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10.04.2019 Opinion

We Must Learn From History To Become Truly Wise

By Sir Divine Agyenim-Boateng Bassanio
We Must Learn From History To Become Truly Wise
10.04.2019 LISTEN

Since the genesis of creation man had never lived in isolation, in mans communal living, consciously or unconsciously our being is perfected through our relations with ourselves and others specifically with the people we live with within our very confinement.

This will motivate Aristotle to state that "Man is a Social being ". It's therefore through this interaction with others that we learn and unlearn (both good and evil).

Ordinarily, the people to imitate are those who are supposed to be of higher Social and Moral values in society. Young people are quick to learn and imitate from the very people they admire as their mentors or role models.

Even though young people of our age may be intellectually smart to imitate yet many among them are moral dwarfs, such that they can't even distinguish between what is good and what is bad, causes and effects, hence for them once they admire you as their model anything you will do or say to their sight and hearing, ones it coming from the one they admire, it suffices to be worth emulating.

Arguably, it is commonly said that young people have never been very good at listening but they have never failed to imitate. It will, therefore, be logical for me to make the wise claim that probably most of the vices and virtues we experience daily as being exhibited especially among the young people of our generation is as a result of blind imitation of the ill- manners of the very people our country Ghana and the world today present to us as models on Televisions and on Social media as worthy of emulation.

The question remains as what are the young people of our generation learning and whom are they learning from? Ages past, all people and society at large will embrace, admire and uphold people of good ethical values and men of integrity and place them on a pedestal, and worship them like idols”

I wouldn't be too far from the truth if I should say we still have a good number of men of integrity and morals present in our society today just like we had in the times past. If this premise is true then comparatively why the sudden uprise of the level of corruption and moral decay in our present age? The difference is obvious while as our generation attempts to tame, insult, criticize and even kill the good icons among us, the people of old and the society at large will embrace, admire and uphold people of good ethical values and men of integrity and place them on a pedestal.

Ironically we tend to do the vice versa by admiring the people who are rather corrupting our generation with their mischievous and vicious acts.

Come to think of it, visit our music industry, "dis" songs is the order of the industry and we praise the artist with the most abusive words and we claim he has the talent. Gone are the days when many songs were dismissed from the public domain because society as at that time conscious of morality saw those songs as morally lacking. We are not growing because our generation is lacking.

What good legacy do we leave behind for this generation when some of our honorable politicians have turned our parliament house into a boxing ring, trading blows and exchanging slaps and insult.

Maybe we need the prophets and the Pastors to liberate our generation. Some of them have also turned the church and prayer camps into venues of the night market where they live in luxurious comforts, using all dubious means to amass wealth. Preaching virtues and practicing........?

What else do we expect, when our media houses have turned into the home of hoax and temples for the propagation of propaganda. The implication is very simple, we don't expect anything better either than what we are experiencing now in our generation such as the alarming number of marriage breakups, Homosexuality, Suicides, corruption, lives of sexual promiscuity, leaking of sex and naked videos and some walking almost naked on our streets in the name of fame and celebrity.

Morality and its implementation seem not to be anybody's business any longer. In order to correct these immoral atrocities, we need to set standards in our country Ghana and make our country great again. I hereby conclude by categorically stating that all individuals and the world at large must come to admit that “a good man's breeding is the best security against other peoples ill-manners.”

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