By Nneka Okumazie
If a country has people whose means of income is street hawking, with stuff on their heads, or in their hands, from street to street, or across roads, shouldn’t it be possible that that country can have people willing to work, at varying conditions to bring lots of productivity to that country?
If another country has people who cling to buses, leaping out and on, seeking those heading to their destinations, shouldn’t that country also have people with very open work willingness?
There are lots of unanswered questions about many places in the world, with the kinds of problems they continue to have.
Though most direct answers, emerging from bias, are wrong, it is still important to continue to think of how and why with such situations.
How is it possible to endure something harsh, risky, tough and difficult alone, but impossible to muster it collectively?
Is there something about this disposition that precedes their time?
There is no society in the world without a lot of self-centeredness, but many through time gave it up for the group good.
Doing so is a lesson, an experience and a message seen and passed on, through generations. And in that, for some places explain parts of the progress and difference they continue to make.
There are places that the people know that for all is better, than for one or some.
There are also places where people are for one, and all can rot.
Some people are really clean, they spare no dirt within their homes, or around their possessions, but are careless about what happens in their environment.
Some others ensure to smell good and don’t mind that around them maybe smells hell.
There are people with lots of discipline or principles, enforcing and finding scapegoats around them, but their society is a factory of lawlessness.
There is something about these individual characteristics, unable to be translated into the group’s progress.
The problem of society may just be mutated selfishness.
There has been a lot of buzz in recent weeks about corruption as a factor of a certain failure. There is also the problem of corruption in many countries, with staggering acts.
What if corruption is inherited and blended with collective personalities?
What if corruption would take 500 years to boot from a society?
There may be other reasons and lots of counter examples, but in many of the countries with invasive corruption, it sprawled from long before them.
There are some societies, whose say attitude to funeral can be traced directly to their culture from hundreds of years ago, that regardless of global progress, they infuse new tools, but keep the core of how they do it.
Expenses on funerals, for example, for those who can afford it may be fine, but to have it in a certain way, so that most people go with it no matter how hard it is to fund it, maybe a form of selfishness as well.
Maybe if many, prior, continued to say no elaborate funeral, the wind may have waned in some places.
There are lots of societies whose survival didn’t depend on much courage, or group stuff, or even the fittest, it just came how it came and they lived how they lived. They hardly had many clear fittest.
If people who emerged from such didn’t adjust, they may have machinated selfishness that defies expected progress.
Broadly, it is hard to care about a lot of things, but caring about certain random and remote things can also be part of what some people inherit.
For example, some people care about certain endangered species that some others see and marvel.
This, though may seem detached, may also explain how it runs parallel to why some people just care about justice and fairness no matter the cost.
There are traits that are relevant to different things, but one important trait for a people is group knit.
There has to be continuous projects and works to ensure that in-group selflessness and fairness thrives while checking for most unaligned outbreaks.
The for-group trait – may eventually become reliable as a progressive force.
And for groups in this category, even if new economic ideologies emerge – it alters and goes, no matter how it may be crushing for some in the mix.
There may be countries, say with similar ideologies, but one made it big, while others crashed. Though it may seem like ideologies were enforced, but group bond of a few decades is less compared to the group bond of centuries.
Assuming one of the countries had a stretched block project – setting and setting, building over many years, with everyone adding something aside from those directly involved; the story, the example, the inheritance, may later be harnessed – beneficially to them, while others in their ideology failed.
It is not to say that corruption cannot fester regardless of group, but it does not win in a way that slows them down.
The advantage of a group can also be more people of good courage, though some leaders may abuse it to cause pain. But for knitting groups, courage emerges from many points.
A casualty of selfishness is courage. Most people in selfish societies lack courage.
Some may argue that some in religions – organized or not, cooperate, yes, but most religious cooperation can be tacked as selfish selflessness.
Religion is in the hope industry.
Religion, as a possession, drives hope.
So for what many do, organized religion or similar ideology, they do so to increase their hopes.
Hope is natural to life and integral to capitalism, as trust.
So the abundance of religion in some places does not say they are not mostly selfish.
For the group religion projects, it is not easily inherited – per selflessness, like general projects.
One reason may be because of how it is defined.
A non-organized religion for a certain people, or certain types, can do much but has to be continuously defined to those who would carry on, so not often the group trait – as sought.
It is also possible to say for Christianity that those who truly believe are few that it cannot be passed on just as that to reach group mass – for collective progress.
There are traits that make education meaningless.
There are traits that make it that instead of approaching capitalism as should, makes some seek things illegally.
These traits are common and continue to grow, including for those tuned to compulsive and continuous entertainment.
There are also traits evolving on capitalism that would ruin parts of societies in years to come.
[Numbers 31:53, (For the men of war had taken spoil, every man for himself.)]