Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events but small minds discuss people!
By Mpandashalo Mwewa.
Lusaka – When you see a party that was in the opposition for 20 years remaining so petty, two years into forming government, and in the midst of several self inflicted national issues, just know that the nation is dealing with a leadership that thinks lowly of its people.
Hon. Gary Nkombo, just like many other politicians today, believes that Zambians are shallow in thinking, and that’s why he chose a shallow debate when he is capable of debating at a higher level.
There’s need to change this narrative. How is debating the Patriotic Front and its leadership a solution to the various immediate social economic challenges that Zambians are faced with, which, to a greater extent, are as a result of President Hichilema’s lack of leadership, who has put together, probably, the most incompetent Cabinet in the history of Zambia?
Also Read: This is a wrong time to align Zambia to the US with a changing geopolitical landscape.
Let’s see how shallow the narrative in this video is with the help of the famous quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people!” with the hope that someone may see through this kind of brainwashing by these useless, self-catering politicians.
So, what does this quote mean from a critical thinking point of view?
Let’s start by defining the three words; ideas, events, and people.
Discussing people here means to talk about a person, typically in a negative, gossipy way in the manner Hon. Nkombo just did. Discussing events means to talk about the events happening in the country such as Yo Maps performing next month. Discussing ideas means to understand the higher level messages behind an event, to understand human behaviour, to look beyond what’s given, and focus on finding solutions.
▪️ Small Minds Discuss People.
Those who discuss people as an end in itself are shallow, FACT! Unfortunately, a fair segment of the population today in Zambia, especially on social media, dedicate themselves to discussing people. And this is why pages like ours have fewer likes. Our content is above that.
Our people are glued to celebrity gossip pages like it is the central goal of their lives. How often do we see people shaming or attacking each other, or worse still, others supporting such behaviour and joining in the attack, rather than taking a higher ground?
Increasingly, unfortunately, many of our politicians, today, spend more time making personal attacks and conducting smear campaigns than they put their minds to solving issues. People like Hon. Gary Nkombo.
▪️ Average Minds Discuss Events.
When you switch from discussing people to events, there is an improvement because you look beyond people and focus on events. There is an element of objectivity as you’re now looking at facts, figures, and occurrences. Yet it is still a logical fallacy to think that just discussing events makes us smarter.
Firstly, many stories carrying such events, depending on what you follow, are heavily censored according to the media house’s alliances or sponsors.
Something you ought to consider when you think that you’re enriching your mind when you choose to follow a particular media house is that it’s more likely that you are being conditioned.
Secondly, many media houses tend to sensationalise and report what is shocking. As the saying goes, “ciwamina galu… when a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
Hence, even though there are more important things to share each day, including countless positive stories and consciousness-raising events, the selected stories are rarely the most important, but some of the most negative, fear-based stories you can find.
Thirdly, even though we may be shocked by a political murder that purportedly took place in Western Province, we have to bear in mind that murders, suicides, kidnappings and even war happen every single day.
But when you read selected news for you, your attention gets directed to that one incident whose intention is probably to define your world. Or when a page repeatedly highlights the crimes that are committed by a particular political party, it creates the notion that the party is highly violent, when 99.9% of its members get along perfectly well with you.
In the process of being caught in fear, anger or shock, we miss the bigger picture. The irony is that by thinking that we educate ourselves by reading news from our preferred sources, we are isolating our minds and painting an extremely skewed image of the world we live in and associating it with fear and terror, yet missing the whole point which is, “What can we do to solve the issues we see?”
▪️ Great Minds Discuss Ideas.
This brings us to the last point.
As one becomes more curious about our foreign political system, they start to look beyond what is immediately presented to them; they start to talk more about not just individual politicians or events associated with their activities, but ideas these politicians debate.
If anything, it’s this mindset that makes the difference between success and failure in life.
Questioning why people do the things they do, what drives them.
Why issues like political violence, war, kidnapping and other crimes are happening. And what we can do to prevent such violence!
Or how we can uplift others; how we can improve as a people; because whatever affects others somehow affects us all.
Discussing ideas means choosing not to just take what is presented to you on face value, but to dig deeper, to understand root causes, to understand how something came to be, and to question realities, which, hopefully, would lead to identifying solutions.
If President Hakainde Hichilema were to call you today, don’t conclude that you are more special than anyone else, ask yourself why he chose to talk to you when there are many other citizens with similar capacities.
Someone may say, “Well! You are also debating Hon. Gary Nkombo. This quote is of course meant as a generalization. People and events are often proxies to discuss ideas.
We look upon people like Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda, Martin Luther King Jr., the Buddha, etc. as inspirational figures for change. We discuss people as a way to understand each other. That’s a totally different context of discussing people.
Equally, discussing events helps us to grow in awareness; current affairs is a way to learn about the world around us. If something just happened in my life and I share this with a friend, that’s part of conversation, of relating to each other.
The problem comes in when we talk about people or events as an end in itself. This quote reminds us that when we bad-mouth others, gossip, or follow the news reactively, it doesn’t take us anywhere.
Equally, complaining or chit-chatting about people and events endlessly will not change our lives or make us any better. But focusing on ideas for change, will. Assuming that we act on them, of course.
▪️ Conclusion.
When you allow politicians to address you in the manner Hon. Nkombo did in this video, you are indirectly telling them that you are shallow and that you are ready to be useful idiots, to be the necessary tools they need to advance their personal political ambitions.
When John Sangwa faced the UPND, telling them that so far they had done nothing since forming government, the same Hon. Nkombo, realising he was reacting to an intellectual, agreed and stated that, “Time is moving fast and 2026 is around the corner. It is time the UPND started working and not blaming the PF everyday!”
Same mouth addressing two audiences of perceived varying abilities.
©2022 Woodpecker’s Digest Inc.
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