Writes: John Mulaa

As the country spirals into darkness from which it may be difficult to emerge, the trauma is understandably causing amnesia inducing reactions that are impairing suggestions about the way forward. Trauma can induce all sorts of reactions, among them denial and a lapse into victim mentality where everyone casts themselves as blameless and the other as aggressors. Analysis that starts with self is extremely rare as has been evident in much of the talk and noise among Kenyans.

It requires courage.

Since the country descended into hell, analyses and prognostications of all kinds have been undertaken and publicized. However, a great majority of them have tended to skirt unsparing examination of the drivers of the nation’s calamity opting instead for the lazy option strewn with pseudo -sophisticated assessments that betray a more of the same kind of thinking that is partly responsible for the present mess. Few have ventured radical ideas because our whole ethos is infused with hypocrisy and conformism, which have now tragically failed us.

The Kenyan psyche is branded with a head in sand temperament that has tended to emphasize the short-term over the medium and long term. Corruption is tolerated because it instantly gratifies those engaged in it. Elections are manipulated to produce crowing winners because that is the way things are done; opponents are rubbed off to remove obstacles to desired immediate goals because it is instant and it produces immediate openings. Jobs are doled out to homeboys because it creates instant ethnic satisfaction, gratitude and pride; collective resources are concentrated and unevenly distributed to demonstrate the instant efficacy of ethnic leadership.

We lived by and buttressed stereotypes because it was the easy way out. Why analyze when you have ready-made schemas. And we grew to love intellectual laziness.

Indeed, few Kenyans have not participated in or at the very least condoned our famous ways of doing things.

The lure of short-term gains overrode all other considerations. And even those who did not directly participate signaled attitudinally that they did not find it abnormal.

Trouble is actions tend to have medium and long-term consequences, and right now, the country is harvesting where it sowed. We did everything these past forty some years since independence to avert the gaze from potential serious pitfalls. All the vital segments of society, with a few exceptions, preached similar snake oil prescriptions for what ailed us. It was as if we were lobotomized clones incapable of thinking outside the box, as Americans would say.

In addition, we engaged in systematic denial. We adopted an unthinking reaction to any “strange” idea.

To re- use a cliché, any idea outside the box was immediately pronounced naïve or romantic, by people who cannot tell the role of naiveté and romanticism in history. An idea outside their ken is immediately disdained because it requires more than instant analysis to fathom. Just re-examine our short history. We never engaged those with “strange” ideas.

We harassed, hounded or assassinated them, because they were disturbing our peace. We wanted to get on with our lives, the better if they were unexamined.

Our posture of head in the sand should not be disturbed at all costs!

That attitude has a stranglehold on many of our opinion leaders. Even as the country undergoes a serious reality check, there are those who are incapable of seeing it for what it is: a pent-up bust of unattended problems we ignored because our perspective is purely short-term. Their solution, as one local observer put it, corral all politicians who personify the disturbance to the system and ship them elsewhere. We want to put our heads back in the sand!

Life and reality have little respect for those who do not bother to pay close attention. They marche on and impart lessons regardless. As Kenyans ponder the next steps, two aspects need to be implanted in their thinking if anything is to be salvaged. Short-term perspectives are a recipe for disaster, and, two, it is necessary that any action be proceeded by serious scenario casing, at least up to the medium term.

If the groups that triggered the present crisis had bothered to think along those lines, the country would have bought time, and, just maybe, would have woken from its slumber in the interim and started addressing pressing problems from a long-term perspective. And for heaven’s sake entertain naïve and romantic ideas!

They might provide the solution.