I maintain that colonial Zimbabwe was a mixture of archaic Western culture (but barely the Modern variety of Western culture) and African traditional culture. Since both have created the uneven blend, it is hard to know where one culture stops and the other starts. In general it seems that Zimbabwean culture as a whole embraced fatalism.
Hear Marechera:
"[B]ut the brain only dies at its own behest and the body is a precious thing which, fading and knotting within itself, generates a new being who shimmers around the old body and does not die unless the great star comes down." [ p 80 The House of Hunger]
Similarly, in reading an article by a white ex-Zimbabwean author, I recently caught a whiff of the notion that "you do not die unless your time is up." This certainly explains how many white Rhodesian young men joined the army, trusting their fates into "God's hands". It is an ode to fatalism. They understood that they could take any risk imaginable but would not die unless their God had particularly set that time and place in advance for them to die. This explains why they did not read the sign of the times correctly, (seeing that the force of global opinion would not allow them to prevail). Instead, they continued to sacrifice themselves, believing in Providence to do the right thing by them.
And now? I see that a different mode of thinking prevails. It says, "You had a choice!" and "You are to blame completely for making the wrong choices!"
Could it actually be that I am now living in a completely different culture?
Hear Marechera:
"[B]ut the brain only dies at its own behest and the body is a precious thing which, fading and knotting within itself, generates a new being who shimmers around the old body and does not die unless the great star comes down." [ p 80 The House of Hunger]
Similarly, in reading an article by a white ex-Zimbabwean author, I recently caught a whiff of the notion that "you do not die unless your time is up." This certainly explains how many white Rhodesian young men joined the army, trusting their fates into "God's hands". It is an ode to fatalism. They understood that they could take any risk imaginable but would not die unless their God had particularly set that time and place in advance for them to die. This explains why they did not read the sign of the times correctly, (seeing that the force of global opinion would not allow them to prevail). Instead, they continued to sacrifice themselves, believing in Providence to do the right thing by them.
And now? I see that a different mode of thinking prevails. It says, "You had a choice!" and "You are to blame completely for making the wrong choices!"
Could it actually be that I am now living in a completely different culture?
2 comments:
Yes. But from what I divine on this, the whole rhetoric about choices is some pop psych zeitgeist ... like self esteem and the emphasis on "happiness" ... some sort of commercial late capitalist thing. It's very commercial, middle class and mainstream - and superficial.
It assumes people think they have no choice(s), and tells people they have two. In reality there may be more than two, or fewer.
One very irritating version:
A: I do not like the policies of the current government.
B: Well, remember you have the choice to move to another country.
B, the choice advocate, is actually the one shutting down the options.
Yep-- but this is basic knowledge from Nietzsche's psychology: You give someone a choice when you want to hang them, ie. in order to show their moral culpability. Those who are always wanting to know my motivations for this or that are trying to prove the same. For instance, I once gave the raw stages of my autobiography to read, to some American-based elitist white African scholar, and she shot back at me that I had to explain why I ever returned to Zimbabwe after I left it. Now this is the kind of impertinent borderline abusiveness that Westerners are apt to engage in. For anybody else, going back to their place of birth would be self-explanatory. One does so for sentimental, nostalgic and human reasons. However, white colonials are not supposed to be human. Our reasons are never self evident, nor even credible, consequently.
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