Change your ways first then think revolution

Kenya does not need a revolution when it has hardly evolved from rudimentary and archaic thinking. As a collective, our nation is still in the dark ages despite trains and electricity being a part of our nation for nearly 100 years.

Our archaic thinking has ensured that despite our modernity our behaviour has remained untainted by time, education, information and common sense. For how transformed can a mind be when it has millions to buy a Range Rover and no sense to know not to litter while driving or to overlap in traffic? What kind of revolution, pray tell, will save us from ourselves?

The trouble with Kenya does not just reside in high office. It resides in the hearts and minds of almost every Kenyan. It is the trouble of a society that has not evolved or jelled into the higher function and virtue that is needed for the success of any society - animal and human alike. As a society, we lack the basic ingredients for a successful evolution.

Social media

The first ingredient we lack is unity. As Kenyans we are divided in every way known to man. We  are divided by class, gender, tribe and petty politics. We are yet to realise that our tribes exist only to marry us, bury us and confuse us as to which party to vote; which forms our petty politics.We are still not aware that there is no “Hustler Nation” because if there was, the proponents of it would tell us about reduced costs of living, jobs for the youth and safety nets to the poor.

Instead, they speak of their rise to power while we the poor and the hustled clap for them as if we will magically move into State House and governor mansions with them.

By the same token, our social media and morning radio shows are obsessed with men and women fighting as to which gender is worse and which gender cheats more as if men don’t cheat with women, and women with men. We fight for gender and tribal supremacy forgetting that in that instant, our unity is lost and divided we fall and suffer.

Greater good

At the same time, we have no ideology we believe in, value or live by. The average Kenyan is led only by his stomach and hunger for more. Money is the only thing that church, politics and the people agree on. How to get it is akin to wrestling’s Royal Rumble, a wild jungle where only the worst of us survive and only the most vile make money.

It is a cut throat world where only the ones that bring us profit are valued while the poor are trodden underfoot. Because of this, Kenyans have no common goal and no common good. We desire personal opulence even if that opulence is achieved as an island in the middle of a river of sewage.

The truth of the matter is there is no revolution or evolution without a selfless society from which rises a selfless leadership. Every evolution requires that there must be a people willing to forgo wealth, comfort and privilege for the sake of a cause they believe in.

In the recent Sudan revolution, citizens had to take months of no work, no business, no pay, tear gas, hunger and live bullets to get the change they wanted. In Kenya, a traffic jam is enough to make us abandon the greater good. Our selfishness ensures that when faced with a societal problem, we solve it for ourselves only and forget everyone else.

This is evidenced every time we are at a T-junction without traffic lights. It takes exactly 4 cars and the junction is blocked by 4 cars with drivers unwilling to think or be logical.

It is the same kind of mentality when it comes to living. Once we make a little bit more money we leave. Leaving our former neighbours and friends to “pambana na hali yao”. It is this thinking that creates billionaires who don’t pay debts because the whole point of Kenyan life is to find ways of taking advantage of each other and getting away with it.

It is somehow from this stock of Kenya that we are meant to get a revolution. I pray to God that none of this selfish, tribal and rudderless fellow citizens of mine make it to power. People who can't be trusted with traffic can’t be trusted with power.

People who can't sacrifice can't be trusted with public funds, people who can't vote right can’t then be trusted to legislate right and even worse a society that is divided, is virtueless, rudderless and selfish can’t be trusted with a revolution.

For a revolution will mean we will be led by you and your friends, a collection of tribal, selfish and vainglorious fellows. Fellows who have done nothing for others, and were it not for the Children’s Court, they would do nothing for their children. These are not revolution material, they are disasters waiting to happen.

Before we change the nation we must change ourselves, we must evolve. Without this evolution, our revolution will be about replacing the pigs we know for the warthogs we don't.

 

Mr Bichachi is a communication consultant. [email protected]