Neanderthals Of The 21st Century

By Sydney Alaekwe

According to the foremost Sociologist, Auguste Comte, human societies evolved through three distinct epochs/stages to wit: the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive/scientific stage.

Accordingly, human societies started from the theological stage in which the world and place of humans within it were explained in terms of gods, spirits, myths, and magic. A world where a woman’s beauty was attributed to the Greek goddess Aphrodite or her Roman counterpart, Venus, not considering her parents’ genetic makeup. A world where wars were attributed to the Egyptian god, Anhur or Odin, the Norse god.

Human societies subsequently evolved to the metaphysical stage, the age of reason and teleology where phenomenal explanations were based on abstract notions such as essences and final causes. The age of logic and deep reasoning. The world of Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Socrates, and the other great minds of that age.

Societies ultimately transited to the positive stage based on scientific knowledge. The world of aerodynamics, space travel, Artificial Intelligence, and other life-altering innovations. This data-based world. Our time!!!

While the rest of the world are at varying eras of the scientific stage, with the most advanced at the threshold of the post-scientific stage of time travel and other yet to be imagined, mind-numbing innovations, Sub-Saharan Africa is still stuck in the theological stage. We are yet to broach the threshold of the metaphysical stage of reasoning and logic. We still hope and depend on our gods or God to solve our very basic problems. We see supernatural intervention as panaceas to the insecurity and other ails plaguing our lands. In this 21st Century?

While the rest of the world engages in meaningful discourse and innovations aimed at solving humanity’s unending problems, we are trapped in our hellhole debating the efficacy of Odeshi. While other climes are creating means and pathways towards sustainable wealth, we still believe and argue that wealth can be generated by ritual killings and seed sowing!!!

In our shameless docility, we have accepted stooges and puppets as god’s anointed leaders, even when such “anointing” goes against our desires and interests. We now accept meaningless and avoidable deaths as the permissive will of whoever it is we worship. Just blind acceptance to myth and puerile indignation whenever such unsubstantiated myths are logically questioned. We have become a people proud of our monopoly of ignorance, leading the rest of the world in an unchallenged race back to the stone age. In the world of today where we could have been anything, we chose to be the Neanderthals of the 21st Century. And beyond.

(c) By Sydney Alaekwe 2022