(Part 1)

“The New World Order is neither here nor there, now nor hence, today nor tomorrow!”, they say. “But who are ‘they’?,” asked Ghana. The answer is predictably sensational! A pandemonium of thoughtful silence. “What?,” you say. Another silence of thoughtful pandemonium. Incidentally, no one seems to pay the former question any serious attention because Ghana, it appears, has lost moral credibility in The Mirror of Self-Appraisal.

And no one particularly cared about the second question either. The country has become No Man’s Land. Well, the world has changed so dramatically since Nkrumah’s Dark Days when “they” and “you” commanded immense respect in the Great Forest of Community, Gold Coast-turned Ghana. “Anyway, who is ‘you’?,” asked The Mirror of Self-Appraisal. Noisy silence. Again. “You” is we, you, and I. Us, you mean? Us, that is we? The great community of you, we, and I, you mean? Probably. Lest we forget, “they” and “you” are the opposite faces of The Mirror of Self-Appraisal.

“Do you mean it?”, asked The Wind.

“Not if you are dreaming!”, answered Nobody.

That is a simple matter of visual, intellectual, and cultural confusion! “But you have not seen anything yet!”, remarked the faddish Prof. Confusion, the Great Political Transvestite, a thought openly shrouded in a sartorial diffidence of Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, a sort of moral transvestitism. By the way, who was the Great Political Transvestite, otherwise called Prof. Confusion? That? In layman parlance, the Great Political Transvestite was a political she-man. What? Better still, the Great Political Transvestite was “you,” “we,” and “I,” the community of us!

Predictably, the Great Political Transvestite believed she-he was trapped in a wrong body. Of course she-he may be right to some extent. How? We ask: What is the evidence supporting the claim she-he was trapped in a wrong body? What nonsense! What is wrong body? Body is body! Simple! Hey! Don’t get us wrong, however. The Great Political Transvestite was neither a he-goat nor a she-goat. She-he was simply Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Prof. Confusion. But “body,” wrong or not, was itself a kind of mindset, The Mirror of Self-Appraisal, that is. If that were truly the case, was this what Prof. Confusion, so-called, also the same great professor of Confucianism, talked about in Ghana’s parliament in the shadows of yesteryear? Sort of!

Here is part of the evidence: Greed. The Great Political Transvestite’s Space-Shuttle of greed was proverbially known, at least once, to have torn past the unimaginable reach of the universe in the crater-heat of cascading hungriness, to the extent that The Mirror of Self-Appraisal failed to catch up. The Great Political Transvestite rapaciously ate her-his feces and drank her-his own urine. The Great Political Transvestite used up atmospheric oxygen in the company of other creatures without a sense of equity. Living creatures underwent social asphyxiation in her-his spongy presence. Oh Greed! Greed! Greed! Greed! Oh Greed! It is all about Greed! Oh greedy today of the past, of the present, of tomorrow!

She-he thought the world was hers-his, to her-him alone. She-he also lived in the present and somehow believed the God of Animals and the Dog of Human Beings created tomorrow for the blind, the fool, and the loser. And the past? Forget it! The past meant tomorrow for her-him. Arguably, she-he accepted the agnostic fate of the past and tomorrow without question. Yet her-his situation was difficult to explain to anyone, the uninitiated, because he was born in the future Space Shuttle of tomorrow, rendering the shadow of the past historically invisible—but intellectually inviolate. It was all the fault of Greed!

In fact, her-his lifetime dream was to make a smooth transmission from the Space Shuttle of the future of tomorrow to the Heliocentric Inertia of the present, then, as others before him had done, to begin to appreciate the physical proximity or nonphysical remoteness of the past, a moral negation of tomorrow. So you think, eh? Unfortunately, a huge secret concealed in the bosom of nature had escaped her-his narrow purview of ontology, which was that the past, present, and tomorrow were intertwined in a dragnet of cosmological connectedness. Such was the tapestry of life, of nature!

Ironically, life was like a broken mirror in those days, those days of relative pristine consciousness, Nkrumah’s Dark Days, for it always gave viewers back exactly what they asked for. Yet corruption, self-aggrandizement, and money were such great inventory of social variables The Great Political Transvestite could not have simply afforded to let go. The more she-he ate, the thinner she-he became. What a wonderful world! She-he even rode on the wings of vanity to the end of the Milky Way for these great inventories of social variables only to find the face of GOD, the Devil or God. But she-he was not one to be intimidated by the Devil or God of frustration.

It was all the fault of Greed! The people put her-his picture on paper money and by the time they came to their sense she-he had chewed all the national currencies, sending the body politic to the graveyard of bankruptcy. The people gave her-him the Bank of Ghana (BOG) and she-he turned it into the Burden of Ghana (BOG). Oh how great is the Body of Greed (BOG)! The people blessed she-he with enormous wealth and she-he cursed them with perpetual poverty, misery, and privation. The people blessed she-he with a life of success and she-he returned their magnanimity with deaths of failures. The people gave she-he the Blessings of God (BOG) and she-he converted their generosity into Banks of Gangsters (BOG) as their political leaders. It was all the fault of Greed!

Oops! What more could the good people of Ghana do to salvage the situation! Thankfully, they dragged her-him to a mega-church, overseen by Reverend Gravedigger Greed, in the Heart of the Devil for deliverance, but her-his mere presence, inexplicably, converted the offertory baskets and the church’s bank accounts into a desert of ghosts, of moral poverty. In no time, mountains of frustrations piled up on valleys of frustrations in the crater-mouth of the people’s head until they, that is, “you,” “we,” and “l” gave up on her-him. Corruption, un-patriotism, and greed, it soon became clear to all, had seeped into the depths of his psychological genomics. It was all the fault of Greed!

Probably, only the science of moral purgation could have reversed that condition of hopelessness. But that kind of hopeless science was far away, very far away, very far, far away, very far, far, far away, in fact, beyond the spiritual reach of The Mirror of Self-Appraisal. Thus, The Great Political Transvestite approached The Mirror of Self-Appraisal for alternative solutions to her-his problems. Pleasantries changed hands. “Do you want more money?”, The Mirror of Self-Appraisal asked her-him. That? The question did not particularly sit well with The Great Political Transvestite. The point was that he had come to seek practical solutions, not to be pushed further into an abyss of despair. It was all the fault of Greed!

Interestingly, The Great Political Transvestite did not know The Mirror of Self-Appraisal was telepathically reading and interpreting her-his mind. “The only solution to unbridled love for money is unbridled access to more money. No less!,” said The Mirror of Self-Appraisal, nicknamed The Beetle Scarab, adding: “Don’t you think?” Silence. Confused, the Political Transvestite then ruffled through her-his stubby beard with her-his wormy webbed feet for innovative answers. There were none. Her-his stubby beard had always disappointed her-him when she-he needed it the most. In fact, the stubby beard itself was the problem. It was the Amazon Forest of problems. She-he needed all the money in the world to maintain it, to keep it going. It was all the fault of Greed!

Eventually, the Scarab Beetle said to the lazy Prof. Confusion, The Great Political Transvestite, “Go to the Amazon Forest of your mind, the middle of it, I mean, and there you will see The Giant Iroko Tree waiting for you. And once you get to it, please, uproot it and there, the abode of the roots, you will find all the money you want or need in the entire world.” That was it! The Great Political Transvestite suddenly disappeared into the Amazon Forest of her-his mind. Soon, she-he discovered The Giant Iroko Tree but realized it was not something she-he could uproot unassisted, a justifiably well-placed admission or concession. Still, The Great Political Transvestite, an elephant in disguise, could not bring her-himself to accept her-his helplessness. It was all the fault of Greed!

In the meantime, walking through the overcrowded comfort of her-his mind, the Amazon Forest, he happened upon The Scarab Beetle. She-he saw the Scarab Beetle, ant-like, carry a mountain of dung twenty-thousand times his weight. “How does he do that?”, thought The Great Political Transvestite. A strange thought came to her-him, the question of how The Scarab Beetle had turned up in the Amazon forest of her-his mind constituted an unexplained paradox. Should he solicit The Scarab Beetle’s assistance in uprooting The Giant Iroko Tree? Sure. He did. In fact. The Scarab Beetle consequently unloaded the mountain of dung, after which he blew a whispery tune of tornado in the direction of The Great Iroko Tree. It fell like the small body of Goliath. Boom! Boom! Boom! It was the all fault of Greed!

Afterward, The Great Political Transvestite discovered a huge crater in the ground, then the domicile of the roots. The Scarab Beetle slowly bent over, picked up the crater and, after profusely thanking her-his helper, carried it to The Scarab Beetle, who had been waiting for her-him in The Mirror of Self-Appraisal. The Scarab Beetle received the crater with great fanfare. A thorough examination of the crater ensued in earnest, a gesture accompanied by punctuations of laughter. “Good job!” he said. The Great Political Transvestite turned into a befuddled gargoyle, expecting The Scarab Beetle to have retrieve the money right away from the crater and given it to her-him. It was all the fault of Greed!

That did not happen, however, at least not sooner. She-he stared at her-himself in The Mirror of Self-Appraisal, her-his mindset, but only saw DOG and DOG. On the other hand, “My Mind Playing Tricks On me,” a rap track by Geto Boys blasted in the background. That set The Political Transvestite thinking hard. She-he wondered who The Scarab Beetle really was. Then, as though she-he was in a trance, The Political Transvestite threw the crater another quick look. “Where is my money?”, she-he asked The Scarab Beetle—who merely winked and smiled at him. Moreover, as was always the case with him, The Scarab Beetle, looking overtly elated yet covertly volatile, tilted the inside of the crater for her-him to see what was actually there. Spiritual emptiness! Emotional nothingness! But that was not the Black Hole. It was the White Hole instead.

Apparently, in the end, the most important questions of all, of life, probably, seemed not to have been posed at all, let alone answered, in the first place. Who was MONEY? Was MONEY God or Dog? Did MAN create MONEY or the other way round? Was MONEY a living creature? Could MONEY be MAN in disguise? Why would MAN create MONEY to outlive her-him? Between MAN and MONEY, who wielded most of the power in the world? Was MAN MONEY or MONEY MAN? Was MONEY a tenant of MAN’s soul, mind, and spirit? Was MONEY or MAN the root of all evil? Was MONEY all there was to life? And why have MAN and MONEY both refused to adequately address these questions?

MAN and MONEY could not have been blamed! Instead the Ghanaian political animal should have. Why? Because the Ghanaian MAN, an out-of-the-ordinary breed of political animal, came across as a different creature among men. Simple. Besides, granted that the evil machinations of MONEY could have intricately been intertwined with the complex nature of the Ghanaian MAN, why did all the coups fail hopelessly to uproot these evil machinations from the un-fertile soil of the nature of the Ghanaian MAN? In fact, which reasons adequately explained the most ancient of Ghanaian moral conundrums, that the more firing squads the Ghanaian Man, a political animal, faced, the more politically evil and devious she-he became?

Indeed, allegedly the coup makers had intended to impose an outwardly-driven New World Order of mis-consciousness on the body politic in the hope that, except the greatest and outstanding Ghanaian, the incomparable Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the old nature of the Ghanaian Man, a political animal, would see reason with common sense to change its untoward behavior for the general betterment of society. Thus, the coup plotters, led by General Afrifa who merely replaced the “C” in Africa with “F” to assure—if deceptively—unsuspecting Ghanaians of his noble African-ness forced MONEY down the throat of the people.

MONEY—Man’s Old Nature Ended Yesterday. This Afrifaist catastrophism approach to transforming the old nature of the Ghanaian Man overthrew the Nkrumahist gradualism approach of MONEY—Man’s Old Nature Erodes Yearly. As a matter of philosophical emphasis, Afrifa’s catastrophism approach entrenched the old nature in the body politic, as he himself incontrovertibly proved to be a model of the old nature, given that his feline moustache and Hitlerite moustache shared a false, if superiorized, sense of inferiority complex. Afrifa’s feline moustache gave him away. We now know who he was, a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, since his alchemized putschism could not retrench either the CIA or MONEY.

In the end, what did Ghanaians of the ancient Ghana Empire, of the progressive Old World Order, do to understand Nkrumah’s innovative response to their deep-rooted moral dilemma via the philosophical scaffolding of African Personality? For possible creative solutions, let us, namely, “we,” “you,” and “I,” closely shadow The Scarab Beetle as he diligently sought clues in The Mirror of Self-Appraisal in Part 2! We should be joined by The Wind and Nobody.