March 4, 2014.

THIS-GENERATIONERS VS NEXT-GENERATIONERS

The next generations. The next generations have always been the ones wished for a better future and better living conditions than we have now. Why not this generation? Heaping that kind of honour, luck and responsibility on people you don’t even know will grow up to be as old as you are is kind of wrongly placed. It's reasonable and logical to some extent, but if we also thought of it the other way, we would benefit.

We find comfort in not being on the spot for not doing something. The next generation is always poised to have a better way of solving problems that this present generation seem not to be able to solve. And it is not that this generation cannot solve it, it is because this generation has chosen to relax and leave that particular responsibility to the next generation. 

Complacency has been made to be acceptable in the manner that people have been made to think that they cannot be able to achieve some things now. The world is not yet prepared for that idea, Not in these times, People will not buy that idea, People will not understand that idea. Bla bla bla

Look at the guys spearheading technological advancements for example. Where would we still be if Steve Jobs  had paid attention to the many people who tried to discourage him that the things he wanted to achieve could not be done YET? If the creatives at Sonny, LG, Samsung, just to mention a few had given into the next-generationing mind-set, would we have the amazing products that we can’t almost live without now?

And that is the thing with not believing that next-generationing crap - you end up discovering something that the world never thought it needed yet now everyone can’t feel “normal” without them. Imagine not having a smart phone now, for the people who have them. Imagine not having the very fast computers you use every day. The people who advanced the infant ideas that started these brilliant inventions did not give into the next-generationing mind-set. They braved their way through, they put away sleep, food, TV, radio, girlfriends and boyfriends and going out to see to it that they achieved their goals. And you will hear or read about how most of such people ended up advancing their ideas to extents they never imagined would be possible.

World famous Kenyan collage artist Wangechi Mutu has an inspiring story. Not in how she was financially incapable of going to the best schools and having the best life after her family moved to the USA (which she had a fair share of by the way) but about how she decided, she risked it all, to fail and try. Or even if you like, to try and fail. Either way it still points towards one direction. Resilience in the face of doom. She says how failure has always been a part of his journey and how one simple extra smudge of paint for example has spoilt an entire body of work(and we all know how large Mutu’s collage pieces are) leading to an entirely new and better concept that she then develops to form a better piece. Resilience doesn’t know of next generations. Resilience knows that the more you live the closer you are to death and thus the more you have to push yourself to achieving (if you had planned to. There are people who don’t have plans whatsoever to achieve one thing or the other. These are the people who usually leave stuff for the next generation to do for them.)

As an artist, I have grown to think that life is shorter for me than other people who do not view life from an artistic perspective, and I want to explore and experience as much as I can. I find happiness in spending almost each and every minute doing something that I can think of as exploring life from a different perspective. There is a lot of conformism around, of course that has to interfere with my exploration from time to time. (Attachment- you are supposed to do this like this every day. Work- you are supposed to write this here each and every day. 9 p.m.- we will bring you news from all over the country starting with rubbish politics, then ask you a YES or NO question about the rubbish politics then read some of your rubbish politics question answers on TV then give you a rubbish percentage that has won over the rubbish question. And you have grown up to believe that you have to take in this rubbish each and every day at 7 pm and 9 pm. So basically you have been taking in rubbish for a long time and consequently that political rubbish is in your brain. And we all know how GIGA works. The government- don’t talk about our rubbish to the people we are fleecing, tell it to yourself and your spouse, not people who can gang up against us). Yes all of that conformism is rubbish. And I am struggling so hard to be a non-conformist.

Non-conformism is the thing that has brought the world to where it is now. Albert Einstein did not wait for the next generations to be the ones to  discover all the things he did . Isaac Newton did not leave the gravity thing for the next generation to figure out. Dedan Kimathi did not leave the liberation struggle for the next generation to take up. Barrack Obama did not put aside his dreams for Sasha to achieve. You are probably mentioning Martin Luther King Jr in your mind right now. MLK acted, he did something. He got arrested; he got fucked up a whole lot of times. He only mentioned dreams as a prophecy of a future he saw possible if the black people did not chill and wait for the next generation to agitate for their rights from the white man. MLK wasn’t a next-generationer.

Mandela wasn’t a next-generationer, and God! My favourite; Malcolm X most certainly wasn’t a next generationer. These are people who took pain in and gave resilience and persistence out. These are people who deep inside understood what lied on the other side if what they agitated for was achieved by their own generation and not people who they did not even know would exist.

Next generationers are the corrupt, lazy, fucked up, not-trying people you know. The status quo people. The people who won’t give you a chance because they don’t see as far as you see. The people who think that idea is too brilliant to be achieved now or too expensive to be funded now. People who basically don’t do enough or despair easily.

The people I am most proud of as far as not being next generationers is concerned are the lot of Africans who saw colonizers come to take over their territories and with their crude, savagery, backward, undeveloped, mountain-worshipping asses kicked the "genetically superior" out. We wouldn't be as free as we are today if our great grandfathers and great grandmothers were next-generationers. We would still be colonized as Africans to date. And going back even further, we would still be slaves. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a next-generationer, that's whey we are not slaves now. The world is only taken forward by the people who are not next-generationers.

This-generationers are the people who are going to take this world forward. This-generationers are you and me. Alive, healthy, able, young in the mind, sane people who have the potential of saying no to wrong things and demanding that they be changed now! It is not an easy task to be a this-generationer in a world where the cost of life is becoming more and more unbearable for the majority of people. You therefore have to just feed yourself, live in a good house, drive a car, take your kids to school and take care of your family and tell yourself that’s it! That’s as far as it goes! And it is understandable when we choose to live life that way. We have to be comfortable, life is short, let’s enjoy it safely the much we can. That is conformism for you. 

There are a lot of people who live the life I have just described, and there is even a larger number of people living corruptly stealing from others to satisfy themselves knowingly or passively. This is the spirit of next generationers, comfort in numbers, conformism. Marry at this age, have kids at this age, do not attempt to write the truth about your government on social media. Basically do not attempt to change things, leave that for the next generations to get born, learn how to talk and walk,  go to nursery school, go to primary school, go to secondary school then go to uni and then get compromised as far as agitating for change is concerned then just talk about it on social media without taking action like you did. And that is shit.

I view the case of Kenyan political activist Boniface Mwangi deciding to abandon active activism for a quieter normal life as a situation where next-generationing has won over this-generationing. I do not say this to mean that I am against his decision to back down from pro-active activism. It is normal and very advisable to abandon things that put the lives of your family and friends in danger. Proud of you Boniface.

I am not saying that you live a life like mine. But don’t believe in next-generationing. The world could just shut down now. Live independently and freely in your own little way. Make impossible stuff possible in your own little ways. Talk about the political rubbish in your own BIG ways. Escape government shit in your own ways. Live a free life, but don’t interfere too much with other people’s freedom. YOU GOVERNMENT, LEAVE MY FREEDOM ALONE! (I am laughing at this point, shouldn't be).

Next-generationing doesn’t generate new ideas, the time is now. With the internet and all the technological advancements made this far it is possible to connect the little bits of knowledge from around the world and discover a stupidly crazy thing for an average mind that would end up benefiting the world. I believe for instance that it is possible to make a time traveler at this point in time if the world’s brightest minds would communicate more and just talk freely in a cooperative manner. The creativity that is going to move this world is combinatorial, not futuristic. Creativity has always been there in us. Its always present, its not something that is going to be realized in the future because its here already.It just has to be tapped then connected. Maria Popova’s article titled “Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity” published in brainpickings.org explains this aptly and explains how

“In order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines to combine and recombine these pieces and build new castles”

Presently in Africa political and social shit is rife. Corruption, impunity, inequality, tribalism is every fucking where! And what answer would you get if you asked people whether they thought it is possible to do away with these problems presently? “All these problems should be done away with, it is possible but not now. Maybe in 100 years’ time.” My Political Science course mate even tells me that talking of the possibility of a Kenya where all these problems have been solved is equal to day dreaming and statements like “eradicate corruption, enforce equality in employment and respect to the rule of the law” can only suffice when answering a question like “How can we realize a more developed Kenya” in an examination setting. And we would give that answer just for marks, not to mean that it is what should be done for more meaningful development to be realized.

Politically speaking, if we keep leaving the task of cleansing our political environment of all the corruption and impunity that has grown to be like a natural part of our politics then the next generation is going to be doomed and more fucked up! The state of things as is already is intolerable. And I do not blame the citizens who don’t do anything about it. Being complacent about this flooding state of corruption and impunity is caused by a well-knit wrong way of thinking that has grown to be the political culture of this county. People are engaged in the wrong kinds of conversations. There is a lot of sensationalism in our discussions about corruption for example that you will hear some Kenyans praise former President Daniel Moi for how he has managed to not be convicted for the many corrupt deals and extrajudicial killings that took place during his 24 years tenure as the president of this nation. If nothing has been done twelve years later on about a man who almost every Kenyan knows was in some way connected to the assassination of some prominent personalities in Kenya even now that we have a new constitution that can be used to bring him to book, what stops the current president from engaging himself in the same kind of acts?

The point is not to say that it is being done, it is to curtail chances of it happening. This-generationing acts now, it doesn’t wait for the next generation to have to handle something that will have outgrown being stopped. And this is the state of corruption in this country. The generations of the 1980s to the 1990s were kind of complacent about it when its manifestations were still sparse. Presently, corruption is wide spread and is every fucking where!  The perpetrators saw how complacent the public was in eradicating it and this gave them a bit of confidence in doing it in larger scales. Now we hear of corruption in the government in the proportion of millions and it doesn’t shock us that much, guess why? Because we have heard about embezzlement of millions too much that we only get shocked by the mention of billions. If we keep reacting this way, what stops the perpetrators of corruption from climbing up the ladder to trillions?

In a weekend interview on  NTV during Larry Madowo’s Friday night show The Trend, a heated debate between this-generationers and next-generationers manifested itself in the arguments between Boniface Mwangi and  Betty Waitherero on one side and Moses Kuria and  Dennis Itumbi on the other side. The pro-change side of Boniface and Betty represented the civil society and agitated for better legislation and pro-development political processes while the government side represented by Dennis and Moses had one message for the country: stay calm and peaceful and give the government time to implement its manifesto. This government has had very open and close affiliations with China. And so Betty Waitherero was right to pose this question to Dennis Itumbi, the government’s representative at the debate: “if the government is so attracted by the Chinese that it is adopting almost everything from China, why can’t it do what China does to people found engaging themselves in corruption? Kill them!” This-generationers are practical that much. And it’s very reasonable by the way.

Next generationers think they have figured out things, in their own way. Which is true. But I think their thinking is toxic even to the next generations they claim will be able to solve problems and realize the changes we only “dream” of now. If you think that way now what stops your kids from thinking that way 3o years down the line? What stops them? Next generationing encourages complacency and laziness that gives other people the opportunity to exploit others. Next-generationing encourages comfort-zoning that is not progressive but maintains things as they are. World renowned author Binyavanga Wainaina’s YouTube series We Must Free Our Imaginations is a rejoinder to the call for this-generationing. In the video series he expresses how he thinks for example that the Riverwood and Nollywood productions are the beginning of an explosion of creative processes in the African film industry and how this beginning is the start of a chain of processes and stages that will take African Film to greater heights globally. In the same breath, last month in Kenya, the first karate movie was released.

This announcement was received by many negative comments about how inferior the quality would be and how fake it would generally come out as. There is some sense of truth in that kind of statement, but look at the larger picture. I watched a snippet of the said movie and I was amazed by how real the kicks on the face and stomach looked! Someone had to take close to 20 or even more attempts of such a scene to get that kick right! And what does the next-generationer see despite such effort? Inferiority. This-generationers are ready to be ridiculed and laughed at but to sit back later on and tell themselves how proud they are for themselves for trying things out to the end.

This-generationing is lethal but more realistic. The spirit of being human in itself dictates putting in effort and going the extra mile to see to it that something is done. We are the smartest creatures on planet earth! We have to make the right decisions. We must change things when we see faults now and not leave things for future generations. That is the much we should do for our kids’ kids’.

Are you a this-generationer or a next-generationer?