, 2021, at 10:12, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



Harrow, Kenneth

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Dec 9, 2021, 2:07:34 PM12/9/21
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i learned it as the conference of birds.

dear toyin....and toyin...and nimi,
i woke up this morning to nimi's response and incredible image of lacan and de sade. i think of jouissance as more than pleasure, as in fact transcendence, like the look on the saintly woman's face he liked to evoke, teresa, coming in her divine ecstasy, but certainly  not through the words.
well sufism and desade, two opposites, coming together, punning together, outside the law. the first was the law of the muslim clerics who thought you earned your way to heaven; the latter who wanted the law so as to be able to violate it.

i did write a book on trash, to discover that it lay at the foundation for all value, all value systems. one of the images for that value came, no doubt via deconstructionists but certainly bataille, in the form of the void. i discovered that everything that is organized has to have the void around which to formulate organization.  adepoju, that is your ocean, indeed, as the great sufi poet put it, as the ocean breathes in and out, and we align ourselves with that incessant motion.

without the current ceasing, how could you have come to that thought? you love your newton, oh, well...classical physics is fine, but leaves you with the dead end of ether, which einstein finally dispelled. when he did so, he opened us up to the greatest of thought, which comes with relativity and finally quantum mechanics. it is that time and space, and with it energy, matter, and force, are all the effects of that great initial explosion. time wasn't there before; space wasn't there before. this is rovelli's argument, that only in the event in which particles interact, waves interact, or shall we say, strings interact, does time occur, does space occur.

i am writing to you, toyin adepoju because of your love for what these discoveries bring, an astonishingly new view of the world we are in. there is another top physicist and writer i'll cite, karen barad. she says, we are part of the world we observe. we are part of it, not separate from it. we participate in the very thing, in our very being. so when you ask, who am i, you can't separate that question from the same question, what am i part of, not as an outside observer like newton or kant who thought time and space had independent objective existence we could observe and measure, but actually part of it.
you stand on your platform, and watch me running, and measure the time i experience as over against yours, and each is different. newton could not reach to that point. it took einstein in 1905, anno miribilis, to get us there. it took bohr and lemaitre and heisenberg and schroedinger to get us to the point where we realize that where a particle is can't be ascertained without it being affected by our observation.

your universe is not surrounded by darkness; you are the very substance of your ocean and universe. ana al haq, as the sufis say. now the quantum physicists are saying it too.

thank you toyin, and wini and toyin, for beginning yet another day with this wonder. it gives real meaning to life, and its own jouissance.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 9, 2021 8:32 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort
 

Nimi Wariboko

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Dec 9, 2021, 5:35:11 PM12/9/21
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Dear Oga Cornelius:

 

Your intervention made me laugh out loud. There is a “wicked,” wise, and brilliant humor to it. Yet, its intellectual subtility, power of insight, and playfulness exude careful thinking. It was sheer fun reading your response.

 

Let me ask you, before God said “Let Newton be! and all was light” what was God doing? Martin Luther, the Reformer once said God was cutting canes with which to flog all those who would ask such a foolish question. What is your answer? Some Nigerians think God was creating the bad leaders that would be sent to Nigeria. The current gang of Nigerian leaders were created before the utterance, “let there be light,” and as such they are ever ready to unleash the powers of NEPA-darkness on Nigerians. (Toyin Adepoju, take comfort from this creation story whenever you make plans to cross the Atlantic in conformity with Cornelius’s advice. The NEPA problem predates the foundation of creation).

 

Perhaps, a different myth about creation might help us better tell the story of the emergence of Nigerian leaders. This is a story before the creation story of Genesis. The Lurianic Kabbalists say God first prepared a space within the Godself (tzimtzum) by a process of contracting God’s being for creation to emerge? Some Nigerians say Nigerian leaders exhibit God-like impunity in dealing with the governed because they believe they there when God was contracting Godself for the space to emerge as the Khora for creation. What can we do about them? Perhaps, we should ask like Job in the Bible, why were the terrible future leaders of Nigeria not cut off before the tzimtzum or by the darkness/chaos that preceded “Let Newton be! and all was light.'  Since they do not like “cosmos” (organization of order/form out of chaos) we should deliver them to eternal chaos and disintegration, to the nothingness of formless nonbeing.   

 

My brother Biko says Toyin should work during the day. Haba, Toyin must be allowed to work when his muses are wont to be around. Abeg, Nigeria must not be allowed to bend everything for us. Our dear brilliant Gloria asked who are the dealers of the generators, the merchants of darkness? If Toyin were to answer all her questions he would have no time to think and truck and traffic with his muses. It would take a dissertation to adequately respond to her question. And who can write a dissertation to enlighten anyone amid the darkness?  

 

Blessings,

 

Nimi Wariboko

Boston University      

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Nimi Wariboko

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Dec 9, 2021, 5:35:11 PM12/9/21
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Professor Harrow’s intervention is pure gold. Brilliant. Converging currents of ideas. I will read his book on trash.

 

Nimi Wariboko

Boston University

 

From: <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Harrow, Kenneth" <har...@msu.edu>


Reply-To: "usaafric...@googlegroups.com" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 2:07 PM

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 9, 2021, 6:15:43 PM12/9/21
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

Your images and metaphors of ocean are evocative of a few lines from Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach

If only it were a mere matter of “the inner light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not”

Consider this truism from Jesus and try to acquire it, so that your problems can at the very least disappear into non-existence. Jesus said Faith can move mountains.

And according to the bard, “ Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain't neutral ground”

Some time ago, in a slightly stricter form the ultimatum was from Baby Bush : “You are either with us or you're with the terrorists.”

I can hear your good conscience protesting in reply, ”if only life were that easy or my existential agony could be reduced to that kind of simplicity over here in Nigeria where it’s a well -known fact that I’m naturally allied with Uncle Sam against all forms of terrorism including the terrorism of being forced to live in darkness, when this happens against our will.”

Well, the ball is now in your court. Either you take the down-to-earth practical advise from Doctor Biko Agozino - early to bed and early to rise or you continue to sacrifice yourself, your body, your soul, your time, the sanity that you’ll have left of your mind, with unproductive thoughts multiply by sitting in the darkness and contemplating the subtle auto-suggestions embedded in Ojogbon Harrow’s philosophical machinations or like Abraham Abulafia you yourself start with permutations of the holy Hebrew alphabet ( the key to the knowledge that you seek) and per chance to hit on the Lord’s wonder-working ineffable name, although that would probably not be the best reason for seeking that kind of knowledge without the requisite ethical foundations to equip us for such a search...

Haven’t you noticed that most of the avuncular advice, and indeed most the the critiques of the live life situations that ordinary mortals have to put of with in Nigeria, comes from those who are comfortably ensconced in their various ivory towers over there in the United States of America, so that when you are wailing about the challenges of life in Nigeria, the day-to-day bread and butter issues of survival, living quietly and suffering, one day at a time in a forced darkness that’s beyond your control, that’s when you can trust e.g. Ojogbon Harrow to be reaching into his arsenal and coming out with some gobbledegook about quantum physics, “the void “, and some quantum mechanics, that “ time and space, and with it energy, matter, and force, are all the effects of that great initial explosion” that “ it took bohr and lemaitre and heisenberg and schroedinger to get us to the point where we realize that where a particle is can't be ascertained without it being affected by our observation.” and on top of all that, juxtaposing you existential shufferings with thoughts of “jouissance as more than pleasure, as in fact transcendence, like the look on the saintly woman's face he liked to evoke, teresa, coming in her divine ecstasy, but certainly  not through the words.”

The dude tells you he’s hungry and you tell him to please try to get over it because , really, time does not exist...

Consider also all the great things accomplished in this world before the electric light bulb could transform day into night., Moshe Rabbenu trekking with his flock, 40 years of hardship through the wilderness , Jesus and Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa salaam did not complain about a lack of electricity, or the lack of other creature comforts did they?

Lastly, as you are aware, Thomas Alva Edison comes with his electric light bulb as late as 1879, which means that your man Kant accomplished all that he did before the advent of the electric light bulb….

Ishmael Reed is here again with an answer to you question “ Who am I ? “:

I am a Cowboy in the boat of Ra

Alan Watts answers the same question more in line with Algaba Harrow’s quantum philosophy in that his best seller The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Really Are


On Thursday, 9 December 2021 at 09:45:50 UTC+1 ovdepoju wrote:

Harrow, Kenneth

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Dec 10, 2021, 7:24:07 AM12/10/21
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cornelius raises a good point, which came to me as i wrote. it's not so much whether living in my luxury of east lansing i have the right to respond to a victim of nepa, but really the questions posed by the sufis, and maybe by people whose lives are given to poetry and to science have any right to respond to material deprivations--we re all called by an ethical imperative, --thanks mr. kant--regardless of our own conditions. but the larger question is whether there is room for poetry and transcendentalism in a world of material strife and shortcomings.

my favorite reflection on this comes from chaucer, the nun's priest's tale, i think it was. the cock had a dream, that the fox came and wreaked havoc in the courtyard, and all hell broke loose.
i understood it was the serpent in the garden, that evil led to the great fall, which the rooster had had this nightmare about...
he told his wife.
she said, you must have eaten something bad last night, that upset your stomach. take a digestive next time.

two worlds together, heaven and earth?
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 10, 2021, 7:26:25 AM12/10/21
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Dear Nimi Woriboko,

If I got you right, your question is, What was God doing before He said “ Let Newton be” – and there was light? - and by extension all the way back to before the beginning when darkness hovered over the waters / when darkness was on the face of the deep. I suppose it’s the same rhetorical question.

The answer is , I don’t know.

Aren’t we the ones who should be asking you that sort of question?

For the Muslim Faithful , the throne Verse Ayatul-Kursi answers that question , not by telling us what God does but by defining Who and What God is.

Your mild reprimand of Dr. Agozino and your exoneration of Adepoju who you believe “must be allowed to work when his muses are wont to be around. Abeg” is slightly reminiscent of Jesus opining that “ The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath”

I don’t know what Jesus says or would have said about Adepoju the night owl’s perennial problem of electric light for his late nights not being supplied by the state actor known as the Nigerian Government, and if there are special disadvantages with that lack of night light when it comes to living a holy life. On the plus side, it could be viewed as a blessing in disguise. ( I’m thinking of the ultra-orthodox not opening their refrigerators on the Sabbath for fear that the lights would come on , thereby transgressing the law that says “ thou shalt not light a fire during the Sabbath”, electricity after all being some kind of fire, albeit a special kind of fire flowing through the electric wire...

Re - “ The current gang of Nigerian leaders were created before the utterance, “let there be light,”  These are very hard words from a renowned ethicist like you. At the risk of sounding a little like Nathan Söderblom, the moralist or better still some big time Kabbalist, I daresay we should all be putting our shoulders to the wheel in the name of tikkun olam

By the way , in secondary school in Sierra Leone (The Prince of Wales School) I had a classmate by the name of Omodele Woriboko. I last ran into him briefly, all to briefly in Port Harcourt 1982 after which he disappeared into the blue. I last hear of him a couple of months ago from our mutual classmate and Facebook friend Charles Macaulay. I must also enquire from our other Nigerian classmate then, Michael W. Bassey, who is also a Facebook friend .

Last word: In the whole of Nigeria, there are no more hospital people than the Kalabari of Buguma, Bakana, Degema and Abonnema, with whom I lived in Nigeria for two years, and no better music than that produced by the Akaso Cultural Society in the early 1980s ( available in the LPs Igwe and Hosanna - treasured music possessions.

Long live and prosper our Kalabari people

Amen.

Toyin Falola

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Dec 10, 2021, 7:45:46 AM12/10/21
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All great ones:

This is the best thread of 2021, generating profound thoughts and raising serious questions. I came to the Humanities via the sciences, and the connection points are many.

 

To Cornelius, if you can leave Farooq alone, you may emerge as one of the most preeminent intellectuals of our time. Ken’s brilliance shines through in its first response.

 

Let me throw sand into the gari of all your arguments and let me remove salt and palm oil from your egusi soup: How do you bring a person like me into the picture? I don’t process obstacles. Darkness does not stop me from work—I stay still and compose a poem; I muse about the Satan and his unique contributions to our world; I seek the power to fly like a witch; I pray for the survival of the mosquitoes for the melody. Insecurity does not stop me from work—I appreciate life and seek joy in joining the departed ones. I don’t process fear. I am not bothered by conflicts. I shrug off praises. I don’t see myself as important. I don’t see fame as a blessing. I don’t appreciate the end product of work but the process of work. I don’t see what scholars do as more important than want landscapers do. I respect the struggling scholars in Africa far more than the most successful scholar in the diaspora.

 

Continue!

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Dec 10, 2021, 11:32:06 AM12/10/21
to Toyin Falola, usaafric...@googlegroups.com
 “Our dear brilliant Gloria asked who are 
the dealers of the generators, the merchants 
of darkness? If Toyin were to answer all 
her questions he would have no time to 
think and truck and traffic with his muses.”
Mimi Wariboko


Thank you for the  compliment, 
Prof., but Cornelius the Wise hit the nail on
the head when he reminded Toyin Adepoju 
that his inspirational hero, Kant,  had zero 
electricity when writing  his masterpieces- 
so we would  surely get to know about the 
“merchants of darkness.”🤓



Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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Sent: Friday, December 10, 2021 7:39 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The best thread of 2021: Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort
 

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 10, 2021, 4:41:24 PM12/10/21
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Wow.

It's great to have a thread initiated by one's post being so appreciated as Falola has done here.

Great thanks to all contributors.

I had planned to respond at once to all comments but that could be quite demanding so am more likely to do it a little at a time.

The piece was written at night, in response to a power outage which had lasted for much of the day and into the night because I needed both the day and night for my work in order to meet a deadline.

Electricity is needed to power such electronic devices as computers and mobile phones, indispensable for work in the contemporary world, so it's not simply an issue of light by which to see but of energy to power one's devices.

Is moving to a more developed nation an ultimate solution?

It would be a personal solution but one which does not address the national problem.

One might not be inclined to demonstrate on the streets calling for revolution as Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, did in moving from what I understand is his base in the US to the Nigerian streets or possess the public clout of a Wole Soyinka who shuttles across the world but makes sure he makes his input into Nigerian affairs but one can speak up, in one's own way, communicating to whoever is responsive.

" The work is not ours to finish" one expression states, " but neither are we free to take no part in it".

Thanks

Toyin




Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Dec 10, 2021, 4:41:34 PM12/10/21
to 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series, Toyin Falola


Cornelius,  the Professor’s name is not
Woriboko but Wariboko. Gloria, his
first name is Nimi not Mimi.




Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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Sent: Friday, December 10, 2021 11:14 AM
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The best thread of 2021: Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort
 

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 10, 2021, 4:42:25 PM12/10/21
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Although Ojogbon Falola is being unjust to me, I give him the benefit of the doubt, crown him with the best of intentions , not with a crown of thorns and that’s why I have taken Ojogbon Falola’s advice to heart, even though the advice is craftily worded like Zulfiqar the double-edged sword, figuratively understood to be the sword of discrimination between the good and the bad, more mundanely and in the battlefield the arena in which theory is out into action, the sword that summarily executed terminal judgement on the kuffar and the enemies of al-Islam, sent them directly in the blazing fire of the Hereafter.

Ojogbon Falola unjust?

Yes, unjust!

Have I forfeited the right to state my case? If not, this is the case that I’m making, and please, true, I am no proverbial Job , nor is he , so you be the judge. And according to the wielder of Zulfiqar about Who God is and what God does and did, only God is capable of not being unjust.

I protest that circumstances have succeeded in situating me in the very unenviable & difficult position in which I find myself presently and this is my sad complaint: Ojogbon Falola is fond of making fun of me. Normally, such an accusation should put the Ojogbon who prides himself on being fair , neutral and impartial, in the defensive - that that a holy man like him is utterly incapable of being unjust even towards anyone who he thinks deserves it for “ going after” Farooq, one of his holy cows, another little drop in the desert. Thank God, I have no holy cows and no golden calf and I know that not even Ojogbon himself is beyond criticism speak less of of the serial abuser of those in authority in Nigeria…

I have followed the Nobel Week Dialogue for decades, and here’s the 2021 show with Zainab Badawi featuring some of the “most pre-eminent intellectuals of our time”

Cornelius is not mocked. Cornelius is neither a scholar nor an intellectual ( God forbid), hopefully, Cornelius is a perpetual voyager what the Sufis refer to as a salik - and of course, “Ken’s brilliance shines through in its first response.” And in the second response too. Who said that it didn’t? I would have thought that Adepoju, the Ifa initiate, cosmologist , connoisseur of the esoteric, would be the last person to preach to about Blake’s Auguries of Innocence , when what he’s complaining about is a lack of electric light at night.

As to the question of who he is, I suppose that question could be succinctly reframed as “ What is the purpose of existence ?”But, if the insistence is on the “I” then for the shortest path to that realisation I would recommend that he understand both Ken and Nisargadatta Maharaj

This is calculated to make Ojogbon Falola smile...

Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 11, 2021, 6:06:31 AM12/11/21
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​Glorious Gloria, your brilliant questions are very important to those whose aim is not to leave leprosy to chase ring worms. The technology of generating and distributing electricity has been solved many centuries ago and with the academic qualifications of the managers of the Nigerian electricity and the huge amount of money ($16 billion under Obasanjo and $34 billion under Jonathan) at their disposals, the whole Nigeria should by now be shining with electric lights.

Since the amount of money spent on electricity generation and supply in Nigeria resulted in epileptic supplies, a Nigerian NGO, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) approached the court to force the Federal Government to give public accounts of how the funds were spent. On July 4, 2019, Justice Chuka Austine Obiozor in a judgment ordered the Federal Government to publish the names of companies and contractors who collected public funds since 1999 but failed to execute any electricity projects. The court order is yet to be obeyed.  Barely four months after Justice Obiozor's court order, Senator Francis Fadahunsi, moved a motion in the Senate on Tuesday, 20 November 2019 seeking for a five-year temporary ban on importation of generators into Nigeria in order to hasten solution to the energy crisis in Nigeria. The senate rejected the motion in a voice vote. Senator Fadahunsi's motion, as indicated by your questions, exposed the connection between importers of generators and the saboteurs of the national grid. Further, on Wednesday, 11 March 2020 Senator Bima Enagi introduced a Bill seeking to ban importation of generators into Nigeria, but the Bill did not pass through second reading. Well, Nigerian people love praying a lot which is why they pray to God to give them light when it is men/women foisting darkness on them.
S. Kadiri 

From: 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: 10 December 2021 17:14
To: Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>; usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The best thread of 2021: Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort
 

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Dec 11, 2021, 12:03:56 PM12/11/21
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Thank you. Very illuminating, S.K.

I suggest that TF should consider a book
project that probes into the issue.  He can 
invite a few engineers to contribute.
The political economy of  Light -
comes to mind. 






Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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Sent: Friday, December 10, 2021 5:38 PM
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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The best thread of 2021: Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort
 

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 11, 2021, 12:16:05 PM12/11/21
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Fine contributions.

Great thanks.

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BL0PR01MB45147690E3C1E6384264ACFDDE729%40BL0PR01MB4514.prod.exchangelabs.com.

Toyin Falola

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Dec 11, 2021, 12:16:11 PM12/11/21
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, Salimonu Kadiri

…except that they don’t seem to pick my clues that darkness has its own epistemology!

…it lies at the root of secret societies, the transformation of the pyramid and triangles into esoteric power, witchcraft…

In modern politics, it is the zone of power—the conversion of the postcolonial into its performative essence. Oaths, oath making….with lantern, not with NEPA

Of course ritual murders!!!

And in harem-keeping, where there is electricity, it has to be turned off to produce Adepoju’s agonies….No woman has seen the body of the Alhaji. All those heavy bodies reside in the privacy of the garbs!!!

Without darkness, there are no major sacrifices—to gods and goddesses, to Esu, to tap unseen powers

And it is a link with nakedness, the power of being, the zone of mortal curses, the power invested in a naked woman in darkness to impose a mortal curse.

TF

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Dec 11, 2021, 1:11:51 PM12/11/21
to Toyin Falola, usaafric...@googlegroups.com, Salimonu Kadiri
I deliberately chose the word “light” to
preempt discourse on the esoteric. 
That is another worthy project, of course, 
but it may steer the discussion away from
technology, economy, politics, class 
elitism, corruption, militocracy, democracy 
etc. 




Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The BBC best thread of 2021: Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort
 

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 11, 2021, 1:20:39 PM12/11/21
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Beautiful...


Spiritualities. epistemologies and sociologies of darkness

But....

When this darkness is enforced rather than self created...
 




To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN7PR06MB724720354BB0DED619C27ECAF8729%40SN7PR06MB7247.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 12, 2021, 2:07:50 AM12/12/21
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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 15, 2021, 5:59:02 PM12/15/21
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, 


 Dumbass question: Why should Nigeria be lagging behind Morocco? 

( Well, a while back Morocco left the African Union and wanted to join the EU with whom they have sardines in common and of course, ancient Islamic links with Spain. Of course, I can't imagine Nigeria  or  your Fulani Herdsmen making that kind of move ( wanting to be apart of the European Union)  and neither can you. (And if Morocco should become an EU member what about Libya, Tunisia, the most Europeanised among the North Africans?  For Egypt and dear Algeria  who really fought for their freedom, let us suppose that a continued membership of the Arab League is a stronger attraction. 

The good news is that Morocco eventually  reverted to African Union membership.)

Morocco will soon be exporting clean solar energy to Europe ( the only setback so far being that Morocco has not yet attainted to what the EU feels they should attain to in order to guarantee stability and a constant supply  electricity through of solar power) namely Democracy. 

We are told  in that BBC program that Solar power from a relatively small area of North Africa is capable of electrifying the whole world!!!

A final consolation to you , for relief from both inner and outer darkness 

( I'm fascinated listening to this right now:

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Dec 15, 2021, 7:04:59 PM12/15/21
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Some Nigerians are also exploring solar power.

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/f73bd32e-6653-4f68-a4d5-e110fe25ec38n%40googlegroups.com.

Harrow, Kenneth

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Dec 15, 2021, 10:45:41 PM12/15/21
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just finished a beautiful series of essays by teju cole, in a book called Black Paper.
lots of meditations on darkness, the void, and the like. brilliant thinker and photographer, and writer of course. i recommend the book
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The best thread of 2021: Pondering My Life in the Darkness: Between Deprivation and Effort
 

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 16, 2021, 8:20:44 AM12/16/21
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thanks to you ken, I have just zapped through

the first 24 delightful pages of the preview 

and my review is this: Pure Genius , with a capital G

Gee!

Call a spade, a spade. One does not have to be a genius to know one

the inimitable essayist Teju Cole, he’s got soul and always (for the mimic men/ pretentious monkeys

it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing

Pages 1-24 are somewhat reminiscent of some of Harold Bloom's Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds ( although, not inexplicably Caravaggio is not included in that crowded field of 100 geniuses , indeed already a big enough crowd and Michelangelo is not included either.

But what do I know about crowds, or “ a large number of people” a-part from Sheikh Wordsworth’s most definitive definition provided by his poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” – and there we are viewing

“A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

 A brilliant question for you …

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Dec 16, 2021, 8:21:25 AM12/16/21
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 Oluwatoyin,

Some Nigerians, indeed.

Here’s another true-ism with which I’m sure you’ll readily agree

Today’s small-scale hero is another Kenyan genius , John Magiro and his Magiro Hydro Electric Limited supplying electricity to his village.

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