Some arrive in the world into affluent
families, good healthcare, reliable electricity, good schools, family
connections, and bank accounts that already have money in them. Others arrive
where the roof leaks, the “road” disappears in the rain, and “opportunity” is
something people discuss on television. One child inherits confidence. Another
inherits responsibility. One grows up asking, “What do I want to become?”
Another first asks, “What can we afford?”
This is facticity: the unchosen
facts of our existence. Our birthplace,
parents, bodies, language, class,
health, history, religion, neighbourhood, passport, and economic circumstances.
Nobody chooses the opening scene. The universe simply drops us into one and expects
us to display our thespian skills; and while some are blessed with producers
and directors, others do not even have the luxury of a script.
Yet our beginnings are not the
whole story. Human beings possess another strange capacity: transcendence. We
can imagine beyond our circumstances, act within them, and sometimes transform
them. Transcendence does not mean that anyone can “manifest” their way out of
poverty. It is not a motivational poster with a paraphernalia of wealth as the
background, it means that, within limits, we remain capable of choosing, refusing,
building, and making meaning.
That tension defines much of
life. We are shaped by circumstances we did not choose, but we are also
responsible for what we do with the circumstances we inherit. The universe may
be indifferent. Human beings cannot afford to be.
We often pretend that everyone
starts from the same line. It is a convenient fiction, especially for people
already halfway to the finish. But the Nigerian child born into an affluent
family in a Lagos household, the child growing up in a rural community in Kano,
and the child displaced by conflict in the Northeast do not receive the same
introduction to possibilities. They may possess equal human worth, but they do
not possess equal options. One has access to stable broadband, another shares a
phone with five family members. One studies under bright lights, another reads
beside a solar-powered rechargeable lamp. One dreams of becoming a doctor.
Another is calculating when he must temporarily leave school to maximize the
planting season as the rainy season starts. Yet when their lives produce
different outcomes, we often call the difference “merit.”
Merit matters. But hoping for merit
without providing access is basically blindfolding talent and sending it into a labyrinth.
This is why fairness is not a
luxury. It is not decorative morality, like good ambience in a hotel lobby.
Fairness is the ground beneath opportunity. It determines who gets to develop
ability, recover from failure, imagine a future, participate in shaping the
future, and enjoy their share in society’s commonwealth. A will needs a way to become real.
A child denied food does not lose
only today’s meal. Society may lose tomorrow’s engineer, teacher, nurse,
artist, farmer, or honest public servant. Scarcity does not merely reduce
consumption, it narrows imagination. When people spend all their energy
surviving the present, they have less energy left to design the future. We
praise resilience so enthusiastically that we sometimes forget to question the
conditions demanding it. We celebrate the person who succeeds “against all
odds”, then behave as though the odds deserve no investigation. Even though
resilience is admirable, it is not a development strategy. A society should not
use the strength of its people as an excuse for the weakness of its systems.
This is where existentialism
becomes more than a university discussion conducted beside a dusty bookshelf.
Facticity reminds us that circumstances matter. Transcendence reminds us that
circumstances are not sacred. We cannot choose where we begin, but we can
choose whether inherited conditions will continue ruling over everyone who
comes after us.
That responsibility begins close
to home, seated in our immediate communities, entrenched in our larger societies.
It appears when a family decides
whether the girl will continue her education or be withdrawn because “she will
marry anyway.” It appears when a community decides whether disability will be
treated as shame or accommodated as part of human life. It appears when
relatives stop describing depression as laziness and begin asking what pain
might be hiding underneath. It appears in the ordinary choices we make about
one another.
We are often quick to explain our
own behaviour through circumstance and other people’s behaviour through
character. When we are late, there was traffic. When someone else is late, they
are unserious. When we fail, the economy is difficult. When another person
fails, they lack discipline. We are generous interpreters of our own facticity
and strict judges of everyone else’s. Perhaps moral maturity begins when we
apply the same honesty in both directions. Yes, people must take responsibility
for their choices. But responsibility becomes cruel when it ignores the
conditions under which choices are made. Telling someone to “just leave” an uncomfortable
environment without considering money, culture, safety, and other basic needs
is not wisdom. Telling an unemployed graduate to “start a business” without
considering capital, networks, skills, and market conditions is not a plan - t
is an inspirational sentence without shoes and without wings. Freedom is real, but
freedom is not evenly supplied. Some people have room to make mistakes. Others
make one mistake and spend years paying dearly for it. Some can leave a bad
job, a bad marriage, or a bad neighbourhood. Others remain because survival has
locked the door from the outside.
If we want to speak seriously
about freedom, we must care about the conditions that make freedom usable and replicable. This
is where we bring in the Government, and sew the words “Responsibility and
Accountability” into the seams of every garment they don.
This does not mean trying to
engineer a world without difficulty. Difficulty is part of life. We will still
experience grief, illness, heartbreak, disappointment, and the occasional
humiliation of sending an inappropriate message to the wrong person. No system
can abolish tragedy. But we can reduce the unnecessary suffering produced by indifference,
neglect, prejudice, and corruption.
We must create policies that have
human progress at their core. We must build and equip schools that do not
punish children for being poor. We must create healthcare systems that do not
turn illness into financial ruin. We must make cities safer for women,
children, and people with disabilities. We must protect the elderly from
becoming invisible or burdensome. We must create stable societies, and in the
event of displacements, we must treat displaced people as human beings rather
than inconvenient statistics. We must build communities where asking for help
is not considered a confession of failure. We must build societies where people
have all it takes to thrive, and not just have access to what they need to
survive. These are not acts of charity. They are acts of collective
self-preservation.
We like to think life is a test
of character. Sometimes it is. But it is also a test of the environments we
create. A society reveals itself not by how loudly it praises excellence, but
by how it treats people who begin with less power, less money, less health,
less protection, or less luck. The moral question is not whether everyone will
end in the same place. They will not. The question is whether the road is
designed to turn disadvantage into opportunity, rather than destiny.
We are born into facts. We are
not born into excuses. Our circumstances explain much, but they do not absolve
us from all action. The person with little power may still offer kindness,
solidarity, truth, or courage. The person with influence carries a wider
obligation. The person who has escaped one form of hardship should not pull up
the ladder and rename the act “self-reliance.” An indifferent universe does not
command us to be just. That command comes from our shared vulnerability. Most
of us know what it means to need help, to be overlooked, to start behind, and
to possess ability without access. We also know that the conditions of life are
not entirely natural. Many are made by people, supported by people, defended by
people, and therefore capable of being remade.
If the universe will not provide
fairness, fairness becomes our work - imperfect, costly, political, personal,
and endless, but still our work.
We are not responsible for
choosing the world into which we were born. We are responsible for deciding
whether the next person must suffer the same limitations merely because we have
grown used to them.
That is the burden of freedom - not simply escaping our circumstances, but leaving behind a world in which fewer people are imprisoned by theirs.
Thank You!
God Bless Us All!!
See You Next Time!!!
~ SirRash
