For centuries, the West held the rest of the world as colonies and did a masterful job of convincing others of their inferiority.
As countries emerged from the grips of colonialism, one of their first challenges was rewriting their history. After all, no nation has ever risen to greatest on the basis of a history written by others. And no people can succeed while convinced of their own inferiority.
Liberians are perhaps alone in failing to tackling that indispensable task. Ghanians and Tanzanians, Trinidadians and Guyanese, Indians and Chinese have all done it.
Even in the U. S., the rewriting of black history came before the Civil Rights Movement and the election of blacks to public office.
I hope that in 2023 we Liberians will finally realize that politics cannot unite us because the electoral process is inherently divisive. Only the humanities and the arts can provide us with a coherent sense of identity, dignity and purpose that can propel us forward.
I hope this is the year we will stop expecting politicians to provide a new vision for our fractured nation. Most are constitutionally incapable of producing any such thing. That task falls squarely on the shoulders of the writers, visual artists, musicians and other creative folk.
Why? Only those who dare step “outside the box” of conventional thinking are capable of generating anything new. And envisioning new ways is, by definition, what creative people do. Our currency is not popularity per se, but rather truth and beauty.
Writing and making art are usually lonely pursuits. We who embrace these callings are often marginalized, but it is precisely “at the margins” that new visions are born.
It is time for Liberian writers and artists to “be the change we want to see in the world.” The politicians will follow, and they will bring their followers trailing behind them.