Some believe we live in dangerous times. They look at what they can see; the deep in the world economy, turmoil in some places of the earth, natural disaster, lack of food in Haiti and elsewhere which is a bigger terror, disease, poverty in terms of balance sheet and poverty of knowledge, moral turpitude and overall avant-garde posture from men and women who lay claim to be ruling this habitable world of matter. People see things that way for no special reason except that this is what they can see. The facts stare them in the face, confronting them at every turn and bend. The human energy is in doubt and tools for information dissemination gives assurance to this fact. The media is neither pulling people along nor spreading hope. Today media adopts a militant posture. It gives people the best assurance of their doubt but someone must be gaining. If “one man’s poison is another man’s meat”, who could be reaping the profit? What is really happening? Can we see the Voodoo, the home run Hoopla, the Kublai-Khan?
Ok! Let us assume that no one is gaining, no profit is being reaped somewhere as things are. Let us for the moment, for the purpose of convenience just live with this assumption. Let us see the problem as world infested. With this nuance in our mind, let us raise the equation to the level of re-birth. Probably, nature has taken enough fermentation after a long while of affluence and now putting its hands into its bag of spells to add to human follies and releasing from that reservoir, a poisonous venom, thereby, inflicting the human specie, to give them a re-birth, a new soul, such that they awaken the next day feeling anew.
So, our destiny now have same heart beat, same motion without movement. We are not only accursed by death; we must now face economic threats like students performing Japanese ‘mukade’ parade…the first person in line falls and the whole bunch goes down. The press is reporting the situation as it is and in doing so, they are doing their job but it is not complete. The role of the press should not be seen as only to report facts but to give courage and hope without necessarily being or acting as propaganda machine for the government and or any of its agencies.
I have not seen the media giving courage, rendering hope in the future, reminding citizens that we have traveled this road before and will pull out of this “double-cross”. I am yet to see any upliftment. All I read and see are news on the pillaging of the economy, the hopelessness, and line of people needing food getting longer, demonstrations at gate of factories, and a little dose of citizen bailout from government. So, since there is no long lasting solution except handouts to help douse the flame, the press has nothing to report and is redundant to render any hope.
Locally, here in Japan, the press has other news too, mostly bad news. Its either violent death somewhere, accident there, denied cohabitation here or about hard drug by campus students that has of most recent been elevated to murder of a Professor at Chuo University? To loose ones life is worse indeed but to have performed such an ignoble and blood cuddling act of violence in a place as fertile as a university is to say the list horrendous. It was not just that the act killed a Professor; the action on itself in a citadel of learning stabbed the university community and much more. But let us leave this matter for another day.
Everyday I wake up, I find staring in my face a question a friend asked me last Sunday; “can you raise enough money to send my corpse back to Africa?. This family man has a wife and a son. He is ready to abandon ship but does not want to return to Africa alive. Even if he wanted, he has no money to ferry himself. All he earned in Japan in the past 17 years, he has put back in raising his 6 year old son and assisting his wife who is not working due to health problem. He is not sure of continuing to pay the monthly mortgage for their home…his monthly home take having been cut in half.
Let us forge ahead together. Let us raise the spirit and the momentum out of the current ill wind even when the press barks otherwise. We homo-sapiens have never been scheduled for same course. Count yourself in.
Patrick Nwadike is a teacher and a Freelance Journalist.
