As a Liberian and an American educated returnee scholar to Liberia since 2011, my anticipated study of my people and nation takes ten Blacological Research steps.
(1) What is my most significant topic for discussion. Being culturally and nationalistically conscious to assist in the post-conflict Liberian reconciliation and peace building, ten Blacological research propositions will authentically facilitate constructive and objective guidance through this effort.
(2) What have I already learned about post conflict Liberia since my physical presence on the ground?
(3) What exactly are my burning questions and state of affairs relevant to post conflict Liberia?
(4) What do I need to know that is necessary for the intellectualization of my people?
(5) Are there ethical concerned that might obstruct or do harm than good to my people through this intellectual exercise since I am just returning to my country after many years from studies?
(6) What are the Blacological methods that will be substantially applicable in this exercise?
(7) How can my message be receptive in a culturally complex post conflict Liberian political and socio-cultural society?
I was born knowing Liberia as a nation and people who were culturally, ethnically, spiritually, traditionally, fraternally, maternally, paternally, and religiously diversified and sensitive and a culturally conscious community.
However, contemporary observation of my land of nativity has drawn me to deduce that my people and my nation have embraced, in some degree, a philosophy, a doctrine, and a selective rush to judgment philosophy or paradigms that appeared to be evoked into an orthodox self-ascribed scriptures, belief, and concepts that can seem quite confusing on issues of post-conflict True and Reconciliation and comprehensive structural transformation in the Liberian 25-years genocidal civil conflict.
Notwithstanding, post-conflict Liberian leadership, decision makers, and outspoken citizens, and concerned Liberian victims of the Liberian civil conflict and the current social construction of reality, must distinguish between two kinds of judging in these critical periods of our perpetual transitions from 25-year civil conflict to an EBOLA, the enemy unknown, the enemy of death against the Liberian people, the enemy you do not see.
This is absolutely essential because the scourge of post-conflict disparities, discontents, dissolution within the Liberian population, evident on the author’s watched, would make humanity sees that her long-term interests demand the obliteration of present hates, disputes, false accusations, rush to judgment conclusions, and that only in unity, found in a united federated, culturally conscious one Liberian people, one Liberian community, one federated government can the Liberian people find their lost destinies.
It is necessary to elucidate that I have always had a pre-disposition with the Liberian political leadership since my “over standing” (understanding) of the Liberian political cultures. Please note that different does not mean divisive, it’s just different. I am a descent scholarly thinking Liberian. Overall, I am just a different person, and Black African Liberian scholar who understand contemporary social phenomena differently. I do not subscribe to the philosophy of going with the flow; knowing that only fish goes with the flow. I have always come up on the rough side of the mountain of despair with the stone of hope. This article intends to provoke a constructive and reasonable political controversy and to provide a new thesis concerning post conflict euphoric political confusion and miss-understanding of a good leader who is dealing with difficult circumstances. This declarative hypothesis is articulated based on an empirical observation, that all politics are local. If this assumption cannot be a fallacious characterization, or sounds like a static description of a political naivety, then all Liberian political propositions must be, at minimum, culturally, ethnically, and ethically composed of a specific frame of reference (concepts and their cultural consequences and definitions), and overall articulated statements (proposition) connecting the components of the frame of reference.
Taking a concise objective view and conceptualization dimension and analysis of the subject in question, one can pre-maturely test the hypothesis with some semi-justifications that , the question of Legacy in the context of whose next after President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has a demonstrative and theoretical aspects of crucial importance of the present political situation without a preponderance and specific political focus group’s optimism of an honorific gratitude and title symbols for good work done so far; considering the circumstances of making the best use out of the worst Liberia post conflict situations. Therefore, to write anything about the politics of post conflict Liberia in many ways requires an extraordinary ambitious undertaking. For post conflict Liberia’s political cultural context, it is hard enough to understand what happens politically in one single district at times, indeed, hard enough to understand what happening in an individual town or particular occupational post conflict Liberian communities (factories, schools, or universities, and departments). How can one surely hope to comprehend such a treacherous and opaque subject matter of such huge scale out of prejudices or biases? For me, there is nothing ambivalence about a modern professional training in the social sciences which gives even a modicum of trustworthy intellectual guidance on how to approach an understanding of these post-conflict Liberian political operational extremities.
As Karl Popper meant by the statement that “Within any cultural science there must always be an overabundance of falsifiable propositions”[1] Personally, from every humanistic and logical comprehension of natural human groupings, and from an intellectual expository political and philosophical calculations, the anticipated legacy of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf can be viewed, in many instances, from her first book written by the author of this article as (a) Helping Visionary Liberian Leader Gain Democratic Power). From all fairness, are the people of Liberia, specifically the government officials, actually and faithfully helping President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to gain democratic power in meeting the national demands? (b) Why President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf can be viewed, in our excruciating post conflict situations as the appropriate chosen Visionary Liberian leader? From an introspective retrospection, all Liberians, if not just many Liberians, specifically those who were on the ground at the genocidal days of Liberians by Liberians, will admit that the only appropriate and internationally reputable and creditable Liberian who could be a person of interest that was, in many cases, nationalistically, patriotically, passionately, prepared, and ready to take the life’s detrimental position on behalf of her land of nativity and her people, that person was and is our mother, Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia. It is essential to lament that Liberian(s) who are interested in determining the evaluation of President Ellen Johnson Sir leaf’s legacy, make efforts to un biassly study her ultimate honest performances with deep and great consideration of the nation’s circumstances with whom she serves.
Liberia: The Political and Socio-Culture of Amnesia and the Anti-thesis of Political Generation.
It is saving to elucidate that we as Liberians and or as a people, must be opened to the dimension that we do not know. For, no one knows all and everything there is. Paradoxically, yet, true, that the more we know, the ignorant we become. It is only through our consciousness that we acknowledge our limitations. Precisely, the more gratifying results of our intellectual evolution are our continuous opening up of a new and a greater innovative and culturally conscious intellectual development. I am presently developing an observable political, social, and culturally sensitive prognosis…that Liberia will rise again.
Therefore, during difficult times, everyone must rationally exhibit extreme sensitivity in grace. Political, culture, and economic transformation has its own painful transition and post-conflict Liberia is a case in point. At times, only when it is dark can you see the stars. The Liberian people in general have specific appetites for negatively accusing good people for doing good things. And they suffer from amnesia for your goodness and when you do well for them. It must be mentioned that post -conflict situations in Liberia cannot and will never be resolved by obnoxious, pessimistic, and skeptics Liberians whose horizons are indefinitely myopic by obvious realism.
This brings the subject to what is coined as a “Political Generation”: A German Sociologist Karl Mannheim argued that great events put their mark on an entire generation who carry the attitudes formed in their young adulthood all their lives. He called this Political Generation. For instance, World War I. produced a war weary “lost generations” throughout Europe. The Great Depression produced people who forever craved job security and welfare measures. Vietnam produced many Americans who are cautious about U.S. military intervention overseas. One theory of war-not a completely one, uses the political generation approach. A generation that experienced the horrors of war is reluctant to send its sons and daughters to war. This, of course, inclines the country to peace.
The new generation, though, which has known only peace picks up a romantic and heroic vision of war and tends toward an assertive foreign policy that may lead to war. We might call this a “forgetting” theory. The generation that forgets what war is like, is more inclined to engage it. It is save therefore, to elucidate that as a culturally conscious Black-African- and an American educated repatriate-Liberian scholar and professor, at Cuttington University since September 11, 2011 to 2016, my personal and professional engagements with students, the public, and other concerned citizens; the question of legacy and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; whose next after, has been one of my major in and out of class rooms subjects. Of course facing the challenges of post conflict Liberia demands a new age and mind set and overall realistic reasonableness in asking a research question of this nature. The Liberian people, many of whom have been at my professional disposal Blacologically, have come to the ultimate realization that never again.
Never again…and never again shall they be made to reflect on the painful and useless genocidal self inflected destruction to provoke them to uncalculated actions like in the past? I indeed personally support this endless cause. Every Liberian has graphically explained to me, both in classes, seminars, conferences, and open discussions, their personal experiences of the useless civil conflict. And those experiences are not always synonymously mutual or the same in graphics. Many of these culturally, ethnically, spiritually, and nationalistically conscious individuals have come to the realization that the only tragedy is that the truth about the authentic Liberian Culture and its role in human progress has been so effectively suppressed that not even the Liberian institutions of higher learning and the religious institutions are fully convinced of its reality. In spite of all of these disappointing experiences, many Liberians are positively alluding to the “Political Generation” theory. Liberians do not want to go back to war anymore as speculated on the 2017 Elections and The UNMIL-Draws’ Dawn.
For many, the 25-years foolish and self-destructive civil conflict has wasted their early and youthful learning times; even though it never too late to learn, these good citizens thank God-Allah for this day that they and their children are able to sit in classes to learn together without sounds of mechanized weapons of mass destruction. This is why the main focus of the question of legacy-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, whose next after; can and must be critically viewed as a new realistic research question in post-conflict Liberia. For me, whose next after President Ellen Johnson is my pressing fears moving forward. If there is anything that fearfully calls for concern, it is the dangerous struggle for the occupation of the political vacuum after President Sirleaf. It is even dangerous than when Liberia becomes a Christian nation.
Conclusion
President Ellen Johnson Sir leaf’s legacy, if crafted by an un biased expository writing practitioners, must critically evaluate some areas such as a core values and mission, the restoration of what the 25-year useless genocide Liberian civil conflict has denied our people, our young people, specifically our post-conflict Liberian youth.. “I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”—Oliver Wendell Holmes. From a personal conjecture of this article, I would like to address myself from the perspective that those of us who live in the twentieth century were and are privileged to live or to have lived in one of the most momentous periods of human history. It was an exciting age filled with hope in many instances.
It was an age in which a new social order was being born. We stand today between two worlds. (1) The world of the dying old, and (2) the world of the emerging new. The Liberia and the Liberians I left in the 80s are not the Liberia and Liberians of today. In addition, I am absolutely cognizant of the fact that they are those who would contend that we live in the most ghastly period of human history. They would argue that the rhythmic beat of the deep rumbling of discontent from the Liberian in the Diaspora of the United States, the uprising or protests of the few minority strong Liberians on the ground against those needless protests, the Blacological and nationalistic longing of peaceful resolution and intervention of our institution are justifiably defending a peaceful retention of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Administration and wishing for it future leadership replication. It must be emphatically noted that under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in spite of all else, this is the best and rethinking moment for us as Liberians to make the best use of what we can do to move our nation forward.
This, of course, is an exciting time and full of stories telling times of our past tragic experiences with progressive and transitorily commemorating, and hope with the thinking that doing good is a cardinal value of reciprocity. And that does well not difficult. In fact, just speaking good is a movement to one who does it. From post conflict Liberian situations as it relates to President Ellen Johnson Sir leaf’s leadership, for those who do good selflessly in this administration and for others, are at the same time doing it for themselves and their nation. I want to go on record based on my independent scholastic and critical thinking philosophy that; I will continue to support President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to the end. This is my nature of support…when I obligate myself to a cause or to a person of interest; the sky is the limit….
About the Author:
Dr. Amos M.D.Sirleaf (Ph.D), Vice President-Professor, Blacology Research and Development Institute, Inc., (USA-Liberia). Professor-Peace Studies, Cuttington University/Director/Professor-Law Enforcement-Criminal Justice, Cuttington University/[email protected] or [email protected]
[1][1] See Dr. Clyde O. McDaniel, Jr. Research Methodology: Some Issues in Social Science Research, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1974.