ON CULTURE

Culture is best to believe as the total way of life of a particular group of people. Have you ever thought you could start your acts and generations to come would consider its culture?

With the world evolving, it’s really hard to maintain standards from ancestral lineages. I’m sure one of the forefathers just woke up and felt like the only way to prove you’ve been trained well is by kneeling down or prostrating to greet as in the Yoruba culture.

Times are so hard now, I nearly forget to bend. And I just need to avoid people looking at me like someone without home-training so I bend my knees a little to show I still have respect even when it’s not necessary.

I’ve questioned a lot of 'whys' on culture and I’ve learnt that it’s slightly impossible to get answers. You can always give yourself the answers you want and start a new way of life.

“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” – Euripedes

Currently, I believe culture wasn’t made to make me. I can decide the kind of thing I want to live by and that would be passed down to my generation as a culture.

Also, I’ve decided I’m not trying to fight culture because what is not easy is to change other people. People attached to a set of rules find it harder to change it if it’s not of benefit to them. Say you give them a bag of rice now, they are ready to move the world with you. What I’m trying to do is form the kind of life I can comfortably live without having to think of what ancestors, that I don’t know, thinks of how I live.

People are very comfortable with oppressive systems as far as nobody is physically hurt. And it’s not what I want, the kind of trauma a lot of cultures have put on people is crude.

Culture was made by humans and every human is human enough to set their own rules, system and beliefs.