DIALECTICAL SPIRITUALISM
[Dialectical Spiritualism] – Marx and Engel’s powerful materialism theory has a spirituality root. Though their students around the world prefer and want to expound more on major aspects – especially those of the ‘economic and political rule’ factors.
It appears, we Africans have been meditating too much on the ‘revolutionary’ aspects – for the end game of attainment of political and economic [material] wealth power. Moreover, to get there, it has always been through the over amplified political activism… and mobilized ‘proletariat’ violence – seen as popular and colorful if often violent revolt!
Though Marx and Engels theory plays out as holistic, the early generation students of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s implementing groups, hardly ever looked seriously at the scope of ‘dialectical spiritualism’ – probably due to how the Leninists initially down-graded religion – and, probably thereby creating the negation of ‘dialectical spiritualism’. So that, today, as the world advanced into the digital age, the real root of this enormous thinking still remain hidden.
However, what to me is probably more tenable [in thought] is fact that the dialectical thinking of ancient times… whose unfolding include the solid fundamental revolutionaries and the many-many fanciful and romantic revolutionaries; Lenin, Stalin and down the revolutionary lines to Castro, Che Guevara and the host of their African followers oversimplified the Marx and Engel dialectical thinking to media loaded undue proletariat type African violence…
Simple – the ‘dialectical spiritualism’ factor I am trying to freely visualize and expound seems to me as ruling over all factors including political, economic and militancy factors.
FAUST, the German tragedian grand heavenly play is to me the indicator to the root of dialectical thinking in all its varied components... This to me again, on the other hand seems to manifest itself in that ‘Fine Art Student’ College conflict of Vienna that is historically said to have eventually plunged the world into the two main world wars! So that, in our twenty first century, we should see that vision of the fine artist.
That whole backlog of world literature still does not specifically address themselves to the African Continent. We have therefore been aping, following and part stage [Shakespeare] players – deftly trekking after ideological principles we actually do not know how to identify with.
To get wind of my direction, one needs to sample certain aspects of world history - as supplementary to or actually part play, in the implementation of the dialectics.
In the old East, ‘Dr. Zivako’ captures it very well – while in the west ‘Clark Gable in [Gone…]equally captures the western aspect very well.
The modernist history plays itself out finally highlighted by the Western and Eastern confrontation over the [Iron Curtain] beginning with Gary Power’s U2 [the point of entry for Pan Africanism] with FAUST’ tragedy [Nazi] power-play fitting well in that ‘dialectical materialism’ locking of horns over Nazism... What eventually creates space for the writing of current history?
Two previously missing pieces of the zig-saw puzzle, were Africa’s entry points into the dialectical materialism as played-out between the old ‘Communism and Capitalism’. Seen through the old lenses that focuses on the spy plane U2 politics and, on the other hand, Che and Fidel seen playing golf on the green courses vacated by the Belgians in the old Katanga.
Today – Ugandan political opinionated and discussants, like their brothers around Africa, search for the “Ideological” way-forward; they are looking for ‘theories’ that might help blend our local thinking with that of the International political, social and economic ideologies.
In my own view, I think the African search should start with the understanding of ‘dialectical spiritualism’ as part of the teachings of Marx and Engel that is not so clearly absorbed in Africa. Bearing in mind that, despite the old Curtain wars… actually Marx and Engel theories weren’t exactly Communist nor even Capitalist - but rather theories that exacted the functions of systems based on their material needs and applications.
Africans therefore in my thinking need to be less followers of the old fundamental and even charismatic revolutionaries - but to heck-out newer lines of thinking based on the zig-saw puzzle pieces I observed above. Here, I am open to critical views and challenges on my direction of thinking and interpretation of that ancient dialectical thought. It is only an attempt at looking more closely at life. END
