Do we really work?

"Teranga domu Adama, ligeuye rek moko muna johe." ~ Dr. Youssou N'dour (Work's the surest means to dignified living).

See, if mighty America suffered injustices of colonisation, Europe almost ruined by the Second World War, and seeing where they are today, it's safe to say that our lack of progress is not entirely a consequence of colonisation. Granted, we have a very sad history of being taken advantage of. But whining and throwing pity-parties in the name of Pan-Africanism is not gonna help, because even though it takes courage to complain, it cannot without action undo the past.

Some wise person once said: "if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out. Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier."

But then, meaningful work requires thinking, and thinking's a complex process that many of us don't have time for. Those that we call thinkers are just tinkerers. So we have entrepreneurs who just buy and sell but don't think to innovate, and an intelligentsia so mentally enslaved they can't think outside the babylonian box. They'd rather be gaming and bending the rules, abusing and cheating the system, just to milk the system and create a shitstem.

But, even if that's not true, we are so bare minimum minded, our work attitudes and ethics suck, and that's true. The "Semesters" from Europe and America are around; ask them and they'll confirm that we here don't work as in the true sense of the word. Those who truly work are either being fought, or in it for personal interests and immediate advantages, not for posterity. So you see workers work overtime not for exigencies but for the extra pay thereof, reason why you hardly see businesss outlive generations, and why some folk will start something lucrative in your area just to save up for a certain 'hew' (ceremony), after that, it's done, that's it, we don't work!