Is it our destiny as a nation to get embroiled in constant dog fights; to keep barking at others while some of us cower frightened

d and unwilling to speak out? Our lack of confidence in dealing with each other is well described by the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe who wrote the de-colonization classic No longer at ease. It is obvious at this point that we will never get de-colonized till we understand the experience of colonization itself; that we will not develop until we know precisely who we are and what we are not as western definitions but as living, breathing forms of life able to recognize both self and each other. History is not dead. It forms one unbroken thread that connects the so called past with the so called present and so called future. These three dimensions are united and we have connected all three with or habitual and ignorant thinking. The same errors are repeated generation after generation without ever touching the essence, the real and true. Our failure to learn the lessons of history are linked intimately with our more general failure of introspection and the inability to see ourselves as we truly are.

'Educated' leaders have demonstrated on more occasions than we'd care to recall, that 'learning history is easy enough, but learning its lessons are almost impossibly difficult.'
We have tried to connect with our past a civilization which has left behind the physical evidence of a genuine culture and failed. Nothing that our historians wrote, nothing that our ancestors left behind as stories and anecdotes and nothing that some political leaders tried to cynically exploit has given us that rich and sublime emotion of being heirs to something bigger and deeper than a narrow, besieged and antagonistic racial and religious identity. We know who did what and when in history but we dont have a clue as to WHY? What were the ideas and concepts that motivated and drove our ancestors? Without this authentic conceptual framework and insight into the way these ideas evolved we are simply left with the dry bones of history and the equally dry and even more dangerous categorizations placed by western and western educated scholars. Having taken sides based on that alien classification we are now unable to look at history with any critical objectivity; our kings and what they did was wholly good what the invaders did was wholly wrong. And the grand

theme of this island is unity against adversity even when it has now become apparent that this is simply a fiction, a story that has long become outdated but which has served our ruling families well. In fact the disintegration of our civilization began centuries before a white man set foot on this island. We do not know how we became a nation in the distant past and we do not know how that nation died to leave a bunch of poor imitators behind.

Sajeeva Samaranayake January 30, 2013