Discussion: Why folks must give up their delusions of Superiority Part 2 of 6?
IGBO SUPERIORITY FEELING IS A DANGER TO HER NEIGHBOURS
By Ozodi Thomas Osuji – It is apparent to any one with eyes to see that many Igbos would like to believe that they are superior to their Nigerian neighbours. They assume that they are superior to their neighbours.
This belief in their superiority is strange considering that virtually all their neighbours were politically more advanced than them before the white man came to their world; their neighbours attained feudal social-political organizations: they had kings governing their entire ethnic group whereas Igbos were at the rudimentary level of social organization; Igbos never managed to unify all Alaigbo into one political unit; they had only village or small town political organizations (what anthropologists call primitive stateless people and Marxists see as primitive communalism…in Marx’s categories society developmentally goes from basic primitive communalism to slave to feudal to bourgeois and finally to socialist state).
Igbos did no develop writing or invent the wheel. By all indicators of human civilization, they were primitive when the white man came to their world in the late 1800s.
They have contributed nothing to science and technology, and certainly nothing to the art of social and political organization (considering that they did not attain Igbo wide political organization they lacked political skills).
Like their West African neighbours they ran around capturing their people and selling them into slavery, to whoever wanted to buy them, to Arabs, to white people and to local domestic enslavers. It took white men (Fredrick Lugard stormed Aro long juju in 1902 and thereafter pacified most Igbo villages and stopped them from capturing and selling their people into slavery) to fight to stop slavery in their world.
Igbos did not fight to stop slavery in their world indicating that they lacked understanding of the evil entailed in slavery hence were savages. In fact, if white men did not enact laws prohibiting slavery they would today be kidnapping and selling their people into slavery. As I write they are busy kidnapping and holding their people for monetary ransom.
They generally blame their heinous crime against their own people on other persons. They are poor, and claim that the Nigeria state deprived them of the opportunity to have money so they have to make money by kidnapping their people.
This tendency to blame other people for their crimes was practiced by their ancestors who blamed white folks for selling their people! It is always others fault that they engaged in criminal behaviour; it is never their fault. Like children nothing is their fault, it is the fault of adult others.
Apparently, blaming others makes children feel perfect despite engaging in bad behaviours. Adults take responsibility for their behaviours, good and bad, and from so doing acquire understand that they are not perfect human beings.
Deluded persons manage to retain a sense of perfection by denying responsibility for their crimes and blaming others for them (if it is not ones fault that one does something wrong then one is perfect, a god, a deluded god, that is).
Their backwardness notwithstanding Igbos still feel superior to other people! They look down on their neighbours and call them all sorts of derogatory names.
I believe that were Igbos in possession of political and military power that they could do what Germans did: seek to lord it over their neighbours and even kill them. They would do so on the ground of their alleged superiority and others inferiority. The manner these primitive people feel superior to their fellow primitive neighbours is amazing; if you listened to them you would think that they are responsible for human scientific civilization only to learn that they have not contributed anything to civilization (other than sell themselves to all buyers) yet they feel better than other persons. This is insanity at work. This is one reason I am motivated to heal them of their paranoia or at least point it out before it leads them to harm other people. Someone has to point out their childish garagara behaviours (the desire to seem and act tough when one is weak) before it leads them to act out harmfully to others and then people say that nobody told them what is going on with these untamed people.
We must find a way to transform these people and make them loving human beings rather than people who do not respect people and only know how to desecrate them or kidnap and sell them into slavery or hold them for monetary ransom while fancying themselves civilized persons.
Civilized persons do not kidnap their people for money or sell them into slavery; only primitive savages do such dastardly things and then come to the public and pretend to be decent human beings and present themselves to the rest of the world as civilized persons. It is time we called a spade a spade and called these people what they are, not what they pretend to be; their civilization is skin deep.
Putting their neighbours down makes those neighbours feel angry and some of them occasionally attack and kill them. Like deluded persons everywhere they seem to lack insight into their behaviours and the consequences of their behaviours. Many of them actually do not see the correlation between their abusive language and other people’s hatred of them.
They do not seem to have any kind of psychological understanding at all. A little bit of psychological understanding teaches even children that human beings have pride and that if you insult them you injure their vanity and those with injured vanity feel narcissistic rage and attack whoever made them feel small. Igbos lacking this simple understanding of human nature go about insulting other Nigerians and not expecting them to feel angry at them and attack them.
When they are attacked they feel like they are innocent victims of others attack and cry foul; they forget what they did to generate the hatred and attack on them.
If you look down on a human being or verbally insult him you have invited him to attack and even kill you. Nations do go to war when their people’s prestige is insulted yet adult Igbos insult other Nigerians and not expect harm to come to them! It is like they are deluded gods and have a right to insult other folks and those persons accept been insulted and do nothing about it; as if they are superior beings and as such inferior others should accept their insults. This is amazing. This is the nature of delusion disorder.
(Some of their neighbours have come to see them as children hence forgive their insulting talks for they understand that adults do not insult other adults and not expect negative consequences. This perception of them as children makes it unlikely that their neighbours would entrust any of them with serious political offices, such as the president of Nigeria, for how can you allow children to rule the human polity?)
In addition to their insulting behaviours is their tendency to anti-social behaviours (paranoia and sociopathy tend to go hand in hand). They are very opportunistic; they lack principle and if you trusted them they would rip you off big time and laugh at you for being such a simpleton as to trust them. They are totally lacking in morality and conscience and would steal from you at any time and not feel guilty for doing so; in fact, they would blame you for stealing from you; it is your fault that they stole from you!
In their world their leaders: governors, chairmen of local governments etc. literally are thugs and steal most of the money given to them by the Nigerian state to develop their land and people; their criminal politicians squander their peoples monies on themselves and blame other Nigerians, especially Hausas and Yorubas, for the lack of development in their world.
These people seem to come from another planet, not earth where human beings are supposed to feel remorse upon doing bad things; these people laugh upon engaging in psychopathic behaviours (making you want to line them up against a wall and shoot them to death for they are a disgrace to the term humanity).
Occasionally, when the neighbours they abuse with their bad mouthing and anti-social behaviours have had enough they attack them. They would then run to their ancestral home in the eastern part of the country. They would secede from the country without thinking their actions through. They would have the deluded belief that with simple weapons, sticks, stones and machetes they would defeat their neighbours armed with modern weapons; apparently, they see themselves as special, as invincible gods, and bullets would not mow them down! Of course they are mowed down by bullets for they are, despite their delusions of power, human beings made of flesh and blood.
If you are going to go to war reason demands that you first assess the situation correctly and know what it takes to fight that war and win it: modern armaments. A reasonable people would have first amassed modern weaponry before seceding from Nigeria but we are talking about people who are not dealing with reality but live in fantasy where they take their wishes as reality.
After less than three years of fighting, they surrendered. Wars of independence generally last more than ten years but they gave up after only three years. Why not fight longer, go into the bush and fight guerrilla war for as long as it takes to win their independence? Long, protracted struggle is not their habit; they are into immediate gratification and when that fails they give up.
Having given up the struggle instead of tucking their tails between their legs and hiding their faces as defeated folk normally do they turn around boasting about their imaginary prowess? Listening to them boast one would think that they are invincible. Their braggadocio is so infantile that most of their neighbours smile at them.
Their level of vanity and narcissism is akin to what is found in the mouse that shakes its little hand at the mighty sun!
Simply stated, many Igbos have the illusion that they are superior to their neighbours. When you hear them talk, you get the feeling that they actually believe in that wishful thinking hence they are deluded, insane.
They actually want you to collude with them and see them as they would like to be seen, important and superior persons.
They cite the few Igbos who seem to have made some waves, such as Achebe, as evidence of their alleged extraordinariness.
You shake your head and ask why these people cannot just accept reality, the reality that all of us are the same and equal and love and respect all of us.
Ah, if you dared call attention to their insanity and not be in cahoots with them they would go to war with you and call you every derogatory name they could muster. Like Nazi propagandists (Joseph Goebbels and company) they would try to paint you black and tell all sorts of lies about you, most of them contradictory and certainly unbelievable except to them.
And the worst part is that they do not give up; they do not know when they are defeated by their enemies. For example, those they try painting black reciprocate and tell the world of their true character hence damage their reputation further but they would not give up and continue fighting and being exposed for what they are.
You keep asking what it would take to heal these people of their paranoia. It is not easy to heal folks of their paranoia, for paranoia serves an existential function for them. They feel inferior and do not like feeling so and believing in their imaginary superiority makes them feel worthwhile and makes life worth living for them. If they did not feel superior they would feel inferior and become depressed (and suicidal and may be kill themselves).
So why do human beings become deluded, paranoid? There are many reasons for this phenomenon. Let us explore some of them.
Let us start by understanding what the term delusion means; to be deluded is to believe what is generally seen by ones society as not true as true. Each society has its ideas of what is true. (The truth is unknown; in the meantime apparent truth is a social construct.) The deluded person generally posits his own understanding of truth and believes it even as other persons in his society do not agree with him.
Generally speaking, in delusion disorder the individual is like all of us, ordinary human being, a mortal human being who lives and dies and rots and returns to the elements, atoms, protons, neutrons and electrons that his body is made of, but instead of accepting that reality, the reality that his body came from nothing and will return to nothing, he postulates a grandiose self-concept and fancies that he is that imaginary self-concept. He may see himself as god, as all important and all powerful and believe it and act as such.
Of course no human being is all powerful for all it takes is a bullet into a human being’s head and his brain is deprived of oxygen and within six minutes he is dead and is food for worms. That is to say that the belief that one is all powerful is false hence deluded.
