Sierra Leoneans are familiar with human character, but only few of us challenge the notion that we are powerless over this basic ethical makeup of all human beings. Character comes from a Greek verb meaning “to engrave” and its related noun means “distinctive quality”.
Character is who we essentially are as Sierra Leoneans. It is not a superficial lifestyle we purport to live because when we say a Sierra Leonean has character, we mean that person has good ethical values and integrity to live up to them. These include honour, dignity, hospitality, reliability, trustworthiness and kindness. They also include different sets of virtues like courage, tenacity, remarkably goodlooking and, of course, competence. Our forefathers taught us all these virtues everyday at home, in work places, at school and in the church.
The attitudes of most Sierra Leoneans today portray a rejection of all these virtues. There is a sharp decline in morality and ethical behaviours among the youth. For the past years Inter Secondary Schools competitions have been marred by violence that has left innocent people injured and property damaged. We were never taught to take knives and acid to these games. We went to cheer our schools if even we are losing, but today, students have knives, acid, syringe and needles and other dangerous weapons when going to school.
Compassion, idealism, and justice have become rhetorical and divert us from actually doing what is right. One of the greatest dangers confronting Sierra Leoneans today is the erratic desire of the youth for money no matter the source.
Some people have the notion that character is fully formed and permanently fixed. The implication is that character is essentially a composite of hereditary traits, tendencies and temperaments, and environmentally imposed values and attitudes. Therefore, man has little to do with what he is. That is, character is something that cannot be altered or improved.
Several schools of thought have challenged this fatalistic notion of character in favour of a more dynamic concept. Certainly, there is no doubt that the good and bad habits that become our virtues and vices respectively are strongly influenced by both hereditary and environment. Nobody is destined to be good or bad. Nobody’s character is permanently fixed by external circumstances. Good principles, conscience and courage are powerful tools that can change a bad character to good.
People with good principles believe in honour, integrity, duty, compassion, justice and other ethical values. A person that lacks character wants everything the easy way and they can stop at nothing to get it. That is why armed robbery is on the increase, corruption too is rising and respect between peers or young and old have almost vanished.
Conscience is an internalized sense of right and wrong. It is a virtuous inner voice that unceasingly reminds us of our moral obligations and urges us to live up to them. A strong conscience enforces its moral judgments by rewarding good behaviour with good feelings of pride and self- esteem, and it imposes penalties for bad behaviour in the form of shame and guilt.
There are several of us who have good principles and vigilant conscience, yet they indulge themselves in drug trafficking and armed robbery. This shows that good principles and vigilant conscience alone are not enough. A third quality of life in the form of moral courage or will power, something to help us do the right thing even when it is costly, risky or unpleasant, is a powerful force which adds up to good principles and vigilant conscience to change character.
Morality is a set of social rules and norms intended to guide the conduct of man in society. These rules and norms emerge from our beliefs about right and wrong conduct, good and bad character. Morality is a pattern of conduct that is considered worthwhile and cherished by society. It does not only constitute good principles of behaviour but also goals of social and individual action that are potent to change bad character into good.
Good character promotes human well-being and social harmony. Bad character is detrimental to the well-being of humanity. To promote and sustain the well-being and social harmony of Sierra Leoneans demands some basic principles of life. Integrity produces those principles. When you have integrity, you integrate your whole life around a set of principles which you value. These are honesty, dignity, trustworthiness, compassion, justice and sincerity that produce an inner core of security, guidance, wisdom and power that become a wellspring of strength for every area of your life.
Unfortunately, most of us have devalued these beautiful principles because of our erratic desire for wealth at any cost. The public discussions about the character of various politicians, business executives and civil servants involved in cocaine business, allegations that some public officers who are in positions of trust assist cocaine dealers and connive with armed robbers, business executives causing bank officials to lose their jobs because of non-payment of their loans, armed robbery and mobile phone snatching becomes institutionalized. The never-ending barrage of scandals among high- profile leaders and celebrities in the country etc. have dominated the coverage of national media. One of the greatest tragedies of bad character is what it does to other people; torture, oppression, violence, all forms of immorality, hatred, wars, injustices, intolerance, falsehood, hunger, diseases, tribalism, nepotism, political upheavals that turn people into refugees etc. I am afraid people today tend to overlook these dimensions of bad character and seek only their selfish desires with disregard to the pain their actions bring to others.
During the world Cup Tour at State House, it was demonstrated how backward and how inept we are in Sierra Leone to the point of security personnel telling us journalists to “fuck off’, as well as treating us like dogs. It is Africa and we can be treated like dogs because we all have lost our characters and respect due to the position we find ourselves today.
It would be a mistake to underestimate the profound impact on our national economy of these various dishonest acts that constitute bad character. The destiny of Sierra Leone and its people is at stake. The bundle of habits, dispositions and attitudes of us are influencing the destiny of our country. Our character today determines our destiny tomorrow.
Our principles are devalued. Our hopes for the future as a nation are shattered. The use of cocaine, heroine, marijuana, the erratic desire for wealth and our bad sexual habits, all constitute a threat to morality in the country. We are gradually turning our values into disvalues.
To better understand how powerful character is, it is important to understand its nature and the central place it occupies in our ethics. Possession of good character traits leads people to pursue morally commendable actions and behaviours expected in the context of social morality and it helps the society to develop. When the character of individuals’ degenerates, capacity and quality of life of the country is affected: such degeneration leads eventually to the decline and civil unrest as it was evident in the 11 year war.
It is not easy to change our ways.
The erratic desire for wealth, the use of drugs and the rate at which the drugs business is flourishing in Sierra Leone, and the immoral acts of most Sierra Leoneans have made us to form habits of heart and mind that are well entrenched and rooted in durable dispositions and beliefs in the choices we have made. Yet, just as the river banks are constantly being reshaped by the flowing water, our character can be reformed by a new set of choices.
Our human capacity to reason and choose makes the formation of our character an ongoing process. Each day we can decide to be different. Each day we can decide to change our attitudes, re-evaluate and re-think our values, and exercise a high level of self-control to modify our behaviours.
Character is the cause of our actions but it is also the result of our actions. According to Aristotle, “we are what we repeatedly do”. Therefore, the power to control our actions is the power to control our character, and the power to control our character is the power to control our destiny.
By Austin Thomas