Writings / Essays: Wole Soyinka

For even here we find embedded yet another unsettling interrogatory of human existence – is self-preservation a function of reason?  Or is it of instinct? On what basis, for instance, do the Yoruba preach – iku ya j’esin lo – ‘Sooner death than humiliation’? The Yoruba are not alone. Not simply individuals, such as the Jan Palachs, Muhammad Bouazizis, the unemployed family bread-winner at his wit’s end = among thousands unknown and unsung = but most cultures have their own versions of that existential ethos, one that places self-preservation at the lowest rung of the ladder of human volition. The suicide bomber is however in a category all of his own, where the denial (and pursuit) of dignity need not feature as a motivating factor, but is supplanted by the vision of domination, hate, or vengeance.

What else, but bewilderment and frustration at such an insurmountable paradox, could have prompted a Nobel Peace Laureate, Elie Wiesel, to propose on a number of occasions that suicide bombing be deemed a ‘crime against humanity.’ Of course it is that, but it is much else. It is the fatalist paradox of our time. A ‘crime against humanity?’ Yes, but how do you set about arraigning and prosecuting a self-terminating paradox? The paradox that makes existence a contradiction of itself, argued into fulfillment through an unexceptionable human pursuit: self-worth, peer approbation – even if confined to fellow fanatics – and dignity? Totally beyond recall, beyond the proposition that others also have a right to volition in their quest for self-worth, peer approbation and dignity as a condition of existence, this other actively denies to all others the same pursuit in the valuation of their humanity!

The school of hate is allied matter, one which, like the school of after-life gratifications, requires its own field of discourse, and offers no paradox. We confine ourselves here only within the face of utter, self-absorbed conviction. It is there resides the insuperable paradox, a contradiction within contradiction that indicts, judges, and executes.  And the accused? All of  humanity wherever and whenever, who happen to be minding their own business – from the most banal preoccupations to the sublime.  For the solipsistic judges who accuse such humanity of the crime of living, only the invalidation of humanity’s very existence guarantees them their own certificate of existential self-sufficiency, indeed self-fulfillment. Laid prostrate before the implacable judgment of a paradox, the world is helpless. It is confronted by members of its own species at an embarrassing point of agreement – that without dignity and volition, existence is nothing.

Any response to the conundrum should therefore seek validation from this basic, universal terrain of paradoxes – the auto-destruct mechanism in every human life, and the tendency towards self-preservation – instinctive or reasoned, actively or passively embraced. This implies that we cannot concede to others the right to interfere with, or rob us of that inborn paradox, and this implicates – insofar as we also cherish our dignity and the right of volition – the moment and means of our extinction, be it suddenly, through choosing to stand in the way of an express train, or in submission to that hidden paradox, the conclusion of a cumulative gradualism, hastened perhaps through such activities as indulging in forbidden fruits, privations or excess, or simply by growing old. We are equally entitled to attempt to postpone that moment through jogging, bland dieting, and other forms of joyless existence.  Each and every individual is entitled to that very dignity and condition of volition that makes one human.

‘I die, therefore, I am’, taken to its homicidal deliberation – ‘I kill, therefore I am’ – violates the very conditions of volition and dignity in others. While the former can be elicited from the auto-destruct code within the human genome from conception, there is no equivalent in which the interventionist variant – I kill, therefore, I am – is encoded. Only by a stretch of ego-appropriation – which requires the elimination of the ego of others – can the latter be sustained as a valid criterion for one’s humanity. The former paradox is universal and empirical, eternal and temporal – paradox upon paradox! – but then it enables one to see paradox as the very condition of existence – in the light of truthful contradictions.  The killing variant is simply an ego trip to the land of illusion – there are no thousand virgins on the other side of existence!

* from contribution to the theme “PARADOXES” at La Milanesiana Festival of Literature, Music, Cinema, Science, 12^th edition – Milan, Italy.

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