An Exploitative Culture And Its Unfairness -By Ogala Osoka

I think we live in an exploitative culture, where people are only valued by how functional they are to us. We value the people whose performance can produce physical, emotional or mental benefits. This, in itself, is dehumanization, because we have reduced a human into a product – something that serves us. A man only gives attention to the women who have the most obvious sexual features. The woman grooms the man who provides her social validation or physical needs – the one who makes her happy. We learn this construction from childhood where our parents show us that they will only give us love and treat us like humans, if we obey them and do what they want us to do. Our own parents, who gave birth to us and are sworn to love us unconditionally, give us attention when we succumb to being their source of social validation, a system referred to as reward-punishment construct.

Consequently, we learn to bend and change our complexion and ideas as kids in order to win our parents’ approval. As adults, this pattern has solidified into a full-blown cultural norm, so that we know how to be everything else to others in order to get their ‘attention, but we don’t know how to be humans, especially to ourselves. We don’t know how to forgive as be tolerant, even when we make mistakes. We are quick to deliver harsh criticisms to people and ourselves because, because of the reward-punishment system that was disguised as parental care, we don’t know the difference between a person and their actions. We condemn a person and their actions, when we are to condemn their actions but maintain love and respect for a person, simply because they are humans before anything else (especially since this is how we would love to be treated when we make mistakes). We do not only bend and change our complexion for others to like us and find us valuable, we expect others to do the same if we must value them. The consequence of this Illness is so potent that perhaps it is the reason why modern humans are restless and intolerant, not only with others, but with themselves.

A person who becomes so immutable so as to have a watery existence that depends on their many shifting social roles soon finds out that they have no sense of self. If we are to become benefits for others, then when do we have the time to truly stay true to ourselves, even when no one likes our positions? A poor man trying to become like the rich because everyone hates him and so he learns to hate himself. He does not realize that it is not lack that makes one poor; for in one way or the other, we all lack something. He does not realize it is his self-loath; the same that is inspired by others that makes him poor, and his prison – no matter how hard he works, no matter how much money he makes, he and his generation will always be poor, only because they have been taught to hate themselves It is not a coincidence that the black community, who have a long history of loathing and self-loathing, have the poorest population.

Since we have been raised by parents, through the language of rejection, to conform to people’s expectations and desires, avoiding rejection would be our strongest motivation. We would be like domesticated circus animals, scarred by the whips of social ostracism every time we think we deserve freedom; like slaves bound by chains and kept at the lower decks of cargo ships where sunlight loses meaning.. You want to dance in the rain but you are afraid of the rejection you will face from your friends. You want to be a footballer but you are afraid of the rejection you will face from your parents. You want to be able to express yourself entirely, but you are afraid that society will reject you. One can only be afraid of something one has experienced. This is what is called a traumatic event, when you experience it once, and it traumatizes you so much that you live the rest of your life avoiding it, even if it means staying away from who you truly are.

Hence, filled with this fear of rejection, you easily disburse it to people who do jot conform to your own ideals. In your perspective, it is the ultimate punishment for those who are too weak to bring you the benefits you desire; the rights you rightly deserve. You are like the parent, the slave-master, entitled by their own arrogance and drunk by their own trauma. You easily seek to control people’s lives as yours has been controlled. Just as your parents feared they will be nothing without your validations, you also fear your identity will be lost if no one likes you, and you quickly mete out punishment to those who don’t give you your birthright. You call them ‘haters. You make sure you have a strong grip of the people around you, and you ensure that they do want you want, that they are always beneficial to you, and when they are bold enough to tell you “no” because they want to maintain their identity, you become vexed.

Consequently, it takes an extra kind of boldness to maintain your identity, irrespective of your being liked or rejected. When you are this way, people either fear you or hate you. This to them, means you are arrogant. If you are not arrogant, you will be like everyone else who depends on everyone else for validation. Who the hell do you think you are? You will obey everything your parents says. You will kiss the feet of your pastors even if you are half-confused by their desertions. You will laugh at jokes that are not funny just because everyone else is laughing. You will say ‘yes sir’ forty one times in a single utterance because you need a job. You will sacrifice your sense of self on the alter of materialism and social validations. This is what the African calls winning. “If that’s what you have to do to get it, then do it,” he will say. However his hypocrite becomes so profound when he claims to worship the Holy Book that asks “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?”

This exploitative culture means we are too scared to make mistakes and take risks. The rejection that comes with failure is too much a burden to bear. Nobody would like us, people would invent stories about us and we would be a bad example to kids. However this is all a result of the sense entitlement that emanates from our overly controlling nature. We must be liked. We must always have things done our way, if not, then what are we existing for? It is how we were raised – to bend and allow people to have their way, and, we are told, if we do it well enough, we too will grow and have people bend their identities for us – our birthrights. Yet life is not designed to always bend or change it’s complexions. Things will never always go our way, and that’s okay. This does not change who we are. It does not make us less humans when our needs and desires are not met. We don’t have to succumb to the pressure of controlling others and squeezing out our benefits from them because we know they are not custodians of our happiness; because we know life is not engineered to always give us what we want. Happiness and unhappiness are mental states. We won’t find them in people or circumstances, we would only find them in our minds. Only we are responsible for our individual wellbeing, and it is high time we start being accountable to ourselves, and ourselves alone.