The Cutting Edge - Kamau Muiruri (i love reading TXT) 📗

a time of hunger for change, the candidate that presents some hope to the desperate and some future for the vulnerable is likely to win.
As Obama now face John McCain, the main symbolism will more likely be that of young vs. old. Obama is seen as young, charming, charismatic and dynamic while on the other hand McCain is old, slow and not very charismatic. When the race is at the level of age, the youthful person has more energy and chance of charming the audience. Thus, if Obama does not face too many complications with his party and other issues, his youthfulness might deliver the statehouse to him. On the other hand, an older person is more steady and experienced and can use this strength strategically to wear-out a younger person.
In a nutshell, the State House race offers a rich symbolic intersection. As I have stated before, the world is desperate for change and Mr Fate and Mrs Destiny has brought in Obama to inspire America towards a better direction.


Get ready for a new image

Now if you wake up one day and the government has changed a law on how to view and respond to your culture then you have lost something that helps you to construct and interpret the reality as well as deal with the world around you. I hope this gives you a simpler way of understanding what I wish to argue below concerning introduction of the new law in a society.

-Kamau Muiruri Monthly contribution to Stavanger Afenbladet, Norway, june 2008

You know when get up, you have a wash and get all ready for the world out there, and this says a lot about you as a person, plus it sets the stage for what you believe about your self as well. You only know who you are when people tell you, oh you are a good guy, you are smart today and so on. Another person can also say, “You know so and so.. He is a good guy.” When people say that you are good, then you begin to unconsciously believe “I must be a good guy.” Now draw a picture in your head about a society waking up and presenting itself to the world. It is the same as you waking up. If the society waking up to the world does not take time to prepare well for the day, this is what the world sees that society as being. In other words we are who we are by our beliefs, character, our buildings, our home, our families and this is what forms our culture. Through our culture we maintain our identity and integrity of our country and present our people to the rest of the world. Now if you wake up one day and the government has changed a law on how to view and respond to your culture then you have lost something that helps you to construct and interpret the reality as well as deal with the world around you.
I hope this gives you a simpler way of understanding what I wish to argue below concerning introduction of the new law in a society.Over the last few days I have seen a number of people concerned by the effects of the newly passed law on gay rights. Unfortunately, the voices were not strong enough and there is luck of a steady debate involving psychologists, sociologist and anthropologist as well as the church community about the prons and the cons. So I decided to develop my own analysis and understanding of how this law will affect the future of this society.
The first thing to point out is that this law has great, social political hidden features that cannot be decoded even for the coming 10 years. It solidifies and allows one of the most controversial phenomenons to the main stream norm of the Norwegian society. In other words for example the stories and the basic socialization that tell us that a family institution is made up of father, mother, and siblings will be challenged. A social ethics teacher speaking of such a thing in the new setting can go to court for teaching something which is contrary to the law. According to sociologist, law helps to enhance behaviour and to make given previously not allowed or allowed behaviour permitted or not permitted.
As a sociologist, I see law being a distortion tool that offers multiple levels of control that would not be available without it. Law start with a little step of legislation but the more complex work start when it comes to implementation and response to the law in practical situations in real life. Law have proved to bring desirable social political as well as economical changes. For example in America, the Black people and other minority have received a lot of acceptance and social, political as well as economic progress as a result of civil rights laws. At the current America election, a black man has been chosen to be the front runner of a major political party. This is great and positive change.
I believe that law can also prove to be deadly. They can become a point of conflict and division in an otherwise united nation. With the introduction of the concerned law we see little debate or protest from the Norwegian people. However this silence does not mean that all people unanimously support the said laws, contrary, and a good number of people I have consulted do not support it but they would better keep off the issue. Others are so indifferent to comment on it or so super-neutral to have any supportive or opposing views. To me, there are dangers in such a society. First, the people of Norway seem to be less and less detached to the issues that affecting their society. They have become a culture that takes almost anything for granted and without challenging it. Most Norwegians seem to luck a united front to respond to sociological issues because indeed they may not be sure of what they themselves believe at present and therefore they can not take any direction. Many are taking the direction being taken by their closest family or friends and no wonder Norway itself is taking the direction being taken by its closest sister nations.
Further, I see Norway lacking challenges that inspire personalities. Great personalities are created by a great problems or a great controversy. A society that lack problems lacks great personalities and hence a culture of silence is generated. Nobody rises to face a giant when it comes because the stories of e.g. David Vs Goliath / Mandela vs. Apartheid and so on are rare. There is therefore lack of personalities who can take such important debates and issues by their horns and become symbols of the people’s stand. The problem of many years of peace and prosperity is that it leads to erosion of culture, family and community. It makes people to relax and unconsciously begin with the process of substitution of what they have with something else.
That is to say, the greatest danger for Norway today is that the foundation and pillars that established this so good society are in the process of being substituted little by little. At the moment the margin of substitution has a positive intention but the process will increase because the consumption of what we have substituted with will depend on associated new laws and accessories to ensure satisfaction of the new order.
In sociological terms, we can argue that if you are consuming two things, an increase in one of the other means that one of the two things under consideration causes negative effect on the other unless accompanied by equal increase of the amount of the other. Using this model for Norway, we expect there to be more family related laws to protect family institution as well as the new image of family brought by the new law, however, everything is easier said than done. In the next few years, I bet that Norway must be prepared to pay the painful price of the social impact of this laws that are casually being passed.


When freedom fighter turned enemy

Mugabe is a man who has been imprisoned by his past and fighting long gone battles. He is kind of mad player who would be left playing a football game when the official time is over and claim what he has scored as legitimate GOAL

-Kamau Muiruri Monthly contribution to Stavanger Afenbladet, Norway, june 2008

What is wrong with Mugabe? Have to be the question everyone asks. Is he crazy? Asked a friend of mine. Just what the hell does he think he is doing? Asked another.
Robert Mugabe is a very unfortunate man. He is a man who has been imprisoned by his past and fighting long gone battles. He is kind of mad player who would be left playing a football game when the official time is over and claim what he has scored as legitimate GOAL. For me, Robert Mugabe is still fighting the colonialists. He is talking about Britain as if we are still in 1950. I am not so sure whether he has visited Britain in the last 20 years, realising that the United Kingdom is not a land of white people only. It is a multi ethnic country with over a million black people full citizens of Great Britain (including thousands of Zimbabweans). Mugabe got stuck, because he believed that after fighting for freedom things will work out by themself and as quickly as possible. After gaining independence he failed to read the signs of time. He did not study the history of countries like Kenya, Nigeria, and so on as much as he has failed to clearly read the signs on the walls of every Zimbabwean suffering that his leadership is over.

Mugabe saw the remnants of white people in the country as a problem rather than a resource. He failed to realize that an African country may also be a multi racial society regardless of the discrimination possession of historical events, however painful they might be. He failed to understand that it is not possible to change the past history, but he can make history. Instead of trying a smart way to work with the white Zimbabweans and work together to make the country better, he chooses confrontation. We all know what followed. That colonialist did a bad thing, doing a bad thing does not make a right. When Mugabe began to expel white farmers from their farms, it seemed as though that something or someone will soon stop him.

Some white Zimbabweans rented some apartments in Harare as internally displaced persons and no one has noticed as much about them because they were not living in a refugee tent that attracts attention from the media. At the end of the day, nothing was done and Mugabe had his day. Most of these white Zimbabwe victims gave up the wait and went elsewhere to start a new life. It is said that Nigeria attracted most of the farmers who were welcomed and helped to invest in their country. At the time, Mugabe was through with the eviction, he may have sat back and celebrated, and may have even relaxed to write a book that "Finally Fully Free", but little did Mugabe know that he had dug his own grave and that of Zimbabwe as a nation?

Zimbabwe, a once prosperous country today suffers the highest inflation ever recorded, and I believe it is now in the Guinness book of records. Several Zimbabweans have died of starvation, violence and unnecessary because of a lack of basic needs than ever before. So that is the enemy of the people in Zimbabwe today.

Mugabe has turned