Can we be Good without God?

The second I wrote this title down, I realized how lost a cause I was embarking on. Microsoft Word, my document originator of custom, was the first manifestation of the loss of course I was rabbit-holing into:

Freddy:                Can we be Good without God?

Microsoft:           What you mean to say is “Can we be good without God?

All’s well and good. Parallel to what is often the Social Media case, whenever I talk about God, Microsoft chose to ignore the capitalization of God, but focus on the capitalization of Good. You see, on Social Media, the reverse has always been true for most.

Talk about any and everything under the sun, and more likely, you will be ignored. Talk about God and voila. Wildfire does not begin to burn the roots of how volatile that discussion can become. Especially, as is my norm, when you under-capitalize god.

The right good thing to do at this juncture may be to come out of the devil’s closet and pronounce – Atheists Nonymous – that I do not believe in god or his right-ordained Jubilee. But that would be too easy, too mundane, and too untrue.

I believe that there is good sense and proper thought in most every one of us beings on the universe, god and Jubilee included. There is also bad sense and improper thought in most every one of us doings and sayings on the universe, god and Jubilee included.

Take furious atheists, for example, many of whom I may identify with, but not necessarily fully agree with. How in the god’s good sense can you possibly believe that you know it all, are perfect and should not be questioned? Newsflash: since you are so smart, look at your self in a backdrop that features the fundamentalist, group-thinking, jihading, caste-systemic, authoritarian religionists. Compare, contrast; correlate, causate.

Your atheism is not right, is not good. It is a system of beliefs in reason, not a lack of belief. Otherwise, you would disbelieve and let believe. What you are doing with the loudness, is simply believing; believing that you are god. That your way is the only way, because the highway is full of ‘fundies’ and ‘religious trolls’, so because you are the one, the one that knows, you are right, are supreme. Can’t touch this! Hammer time…!

Your Christianity is not good: it is a system of beliefs that becomes a subtle way of living, way of being. There is good in Christianity, but to say that Christianity is good would be to generally condone the implementations of some bad ideas it consciously profers. Ideas like absolute indoctrination into an antediluvian system of living; or else Hades. Ideas like locking up children in their mothers’ wombs despite what the padlock does to them both; or else Hades. Ideas like What Would Jesus Do guiding your everyday existence, here, now, in Africa, where the sewerage does not part and allow you to walk through then vanquish your enemies behind you; or else Hades.

Your Islam is not halal: it is a system of beliefs that becomes a visible way of living, of doing. There is halal choice in Islam, but to say that all of Islam is absolutely based on Iman – the metaphysical aspect of the religion – would be to generally condone the implementations of some ideas that are not halal. Ideas like wearing a hijab because you have to, not because you want to; or else fatwa. Ideas like wearing a hijab to a pub, or that robe to the cab, only to emerge in the miniest of micro minis. Who are you kidding?

What is good is not simple, not a matter of running around with a label. It is what you evaluate, your beliefs notwithstanding, and find in to be in favour. It is what allows you, and others, to freely think, say and do what is beneficial to you and them, fair to you and them. It is what allows, not what grates.

It is a collaboration, hardly a compromise, and most certainly not about competition. Collaboration and compromise may sound alike to some, but to a little old semantic romantic such as I, they are not. One is a negative connotation of the other.

So am I an atheist? Am I a Kenyan? Am I religious? Do I believe? Today I’ll give that last one a shot.

I believe: in right and wrong, and the ability of humans to know the difference, because – like Jesus said, or didn’t he? – Humans would know it was right or wrong if it was happening to them and/or theirs. Knowing said difference is a realm of knowledge. I may or may not like to call this realm the fairness and justice of good and bad; or, its unfairness and injustice.

This is my literacy. Only mine. You can have yours; every single one of us can have theirs, and at the end of it all, it would be based on something. Something written, something read. Something experienced, something imagined. Something real, something perceived. Something quiet, something loud. Something good, and the other thing?

The other thing, bad.

Plagiarist Beginnings: In League with Clay's Court, and Other Extraordinary Gentlemen

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These are the Confessions of a literary 'one hit' wonder man.

Originally uploaded at Memorial Univerity 

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On July 7, 2007, I was fortunate enough to be bored with proceedings at the Carnivore Grounds, sometime between 1 and 2 am. Come to think of it, it was actually 8^th July. I have a thing for dates, and the general correlation of numbers to situations.

Why I remember the date, perhaps? Because it was Saba Saba (7-7), a date immortalized by the number of times it inspired dread in my childhood owing to the magnanimous fimbo ya nyayo that clamped down on dissent annually on the date due to its significance in Multi-party politics? I can recall the many times I scaled walls as a kid to escape the onslaught of General Service Unit (GSU) policemen unleashed by Moi's hounds. Ok, that one's a lie. I wasn't scaling walls to escape them, but rather to watch them manhandle women and children - and a few potato sacks - from within the confines of my gated community, aka the ¼ acre plot we shared with 15 other tenants under Lord Landlady's eagle eyes.

But that ain't it. That's not why I recall 7^th July 2007 so vividly. It's a less nationalistic reason, that being that my birthday falls on 8th August, aka Nane Nane (8-8) – not really – and the chicita I was wooing then was celebrating her birthday on that day. 7^th July. It made for a quite interesting – in my mind – opener to the said woo conversation.

“Your birthday's 7^th July? Mine's 8^th August! We're meant to be together! [sick]”

Anyway, as I said earlier, I was fortunately – in retrospect – sufficiently bored sometime between 1 and 2am at Carni. Which is how I found myself gravitating away from the chicita, who'd been filling my eardrums to percussive inefficiency with the drole humdrum drones of how her soon-to-be ex was such a pig. Somewhat fortuitously, I escaped to the Dormans stall for a mug of coffee, and happened to end up engaging with one of the few chaps I found grabbing a caffeine fix himself. While the details of how or why this conversation began escape me - despite my being a teetotaler then - it would end up serving as quite the encounter.

We got a-talking about the legal profession with my new-found curious amigo amicus curiae, given he was venturing towards legal study, as was I at the time. After quite the exchange of ideas, banter and whatnots, he would then go on to ask me if I read blogs, and suggest a particular one. Being as I was the archetypal young man then, prone never to ask for directions, I omitted the fact that I had no clue what a blog was, content in the knowledge that my amicus omniscientae Google knew what it was. [Ok, that's the end of the terrible amicus inventions.]

The blog he recommended that I read, was thinkersroom, when he was still on Blogger.com. The blogger whose literary fodder was so good (still is, only less frequent) for so long that he was cited severally by International News outlets long before blogging became every [wo]man's accessory. And ignominiously, the same man whose works were subjected to a poor 'publicity stunt' by none other than Clay Muganda, who reprinted his work on his column in the Daily Nation's pages, citing it merely as 'available on the Internet.'

I was reminded of plagiary, and my own not-so-humble beginnings as I read Nyanchwani's blogpost last week, about how men should never be the good guy to women; one MMK (Media Madness Kenya, perchance?) chided and derided him publicly in the comments section about using two pieces of writing without citing them; I stopped myself in my own tracks before I could even consider rising up to judge him. I think it's only fair that I not be so quick to cast stones, given my own glass house being built on its own small foundation of plagiarism.

I. Plagiarised. @Roomthinker. No point justifying it. An explanation, nay – an elaboration of how it happened – I will, however allow myself.

It began when I started, in the second week of July 2007, reading Roomthinker's posts. Boy were they good. I enjoyed them a whole lot. So much so that I started pulling down some of his posts and saving them on my laptop, just in case, for some reason, his blog were to ever go down. As a purveyor of all things literal, that possibility could not be allowed to ever mutate to reality. I was soon in my first year of campus. 2007-2008's PEV happened,and  as I proceeded to my second semester in Varsity, I had a brace of pals – making up the trio of witty, literary musketeers we were – with whom I discoursed everything, from what women know or do not know they want, to what the implications of religion and God's existence – and the lack thereof 'Him' I proposed – meant to life. It was only logical, then, that we would discuss the posts I had saved as copy-pasted word documents on me trusty lappy as well.

A rather unexpected development, however, followed said logic. The posts I had saved on my machine were the only resource I had to share with them of Thinker's work (the Internet, in Moi University Main Campus Eldoret, was a major luxury then, compared to a need for sustenance in the way of supper.) They read the pieces in silence, then congratulated ME for such an affluent degree of sense, reason and wit in equal measure.

I had an option right there. Fess up – technically I hadn't lied yet – to the fact that it was Thinker's work.  Or take the credit for Roomthinker's writings and musings.

Copied from Class Guides

Since we're here discussing plagiary, we can all guess how that option went down.

It doesn't end there though; oh, how I wish.

In 2008, my old lady went to 'rest with the angels' (ironic, that, coming from a professed atheist, no? I tend towards the view that because she believed that's where she'd go, that's where – to her – she is.) My first ever Facebook note was my own lamentation of her passing, and soon I was publishing regularly on Facebook.

I proceeded to post this article lifted off Thinker's blog to my notes, without expressly stipulating that it was 'written by Roomthinker,' or, since I wouldn't actually have known to call him that then, 'initially posted on roomthinker.com by owner.' Immediately, I get a host of comments, especially from womenfolk who liked my writing, telling me how “THIS IS AWESOME!” and I was the “Greatest writer I know!”

Sema conundrum! Especially since the chap who 'introduced me to Thinker,' so to speak, was perhaps the second Facebook friend I added back in 07. Meaning he could read my notes. Cue the cover-up. Edit note settings; exclude @Archermishale from viewing this note!

It was all downhill from there. I did not once say that I wrote the piece, but I did not once correct those who very eloquently thought I had either. At the time, I was writing a lot of Facebook notes, and soon we had moved on to the next good (not “Greatest that ever lived!”) post I actually wrote.

I was also one of a clique of writers, one that has so far produced such success stories as @wagaodongo, @midegaodero and @yenyewe, that was known as Plus254. We had (and still have, somewhat) Facebook groups and pages, campus magazines and at one point even a website, that worked towards building our literary skills collectively. The same piece would go on to be published on our website under one of my past aliases; again, not one word. Having come this far, I figured I might as well be outed by anyone else. I certainly wasn't ready to do it myself.

But unlike Nyanchwani's blogpost, my indiscretions went unnoticed, or at the very least those who noticed weren't as savvy or brazen as the guy who blasted Nyanchwani. Or maybe it was too early in Blogger's days for there to have been an audience big enough to notice, a luxury Clay Muganda's post was not afforded. Neither was Barrack Obama, nor his Deputy Joe Biden, 20 years before him. I like to think that having battled such bigwigs (detest, absolutely, this word and how it's used on Twitter) Thinker had no time to slug it out with juvies.

Today I do not copy anyone's work, and when I base mine extensively on any piece, I am quick to link back to their original work. Thinker included :)

By the time I started out blogging, I'd done academic writing, learnt how to cite works read in writing my journal articles, and basically, matured. I did, however, put up @itsnowrc's post about Nairobi's ChipsFungaz on my blog, a popular post – judging from the close to 7000 hits it's had since. It was well credited, linking back to his site, and I made a point of contacting him randomly on Facebook, informing him that I'd used his piece on my blog. Had he had any reservations, it woulda been pulled down instantly, but as it turns out, he was easy, and I made a new friend to boot.

Why the big effort at elaborating my plagiarism? Well, for a moment as I was writing the piece I did on Mutula's life and death recently, I paralleled the if-by-Mutula fallacy to my own fault start as a writer. Questioned the questionable beginnings based on plagiarism, linking them to Mutula's dark ages, and the rather self-styled writer I now am to his proposed post-Moi renaissance. 

That thought disappeared as fast as it had shown up; after all, my plagiarist foundations did not defend a despot and legally jargonize the rigging of an election, making billions while at it. It only made me seem better than I was at the time; and I got not one cent out of it! At least Clay Muganda got a couple geez outta Thinker's work, though he did go on to lose his column for a while. The Daily Nation's management, including Charles Onyango-Obbo, handled the matter rather diligently, I might add.

So, to the beginners out there. It's easy to fall into the trap of using other people's ideas and claiming them to be your own. In fact, many creatives out there are afraid to let their work be seen, on the off chance that someone will like and copy it. To the first, I say do the easier and ethical thing, and simply credit your sources. Ignoring the misplaced energies spent trying to cover up your theft, it could save you a cereal bowl full of blushes at best; at worst, you could find yourself in a legal conundrum, what with copyright, trademark and patent laws slowly strengthening in Kenya thanks to institutions such as KECOBO, the Kenya Copyright Board, and KIPI, the Kenya Industrial Property Institute.

Borrowed from Pla(y)giarism vs Plagiraism

To the second, I say learn to put yourself out there as an artist. Sure your work may get copied, stolen, reprinted and whatnots. But you know what I do? I take copycats as a compliment. Copycat killers often are big fans of the original killers' work. It's the same here, only that amidst all the copying, stealing and reprinting, someone out there takes notice of what you're doing. 

And you get the call. 

Meanwhile, the copycat has no idea worth selling, and gets tangled up in his own web of lies eventually.