*UNDERSTANDING _THE _3C's! :by Dr. Samuel Lena Ugwumba*
# UNDERSTANDING_THE_3C 's!
Sometime ago, I wrote on the three pillars of human development which have remained with humanity since the days of the first family!
However, one thing I forgot to include in that write up was the relationship that exists among the three pillars.
It is truthfully accurate to assert that the whole summary of human trainings is to develop the three most important parts of the body, namely; the Heart, Head, and the Hand; which sums up the character/
capacity/competence quotient of every human!
The understanding of these three key elements of the human body is the beginning of wisdom to any individual, organisation or government that wishes to formulate policies geared at developing the society.
It is true that people make up the larger part of our human society with the animals and the other physical cum immaterial features contributing to the peaceableness of our overall existence. It is equally true that all other features on earth save the human being were designed to remain in their elementary state until man became aware of other things he could transform them into. For example, it might surprise some folks to learn that the clothing materials we use to make our apparels are mostly gotten from trees (cotton) with just a little being extracted from the animal species. This surprise might come especially to such a person who hadn't really thought up where most of the things which he had been using came from.
Also, would you agree with me if I said that all the tractors, articulated vehicles, airplanes, and all those earth moving machines were gotten from materials beneath the same soil we walk on each and everyday?
It is therefore very important for us to ruminate over most things we see everyday and try to question the very basic things they were forged from because this is one simple but sure way of exhuming our thinking faculties from the rot of disuse while activating it for conceptualizations and more discoveries!
Every successive generation on earth had always believed their own generation was the ultimate in terms of what man could make and use from the available resources of nature. But it is equally right to say that most of these beliefs had stemmed from the level of mental development man had attained at such times.
Just like it would be impossible to explain to Moses that there is such a better way of espionage in this particular dispensation of deployment of drones and very sublime but highly reliable technologies other than deploying the three Hebrew men that spied on Cannan during their time, so also it would be impracticably unrealistic to make you understand today that the generation coming after us would completely dwarf whatever systems or technologies or exploits we would attain as our highest ideals before our exit! And in all of these things, the common theme has hinged on the power of the human's mind (i.e. capacity)!
Among the three pillars I earlier mentioned, capacity had always been ranked as the highest which is verifiably true since the capacity of a man's mind to think out solutions to his problems has always remained the truest definitive parameter the various generations of the earth dwellers had been assessed with!
Capacity is such a very strong power that the only difference between man and God is the level of capacity that knowledge bestows! Yes, God is all-knowing, omnipotent and omnipresent and man too could be omnipotent, omnipresent and omni knowing! It is just a matter of capacity for we are also imbued with the same nature and functionality of God!
God knew the extent to which the human capacity would serve man if it was properly channelled and that was the basis for the introduction of the second pillar which resides basically in the heart (i.e. character)! Character was meant to regulate the use of the human capacity just as the skin regulates the extent to which external materials can gain entry into the human body!
Since man was capable of self-destructio
n and rendering the whole earth chaotic, the heart was implanted in the body to guide the utilization of our minds but it never was given to replace the functionality of the human mind such that the capacity of man has never been in doubt even though most people tend to disbelieve what man is capable of doing.
This is the implication of God's ultimate premium he has continued to place on man and what man could become!
Stories and discoveries have always told us that whatever a man became in life was a product of his own mental capacity and this is justifiably true when we understand that God deals with man according to his capacity to believe that nothing is impossible (or what we may call faith)! At different times had God challenged man to think like him and this could be verified in the stories of God instructing Father Abraham to count the stars in the skyline! A simple act of God used to increase the capacity of our spiritual progenitor, Father Abraham before all the promises God had made to him could materialize!
In the same vein, considering the length of time it took ( from the days of Father Adam) for Jesus to be born and begin his earthly ministry, and the various disbeliefs and lies spewed against what man was capable of, such was the reason why Jesus was sent to redeem (Restore man's capacity) man to his original nature and this is what Jesus has continued to do in the lives of true believers till this day!
Everything on the planet is governed by the LAW OF BELIEF and the extent to which a man would deploy his mind is the extent to which life would respond to him and this is the basic reason why Christians are correctly called BELIEVERS because they are supposed to believe every dot of the word of God which is the whole essence of man and not to doubt! A believer, not a doubter!
It is very apt and true to say that the level of our capacity determines what we hold to be true, real, doable and ideal but also true is the power of our uncultivated and unchallenged basal capacity to become and serve as generating stations of doubts. Man becomes doubtful whenever he fails to recognize the limitless abilities and potentials resident in his mind.
Even a seemingly inexplicable thing could be perceived as achievable if over the years man had continually did and believed it was possible! For example, man had always believed that if he would put stems of cassava in the earth, they would grow to produce some tubers of cassava after a period of time, and not tubers of bamboo. But the explanation of this system has remained impossible for man to fully describe!
Our individual lives are determined by our individual capacities and this is and should be the whole essence of our educational system!
Our system of education should be more focused in developing capacities and manpower who would think, believe and do the impossible!
Our education needs to emphasize that what a man thinks is what a man would do and what a man can do is dependent on what a man can think!
I have come to this stage in my life believing that I can think, believe and do the impossible. All I have done (and all I am yet to do) have been the careful deployment of my capacity to think as a creature of God that I am!
I believe in things which most human minds might find impossible because I have come to believe that man is god on earth.
If Nigeria and the entire African continent can remodel our poorly inherited, beggarly and limiting educational system, and make it strictly centres where the human mind would be developed and encouraged to think, believe and do the impossible, then we can rule our world and dominate the whole world.
It is time for us as the indigenous people of Africa and as Nigerian citizens to stop the abuse on our capacity; stop the total use of our mind for memory (and recitation of disbanded theories) as against the imaginative abilities it was originally created for, and stop our over-indulgence and reliance on imported capacities!
We must encourage the use of local content in every of our activities and task our minds for ready solutions to our problems!
All humans are created equal but capacity has reminded the only distingushing distinction!
Our universities need to understand that the undergraduates are not just there to memorize theories propounded by men and women who were busy deploying their minds in practical doings, but are sent there to begin in practice what would be explained in theories.
Therefore, our civil engineering students must begin their learning henceforth by undertaking constant repairs of our university roads, constructing better African-suited buildings and also coming up with the better designs on civil constructions.
Our clinical students must be engaged in actual research works and discoveries of medicinal interventions to health as the basis for their training.
Also, students in the humanities must be allowed to operate banking institutions in the school (to begin with), Arts students must be taught of the commercialization of their works and universities could generate huge revenues from the practice-based undertakings of her students. The same goes for all the departments and faculties!
Our primary school must be seen as centres where talents are discovered and developed for the good use of the society, and not places where babies are groomed to be adults. Most of our basic societal needs can actually be produced in the primary schools through the handiwork system ------local hand fans, mats, toothpicks and other handcrafts. The primary school must be seen as a place where the building of future technological giants must start from including the development of all other human endeavors at their basic states!
Our secondary school systems must reflect productivity and definition of roles and interests to be further developed in the tertiary institutions.
Continental writers such as the likes of Ngugi Wa 'Thongo, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Athol Fugard ought to discovered and developed in this stage of education.
Leadership must also be developed in this centre and not just the infinitesimal roles of prefects and headboys but real politics must be taught at this crucial level and the national ideals implanted eternally into their subconsciousness! It must never again, be a stage where only preparations for WAEC, NECO & JAMB are the mainstay!
The various developmental organisations such as the Red Cross, Rotary clubs, Man 'O War, Junior chamber International, Toastmasters international, Leo club and the others must be made to be fully operational at this stage and also serve to instill hands-on competence and experience on these youngsters!
Like I said before, elections must be held in secondary schools modeling after the one obtainable in our larger society and the various arms and tiers of government must be allowed to fully operate in this level. This remains the only way through which we can groom time-tested, proven, disciplined, accountable and service-oriented leaders.
Also, the days of our Boys scouts, Boys/Girls' brigade and Girls' guild must be restored and these organisations should serve as hubs for inculcating such virtues as tolerance, honesty, hardwork, patriotism, camaraderie, practical leadership, problem solving skills, discipline and the understanding of peaceful coexistence. Our Jets clubs, debating societies, creative writers' clubs and arts and drama clubs must be highly effective and goal oriented.
These and many other ideas to be shared in my subsequent posts are the systematic and proper ways of developing a nation with varied competencies and ending vices arising from unemployment and poor leadership.
.............to be continued!
©Sam Ugwumba, PharmD
(A University of Benin-trained Pharmacist)
17/08/2016
Sometime ago, I wrote on the three pillars of human development which have remained with humanity since the days of the first family!
However, one thing I forgot to include in that write up was the relationship that exists among the three pillars.
It is truthfully accurate to assert that the whole summary of human trainings is to develop the three most important parts of the body, namely; the Heart, Head, and the Hand; which sums up the character/
capacity/competence quotient of every human!
The understanding of these three key elements of the human body is the beginning of wisdom to any individual, organisation or government that wishes to formulate policies geared at developing the society.
It is true that people make up the larger part of our human society with the animals and the other physical cum immaterial features contributing to the peaceableness of our overall existence. It is equally true that all other features on earth save the human being were designed to remain in their elementary state until man became aware of other things he could transform them into. For example, it might surprise some folks to learn that the clothing materials we use to make our apparels are mostly gotten from trees (cotton) with just a little being extracted from the animal species. This surprise might come especially to such a person who hadn't really thought up where most of the things which he had been using came from.
Also, would you agree with me if I said that all the tractors, articulated vehicles, airplanes, and all those earth moving machines were gotten from materials beneath the same soil we walk on each and everyday?
It is therefore very important for us to ruminate over most things we see everyday and try to question the very basic things they were forged from because this is one simple but sure way of exhuming our thinking faculties from the rot of disuse while activating it for conceptualizations and more discoveries!
Every successive generation on earth had always believed their own generation was the ultimate in terms of what man could make and use from the available resources of nature. But it is equally right to say that most of these beliefs had stemmed from the level of mental development man had attained at such times.
Just like it would be impossible to explain to Moses that there is such a better way of espionage in this particular dispensation of deployment of drones and very sublime but highly reliable technologies other than deploying the three Hebrew men that spied on Cannan during their time, so also it would be impracticably unrealistic to make you understand today that the generation coming after us would completely dwarf whatever systems or technologies or exploits we would attain as our highest ideals before our exit! And in all of these things, the common theme has hinged on the power of the human's mind (i.e. capacity)!
Among the three pillars I earlier mentioned, capacity had always been ranked as the highest which is verifiably true since the capacity of a man's mind to think out solutions to his problems has always remained the truest definitive parameter the various generations of the earth dwellers had been assessed with!
Capacity is such a very strong power that the only difference between man and God is the level of capacity that knowledge bestows! Yes, God is all-knowing, omnipotent and omnipresent and man too could be omnipotent, omnipresent and omni knowing! It is just a matter of capacity for we are also imbued with the same nature and functionality of God!
God knew the extent to which the human capacity would serve man if it was properly channelled and that was the basis for the introduction of the second pillar which resides basically in the heart (i.e. character)! Character was meant to regulate the use of the human capacity just as the skin regulates the extent to which external materials can gain entry into the human body!
Since man was capable of self-destructio
n and rendering the whole earth chaotic, the heart was implanted in the body to guide the utilization of our minds but it never was given to replace the functionality of the human mind such that the capacity of man has never been in doubt even though most people tend to disbelieve what man is capable of doing.
This is the implication of God's ultimate premium he has continued to place on man and what man could become!
Stories and discoveries have always told us that whatever a man became in life was a product of his own mental capacity and this is justifiably true when we understand that God deals with man according to his capacity to believe that nothing is impossible (or what we may call faith)! At different times had God challenged man to think like him and this could be verified in the stories of God instructing Father Abraham to count the stars in the skyline! A simple act of God used to increase the capacity of our spiritual progenitor, Father Abraham before all the promises God had made to him could materialize!
In the same vein, considering the length of time it took ( from the days of Father Adam) for Jesus to be born and begin his earthly ministry, and the various disbeliefs and lies spewed against what man was capable of, such was the reason why Jesus was sent to redeem (Restore man's capacity) man to his original nature and this is what Jesus has continued to do in the lives of true believers till this day!
Everything on the planet is governed by the LAW OF BELIEF and the extent to which a man would deploy his mind is the extent to which life would respond to him and this is the basic reason why Christians are correctly called BELIEVERS because they are supposed to believe every dot of the word of God which is the whole essence of man and not to doubt! A believer, not a doubter!
It is very apt and true to say that the level of our capacity determines what we hold to be true, real, doable and ideal but also true is the power of our uncultivated and unchallenged basal capacity to become and serve as generating stations of doubts. Man becomes doubtful whenever he fails to recognize the limitless abilities and potentials resident in his mind.
Even a seemingly inexplicable thing could be perceived as achievable if over the years man had continually did and believed it was possible! For example, man had always believed that if he would put stems of cassava in the earth, they would grow to produce some tubers of cassava after a period of time, and not tubers of bamboo. But the explanation of this system has remained impossible for man to fully describe!
Our individual lives are determined by our individual capacities and this is and should be the whole essence of our educational system!
Our system of education should be more focused in developing capacities and manpower who would think, believe and do the impossible!
Our education needs to emphasize that what a man thinks is what a man would do and what a man can do is dependent on what a man can think!
I have come to this stage in my life believing that I can think, believe and do the impossible. All I have done (and all I am yet to do) have been the careful deployment of my capacity to think as a creature of God that I am!
I believe in things which most human minds might find impossible because I have come to believe that man is god on earth.
If Nigeria and the entire African continent can remodel our poorly inherited, beggarly and limiting educational system, and make it strictly centres where the human mind would be developed and encouraged to think, believe and do the impossible, then we can rule our world and dominate the whole world.
It is time for us as the indigenous people of Africa and as Nigerian citizens to stop the abuse on our capacity; stop the total use of our mind for memory (and recitation of disbanded theories) as against the imaginative abilities it was originally created for, and stop our over-indulgence and reliance on imported capacities!
We must encourage the use of local content in every of our activities and task our minds for ready solutions to our problems!
All humans are created equal but capacity has reminded the only distingushing distinction!
Our universities need to understand that the undergraduates are not just there to memorize theories propounded by men and women who were busy deploying their minds in practical doings, but are sent there to begin in practice what would be explained in theories.
Therefore, our civil engineering students must begin their learning henceforth by undertaking constant repairs of our university roads, constructing better African-suited buildings and also coming up with the better designs on civil constructions.
Our clinical students must be engaged in actual research works and discoveries of medicinal interventions to health as the basis for their training.
Also, students in the humanities must be allowed to operate banking institutions in the school (to begin with), Arts students must be taught of the commercialization of their works and universities could generate huge revenues from the practice-based undertakings of her students. The same goes for all the departments and faculties!
Our primary school must be seen as centres where talents are discovered and developed for the good use of the society, and not places where babies are groomed to be adults. Most of our basic societal needs can actually be produced in the primary schools through the handiwork system ------local hand fans, mats, toothpicks and other handcrafts. The primary school must be seen as a place where the building of future technological giants must start from including the development of all other human endeavors at their basic states!
Our secondary school systems must reflect productivity and definition of roles and interests to be further developed in the tertiary institutions.
Continental writers such as the likes of Ngugi Wa 'Thongo, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Athol Fugard ought to discovered and developed in this stage of education.
Leadership must also be developed in this centre and not just the infinitesimal roles of prefects and headboys but real politics must be taught at this crucial level and the national ideals implanted eternally into their subconsciousness! It must never again, be a stage where only preparations for WAEC, NECO & JAMB are the mainstay!
The various developmental organisations such as the Red Cross, Rotary clubs, Man 'O War, Junior chamber International, Toastmasters international, Leo club and the others must be made to be fully operational at this stage and also serve to instill hands-on competence and experience on these youngsters!
Like I said before, elections must be held in secondary schools modeling after the one obtainable in our larger society and the various arms and tiers of government must be allowed to fully operate in this level. This remains the only way through which we can groom time-tested, proven, disciplined, accountable and service-oriented leaders.
Also, the days of our Boys scouts, Boys/Girls' brigade and Girls' guild must be restored and these organisations should serve as hubs for inculcating such virtues as tolerance, honesty, hardwork, patriotism, camaraderie, practical leadership, problem solving skills, discipline and the understanding of peaceful coexistence. Our Jets clubs, debating societies, creative writers' clubs and arts and drama clubs must be highly effective and goal oriented.
These and many other ideas to be shared in my subsequent posts are the systematic and proper ways of developing a nation with varied competencies and ending vices arising from unemployment and poor leadership.
.............to be continued!
©Sam Ugwumba, PharmD
(A University of Benin-trained Pharmacist)
17/08/2016
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