QUOTATION # 123.

ON “RESPECTABLE PROTEST” AND DISSENT.

Who are the criminals here? 

Those seeking to prevent the vandalism of the living planet, or those facilitating it?

Whenever I visit the National Gallery, I can’t help but wonder how many of the places in its treasured landscape paintings have been destroyed by development or agriculture. 

Such destruction……..even in our national parks, is commonly justified as “the price of progress”. 

But if someone were to burn or slash the paintings themselves, it would be an abhorrent act of brutality. 

***SPLASH OF THE SPIRIT: Ouatarra Watts, Mixed Media on canvas, 2018***.

How do we explain these double standards? 

Why is life less valuable than the depiction of life?

………..In raising these issues, I don’t seek to deny the value of art or the necessity of protecting it. 

On the contrary: I want the same crucial protections extended to planet Earth, without which there is no art, no culture and no life. 

Yet while cultural philistinism is abhorred, ecological philistinism is defended with a forcefield of oppressive law.

The soup-throwing and similar outrageous-but-harmless actions generate such fury because they force us not to stop listening, but to start. 

Why, we can’t help asking ourselves, would young people jeopardise their freedom and their future prospects in this way. 

The answer, we can’t help hearing, is that they seek to avert a much greater threat to both.

GEORGE MONBIOT.

Full article available here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/19/van-gogh-sunflowers-just-stop-oil-tactics

****NGEWA I: Kaloki Nyamai, Mixed Media on canvas 98 x 108 cm, 2020****

******NBA COMMENT*********

The situation here and now at Mediocrity Central aka Ogyakrom currently officially designated by the truly pious, honest and astute as GALAMSEY KATEDRA is tragically precarious.

As we speak, the fabric of our society is being viciously ripped apart from within: arable farmland and rivers are continuously and relentlessly destroyed; our marine resources decimated; the currency is shredded and the economy is officially junk.

Yet EVERYTHING has become intensely politicised in our bogus nominal four year ballot box democracy where the feeble minded and half wits dominate the public space and disingenuous window dressing is the order of the day.

The appeasers of course unable to engage beyond facile debate, ignorant of basic facts, almost always woefully incompetent and insistent on tardy one liners to facilitate petty point scoring are always quick to claim that acid analysis and no holds barred conclusions simply amount to what they term, “gratuitous insult” – a well worn, hardly original or accurate defence often used by the pretentious.

*****ATTA KWAMI, oil on linen*****

This particular group is EVERYWHERE and their noxious ethos is on the ascendancy; they even have the gall to attempt to become the final arbiters of what it is to be Ghanaian – “they own the culture. They curate it and have set in amber. And they brook no dissent. It’s all or nothing, with us or against us. Enemies and traitors within.”

They do not engage in or are totally incapable of appreciating nuance and progressive ideas; they simply breed and ooze a mind belittling intolerance and mediocrity that leaks and seeps into every nook and cranny of ghanaian life.

The more badly governed and wretched the country becomes, the more entrenched, ridiculous and untenable the national self delusion.

Our vocabulary trove of synonyms for disorder, chaos, dysfunction and mayhem has been long exhausted and consistently proven woefully inadequate for describing the perennial mess in our beloved country; we are often reduced to mirthless laughter.

What is pathetic is the reality of our bounteous national resources; vast amounts of gold, oil, gas, diamonds, iron ore, cocoa, manganese, bauxite, lithium, forests, timber, fish, arable land, a cohort of capable and enlightened people etc etc – meeeeehn; has not led to impressive and sustainable development.

Therefore, nothing now remains but for those who are serious and committed to continue exercising their inalienable democratic rights and refuse to be intimidated nor hoodwinked as they press for a deep change in our social and political culture.

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