Notification:
We are accepting
article for the 14th issue of NEVIS Review. If you have any articles
which deals with Ethiopian/African socio-political analysis , economic
analysis/development discourse, and related, please inbox us or send it
via our e-mail: editor.nevis@yahoo.com. The deadline is next week on April 4. If your articles, or the article you suggest are longer than three pages, we request that you send us a 1-3 page summary/abstract.
Thanks
NEVIS ET*
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
NEVIS Review No 13, Section III, Ref # 13.3
NEVIS Review No 13, Section III
Ref # 13.3
Ref # 13.3
March 25, 2013
-------------------------------------------------
Development Ideas in ‘Post-colonial’ Africa
By Eyob Balcha
[ebalcha@gmail.com]
Ghana’s independence in 1957 championed under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah was a remarkable achievement by Ghanaians and an inspiration for other Africans who were under the yoke of colonialism. The years to follow, particularly the decade; 1960s, specifically has become a milestone period in the history of many African countries. The decolonization and independence that was achieved, most of the time, through fierce struggle and fighting was followed by a national mission of ensuring the socio-economic wellbeing of Africans. This mission by many newly independent African states coincided with the emergence of new vocabularies both in the intellectual and political-economy sphere like ‘Development’ and ‘Modernization’. Moreover this, the period has also witnessed the highest point of the political confrontation between the East and West ideological blocks.
Starting from the early days of independence, both development and modernization have been pursued by African states across various lines of thinking. This seemingly non-ending mission of achieving modernization and development has its own trajectory in which certain ideas are more dominant than others, some actors are more powerful than others and some contexts are more favorable or constraining than other situations.
-----------------
Early Independence – African Socialism
One of the most powerful developmental ideologies during the early days of independence was African Socialism. It gained its dominance mainly because of the fact that it was conceptualized and operationalized by the two most respected Pan-African leaders, namely Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah. The fundamental thesis of African Socialism is ensuring the socio-economic, political and cultural development of Africa through the rehabilitation and reactivation of the pre-colonial African communal values and institutions (Nyrere, 1967). African socialism asserts that one of the negative impacts of colonialism is disintegrating African societies from their inherent nature of humanity pursued through communal life. These African values and orientations were supplanted by the colonizers and the ideals of individualism and materialism were introduced (ibid). But both Nkrumah and Nyerere believed that these African values have never died and should be revitalized and reintroduced to inform the missions of development and modernization.
Nyerere’s attempt to institutionalize African socialism in Tanzania is known for its name, ‘Ujamaa’, which means ‘family hood’ in Swahili. Indeed its conceptualization of socialism is also diametrically opposite to the fundamental principles of socialism in European context. The central point of is his assertion is about the irrelevance of the concept class and class conflict in African socialism. The pre-colonial Africa is a classless and communal society which embraces a unique form of Humanity and mutual respect. And African socialism is based on these principles of societal interaction where members of every community have the obligation to work and share their property and production.
Socialism is essentially about human equality. African socialism is an attempt of establishing a social order with egalitarian patterns of production and consumption, an egalitarian way of life among members of the community and ensuring the principles of equality and mutual respect in the moral and intellectual consciousness of citizens within the society. Nyerere argues that, though African socialism seeks to realize such a society with equality and human dignity, it is neither a Utopian project nor an ideal attempt which is unaware of unequal capacity of individuals both in their access and ownership of resources. It is rather an attempt of using the inequalities among people for the service and best interest of everyone’s equality. It is about creating a social order in which it is impossible to use such inequalities and individual strength to the exploitation and de-humanization of others. In his words; Nyerere said ‘… if the pursuit of wealth clashes with things like human dignity and social equality, then the latter will be given priority.’ (ibid)
These principles of African socialism demanded the presence a strong state intervention at every level. Indeed; even though it was not termed as African Socialism by many African states, there was a significant attempt of realizing development and modernization in African through state led projects and interventions. It is nearly to everyone’s agreement that the early period of independence was the most favorable period for most African countries, almost in every aspect. The state was heavily engaged in doing every business like investing on education, infrastructure, health, agriculture, industry and also ensuring social welfare for citizens. But the changing trend of ideas both at the intellectual and political economic spheres made such attempts of using the state machine for development less favorable, particularly in the endeavors of establishing a capitalist society.
-----------------------
The Periods of Structural Adjustment (Mid 70s and 80s)
The honey-moon period of state led development process and also promoting the ideals of African Socialism quickly vanished for lots of reasons. The changing global trend in the political economic philosophies and the heavy deficit that states have faced in their economies were the principal reasons to look for alternative ways of realizing development, specifically capitalist development. At this point, it can be argued that the ownership of African developmental ideals were no longer in the hands of Africans rather in the corridors and board-rooms of western financial institutions, donor agencies and countries.
Most African countries were forced to bow down to the political pressures and conditionalities of the so called ‘development partners’. Thus, they were required to abandon their mission of ensuring socio-economic development through their intervention rather by facilitating the presence of a free-market oriented economic system. The state was considered as incapable of ensuring fair resource allocation and realizing the required state of socio-economic development. Rather the market was sanctified as a sole institution for achieving the aspired development in Africa. It was based on this principle that most African countries were forced to adopt the Structural Adjustment Programs financed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Engberg-Pedersen et al, 1996, p. 4-8; Toye, 1994, p. 18-21)
The developmental quagmire that most African countries were facing forced them to become dependents on external actors, mainly to secure financial assistance for their development projects. The strict conditionalities they needed to fulfill more pleasing to the interest of the external actors than to the African states or their citizens. Hence, the periods of structural adjustment were merely periods of losing the grip in determining the developmental course that Africa aspires to take. One can mention the attempt of regaining the control over determining the developmental discourse in Africa particularly through the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) and the African Alternative Framework to the Structural Adjustment Programs (AAF-SAP). But the reality is these programs were not fully operationalized into the African political economy because of the mere fact that their philosophies, ideologies and principles were not pleasing enough for those who control the financial source.
---------------------
Neoliberal and Developmental States - from 1990s till the present
Though the 1970s and 80s can be considered as the high-time for the influence of external actors in dictating developmental ideas for African states, the intervention has been continuing and manifested in different scenarios. The inclusion of the principles of good governance and human rights to the discourse of development, the continued assertion of ensuring the free market system in the political economy policies and strategies, the reformulation of the role of state as a facilitator for the private sector rather than as a leading actor in the economic sector are some of the basic ideas that remained dominant. And these principles become immensely incorporated into the political economic philosophies of African leaders than being externally imposed. The so-called the blue print of Africa’s renaissance, NEPAD, can be considered with this regard. There are serious critiques against the developmental ideals of NEPAD by many particularly against its unprecedented recognition of the neoliberal paradigm (Pederson et, al, 1996; Aina, 2004; Adesina, 2002; Adesina et al, 2006).
At present, the seemingly dominant discourse of African development revolves around the Developmental State paradigm as one can see the African Economic Report of 2011 by UNECA. But there is a paradoxical relation between the philosophies of NEPAD as an economic program of the AU and the developmental state philosophies of some African countries like Botswana and Ethiopia. The state is still considered as a vital player in managing the economic sphere to a higher degree in a developmental state, unlike the neoliberal. Perhaps, this can be one of the indicators for the challenge that the continent is facing in realizing a political and economic integration i.e. the problem of setting a sound political economic and development framework at continental level. Still, the ideas that are informing high level policy decisions and strategies are less influential with respect to each member states of the continent.
Finally, the ‘post-independence’ period can be characterized by its dynamism in upholding and disregarding certain developmental ideals. But the degree to which the ideals were informed by the internal needs, aspirations and intellectual consciousness of Africans has been declining significantly. It is certainly not because of the inability of African intellectuals or philosophers to conceptualize a comprehensive developmental framework that can be used both at continental and national level. Rather it is mainly because of the mere fact that development is also a political endeavor like the knowledge tenet that informs its origin. Hence, it does not matter whether it is right or wrong, rather who is benefiting.
-----------------------------
Reference
Adesina, J. O., Graham, Y. and Olukoshi, A. (Eds). 2006, Africa and Development in the New Millennium, Zed Books Ltd., London, UK
Adesina, J. O. 2002, NEPAD and the challenge of Africa’s Development: towards a political economy of discourse. Paper presented for the 10th General Assembly of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Kampala, Uganda.
Aina, A. Tade, Chachage, S.L, Chachage and Annan_Yao, E (Eds.).2004, Globalization and Social Policy in Africa. Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Dakar, Senegal.
Engberg-Pedersen, P., Gibbon, P. , Raikes, P and Udsholt, L. (1996) Limits of Structural Adjustment: the Effects of Economic Liberalization (1986-1994), James Curry, Heinemann
Nyerere, J. 1967, Freedom and Unity, Dar es Salaam, Oxford University Press.
Pederson, E. Poul, Gibbon P., Raikes, P. Udsholt L. (Eds). 1996, Limits of Adjustment in Africa. Center for Development Research, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Toye, J. (1994) Structural Adjustment: Context, Assumptions, Origin and Diversity in Structural Adjustment and Beyond in Sub Saharan Africa; edts. Van Der Hoeven, R. and Van Der Kraaij, F. 1994; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands and James Curry Ltd, London
-------------------------------------------------
Development Ideas in ‘Post-colonial’ Africa
By Eyob Balcha
[ebalcha@gmail.com]
Ghana’s independence in 1957 championed under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah was a remarkable achievement by Ghanaians and an inspiration for other Africans who were under the yoke of colonialism. The years to follow, particularly the decade; 1960s, specifically has become a milestone period in the history of many African countries. The decolonization and independence that was achieved, most of the time, through fierce struggle and fighting was followed by a national mission of ensuring the socio-economic wellbeing of Africans. This mission by many newly independent African states coincided with the emergence of new vocabularies both in the intellectual and political-economy sphere like ‘Development’ and ‘Modernization’. Moreover this, the period has also witnessed the highest point of the political confrontation between the East and West ideological blocks.
Starting from the early days of independence, both development and modernization have been pursued by African states across various lines of thinking. This seemingly non-ending mission of achieving modernization and development has its own trajectory in which certain ideas are more dominant than others, some actors are more powerful than others and some contexts are more favorable or constraining than other situations.
-----------------
Early Independence – African Socialism
One of the most powerful developmental ideologies during the early days of independence was African Socialism. It gained its dominance mainly because of the fact that it was conceptualized and operationalized by the two most respected Pan-African leaders, namely Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah. The fundamental thesis of African Socialism is ensuring the socio-economic, political and cultural development of Africa through the rehabilitation and reactivation of the pre-colonial African communal values and institutions (Nyrere, 1967). African socialism asserts that one of the negative impacts of colonialism is disintegrating African societies from their inherent nature of humanity pursued through communal life. These African values and orientations were supplanted by the colonizers and the ideals of individualism and materialism were introduced (ibid). But both Nkrumah and Nyerere believed that these African values have never died and should be revitalized and reintroduced to inform the missions of development and modernization.
Nyerere’s attempt to institutionalize African socialism in Tanzania is known for its name, ‘Ujamaa’, which means ‘family hood’ in Swahili. Indeed its conceptualization of socialism is also diametrically opposite to the fundamental principles of socialism in European context. The central point of is his assertion is about the irrelevance of the concept class and class conflict in African socialism. The pre-colonial Africa is a classless and communal society which embraces a unique form of Humanity and mutual respect. And African socialism is based on these principles of societal interaction where members of every community have the obligation to work and share their property and production.
Socialism is essentially about human equality. African socialism is an attempt of establishing a social order with egalitarian patterns of production and consumption, an egalitarian way of life among members of the community and ensuring the principles of equality and mutual respect in the moral and intellectual consciousness of citizens within the society. Nyerere argues that, though African socialism seeks to realize such a society with equality and human dignity, it is neither a Utopian project nor an ideal attempt which is unaware of unequal capacity of individuals both in their access and ownership of resources. It is rather an attempt of using the inequalities among people for the service and best interest of everyone’s equality. It is about creating a social order in which it is impossible to use such inequalities and individual strength to the exploitation and de-humanization of others. In his words; Nyerere said ‘… if the pursuit of wealth clashes with things like human dignity and social equality, then the latter will be given priority.’ (ibid)
These principles of African socialism demanded the presence a strong state intervention at every level. Indeed; even though it was not termed as African Socialism by many African states, there was a significant attempt of realizing development and modernization in African through state led projects and interventions. It is nearly to everyone’s agreement that the early period of independence was the most favorable period for most African countries, almost in every aspect. The state was heavily engaged in doing every business like investing on education, infrastructure, health, agriculture, industry and also ensuring social welfare for citizens. But the changing trend of ideas both at the intellectual and political economic spheres made such attempts of using the state machine for development less favorable, particularly in the endeavors of establishing a capitalist society.
-----------------------
The Periods of Structural Adjustment (Mid 70s and 80s)
The honey-moon period of state led development process and also promoting the ideals of African Socialism quickly vanished for lots of reasons. The changing global trend in the political economic philosophies and the heavy deficit that states have faced in their economies were the principal reasons to look for alternative ways of realizing development, specifically capitalist development. At this point, it can be argued that the ownership of African developmental ideals were no longer in the hands of Africans rather in the corridors and board-rooms of western financial institutions, donor agencies and countries.
Most African countries were forced to bow down to the political pressures and conditionalities of the so called ‘development partners’. Thus, they were required to abandon their mission of ensuring socio-economic development through their intervention rather by facilitating the presence of a free-market oriented economic system. The state was considered as incapable of ensuring fair resource allocation and realizing the required state of socio-economic development. Rather the market was sanctified as a sole institution for achieving the aspired development in Africa. It was based on this principle that most African countries were forced to adopt the Structural Adjustment Programs financed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Engberg-Pedersen et al, 1996, p. 4-8; Toye, 1994, p. 18-21)
The developmental quagmire that most African countries were facing forced them to become dependents on external actors, mainly to secure financial assistance for their development projects. The strict conditionalities they needed to fulfill more pleasing to the interest of the external actors than to the African states or their citizens. Hence, the periods of structural adjustment were merely periods of losing the grip in determining the developmental course that Africa aspires to take. One can mention the attempt of regaining the control over determining the developmental discourse in Africa particularly through the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) and the African Alternative Framework to the Structural Adjustment Programs (AAF-SAP). But the reality is these programs were not fully operationalized into the African political economy because of the mere fact that their philosophies, ideologies and principles were not pleasing enough for those who control the financial source.
---------------------
Neoliberal and Developmental States - from 1990s till the present
Though the 1970s and 80s can be considered as the high-time for the influence of external actors in dictating developmental ideas for African states, the intervention has been continuing and manifested in different scenarios. The inclusion of the principles of good governance and human rights to the discourse of development, the continued assertion of ensuring the free market system in the political economy policies and strategies, the reformulation of the role of state as a facilitator for the private sector rather than as a leading actor in the economic sector are some of the basic ideas that remained dominant. And these principles become immensely incorporated into the political economic philosophies of African leaders than being externally imposed. The so-called the blue print of Africa’s renaissance, NEPAD, can be considered with this regard. There are serious critiques against the developmental ideals of NEPAD by many particularly against its unprecedented recognition of the neoliberal paradigm (Pederson et, al, 1996; Aina, 2004; Adesina, 2002; Adesina et al, 2006).
At present, the seemingly dominant discourse of African development revolves around the Developmental State paradigm as one can see the African Economic Report of 2011 by UNECA. But there is a paradoxical relation between the philosophies of NEPAD as an economic program of the AU and the developmental state philosophies of some African countries like Botswana and Ethiopia. The state is still considered as a vital player in managing the economic sphere to a higher degree in a developmental state, unlike the neoliberal. Perhaps, this can be one of the indicators for the challenge that the continent is facing in realizing a political and economic integration i.e. the problem of setting a sound political economic and development framework at continental level. Still, the ideas that are informing high level policy decisions and strategies are less influential with respect to each member states of the continent.
Finally, the ‘post-independence’ period can be characterized by its dynamism in upholding and disregarding certain developmental ideals. But the degree to which the ideals were informed by the internal needs, aspirations and intellectual consciousness of Africans has been declining significantly. It is certainly not because of the inability of African intellectuals or philosophers to conceptualize a comprehensive developmental framework that can be used both at continental and national level. Rather it is mainly because of the mere fact that development is also a political endeavor like the knowledge tenet that informs its origin. Hence, it does not matter whether it is right or wrong, rather who is benefiting.
-----------------------------
Reference
Adesina, J. O., Graham, Y. and Olukoshi, A. (Eds). 2006, Africa and Development in the New Millennium, Zed Books Ltd., London, UK
Adesina, J. O. 2002, NEPAD and the challenge of Africa’s Development: towards a political economy of discourse. Paper presented for the 10th General Assembly of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Kampala, Uganda.
Aina, A. Tade, Chachage, S.L, Chachage and Annan_Yao, E (Eds.).2004, Globalization and Social Policy in Africa. Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Dakar, Senegal.
Engberg-Pedersen, P., Gibbon, P. , Raikes, P and Udsholt, L. (1996) Limits of Structural Adjustment: the Effects of Economic Liberalization (1986-1994), James Curry, Heinemann
Nyerere, J. 1967, Freedom and Unity, Dar es Salaam, Oxford University Press.
Pederson, E. Poul, Gibbon P., Raikes, P. Udsholt L. (Eds). 1996, Limits of Adjustment in Africa. Center for Development Research, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Toye, J. (1994) Structural Adjustment: Context, Assumptions, Origin and Diversity in Structural Adjustment and Beyond in Sub Saharan Africa; edts. Van Der Hoeven, R. and Van Der Kraaij, F. 1994; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands and James Curry Ltd, London
(Ed's note: the first version of
the above article was published on Diplomat Magazine Feb. 2012 Issue No. 2.
There is a slight change in the article.)
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NEVIS Review No 13 Section II, Ref # 13.2
NEVIS Review No 13
Section II
Ref # 13.2
March 25, 2013
------------------
Inflation and economic growth: an estimate of the threshold level of inflation
By Emerta Asaminew
ABSTRACT
Although Ethiopia has been a low inflation country, recently, double digit inflation has become one of the main macroeconomic concerns of policy makers and the society. By adopting the threshold approach, this paper is primarily meant to estimate the optimal level of inflation in Ethiopia around which inflation affects economic growth optimally. Applying this modeling technique on the data from 1970-2010, this paper established that inflation level of about 8-10 percent is optimal for Ethiopia. Any inflation level significantly above or below this level may be a deterrent to a long-term and sustainable economic growth. Hence, the monetary authority (National Bank of Ethiopia) should work to maintain the inflation level close to the threshold level. Good monetary and fiscal contributions are also needed to maintain the inflation level around the desirable range. The inflation target of 6 percent set in the GTP may not only be so ambitious, given the current context of the Ethiopian economy, but also a little below our threshold estimate. The estimation result is robust to alternative specification
[----]
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Section II
Ref # 13.2
March 25, 2013
------------------
Inflation and economic growth: an estimate of the threshold level of inflation
By Emerta Asaminew
ABSTRACT
Although Ethiopia has been a low inflation country, recently, double digit inflation has become one of the main macroeconomic concerns of policy makers and the society. By adopting the threshold approach, this paper is primarily meant to estimate the optimal level of inflation in Ethiopia around which inflation affects economic growth optimally. Applying this modeling technique on the data from 1970-2010, this paper established that inflation level of about 8-10 percent is optimal for Ethiopia. Any inflation level significantly above or below this level may be a deterrent to a long-term and sustainable economic growth. Hence, the monetary authority (National Bank of Ethiopia) should work to maintain the inflation level close to the threshold level. Good monetary and fiscal contributions are also needed to maintain the inflation level around the desirable range. The inflation target of 6 percent set in the GTP may not only be so ambitious, given the current context of the Ethiopian economy, but also a little below our threshold estimate. The estimation result is robust to alternative specification
[----]
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
The estimation procedure gave some interesting results. First, only the second period lag of inflation affects economic growth significantly. Second, we found a non-linear relationship between growth and inflation in Ethiopia over the period 1971-2010. Third inflation level within the range of 8-10 percent is optimal for economic growth. The estimation result is robust to choice of variables and estimation technique.
The findings also have important policy implications. First inflation is not generally harmful for growth in Ethiopia. Second, the monetary authority should keep the inflation level with in the single digit level, but lower than our estimate. Third, the inflation target of 6 percent for the period of GTP is not only very low, but also ambitious given the recent state of the economy and the planned projects. Fourth, the policy advice of the international lending agencies of reducing the inflation level to a very low level (close to zero) are likely to adversely affect economic growth.
(Source- Proceedings of the ninth international conference on the Ethiopian economy, Volume II, Ethiopian Economics Association, June 2012)
----------------------------------//----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEVIS Review No 13, Section I, Ref # 13.1
NEVIS Review No 13, Section I
Ref # 13.1
March 25, 2013
-----------------------
The trend of inflation in Ethiopia
by Mesfin Tekle
In April 17, 2011, I penned an article on inflation in Addis Fortune newspaper. At the time of writing that article, inflation seemed to have gone out of control. [This is the link to that article: http://www.addisfortune.com/Vol_10_No_572_Archive/Viewpoint.htm
Ref # 13.1
March 25, 2013
-----------------------
The trend of inflation in Ethiopia
by Mesfin Tekle
In April 17, 2011, I penned an article on inflation in Addis Fortune newspaper. At the time of writing that article, inflation seemed to have gone out of control. [This is the link to that article: http://www.addisfortune.com/Vol_10_No_572_Archive/Viewpoint.htm
The good news since then is that inflation in the last quarter seems to have come down remarkably giving consumers a breathing room and hope to a frustrated public. However, the government’s promise to bring it down to single digits still remains a panacea. One of the main causes of inflation in Ethiopia is excess money supply. Most of the spending has been on building and expanding the infrastructure of the country to help attract more foreign direct investment and grow the economy. However, in the aftermath of this massive spending, inflation had gone out of control-putting savers and consumers under the strain of inflationary pressure for the last four or five years. Is the downtrend in the rate of inflation in the last quarter sustainable? It may be unlikely. The country still needs to spend more on new and unfinished infrastructure projects. Our export is significantly lower than expected. The target was five billion dollar for the year but reports indicate in seven months export earnings were only 1.7 billion dollars.
NBE is also forcing banks to lend 40% of their loan portfolio to short-term borrowers. Banks have concentrated on lending to long-term borrowers to avoid buying those pesky government bonds. If banks are forced to lend 40% of their portfolio to short term borrowers so the government can absorb 27% of the total loan portfolio to redirect it in to its chosen projects, the unintended consequence might be another bout of inflationary pressure. Moreover, the high cost of living due to untamed inflation has already made life difficult for the average citizen. The purchasing power of the Birr has also alarmingly deteriorated over the years. It is true that per capita income has increased significantly but most of the gain has been lost to inflation, not savings or investment.
Unless we expand our export in targeted sectors and tame the growth of imports, the value of our currency will continue to deteriorate. We also have to seriously look at infrastructure spending, if the funding continues to be tied to an unsustainable easy money policy.
Therefore, the above points are some of the updates in Ethiopian macro-economic landscape since I wrote the article on inflation on 2011.
-------------------------//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Notification: request for nomination
NEVIS Editorial team is planning to interview eminent people on issues that deal with Ethiopian political dynamics, economic issues, creative arts and literature, social and technological/innovation issues. These eminent people may be academicians/intellectuals/
Please include the full name of the person, why you nominated him/her, the kind of questions/issues you want NEVIS editorial team to ask, and his contact address.
You may send us by our e-mail: editor.nevis@yahoo.com
Please all try to promote the page to your circle of friend so that they will also make use of the articles.
Thank you
NEVIS ET*
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
NEVIS Review No 12, Section III, Ref # 12.3
NEVIS Review No 12
Section III
Ref # 12.3
March 11, 2012
The Metaphysics of Wax and Gold
By Messay Kebede (PhD)
In his book, Wax & Gold , Levine attempts the analysis of what he thinks to be the spirit of the Amhara and, by extension, of Ethiopian society in general. He derives this spirit from a dominant form of poetic expression, semna worq , translated as wax and gold. As he himself says, this "poetic phenomenon . . . constitutes both a key to the genius of Amhara culture and a highly distinctive Amhara contribution to Ethiopian culture.”1 The poetic form is "built on two semantic layers. The apparent, figurative meaning of the words is called 'wax'; their more or less hidden actual significance is the 'gold'."2 The prototype being the superposition within a single verb of the apparent meaning on the hidden significance, ambiguity, or double-entendre pervades the whole style. This art of ambiguity is what Levine calls the genius of Amhara culture.
The poetic style is no doubt highly praised in Amhara culture. It was even deemed to be the crowning achievement of erudition in the traditional society. But the way Levine defines the style hardly accords with the place it is supposed to occupy. Rather than semna worq , the book stresses the pivotal place of authority and individualism in the Amhara society. Had the book been written without reference to the spirit of wax and gold, no essential loss of meaning would have occurred. Its usage is indeed very limited. According to Levine,
it provides the medium for an inexhaustible supply of humor . . . a means for insulting one's fellows in a socially approved manner . . . a technique fordefending the sphere of privacy against excessive intrusion . . . the one outlet for criticism of authority figures."3
Scarcely can one maintain that these functions fulfill a "way of life."4 Moreover, other than the cult of ambiguity and duplicity, no positive approach to life seems to2 issue from the poetic form. All the analysis does is to give support to James Bruce's remark according to which "dissimulation, in all ranks of these people, is as natural as breathing."
Yet other known facts, such as the deep religiosity of the Ethiopians and the place of authority, do not mesh with Levine's remarks. One important distinction which is never ambiguous or dissimulated is authority. An Ethiopian does not even take the least care to conceal his authority or to disguise it with courteous manners. Authority is displayed and affirmed with great stress and ostentation. On the subject of who rules, who has authority, no attenuation or ambiguity of whatever kind is customary. Ambiguity may permeate the behavior of the subordinate, but not the manners, place, and right of the superior. The individual who controls power can be contested, but not power as such; the frankness, firmness, and ostentation of power are appreciated.
According to Levine, the Amhara are "austere religionists and spirited warriors."6 How does this harmonize with the alleged infatuation for dissimulation? Can this religiosity be cultivated independently of loyalty and steadfastness? Knowing the great impact of religious ideas on Amhara culture, anything less than a strong sense of commitment rings false. The very survival of Ethiopia, this unfailing commitment to Christianity and to a long-standing sociopolitical system, militates against the importance attached by Levine to the "cult of ambiguity."7
May it not be, then, that the poetic style, as defined by Levine, is a degenerated and secularized form of a deeper mode of conception? Degenerated not in the sense of being distorted, but in the sense of being used for purposes outside the original function. Some such interpretation is forwarded by Albert S. Gérard, who detects in Ethiopian poetry "a unique kind of wisdom, dark and3 deep."8 In particular, the distinction between deeper and outer meanings would be "a propaedeutic to the study of religious texts."9 Its philosophical significance would be that "by affording exercise in fathoming secrets it 'opens the mind' and thereby enhances the student's ability to approach the divine mysteries."10 In other words, before being the art of cultivating ambiguity, the spirit of wax and gold carried a method of approaching religious texts and mysteries. Viewed from this angle, it turns out to be a method of grasping reality or truth in the manner of Western thinking, whose distinction between essence and appearance is only too familiar. Evidently, wax stands for appearance and gold for essence or truth
Remember Plato's simile of the cave. In order to explain the two orders of existence, the visible and the intelligible, Socrates imagines the case of prisoners held in a cave. The prisoners can only see the shadows of things projected on the wall by a fire. In this condition, asks Socrates, "would they not assume that the shadows they saw were real things?"11 The simile presents the visible or the physical world as a projected and distorted image of the true world, which remains distinct. Knowledge consists in the ascent of the mind from appearance to reality. Not only is appearance veiling reality, it is also usurping its place by passing itself off as the truth. The purpose of knowledge is to reinstate the truth by denouncing the usurpation and discovering the veiled, hidden reality.
The method of wax and gold is quite reminiscent of this conception of things. Wax is the appearance which hides, veils reality. In falsely claiming the status of reality, it is perforce misleading. The gold is the truth, the essence, the object of knowledge: it is arrived at by brushing away the appearance. The goal of the method is to reinstate the truth by extracting it from a distorting veil. This is exactly4 how an Ethiopian scholar defines the spirit of wax and gold:
these two elements [wax and gold] have the same color, but the gold is hidden by the wax–and it is always the gold which gives the true meaning of the distich. It is obtained by pronouncing the words in a different way.12
Far from being the cult of duplicity, wax and gold is then the art of discovering and reinstating the truth. It is in fact a theory of knowledge on which an ontology is also grafted. The ontology affirms the dualism of reality, better still the existence of reality behind the visible appearance. Consequently, a form of knowledge able to distinguish between reality and its misleading double is required. In discerning and extracting in what is apparent the hidden truth, the knowledge declares its aptitude for understanding divine mysteries.
That the spirit of wax and gold is a real propaedeutic to religious studies becomes evident when we see to what extent it corresponds with the Ethiopian conception of the divine. For the Ethiopians, there is a fundamental duality in the nature of God. Though "everything that happens reflects His active will,"13 yet this will is not transparent, so that "Abyssinians view God above all as mystery ."14 The mystery of God and His omnipotence constitute the dyad appearance-essence. No direct, transparent correspondence exists between His will and its reflections in the visible world. Since reflections are such that the will is hidden, the knowledge of their real meaning requires the surpassing of the visible manifestation.5
It is in the nature of things that the transcendent and boundless power of God cannot express itself through world phenomena without undergoing distortion. The immense disparity between the created world and God prevents any direct translation so that the language of God is not outwardly intelligible. Moreover, the visible world is impregnated with the tendency to appear independent and selfsufficient. This pretension to self-sufficiency is the manner in which deceit is instilled into the thinking of human beings. In this sense, the poetic style expresses the deep religiosity of the Ethiopians, the complete dependence of the created world on the Creator, its utter nothingness outside the will by which it exists and is what it is. The religiosity is stamped with deep wisdom since, behind the pretension of all things to being entities, it detects the gold which controls their nature and destiny. Plowden gives a good idea of this dependence:
The name of God is nowhere in such constant use as in the mouths of the Abyssinians. They imagine a special interference in every act of their lives, and in everything that occurs to themselves. A thief will piously praise God for having assisted him a dangerous robbery; a man will say, 'God threw my enemy in my way, and I slew him;' the death of a dog, the breaking of a bottle, a slip in the mud, are sufficiently important to be attributed to the immediate will of the Divinity.15
In defining the moral implications of the Ethiopian poems, an Ethiopian author rightly says: they "teach patience to those who suffer, moderation to those who are happy, to the former the eventuality of becoming the latter."16 The complete dependence on God turns every acquired thing into a mere gift, but even more so into a fleeting possession. Everything is reversible and nothing is definitively acquired. To think otherwise is to be the victim of appearances and to forget who is the master of all things. What has been called duplicity or dissimulation is in reality6 the deep sense of the fleeting nature of things, of the reversal of fortunes and positions, of the absolute dependence of all things on God. Things, including living beings and persons, are not ends in and of themselves; they are by and for God. They are, so to speak, no more than puppets. To know this is wisdom, for disasters await those who, overlooking this dependence, consider themselves as entities. For the Ethiopians, these people commit the highest sin, the sin of presumption and arrogance that they express by the words tigab or tibit.
1 Donald Levine, Wax & Gold (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 5.
2 Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 9.
4. Ibid.
5. James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964),
p. 83.
6 Levine, Wax & Gold, p. 5.
7. Ibid., p. 10.
8. Albert S. Gérard, Four African Literatures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 273.
9. Ibid., p. 274.
10. Ibid.
11. Plato, The Republic (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 279.
12. Mahteme-Selassie W. Maskal, "Portrait retrospectif d'un gentilhomme ethiopien," in Proceedings of
the Third International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa: Artistic Printers, 1970), p. 67
13. Levine, Wax & Gold, p. 67.
14. Ibid.
15. W. C. Plowden, Travels in Abyssinia (Westmead: Gregg International Publishers Limited, 1972), p. 91.
16. Mahteme-Selassie, “Portrait retrospectif,” p. 67.
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(Ed’s note-The above article first appeared in Wax and Gold facebook community's site. Professor Messay Kebede teaches philosophy courses in University of Dayton. He has also designed and taught new courses, namely, African Philosophy, Value and Economics, and Professional Ethics in a Global Community. His research work has focused on writing articles on issues of development and culture change and completing a book on African philosophy. He has a Ph.D from the University of Grenoble, France.)
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Section III
Ref # 12.3
March 11, 2012
The Metaphysics of Wax and Gold
By Messay Kebede (PhD)
In his book, Wax & Gold , Levine attempts the analysis of what he thinks to be the spirit of the Amhara and, by extension, of Ethiopian society in general. He derives this spirit from a dominant form of poetic expression, semna worq , translated as wax and gold. As he himself says, this "poetic phenomenon . . . constitutes both a key to the genius of Amhara culture and a highly distinctive Amhara contribution to Ethiopian culture.”1 The poetic form is "built on two semantic layers. The apparent, figurative meaning of the words is called 'wax'; their more or less hidden actual significance is the 'gold'."2 The prototype being the superposition within a single verb of the apparent meaning on the hidden significance, ambiguity, or double-entendre pervades the whole style. This art of ambiguity is what Levine calls the genius of Amhara culture.
The poetic style is no doubt highly praised in Amhara culture. It was even deemed to be the crowning achievement of erudition in the traditional society. But the way Levine defines the style hardly accords with the place it is supposed to occupy. Rather than semna worq , the book stresses the pivotal place of authority and individualism in the Amhara society. Had the book been written without reference to the spirit of wax and gold, no essential loss of meaning would have occurred. Its usage is indeed very limited. According to Levine,
it provides the medium for an inexhaustible supply of humor . . . a means for insulting one's fellows in a socially approved manner . . . a technique fordefending the sphere of privacy against excessive intrusion . . . the one outlet for criticism of authority figures."3
Scarcely can one maintain that these functions fulfill a "way of life."4 Moreover, other than the cult of ambiguity and duplicity, no positive approach to life seems to2 issue from the poetic form. All the analysis does is to give support to James Bruce's remark according to which "dissimulation, in all ranks of these people, is as natural as breathing."
Yet other known facts, such as the deep religiosity of the Ethiopians and the place of authority, do not mesh with Levine's remarks. One important distinction which is never ambiguous or dissimulated is authority. An Ethiopian does not even take the least care to conceal his authority or to disguise it with courteous manners. Authority is displayed and affirmed with great stress and ostentation. On the subject of who rules, who has authority, no attenuation or ambiguity of whatever kind is customary. Ambiguity may permeate the behavior of the subordinate, but not the manners, place, and right of the superior. The individual who controls power can be contested, but not power as such; the frankness, firmness, and ostentation of power are appreciated.
According to Levine, the Amhara are "austere religionists and spirited warriors."6 How does this harmonize with the alleged infatuation for dissimulation? Can this religiosity be cultivated independently of loyalty and steadfastness? Knowing the great impact of religious ideas on Amhara culture, anything less than a strong sense of commitment rings false. The very survival of Ethiopia, this unfailing commitment to Christianity and to a long-standing sociopolitical system, militates against the importance attached by Levine to the "cult of ambiguity."7
May it not be, then, that the poetic style, as defined by Levine, is a degenerated and secularized form of a deeper mode of conception? Degenerated not in the sense of being distorted, but in the sense of being used for purposes outside the original function. Some such interpretation is forwarded by Albert S. Gérard, who detects in Ethiopian poetry "a unique kind of wisdom, dark and3 deep."8 In particular, the distinction between deeper and outer meanings would be "a propaedeutic to the study of religious texts."9 Its philosophical significance would be that "by affording exercise in fathoming secrets it 'opens the mind' and thereby enhances the student's ability to approach the divine mysteries."10 In other words, before being the art of cultivating ambiguity, the spirit of wax and gold carried a method of approaching religious texts and mysteries. Viewed from this angle, it turns out to be a method of grasping reality or truth in the manner of Western thinking, whose distinction between essence and appearance is only too familiar. Evidently, wax stands for appearance and gold for essence or truth
Remember Plato's simile of the cave. In order to explain the two orders of existence, the visible and the intelligible, Socrates imagines the case of prisoners held in a cave. The prisoners can only see the shadows of things projected on the wall by a fire. In this condition, asks Socrates, "would they not assume that the shadows they saw were real things?"11 The simile presents the visible or the physical world as a projected and distorted image of the true world, which remains distinct. Knowledge consists in the ascent of the mind from appearance to reality. Not only is appearance veiling reality, it is also usurping its place by passing itself off as the truth. The purpose of knowledge is to reinstate the truth by denouncing the usurpation and discovering the veiled, hidden reality.
The method of wax and gold is quite reminiscent of this conception of things. Wax is the appearance which hides, veils reality. In falsely claiming the status of reality, it is perforce misleading. The gold is the truth, the essence, the object of knowledge: it is arrived at by brushing away the appearance. The goal of the method is to reinstate the truth by extracting it from a distorting veil. This is exactly4 how an Ethiopian scholar defines the spirit of wax and gold:
these two elements [wax and gold] have the same color, but the gold is hidden by the wax–and it is always the gold which gives the true meaning of the distich. It is obtained by pronouncing the words in a different way.12
Far from being the cult of duplicity, wax and gold is then the art of discovering and reinstating the truth. It is in fact a theory of knowledge on which an ontology is also grafted. The ontology affirms the dualism of reality, better still the existence of reality behind the visible appearance. Consequently, a form of knowledge able to distinguish between reality and its misleading double is required. In discerning and extracting in what is apparent the hidden truth, the knowledge declares its aptitude for understanding divine mysteries.
That the spirit of wax and gold is a real propaedeutic to religious studies becomes evident when we see to what extent it corresponds with the Ethiopian conception of the divine. For the Ethiopians, there is a fundamental duality in the nature of God. Though "everything that happens reflects His active will,"13 yet this will is not transparent, so that "Abyssinians view God above all as mystery ."14 The mystery of God and His omnipotence constitute the dyad appearance-essence. No direct, transparent correspondence exists between His will and its reflections in the visible world. Since reflections are such that the will is hidden, the knowledge of their real meaning requires the surpassing of the visible manifestation.5
It is in the nature of things that the transcendent and boundless power of God cannot express itself through world phenomena without undergoing distortion. The immense disparity between the created world and God prevents any direct translation so that the language of God is not outwardly intelligible. Moreover, the visible world is impregnated with the tendency to appear independent and selfsufficient. This pretension to self-sufficiency is the manner in which deceit is instilled into the thinking of human beings. In this sense, the poetic style expresses the deep religiosity of the Ethiopians, the complete dependence of the created world on the Creator, its utter nothingness outside the will by which it exists and is what it is. The religiosity is stamped with deep wisdom since, behind the pretension of all things to being entities, it detects the gold which controls their nature and destiny. Plowden gives a good idea of this dependence:
The name of God is nowhere in such constant use as in the mouths of the Abyssinians. They imagine a special interference in every act of their lives, and in everything that occurs to themselves. A thief will piously praise God for having assisted him a dangerous robbery; a man will say, 'God threw my enemy in my way, and I slew him;' the death of a dog, the breaking of a bottle, a slip in the mud, are sufficiently important to be attributed to the immediate will of the Divinity.15
In defining the moral implications of the Ethiopian poems, an Ethiopian author rightly says: they "teach patience to those who suffer, moderation to those who are happy, to the former the eventuality of becoming the latter."16 The complete dependence on God turns every acquired thing into a mere gift, but even more so into a fleeting possession. Everything is reversible and nothing is definitively acquired. To think otherwise is to be the victim of appearances and to forget who is the master of all things. What has been called duplicity or dissimulation is in reality6 the deep sense of the fleeting nature of things, of the reversal of fortunes and positions, of the absolute dependence of all things on God. Things, including living beings and persons, are not ends in and of themselves; they are by and for God. They are, so to speak, no more than puppets. To know this is wisdom, for disasters await those who, overlooking this dependence, consider themselves as entities. For the Ethiopians, these people commit the highest sin, the sin of presumption and arrogance that they express by the words tigab or tibit.
1 Donald Levine, Wax & Gold (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 5.
2 Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 9.
4. Ibid.
5. James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964),
p. 83.
6 Levine, Wax & Gold, p. 5.
7. Ibid., p. 10.
8. Albert S. Gérard, Four African Literatures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 273.
9. Ibid., p. 274.
10. Ibid.
11. Plato, The Republic (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 279.
12. Mahteme-Selassie W. Maskal, "Portrait retrospectif d'un gentilhomme ethiopien," in Proceedings of
the Third International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa: Artistic Printers, 1970), p. 67
13. Levine, Wax & Gold, p. 67.
14. Ibid.
15. W. C. Plowden, Travels in Abyssinia (Westmead: Gregg International Publishers Limited, 1972), p. 91.
16. Mahteme-Selassie, “Portrait retrospectif,” p. 67.
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(Ed’s note-The above article first appeared in Wax and Gold facebook community's site. Professor Messay Kebede teaches philosophy courses in University of Dayton. He has also designed and taught new courses, namely, African Philosophy, Value and Economics, and Professional Ethics in a Global Community. His research work has focused on writing articles on issues of development and culture change and completing a book on African philosophy. He has a Ph.D from the University of Grenoble, France.)
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Monday, March 11, 2013
NEVIS Review No 12, Section II , Ref # 12.2
NEVIS Review No 12
Section II
Ref # 12.2
March 11, 2013
Religious Values as Correctives for a Corrupt and Corrupting Culture
By Tedla G Woldeyohannes
ABSTRACT: The central claims of this paper are aimed at bringing out the moral consequences of some of the themes from the wax and gold tradition especially about interpersonal communication. Communication is interpersonal; so is the domain of morality. I’m not going to talk about the ethics of communication. My focus will be on the consequences of interpersonal communication for the domain of morality and human character or behavior. Accordingly, I want to explore the moral consequences of some of interpersonal communications since communications among moral agents such as us human beings cannot be morally neutral or indifferent. Furthermore, I’ll argue that widely shared religious values can play a corrective role in addressing undesirable moral consequences of the wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication.
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In the first section of the paper I’ll focus on an analysis of conceptual relationships among key practices of wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication. I’ll particularly focus on “deception”, being “secretive” and “suspicious”, and “yelugnta and pretension”, as widespread modes of interpersonal communication in the Ethiopian society. In the course of doing conceptual analysis I’ll draw out the moral implications or consequences of the wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication. In the second section I’ll show some important roles religious values or practices can play as a corrective to corrupting cultural values and practices that are directly related to the wax and gold tradition of communication that I discuss in the first section. In the third section I’ll conclude the paper.
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I
Prof. Levine’s book, Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture, will serve me as a starting point for the central claims I’ll be making in this paper. I turn to Wax and Gold, the book, for examples of the tradition of interpersonal communication among the Ethiopian people, which is an extension of the Amhara culture, which is the subject of Prof. Levine’s work. I’ll mostly focus on the role of the following widely shared practices as key in interpersonal communication among Ethiopians: “deception”, being “secretive”, and “suspicious”, and allied concepts and practices such “pretension”, “lying”. My interest is not in the linguistic or poetic aspect of the wax and gold tradition. My project goes beyond description and descriptive analysis of the wax and gold tradition to an evaluation of the moral consequences for interpersonal human relationship and I’ll argue that the negative consequences outweigh the positive. My approach is distinctly philosophical in the sense that my interest is in the notions or concepts that play crucial role in the wax and gold tradition of communication.
Prof. Levine writes, “In essence, wax and gold is simply a more refined and stylized manifestation of the Amhara’s basic manner of communicating.”1 He also notes, “Wax and gold embodies this fundamental indirection in speech by means of the studied use of ambiguity.”2 Two things to note from the preceding quotations from Prof. Levine: (1) That wax and gold is a basic manner of communication, and (2) that wax and gold tradition prizes indirection as opposed to a direct manner of communication and hence it consequently prizes ambiguity. Let us take “deception” as our first example which is a widely held practice among most Ethiopians.
On Deception: Prof. Levine notes different manifestations and functions of deception. Some manifestations of deception are “for reasons of considerateness not wanting to tell the other person something that will offend him.”3 However, most of the time deception “is obviously being used to further one man’s interests at the expense of another’s.” Now let’s reflect for a moment on what it means to engage in deception in the context of wax and gold tradition and what the very idea of deception conceptually involves. In the context of the wax and gold tradition deception can be considered morally neutral. In the Ethiopian culture deception is embraced and widely practiced in its various manifestations. But embracing and practicing deception as morally-neutral makes it hard to figure out the demarcation line between the morally-neutral senses of deception from the morally-involved senses. This ambiguity is one reason for the perpetuation of deception and why it is widely embraced without much debate about the moral challenge embracing and practicing deception presents for a society.
The ambiguity about the function of deception opens a room for ambivalence towards lies as well. Generally, lies involve deception. Typically, a lie aims at distorting what is the case or the truth and in order to achieve this goal one must intentionally engage in distortion manifested as deception. Since a lie necessarily involves deception, deception becomes a modus operandi for a lie. Furthermore, generally, lying is morally wrong. If lying is generally morally wrong, and if the modus operandi for lying is deception, then in some sense deception is and can be morally wrong. But exactly it is this moral implication of deception that needs to be brought out beyond its apparently morally-neutral senses that are at the heart of discussions in the wax and gold tradition. A community that views deception without moral implications of deception can easily justify various manifestations of lies as well. The marriage between deceptions and lies finds a perfect niche in the wax and gold tradition.
Prof. Levine also notes that deception has a more subtle form as well that is achieved by “omitting the truth rather than committing a falsehood.”5 A moment’s reflection on this form or manifestation of deception would show that a practice in deception is a complex phenomenon that requires conscious decisions, being intentional, on the part of the one who means to engage in the act and process of deception. A person who intentionally omits some aspect of the truth in order to conceal the whole truth can do this for a variety of reasons. But the very exercise of engaging in revealing and concealing one aspect of the truth against the other aspect of the truth militates against a habit of speaking the truth, period. This habit of being selective about telling aspects of the truth is not conducive for development of human character traits such as personal integrity, transparency, honesty, and truthfulness, which are virtues that do not sit well with vicious or undesirable character traits such as deception, dishonesty, duplicity, and lying. It is commonplace to distinguish between virtues and vices in human characters and a tradition of interpersonal communication such as wax and gold that blurs such common distinctions in human character traits is not conducive for human flourishing. It is plausible to think that what kind of persons we are is largely constituted by our characters and a person’s moral character is a function of the kind of moral virtues or vices a person has or lacks. Let’s now take a moment to reflect on the moral implications of being “secretive” and “suspicious”, which Prof. Levine observes as part of the wax and gold tradition in relation to “deception.”
On being “Secretive” and “Suspicious”: We’ve seen the moral or ethical implications of deception. Now let’s take being “secretive” first. Being secretive does not appear to be morally-laden on the surface or it does not seem to have moral implications. But a reflection on the practice of secrecy can show that there is more to it than its appearance to be morally-neutral. Being secretive requires of a person to be suspicious of another person in the sense of intending to withhold information that could be shared otherwise. We don’t need to claim that a person should share any and all private information with anyone in order to avoid being negatively seen about his/her being secretive. That would be too much of a requirement and an implausible one to accept. But being secretive with respect to most people one encounters (except one’s personal friends and there can even be an exception even among close friends) in the sense of being suspicious of them requires one to judge others that they have potentially “hidden motives.” To judge others in the absence of any evidence that they have “hidden motives”, if and when they do not in fact have anything as such, is to hold potentially false beliefs about others.
To hold even potentially false beliefs about others in the absence of evidence is to practically hold false beliefs since there is no difference, practically speaking, in holding a potentially false belief from holding a false belief. One who acts on the basis of a potentially false belief, when one is suspicious of the other person without any evidence of hidden motives of the other, would act in the same way as someone who would act on the basis of a false belief. Now to hold a false belief about the other is engaging in distortions of the truth about the other person, and distortions of the truth about the other person since they are intentional amount to lying about the other and lying, generally, is morally wrong. Now a reflection on being “secretive” and being “suspicious” of the other brought us to a conclusion that such practices in interpersonal relations have moral consequences. That means, these widely practiced ways of interpersonal communications have morally undesirable consequences.
On Yelugnta and Pretense: Now let’s consider one widely practiced form of interpersonal relation among Ethiopians. I’m thinking about yelugnta and the role of yelugnta in the interpersonal relations among Ethiopians. I don’t know any equivalent word in English for yelugnta and the difficulty in finding an equivalent English word for it, I think, is due to the indigenous nature of the phenomenon or the culture of yelugnta. I’ll explain the phenomenon and will argue that it is closely related to “deception” and “pretension” but not identical to either of them.
I begin with what it means to be pretentious and argue that being pretentious is approximately functionally equivalent to yelugnta. Being pretentious and engaging in yelugnta seem to function the same way, more or less. They both require for a person to think and act in ways that are intended to hide the truth about the person with an intention to make others believe what actually is not the case about the person. Now when a person engages in an act mainly motivated by what others would think about him/her so that what he/she does would be deemed the" right" thing or "acceptable" by one's community I take that notion captures an act driven by yelugnta. But what has happened in this process is acting in such a way that others believe what was done was done simply because what was done was the right thing, period; no motivation to be "accepted" having driven the person to act as such. That is what I mean to say yelugnta is functionally equivalent to be that of being pretentious.
How do yelugnta and deception relate? I'm inclined to think that a careful study of this phenomenon, especially yelugnta, has a potential to provide a goldmine of opportunity about reasoning in moral psychology [=reasoning about interpersonal relationships] of the majority of Ethiopians. Both these modes of interpersonal relations, i.e., deception and yelugnta, are widely practiced in the Ethiopian culture. Now, we’ve already seen that deception is intentional; there is no deception without intention. We can also say that there is no yelugnta motivated act without intention.7 Therefore, both deception and yelugnta are intentional in a harmless or morally neutral sense, at least on the surface. But that does not mean they are identical. One can engage in yelugnta driven act out of a desire to do something good to the other person. Also, some acts of deception can also be done out of a desire to do some good to the other person. Earlier I’ve argued that lying requires deception and there is no lying without intentionally engaging in deception, or distortion of the truth. It’s argued that since, generally, lying is wrong and since lying requires deception at least some form of deception is morally wrong as well.
But what about yelugnta? It’s hard to think of yelugnta that does not functionally [not necessarily semantically or by way of meaning] involve some form of pretense. Now pretense involves some form of deception. Furthermore, pretense aims at making the other person believe about oneself what is not true of oneself. But to aim, intentionally, at making the other person believe something that is a lie or falsehood about oneself is itself lying. Though it’s not explicit yelugnta, in the way it functions as pretense, implicitly involves lying about oneself. Since lying is generally morally wrong, one can conclude that at least some forms of yelugnta are morally wrong.
Let me give an example to make the point rather concrete: This discussion about yelugnta would be just academic if we put aside what it practically means for an average Ethiopian to engage in yelugnta driven actions that cost so much financially and so much personal pain when one reflects on what a person does is largely to communicate something to the other: I’m not as poor as you might think, I’m doing alright kind of message which takes so many forms and shapes. Take an example of wedding in the Ethiopian culture. So many families, the ones getting married, their parents and friends usually go a long way to make the wedding a huge festival when in reality they can’t afford even the tiniest fraction of the amount of money spent on the wedding. Such lavish weddings usually are just face-saving acts pure and simple. The motive? Not purely the well-being of those who come to eat the feast. Not primarily, at least. “Keman anishe” [I’m no less than the other such as my neighbor] reasoning is the yelugnta-driven reasoning in its robust way. This is what I am trying to get at when I argue for a functional equivalence of yelugnta and pretense, which is posturing in a way that speaks something that is not true of the person. Those POOR families who throw a huge feast in the form of a wedding ARE NOT IN FACT RICH folks! They appear to be rich when in fact they are poor. This yelugnta driven act communicates falsehood about oneself with a hope that others would believe it as the truth. This face-saving act aims at seeking respect and dignity for oneself or one’s family but the manner in which the dignity is sought involves some form of deception or posturing or even pretense—to appear to others what is not, in fact, true of oneself. Examples like this are countless and they are part and parcel of countless Ethiopian stories.
From the preceding reasoning one can plausibly infer that to engage in yelugnta implicates one in a development of character that is, more or less, disposed to the development of either virtues such as personal integrity, transparency, truthfulness, and honesty or vices such as lack of integrity, lack of transparency, lack of truthfulness or dishonesty. It’s obvious that yelugnta-driven action is more prone to predispose a person to the development of more vices than virtues even if yelugnta by itself, arguably, is not a vice.
Below I’ll briefly argue that to engage in yelugnta can contribute to character formation in an undesirable way. But before that I want to say a few points about pretension as one widely practiced mode of interpersonal communication especially among educated Ethiopians. I single out especially educated Ethiopians because they are conscious that their society expects them to be in the know about many things. We have already noted that deception and yelugnta are both widespread practices in the Ethiopian society. In a society that is prone to deception and lies and yelugnta it is not hard to find a conducive environment for pretension, in its own right, to be equally widespread. One can hardly miss an opportunity with a bit educated Ethiopians about issues that are considered an educated person should have a say. These issues most likely would include politics, and religion and even science. One might want to talk about arrogance among a bit educated Ethiopians rather than pretension. I’m inclined to think that arrogance, no less widespread than pretension, is a function or an extension or a manifestation of pretension. A person who finds it hard to admit lack of knowledge could easily be an arrogant person as well. Of course, conversely, it’d be easy for a humble person to admit lack of knowledge about a particular issue since humility is consistent with open-mindedness and a desire to learn from others. On the other hand, one can argue that arrogance is consistent with pretension and closed-mindedness and a refusal to learn from others. These notions are closely related and they play a significant role in the interpersonal communication among many Ethiopians.
Now to a brief remark on character formation and the role yelugnta and pretension would play in character formation. Character formation is intentional, a person can’t be accidentally virtuous, and it requires a practice over an extended period of time. It is not implausible to claim that engaging in practices-- such as yelugnta and pretension-- that predispose a person to deception, dishonesty, speaking lies, etc are conducive for formation of character that is less than virtuous. Even if one should resist claiming a person who engages in yelugnta develops vicious character traits it’s not implausible to argue that yelugnta when it functions as pretense is more conducive for formation of some vices than virtues. As virtues are intentional and are formed as a result of habitual practices, so are vices. A person who engages in habitual acts of yelugnta and pretense is less likely to be predisposed to developing virtues that are central for the formation of virtuous character traits such as truthfulness, honesty, personal integrity, openness. Earlier I claimed that it is plausible to think that what kind of persons we are is largely constituted by our characters and a person’s moral character is a function of the kind of moral virtues or vices a person has or lacks. Again, the same reasoning applies to the habitual practice of yelugnta and pretension such that the moral character of those who engage in yelugnta and pretension is a function of the kind of moral virtues or vices they possess. That means a habitual engagement in yelugnta and pretension has implications for a moral character of those who practice pretension and yelugnta, especially when yelugnta functions as pretense. So far, we’ve seen the moral implications of some key interpersonal modes of communications, viz., deception, being secretive and being suspicious, and yelugnta and pretension. In the next section I briefly attempt to show some corrective roles religious values can and should play with respect to the moral consequences of the wax and gold mode of interpersonal communication.
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II
The corrective role of religious values: Before I consider some core religious values as correctives to the corrupting cultural values I’d like to make a point or so about the religious values I mean to discuss in light of the wax and gold tradition or culture of communication. My focus in this part of the paper will be confined, generally, to the Christian tradition, both the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Protestant or Evangelical tradition because I’m more familiar with these religious traditions than Islam or any other religious tradition. Much of what I say will approximately be something like what the Christian worldview, generically understood, holds about particular issues than specific doctrines that belong to particular Christian tradition. Before I discuss the corrective role religious values can and should play regarding corrupting cultural values, I want to make the following claim for which I’ll not provide an argument in the present work. The claim is this: Orthodox Christianity has had centuries old marriage with the wax and gold tradition and as a result the role of religious values has largely been undermined by some undesirable values of the wax and gold tradition. In other words, the positive ethical message of Christianity has been held captive by and to the wax and gold tradition. Protestantism has often been offered as an alternative to the Orthodox version of Christianity. However, the success of Protestantism, in some sense understood as a corrective to Orthodox Christianity’s marriage to the wax and gold tradition, among others, has also started to wane as the ethical underpinning of Protestantism gave in to the subtle force of the wax and gold tradition. Hence, one can hardly fail to see the influence of the wax and gold tradition even on religious values. However, I argue that it’s still possible to overcome the corrupt and corrupting cultural values of wax and gold tradition by developing a robust ethical challenge from within the religious tradition that millions of Ethiopians profess to hold or actually hold and practice. My proposal is not tied to either the Orthodox understanding of Christianity or the Protestant understanding of Christianity. Rather, my proposal is generic to both the Orthodox and Protestant understanding of Christianity when these versions of Christianity are broad enough to accommodate what is common between them than what is different about them.
Now it is important to note that both the Orthodox and Protestant understandings of some fundamental teachings of Christianity are relevant to some of the issues discussed in the last section above. Broadly understood it’s plausible to argue that both the Orthodox and the Protestant believe that God is interested in how human beings should live in relation to God and among themselves. Both religious traditions are committed to the view that insofar as what is revealed in the Scriptures, the ones commonly held by both, there are sufficient instructions or directions for human life. Both the Orthodox and Protestant religious traditions are committed, among other things, to the view that human beings are created in the image of God, however they understand this. What follows from this fundamental commitment, among other things, is the view that human beings can tell what is good from what is evil, human beings can tell what is morally right from what is morally wrong, they know that doing good things to fellow human beings is a good thing. Also, both religious traditions hold, among other things, that being truthful is different from being untruthful or deceitful , and it’s better, all things considered, to tell the truth than falsehood; they hold that being honest is different from being dishonest, and it’s better to be honest than dishonest. Both religious traditions hold to the lesson communicated by such teachings as the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the example of Jesus in his Incarnation as an example that is an ultimate lesson on humility and putting the interests of others before our own interests. Also, the notion of God as all-knowing before whom all our thoughts and actions are revealed or known is generic to both Orthodox and Protestant religious teachings.
Now, paradoxically, prominent forms of interpersonal communication we’ve examined in the wax and gold tradition-- such as “deception”, being “secretive” and “suspicious”, and “pretension”, and “yelugnta” when it functions as pretense or posturing—are in some conflict with core teachings of the Christian religious tradition. Christianity does nowhere teach “deception” or “deceitfulness” as a virtue, nor does it teach “dishonesty” as a virtue or something to be practiced. But this is in direct conflict with the traditional wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication that at least condones “deception” and embraces it as among “accepted” or “acceptable” features of interpersonal communication. Though one can argue that not all forms of “deception” are morally wrong, and hence the wax and gold tradition need not be seen to be in conflict with the basic teachings of Christianity, it’d be implausible to argue from this that all forms of lying is morally acceptable. I’ve argued above that, generally, lying is morally wrong and lying is intentional and involves some form of deception as a distortion of the truth. That means, since lying involves intentional distortion of the truth which is functionally equivalent with deception, not all forms of deception can be morally acceptable since all forms of lying involve some form of deception. Since lying is tolerated in the Ethiopian culture to the extent that deception is tolerated, it’d be hard to find a reasonable defense for the compatibility between the core features of wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication and the basic teachings of Christianity.
Let’s briefly consider another form of wax and gold interpersonal communication in light of some teachings of Christianity. A Christian is committed to the view that God knows everything; that nothing is or can be hidden from God. That means, one cannot lie to God, one cannot be secretive towards God, one cannot deceive God, one cannot pretend before God, one cannot successfully engage in a yelugnta driven act before God. But we’ve already observed that the wax and gold tradition of communication provides a tolerant environment for all the preceding forms of interpersonal communications even among Christians, to one degree or another. Consequently, on careful reflection, forms of interpersonal communication in the wax and gold tradition are again in conflict with the basic teachings of Christianity. Though it’s possible to add more tensions or conflicts between the basic teachings of Christianity and core forms of interpersonal communication in the wax and gold tradition what we’ve observed so far seems sufficient for the purpose of this paper. Now what should follow from this?
I contend that one of the major religious traditions that is embraced, to one degree or another, by millions of Ethiopians has resources to counter the negative or corrupting cultural values and practices of the wax and gold interpersonal communication. Those millions of Ethiopians do not need to turn to another culture or tradition in order to correct the corrupting cultural values that they happen to hold, value perhaps inadvertently, and practiced for centuries. Millions of Ethiopians have solutions to some fundamental problems of their own culture within the religious tradition they profess and practice in one form or another. I’ve argued above that the wax and gold culture of interpersonal communication contributes to undesirable character traits for a society whose widespread interpersonal communication tolerates deception, lies, yelugnta that functions as pretense and being secretive and suspicious of others. I’ve also argued that the widespread yet undesirable character traits are in direct conflict with the basic teachings of the Christian religious tradition. The choice between the wax and gold tradition and its forms of interpersonal communication and the alternative presented by the basic teachings of the Christian religious tradition that itself is embraced by millions of Ethiopians is stark and live.
Now the key arguments of the present project present a dilemma for the majority of Ethiopians whose lives and actions have largely been shaped by the wax and gold tradition and that of the corrective values they happen to hold as presented in the Christian religious tradition. I contend that a solution is available to the widespread societal problems with respect to undesirable character traits. These widespread character traits are or could be shaped, at least, by one of the two traditions, the wax and gold tradition or the Christian religious tradition. I contend that character traits shaped by the values of the Christian tradition, which is presented as one of the two horns of the dilemma, when explicitly held and practiced, is superior to and more conducive for the flourishing of the society. To show how that can be achieved is another project for another day.
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III
In this paper I drew out some moral implications of the key forms of interpersonal communication in the wax and gold tradition. Interpersonal communication is inherently moral; consequently, I argued that there are undesirable moral consequences of interpersonal communication of the wax and gold tradition. Also, I argued that the basic teachings of the Christian religious tradition, that millions of Ethiopians happen to embrace to various degrees, is in conflict with the moral consequences of the wax and gold tradition. I contended that the solution for the undesirable moral consequences of the wax and gold tradition of communication is within the Christian religious tradition. Therefore, the values of the Christian religious tradition can and should play a corrective role for the corrupting cultural practices of the wax and gold tradition. Ethiopia need not turn to an external tradition or culture for the widespread character problems in the Ethiopian society since the Christian religious tradition provides the needed solution. Working out the details for the proposed solution is a project for another day.
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Ed’s note:
We would like to thank Tedla G. Woldeyohannes for allowing NEVIS to reproduce his article which first appeared in Wax and Gold site. Tedla is a PhD candidate in St. Louis University,Saint Louis, Missouri. He also teaches philosophy courses as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the same university from 2009 to present.)
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Section II
Ref # 12.2
March 11, 2013
Religious Values as Correctives for a Corrupt and Corrupting Culture
By Tedla G Woldeyohannes
ABSTRACT: The central claims of this paper are aimed at bringing out the moral consequences of some of the themes from the wax and gold tradition especially about interpersonal communication. Communication is interpersonal; so is the domain of morality. I’m not going to talk about the ethics of communication. My focus will be on the consequences of interpersonal communication for the domain of morality and human character or behavior. Accordingly, I want to explore the moral consequences of some of interpersonal communications since communications among moral agents such as us human beings cannot be morally neutral or indifferent. Furthermore, I’ll argue that widely shared religious values can play a corrective role in addressing undesirable moral consequences of the wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication.
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In the first section of the paper I’ll focus on an analysis of conceptual relationships among key practices of wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication. I’ll particularly focus on “deception”, being “secretive” and “suspicious”, and “yelugnta and pretension”, as widespread modes of interpersonal communication in the Ethiopian society. In the course of doing conceptual analysis I’ll draw out the moral implications or consequences of the wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication. In the second section I’ll show some important roles religious values or practices can play as a corrective to corrupting cultural values and practices that are directly related to the wax and gold tradition of communication that I discuss in the first section. In the third section I’ll conclude the paper.
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I
Prof. Levine’s book, Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture, will serve me as a starting point for the central claims I’ll be making in this paper. I turn to Wax and Gold, the book, for examples of the tradition of interpersonal communication among the Ethiopian people, which is an extension of the Amhara culture, which is the subject of Prof. Levine’s work. I’ll mostly focus on the role of the following widely shared practices as key in interpersonal communication among Ethiopians: “deception”, being “secretive”, and “suspicious”, and allied concepts and practices such “pretension”, “lying”. My interest is not in the linguistic or poetic aspect of the wax and gold tradition. My project goes beyond description and descriptive analysis of the wax and gold tradition to an evaluation of the moral consequences for interpersonal human relationship and I’ll argue that the negative consequences outweigh the positive. My approach is distinctly philosophical in the sense that my interest is in the notions or concepts that play crucial role in the wax and gold tradition of communication.
Prof. Levine writes, “In essence, wax and gold is simply a more refined and stylized manifestation of the Amhara’s basic manner of communicating.”1 He also notes, “Wax and gold embodies this fundamental indirection in speech by means of the studied use of ambiguity.”2 Two things to note from the preceding quotations from Prof. Levine: (1) That wax and gold is a basic manner of communication, and (2) that wax and gold tradition prizes indirection as opposed to a direct manner of communication and hence it consequently prizes ambiguity. Let us take “deception” as our first example which is a widely held practice among most Ethiopians.
On Deception: Prof. Levine notes different manifestations and functions of deception. Some manifestations of deception are “for reasons of considerateness not wanting to tell the other person something that will offend him.”3 However, most of the time deception “is obviously being used to further one man’s interests at the expense of another’s.” Now let’s reflect for a moment on what it means to engage in deception in the context of wax and gold tradition and what the very idea of deception conceptually involves. In the context of the wax and gold tradition deception can be considered morally neutral. In the Ethiopian culture deception is embraced and widely practiced in its various manifestations. But embracing and practicing deception as morally-neutral makes it hard to figure out the demarcation line between the morally-neutral senses of deception from the morally-involved senses. This ambiguity is one reason for the perpetuation of deception and why it is widely embraced without much debate about the moral challenge embracing and practicing deception presents for a society.
The ambiguity about the function of deception opens a room for ambivalence towards lies as well. Generally, lies involve deception. Typically, a lie aims at distorting what is the case or the truth and in order to achieve this goal one must intentionally engage in distortion manifested as deception. Since a lie necessarily involves deception, deception becomes a modus operandi for a lie. Furthermore, generally, lying is morally wrong. If lying is generally morally wrong, and if the modus operandi for lying is deception, then in some sense deception is and can be morally wrong. But exactly it is this moral implication of deception that needs to be brought out beyond its apparently morally-neutral senses that are at the heart of discussions in the wax and gold tradition. A community that views deception without moral implications of deception can easily justify various manifestations of lies as well. The marriage between deceptions and lies finds a perfect niche in the wax and gold tradition.
Prof. Levine also notes that deception has a more subtle form as well that is achieved by “omitting the truth rather than committing a falsehood.”5 A moment’s reflection on this form or manifestation of deception would show that a practice in deception is a complex phenomenon that requires conscious decisions, being intentional, on the part of the one who means to engage in the act and process of deception. A person who intentionally omits some aspect of the truth in order to conceal the whole truth can do this for a variety of reasons. But the very exercise of engaging in revealing and concealing one aspect of the truth against the other aspect of the truth militates against a habit of speaking the truth, period. This habit of being selective about telling aspects of the truth is not conducive for development of human character traits such as personal integrity, transparency, honesty, and truthfulness, which are virtues that do not sit well with vicious or undesirable character traits such as deception, dishonesty, duplicity, and lying. It is commonplace to distinguish between virtues and vices in human characters and a tradition of interpersonal communication such as wax and gold that blurs such common distinctions in human character traits is not conducive for human flourishing. It is plausible to think that what kind of persons we are is largely constituted by our characters and a person’s moral character is a function of the kind of moral virtues or vices a person has or lacks. Let’s now take a moment to reflect on the moral implications of being “secretive” and “suspicious”, which Prof. Levine observes as part of the wax and gold tradition in relation to “deception.”
On being “Secretive” and “Suspicious”: We’ve seen the moral or ethical implications of deception. Now let’s take being “secretive” first. Being secretive does not appear to be morally-laden on the surface or it does not seem to have moral implications. But a reflection on the practice of secrecy can show that there is more to it than its appearance to be morally-neutral. Being secretive requires of a person to be suspicious of another person in the sense of intending to withhold information that could be shared otherwise. We don’t need to claim that a person should share any and all private information with anyone in order to avoid being negatively seen about his/her being secretive. That would be too much of a requirement and an implausible one to accept. But being secretive with respect to most people one encounters (except one’s personal friends and there can even be an exception even among close friends) in the sense of being suspicious of them requires one to judge others that they have potentially “hidden motives.” To judge others in the absence of any evidence that they have “hidden motives”, if and when they do not in fact have anything as such, is to hold potentially false beliefs about others.
To hold even potentially false beliefs about others in the absence of evidence is to practically hold false beliefs since there is no difference, practically speaking, in holding a potentially false belief from holding a false belief. One who acts on the basis of a potentially false belief, when one is suspicious of the other person without any evidence of hidden motives of the other, would act in the same way as someone who would act on the basis of a false belief. Now to hold a false belief about the other is engaging in distortions of the truth about the other person, and distortions of the truth about the other person since they are intentional amount to lying about the other and lying, generally, is morally wrong. Now a reflection on being “secretive” and being “suspicious” of the other brought us to a conclusion that such practices in interpersonal relations have moral consequences. That means, these widely practiced ways of interpersonal communications have morally undesirable consequences.
On Yelugnta and Pretense: Now let’s consider one widely practiced form of interpersonal relation among Ethiopians. I’m thinking about yelugnta and the role of yelugnta in the interpersonal relations among Ethiopians. I don’t know any equivalent word in English for yelugnta and the difficulty in finding an equivalent English word for it, I think, is due to the indigenous nature of the phenomenon or the culture of yelugnta. I’ll explain the phenomenon and will argue that it is closely related to “deception” and “pretension” but not identical to either of them.
I begin with what it means to be pretentious and argue that being pretentious is approximately functionally equivalent to yelugnta. Being pretentious and engaging in yelugnta seem to function the same way, more or less. They both require for a person to think and act in ways that are intended to hide the truth about the person with an intention to make others believe what actually is not the case about the person. Now when a person engages in an act mainly motivated by what others would think about him/her so that what he/she does would be deemed the" right" thing or "acceptable" by one's community I take that notion captures an act driven by yelugnta. But what has happened in this process is acting in such a way that others believe what was done was done simply because what was done was the right thing, period; no motivation to be "accepted" having driven the person to act as such. That is what I mean to say yelugnta is functionally equivalent to be that of being pretentious.
How do yelugnta and deception relate? I'm inclined to think that a careful study of this phenomenon, especially yelugnta, has a potential to provide a goldmine of opportunity about reasoning in moral psychology [=reasoning about interpersonal relationships] of the majority of Ethiopians. Both these modes of interpersonal relations, i.e., deception and yelugnta, are widely practiced in the Ethiopian culture. Now, we’ve already seen that deception is intentional; there is no deception without intention. We can also say that there is no yelugnta motivated act without intention.7 Therefore, both deception and yelugnta are intentional in a harmless or morally neutral sense, at least on the surface. But that does not mean they are identical. One can engage in yelugnta driven act out of a desire to do something good to the other person. Also, some acts of deception can also be done out of a desire to do some good to the other person. Earlier I’ve argued that lying requires deception and there is no lying without intentionally engaging in deception, or distortion of the truth. It’s argued that since, generally, lying is wrong and since lying requires deception at least some form of deception is morally wrong as well.
But what about yelugnta? It’s hard to think of yelugnta that does not functionally [not necessarily semantically or by way of meaning] involve some form of pretense. Now pretense involves some form of deception. Furthermore, pretense aims at making the other person believe about oneself what is not true of oneself. But to aim, intentionally, at making the other person believe something that is a lie or falsehood about oneself is itself lying. Though it’s not explicit yelugnta, in the way it functions as pretense, implicitly involves lying about oneself. Since lying is generally morally wrong, one can conclude that at least some forms of yelugnta are morally wrong.
Let me give an example to make the point rather concrete: This discussion about yelugnta would be just academic if we put aside what it practically means for an average Ethiopian to engage in yelugnta driven actions that cost so much financially and so much personal pain when one reflects on what a person does is largely to communicate something to the other: I’m not as poor as you might think, I’m doing alright kind of message which takes so many forms and shapes. Take an example of wedding in the Ethiopian culture. So many families, the ones getting married, their parents and friends usually go a long way to make the wedding a huge festival when in reality they can’t afford even the tiniest fraction of the amount of money spent on the wedding. Such lavish weddings usually are just face-saving acts pure and simple. The motive? Not purely the well-being of those who come to eat the feast. Not primarily, at least. “Keman anishe” [I’m no less than the other such as my neighbor] reasoning is the yelugnta-driven reasoning in its robust way. This is what I am trying to get at when I argue for a functional equivalence of yelugnta and pretense, which is posturing in a way that speaks something that is not true of the person. Those POOR families who throw a huge feast in the form of a wedding ARE NOT IN FACT RICH folks! They appear to be rich when in fact they are poor. This yelugnta driven act communicates falsehood about oneself with a hope that others would believe it as the truth. This face-saving act aims at seeking respect and dignity for oneself or one’s family but the manner in which the dignity is sought involves some form of deception or posturing or even pretense—to appear to others what is not, in fact, true of oneself. Examples like this are countless and they are part and parcel of countless Ethiopian stories.
From the preceding reasoning one can plausibly infer that to engage in yelugnta implicates one in a development of character that is, more or less, disposed to the development of either virtues such as personal integrity, transparency, truthfulness, and honesty or vices such as lack of integrity, lack of transparency, lack of truthfulness or dishonesty. It’s obvious that yelugnta-driven action is more prone to predispose a person to the development of more vices than virtues even if yelugnta by itself, arguably, is not a vice.
Below I’ll briefly argue that to engage in yelugnta can contribute to character formation in an undesirable way. But before that I want to say a few points about pretension as one widely practiced mode of interpersonal communication especially among educated Ethiopians. I single out especially educated Ethiopians because they are conscious that their society expects them to be in the know about many things. We have already noted that deception and yelugnta are both widespread practices in the Ethiopian society. In a society that is prone to deception and lies and yelugnta it is not hard to find a conducive environment for pretension, in its own right, to be equally widespread. One can hardly miss an opportunity with a bit educated Ethiopians about issues that are considered an educated person should have a say. These issues most likely would include politics, and religion and even science. One might want to talk about arrogance among a bit educated Ethiopians rather than pretension. I’m inclined to think that arrogance, no less widespread than pretension, is a function or an extension or a manifestation of pretension. A person who finds it hard to admit lack of knowledge could easily be an arrogant person as well. Of course, conversely, it’d be easy for a humble person to admit lack of knowledge about a particular issue since humility is consistent with open-mindedness and a desire to learn from others. On the other hand, one can argue that arrogance is consistent with pretension and closed-mindedness and a refusal to learn from others. These notions are closely related and they play a significant role in the interpersonal communication among many Ethiopians.
Now to a brief remark on character formation and the role yelugnta and pretension would play in character formation. Character formation is intentional, a person can’t be accidentally virtuous, and it requires a practice over an extended period of time. It is not implausible to claim that engaging in practices-- such as yelugnta and pretension-- that predispose a person to deception, dishonesty, speaking lies, etc are conducive for formation of character that is less than virtuous. Even if one should resist claiming a person who engages in yelugnta develops vicious character traits it’s not implausible to argue that yelugnta when it functions as pretense is more conducive for formation of some vices than virtues. As virtues are intentional and are formed as a result of habitual practices, so are vices. A person who engages in habitual acts of yelugnta and pretense is less likely to be predisposed to developing virtues that are central for the formation of virtuous character traits such as truthfulness, honesty, personal integrity, openness. Earlier I claimed that it is plausible to think that what kind of persons we are is largely constituted by our characters and a person’s moral character is a function of the kind of moral virtues or vices a person has or lacks. Again, the same reasoning applies to the habitual practice of yelugnta and pretension such that the moral character of those who engage in yelugnta and pretension is a function of the kind of moral virtues or vices they possess. That means a habitual engagement in yelugnta and pretension has implications for a moral character of those who practice pretension and yelugnta, especially when yelugnta functions as pretense. So far, we’ve seen the moral implications of some key interpersonal modes of communications, viz., deception, being secretive and being suspicious, and yelugnta and pretension. In the next section I briefly attempt to show some corrective roles religious values can and should play with respect to the moral consequences of the wax and gold mode of interpersonal communication.
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II
The corrective role of religious values: Before I consider some core religious values as correctives to the corrupting cultural values I’d like to make a point or so about the religious values I mean to discuss in light of the wax and gold tradition or culture of communication. My focus in this part of the paper will be confined, generally, to the Christian tradition, both the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Protestant or Evangelical tradition because I’m more familiar with these religious traditions than Islam or any other religious tradition. Much of what I say will approximately be something like what the Christian worldview, generically understood, holds about particular issues than specific doctrines that belong to particular Christian tradition. Before I discuss the corrective role religious values can and should play regarding corrupting cultural values, I want to make the following claim for which I’ll not provide an argument in the present work. The claim is this: Orthodox Christianity has had centuries old marriage with the wax and gold tradition and as a result the role of religious values has largely been undermined by some undesirable values of the wax and gold tradition. In other words, the positive ethical message of Christianity has been held captive by and to the wax and gold tradition. Protestantism has often been offered as an alternative to the Orthodox version of Christianity. However, the success of Protestantism, in some sense understood as a corrective to Orthodox Christianity’s marriage to the wax and gold tradition, among others, has also started to wane as the ethical underpinning of Protestantism gave in to the subtle force of the wax and gold tradition. Hence, one can hardly fail to see the influence of the wax and gold tradition even on religious values. However, I argue that it’s still possible to overcome the corrupt and corrupting cultural values of wax and gold tradition by developing a robust ethical challenge from within the religious tradition that millions of Ethiopians profess to hold or actually hold and practice. My proposal is not tied to either the Orthodox understanding of Christianity or the Protestant understanding of Christianity. Rather, my proposal is generic to both the Orthodox and Protestant understanding of Christianity when these versions of Christianity are broad enough to accommodate what is common between them than what is different about them.
Now it is important to note that both the Orthodox and Protestant understandings of some fundamental teachings of Christianity are relevant to some of the issues discussed in the last section above. Broadly understood it’s plausible to argue that both the Orthodox and the Protestant believe that God is interested in how human beings should live in relation to God and among themselves. Both religious traditions are committed to the view that insofar as what is revealed in the Scriptures, the ones commonly held by both, there are sufficient instructions or directions for human life. Both the Orthodox and Protestant religious traditions are committed, among other things, to the view that human beings are created in the image of God, however they understand this. What follows from this fundamental commitment, among other things, is the view that human beings can tell what is good from what is evil, human beings can tell what is morally right from what is morally wrong, they know that doing good things to fellow human beings is a good thing. Also, both religious traditions hold, among other things, that being truthful is different from being untruthful or deceitful , and it’s better, all things considered, to tell the truth than falsehood; they hold that being honest is different from being dishonest, and it’s better to be honest than dishonest. Both religious traditions hold to the lesson communicated by such teachings as the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the example of Jesus in his Incarnation as an example that is an ultimate lesson on humility and putting the interests of others before our own interests. Also, the notion of God as all-knowing before whom all our thoughts and actions are revealed or known is generic to both Orthodox and Protestant religious teachings.
Now, paradoxically, prominent forms of interpersonal communication we’ve examined in the wax and gold tradition-- such as “deception”, being “secretive” and “suspicious”, and “pretension”, and “yelugnta” when it functions as pretense or posturing—are in some conflict with core teachings of the Christian religious tradition. Christianity does nowhere teach “deception” or “deceitfulness” as a virtue, nor does it teach “dishonesty” as a virtue or something to be practiced. But this is in direct conflict with the traditional wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication that at least condones “deception” and embraces it as among “accepted” or “acceptable” features of interpersonal communication. Though one can argue that not all forms of “deception” are morally wrong, and hence the wax and gold tradition need not be seen to be in conflict with the basic teachings of Christianity, it’d be implausible to argue from this that all forms of lying is morally acceptable. I’ve argued above that, generally, lying is morally wrong and lying is intentional and involves some form of deception as a distortion of the truth. That means, since lying involves intentional distortion of the truth which is functionally equivalent with deception, not all forms of deception can be morally acceptable since all forms of lying involve some form of deception. Since lying is tolerated in the Ethiopian culture to the extent that deception is tolerated, it’d be hard to find a reasonable defense for the compatibility between the core features of wax and gold tradition of interpersonal communication and the basic teachings of Christianity.
Let’s briefly consider another form of wax and gold interpersonal communication in light of some teachings of Christianity. A Christian is committed to the view that God knows everything; that nothing is or can be hidden from God. That means, one cannot lie to God, one cannot be secretive towards God, one cannot deceive God, one cannot pretend before God, one cannot successfully engage in a yelugnta driven act before God. But we’ve already observed that the wax and gold tradition of communication provides a tolerant environment for all the preceding forms of interpersonal communications even among Christians, to one degree or another. Consequently, on careful reflection, forms of interpersonal communication in the wax and gold tradition are again in conflict with the basic teachings of Christianity. Though it’s possible to add more tensions or conflicts between the basic teachings of Christianity and core forms of interpersonal communication in the wax and gold tradition what we’ve observed so far seems sufficient for the purpose of this paper. Now what should follow from this?
I contend that one of the major religious traditions that is embraced, to one degree or another, by millions of Ethiopians has resources to counter the negative or corrupting cultural values and practices of the wax and gold interpersonal communication. Those millions of Ethiopians do not need to turn to another culture or tradition in order to correct the corrupting cultural values that they happen to hold, value perhaps inadvertently, and practiced for centuries. Millions of Ethiopians have solutions to some fundamental problems of their own culture within the religious tradition they profess and practice in one form or another. I’ve argued above that the wax and gold culture of interpersonal communication contributes to undesirable character traits for a society whose widespread interpersonal communication tolerates deception, lies, yelugnta that functions as pretense and being secretive and suspicious of others. I’ve also argued that the widespread yet undesirable character traits are in direct conflict with the basic teachings of the Christian religious tradition. The choice between the wax and gold tradition and its forms of interpersonal communication and the alternative presented by the basic teachings of the Christian religious tradition that itself is embraced by millions of Ethiopians is stark and live.
Now the key arguments of the present project present a dilemma for the majority of Ethiopians whose lives and actions have largely been shaped by the wax and gold tradition and that of the corrective values they happen to hold as presented in the Christian religious tradition. I contend that a solution is available to the widespread societal problems with respect to undesirable character traits. These widespread character traits are or could be shaped, at least, by one of the two traditions, the wax and gold tradition or the Christian religious tradition. I contend that character traits shaped by the values of the Christian tradition, which is presented as one of the two horns of the dilemma, when explicitly held and practiced, is superior to and more conducive for the flourishing of the society. To show how that can be achieved is another project for another day.
----------
III
In this paper I drew out some moral implications of the key forms of interpersonal communication in the wax and gold tradition. Interpersonal communication is inherently moral; consequently, I argued that there are undesirable moral consequences of interpersonal communication of the wax and gold tradition. Also, I argued that the basic teachings of the Christian religious tradition, that millions of Ethiopians happen to embrace to various degrees, is in conflict with the moral consequences of the wax and gold tradition. I contended that the solution for the undesirable moral consequences of the wax and gold tradition of communication is within the Christian religious tradition. Therefore, the values of the Christian religious tradition can and should play a corrective role for the corrupting cultural practices of the wax and gold tradition. Ethiopia need not turn to an external tradition or culture for the widespread character problems in the Ethiopian society since the Christian religious tradition provides the needed solution. Working out the details for the proposed solution is a project for another day.
------------
Ed’s note:
We would like to thank Tedla G. Woldeyohannes for allowing NEVIS to reproduce his article which first appeared in Wax and Gold site. Tedla is a PhD candidate in St. Louis University,Saint Louis, Missouri. He also teaches philosophy courses as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the same university from 2009 to present.)
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