“But wetin this oyinbo people go find for there sef”
I have long accepted my cross as an offline search engine cum facts aggregator providing value added services to my bosses. But whereas I wish I could request a salary increase attuned to the higher costs of staying current, this article is not about negotiating a raise. My boss’ question mirrored the minds of many Africans and even non-Africans wondering why anyone would pay US$250,000 (almost ₦200 million) to increase the number of persons lost to the Titanic.
It is no longer news that five persons who recently joined a submersible heading down 4,000 metres to see the ruins of the famous Titanic are no longer in possession of their bodies. While debates about the safety of the vessel and conspiracy theories somehow seeking to link President Joe Biden and the US Navy to the fiasco will continue, I am more interested in the mindset of the people who were willing the go down the oceans inside what was effectively a pressurised Pepsi can. That mindset, in my view, is explained by cultural and situational factors with which many of us cannot relate.
Let us start with the culture of exploration. Societies tend to be quite conservative for good reasons. Why rock the boat and risk unlocking a threat to the community’s survival? However, while many African communities historically had (almost all) they needed, lived in a resource-rich environment, and had an endowment of contentment, their peers in Europe did not have such luck. The European lived in a harsh environment where the weather was always conspiring against his wellbeing, did not have as much land as he wanted, and did not have as much resources as he would have wanted. It is therefore unsurprising that Europeans readily ventured out to explore the earth and were willing to come to places like Africa even when malaria was a life-threatening illness.
Of course, not every European had this risk-taking mindset, but while majority would have stuck with the relative safety of their homeland, I think they could understand why their compatriots were seeking the sea route to the Americas. Some others would have been bored with the monotony of having four seasons in one day and longed for life in a different land with more predictable weather, or maybe just sought an opportunity to reinvent themselves, or run away from some unsavoury life back home. If we throw in the high risk – high reward proposition, we see why wealthy benefactors would fund such explorations or even join the expeditions themselves for a chance at glory and gold coins.
Compare this with the African living in a society where he was safer staying with his people because slave traders where on the prowl seeking humans to sell for guns and mirrors. This African, unable to set out on a journey all alone, would have had to convince his peers that he was not crazy to want to leave his people in search of what even he could not articulate. This African likely had a wife who might quickly become destitute or forcefully acquired by one of his jealous brothers as an extra wife should he fail to return and be declared dead. As an extra disincentive, some random Chief Priest would peep into a browning calabash and declare the gods’ anger that this African wanted to venture “beyond the evil forest”. Of course, I am being dramatic and over-generalising, but we get the picture, right?
Someone would say that this hypothesis does not explain our contemporary billionaires’ desire to visit the Mariana Trench or have a vacation home in Mars. However, I think it does. What do you do when you have enough not to bother about your daily survival? What do you do when you can afford to pay for a chance to earn bragging rights about being the first to go somewhere or do something? In today’s world, the average African has a much lower standard of living and is likely still encumbered by basic wants, hence, does not have the bandwidth to even consider going on some exploration somewhere. This average African also likely has several dependants who would likely have worsened outcomes in life were he or she to be lost during an expedition. Can we see how our risk aversion correlates with the potential outcome of a loss?
Going away from exploration, let’s take Nigerians as a subset of Africans. The average Nigerian undergraduate is conditioned to think and write like his lecturers to avoid getting a bad grade, which would affect his chances at getting a job in a saturated labour market. And the average Nigerian is bothered by costs and insecurity to consider travelling for leisure even within Nigeria whereas her European counterpart could easily pick up a backpack and hitch a ride into another country for a week, while the Nigerian is still trying to secure a visa. For local travel, the Nigerian would wonder why he should risk going to explore Okija only to end up acquired by a ritualist or an organ trafficker. Hence, real and perceived risks make us quite happy staying within our known environment.
I think that societies have a Societal Risk Tolerance Profile which is transmitted genetically and socially across generations. Today, I work in an industry where contracts explicitly stipulate that no unproven technologies are to be used. This is risk aversion becoming institutionally codified. Of course, there could be good reasons for not wanting to be a guinea pig for testing, but when we veto risk taking, we also forgo any potential benefits and should not complain when we see risk takers enjoying the rewards of their fearlessness.
Understanding that our actions are likely driven by our view of risk and situational factors should make us more circumspect about ridiculing those who take risks or those who don’t. For the former, we should note that our living standards have greatly improved because some persons dared to risk their lives to make life-changing discoveries. And for the latter, we should note that the society’s desire for continuity will not happen if everyone is willing to dive into the Atlantic. Now, that is the balance we clearly need.
Image Credit: wallpapersafari.com
Jilomes 