Climate of Fear by Wole Soyinka Page B

we hear is democracy, democracy! Human rights! What exactly is this democracy? Does it prevent hunger? Is it something we can put in the mouth and eat like food?
    I felt bound to come, quite unnecessarily, to the defense of the United Nations and wrote an article in response, remarking that I had dined in the cafeterias and restaurants of the United Nations on occasion, and had never seen democracy on the menu, nor indeed on any menu in restaurants all over the world. So, what, I demanded, was the point of that statement?
    Well, while democracy as such may not be on the UN restaurant menu, it is nonetheless on its catering agenda. So is human dignity. Needless to say, both are inextricably linked. Indeed, human dignity appears to have been on everyone’s menu since the development of the most rudimentary society, recognized as such by philosophers who have occupied their minds with the evolution of the social order. Nothing is more fascinating, but permanently contentious, than the kind of binarism attributed to the motoring force of the evolution of this order by Hegel, Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Locke, among others. The historic man, according to these thinkers, would appear to be a product of a choice between abject submission or bondage, on the one hand, for the sake of self-preservation, and, on the other, a quest for dignity, even if this leads to death. Karl Marx, for his part, felt compelled to distance himself from their deductions, yet even he refused to ignore the importance of that element, human dignity, naming it as a reward that comes naturally with the evolution of man whose labor is un-governed by necessity. That is the phase when it becomes possible to celebrate
the dignity of labor.
What for us is worth noting today is simply the prodigious output of numerous minds on this theme, nearly all of whom emphasize that the pursuit of dignity is one of the most fundamental defining attributes of human existence.
    We could utilize the animal kingdom as our entry point: I have listened sometimes to comparisons of household pets in terms of dignity—a cat, for instance, is usually accounted to be extremely dignified in comparison with a dog. The former is regarded thus because it is aloof, independent, and deliberate in its motions, while the dog exhibits traits of fawning, dependency, and easy excitation. These judgments are of course taken from what human beings have extracted from their own patterns of social conduct. Thus, a predator stalking through the jungle, a “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,” in those luminous lines of William Blake, is often regarded—especially in
National Geographic
and by conservationists—as the very epitome of dignity, but watch it when it is devouring its prey or snarling at interlopers and I believe that all thought of dignity is forgotten. I think also that we would all agree that there is not much dignity to be found in the execution of one of those natural functions that even the most exalted, elegant, and “dignified” among us cannot avoid. Or indeed when we are indulging in that activity that guarantees the continuation of the species, but is mostly undertaken simply for the ecstasy of losing ourselves in another being.
    Obviously we cannot remain within those parameters of poise, balance, rhythm, control, and so on, those attainments that are within the capability or trainability of the animal family, of which our species happens to be a part—a unique species whose social rituals and conduct have defined it further and further away from the rest of the larger family since the beginning of evolution. Today, we can hardly conceive of the individual outside the membership of a socialized group that constantly reinvents itself; we do not equate ourselves with some static organism under observation in a permanently controlled setting, or indeed with a “dignified” animal in a zoo. Thus, it is within human relationships that the essence of a