The Ethiopian Intellectual - Lost and Adrift

A Facebook post that I read yesterday reminded me of something that's been repeated in Ethiopian intellectual circles for decades, but still bears repeating because the problem its speaks of is still among our major problems, if not the most important problem in Ethiopia.

With age and experience, being a product of 'modern' education, that is, modern as an ideology, with every passing year I realize more and more how much our minds - the minds of Ethiopian 'intellectuals' (the quotes are for me) - have been colonized by what we might call modern or foreign (mostly Western) education. Even those of us who decry modernity's influence on Ethiopia, who decry our maladaptation of foreign mindsets, theories, and practices, are so much formed by these influences that are foreign to Ethiopia that we even express our concerns in foreign terms!

The problem with the foreign and modern mindset is not just that it is foreign and modern. The problem is that it is alien and therefore goes against the inertia of thousands of years of  Ethiopianness - however one defines Ethiopianness.

Let's take the idea of the modern 'democracy', an idea that most of us have fallen in love with at some time or another,  as an example. First of all, to even define and understand the idea properly, one would need to be immersed in the context in which the idea evolved. That is, an Ethiopian academic born and raised in Ethiopia, even if he was educated in the West, and even if his father, and even his grandfather, were products of Western education, cannot understand the idea of democracy in a way that a Briton or American can. The Ethiopian's understanding will always be somewhat superficial and so his application of these ideas will always be somewhat flawed.

Secondly, at the level of the society at large, not just the Western educated intellectuals, the understanding of democracy would be even more superficial because the idea, as it is, is so foreign. I say 'as it is', because of course there are ideas within democracy that are also part of Ethiopian tradition, or that are even universal, but the total idea of Western democracy remains foreign and difficult for the Ethiopian to fully absorb, let alone practice.

Third, and most importantly, the foreignness of Western democracy means that, sui generis, it cannot be a good fit in Ethiopia. That is, it did not evolve out of Ethiopian tradition, to address Ethiopian needs, to address Ethiopian problems, etc. It may have excellent ideas - it may itself be an excellent idea - but, as a whole idea, it remains foreign and as such cannot be a  prescription for an Ethiopian problem or any Ethiopian problems. That is not to say that something that looks like democracy may not be good for Ethiopia, but this something, whatever it is, will not come about by bringing the idea of democracy into Ethiopia, or adjusting it to Ethiopia. It will come about by looking at Ethiopia as it is and thinking about what social change, if any, would be good for it.

Ironically, those intellectuals who have warned us against being colonized by Western mindsets were often foreigners themselves. One of them, the great Donald Levine, summarised these sentiments in one of my favourite quotes:

“The vitality of a people springs from feeling at home in its culture and from a sense of kinship with its past. The negation of all those sentiments acquired in childhood leaves man adrift, a prey to random images and destructive impulses… The most productive and liberating sort of social change is that built on continuity with the past.”

Levine used to always recount a conversation he had with a modern Ethiopian intellectual or student in the 1960's. This student, presumably upset by the injustice of the policies of the Imperial Government, and at the same time suitably brainwashed, like most of his contemporaries, by some version of communism, remarked to Levine that the best thing for Ethiopia would be communism. Levine, like an elder of sorts, reminded the modern Ethiopian that communism requires revolutions that usually cost tens of thousands of lives. The modern Ethiopian replied that let alone tens of thousands of lives, millions of lives would not be too great a sacrifice to bring about communism to Ethiopia! Levine, as a lover of Ethiopian tradition, was shocked and alarmed to hear such a sentiment from the cream of Ethiopia's crop.

You see, Ethiopian intellectuals, given a background of relative poverty and backwardness from the point of view of the world today and the inferiority complex that comes with it, in order to run as fast as we can away from our seemingly insurmountable problems, run blindly, like a deer chased by a lion, into the arms of foreign ideas and ideologies. And then, we quickly become more Catholic than the Pope, so to speak. We become the most radical Communists, or radical ethnic nationalists, or worshippers of 'democracy', etc. We become so attached to these 'pretty', foreign, ideas. This, if not anything, illustrates how dangerous and incompatible foreign ideas are with being Ethiopian.

So I, myself, I try to flee back, back to being Ethiopia. I try my best to cling to my childhood sentiments, so to speak, even if my modern mindset rebels. It is the safe, the tried and true, the resilient and robust approach. I ask Ethiopian intellectuals to do the same. And I hope and pray that those not infected by modern education can avoid the infection!