This is the 21st century. Homo sapiens has evolved to a level of enlightenment and sophistication never seen before. Human beings are governed by reason and logic. Science holds sway (or it is supposed to). They are able to understand and explain the most complex phenomena, if not instantaneously at least after a period of reflection, study and analysis. That’s how it should be. But it isn’t how it is. When faced with situations they cannot immediately deal with, such as that brought about by natural disasters or pandemics caused by hitherto little understood agents, these sophisticated beings retreat to the basic instincts of the primitive period. All the years of evolution are rolled back to the time of myth, superstition and conspiracy theories. It has always been thus and is happening again today with Covid-19 and rising lakes, floods, landslides and locust invasions. Humankind must find some sort of answer to questions they have not faced before or of unusual magnitude and reach. In the distant past societies invented myths to explain such things as creation or the origin or occurrence of things. Myth and fact were frequently fused to invest certain characters with extra-ordinary powers and thus turn them into legends, often to explain their conquest and domination of some territory. Indeed mythology has been both the subject and source of great literature and art through the centuries. Think of the holy books (or the unwritten tales) of the different religions, our very own of Gihanga and others in this region who dropped from heaven, imposed their authority on the earth and founded thriving nations. Or the supernatural exploits of Ruganzu, or even those that explain the dispersal of the same people in different directions with stories about a brothers’ quarrel over a spear and a bead. We should not be surprised by the amount of literature, music and films that the Covid-19 pandemic will spawn once it is over. The making of myths is probably the broader, more creative response to, and explanation of, the unknown. A less developed, but no less important is the growth of superstition, also as explanation of things we don’t know or understand. Superstition often ascribes perfectly natural happenings to a supernatural being. .For instance, death due to causes people do not yet know or on a scale never seen before, can only be the work of an angry God who can no longer turn away from the sins of the world, or of vengeful evil spirits. AIDS was for long seen as divine retribution. More recently Ebola was the work of bad spirits. The remedy for these sorts of epidemics is often equally creative. Thousands of people In Uganda in the 1990s many people were convinced that soil dispensed by a self-proclaimed divine intermediary could cure them of AIDS and other ailments and flocked to her home in their thousands. In other instances they believed that if they took a dip in some pond, its water would wash away their sins and cure their diseases. In the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic we have heard similar beliefs. Some, including top managers of society in this region, believe the only cure can come from prayer; all other actions are irrelevant. I have seen images of pastors in the United States insisting that their mission is healing by touching (pushing to the ground really) the afflicted individuals, and so the notion of social or physical distancing is nonsense. In their mind they have divine immunity and their flock believe them, and so, too, some of the country’s political leaders. In East Africa, lakes have recently risen above their normal levels, the highest since 1964, according to reports, and completely covered human settlements on their shores. In the same region floods and landslides have destroyed lives and property. We shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the rising waters are the expression of the wrath of the spirits of the lakes and punishment for transgression against them. Yet these are perfectly explicable natural occurrences. Whether this thinking is the result of conviction or capture of the mind by some unknown elements, it has the same effect. When one surrenders to a supernatural power to solve their problems, even those they can deal with, that is admission of helplessness or abdication of responsibility. Superstition or blind faith (there is a very thin line between them) removes agency from individuals. In the extreme, it can be a denial of reality and therefore lead to disaster of untold magnitude. We come back where we began. This is the twenty-first century. Humankind has made unprecedented advances in knowledge, science and technology, but myth and superstition still persist, and not in the so-called backward societies only, but even in the most advanced. Contradictory as this might appear, it should not surprise anyone. This is often the fall-back position when people are faced with extreme danger and uncertainty. Superstition, faith, artificial intelligence and whatever superior product of the human mind will replace it seem to co-exist, sometimes happily, other times in turmoil. As the Nigerians would say in pidgin, na so this world be. The views expressed in this article are of the author.
