Friends & Friction: Discontent is better than a fool’s paradise

These days, it seems, everything that we do and eat is wrong.

We’re told that red meat is bad; that starch is bad; that running is bad for your knees – and so on. As one author put it: “We are consuming our own discontent.”

It is not all bad. Discontent is necessary for progress, and the kind that we currently see in our country is not “nostalgic discontent”, whereby we yearn for the past.

Instead, the people want a country that has free education and visible service delivery – and, essentially, one that rids itself of corruption.

There is no doubt that if you were to return to South Africa 100 years from today, you would find a better country.

Therefore, it means that the current unrest is an expression of good discontent.

At times, we remember the legacy of apartheid more than the progress we have made in the past two decades.

We now have a robust constitutional democracy, which has freed us from the possible re-emergence of an HF Verwoerd and other execrable humans this country has fallen prey to.

We have unprecedented political press freedom, which gives us a front-row view of the shenanigans going on in the corridors of power.

However, still lacking are accountability and consequence.

Many more people have decent housing than before as RDP homes have mushroomed throughout the country.

But to someone who was born after Nelson Mandela’s presidency, there is no point of reference. What they see is the bare minimum.

Our young people have new ideals – and they have a right to them. That is what progress is about.

When times are tough, we dream of a different world – one that is better than what we are experiencing currently.

When you are hot and thirsty, you dream of an ice-cold drink, but when you are cold and weary, you dream of a steamy, revitalising beverage.

In political philosophy, that dream is called utopia – a term coined by English lawyer, statesman and author Sir Thomas More in his book of the same name.

It is a Greek word meaning “no place” and, in More’s work, serves as an imaginary island society with idyllic religious, social and political customs.

The Italian poet Tommaso Campanella took utopia to a different level. In his book, The City of the Sun, individual ownership is strictly prohibited, fighting is punishable by death and love for all is compulsory.

Smart people are compelled to sleep with stupid people, fat ones with skinny ones and, in today’s contrary society, black people would be forced to sleep with white people.

Different utopias have come and gone over the ages. National socialism, or Nazism, was one such idyll suggesting life would be good for all Germans. When this seemed unattainable, the Jews were blamed.

Apartheid was supposed to be another form of utopia, where different races and tribes lived separately and happily ever after.

Like all other societies of this ilk, it quickly disintegrated into a dystopia, and black people were to blame for their aspirations.

Today’s utopia promotes the idea that the economy and money are the answer to all our problems.

This too will disintegrate, and then the weeding out of the human “obstacles” will begin. As usual, blood will then flow down the streets like burst sewage.

The unintended consequences of this economic utopia are now plain to see. We are told that we are eating the wrong food, yet our lifespan is much longer than that of our forebears.

The people telling us how wrong we are, are the very ones who peddle what they claim to be the correct solution. They are seldom honest observers, though.

A human ideal is never a bad thing, but we need one that places the quality of human life above the belief that the economy is the answer to everything.

Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency