Take A Stand

Many people fear what they don’t understand and rather than address their knowledge gap, they prefer to act out of their fear thereby becoming a danger to society and everyone around them.

Fear demands irrational behaviours from its slaves. Fear is manifested when we don’t understand people’s cultures, languages and beliefs. Many fear the places they haven’t been to and people who are different from them. We are quick to judge a person, situation or place; we are quick to jump on the bandwagon of popular opinions without testing them for correctness, fairness, or truth.

This has cost many people their jobs, families and relationships. Other have sadly lost their lives because fear put them directly in harm’s way. The media and especially social media haven’t helped with far too many people being too lazy to look into the truth before sharing a post or pushing a lie.

Over the Coronation weekend, I came across a tweet by Edwin Hayward (@edwinhayward) where he showed that The Express newspaper published 136 overwhelmingly negative articles about Harry and Meghan over a four-day period. Many times, we gloss over these kinds of posts with some people believing what they read without questioning the motives of the writers.

Others gloss over it because we are so used to consuming ‘garbage’ and many actually don’t mind reading the garbage because it lines up with their previous bias against the couple. When humanity is forgotten, we lose sight of the most basic acts of kindness and decency.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about liking the couple; like, love or loath them, we must remember they are human beings and someone’s children. A constant attack on two people just to get sensational headlines is unfair, immoral and unjust. None of us would wish that on our worst enemies and definitely not on our family members.

On the flip side, I grew up in Nigeria where we have people accusing young children or elderly people of witchcraft either because they have mental health challenges, learning difficulties or they are suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Because people lack an understanding of these issues, they jump to the ignorant and sad conclusion that there must be something wrong with the victims of these conditions. In extreme cases, vulnerable people are stoned, burned, beaten and killed because of the callousness and ignorance of the people around them.

When the ignorant masses don’t see the humanity in others, it becomes easy to discount their lives and worth to societies. Some charities have stepped in to offer education to people and support to the victims. Children and elderly people who were abandoned and malnourished due to the deliberate starvation visited on them as punishment for being evil, were rescued and today are thriving under the right conditions.

Recently there was news about a cult in Nairobi, Kenya where people were ordered by their pastor to starve to death on account of a false promise. As at the latest count, over 200 were dead and another 600 were still missing. This shows the power of manipulation, false information and people being fed lies until they believed them to be the truth.

We must ask ourselves a few questions including:

What lies have you been fed? What lies are you believing without questioning? Do you believe anything that lines up with your bias? Do you reject ideas and opinions at face value only? Do you follow leaders unquestioningly? Do you believe someone in a position of power, influence or authority is always right?

Do you align with public opinions simply because you are afraid to swim against the tide? Are you scared of losing face preferring not to stir the pot? Do you allow yourself to be a critical thinker? Are you scared of the truth you might find if you open your eyes? Who defines truth for you?

These and many more questions must be asked for us to improve the societies we live in. We must demand for basic humanity and decency which means speaking up for those who are vilified or endangered.

It means refusing to share posts, news, images and ideas that are damaging to our fellow humans. It looks like resisting the click baits, tempting sensational and pointless headlines and voting with our feet. We can tell the news algorithms never to suggest posts from certain newspapers and writers. Sometimes the only language people and organisations understand is when there is damage to their bottom line.

Before you join others in castigating another person, think what you would like to happen if that person was your child. Before you click on that article that you already know is rubbish and full of lies, think that it could have been you at the end of the abuse.

Before you call a child a witch, accuse anyone of being possessed by the devil or accuse a vulnerable elderly person of confessing to evil deeds, see them first. See them as your mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son. See their humanity, see their victimisation and let love arise in the place of fear.

Before you foolishly follow a self-titled ‘man or woman of God’, check if what they are preaching lines up with and looks like unconditional love.

None of us is perfect; everyone deserves a break, so let love reign in the place of fear. Finally educate yourself. The odds are someone you know will suffer from dementia, Alzheimer’s, mental health and behavioural challenges so learn about these conditions.

Think of the mental health damage some newspaper articles unleash on their victims and tell them to stop and don’t help spread their lies and culture of ‘hate’. Enough is enough; it’s time to stand up for each other and especially for the weak, preyed upon and vulnerable amongst us.

Thanks for reading my post. See you next week.