People who know me or read this blog religiously should have now figured out that I was one hell of a pain in the butt when I was young—and even today, I am a thick nail in the skin of a lot of people.
I cut through a lot of the usual Ghanaian BS and I am not bothered by the age of the person sitting at the other side—let’s be frank, most older people are plain stupid, caused by generation gap and their ‘dogmatism’.
In Ghana, the notion ‘Opanin (the elder) is always right’ is the cause of many of our problems today—as many Ghanaians lack the ability to critically think and evaluate situations to form their own reasonable opinions.
Dangerously, this ‘metusala’ tradition accentuated in our way of doing things has created a generation of cowards, non-rational thinkers and millions of people incapable of standing up for themselves, their rights or beliefs. It’s worse when the opponent is someone older…
Of course, it is within good manners to respect the elderly, in fact, you must respect everyone—but that does not mean, by default you should swallow whatever BS the elderly is feeding you and accord him or her some undeserving immunity from criticism.
When I was a child, I was labelled ‘obstinate and troublesome’ when I was not really any of these two; I just asked why I have to do certain things while many other children just jumped because they were told to do so.
I asked questions and mostly I ‘rebelled’ when the answer was not forthcoming or the answer given did not sit well with my own reason—I guess that is the reason why we all have brains.