WHY AFRICANS FAIL TO BE CREATIVE 1

The failure of Africa’s educated elite to conduct research into the traditions of Africa and build up a body of knowledge that contains the studying of the mind, the body and the spirit of man for Africa’s youth to study, is the cause of Africa’s mental slavery, poverty and suffering. Today, the youth have risen from different corners of the world to raise high the flag of Africa by creating new organizations to inspire and empower their creative spirit to make our continent a better place to live.

When people appreciate the science of the mind, body and spirit, they will never engage in the physical wars that are destroying the world today. Instead, they will use their wisdom and intellectual weapons to fight a mental war, and not resort to raising cutlasses, arrows, swords, guns and bombs to kill each other. We will no longer use our physical strength to wage war because the mind is the most powerful weapon available to man. People easily resort to physical weapons because they lack the wisdom to wage mental warfare. They use their physical bodies as weapons to fight for what they want and as tools in self-defence. But once people begin to appreciate the power of the mind and they learn how to deploy this power, a lot of the problems in the world will be solved. But achieving this mental power comes from an appreciation of one’s traditional origins.

Today, how many of our African youth know the real traditions of Africa? How much does the current generation of Africans know about the history and customs of the continent they call home? We need traditional education now and not later. We need a new African renaissance in which African culture and traditions will be aggressively applied by Africans in their daily lives. This will not only make the new breed of Africans conscious of their heritage, this traditional education will open more venues for employment, reduce ignorance, cut our dependence on foreign cultures, and bring about an African re-awakening that will fill us with confidence and hope. For years, Africa has been impoverished and not taken seriously on the global stage because Africa’s educated elites are too lazy to think and too dependent on foreign traditions, which have taken over their minds.

The only way for a people to achieve true identity and development is for them to use their creative wisdom to create their own cultural and traditional systems that put their destiny in their own hands. When a people throw away their cultural identity and embrace foreign cultures and traditions, they begin to lose themselves. No matter how talented and gifted you are, if you accept some else’s tradition against your own tradition, everything you do favours the one who deceived you to throw away your tradition and embrace his. Throughout history, people have sought to impose their customs and traditions on other peoples. Europeans did it to Africans, the Arabs did it and now the Chinese and others are doing it through economic imperialism.

I am not saying it is wrong to learn from other cultures; I am only saying that we must acquire knowledge from them but we should use our own brains to transform the knowledge into our own traditions. This is the best and only way for us to equip ourselves to face the challenges in the world. For any group of people to develop and prosper, they must first understand themselves, their mindset, their culture and traditions. If a person fails to research into his own mind, body and spirit to understand them, there is no way he can study the materials in the universe and understand them to use them to design and create things that will benefit himself and the world. A man must first understand and appreciate his own mind, body and spirit before he can understand and appreciate others and make sense of the myriad of living and nonliving materials that surround him. When this is done a person’s ability to think increases greatly. His sense of imagination and discovery receives a massive boost. He will not be a duplicator of what he learns from others, because once he learns something from you, his sense of creativity and innovation drives him to make a similar thing.

Though what he produces is similar to what he learned from other people, it is not an exact duplication. Such a person has the ability to express his opinion differently because his reasoning and logic are very clear. People who fail to study and critically understand their own mind, body and spirit have limited insight into the issues of life. No matter how long they study (even to the level of PhD), the best they can do is duplicate what others have done. They have little sense of discovery and creativity. Not all doctors are discoverers; majority of them are duplicators. They can apply the knowledge they have learned to treat people but they can't design and develop their own system of treatment. A person who does not understand his own mind, body and spirit will always be a follower and not a creator. In fact, a person’s failure to diligently study and understand his sense of being and sense of character is a big mental disease. Not knowing yourself is a potentially fatal flaw. One cannot judge fairly if he doesn't know his own character. Understanding one’s own character gives you a huge moral opportunity to balance yourself in society and with others. A detailed self-evaluation will reveal all the dimensions of your character, and help you identify and correct any character flaws in order to achieve balance with other characters. It is only when you identify all the facets of your own character (both good and bad) will you be able to identify and appreciate other people’s character.

Regrettably, few human beings endeavour to study their own character and accept both the positive and negative parts of their character. These are the real creators and innovators. The vast majority of us don't study own character but we are quick to critically evaluate other people’s character, many times condemning and judging them. Even for those who study and assess their own character, many of them deny and suppress the negative aspects of their character while emphasising and justifying the positive aspects.