Are We A Courageous Lot Or A Posturing Bunch?

Courage must be mustered but posturing is mastered. Courage is about fearing something and doing it, anyway. It is never about the absence of fear but rather the presence of it even when doing that which you fear doing.

Posturing is about acting courageous when in actual fact you are just one second away from giving in to reality.

If two guys are confronted by a fierce dog, their bodies respond accordingly and emit the scent of adrenaline which the dog picks and interprets as fear. That encourages it to get closer. The brave guy shall stand his ground and the dog will get confused and avoid him. The other guy immediately goes into flight mode and runs away. The dog will pursue him for as far as it will take to catch him.

At peacetimes, everyone seems brave, but when the adrenaline-calling conditions come alive, the Y-junction gets clearer and many will go one way and a few, the other way.

Let's start with the Jua Kali sector. One guy breaks away from the lot in their designated area to set up shop along a busy roundabout. Within a month of this guy showing up, another twenty traders set up shop. For a while, everyone thinks that what they've witnessed is a courageous lot with no concern for city regulations. But they are in bed with county law enforcement officers on the take. And when the residents come together in a protest match, the authorities take note and in one swoop, clear the offending structures with the efficiency of a hurricane. What looked like loads of courage end up as muted protests that are just enough to get them back into the designated market zones. For these lot, it's never about courage but the safety in numbers needed to posture.

Let's look at the unionisable workers, university staffers in particular. These are the most educated of all unionisable groupings in the country. When they make demands on TV, they are quite lion-like as they are mostly maned in their long beards. It is always about more money with no corresponding increases in workloads. Were this lot courageous enough, they would have brought about revolutionary ways that would at such times as now help them overcome the consequences of the budget cuts advocated for by the IMF. Many more universities are opening worldwide while ours are shutting down.

These dons have not only let themselves down but also their students out there who in their thousands feel the heavy loads of embarrassment brought on them by the men and women who gave them the education and the grades that mattered. All the hot air meted out on TV amounts to posturing and unfortunately, it has nothing to do with wealth creation but rather consumption.

Politicians, there is no escape for you.

These people sound brave in parliament while making inaccurate claims on the floor of the house. One minute they seem courageous and the next very timid apologists when the speaker demands a withdrawal of such offending statements.

The same lot encourages citizens to rise against the government whilst their children are far away from these protests. Many seem courageous but won't turn up because theirs was just an act of posturing. Courage puts all resources, children, warts, and all in the forefront. But clearly, politicians are good at using other people's children, time, and money.

The corporate world is full of posturing types. The policies are clearly articulated but they are not followed. On paper, advances made on any staffers are forbidden but often, that is the business pursued and executed better than the core business. Much as that doesn't reach the bottom line, it defines the line within which many people get to keep their jobs. A courageous boss would take responsibility when caught or reported but it's all about the posturing consistent with deny, deny deny.

Courage is about moving the country from rugs to riches. Posturing is about setting goals that no one plans to attain. Do we have the courage to actualize serious dreams or is our posturing helping to nurse nightmares?