By Arnold Ngatchu
Imagine you are all by yourself, imagine you are not interacting with creatures of your kind. Lets say you are a lunatic. Would you bother about identifying yourself to yourself? Would you bother about having legal systems telling you what, when and how to do a thing for yourself? Imagine life before administrative units. Imagine growing families in an environment. Imagine the valuable resources available. Due to the need of 'the same' resources by similar creatures, Out of the human interpretation of life, humans generate rules they live by. When humans, with similar life rules, cohabit the same environment and form a growing society, they consciously or unconsciously introduce their life rules into the lives of their growing families.
In this writing-up I will explore the way humans go about forming society. I will, from there (existing societies), go on to highlight the need of a great society, with a pragmatic definition of great society. The next subsection will focus on the creation of societies. The subsection there after will focus on means and ways of bringing to reality society's elusive "greatness".
Human Civilization and Quest for Success
As humans explore their environment, they come across other growing families. For whichever reason, they may settle around another growing family forming a society, or they may move on continuing their exploration.
As the society grows, the complexity of the life rules in the society increases. Hence common denominators are pragmatic to simplify living in such a growing society. Finding and implementing such common denominators in a society gives birth to a civilization.
From this basic derivation of a civilization, it follows that every creature that contributes in the complexity of living in the civilization should contribute towards finding and implementing common denominators, if a simplified life in the civilization is the primer and if this primer should be consistent over generations.
Due to some limitations bestowed upon humans, humans have, over generations, born fragmented consistent civilizations. A nation could be considered as a fragment of a fragmented consistent civilization.
Making of A Great Nation?
It becomes apparent from the last two paragraphs of the introduction, that, humans build nations, because they accept the limitations bestowed upon them. We can therefore infer, that, a great nation, should in its limited sphere, be able to identify efficient and pragmatic common denominators in the societies making up the nation. Efficiency, here, is measured with respect to how satisfied every member of the nation is. The more satisfied every member of the nation becomes, the greater the nation becomes.
In the case of Cameroon, greatness will follow general satisfaction, which is attained by individual contributions. It follows that any person dreaming of a great Cameroon should apply his/her understanding to motivate individuals to contribute their life rules in a public forum from where a common denominator could be derived. What Cameroonians of all walk of life should do at this juncture of the country's history is for each individual to attempt to excel in his/her own little niche. And from that vantage position bring on board and motivate colleagues and family. When we as respective individuals are able to identify, carve a niche and excel in our respective niches and then attempt to spread out the accrued positives, there is no doubt that Cameroon will sooner rather than later walk into the hall-of-the-greats and sit side by side with the Koreans, the Scandinavians, the Britons, the french and the Argentines, as equals!
In essence, the greatness of Cameroon would come to fruition, thrive or wither depending much more on its ordinary citizens, you and me, than on officeholders adorned with trappings of official power. National greatness requires a citizenry activated to unity on the essentials of freedom, individual dignity, equality of opportunity, the rule of law, and national security; on nonessentials, greatness requires the celebration or welcome accommodation of diverse views. All these factors elude the unsuspecting ordinary cameroonian---the ruled. Sadly, it is deeply engrained in us that our nation will only march forward simply on the benevolence of the rulers. We as ordinary citizens have a huge role to play.
The essentials of Cameroon's greatness that citizens must inculcate and practice can be succinctly enumerated: unwearied opposition to tribal, gender or religious prejudice; eager cooperation with law enforcement authorities to thwart or punish crimes, vocal denunciation (in lieu of silence or tacit condonation) of violence as a legitimate surrogate for peaceful dissent or democratic change; vigilance against government excesses and challenges to perceived wrongs through legal avenues of redress; enthusiasm for defending the territorial integrity of Cameroon against seperationists and all other enemies, foreign or domestic; and a pious reverence for our forebears who sacrificed so much in fighting colonialism so we could live free and evolve as unchained people.
All Hands must be on Deck
For those members of Cameroon's society (professionals, politicians, NGOs etc.)that are already highly motivated, I will recommend they rely on public forums to rally their peers, colleagues and family. Under the assumption of a vibrant and productive public forum, it becomes pertinent, that, an efficient public information management system in collaboration with cameroonians will precipitate the greatness of Cameroon, as a nation. The use of public information systems should be the first and most significant step in rallying Cameroon's people to build a great nation. We cannot afford to let this great age of the IT pass us by, without reaping its benefits
How cameroonians should conceive, implement and deploy such a public information system will be the key challenge to confront as Cameroon embraces this elusive 'greatness'. In the last few years, the deployments of computers have been trendy in embracing greatness. Emulating that trend could, for Cameroon and cameroonians, simplify the challenges that come with greatness.
In my future work and in subsequent writings, I will be elucidating on how to deploy computers in cameroonian societies, and how such deployments will leverage Cameroon into a great nation. Remember, greatness, here, is a measure of satisfaction of the members of the society.
Comments