Teodros Kiros - Ethiopianity and Independent Thinking

Ethiopianity and Independent Thinking

1 January, 2011 | By Teodros Kiros (Ph.D)
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I love being an Ethiopian, and I am

honored to have been born to

Ethiopian

lands; I am humbled by

our sublime mountains designed to

nurture spirituality,

manifest in the

birth of the great thinkers who

grew up there; my soul is

pervaded by the depth of thought that the ravines and valleys inspire
in me; my eyes are drunk with the beauty of the lush and green of
the south, which greet me, when I land from Ethiopian Airlines to
visit my homeland; my heart vibrates when it listens to the roaring
sound of the saxophone and the sharpness and power of the
trumpet in classical Ethiopian music, how many times have I shed
tears of passion as Tisita, pierced my sensitive heart in the darkness
of a lonely night; how often have I fallen in love with those round
and bright Ethiopian eyes, resting on the ravishing bodies of our
women; how tirelessly do I admire our dance and the cuisines that
accompany them; how desperately have I wished that I could
master all our ethnic dances and consume their cleansing fragrance,
when one is possessed by them.

There are however, many Ethiopian matters that await our objective
criticism, so that the features of our Ethiopianity could be
considerably better, if we take a deep look at ourselves, and we will
become the best because of them.

We Ethiopians are much too secretive about things that ought to be
openly shared, discussed, corrected and discarded if necessary, and
yet we choose to die with secrets which divide us, and which
contaminate our souls, and sometimes contribute to our early death.
We need to rethink the relationships between secrets and our souls;
some of the secrets are so frivolous that they are not worth dying
for, and yet we prefer to die with them as opposed to openly share
our with our friends, acquaintances and our loved ones.

We are also disturbingly suspicious of one another. Our eyes say it
all, when we meet a new Ethiopian. We hardly welcome the new
person, and we suspect anything that comes out of the person’s
mouth. We deliberately stare down when a stranger comes to our
midst; sometimes we deliberately deny the person a human
recognition, particularly, if we think, he/she is better dressed, better
spoken.

We go out of our way to make the person invisible, when we
encounter her/him on the streets, at an elevator, at a public faction,
on parking and numerous public spaces. When matters go out of
hand, we make decisons about marriage and other matters based on
the ethnicity of the person. We go out our way and decide to form
opinions on the bases of the person’s name and his/her ethnicity.

Our relationships suffer, because we lie to each other. The men go
one way and the women go the other way. In the middle love is
lost; in fact, I often wonder if we really know what love is, if we
really let love embrace us, because falling in love is an act of
courage; often, we confuse love with use. We enter relationships to
use one another, and when use is exhausted, we are left empty, and
become the object of laughter and gossip, because we engage in
both of them so deeply.

Surely we go to church and make attempts to live the Christian life,
and yet we do not even really forgive a mistake, and we are not
aware that forgiveness is the corner stone of Christianity. Many
marriages and even more friendships collapse, because we do not
forgive. Friendships and relationships are destroyed because we
are too proud to forgive and move on. Instead, we pretend to be
saints who never mistakes, and we encounter Ethiopians who make
mistakes and ask for our forgiveness, we shun them, we humiliate
them and we ostracize them.

One of our central weaknesses is the unwillingness to think for
ourselves and by ourselves in the company of the creator. Often,
and almost always, our families and our ethnic affiliations influence
our decisions. Rarely, do we consult our inner reason and think
independently. We do not tolerate objective criticism and advise.
We quickly resort to group thinking and we condemn Ethiopians
who think differently, and label those who disagree with us by
putting them in ethnic baskets, forgetting that individuals who
disagree with us may be doing so, as independent thinkers, seeking
to think for themselves.

The Ethiopianity that I dream about has to attend to the above
matters, objectively, through good manners, as our classical
Ethiopian ancestors did.

I love my country so much that I have ventured some of my thoughts
for your considered reflection. I, too, am afflicted by the vices, and
I am making every effort to correct them- as I move towards death
and mature in the womb of time.

Life is short and maturity is long, but we all must try with the help of
the Transcendent and embark on the path of growth and self-
purification, through the power of independent thinking- tenaciously
and relentlessly.

The unfinished project of new Ethiopianity demands our willingness
to change, to grow, to mature and die.

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Teodros Kiros Professor of Philosophy and English (Liberal
Arts) Berklee College of Music is also a Senior Editor at Ethio
Quest News. His weekly column appears here