Reflections on Social Conventions

The famous social contract philosopher - Jean Jacques Rousseau - wrote that ‘man is born free but everywhere in chains’. We often act under the illusion that we are socially free, yet our range of choice of action is to a large extent determined by the societies in which we live. That in itself is not as such a bad thing but could translate into some sort of a social dictatorship.

Back in my early seminary days in the 1990s, two of my classmates were suspended for having shaved their heads close to clean. They were told not to come back to school until their hair  had grown. A decent seminarian had to retain some amount of hair on his head. Fast forward into the 2000s, a virtually clean head is the way to go! And I am often reminded that I need a hair-cut! 

Why do I need a hair-cut? It is because almost everyone has theirs cut, and I don’t have to look different. I have to fit into the taste of the majority, which majority itself is largely a blind follower of the waves of social convention. Under such majoritarianism, individual freedom and room for harmless difference are usurped by the ‘ideal’.

This is just but a small indicator of our intolerance to difference. It extends to higher forms of difference such as race, class, ideology, tribe, gender and so on. We often have the urge to homogenise. In a manner that Professor Peter Kanyandago calls ‘negative universalism’, we label, stereotype and dismiss wrong languages, wrong colours, wrong tribes, wrong lifestyles, wrong dress-codes, wrong cultures, wrong foods, ... When you choose to grow your beard, you are coerced back into the fold by being labelled ‘crazy’ or a ‘terrorist’.

When I went for my first job interview (in the conservative world of accountancy), I knew that the conventional official dress-code was a suit. On that hot day, I had to package myself acceptably in a black suit. About thirty minutes before the interview, my patience with the weather-insensitive dress-code had climaxed. I walked in with jacket in hand and all the interviewers looked at me like they were seeing ‘porridge in a bar’.  In this hot part of the world, members of parliament are thrown out of the house for indecency, where decency means wearing a suit. The irony is that they ensure that air conditioners are running. What a mental slavery! No wonder their lack of realism extends to their monstrous self remuneration amidst an impoverished electorate. 

My mum would always ensure that my shirt was tucked in before I would leave for school. After the exercise, she would exclaim: ‘smart boy’. Well, perhaps. Indeed some people look smart with their shirts tucked in neatly, and some seem to fancy every bit of it. But I never experienced it and it always made me feel awkward!  

Yet someone always had to ask why I had not tucked in and add that I was indecent. May be I was, but there was no option for those of us who would prefer a no-tuck-in code! The subjectivity of smartness aside, some people look real cumbersome with shirt into trouser. And maybe they feel it, but the social chains intricately packaged in their upbringing do not allow them to live what they feel! Again, what a mental slavery! 

Why does your house have a shade with pillars? Because every ‘good’ house has a shade with pillars. Why have you painted it cream? Because that is the colour on all ‘good’ houses today. Why are you wearing those dark shades on a cloudy day? Because everyone is wearing shades these days. Why are you buying an Ipsum? Because everyone is buying one. Why are you always playing that song? Because it is a hit. Why are you watching that TV soap? Well, precisely because everyone is watching it. Perhaps there are some people who go into such things with genuine purpose, but quite a number are victims of the ‘herd complex’. Where those ahead go, the rest will follow. A people condemned to a very loud inferiority. 

With a mixture of enjoyment and awe, I have been reading a book entitled I Write What I Like. It is by none other than the great Steve Biko, a man I still feel I took rather long to discover. Well, he was killed by the Apartheid regime in South Africa in 1977 at a tender age of 30 precisely because of the ideas that won my admiration for him.

 In instilling ‘Black Consciousness’, Biko lashed both at the coloniser’s dominative tendency and at the black race’s unashamed mimicry. He observes that henever colonisation sets in with its dominant culture it devours the native culture and leaves behind a astardised culture that can only thrive at the rate and pace allowed it by the dominant culture. That is where we are.

A big lot of us are oppressed by social conventions – consciously or not. We have become ‘beings for and as by the other’. However, as Franz Fanon recommends in Black Skins, White Masks, it takes our consciousness to rise above the absurd drama that others have staged around us. We would agree with Biko that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”.

Granted that we don’t always have to determine our actions individually and as per our individual tastes/preferences, but that should not be an opening for irrelevant social conventions to stand in the way of our freedom.

 

Jimmy Spire Ssentongo