In our pursuit to build a better Gambia, it is critical that we first of all understand ourselves thoroughly to be able to make the necessary adjustments, particularly to our behaviours, as the current approach is clearly not working. I opined previously that we as a people have limited “intra-personal intelligence” (comprehensive self-awareness) which I ascribe mainly to the collective type of society in which our ways of life are prescribed to us from infancy. While this may offer us other benefits, it has contributed in narrowing our imagination, and distorted our sense of reasoning and thus limiting creativity. As Gambians, are we able and willing to search the real world outwith the realms of our dreams for unexplored dimensions, depth and meaning? Can we do this and most importantly harness the knowledge for our benefit? Of course not, not even close, we are yet to understand ourselves in relation to our immediate problems. The walls, that is where our thinking ends, is “god knows best and he is in control” even though he has made learning and knowing further compulsory on us. This is stress reducing and is consistent with our love for convenience and general laziness. Professional wise we are a polarised nation. We want to wear suits and be lawyers, a profession that puts a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems, also consistent with our egoistic nature. The paradox is we want to cling to our ways, but desperate to benefit from the gains of others who thinks more realistically devoid of all superstitions.
Please excuse the boring, but necessary scientific augments here, as it offers an alterative to our belief. The three important question is who are we? Where are we going and why? Which is expressed in science as “proximate” and “ultimate” causation of living process. The worldview that underpins religiosity is that our presence in the world and its meaning is predetermined by a “designer” and that our temporal presence here is to perform a specific job that we ll be rewarded for in the hereafter. Conversely, in science, the intention of us being here is not attributed to the will of the “designer”, but the accidents of history. That there is no designer, but instead overlapping networks of physical cause and effect, genotype to phenotype. A random accident that makes another type of accident likely. This is the phenomenon of natural selection described by Darwin in his book “origin of species” which explains how living organisms becomes adapted to the natural environment during the course of evolution. Natural selection means genetic make up of an organism is subjected to alteration which bring about new traits and traits that increases once ability to survive in a particular environment will be selected to be represented in the next generation. The sophistication of human beings driven by natural selection has climaxed as evidenced by the advancement of human knowledge and we are about to cross a borderline into techno-scientific era in which our evolution will be driven by “volitional selection” for which, with the available technologies for genome editing, humans can shape what we want to look like, be like etc. going forward. The shopping list is endless. The most contentious between religion and science is evolution on which modern medicine, that we all benefit from, stems. The most specific example is the new proposition of personalised medicine which aims to target and cure illnesses more effectively with greater precision. My philosophy here is, and I stand to be corrected or straightened out, devoid of judgement, that we must somewhat enjoy the best of both worlds. We take part in seeking knowledge rather than simply waiting for our fate on this earth and relying on others for help. We, and our leaders did not only wait for the west to help us tackle the Ebola outbreak, we blamed them for testing a genetically engineered Ebola virus as a potential bioweapon on us, even that we were too lazy to verify and prove.
How did this all fit in our current social interactions? The scientific studies suggested eusociality as the herald for our social advancement that encouraged competition, corporation and division of labour to enhance survival of the species. This social construct is observed across 20 different species including humans and insects like ants and termites. The dynamism and demands of competition and corporation by eusociality for survival in a particular environment required a memory good enough to evaluate the intention of other members, as well as to predict their Reponses from one moment to the next. This according to social psychologists, rapidly stimulated mental development of humans and consequently a more sophisticated memory and reasoning in the prefrontal cortext of the brain able to streamline past, present and future. This enabled us to asses the prospects and consequences of alliance, bonding, sexual contacts, loyalty, betrayal, domination and rivalries.
In addition to this phenomenon of eusociality, two theories were proposed by scientist that natural selection acted upon during human evolution – Kin selection and multilevel selection. The former is tested to be only viable in certain condition, which is a rear one and therefore wouldn’t be discussed further here. The latter, which is favoured as more plausible, is the what is visible in current human societies. Multilevel selection, as the name suggests, entails natural selection acting on both individual level (competition and corporation amongst members of the same group) and at group level (competition and corporation between groups). Human beings instinctively are compelled to belong to a group or a need to create one. We prefer to be with those that look like us, speak the same language as us and holds the same belief. This is in agreement with the popular verse in qur’an that says “god created us in tribes”, only that my contention is the misconception of “tribe” in the African context. We think that tribe can only mean Mandinka, Fulla, wollof, and cannot mean Gambian. Tribes can merge and form a bigger tribe in which the strengths of the diversity can be harnessed for greater prosperity. If we are restricted to a tribe, god would have put a barrier to gene flow to keep tribes separate. That means intertribal marriages will not give rise to any offspring, even if it does, the child will be infertile.
So what is the inherent characteristic in humans that allows us identify a tribe that we belong to? Is it genetic or environment? I believe culture may contribute in the past but gradually fading away in this process now. I also believe it is more to do with environment than genes. It is less to do with genes because we Gambians automatically belong to the tribe of our father’s, and not mother’s. Science said each parent contributes 50% of the genetic make up of the child during reproduction. In fact, based on this, one can argue that a person should belong to the mather’s tribe because in addition of the 50% genes derived from the mother, mitochondrial genes (the energy making factory in us) are inherited only maternally. Thus, we take more genes from our mothers than our fathers. I believe its mainly to do with environment. This is because, as we can observe, for example, mandinkas or jolas brought up in the greater Banjul areas are more likely to associate with the dominant tribe of that region, the wollofs. Also, mankinkas in the provinces will not readily associate with mandinkas in Mali or other regions in Africa. Thus, our current attention to address the issues attributed to our disunity are limited to rhetoric, the most effective way to unify our country as a single tribe is creating an environment that is the same across the country. That includes access to education, electricity, internet, clean water and adequate nutrition. The natural forces will enforce this as tribes continue to intermarry. Diversity is favourable for country because children from two tribes stands a better chance of surviving a disease outbreak than inbred children (both parents from one tribe), also, diversity helps to create new desirable traits in a population. Thus, its both nature’s and society’s benefit to come together.
I will keep this topic going discussing it from different perspective.
