Ghana’s culture falsely equates old age to maturity and this is insisted upon at every forum and situation. If you are younger and dared to be confident in your vision and abilities, you are quickly and recklessly regarded as disrespectful and insolent. If the old folks believe that they have all the wisdom in the world and prefer to be in complete control of affairs, is it then not accurate for me to state that they are fully in charge of the poverty generation and disease embattled society that exist in Ghana.The old bury their achievements and watch the young and new struggle to begin from scratch and they sit with their old wisdom wondering why poverty exists. Having their hands on all the wealth of this poor country but unwilling to spend on education, research and development. Suffocating the thoughts of the young and turning around to point that finger into their face in anguish, accusing the young of lacking knowledge. I was peeved into writing this piece by what a government official said recently in Ghana.
Children of Children:
Many here are born to people who barely understood life and living before welcoming a newborn into the world. People grow old by any means and anyhow and now, the fact that they lived longer than others somehow accords them the right to most times humiliate the young at every turn. If you lived successfully, then you must know that the greatest treasure of this life is to be young and young at heart. They will not look at the youth with disdain and pity, youthfulness is a great treasure and I will not be in a hurry to be old and actually will refuse to be old.
I love being young and I will always encourage the young people to cherish their youth, dream and aspire as though the whole world depended on their dreams. The life of the world is for us to create, to contribute in synthesizing the needed structures driven by love and empathy.
Moral Dyslexia:
Those who insist youthfulness is not profitable, that those who have not seen their number of years on this earth are far inferior that themselves, please seek redemption because you are suffering from a moral dyslexia. Unable to read through the logical scripts life has given us, life’s greatest gift is the young and the new, that youthfulness is the greatest treasure to the world. The young, the youthful and the young at heart, life is on your side, do not allow those who believe their best is in the past to rob you of your joy. The best is always yet to come, never embrace the delusional precepts of those who have no hope left and can only draw from the wells of antiquity. I shudder to think of a country and by extension a continent that cherishes the dead and devotes so much time and expense at according the dead a dignified farewell. Cloth the dead in sparkling shroud and leave millions of children naked, hungry and attending school under death traps called classrooms. Wake up people, the young is your greatest treasure.
The root cause of endemic poverty is low maturity levels:
The greatest treasure any parent can bequeath to their young is a strong sense of maturity, a strong desire to dream and to envision life in the best of its glory. There is no need to wait and watch the child pick up the life of their own. Go on and tell them to dream and aspire the moment you can assure yourself that the child can hear and understand you. Once they have imbibed the holistic sense of maturity, you can relax and believe that they will bring out their precious gifts and talents.
In Ghana, even one’s own family will never value them until they are the only old persons around and then they take their turn to repress the younger people. Somehow, people who bask in their old age are under the illusion that only the old is the best, that you are never good enough until you are the only old person around. Immature due to the repression of the old folks, poverty is inevitable, without the desire and the skill to create or acquire the essentials of life. Old and finally absolutely in charge but lacking creative youthful days, there is nothing you can do but corrupt the system further and take all the goodies. And we still wonder why Africa’s future has been taken hostage by corrupt office holders (no leaders here)?
To live longer is to live young for long:
Youthfulness is so despised sometimes in Ghana; to be young is to be unheard, never speaking, grievously dependent and forbidden from dreaming dreams and seeing visions. This has enforced in the young people a relaxed attitude towards life and responsibility, not to think of independence of attitude and will. Look at the younger members of the Atta Mills administration, all they do is to hop from one radio station to the other yelling insults and insinuations at the top of their voices. Maybe it is the desire of the older people to be fully in charge thus pushing the young ministers out just to talking themselves into public relevance.
Infantilization of young people in Ghana:
In a country where all that is good and fine in life is reserved for the old, it will be fair if their claim to such a thrown will have some basic requirements such as the level of bravery and heroic efforts made. Many irresponsible fathers abandon their children to the elements of the weather only to stage a public claim to the riches of these same people. The young is credited with the lowest level of wisdom and responsibility, made to sit and wait, pushed off into boring and irrelevant tasks whilst the totalitarian old folks try to do what they have no idea about. Imagine a retired teacher in charge of the ministry of education, how do you expect such a person to revolutionize the education system? The young, creative, fresh and absolutely frustrated by the existing should have an unparalleled power to create and revolutionize a system and not the old and retired? Look at the heroic effort of Mr. Patrick Awuah, a young and visionary man willing to impact this country and continent through the Ashesi University project.
A government official stands up and declares, “Youth of today are not serious about life- Sena Dansua”. Not true!! Rather too many old people have given up on life. Madam Minister, please understand that majority of the old people in Ghana have long given up on life, and they are stampeding the youth and suffocating their thoughts and visions to the point of despair. So stop blaming the youth and rather clear the old folks out of the way.
To be Young means full of life and living it, the old means passed and passing:
The ideal society is made up of only young people and the young-at-heart; there is no progressive country for old and retired people. The young-at-heart are those old people who always appreciate the power of the youth; the terrible truth is that the young is always better than the old, more intelligent and even more creative. Otherwise, what is the point of reproduction? It is criminal not to allow the new to be better than the old that will not make any biological sense at all. Why procreate lesser versions of an entity? This does not hold in any industry in the world, golf 5 is far better than golf 1 so is the power of the two generations of engineers who created them. I will be personally disappointed if my own children are not intellectually and creatively more superior than I am. I even plan to take them to see places at age 10, where I only got the chance to see at age 31, places like the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
Mature Young and live Forever Young:
Any one who has read the book “built to last’ by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras of the Stanford University, would discover that more than 90 % of the people who created the great, enduring and visionary companies such as HP, 3M, Merck, were below the age 30. In Ghana life begins at 40, you are only allowed to begin the process of independence when you turn 40 years old. One of the universities in Ghana recently set up a committee to draw the plans for a new research institute, I was appalled to find that all the committee members were many years into their retirement. How do you expect this group to create a futurist institution without ideas from young people working in visionary institutions outside Ghana? The situation in Ghana is rudimentary in many respects and it stands to reason to look to places of the Isaac Newtons and the Albert Einsteins of this world.
My appeal to the young in Ghana is this, please take charge and exercise a full sense of responsibility. Refuse to be intimidated, stampeded and suffocated by people who ascribe to themselves the monopoly of all wisdom based on the simple fact that they are older. Ignore any such distractions and focus, dream dreams, envision a progressive and prosperous future for yourself and proceed to creating it with your own hands. The power and creativity to overcome all the difficult situations in this life is on the side of the young, so proceed in this liberating idea and you will be impressed how far you reach. Look out of Ghana to the Visionary personalities and institutions of this world and learn from them.
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Kindly edited by Gloria Baaba Arkaifie
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Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),
parthur14@gmail.com
http://pakar1-corner.blogspot.com/
