“If we want real change, I mean radical shift from worst to excellence, should we draw up a sketch of a just society and then simply march towards it? I think it’s better to look around and find the seeds of a better future – perhaps dormant – in the present, and nurture them into a viable alternative that can challenge and transform the world around us but we must start from somewhere”
The focus of this pieces is based on personal analyses and comparism on several approach to social and political values like: utilitarianism, liberalism and communitarianism, which postulate different views on justice and on ways to make society better and all shared the same vision of building an Utopia like world.
It is true that popular uprisings or genuine movement are as old as history. History tells us about the days of classical Greece ‘revolutions’ which then were considered a normal way of assuming power by differing regimes. They occurred whenever democratic, oligarchic, and monarchic regimes alternated in assuming power, and such alternation of political power often came through violence. I don’t think this is the only option available to us in line with modern reality but there are lay down rules if we must form a strong base to make any meaningful progress.
The assumption that all political movements have many traits in common does not imply that all movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. Here, I try to establish a justified approach to the promotion and building of ‘A Just Society’ and maintained that it is only when there is a clear goal with practical steps to accomplished the set goals, as the principal value of the collective life on the basis of public debates and democratic civic pressure.
In every political system from dictatorships to participatory democracies, emerges from public support. No dictator can carry out his or her will without obedience from subjects; nor can any project requiring collective action be achieved without the support, begrudging or enthusiastic, of the
group. I put it to you that it is because of the support given to our so called leaders that empowered them to disempower us as a people.
Then what can we do?
First, outside of rare moments of political and economic crises, the public has no way to collectively withdraw its support from governing institutions without preexisting mass organization. Individuals acting alone have no impact on the state’s power – we need that organisational capacity for greater mass action. We must need that platform of togetherness bonded in spirit and soul under one ideology. I mean the gathering of True Believers, whose appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation, in opposition to the failed system.
There is no doubt that all mass movements according to Eric Hoffers in his Book, The True Believers, generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, including hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand maximum faith and single hearted allegiance to the eternal order.
Unless we secure the fellowship of those:
Fellows who can stay committed to the founding principles and foundation of the movement.
Fellows who can set out goals and not only aspire to achieve them, but see them come to reality.
People who are committed to the independence of the movement and build a strong firewall to forestall any external interferences.
Men who are sensitive with respect to the enemy and its plots and refrain from following them. Am talking about men even though they are hungry and tasty but refused to drink from the unholy sea and reject the poisonous food prepared by people of questionable characters. They are those fellows whose conscience cannot be induced to the detriment of the We The People.
And lastly men who are tasty and ready to acquire knowledge unlimited and seek for Political Piety.
Unless we secure the fellowship of these fellows and move under one umbrella as a formidable force with clear road map that is practicable in this part of the world, the noise and dream of building a new Nigeria will still remain a fantasy.
Nkemdi C Mordi Kenneth
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