Science, coming to you in Africa mainly via westernized Science, has truly emerged for all to see as the Powerful Bullshit Industrial Complex that it has always been.
You don’t have to look at the history to admit this. Take today. Take the western science journals which publish nothing but letters from friends and boyfriends; take the MIT Media Lab which went to bed several times with the sexual predator, Jeffery Epstein; take Ted Talks, which has become more entertainment than technology or design; take the research university which invests its so-called billions in private prisons that re-enslaves Americas Blacks (Mass Incarceration of Blacks). Take any serious science outfit in the west, chances are that its mouth is dirty, like a rat.
Western science has also been the perfect shield for western nations in pursuing global capitalist entrepreneurial activities under the banner of innocent, genuine intellectualism. There’s a reason pupils are no longer allowed to garden in school in Ghana. There’s a reason pupils in the Ivory Coast (sorry, it is La Cote d’Ivoire) are no longer taught how to build their own fences from thatch. Pupils must dabble in science. Pupils must catch the science fever. They must genuflect before the west’s scientific ideas.
In Ghana the fever is so infectious that even grown men are seen literally glued to their television sets admiring young impressionable high school minds bleat out answers to stupid questions, year after year, in a so-called National Quiz. Many grown Ghanaian men have signed up to become lifetime fans of quiz teams from the places of their Christian Missionary Education. Few think that the stagecraft is utterly stupid. Still, few refuse to admire the nonsense of a high-school science quiz becoming a national event. The whole idea is as bogus as it is insidious. Yet, few grab the true intent: Which is that you must admire westernized science; see it as a very innocent, genuine intellectualism, and then we can truly indoctrinate you with our sickening glutinous ideas in Primitive Accumulation. More, so we can dominate you!
Back in 1991, John Brockman – the world’s most successful digital impresario (i.e. broadcaster of western scientific ideas), and an agent of the sexual predator, Jeffery Epstein, wrote in a famous essay that “The emergence of the third culture [the digital broadcasting of western scientific ideas like on television] introduces new modes of intellectual discourse and reaffirms the pre-eminence of America in the realm of important ideas.” What the quiz-watchers in Ghana don’t get is that the “pre-eminence of America in the realm of important ideas” was, above all, the outcome of its dominance in the economic and military realms, weakening the efforts of other countries (like Ghana) to create their own vibrant alternatives to Hollywood or Silicon Valley. Yet, the Metha in Ghana give western scientific ideas free prime time broadcasting in Ghana. Few men can wrest their eyes away from the broadcast to focus rather on real matters of importance. (Even the President watches the National Science and Math Quiz).
Alas. The ugly collective picture of the geopolitics of Americas techno-elites that emerges from the Epstein sexual predatory scandal reveals westernized science as truly a Bullshit Industrial Complex that houses a bunch of morally bankrupt Primitive Accumulators. To treat western scientific ideas, especially on national television, as genuine but wrong is too generous; the only genuine thing about these ideas is their facetiousness. Science, via western science, and its apologists may produce the big imaginary ideas the world has ever known (like the idea of going to the Moon and back), yet its renowned stagecraft for flying into Moonlights will remain mostly attune to the dictates of the sexual predators who fund them.
In connecting the above article to the previous one, on Jesus and Vodun, if people do not revert to an inward locus or point of reference (the eminence or god within) they are unlikely to form a culture of deep reflection and by extension it is no surprise that few among them turn out to be critical thinkers. With their reference being outside of and without them they cannot truly contend with it in their minds; they can only “believe” (helplessly hope) in the intervention of an unfamiliar and by extension a non-existent god…
This of itself unwittingly condemns them to a life of non-existence. A case in point can be found down in Loliondo, Tanzania, where thousands went to be cured of manifold illneses by drinking a particular concoction whose maker claimed divine powers… only for their condition to get worse. However this particular “healer” did invoked a “disclaimer” that for one to be cured they must have “unwavering faith” or else it won’t work. The fact that thousands went to be cured shows we are not yet a reasoning (sceintific) society but still carry the blemish of missionary superstitions deep in our psyche. Faith is indeed an empty and unfulfilling promise!
Thus, it is this invocation of faith in an outward and foreign god that renders our reasoning abilities mute. We become helpless automatons good for taking orders and doing and believing whatever our political, business or religious con artists demand of us… Having killed our capacity for reason and reflection “we live by faith”; shunning reason and condemning ourselves to a mental and physical poverty merely because our missionary “educators” asked it of us. Hence our society’s approach to issues is “faith based” on not sceintific; and one should not be surprised by our inclination to believe whatever is put in the mass media… the missionaries and subsequent “educators” have prepared us thoroughly well as unquestioning consumers of neocolonial diatribe!
To put it more succinctly in the words of the colonialist, Thomas Macaulay, to the British parliament in 1835…
“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”
Well said. Mkuki.
The story from Loliondo is a fascinating one indeed. It serves as the patent analogy for our (unmitigated) genuflection before missionary education, before western schools of thought.
The chief ingredient that was/is used in Loliondo is the bark of the moringa tree whose medicinal benefits were clearly known in both Africa and perhaps Asia well before the European missionaries settled in the continent… and then somehow this knowledge was destroyed and lost to many of us natives… even as we hankered on to acquire missionary “education”…
The mode of extraction of the active ingredient then as now was boiling although thanks to present day technology it is now also available in powder form. The moringa tree has robust medicinal qualities and is used in treating or preventing several ailments from stomach indigestion to inflammation, athritis, fever as well as controlling blood sugar for diabetics. It is even rumored to be good for cancer patients. The moringa was the latter day asprin coincidentally before the missionaries introduced asprin and Jesus as the cure for all ailments…
So it is increasingly evident that the missionary was on a mission to clean the slate of our minds from the “evil” knowledge of moringa and make way for the acceptance of European aspirin, clothes, food and all manner of consumables under the banner of “Christ and civilization”…
But now that we are unthinking missionary faithful the Tanzanian healer well aware of this has introduced the morning as a “Jesus cure” for all ailments; he claims he was instructed by Jesus himself to embark on healing people. And because he is using modern marketing techniques of invoking Jesus he did succeed for a while until people begun to discover inadvertently that “Jesus” is not a cure for all ailments… as they say it is strictly business, nothing personal, for after all even the church is a fully fledged business selling the Jesus faith/propaganda to the masses.
The vicissitudes of missionary education. Isn’t it surprising that the people of Loliondo actually practiced science: using the bark of the Moringa tree to cure a significant portion of all their ailments?
That was clearly before the arrival of the cure of “Jesus and Aspirin” and before the (mis-)cure of “Material Consumption.” What many students of science in Africa, especially those of the twenty-first century, fail to appreciate is that the science they learn today (like Aspirin) is loaded with a heavy dose of Jesus. Take [Newton’s] laws of motion, most students will never learn that the idea of absolute distance (that distance x has absolute origin) is the very idea of a one Supreme Almighty being called God, whose only son is Jesus. In fact when Newton himself was challenged on his reference points for time and distance, this is exactly how he put it: there’s an absolute origin! (You see how ideas of evolutionary time fit neatly here as well?)
Now in many places that I know in Africa, to teach the laws of motion infused with this idea of having just one God operating the universe, with only one Son, Jesus, is odd. This one God leaves no room for other Gods, and no space at all for the Ancestors. I have argued amply that it is when we begin a truly African philosophical reflection of empirical research findings and theory making that we can actually have Africa-centric interpretations of scientific observations. Newton was not the first to observe the laws of motion, although this is another story. Newton was challenged by his own colleagues who didn’t want to believe in Newton’s Almighty Origins. Some of those colleagues opted for “relativistic time and distance.” However, even if we accepted that he the laws of motion belonged to Newton, should we hold our next generations to accepting the dose of the Almighty Jesus with it?
Africa needs an inward-looking reflection on science (on the Moringa tree). We must begin from the top: Who are we? What do we want to become? That is the kind of philosophy that must be infused into every single systematized natural observation (science). Loliongo, I contend, should give some thought to Moringa. Students in Loliongo should be planting and studying the life-cycle of Moringa in Botany classes as if their very lives depended on it. We should not waste their time teaching them the life-cycle of the Christmas tree, as if all is jsut science! (All is science, true. But that’s layman talk!)
Narmer. I like how you weaved in the fakeness of the Moon landing with the larger doctrine of the fakeness of western scientific ideas for the sole purpose of establishing America (or the west) as the pre-eminent authority on ideas.
For the fakeness of the Moon landing underscores the spirit, the theme and the modus operandi of western science. I am not surprised they’ve been sucking on Jeffry Epstein’s dick, that bastard of a sexual predator, whose name is never mentioned in place of the Bill Cosby (because Cosby is black). I am not surprised at all.
I also like you tend to think that the Apollo “moon landing” series not only happened to be the first really succeful movie series 5 decades back but also marked the turning point in emboldening US establishment to carry out even more of the same antics both in and out of Hollywood… all the way to crowning itself as the “single superpower” and by extension the most scientifically and materially advanced nation… until it wasn’t!
The recent downing of US drone by Iranians (Persian) missiles proved that America’s radar suppression (missile jamming) technology wasn’t advanced and could not stop home made Iranian missiles from hitting US assets 20km in the sky. In fact it is the military who stood down Trump from attacking and not because of Trump’s “mercies” for civilians.
But this also served to remind the world why US isn’t a scientific power anymore. The other nations having caught up and some even overtaking it in many fields. Which also demonstrates that no one has monopoly over scientific advancement but rather those who incorporate scientific approaches to solving their social economic challenges naturally progress scientifically.
Unfortunately, for US it seems their technological achievements were intertwined with their capacity to import technical minds from Europe and Asia especially after WWII all the way up to the 90s after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thereafter America’s technological progress drastically declines as the bulk of its gifted immigrant scientists retire or die out by natural attrition and as it begins to ship out its industrial capacity to China. Such that this decline now looks irreversible with US having gutted its public school system… and by extension Hollywood’s role has changed to consoling Americans about their (former) “greatness”…
LOL. Apt!
Except this hater of Western science typed all this on the INTERNET. Why didn’t you use a scroll. Or carrier pigeons?
Thing is that I have actually refuted this argument a million times. I shall not repeat it. But I hear you Sir.
Why is that every time we speak about people becoming independent of western scientific thought (western philosophy), someone somewhere always bleats about the use of the internet. In other words, no one on this GREAT OLD Invention of the West, can become independent of the west? Not even in thinking?
Why is thinking outside the box (the internet) so easy for others yet so intractable to the many? This is my next philosophical quest!
Why is “western scientific thought” described as western? Especially when so many of its basic precepts did not even come from the “west”? That’s the kind of bleating that bothers me the most to be honest.
Ok. Let’s go there M.r Brobbey. Let’s get to the gritty details. First let’s start with a book most people can understand. Let’s see if you get it! The example book is “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.” The ideas of that book for instance is what Narmer Amenuti means when he says “western scientific ideas.”
The thing is that when people talk about western scientific ideas, most of you a completely lost. Most of you think Newton’s equations of motion are the “ideals” necessarily being referred to. Most of you have no idea what [western] Christian religious philosophy undergirds Newton’s ideals of the equations of motion. Instead of ask humbly what the “western scientific ideas” are you rather start by berating authors.
So let’s begin humbly without any insults. Let’s discuss. I have given you an example of a western scientific idea that even Russian scientists disagree with. I have given you an instance of a western philosophical idea that they want us in Africa to admire. Narmer is admonishing us to not follow in such [idiotic, stupid, capitalistic and racist] ideas. You seem confused. So, now tell me what your “bother” really entails! I am sure i can help you resolve it. Trust me.!
You claim you are not interested in insults. Yet you’re already – without even hearing what I have to say calling me lost and confused and very thinly implying even worse insults . I have zero interest in engaging with people like you. Trust me.
Waaa look oh! You, Mr. Brobbey, asked two questions: (1) Why is “western scientific thought” described as western? (2) Especially when so many of its basic precepts did not even come from the “west”?
I proceeded to answer you with a fine example of one of the most talked about western scientific ideas in the twentieth-century! I implored that we kept the discussion civil. (Not the I care about civility per se, but I wanted to impose it so you don’t run away.)
Now you run away with your tail between your legs. You see? You either don’t won’t to enlighten yourself, or you don’t want to be enlightened. Simple thing about us is, we run away from the facts and blame civility for it! Waaa look, I can’t even say you are confused lest you run away bleating about that I have insulted you. The thing is, most of you don’t actually know what insults are, or perhaps you do. Perhaps for the purposes of running away from the point you feign having been insulted. My dear friend, civility never built anything! Trust me!