The universe is wiser than the individual.  It gives to us what we need but not what necessarily we consciously think that we need.  Consider. When I was first exposed to African and Nigerian Internet forums and began reading what folks write initially I was ashamed of what I read and wanted to get off the forums.  Somehow I kept coming back to them. Later, I wished that some of the people on the forum writing rubbish would go away.  They seemed so totally stupid that I did not want anything to do with them.

Consider Chukwuma.  He writes like a mad person and apparently takes his lies as the truth.  I kept wishing that the owner of the forum would ask him to go away.  This man distorts whatever he hears. In one of my earlier pieces I said that I inherited a disorder of the mitochondria and that children with it generally wound up in wheel chairs and die early (apparently, my version of cytochrome c oxidase deficiency is partial hence not fatal).

As a psychotherapist I am professionally obligated to speak the truth about myself to encourage my patients to open up and speak the truth of their psychological state. Most people, for example, would not tell you about their medical issues, as I did, but I had to say so for I know that medical issues contribute to psychological functioning. I revealed my medical issue to encourage others to be honest about their issues.

Taking from that vignette Chukwuma wrote that I am on wheel chair and on public assistance. He actually wrote that stuff in a public forum!

Now suppose that I am on wheel chair and on public assistance (which would be something like $200 a month) is that something for him to make fun of. Is it not a call for compassion? But the man does not know compassion. His entire motivation is to put folks down, to insult them and humiliate them. He has no love and no understanding in his primitive head.

Initially, I was offended that he had such low opinion of me to think that I could live on two hundred dollars a month. I looked into his background and found out that he is a mechanic (he had told us that he had smuggled himself to the USA via Mexico and attended one of those Southern A&M schools meant for borderline intelligent folks). Judging by the wages of mechanics I can regularly pay his salary every month. He is a little peasant boy trying to give the impression that he is rich by saying what in his mind humiliates other folks.

What I learned from reading this illiterate boy and his type is that he and his ethnic group are not civilized. Why? It is because they are always saying hurtful things. Those who say hurtful things about their fellow human beings are savages.

Intelligent human beings appreciate human beings existential situation. We are intelligent animals. One part of us is our body which is not different from the body of other animals. Our body will die and decay. If, therefore, all we are is body we have no existential worth. We are not worthier than mosquitos. Yet, we would like to think that we have worth and, indeed, are special. Thus, in our psyche is a sense of worthlessness and desire for worth. Rational persons, therefore, do their best to make people feel like they have worth by loving them and never saying anything that hurt their feelings.  If there is such a thing as sin it is to not love a human being. A human being always deserves love and never merits hate; regardless of who he is or what he did we must love him (we must forgive his errors).

Civilized persons say what uplifts people; civilized persons love people and do not destroy them.  However, despite being uncivilized these folks want you to see them as civilized. They run around being criminals and saying awful stuff about people and still want you to see them as angels.  They want to retain their savage ways and yet want the world to see them as civilized.

Civilized persons love people; civilized persons have compassion for people; civilized persons have sympathy for all people, especially those worse off than they are; civilized persons do not put folks down.

Do you see white folks putting other people down? In terms of material culture (science and technology) white folks are five hundred years ahead of black folks yet they do not rob that fact into the face of black folks. They humor Africans and treat them as their equals and do not tell them that they did not even invent writing or the wheel. They respect Africans despite Africans backwardness.

Now, imagine that Chukwuma and his fellow savages had invented what we admire in the world today, you would see them flinging that reality on folks faces and using it to seem superior to them.

Really superior people are humble; those who try to seem superior are inferior (superiority and inferiority are fictions, illusions and delusions; they do not exist for all of us are the same and equal; nevertheless, if you consider yourself inferior and act as such so you would seem; as a man thinks he acts and as he acts he seems to be even if he is not his behavior!).

Metaphysically speaking, Africans deliberately refuse to do what they have to do to be on par with the so-called other races of mankind (that is, contribute to science and technology instead of taking pride in what brown Egyptians did five thousand years ago... what matters is what we do today, not what Africans did in the past; we cannot rest on our past laurels). Therefore, they are seen as the pariah of the world.  They then struggle to seem important and talk as if they love Africa. That is their game and they must do it for it is how they chose to live.

As for me, I choose to participate in science and technology (I do not believe anyone else knows more or has made more important contribution to my chosen area of science, psychology, than I).

African forums had to exist and all the members had to come and write their stuff for those of us who wanted to learn about Africans to read them and learn about their stage of mental development. If I had not read what folks write on these forms I would not have learned that Igbos and Africans in general are, at least, five hundred years behind other races and that it would take, at least, another two hundred years before they get to the level of civilization enjoyed by other people.

Therefore, instead of wishing that the owners of the forums asked folks to leave I should be asking them to allow all people to participate and exhibit their types of madness so that I learn from them.

The universe knows more than I do; in its infinite wisdom, the universe allows these folks, to me fools, to be around and write their stuff so that I learn from them. If these people had not come to the public square and written what to me seemed like nonsense I would not have learned how stupid and backward they are; I would have continued thinking that you can civilize them in a generation.

Now I know better. I expect Igbos, Africans to be backward for another two hundred years. This is social realism, not idealism; it is based on accurate perception of them as primitive people.

Therefore, I say, let the fools keep jabbering away and whenever I have the time I would visit their forums and see what they write and learn about their backward mental processes.

Anyone who really wants to understand Africans ought to belong to African internet forums and read what supposedly adult Africans write.  Many of these Africans exhibit the emotional age of children and the intellectual status of mentally retarded folks.

Reading what these folks write, you quickly learn why they do poorly at IQ tests and standardized aptitude tests such as scholastic aptitude tests.

I used to think that it must be a lie when I read in psychology text books that Africans average IQ is like the IQ of mentally retarded folks (under 70).

The average IQ for black Americans is 85, for white folks is 100, for Asians it is 115; above average IQ is 120-130...it takes above average IQ to be a medical doctor, PhD etc.; it takes superior IQ, anything over 132, to do original thinking, do research in the sciences.

I could not believe that Africans average IQ is the same as for mentally retarded folks in Europe and North America.   But reading what some of them write has taught me that the average African is mentally retarded but does not know it!

Arguing with white psychometricians about how the tests do not test Africans is a distraction. All that one needs to do is look at their actual performance, at what they write and in the fact that their leaders construe governing as stealing from the public treasury but not generating wealth for the entire nation.

These people are different from other people and the sooner we accepted that fact and sought ways to help them, to bring them up to other folk’s level the better it is for them.

I am glad that the universe’s will prevailed and overruled my wishes; the universe allows all to exist and do their thing, write their thing, so that I could learn about them from reading what they write.

If my wish that offensive Africans go away had prevailed I would not have learned how dull and backward these people, in fact, are.

I now see the wisdom of scripture saying may the will of God prevail and not the wishes of man. Man’s wishes are ill informed and therefore do not always know what is good for him.

God knows what is good for all of us hence allow all of us, good and bad, to exist. God allows his sun to shine for the good and bad.  So, I now accept the existence of the good and bad and no longer wish for the bad to go away. (Before you get smart on me let me quickly add that I am fully aware that God is our construct; it is you and I who tell us what God is or is not; none of us has seen God to have independent knowledge of him. Be that caveat as it may, I accept that God exists. This is not a statement of faith but is based on pure reason, Kantian type of reasoning.)

I learn from the bad perhaps more than I learn from the good. I certainly have learned from the bad, such as the savage called Chukwuma, about his people’s callousness, their lack of love for people, and their desire to insult people. From them I have learned that they are a wicked people scheduled to be punished by their fellows every now and then. The wicked are always punished.

Whoever instead of loving people insults them is wicked and must be punished so that he learns that love is the only attitude a human being should have for other human beings regardless of their race and gender.

In the end, the cliché: beware of what you ask for, for if you get it you might regret it is true. I had asked for annoying folks to go away but if my wishes had been granted I would have missed on the opportunity to learn from them about the reality of who they and their people are. Thus, the universe was kind in overruling my wishes and giving me the good and bad for I learn from both.

Our God gives his rain to the good and the wicked for we learn from the wicked as much as we learn from the good; we find salvation from relating to those who love us as well as from those who do not love us.  God, indeed, is mysterious in his ways.

·         In the language of freedom of speech and democracy, all people must be allowed to have their say even those you do not like, such as racists, tribalists and Nazis; let them speak and write their stuff on how everyone else is inferior and they are superior folks. We learn about their underlying sense of unbearable inferiority that leads them to the delusion of superiority by reading their convoluted materials. I say: never restrict freedom of speech for it leads to our growth; when folks speech is restricted we all stop learning and stop growing. I have learned a lot from many Africans’ weird writings that are suffused with insults for their fellow Africans instead of love for them. I have learned that Africans seldom love their fellow Africans while proclaiming that they do so. Selling their fellow Africans is their forte!

Ozodi Osuji

May 22, 2012