FOOD FOR THOUGHT Part I: THINKING....

The Art Of Thinking 

I have always thought, and probably will always continue to think, that intelligence is a commodity that is conspicuous by its absence in a distressingly large percentage of our populace. Whether by accident or sheer design, I have come to the conclusion that people are just not thinking! And this is truly a very sad state of affairs. You could of course claim that the empty vessels are the ones who make the most noise, or that it takes one to know one, but before you hasten to pass judgment on an innocent fellow, hear me out. Just once case will do. 

It is the World Cup. People are eating, thinking and sleeping football. That may sound a mite uncomfortable but that was what was happening all over the world. Forgotten were people like the President, the Attorney General, the Leader of the Opposition and Pastor Kimanthi of the Glory Glory Fellowship church. The only people who were lucky enough to have their names on everyone’s lips were characters such a Zinedine Zidane, the French Captain and Davor Suker the Croatian skipper. Everyone else is of no importance to the soccer watching public who devour the games with tense energy. And then there is a power failure very close to the tense climax of the match. Beery yells of encouragement and cheers suddenly die out and a shocked silence develops. This silence is drawn out for close to a full minute then even louder shouts of outrage are heard. The spectators in the bar reach a unanimous consensus that gross injustice has been carried out and something must be done about the sheer effrontery of the power company denying them of their soccer. Action is decided. So if a noisy and disorganized fashion these pillars of society decide that they are going to punish the power company. And it is thus a few minutes later we find them congregated outside a power switching station armed with bottles, sticks, stones and jerricans of paraffin and other flammable liquids, the origin on which is dubious. The guards and other personnel prudently make use of the back gate and disappear into the night. Devotion to one’s skin is an emotion altogether considerably more powerful than devotion to one’s work.

Meanwhile, at the main gate things are quite literally getting warm. A bald man rapidly approaching his sixties but displaying a remarkable amount of agility proceeds to jump over the gate. His companions follow suit and amid the sounds of ripping and rending fabric they managed to gain access to the inner courtyard. Immediately the paraffin is sprinkled liberally all over the offices and power generating equipment. Some even managed to douse an elderly dog but the animal found it wise to immediately make haste. A match was struck and almost immediately the fire is spreading across the compound.

The wise men watch on with smiles portraying the satisfaction of work well done before it occurs to someone that they had to depart, and soon if they were to escape having themselves defined as ‘well done’. The resulting stampede to the gate had to be seen to be believed. Some hours later wives all over the town were puzzled as to why their loved ones were smelling so powerfully of a petroleum refinery and were sporting singed eyebrows, moustaches and hair.

Suffice it to say that the following day a small notice from the power company in the bottom left corner of the back page of the local daily regretted to inform the general public that due to an act of ‘wanton’ and ‘animalistic’ hooliganism the local power switching station was no longer functional and for the next half a year or so there would be no power whatsoever for the townsfolk. This news was met with stunned disbelief by a certain number of soccer fans, who were nursing hangovers and burns.

This kind of lightning quick thinking is what leads me to believe that there are those among us who cannot, even by the wildest stretch of imagination, be called intellectual giants. There are sterling local examples of this, but that is for another time…