Mind Evolution Not Revolution

A Revolution is the complete overthrow of leaders and rulers of a state mostly by the followers during challenges of great concern both sectional or generally. Another school of thought says it is the complete and far-reaching evolvement of a people’s way of thinking and behaving. A revolution is the full implementation of one’s principles and mostly accepted values for the public good.

Revolutions have occurred in every continent of the world and came with different achievement as a service to its people. Somewhere it came with rolls of development across all sectors whiles it brought divisiveness and self-slaughtering among others. Why? And who rolls out the outcomes?

The French revolution (1789-1799) is a major event and period of shift in the historical system of human’s dominion over each other. For a bare fact, the revolution was ignited by the struggle for resources between hegemonic forces and the masses, ineffective leadership by Louis xvi, an agrarian economy, hard rocks of societal classes thrown at the masses between 1788-1789 and the general enlightenment due to works of scholars such as JEAN JACQUE ROUSSEAU in his work on the SOCIAL CONTRACT (1762). All these brought about the world’s major revolution which had some marveling effect if not immediate on the people of France and the world as a whole.

The revolution made France a republic. It led to fair sharing of the Church’s property. It crashed the arbitrary rule of kings and planted in its place the declaration on the rights of man and all citizens. In the near and distant neighbourhood of France, the French revolution became the drawn path of most other revolutions as in the case of Russia. It inspired a change in the political system and ultimately economic system. It brought about the former as seen in the independence struggle of European colonies. Very clear examples are in the cases of its inspiration to Spanish colonies such as Argentina in 1814, Venezuela, Ecuador and Columbia among others. Haiti’s was a slave revolt. Today, the results and effects of the French revolution are the republics and democracies that we have with fully declared human rights and freedoms.

Now, if you look extensively on the revolutions that took place here on earth, the root cause has been a situation of introduction of gourmands as masters on the political scene, social injustice and economic failures. Noteworthy are the French, Haitian, American, and most revolutions in Africa including Ghana. There arises an alarming question: why the same trend but different outcomes comparatively? Why has Ghana had the same trend on many, many occasions but ...?

The unnecessarily many insurrections in Ghana came during trying times. Trying times would usually be felt during continuous high inflation rates, high interest rates, fiscal disequilibrium, high rate of corruption and high rate of unemployment among others. All these are maybe genuine ignitors of coup d'états. But one thing is the public discussion and the other hand is the inner-circle “MAFIA” discussion. The inability of the masses to divulge the newly wedded wife to see its actual face has caused us. The real intents of leaders are self-seeking. Ethnocentrism has been the energizer used to enrich our failed revolutions’ leadership, their descendants and blood shedding for settling of scores.

In Ghana, the land of my birth, love and pride, there have been many revolutions; coups as they are preferably and popularly called and “thumb power”. Have they solved our problems? Has it changed as from the aspiring good people to the best we have always wanted to be? Coups will mostly come because civilian governments have failed the people. We have seen governments come and decay through ballots and resurgences in years, but what is there to show for it?

The problems of old are fresh and even more pervasive today. In the old (1960s- 1980s), the crimes that made people get their lives unattached from their families either by death or imprisonment, make people celebrities today. What have change? Corruption is now considered as part of our culture as some individual make attempts to find its causes.

Individuals, organisations, and the government have always stood up to campaign against corruption as they see it as the cause of our problems. Do I agree? Maybe. These attempts to wipe out corruption is to be done through investigations, campaigns and punishments. These are god ways that are conveniently not solving the problems of our society. This leads to believing something else is the cause of our problems which revolutions have not been able to solve.

The biggest cause of problems such as corruption, and other vices is the hypocrisy within us. Until we learn to evolve as a people leaving behind the pervasiveness of hypocrisy in our daily lives, corruption will continue. We will continue to pretend to not accepting it and the perpetrators will continue to pretend like they will not do it anymore. The hypocrisy is not about leadership but worryingly, among followers.

Ghana and Africa needs revolutions less in governments than we need an evolution of our minds. The evolution of the mind positively is what an aspired people hope to achieve in order for it to inspire them to achieve greatness. Not that we do not know, but our discipline has been engulfed by hypocrisy. I say this because we have been able to evolve (develop) our minds in very smart ways to be heroes of materialism which negatively affect the nation. We may make our minds blind to ethnocentrism, sectionalism, religions and political parties but our Africa first, our Ghana first. Until this sure revolution, we shall still pretend to develop and still be and be sufferers of diseases-natural and experimental and have the always nicely coined insulting tags. If our minds are not prepared, our actions cannot endure. We need ourselves, our only hope.

Gaou Sapaku Ganga-Nyayi
UNINBOTI BI. I SAY. I DO
KPANDAI