 Published
November 25th, 2010
“Remember his constancy in every act
which was conformable to reason, his evenness in all things, his piety, the
serenity of his countenance, his sweetness, his disregard of empty fame and
his efforts to understand things; how he would never let anything pass
without having first most carefully examined it; how he bore with those who
blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return; how he did nothing in a
hurry, how he listened not to calamities and how exact an examiner of
matters and actions he was; not given to reproaching people, nor timid, nor
suspicious, nor a sophist; with how little he was satisfied, such as lodging
bed dress, food servants; how laborious and patient; how sparing he was in
his diet; his firmness and uniformity in his friendship; how he tolerated
freedom of speech in those who opposed his opinions; the pleasure he had
when anyone showed him anything better; and how pious he was without
superstition. Imitate all this that thou mayest have as good a conscience,
when thy last hour come as he had.”
---Marcus Aurelius The subject of the ideal man is, in literary and philosophical
invariability, the subject of beauty. In his majestic mysticism, man’s
ultimate value finds credence in elegant beauty. The degree of his awareness
of, and dedication to beauty is the credibility-extent of man’s ideality.
And man is truly, goodly framed. Man is by nature, commendably good. Man is
a beautiful creature! Have you read from his classic Hamlet, William
Shakespeare’s “What a piece of work is a man: how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties; in form and moving, how express and admirable; in
action, how like an angel; in apprehension, how like a god; the beauty of
the world; the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence
of dust? Man delights not me – no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so” ?
In aligning man’s spiritual chemistry to beauty, let me share what I wrote
on the electronic space allotted me on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, “Beauty?
In pastimes and hedonistic quests, it cannot be found. All compositions--
literary or visual arts – are not its homes. Check religions and traditions,
they lack its guts; it roars in the most disrespected maids of our madness;
it yokes with the neglected bards made mad by our balded banes and rules.
From it, this and that times, and their conquests and holiness have united
to help. Oh beautiful beauty!” In response to this, one of my intellectual
acquaintances on that colourfully imaged linkserv hastily weaved, “But
beauty is proud. Beauty refutes whatever definitions we ascribe her. She
sings in the streets and bleats in the cacophony of silence. Her resounding
echo caresses the hedonists and stupefies the epicureans..., and now even
the father of Samaformism is in tongue-lock with the bride of all academic
seasons. Oh aesthetics, you whose wrinkled laps the epitaphs of sages found
their fount. Oh beautiful beauty, art thou beautifully so?” And perceiving
how misconceived or maligned my observation of beauty was by him, I
elaborately wrote, “The pride of beauty is the limit of our thinking. It
will not be defined not that it may ever be defiled – not that its
refinement might be dragged in the mud of our minds –, but that its radiant
scopes may be captured and ultimately used. Her songs in mortals’ streets,
her violence-devoid bleats, for our stately sake do esoterically breathe.
And the hedonists who feel caressed are only being reprimanded for innate
expansion that helps. See Oscar Wilde’s De Profoundis, out of deep moral
mire can hedonists be sorrowed in readiness for mystical awareness that
helps. And what seems like caressing is nothing but messy miasma of man.
Samaformism may not express man’s all – not single thought-volume ever will
-, but its observations are worthwhile depositions in the traditional course
of our breakthrough. Beauty is the refutation of definitions, the exception
to attributes; in its aesthetic mountain, muted and voiced, fountained the
flutes of come-uppance constants. Of its detested arrogance, gagging our
teething as we inanely toil, nailing our lies, proving all truths, reploting
the graphs of our existential quadratics, detesting our epitaphs - for
beauty is more; scrutinizing our sages of ages from the front-pages the
freest folly lugubriously founded. Bouncing in the pool-blood of our
misconception of its heaven-depth, and bouncing anew and atop our poetry and
science; illuminating the themes of my drama and yours. Beauty is beauty;
and that is the only appeasing definition of beauty. And in all, is the
eternal substance not convincingly beautiful, whose beauty neither the
greatest eloquence and art, nor the cruelest plaudits and pundits can ever
magnify or malign? Oh pulchritudinous beauty, these critics deserve thy
diametrical amnesties, who mistake thy evasive but inclusive dynamism and
qualities for the disturbing ungermaness of all that are said and done,
beauty in thy sacrosanct honour!”
I then harmonized my submission on our deeply reasoned discourse with Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s conclusion on the same subject, “Beauty rides on lion.
Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect
economy. The cell of the bee is built at that angle which gives the most
strength with the least wax; the bone or the quill of the bird gives... the
most alar strength with least weight. “It is the purgation of
superfluities”, said Michael Angelo. There is not a particle to spare in
natural structures. There is a compelling reason in the uses of plant for
every novelty of colour or form: and art saves material, by more skillful
arrangement, and reaches beauty by taking every superfluous once that can be
spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength in the poetry of column. In
rhetoric, this art of omission is a chief secret of power and in general, it
is proof of high culture, to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.”
Over the towering hemisphere of God or of whatever intelligence ensuring the
dynamic specifics and specific dynamics of the universe, beauty from time
immemorial, does covertly and overtly hover. In the rustling leaves of trees
and taciturn babblativeness of feeble blades, beauty dwells. In the silent
flow of rivers and rambunctious rush of the ocean, beauty dwells. In the
royal Constance of the moon and mountains, beauty dwells. In the lonely
field cultivated by fore-fathers and in the ethics of different professions,
beauty dwells. In mosques and temples, shrines and latrines, something there
informs man of beauty. Beauty however, as it is found in all things, detests
to be tacked down in anything. Beauty is humble but abhors monopoly. It is
in all, none can hoard it blessings. And the creature or field which claims
alliance with beauty must successfully swallow the bait of beauty without
getting permanently entangled by its tearing hook-bounty. Beauty is the
grand purpose. Beauty is the infiniteness of attributes. Beauty is the charm
of definitions. Beauty is the defiance of exception. Beauty is justice when
approved by silence. Beauty is eloquence when expended in nobility. Beauty
is war justly begun and fought. Beauty is atheism tested by the burning fire
of soul’s hope. Beauty is piety pontificated and practised in purposeful
purpose. Beauty is illiteracy laced with soaring reason. Beauty is modern or
primordial learning lioned-up for general good. Beauty is protest against
barbarism. Beauty is petition against slavery and colonialism, corruption
and imperialism. Beauty is good governance beyond national boarders. Beauty
is disquietedness with billions’ poverty and hopelessness. Beauty is general
survival and joy. Beauty is morality. Beauty is knowledgability. Beauty is
intrepidity and bravery. Beauty is love. What else can beauty be? Beauty is
beauty! Beauty is Samaformism!
What parameters form the qualities of the ideal man, let us first itemize
and analyze. We cannot choose a particular best mortal from any region of
our world. No sovereignty, in all of our history, is sane enough to produce
for us, the standard of the ideal man. Egypt was selfish and oppressive.
Athens was crude and corrupt. Persia was brutish and domineering. Greece was
oppressive and detrimentally patriotic. Great Britain unconscionably
exploited other nations for her greatness. America made slaves of men and
restricts survival and fulfillment to the territories of America. Their best
cannot be man’s dreamed best. Citizens whose conscience rose against the
filths of their different empires have something invaluable to loan the
ideal man though, their supports and loyalties belonged to some limited
national or regional goals. Their standards cannot be the deep universal
value to be entombed as canons for all of mankind, though boast some
semblance of this. From imperfect beauty, enduring ideality cannot be
created; from duplicates, only faint copies can be photo-mechanically made.
And though photocopied virtues replicated from functional human machines
will clearly reproduce and contain all that the original boasts. But in the
days of Canut limitations, what befalls our badly needed standard? If we
attempt the attributes of the ideal from the best men ever in philosophy,
religion, politics or culture, we risk inheriting the flaws and
imperfections of these fine people. The ascribed ideals to the ideal man
become impugnable and foilable; the charm is poisoned, the beauty is
murdered-- no longer ideal. But we know the route to the home of beauty, and
require no prophet, pamphlet or axiological dealer to absolutely misdescribe
the map we may at first miss but will eventually locate for our dissolving
souls to know.
The good of the world is the lasting tribute of the deep; and it takes a
spiritual rebirth to do beyond the greatest mortals of the past. And what is
spiritual rebirth but some firm mastery of the interdependent relationships
of man with nature, similarities and those differences inferable from the
able spirit of God the Maker? Before the ideal man -- a man with deep
connection with the cosmic implications of every existential symbols and
related ball -– nothing ranks impossible. Neither Jesus and Confucius, nor
Mohammed and Buddha are the standard of the ideal man; it is his own soul.
He loves all prophets and confessors, without any limitary feelings from any
of these. He knows and is driven by the metaphysical foundations of fixed
variations; and whether acknowledged or not, he is the lasting point of God.
In every generation, the ideal man can be found. He is unmoved by our
praises; our condemnations deepen his depth. He is uninfluenced by our
religions and cultures; he is loyal to the source of our spiritual
necessities of these. He has a soul beyond all of our materially, terribly
defensive hopes. His being is mystical, very unusual is the man to be
Samaformistically tagged ideal.
Prenatally swum in the heavenly pool of beauty, the ideal man is a moral man
with no interest in shady deals. He does not lie. He does not corrupt and
cannot be corrupted. In all that he does, his morality stands tall. He is
unbothered by the accompanying agonies of believing in morality, he refuses
immoral appointments and resigns from deeper involvement in anti-morality
transactions. He cannot be a cun artist; neither can he opt for fraud
engineering. He sees and measures the world (and all that there is in it)
with the microscopic lens of morality. This alone gives him the reliable
spiritual value of professors and prophets; and against the criteria of
morality, neither any confessor nor any hypocritical detractor may
successfully wage and win a war. In the family, he is a symbol of morality.
In the office and at the market, his agenda and target is morality. He has
become so mindful of his words and ways to the level of having absolute
belief in the benevolent rewards – whether popularly acknowledged or not –
of soul-refurbishing morality. He cannot request, the ideal man cannot grant
undue advantage. He cannot embezzle funds; the ideal man does not pull merit
down for the temporary advancement of any known or paying demerit. The ideal
man is robustly moral as an unavailable magnet to backward quests and
ruinous request. He also knows the meaning of morality. No culture, no
society can dupe his intelligence with fake moral norms. What is moral is a
function of its beneficial imports to all and to the soul, the ideal man
knows. And beyond this, the ideal man says and upholds morality from the
agelessly inscribed moral laws within his heart.
As a moral mortal, the ideal man does not go into pacts with devil’s
disciples. As a moral man, the ideal mortal cannot betray any pact morally
composed and morally signed for the moral attainment of certain moral ends.
As a moral man, the ideal destroyable does not shun, belittle, calumniate or
undermine the person and worth of others. He sees morality in humanity and
offers no excuses for ignoring those who cannot do without him. In manners,
he is charming; the ideal man must never agree to be exploited for any
reason. Once the smile or love he gives boasts a purpose beneath what he
feigns, or the contract he accepts has the endorsement of thieves, he loses
his spiritual respect at the unseen palace implied by the central soul. He
is made morally filthy and can no longer be ideal to the identity informing
his status as our man.
Morality is doing things the right way without hurting the decent about one.
And if the moral are hurt by one’s morality, or one’s morality impeaches the
moral decency of others, it means morality has been immorally moralized
somewhere. It is wrong to impose beliefs, convictions and creeds on others;
it will generate rebellious protests, cacophony and probably war. It is
wrong to cross the river of material poverty through criminally constructed
bridges; it will estrange one’s soul from lasting hopes and pollute one’s
society with poisonous strives. It is wrong to sexually harass others; it
will make beast of one’s dignity and spiritually place one’s heart with a
hole-to-gorge abode of filths from where half-hearted spirit and dented
doubts spring to frustrate one’s joy. It is wrong to think that one is
indispensable in whatever context; it will render talents unexplorable as
the world tries to prove the icarian man wrong by all means. It is wrong to
threaten or bully others; the threatened and the bullied will one day fight
back and have one’s misused strength mocked by the world. It is wrong to
exploit one’s teacher or student’s works; the teacher will no longer offer
his all, the student will lose his respect fro his teacher. It is wrong to
accept threats and bullies from others without bravely destroying its
mission; the threat issued and bullying foster will yield one’s freedom into
death. It is wrong to be intellectually and spiritually loaded without
impacts on man’s planet; it will make the heavens tired of characterizing
men’s minds with depths and souls with mystical powers. These and other
wrongs the ideal man passionately hates. He cannot remain ideal man once he
nurses any ambition that requires any of them. Morality is a complex term
though, but its mode is the simplest of all things. The man to be tagged
moral must do beyond being orally so; he must be moral in words and in
deeds, in conducts and in composure. His ways must not just satisfy the
substandard standards of the commoners, it must charm the depth of
intelligent earthlings as well. No moral person can be daubed a moral one
because he is well placed. Morality will not allow such a smart ally of
immorality to be tagged moral!
The ideal man is a knowledgeable man. Knowledge is the edge from which he
towers above life’s mysticism, tyranny and challenges. He understands the
source of durable knowledge to be education. Like the thoughtful Joseph
Addison, the ideal man loves and ranks education so high that he will always
say, “Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can
destroy, no enemy can alienate, no despotism can enslave. At home a friend,
abroad, an introduction, in solitude, a solace, in society, an ornament. It
chastens vice, it guides virtue. It gives at once, grace and government to
genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, reasoning savage.” Though
whatever sphere he chooses, he enriches the world. Through questions that
measure his cleverness, and answers that provides insights into the strength
of his guts and wisdom, the ideal man advances humanity. Knowing what is
right from wrong, he backs his thoughts with fantastic actions. He does not
behave like those Cambodian, Liberian, Ruwandan, or Sierralonian
imbroglio-bakers who set the values, lives and invaluable property of men
and women on tragic fire for low ends. He is not the celebrated writer or
musician, artist or patriot who, ascending the ladder of success and
reputation by abandoning a native country with no provisions for their
well-being, turned a phenomenon in prominence, published twenty or more
articles (plus probably a book or two), or releases three or more albums
that speak against the stinking state of things in his country, and then
gives up because the change he dreams in his scholarship and art, his
bravery cannot apply for, and get. I love a scholar and artist whose life is
endowed with excellent mental clarity on the question of social change, and
whose heart is radically resolved on the question of required action. How
can the ideal man fail to explore available grounds in the course of
dragging in the spirit of change to his country, befuddle optimists with
cynically mournful impossibility of positive change? We may relocate if we
choose from any environment or region with no commitment to our survival and
dignity as we live. But we must never relinquish that environment in its
soaring ruin. We must dedicate our attained basement and reputation on
rescuing our republics as we strive on in life. Didn’t William Wallace
travel to Italy for training and strength before returning to remove
Scotland from the harsh dominion diary of England? This is the only hope of
freedom political institution and laws boast. Only through this world
view-can can our world be reviewed away from the destructive venoms of
corruption and bad cultures, of terrorism and obscurantism and of chauvinism
and mental communism. Let there be some fluid relationship between knowledge
and action. For only when the scholar becomes a soldier, or the soldier
becomes a scholar, can the hope of lasting freedom be raised into
skyrocketing height.
The knowledge of the ideal man – all that he boasts as intellectual identity
– cannot freeze in mental refrigerator while any plague claims and maintains
its claim of championship on the group physio-anatomical composition of its
mortal fellows. He must expend his intellectual energy on finding cures to
all deadly, rumored-to-be incurable diseases if his field is Medicine or
Pharmacology, or Pharmacy, or Micro-Biology, or Chemistry, etc. He must
reject the satanic and limiting sophistry that any disease has no cure. His
scholarly researches must transcend bounded ends. The ideal man is the cure
to HIV/AIDS; let him set to sail in the laboratory of required work. The
ideal man is the improved medication to all Sexually Transmitted Diseases,
typhoid, depression and senescent symptoms, let him be professionally and
spiritually aware. As a social scientist or artist, or legal scholar, or
even practitioner, let him be bold enough to hit existing curves and laws,
theories and principles with questions deep insight guides, let him find us
exceptions and state clearer conditions. He must never be hindered by Adam
Smith’s, David Ricardo’s or Abraham Maslow’s intellectual achievements in
the related fields of his choice. Whatever Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin or
Albert Eisten had effectuated must have no limiting effects on his quests.
He shall understand with time, that names and books are as great in
proportions of a generation’s work-extent, confidence and faith; and that
most books that Lord Denin or Akin Oyebode wrote in law, that William
Shakespeare and all laureates sketched in literature, etc., are nothing but
flashes of realms attainable by him. This truth, his religion must not
guide; his culture and cherished convictions must be scrutinized again and
again where they interfere in the balance of his search-after goal or truth.
But knowledge holders must not be taken at their face value by the ideal
man. He must respect every holder of knowledge of his and other times. They
are the first order of light from whose paths his soul is illuminated and
made aglow. However the respect he gives must be anchored on truth. He must
not respect a ‘good man’ whose works are guided by evil orientations and
ends. He must see that the ascension to power of Olusegun Obasanjo and
George W. Bush were fostered by the gross rubbishing of Nigeria’s and
America’s electorates’ will, rigging and killing, and then offer all
exaggerated Sunday Afolabis, Egyptian Mubaracks, Nuhu Ribadus, Dora
Akunyilis and Ngozi Iwealas their deserved scorns and jibes. Or does the
scholar not know that the life-span of evil is elongated when supported by
the excellent conducts of the good ones? Can the ideal man not infer that
good leadership has no hope whenever good people offer ugly tyranny their
protective hands? And this is not just in politics; in the academia, this
has polluted cherished standards; in law, ethically horrible lawyers who
betray justice are being baked for it. In science and technology, see how
nations suffer preventable underdevelopment because evil rules serve as
umpire for general good.
A friend of mine spoke his creative all to get me interested in politics,
precisely in 2002. He pointed out that evil will prosper when good people
refuse to rule. This star-point became my acquaintance after I had read
George William Curtis’ The Public Duty of Educated Men, in which the vibrant
orator wrote, “If governance and corruption and intrigue control the primary
meeting and manage the convention and dictate the nomination, the fault is
in the honest and intelligent workshop and office, in library and the
parlor, in the church and school. When these are as constant and faithful to
their political rights as the slums and the grogshops, the pool-rooms and
the kennels; when the educated, industrious, temperance, thrifty citizens
are as zealous and prompt and unfailing in political activity as the
ignorant and venal and mischievous, or when it is plain that they cannot be
roused to their duty, then, but not until then – if ignorance and corruption
always carry the day – there can be no honest question that the public has
failed. But let us not be deceived. While good men sit at home, not knowing
that there is anything to be done, nor caring to know; cultivating a feeling
that politics are tiresome and dirty, and politicians vulgar bullies and
bravoes; half persuaded that a public is the contemptible rule of a mob, and
secretly longing for a splendid and vigorous despotism – then remember it is
not a government mastered by ignorance, it is a government betrayed by
intelligence; it is not the victory of the slums, it is the surrender of
schools; it is not that bad men are brave, but that good men are infidels
and cowards.”
George William Curtis did not need to remind us as change-agents to know
when the politics we intend to reform and from such mastered understanding
and timing, calculating aptly the roles to be played. How will the ideal man
help his country? From where does the ideal man commence his nation’s
rescue? As a Nigerian, I know how stupid it will be for the truly wise to
serve Nigeria with the existing political infrastructures of filthy
ideologies and shame. We see that our laws have sprung from backward realism
and deserve to be changed. We see our filthy Judiciary and Legislature
require some committed overhaul. We see, every time, the non-deterring
penalties melted-out in our laws to giant-criminals whose crimes most
constantly drown our nation’s hope. As what then should we participate in
politics than as revolutionaries that scatter and rearrange all supporting
structures that our nation may be systemically sane? Under the current
structures, the wise can neither accept any appointment nor vie for anything
political in Nigeria. This is because the locks and keys of the Nigerian
political systems now sleep in the stench-latrine of morally mal-odorous
evils that must be destroyed only with the aids of vision, guts and bravery.
The presiding principles and the prescribing laws are awfully putrid. They
messed Tai Solarin and Wole Soyinka up without forgetting to murder Bola Ige.
Let laureates be lawmakers and ministers, and give state governing duties to
reputable professors and more, Nigeria will remain manfully marred as long
as the misanthropic rules that guide our political games are legacies of
colonial masters and native tyrants. The fundamental work in Nigeria
therefore is to put up some veritably virile structures loyal to citizens’
survival without hurting all of mankind through whatever available means.
And I predict – and this is platitude - that force alone destroys the growth
of tyranny in any society of man. This, the ideal man must master and not
join the league of infidels and cowards who foolishly attempt to rescue
their societies with weak principles and utterly unworkable structural
impracticality.
Because he is constantly brave and cannot be scared by any far-fetched fear
– retail or wholesome – the ideal man is different from all of us. He cannot
be us. His heart is stronger that ours. His thoughts are unbounded, because
he is free. Free of frivolities and trifles, his quests cannot gag his
conscience and hope. Before his defenseless, no equipped combatant is sure
of life; and when he is equipped with weapons, he is an indomitable army on
his special own. Let the enemies be sophisticated, the ideal man is not
afraid. Let foes’ facilities of war songs quake the battle field he goes,
this man is immortal to fear. The man who can plot the death of a hundred
billion soldiers in less than a hundred seconds when universal instincts
say, he is the ideal man we love. He is not weakened, either by love, or by
emotions. He is the Spartan Leonadias fighting on the inspirations of love.
He is the sanguinary Spartacus, refreshing his wife’s memories with enemies’
blood. He is Nigeria’s Kaduna Chukwuma Nzeogwu, frowning with colleagues,
against our backwardness then. He is John Jerry Rawlings of Ghana,
slaughtering eight Generals for his country to live. He is the Athenian
Pericle, or the Italian Comte di Cavour, building the foundation of hope. He
is the German Bismarck, or the English Gladstone whose nations’ histories
would have been boring without the courage they gave. These are the ideals
from the quarters of bravery, not our pairs: we are too pretentious and
cowardly. We do not offer our hearts and souls to the mine-gold of man’s
active hope. We are scared and afraid, tied to the apron-string of the
grinding conditions of heartless privation. We cannot withstand the sound of
guns and bombs, or the uniform movement of bombers and tanks, even for the
survival of man’s ageless values as men. Death is a big deal to us; we
cannot perceive living valour in unsung lying men and women because of our
folly. Mine and your words and faith total up to nothingness in the absence
of sincere and fearless action, be memorably warned.
Only when we act, can our hopelessness be redeemed on this and other realms
of life. Says the voice of the real man in me, “Countrymen, we require no
heavenly trumpets to urge us into acting for our planet’s good; and if we
do, there can be no better time than when our tragedies are vast, and social
sorrows ample enough for all bleeding souls to be wholesome or aligned to
the eternal duties of true transformation. The bold and sincere action of
man is the only reliable time table of God. The time it ought to happen as
it is written by God is the season man is vexed by man’s massive filths to
mob, scrub and tenaciously squiss the squalid evidence of joint filths into
flowing river of our globe’s decadence. The time for comprehensively
exclusive change is now; and the call is for no other person but for the man
whose renewed appetite is, beyond the threats and bully of any fear, that of
freeing action! But despite his fuelled courage for earth’s survival, the ideal man is
loving. He cannot hurt a child in the absence of its protectors; he will do
in its parent’s presence, whatever the ideal man deems unimpeachable before
himself. He is a natural giver; he does not travel Europe or conquer the
Americas, only for himself. The profits of his inventions we see in our
ambitions; the royalties of his books are subsidies to our food and schools.
He is Alfred Nobel rewarding intellectual evidence in his will. He is Sir
Robinson, heavily funding the University of Cambridge for academic expansion
that uplifts humanity. He is Horace Mann or Henry Ford, investing in the
mental endowment of man. He is M.K.O Abiola and Mother Teressa, putting
laughter on the souls of thousands. He is the active but unidentified
philanthropist, attending to the urgent needs of man. At churches, mosques
and classrooms where this man is, there God’s love lives. His approach
cannot be hostile, his annoyance is gentle; he is the ideal man; no
eloquence can capture his features. I love Babatunde Timothy-Taiwo’Adebisi’s
political party on facebook; it is unique and representative of a soul with
deep awareness of the essence of man’s political existence. Jefferson would
applaud it were he alive, as the father of samaformism has done. You want to
know it? What – Does – It – Translate – To – The – People Party! Quite deep
and ideologically thoughtful, this is the party the ideal man would
definitely join. As a political leader, the man’s policies translate
enormously, profitably to the welfares of the people. As an opinion leader,
his choices reflect our appropriate stands, his fights our euphoric joy. He
is Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Nnamdi Azikwe and Obafemi
Awolowo whose fights spelt significant steps for their nations’ hope. Before
or after independence/freedom, the policies of the ideal man impressively
impact on the education, health, finance and other aspects of his people’s
life. He is ashamed of the people’s poverty; he cannot withstand their
endless tears without promptly coming to their aid.
Is the man an African who has a nod in the sustenance of the accursed
culture forbidding the emotional freedom of women? He can never be mistaken
for an ideal man. It is shamefully (oppressively) so by the primordial
provision of African tradition: men are free, quite culturally free to go
after any opposite sex they choose because they are men, while women who try
to exercise similar gender-insensitive right are tagged prostitutes and
defilers. It is passionately unfashionable for young ladies to see and show
interest in any young or old women of their choices. The question is: why
would any marriageable Maria be turned into an unpleasant pariah on the
impure ground of some baselessly castable aspersion if it does not bother on
gender oppression inspired by African’s cultural backwardness? The culture
of a people is a measure of their depth, and sorry to say (and I am also an
African, as African as any African African!), Africans are quite hollow by
this particular measure. Such practice is nothing but a product of
perfidious female chauvinism instituted to traditionally oppress the female
folk. There is no sign of love in this. The adduced reason has always been
the control of women against adultery and prostitution. But who or what
mechanism controls men? None! If a man sees a woman of his choice and goes
after her without aspersion cast, why shouldn’t a woman any man of her
choice? If I were a woman as an African, I would gladly go after any man
after my heart, tell him as passionately as I can, of my honest love for
him, and jettison the agelessly conspired imports of my action, let Sango
stab the sky with strikes of thunder!
The Ideal man and love? In all of the human history, love is a major
possession of those whom many mortals had constantly betrayed and bled to
protect. What did Jesus and Buddha boast that convinced their followers of
their divine status other than love? What did Mohamed and Confucius show as
they spoke the uncommon words and instituted collective bravery against
filths and fraud? It is love. In the American promise, it is prominently
written. In Locke’s Social contract, love is the empowering logic. Read
Adlai E. Stevenson’s and Edmond Burke’s speeches, their echoing observations
and admonitions are affection’s, their criticisms are love-pulled. Every
established ethos, every religious doctrine is, or ought to be a summary of
the sentiment of love. We are less concerned how the man to be called ideal
will collate these, but he must, in politics and religion, war and education
be a loving man. We do not need excuses for hate; what we hastily require
these days is practical love. And only the man who, in the days of difficult
affection brighten our joint darkness with the ray of his soul’s boundless
love, he is our man. The man who, despite his own material poverty, inspired
us all to dream because he sees our potentials to foil the apprehensive
oppression of wants, he is the dream. We will not rate him by the standards
of the millions of Pound Sterling he may never acquire because his poverty
is our hope. We cannot rank his love lower than it is contained in his soul
even if he is a Forbes-rank money bag, let him be truly loving however. Let
nothing in his financial asset set our survival on fire. Love for poetry and
love for art, love for freedom and love for speech, love for science and
love for society, love for beauty and love for life, love for knowledge and
love for God, the ideal man is the spiritual headquarters of all that is
inspired and survived by love.
“Something” and “nothing”, as we erroneously conceive them, go beyond their
materialist and existentialist imports. Something begets nothing when the
in-thing is prominently missing. Nothing will wed our focus to something in
the presence of the in-thing which activates the real thing of every
nothing. Nothing too is something from which something can be built. Based
on the degrees of motrals’ mighty or miniaturized destinies, odds are piled
up on their parts and paths. We must congratulate those who have something
to begin from and expand our superior energies – intellectual and spiritual
– in harmonizing the substance of the nothing we are left with no choice
than to commence with. We are not wretched because difficulties are the
facilities within our reach; we are doomed if resign because of the
mirageous mars our spirit resign to owing to depression and fear; we are
great because we have all it takes, to actually in potentials, thought and
bravery, weather the storm of all odds. The ideal man accepts all
tribulations with calm and hope. He is Peter, the leading character in Hugh
Walpole’s Fortitude saying, “It isn’t life that matters, but the courage you
bring into it”. The Ideal man is the writer of My Match Through Prison
quoting Hugh Walpole’s Peter in acceptance of life’s terrible trauma his
sentence represented on 11th September of 1963. He is Oscar Wilde, finding
the bearing of beauty through the redeeming sorrows of imprisonment. He is
the invisible lady Philosophy assuaged from giving up the crusade or
redeeming truth despite incarceration and looming death. He is Abraham
Lincoln, trying and trying again until he became the personality the whole
world is proud of. He is Martin Luther King Junior, enduring police assaults
and jailing to heal the wound of the American promise. He is an average
Asian or African parvenu, beginning with nothing other than his in-thing to
rank among the richest any time. He does not give up any fight, self or
collective. His spirit is positive, whether or not he has the means of
getting to his goals. The ideal man knows no hurt, and if he knows any, his
fat spirit suspects ways-out, because he does not give himself up to acidic
reflections that fill his mind with hopelessness. He pays his own school
fees as prodigious son of paupers. Says Aristotle, “The ideal man bears the
accidents of life with dignity and grace making the best of circumstances.”
As an orphan, he clearly sees his future, no matter the difficulties and
stress. No jilting, no disappointment, no abandonment, no development, no
death ends the career and quests of the ideal man. He is the only factor
required. He can do without the patronizing presence of other factors. His
ambition is possible, this man spangled the ideal man knows. His revelations
are ever relevant. His revolution is attainable, from this he dare not shy
away. His soul’s elasticity at absorbing shocks, at enduring hurdles, no
sorrow can waylay, no tribulation can suffer.
Beauty is man’s only map into God’s mystical sovereignty of things. The man
whose spirit is childlike is a beauty unmatched in the abode of our hope;
the man who meets and addresses everyone as though these are princesses has
the reputation of angels from envied realms. Simple-spirited and with a
charming heart, this man is the ideal man. He blossoms in the company of the
strong, relying on his inner strength as the real strength through which
life’s tasks are resolved. He infuses inspirations in those whom life’s
attritions constantly make psychologically and spiritually tattered and
tired, knows well their plights, and appeases them from tears and fears. He
awes. His words are consoling; the ideal man is the heavenly succour against
fellow mortals’ rancour. He guides without becoming a guard. He empowers
without becoming drunk of power. The ideal man is our smile in the tearful
venues of deadly mines. The ideal man relates and speaks as innocently as a
child. The ideal man smiles and plans as simply as a child. The ideal man
works and sleeps as unconcernedly as a child. The ideal man fights and
reunites as spiritually as a child. As a child, the ideal man takes no
offence to heart; he gives and requests with love. The ideal man is our
comedy amidst the horrendously vast theater of life’s tragedies. The ideal
man is our needed point; the prominence that makes us prominent. He cannot
bully our childish elders, or torment our immorally conscious children; his
approach to all is dignity-filled. “The ideal man”, says Oscar Wilde,
“...should talk to us as if we were goddesses. He should refuse all our
serious requests and gratify us to have caprices and forbid us to have
missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always means
much more than he says”. Our lively hope whom no threnodic distress
successfully stress-out, that is the ideal man.
The ideal man is sickened by favouritism, tribalism, racism and other forms
of prejudicial biases of the world. He is unnervingly embarrassed by all
forms of undiluted display of crude preferences commanded by unspiritual
jaundices people and society are culturally in love with. As the lord and
advocate of merit, he gives opportunity to all to display the best they have
got. He cannot favour anyone against merit; he cannot honour any religion or
region at the expense of truth. As a leader or follower, he knows, and
follows the beauty charted by the charm of excellence and merit.
The ideal man does not suffer poverty of material or spiritual idea; he
gives his all to others as a kind heart. He contributes to the cause of
others and elevate the goals of all struggling goals. He is Dr Quadri
encouraging Wale Oyewumi’s writing career. He is Socrates, showcasing
helpful ethics before the Athenian youths. She is Bebita Lefevre. She is
Titi Akinola, accommodating and challenging a genius to thrive in his
prodigious dreams. The ideal man is a boundle of gratitude; he appreciates
all energies that weave his joy. He appreciates all Janice Redmonds and J.D.
Otits, finding fulfilling still the angel-part of envy-mixed encouragers.
The ideal man is a fantastic father and reliable husband. He does not run
away from his fatherhood and husbandry responsibilities; he can never
destroy others’ hope to advance his own. To his wife, he is the world; to
his children, he is the most possible end amidst the large ends of the
world. Yet, all women are his cherished mothers, all children are his own.
The ideal man is a fine friend whose friendship does not falter at all; he
stays in friendship, not by words, but by beautiful deeds and love. He is
not the soul’s betrayer that proposes to exploit his friends, he is the
spirit who requests with love and gives with trust. To help others without
the hope of rewards, to apply for assistance, without a mind to dupe
benefactors, ranks among the most beautiful things in the world. The ideal
man knows this and more. He cannot hoard freedom from others because of the
possibility that they will misbehave with it; he cannot offer his support to
liberties that imprison the survival of billions. From the ideal man, coming
eras can perspicuously gather that, “Nothing is entirely good; but through
compassionate comparison, the deep mind arrives at noble possitivity”. The ideal man as the measure of measures will not content himself with
upholding dead traditions or seeing to the obedience of morally tasty laws.
He is our reliable question, the ultimate answer. His voice is a credence
learnt to practices; his willingness is a major fear we entertain in our
decisions and communal activities. He must therefore be sound and confident.
He must never get tired of learning. He must spare no tradition, law and
personality, since his stands are our awaited path. As a law maker, he must
be deep and without blemish. Whatever job he takes up, whatever organization
he belongs, his feet are men’s next glories. He must never depend on books
more than he depends on his own soul for inspirations and knowledge. He must
be more inspiring than all of us; he must make imagination, his only next of
kin. Says Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Each mind has its own method, a true man
never acquires after college rules. What you have aggregated in a natural
manner surprises and delights when it is produced .We cannot oversee each
other’s secrets.”
Yet some factors abound which the ideal man ought to take cognizance of;
these factors will hurt his moral sensitivity and attempt to instigate his
ways against the idealism of his convictions; he will perceive or even
witness in people’s unbelievable actions, the envy and mischief of friends
he trusts and relatives he loves. In their happy presence, enemies will
attack his personality; and as if they impelled this happening, their
silence will be too loud to retain them in the diary of his trust and love.
But for these friends and relatives, he speaks and lives. For the sake of
their joy the ideal man can kill or be killed. Let him not be troubled
still. Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar died out of betraying
cut of Brutus, than the deep cuts of other conspirators in that play. When
we are betrayed by relatives and friends, our energy-reservoir dries up
magically, and we are weakened by betrayal more than by enemies’ bullets.
The ideal man must trust everyone for the progress of the world without
relying on anyone with the physical, spiritual and psychological details of
his own security. He must be stronger than the silence of friends who watch
him swim through the dirty pool of humiliation at any point. He must outlive
the cuts, bullets and bombs of friendly foes who feel he ought to die on the
ground of envy. Let the ideal man be more dangerous than danger!
What is the cash or existential value of virtuous virtues? Beauty and
spirituality! All the attributes of the ideal man cannot be for the material
good of one nation or group of empires. The human race, having ranked
virtue’s gift-house by the mouth by satanically deploying nature’s all for
sectional enrichment, missing out significant steps required as eternal
dance to the songs of the central soul, is a betrayal of nature’s overall
essence of existence. Thus we see this and that great man from this and that
great region of the world, betraying God’s goal – man’s only hope – by
studying, training, staying virtuous, only to capture God’s hidden truths
from America, Germany, for great Britain or France, for China or South
Africa; and descending spiritually low in Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Cameroon,
Cambodia, Zimbabwe to rake-in the profits of eternal endowments for
unpopular use. Now listen to this Samaformistic injunction, you who nurse
the ambition of being refered to by history as an ideal man: neither for you
or for your family, nor for your country or species was the whole universe
of God conceived and made; this universe of God is made for everyone and
everything in it. It is however, a raw mixture of elements – living and
non-living – which requires absolute consideration of necessity to determine
which one person goes or element is eliminated. Love is the measuring rod of
that necessity; bravery is the zeal to know who loses anything when it is
morally applied. As it is, our ideologies are a wreck to the universe. Our
theories are eerie filths that reflect our dirty thoughts. Our regions ruin
our religions, and our religions retaliate our regions’ ruins with more
ruinous ruins. Our policies are dangerously unpleasant, impacting pains on
animals and men. Our organizations are sociologically low, allowing for low
aims, boasts cannot be proud of enacting unbehalf of God. We cannot freely
learn and freely apply for doctors to improve our health. Cambridge and
Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, Yale and London, Sydney and Yale, Massachasset
(MIT) and Salamanca, Hongkong and Cape-Town, Waterloo and Priceton, Lagos
and Ife, Ibadan and Nairobi, etc., are reserved not for the best of souls,
but for the best rogues – or potential rogues with no goal for man. We are
not great teachers like Buddha and Confucius, pouring out their all for
their students to independently grow; we emphasize gains and annihilate
man’s goals. As husbands, we are betrayers of love; our fidelity is an
infidel’s inquisitions into filths. We hurt our wives wit our virtues, just
as our vices threaten their all; our vices fan the emotional air of
disastrous unbelief into the unseen sac of all that we profess to them as
love. Our own fashion of studentship and discipleship ship away the
sharpness of our soul into inconsequential trifles of pedagogy. We are not
innocent and miss the experience of maturity; we do not value the
spirituality of beauty and the beauty of spirituality. We acquire knowledge
to impoverish our souls with the filths of materialism; we ape after the
dastardly standards of any man and institution promising survival to our
hollow hope with utter disregard to aesthetic ethic. We unjustly succeed
through malpractices. We abuse them at will and do not pay homage of due
disrespect to teachers and elders with failed souls for others’ decency,
dignity and integrity. We are beggars in our different worlds; we do not
boast the inner resolve to interrupt the ageless flow of ugly injustice
around the globe. We are interlopers in our own ruinous right, sneakily
passing through the current of existence meant for us and the limitary
designers of this restrictive current because we are cowards. The ideal man
is a marvelous improvement over life’s countless blunders and wrongs.
If as Fredrick Wood Jones says, “Man is no new-begot of ape, bred of a
struggle for existence upon brutish lines – nor should the belief that such
is his origin, often dinned into his ears by scientists, influence his
conducts. Were he to regard himself as an extremely ancient type,
distinguished chiefly by the qualities of his mind and to hook upon the
existing primates as the failures of his line, as his misguided and brutish
collaterals, rather than as his ancestors, I think it would be something
gained for the ethical outlook of Homo – and also it would be consistent for
present knowledge”, but man’s source, subjectively controversial though, is
enshrined in beauty, nobility and purpose. Let the ideal man man the basis
of his being and the benevolence of humanity’s innate beauty. Let him in his
planet plan and sustain the prosperity of all. Let him neither maim his own
conscience with guilt, nor indulge in material frivolities that fire his
soul with spiritual fowls. Let his mission be our longing, and his vision
our hope. For his ways, let the sun be sober and the moon more constant in
its ancient, illuminating mercy for all. Let his best not be rubbished by
fraud. Let him, as an ideal man be the life his neighbours and friends,
family and nation seek. In his work and faith, let love and beauty flow.
From his dislikes, let hate have no say at all.
George Bernard Shaw, a great English writer observed in England and came out
boldly with a just alarm, “Our laws make laws impossible; our liberties
destroy our freedoms; our property is organized robbery; our morality an
imprudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or
mal-experienced dupes; our power is wielded by cowards and weaklings; and
our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for
good reason.” The ideal man, for amply good reasons must thick against evil
at any seen quarters. He is the bearer of the Samaformist hope. The
Samaformist hope, beyond the agenda of companies and nations, religions and
organizations, is the ethical harmonization of all that God has made with
knowledge, boldness and love. To the Samaformist, every life is relevant,
every man deserves the experience of fulfillment that comes from the
elimination of global restrictions and universal hate.
The ideal man belongs to all religions, put together; he rightfully hails
from all regions, no exception. All men are his brothers, all women his
mothers, all children his own. On behalf of his soul, he is the executor of
the will of God. The ideal man must be knowledgeable, moral, brave, loving,
and from the inspiration of love derive boundless spirituality and beauty in
living for others for as long as he lives. Whatever his religion, wherever
he comes from, these are the hallmarks of his terrestrial and celestial
assignments. The ideal man is strong, firmly principled, with wealth of
knowledge and avowable passion in the fashionable beauty and spirituality of
living, advocating, fighting, and if needs ineluctably arise, dying for the
ground effectuation of others’ good as our hope.
What is man made for but to be ideal; a divine standard of what man has
abused; a noble format every religion and region must emulate to elevate the
beauty-level of our race; a solid rock that is unmoved by the most notorious
mover of things; a solution to life’s copious confusions for better
existential organization; an inspiration that wipes off the sick old for the
inception of the refreshing new, replicating the eternal beauty of silence
and deeds which instruct scriptures and cultures of ages, and every second -
with love, sacrifice and humility – wedding himself to the upholding goals
of God as the only hope of the universe and man? The man who is one with the
secrets of the valley, who masters the ego of the mountains, whom no snow
swallows or fans cold, whom no hope disappoints, who knows, is amused by,
and dances to the tune of the thunder in the absence of the rain, whom
firmaments regard as a superstar, whose strength are strong as Hercules’
trainer, in whose voice hearers’ worries vanish, whose beliefs are enshrined
in the well-being of man and beasts, who does not revere the past at the
expense of the future, whose futuristic aspirations hold past greatness in
fate’s tribute diary, whose celestial vitality derives inspirations from the
sources of the devil and prophets, whose deeds and sayings in the vastness
of God’s universe courts fulfillment, whose talents, kindness and passion
trillions cannot match, whose mission and vision are to serve and save the
whole world without pronouncing himself our only savior, who can make
nourishing cream of the sun’s flame-like heat, who can salute the
wave-terror of deluge with soul’s prestige, who neither doubts what he
believes nor believes what he doubts, who will not abandon his friends on
account of wealth, who will not advance his helplessness as excuse to cut
his family off,-- and from the eternal energy and magnetic appeals of his
noble and enviable nature and reputation, keeps his soul for the perpetual
rituals of hope, he is the ideal man!
NB: Mankind Olawale Oyewumi is a philosopher,teacher (of language and
literature) and writer of substance from Africa.He has two fantastic books
to his intellectual credibility--SONGS OF THE LAW,a poetry anthology and
IMMORTAL INSTRUCTIONS,a compendium of his deep thoughts on life's different
spheres.He is also the planner and editor of A GIFT TO NIGERIA AT FIFTY, a
fine book that stars the opinions of prominent writers,scholars and
journalists in Nigeria.He is the father of SAMAFORMISM and the founder of
Humanity Day.The Ideal Man is a part of SERMONS FOR MY PLANET,his third book
under creative construction.
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