Life and Life

Today, at this present time and age, there's life and there's life. One is of utmost importance and is thus highly guarded, heavily protected, ultimately guaranteed, assuredly insured, and luxuriously lived. By contrast, the other just exists because there's still oxygen in the owner's lungs.

So, what we observe is that everything is done to keep life going in one set while the extinguishing of the flame of life in the other set arrives like twilight or dawn, one of those occurrences that we don't count as anything because it's all part of the natural stream of things. Evening comes and morning follows.

What sets life apart from life can be as flimsy as the surname you bear or as alterable as the level of social structure to which you belong. A concatenation of factors can mean that when one life is taken it's a national catastrophe or a death is recorded as part of the statistics. Two national coaches dying a week apart can raise questions of what's happening and have people worrying for the shelf-life of ex-footers while no one will ever know the names of those many whose lives were snuffed out when their communities were attacked as they innocently went about their daily hustles for meagre survival.

Life is not the same as life.

And it's not just national. It's as global as recent events in God's own country exemplify. For the presence or otherwise of melanin in your skin, your surviving a routine drive through town is not guaranteed. That's all. It doesn't get any flimsier. Whether it's argued that a majority of crimes are committed by those in that skin shade ad nauseum is beside the point. Life here is the focus.

Who decides that one is of more importance than the other? And on what basis? Those accidental cleavages of class distinctions? Racial taxonomies? Historical fractions? Anecdotal stereotyping? Bank accounts? Tribal sentiments? Nominal influence? Unequal fingers?

It must have appeared ingenious to declare at some point that "All Men Are Born Equal". It still is, in a sense. The thing is they don't stay just "born" for the rest of their lives. They grow. And somewhere along the line of leaving being born alive (in a castle or in a manger) to getting a life, equality ceases to exist.

The irony, no? Life is born and equality dies. Life is not life. There's life and there's life. Go figure!

Life, ooh life

It all comes down to basic, simple values. Life has no intrinsic colour nor tribe. Not even a nationality. It isn't inherently Maidugurian or Courcourounnesian. It is just LIFE. Humanitarian principles that urge global intervention to the point of contravening another nation's sovereignty are based on this underlying consensus. Life is to be prioritised above all other concerns and differences. When reduced to the basest, that is our shared commonality and it means the same thing everywhere.

But that is clearly an assumption.

When its loss in one part of the globe carries little to no significance in contrasting comparison to global reaction to its loss elsewhere, an oft-neglected issue of significance returns to the debate. Are some lives more important, are some lives of more value than others?

We may have to agree that they are. There is something of geolocation that places an extra veneer of importance to one life somewhere but not to several hundreds, nay thousands, elsewhere. It has nothing to do with the character of the one who loses his or her right to life. It isn't related to the person's innocence either. It's just about where you are in the world. Probably also about which passport has your name on it too. It is about how bad your government is. Or better still, how insensitive your countrymen and women are (that is why little importance is placed on collateral damage in warfare, yea?)

It is on these accidents (these qualities and characteristics of differentiation) rather than the substance of your essence as a human person that hang the value of your life. And since these characteristics of differentiation are unwholesome in that part of the world where you exist, shea butter (that fat extracted from the nut of the African shea tree) is of more value than your life.

It doesn't matter the content of your character nor the moral reticence of your upbringing. Your life is forfeit. If you like bi masquerade or bi defender of the Western weltanschauung, na di same thing. Whether your unfortunate passing gets a mention in the news or not is beside the point. The value on your life just didn't measure up. Finish.

Next time, please endeavour to be conceived and born in a better location. Because principles aren't all they're made to be. They are coloured by a prism of other realities; of bad governance, of uncaring countrymen, of socioeconomic paralysis, of moral somersaults, of nationalistic self interests and of religious jingoism. Those and many more determine how low or high a value is attributed to your life.

Ooh, and don't forget a better passport too. You'd thank me later.

Footnote
There is also the difference losing someone brings to the picture. When you meet those who have endured loss and whose sense of belonging are shaken by the strangeness of the coldness of their own countrymen to their predicament (whilst identifying with similar foreign losses), it strikes you. A reaction to loss of any life is only human. The deeper and closer it is to heart, the more emotional. It, no doubt, helps the bereaved as your solidarity helps with their fortitude.

I decline to define what a selective reaction to loss of life makes one. And the effects on the selectively neglected bereaved. I might go overboard as usual.