Fighting Conflict

A one eyed man among the blind is deemed to be the king. It is therefore not a surprise to see the amount of vitriol pouring in the media and blogosphere, championed by a few pseudo intelligent individuals who,snobbishly mistake their opinion to facts. It is the essence of freedom of expression to voice your opinion but in so doing, it is prudent to realize that this right is not a monopoly to a select few.

It’s worrying how degenerative we've become a point where we are always right and anyone with a contrary opinion is a piece of turd, a numbskull and a dozen of other epithets. We are very intolerant people, quintessentially condescending and always brimming with all manners intimidation. It is said that rudeness is the weak man's sense of defense and, with all our perceived intelligent (and the stupidity of others) we can't hold a decent argument is itself telling on how intelligent we are. Instead of showing signs of decency and maturity, instead of talking sense and remaining pragmatic, we blow the rid every time someone happens to voice or hold contrary opinion. It's a shame that our idea of debate involve an archaic chest thumping, a rigorous shake of the head followed by a chain of bile and vile words.

We can never be equal and we'll not always agree. Why then do we antagonize and vindicate others for their own opinion? In explaining cultural perspectives of conflict, Robbins (2009) argues that sometimes the meaning given to violent behavior often dissociates the perpetrators of violence from blame. This is the tip of the iceberg that is manifesting itself and sadly propagated by the media. We haven't learned anything from the 2007 post-election violence and it seems we are not ready to. The dissociation which Robbins postulates is done by hiding the actions of perpetrators behind a supernatural being, dehumanizing and demonizing opponents or defining war as a defense against the oppressor. This is essentially the result of us versus them mentality where snobbishness confines us in this narrow mindedness.

Stereotypes concerning the various communities are what our comedians call jokes. Instead of letting the diversity of our communities act as our strength, instead of looking for the positive in all the others, we tend to zero in on meaningless negativities and inadvertently malicious. What we consider as harmless jests amidst laughs and mirth eventually turns into our beliefs of the various communities. It limits our knowledge about the other communities their cultures and anything they hold of value. The ethnic cleansing which gripped this country can hardly be compared with what was witnessed in Rwanda but there is a lot we can learn from Rwanda in terms of the reforms which were implemented there. Having Integration Commission to look on issue of hate speech while we haven’t defined clearly what hate speech entails won’t take us anywhere. Like Rwanda, it is time we stopped identifying others by tribe and start seeing them as people .

Until we identify the prevalent problem, until we own the problem and start thinking of the way forward without hiding behind our tribes and tribesmen, the smoke will continue smoldering and soon the fire will break. Fighting tribalism involves more than just shouting down and speculating what this and that tribe is planning. It involves taking a step to try understanding why the individual in conflict is taking a certain view without considering how stupid or intelligent they are. We have to accommodate the views of all Kenyan whether they be trash or not and try to view the world from their perspective. The question is, since we have elevated ourselves, our tribe and whatever little grouping that we identify with, are we willing to shed these bonds to break these ties and accommodate the views and opinion of others? Until we can answer this question on the affirmative and be able to take unwavering steps to stick to this resolution, we shall only be wallowing in mediocrity, and worse, we won’t know of it. Ours would be a constant lie that we are intelligent and this mild notion won’t take us anywhere.