Cultures, Rituals and All that Jazz

 They demonstrated. They were angry. In answer to a reporter’s question, one dude spitted:
“It is about our culture. Museveni violated the pillar of our culture—the Kabakaship.”

One would hope that, beyond the flaming emotion, there was a genuine and salient understanding of the importance of culture to a people. It was an outrage that, in a sense, many non-Baganda were empathetic, with the tacit understanding that it was an assault (besides the murders) on the core of a people’s essence. Odo me goyo nyeki bigoyi bene. (The cane for beating your co-wife will likely be used against you. So, don’t rejoice at the pain of the other woman).

We are all born into some group or another. We had no choice about it—it was a crapshoot, a lottery draw of nature. The group defines us, gives us a basic formative view of the world from which we set our sails to navigate the often treacherous terrain. The group is also supposed to protect us from forces within and without.

Whether be it family, clan, or tribe, the group is a function of social evolution that took thousands of years to build its characteristics. And, like all evolutionary processes, an ingredient for survival has been competition resulting in wars, trade, espionage, exploitation, domination, slavery, alliances, strategic cooperation, deception, humiliation, abuse, etc.

In this milieu of competition the outcome for a group generally hinges on the strength of its culture—the way of life, clear understanding of its place in the universe, and availability and use of resources. So, when you take away a man’s culture you “set about distorting [his] version of reality, figuratively and literally destroying his trust in the world and his confidence in himself.” (Lung & Prowant, ’02).

Besides superior firepower, or arrow-power, or rungu-power, accomplished mind-slayers know that the key to winning is through the mind-gates of eyes, ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the urethra and the anus. Through these orifices they adroitly undermine a culture and literally destroy a people, leaving them quarrelling among themselves, distrusting one another, resorting to self-abuses of all kinds—basically becoming dysfunctional.

For example, this can be done by the use of symbols that cause our minds to involuntarily form thoughts and images, symbols that trigger responses within us whether we want our minds to or not. Why is that? Symbols bypass the critical and logical conscious part our minds and talk directly to the nonjudgmental subconscious levels of our minds. (Lung & Prowant, ’02). The slayer then can insert anything he wants at will.

Any culture worth its salt has rituals: for marriage, coming-of-age, settling quarrels and mistakes, forgiving, groveling for favors and appeasing the gods, etc. A good mind slayer will put a different mind filter that junks your rituals and reconstructs your mindset, often resulting in a dysfunctional confusion. Is there any wonder that we find ourselves spinning our wheels in a journey to nowhere?

Take the example of the ritual of coming-of-age which was supposed to instill a sense of such qualities as honor, identity, group coercion and solidarity, responsibility and all the good stuff. It has been subtly replaced by western education, Christianity and Islam. The latter two being, in reality, just merely other peoples’ mechanistic mind inferences to experiences with existential phenomena. (Boyer, ’01). If this replacement was good for us, overall, what are the results?