A NEW YEAR IS HAPPENING

The new year is happening. Already I am scrolling through the wealth of information to be had on social media. The three or more brief, left wing articles I digest daily gives the same feeling of accomplishment to be had at night when resting a book on the bedside table and turning off the lights. Social media the new novel.

I recently came across a specific culture piece the Guardian had paid to advertise on my stream. It is about a new must know author and his must read philosophy book. And there is a link to the dispatch happy Amazon, ready to monopolise on my pseudo intellect guilt. I click - order and then wonder how I'll find the time to devour something so weighty amongst the articles I read every day and the other Amazon purchased books earmarked for my promised return.

these days I find myself no longer reading or consuming knowledge in a linear, book by book or topic by topic fashion. But more worryingly, I seem to have committed myself to the information age the same way my parents committed me to a Eurocentric education system and the same way I was once committed to a monotheistic religion.

By this I mean I have taken a leap of faith in the leftist academia and news portals. Expecting them to be as innately good and correct as the school principal or priest on the pulpit. And what bothers me most is the right wing. That there are people who think they believe in their version of the truth as pragmatically as I do mine. And how both our borrowed visions clash – the new protestants vs Catholics or Sunni vs Shia. But not as violent. Not yet anyway.

Now that I have chosen a side – which is very different from choosing to seek the truth, am I to just keep on attending mass? Logging on and receiving the sermon of the day similar to the sermon this time last year or the last election year. Shall I keep finding a space to sit quietly until the years come when I resemble the elderly at church who attend from force of habit or for the promise of utopia?

Written by Chima Nsoedo