Mr Man
On questions, indecision, and abortion.
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Dear Bolu,
If my wife were here, she’d say to me, “Mr Man, you’re too indecisive”. She knows my name. She bears it, in fact, and it is not “Man”, but that is beside the point. This subtle jibe gets to me slightly because I can’t return the favour by calling her “Mrs Woman” or something similar—it makes absolutely no sense to do so. I would have, however, reminded her that I called her “mine” the first time we met and nothing embodies decisiveness more than that. She liked that particular fact. She liked that I thought her special from the get-go, and often, it would elicit a beautiful smile from her, wrapped all around by two dimples as if it wasn’t obvious that her smile, in itself, was a gift. “You Yoruba men and flowery words; it’s a wonder that you’re not all gardeners”, she’d say. As I mentally kissed yet another medal handed to me by my ancestors for enhancing the reputation of our great people, a tinge of guilt would creep in. Guilt for allowing the woman I love to continue believing a half-truth. While it’s true that I called her mine on our first date, I didn’t do so because I thought her special at that point, no. I called her mine simply because I called everyone who I was remotely interested in, mine. Of course, the lot of them would not end up being mine but it ensured that whoever I ended up with would believe they were special to me from the onset. You could call it deceit. You could also say it’s how the game should be played. Whatever. I never really got rid of the guilt but her smile made it bearable. Frankly, I don’t regret calling her mine. I’m glad she was mine, if only for a time. And I only confess this to you now, dear friend, because she has passed away.
She was right, my wife—right for me, yes, but also right to call me indecisive. I have suffered from indecision for as long as I can remember, and often times I feel alone in the struggle. It would seem the world is made for and filled with decisive people who always know what they want and where they stand. Men who are bold enough to assert that this is right and that is wrong. They’re so bold in their assertions that convincing you is a question of when and not if. And there are women who are ever so eager to lay down their lives in defence of an idea or a position. “Tomatoes are not fruits and I will die on this hill”. Who knows what makes a hill an attractive location to die on? Who knows what makes it so special? We supposedly want to live long but take us to a hill we fancy and a strong desire to lose our lives overcomes us. “I’m ready to die on this hill”. But not me. Never me. I’ve never felt that strongly about anything.
As a teenager, I’d thought my indecisiveness was a phase that would naturally phase out. I’d thought that I was unable to make choices because I knew too little. “In a few years, I should know more and this struggle would be a thing of the past”. Many years have passed thence, and it’s still a thing of the present. The indecision often has to do with social issues rather than personal ones, of course. If you asked me to make a choice between basketball and cricket; FIFA and PES; egusi and okra; pizza and shawarma; my wife and anyone; I’d blurt out the answer before thinking about it. I’m decisive in those matters. I know what I want. However, when it comes to societal norms, cultural practices, beliefs, and matters that affect people on a communal level, I usually don’t know where I stand. And I envy people who do. I expected adulthood to bring me clarity on these things. I thought that I only needed to read and learn more to be more decisive but I have been thoroughly disappointed. I know more now than I knew then, yes, but it has made me even more indecisive. I’m simply more aware of both sides’ arguments, and I genuinely appreciate them too much to pick a side. So when people ask me where I stand on such matters, I tend to deflect. I give a balanced account of the topic and end by saying, “yeah, it’s a really tough one”. And I’ve found that that is often enough to get by in conversations.
So when Halimat says to me, as I bring my last Math class of the day to a close, “Sir, are you pro-life or pro-choice?”, I am quite shocked. Some part of me is excited about the question and the mind that conceived it. I've always held strongly that young people should be encouraged to pursue their curiosities because it's one way to get the most out of life. So every now and then I ask my students trivia questions to prompt them that there's always more to know. I also give out tokens for correct answers to remind them that knowledge has gains and rewards outside itself. Yes, I'm truly happy she asked the question. Yet, some other part feels uncomfortable and foolish because I don't have an answer for her. And there's the not-so-little matter that it's a Math class, not Biology.
My first instinct is to dodge the question like The Flash would a bullet. One good tactic I've learnt to skillfully dodge a question is responding with a question. When we ask people a question and they respond with a question, it could feel like the Universe has suddenly descended into chaos. What sort of disorderliness is this? I suppose in a rulebook we all read as kids or consumed in our mothers' wombs, it was written that no logical person should answer a question with a question unless, of course, it's a question seeking clarity about the original question. In situations where this logic is violated, we're quick to remind the culprit that they've broken a natural law. If they don't care much for the law and we're insistent that they must abide by it, the conversation could very easily end in a stalemate where no one answers the other's question. "I asked first, answer me and then I'd answer you". "No, no, I need you to answer mine first and I promise I would answer yours". "Fine, forget I asked". "Alright then". Thus, a good way to dodge a question is by responding with another question. The problem with this approach, however, is that it can be very obvious you're trying to dodge the question and usually, that's not what you want.
One way to better conceal your motive is by asking the why-are-you-asking question. It's so good because it allows you to tailor your response in a way that satisfies the motivation for the question without necessarily answering the question. "Who is the president of France?". "Eh, why are you asking?" "I'm trying to determine the proportion of male to female world leaders". "Oh okaay, the president is male". Even if you didn't know his name or for whatever reason, you couldn't remember it, you've skillfully saved your face. And no one would suspect you intentionally dodged the question. Also, the why-are-you-asking question lets you transform the original question into a question you're more comfortable answering. "I see. Well, if that's your motivation for asking, I think what you really should be asking is blah blah blah and the answer to that is yada yada yada". Awesome. This tactic works except, of course, they really need an answer to that specific question or you're a witness under cross-examination.
I can easily dodge Halimat's question but it doesn't feel right to do so. Is she asking because she's pregnant? Does she know someone who is? These questions run through my mind as I compose myself to respond to her. What do I say? I don't know. I'm not on either side of the abortion debate, so I can't give her the answer she seeks. I suppose you're on one side or the other, but that's not the case for me. I don't know where I stand. That, right there, is why I chose only Math to teach and not the several other subjects I'm also qualified to teach. There's little to no personal opinion and subjectivity in maths. Numbers don't have synonyms. Decimal points can't be misconstrued. There are no hyperboles. No semantic meaning or subtext. Logically prove it, and you're right. Math is safe and comfortable for me because there's no indecision in it but Halimat has compromised that safety.
"When in doubt, be honest." That’s what they say, isn’t it? Or is it "when in doubt, be kind"? I forget. No matter, I try to give her an honest response—
Well, Halimat, I don’t have an answer to your question but I think it’s certainly an interesting one. The abortion debate essentially boils down to the question; is an unborn baby a person? Yes? No? Some might say the debate altogether makes no sense—people should be free to do whatever they want with their bodies. While such sentiments may be meant with the best intentions, it may be worth reviewing their ramifications. If we say that an unborn baby is a person, then he/she/it is deserving of the rights that we extend to persons such as ourselves—the right to live, for example. And if we choose to abort a baby, we would be effectively denying them such rights. That’s one reason why the debate makes sense—it’s not just about people’s bodies. As for the question; is an unborn baby a person? I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record but I don’t know the answer to that either. How would you define a person? Are you a person? Obviously, you are, and so am I. Is a 1-month old baby a person? I suppose so. 1-day old? 9-month-old but unborn? 6-month-old? 5-month-3-week-6-day-23-hour-you-get-the-point-old? At what point is personhood conferred on us? It’s a difficult and perhaps impossible one to answer because we can sorta stretch time as much as we want, down and beyond a millisecond. To circumvent the time-stretching debacle, we could say that conception is the defining point. Post-conception, we could consider the baby a person. But if we do that, we assume that conception itself is not a process but rather, a POP, BOOM or PSSH event that occurs in an instant and can’t be subjected to time-stretching. We know that’s not true but say we stick with the assumption that it is. Post-conception, the baby, or perhaps more appropriately, the embryo is a person. Let’s try a thought experiment. If you had the choice of saving either one man or five boys from a burning building, what would your choice be? Other things being equal, you’d save the five boys, right? And it’s because five people are more than one person, isn’t it? Okaay. Well, say instead you were to choose between saving one 1-day old baby and five embryos, what would your choice be? Uhn? The baby? It’s the baby, isn’t it? Why? Isn’t five embryos more than one 1-day old baby? Well, it suggests that we don’t really think of embryos as weight equivalent to babies in terms of personhood. So if they’re not equivalent, why should they be given the rights that are given to born babies, children, you and I? We could then argue that killing embryos isn’t an issue because they’re not in fact, persons, and they wouldn’t even feel any pain whatsoever. Well, the problem with killing someone is not really the pain we caused them or their loved ones, no. There are painless ways to kill people. Rather, the problem with killing someone is that we deny them a future. Who knows what they might have been in that future? A shoemaker? A grandmother? A comedian? It doesn’t even matter what they might have been—as long as they might have been, we’ve denied them something. We’ve denied them whatever future could’ve been theirs, and that’s wrong. So it follows for embryos as well—latent in them are potentialities, and we could argue that killing them denies them a future. Yeah, it’s a really tough one and I have no stance on the matter. I know none of these answers your question, Halimat, but they’re some aspects of the subject I thought you might appreciate. And I hope you do appreciate them—you and every other person here. That will be all. See you tomorrow.
If my wife were here, she’d say to me, “Mr Man, you’re too indecisive”. The jibe wouldn’t get to me today as much as it used to, because it’s been many years since I heard her say it. Many many years. And I’ve slowly learned that it doesn’t always hurt if you don’t have strong opinions on certain matters. It’s often just enough to be able to play gracefully with ideas, dear friend.
Fin.
P.S
Don't you sometimes wonder what gives us the right to say that we know something? Or the confidence that this message we’re spreading is the truth? What makes us sure that this path is the right one? What assurance do we have that the line we’ve drawn between good and evil is the correct one? If our lives were the only thing at risk of our wrong choices, ignorance, mistakes, and stupidity, that'd be fair—we’d be getting what we deserve. But no, our children's lives are also at risk. Our students' futures are always on the line. We can ruin people by teaching them the wrong thing, albeit we thought it was the right thing. It's sad but it's true. The price for one man's ignorance could very well bankrupt the future of a people or an entire classroom. To be a (good) teacher and (good) parent requires courage because we risk people's futures when we commit ourselves to their growth. Thumbs up to anyone who is taking a swing at it.
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Write you soon, merci!
- Wolemercy