Final Friday, in my essay entitled “Nigerian drug,” I dwelt, amongst different issues, on my ear ailment.
Let me make it crystal clear instantly that because the expertise, I’ve tried to make sense of my solitary situations and of these of man on the whole – an expertise which tends to make me an uncommon experiencer dwelling within the area of philosophy or of philosophical philosophy.
Allow us to suppose that one who has at all times had a eager sense of listening to, for one motive or the opposite step by step or abruptly loses his energy to listen to issues and human beings and animals and phrases as was the case earlier than his new situation, how will the brand new expertise be correctly outlined or described by him from a normative angle or from a descriptive one associated to ethics? How will he react to his new problem and outline and describe or narrate it?
What would be the emotional, atypical and mental repercussions of the information of the diminishing or diminished high quality of his listening to and of his ear(s)? The nervousness brought on by the lack of listening to awaiting anybody, particularly if one is an mental or journalist or author or pen pusher or skilled of any worthwhile diploma and sophistication might be unnerving or will at all times and can endlessly be unnerving. If the loss occurs particularly in a single’s center age or in a single’s superior years the loss will probably be doubly unnerving. And with the loss, the full loss, that’s, the experiencer or sufferer of the lack of listening to experiences what’s tantamount to his dying, type of, to the world – or the world’s dying, once more type of, to him.
The lack of one’s useful sense – be it the sense of sight or of contact or of feeling or of style in addition to of listening to – will outcome – beneath regular circumstances – into the love of the opposite, the sufferer, whose emotion is and would be the emotion of the opposite – his empathiser, who feels his love. Thus, we encounter loss within the face of the opposite.
Lack of any form is one thing we encounter within the ethical or moral duty we now have towards different individuals on account of our interactions with them. On this sensible, I can’t however keep in mind Emmanuel Levinas (12 January 1906 to 25 December 1995), a French thinker of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who was an existentialist and phenomenologist who knowledgeable us that lack of any form “signifies that we’re in relation to one thing that’s completely different… as one thing whose very existence is fabricated from alterity.”
For the aim of this column, I gained’t tie the that means of the time period to its eager philosophical import or idea. I’m utilizing or framing alterity right here by way of media concept, which has enabled my ear and its an infection to be seen, rightly or wrongly, by means of the open display screen of this column. Via this medium my contaminated ear and the discomfort it has brought on me discover/discovered that means of their interactions with others, that’s, my readers who examine my plight. Via this journalistic publicity some measure of societal understanding of my plight got here to the fore, which finally resulted in my not coming into the mode and temper of solitude.
For the reason that media announcement (within the body and type of my essay aforesaid) of my troubling ear an infection, the query of solitude has been not one would anticipate it to be. I’m right here free from an excessive limitation my ear an infection would have positioned upon me as a burden. Via cellphone calls and messages from numerous individuals who interacted with me by means of their interactions with my column, my ear has had the type of connection that’s aiding its therapeutic. One reader’s (particularly) urged treatment to assist it has been of nice profit.
With out anybody to have a relationship with, how can the bodily, medical, social, philosophical, literary and non secular therapeutic of my ear discover or have any that means? With out others, invented or not invented, the melancholic melancholy I felt would have contributed an ideal deal and in measures immeasurable to the tyranny of anguish that may have consumed me.
Somebody could wish to say to me as follows: “Why this a lot fuss over an atypical ear ailment?” Expensive readers, no ailment is an ‘atypical’ one particularly within the context of your nation my nation our nation’s present tragic financial and social realities. Each drug on this nation now has a pointy enhance in value day-to-day. Lots of our compatriots are dying in silence and in solitude. We’re dropping them drastically and drastically with out assist from the place they wanted assist and the place it may have come from, however which isn’t the case due to what’s what that’s what in our fashionable/post-modern time of diabolical democracy and crude politics.
The plaque on this nation now could be excessive and nearing its peaky peak if it’s not already there. Many Nigerians are dying out, and a number of other of them should be committing suicide on account of the psychological well being they’re confronted with. We can’t proceed to look at the struggling of our fellow compatriots and human beings. We don’t need them to query why they are going to proceed to stay on this nation that’s their nation their nation their nation.
Right here I keep in mind Lionel, the principle character in The Final Man within the novel by the English novelist Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797 to February 1, 1851). Lionel is deeply downcast, and ceaselessly so, as results of ache upon ache he suffers on account of the struggling of his fellow man. On one event he couldn’t let loose a “fluttering prisoner from my agonized breast.”
Within the pharmacies and hospital I visited I noticed what I noticed. And I remembered Levin as whenever. However I’ll chorus from quoting him totally right here with respect to the “everlasting immanence of dying.” My ear opened my eyes to the crushing actuality Nigerian representatives of the human race are succumbing to in our land now unusual and overseas to us.
One reader, amongst others, whose lengthy message helped to life-buoy my spirit was the professor effectively often known as IBK (Ibrahim Bello-Kano). His letter in all its rigorous humour and amusement of incongruities appeared and appealed to me as some form of “Music” that “is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness,” to borrow the phrases of Emil Cioran (Romanian thinker: April 8, 1911 to June 20 1995). Let me quote IBK’s letter verbatim by and by:
To be continued and concluded subsequent week.
Afejuku might be reached by way of 08055213059.
