There’s nothing as intriguing in life as human nature, especially when viewed through the prism of a prying eye. The varied ways that men jostle like plants to grab the most of a universal sunlight to a point of exclusion, while trapping others in darkness at their own peril. Or the way they entangle their roots in a free and common body of water, while desperately attempting to strangle other roots, so their stems alone may blossom.
More intriguing is the immoral audacity of a man who comes into another man’s land in the guise of an innocent wayfarer or trader. But after his feet are washed with water and his soul refreshed with the milk of hospitality, turns around and lays siege on his hosts’ natural resources to exclusively enrich himself and destroy their lives and land forever. He then turns around to ‘teach’ them civilization, morality, and offers ‘charitable’ aids to their stricken souls to survive a man-made calamity.
Some say these human tendencies are part of the laws of nature or a natural selection of the survival of the fittest. However, such inclinations have deeper implications which ought to trouble any thinking mind. They have indeed bothered the thoughts of great minds over the ages. Men like Jean Jacque Rousseau, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes all described some of these ways of man in their so called “state of nature” as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ To ensure a reasonable measure of equity and progressive human civilization, there was therefore a need for a ‘leviathan’ or a modern state to ensure order and harmony. At the core of this modern state, is the strong arm of social justice to curb the base instincts of man and ensure an equitable playing field where all human plants could stretch their necks to a given sun.
However, since the rise of modern nation states after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, down to our present times, it seems obvious that these base individual instincts of man have rather been weaponized into a state art and used in more horrific forms than anyone would ever imagine. It has tilted the pendulum of social justice in human societies and ripped the heart of harmony in the community of men. In everywhere or any land that the pillars of justice have failed to regulate the five fingers of power, greed, hate, covetousness and unrighteousness from crisscrossing, there will always abide the flip side of harmony. Often more disturbing is when the binding codes of justice is written and executed by men with an un-right-eous spirit.
To imagine that as little as some decades ago, groups of men enacted state laws that made it legal for a man to be a slave or property of another. And illegal or punishable by death for a man to escape slavery and seek to live his life in freedom. Or for two human beings with two different skin colors to hold hands or marry was considered a crime. But these were enshrined in state laws and executed by state organs.
The beauty of human societies is largely felt in the effervescence of social justice that awakens the human spirit in the right direction. The absence thereof, is a death knell. This is why the role of the man of law in society is more sacred than profane. Social order and peace which are the bedrock of progress are spewed forth from the wheels of his genuine enterprise. Therefore, the purpose of the life of a man of law, bears a weightier accountability before his maker.
The flip side of harmony is when men use the instrument of a ‘modern’ nation state to seize another man’s land under diverse subterfuges as we saw in Iraq in 1991, Panama 1989, Afghanistan in 2001, Libya 2011 and many more. Also, when nations take over other people’s land, colonize and neo-colonize them and perpetually covet their natural assets for their own sole enrichment. As we see with European countries like France, Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, who have brazenly robbed, destabilized and continue to strip bare their colonies and neo colonies in Africa, Middle east, Latin America and Caribbean up to the present day without any intent of stopping. Ceaselessly meddling in their politics to uninstall and install leaderships subservient to their selfish interests. Most often with careless disregard to the humanity, prosperity and social justices of these peoples. Chaos, disharmony and retrogression are intentionally structured to make room for perpetual control and manipulation.
This is so evident in today’s Venezuela, a wealthy nation reduced to the knees of poverty and political instability by powers with vested interests in her enormous petroleum and other natural wealth. It is shamelessly visible in the way France has wickedly exploited and still impoverish most of its former colonies. For example, the French company Areva pays the Nigerien government only 5.5% royalties from uranium exploration while it pays the government of Canada 13% and Kazakhstan 18.5% in royalties for same uranium.[8] This greed has generated countless coup-d’tats, political instability and economic hardships in the francophone African countries, despite their enormous wealth in natural resources. The uranium from Niger republic for example, is used to power all the major nuclear electricity plants in France. Ensuring that France is at the top of the industrialized nations of the world while 75% of Niger republic is without electricity, and with little or no chance of industrialization. The World Bank group “Lightning Global” in its recently published report describes Niger Republic as having “one of the lowest consumptions of electricity in the world; … and one of the poorest countries in the world”.
The flip side of harmony is when you consider that Niger republic is the 7th largest producer of uranium in the world with an officially registered (no one knows the unregistered) production of 3,111MT (metric tons) in 2021. France has been exploiting this resource since 1957. An official investment guide report of June 7, 2024, shows that uranium sold for above US$100 per pound by February 2024.
A 3111MT per annum is equivalent to 685,858,098 pounds. This means that this natural resource alone should generate US$6.858580980 per annum for this country. Other major resources are gold (over 32 tons) iron ore at 1.2 billion tons, coal at 75million tons amongst others. The question therefore is, how can a country like this under French colonial control since 1922 be classified as “one of the poorest in the world… and fourth-to-last among all states on the United Nations Human Development Index of 2023/2024”, while France lives in opulence.?
The Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970 was largely fueled by Britain’s greed to maintain its unchecked access to the large petroleum resources on the lands of Biafra. The fact that over 6 million negroid lives was lost, especially children tortured to death through a state orchestrated policy of malnutrition was inconsequential to anyone’s sense of human justice. Especially the so called ‘civilized’ nations. Similar scenarios abound in today’s Congo, Libya, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Fasso etc. etc.
Even international bodies such as the United Nations Organization, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund have become clubs where most of these human atrocities are institutionalized and rebranded. South Africa carried out an official state policy of apartheid for decades in direct contradiction to all moral human values, and these clubs of interests akin to the Hobbesian man in “a state of nature” tacitly ensured its sustenance for decades unmindful of its destructive consequences.
The flip side of harmony is when a man abuses the social structures of justice, to promote his own agenda and arrogate to himself the power of determining for another man what should be good or bad for him, without his consent. Then subjects him under the instruments of the law to live with it. The Caribbean Island of Curaçao experienced its first official same-sex marriage on 27 July 2024 in Otrobanda, Willemstad between Danika Marquez and Melinda Angel. This was made possible based on a ruling of the Supreme Court in The Hague, Netherlands. The local island government, representative of the island people, has severally rejected this proposal two years earlier as an overwhelming majority of the population were opposed to it. However based on a peculiar neo-colonial structure of the Caribbean nation under its European counterpart, the decision made in Europe was enforced on the tropical populace regardless of their cultural or religious sentiments or opinions. Such adoption and application of laws without reflecting a collective social consent only creates the flip side of harmony.
In Nigeria, the home-grown judiciary has become a novel organ that installs corrupt politicians who have been incapable of winning the majority votes of the people that they are supposed to govern. For example, Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo state who was the candidate in a 2019 gubernatorial election with fourth place position in number of votes received from the voters. But after the election, he was declared governor by a judicial court ruling despite mass protests by the citizens. Even the arms of justice which is regarded as the “last hope of the common man” has become the last dope used to destroy the common man.
The flip side of harmony is the boundless human greed that breeds abuse, hate, chaos, inequity, and wars. The great Bob Marley once remarked that “man to man is so unjust”. Until these issues of unfairness and social justice are faced, the human race will forever embrace the flip side of harmony. The places of most people will be colored in pain, penury and angst. The principal role of governments should be to ensure that the abiding internal and international social contracts be re-evaluated at all costs.
Otherwise, the smoke from the burning will leave no garments unstained. This is why a Wise One in eons past, once said “…. there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt”. And this ‘wickedness’ he says “shall neither deliver those that are given to it.” And so, our world groans. From Africa to Middle East, Europe to Asia, the Americas and down to Australia.
Nixon Uzoma is a philosopher, poet and President of Onix Incorporated and Onix Curacao B.V in the Dutch Caribbean Island of Curacao.
