METAPHYSICS OF DEMOCRACY

There is need to strengthen family values, writes Sonnie Ekwowusi

Something important happened last week. It triggered off a pot-pourri of conversation between a friend and I on variegated subject matters relating to democracy, philosophy of education in Nigeria, family values and national development and so forth. We were along a major street in Lagos. My friend was driving the car. I sat in the front seat. Vehicular traffic was light. The rain was drizzling. The street beggars and hawkers were completely soaked by the rain. But they stubbornly remained under the rain. Suddenly a lady in white appeared by the side of the street. She looked like a young mother. She was contemplating crossing the street. Therefore my friend applied the brake to enable her cross the street. Then the lady did something strange. She opened her hands and dropped something that looked like a chaff of corn, ruffled tissue papers and sachets of ‘pure water’ right on the clean street. In other words, the lady had littered the street with the refuse in her hands without any qualms. Time was 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Disgusted by what the lady did, my friend turned, looked at me and said, “Lack of home training”. I nodded my head in affirmation. Thereafter a long conversation ensued on the aforesaid subject matter. It raged until my friend dropped me off home.

We seem to place all our hope in democracy. At the moment we are anxiously waiting for the 2019 elections. But we tend to forget one thing: we always forget that an abstract democracy not sustained by the fundamental social tradition of the society is a recipe for disaster. At the end of the day what strengthens a nation is not nAPC, APC, PDP, nPDP, GNP, nGNP, ADP, CUUP, and so forth. Neither will it be the outcome of the 2019 elections.

What ultimately strengthens a nation and thus paves way for the much-vaunted prosperity are those little communally-binding ideals which inform and form the superstructure of the character of an individual. A country cannot escape destruction if the communal-binding ideals are relaxed in proportion to the democratic ties. Simply put, if we want to strengthen the democratic ties, we must first of all strengthen the communally-binding ideals because the latter are what give rise to the former. Truth be told, democracy has not divested us of our civic, social and family duties and obligations as members of the society. Rather democracy ought to assimilate and reinforce these civic, social and family duties.

For example, the family is one of the most important pillars upon which any society stands and lays its claim to civilisation. Small wonder the family has been dubbed the shaper of values of the child. The value which the family institution inculcates in a child eventually becomes the foundation upon which he/she builds the superstructure of his/her behaviour. Consequently the destruction of the family is tantamount to destruction of a society. And that is why the crises in contemporary democracy are essentially the crises of the family. Therefore it is wrong to perceive the family as a private thing unconnected with the national question. In fact one of the things precipitating a crisis in the political ream is the crisis in the family. When families fail to function properly, Prof. Robert P. George argues, the effective transmission of the virtues of public honesty, public civility, self-restraint, patriotism, respect for constituted authority, fulfilment of civic duties such as paying taxes, participation in the one-year compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), cleanliness, social etiquettes, public hygiene, concern for others, etc., are imperilled. In fact, the increasing societal vices such as drug abuse, rape, human trafficking, kidnapping, piracy and internet pornography are traceable to failed parenting or failed families.

Therefore we must re-work our democracy to focus on those things that really and truly strengthen a nation. Let me repeat here what has been repeatedly said. The surest way to be ruined by democracy is to take democracy for granted. Let us learn not to take our democracy for granted. One of the deficiencies of contemporary democracy is lack of freedom. We must envision a metaphysical democracy that guarantees personal freedom. Freedom is more than absence of imprisonment or freedom from the iron grips of despotic rulers. Freedom is living in liberating principles- shared beliefs and shared values. If there are no liberating principles to guide political activity, then political ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated or corrupted for reasons of power. What is needed today is a democracy that portrays the positive vision of the human person and the solidarity which binds all men.

It is wrong for the lady in white to litter the street because she is a stakeholder in positively shaping society. Parents may not outsource parental responsibility because responsible parenthood engenders a virile nation. A fresh university graduate must not evade participating in the compulsory NYSC because it is, inter alia, a diservice to the nation. When you see a dying citizen in the street in desperate need of assistance your first impulse will not be to complain to the government: your first spontaneous reaction would be to look for the urgent means of restoring the health of the dying person. In many Nigerian cultures, one person alone does not raise a child. The task of raising a child is the task of every member of the community. Therefore we cannot forget who we are as a people. There is a limit to be achieved with empty political creeds or abstract political thoughts or abstract party manifestoes. But much more can be achieved with cultural life, with lived experience made up of little values which forms the character of an individual and sustains the society.

In his essay, Metaphysics of Democracy, Prof Thomas Joseph White writes, “democracies are subject to the whims of superficial collective ideologies; indoctrination of the masses based on television values, demagogy, political correctness, and plutocracy”. Prof Whit is right. Contemporary democracy is made to subsist without reference to the transcendence. We live in a new world in which universal values have been replaced by arbitrary rights to choose; pleasure is mistaken for happiness; information replaces knowledge (truth); sexual conventionalism replaces self-control; egoism replaces solidarity; equality means the deconstruction of man-woman anthropological complementality; subjectivity replaces objectivity. Truth becomes anything that suits one’s fancy.

Certainly, a liberal democracy that does not correctly articulate the human orientation towards transcendence poses a great danger. Our task is to challenge such liberal democracy. In any case, we have seen how such modern liberal democracies are collapsing like packs of cards today. In order to strengthen the nation there must be a fine blend or a convergence between those communally-binding values which sustain society and our democratic tents.