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Seeing, knowing and judging, let’s be careful
Let’s support one another
A beloved poem from the 1800s tells of six blind men who wanted to find out what an elephant was like. So they went to visit one. Each man approached it from a different direction, each taking hold of a different part of the elephant and describing what he discovered. One felt a tusk and concluded that an elephant was like a spear. Another, feeling a thick, sturdy leg, decided an elephant was like a tree. Still another, grabbing the trunk, declared that an elephant is like a snake, and so on.
The poem concludes that these men
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
They were right about their descriptions of what they had experienced. They were being true to what they knew. But they were wrong because they failed to account for what they didn’t know. How can an elephant possibly be like a spear, a tree, and a snake? It’s clear when we see the whole picture. It’s not so clear when we refuse to consider anyone else’s experience.
This mistake is humorous when applied to elephants but tragic when applied to people. Sometimes we are so quick to judge. We make casual assumptions about people based on limited information—the way they look or talk. But in reality, we are all blind. Our perceptions, our experiences are limited. It takes patience and humility to withhold judgement, gather more information, and hear other viewpoints.
The same applies to many of the confusing and divisive issues of our day. Many people seem so adamant that they are right and anyone who disagrees is wrong. But those who come closest to the truth are those who are willing to look for it everywhere—even in the perspectives of those who see things differently.
In our quest for truth, we can look to God for guidance. After all, He sees and knows things we cannot, no matter how observant we are. So with one hand, we hold to the truths we know, and with the other we reach out in humility and goodwill, because there’s always more truth to receive.
As to the difficulties of arriving at justice and fair judgement, one philosopher observed: “We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased.”
It is high tribute to say of any man that he is just in all his judgements. And it is higher tribute to be able to say that he is generous as well as just in judgement. Ungenerous judgement is an unfortunate character fault, and perhaps no one is ever innocent when an ungenerous person is his judge.
It sometimes seems that there is nothing men do quite so much as misjudge other men. Whether knowingly or not, it is a perennially prevalent fault to permit personalities or prejudices to enter into the judgements of others. There isn’t anything that anyone could do that couldn’t be misjudged by one who wanted to misjudge. There was never a mortal man in whom fault could not be found by one who wanted to find fault. There is no act or gesture that could not be misinterpreted by someone whose mind was so set. There is no uttered word to which someone could not give a different meaning from what was intended.
No sentence is ever written that could not be read in different ways. There is no one who could not in some respects be presented in a bad light by a prejudiced person. In other words, either we can decide to see the best side of a man or we can decide to see his worst side, and we see the side we want to see.
Perhaps this is in some degree inevitable so long as people are imperfect and that seems likely to be for a long time. But the fervent petition of Solomon could well be the earnest plea and prayer of each of us: “Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart … that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge. . . ?” Whether it be among our friends or family, among our own intimate associates or absolute strangers, one of the greatest qualities of character is to be just and generous in judgement.
And with a plea from Paradiso again we could well let Dante give us these words of constant warning: “O mortal men, be wary how ye judge.”
By Samuel Enos Eghan
Email: samueleghan@gmail.com
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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