By Abdulwarees Solanke
A casual examination of the prevailing cultural dissonance in our society today will reveal that something is terribly amiss in a nation that is caught in the web of globalization fraught with so many discontents. Globalization is not only about trade and economy. It is not just about global politics or international affairs. Far more are the dimensions of globalization, as they cover such aspects of lives as sports especially soccer, information, technology, and significantly too, knowledge and culture.
But today I am more interested in how globalization is shaping cultural orientation of the modern youth in the blind adoption or promotion of pop which finds expression in fashion and style, in dance and music, in drama and film, in language and thoughts, cuisines and drinks and in matters of the heart and filial relationships. In all these, we are witness a horrifying deviance, sometimes bestial, sometimes obscene, sometimes libertarian but obsessive and usually wasteful and distasteful to reason and odious in appearance.
And the addicts or patrons of this popular but perverse culture are our children who are becoming monsters before our korokoro eyes, as we agonize that in our days, we dare not present ourselves in such ridiculous frame without facing a form of sanction or disapproval from the larger society. We wonder, towards where are we heading, if not a dungeon of history or cultural annihilation.
Look around you if you will not find a barrel chested male youth with sickening tattoo covering almost his entire frame or one with ear rings like a devotee of Sango Olukoso Oka Oya. Our neighbourhoods are brimming with rascals best described as NFAs (No future ambition), yet they are supposed to be the future leaders. You find the area girls going virtually naked without any mother to call them to order yet they will be wife materials from which the successor generation are to be sired.
Check our schools and colleges and you will be confronted with hollow characters and you will wonder if our universities are still equipped with the required capacity to imbue students with ennobling learning and character. Street corners and abe igi aanu are nothing more than drug joints where the omo adugbos find comfort in self-destruction.
Area Boys have become rapacious wolves and hounds at whose sight innocent school girls are not safe from sexual harassment or molestation. Worse, we have all become victims of gang fights among sinister neighbourhood rings or accomplices in sheltering of ruffians and yahoo boys around us, who if you dare report or expose, you become easy target for serious intimidation if not eventual elimination for constituting nuisance to them.
But from where did they acquire the audacity? *Obviously, it is from their monstrous mentors in movie and music, most of who are madmen in mentality.*
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