(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
If you've been with Good Living for any length of time, then I have no doubt that you know that Good Living is essentially the antithesis of the Oludo uprising. Everything we are doing on this channel is just to counter the ever-growing stupidity of the general public. And for a very long time, with several episodes that we've released, trying to talk about the dumbing down of our generation and our society, there's never been a time where we could label it properly.
I was trying to see different perspectives of this issue. And one of the people that I have one of my most intellectually stimulating conversations with is my friend Kelvin, Kelvin Ebi. As we were speaking, I asked him what he thought was the reason why the Oludo uprising is a thing even, and why it has thrived.
Yeah, and so the uprising sneaked into mainstream culture because of the lack of intellectual evolution of our comedy, of our humour. And one of the sweetest things in this world is laughter. And if the thing that supplies you laughter is not making you smarter, whatever is supplying you the laughter is what you're going to indulge and reward.
What a way to sneak in and dominate. And so we talked about the ways that it has evolved and how it is showing itself. And one way that I would have suggested myself would have been the Kataife example and the people that will find funny today.
But he also now put it on a lateral perspective, talking about the other forms of content. I used the Nosferatu versus that American lady who does the Guapo Guano thing as like an example. To say that Nosferatu, what she does is heavily reliant on Yaku.
Unlike what that lady does. Now that is not to say that the lady, they don't have moments where they tear each other down or maybe talk down. But that's not, that's like if you look at how that of Nosferatu is done, it's like 50%.
That is the juice of the content. Exactly. And that's not the case with the American version of it.
I had to show him the video. I'm like, that's what we're talking about. Nigeria can no longer participate in this mathematics competition.
I saw that tweet that somebody made. I reposted it on my story and then somebody responded with something quite shocking. I'm going to read it for you if you have a thing.
He said, it's really good. Somehow Nigeria's educational system has been limiting Africa as a whole. Like, so our downfall is giving opportunities to other people.
Because that's what I'm thinking now. But he went for that to explain. Education has not really helped Nigeria as a country.
And education has not even helped Africa as a continent. The level at which the world is developing tech-wise is the way the world is developing in pharmaceuticals and the rest. We're not developing those areas.
We are zero in all these areas. Different zones, the world is developing. The only thing education has done to Africa mainly is just maybe let's say we're learning another man's language.
We can come at best in maths, but once a student reaches a certain level, you start to discover that ability for them to produce a reasonable output is always low. We are so focused on learning within another man's rightful book. We are focused on climbing within another man's rights.
We need to focus on we being able to create something out of nothing and being able to create something out of nothing. You have to keep education on one side to think well. He's always been on the cards for Nigerian youth to shout school is a scam.
There is literally no effect positively of education on our reality, just as he said. And if in yourself, within yourself, in your environment, you do not feel the impact of something that is so hyped and praised, you will doubt it. Education has an idea of indoctrinating the masses or conditioning them in a certain way so that society can continue in the way that it is.
Education has an idea, it's fantastic. But in the context of Nigerian school, there is a symptom of the Oludo Rising that I started noticing, and I'm pretty sure all of us are noticing it too around the same time. On NTA, on a random Thursday evening, you would see that some young boy in Saminaka, in Kaduna, invented a grinding machine that runs on water.
It makes the news. It is never mass-produced, it's never patented. We just think, oh my god, this is such a good idea, this is such a fantastic invention.
Ah, must be nice to have one of this stuff, must be cool. But the government, nah, nah, that's not where I'm going with this. But really, really, that is the symptom of the Oludo Uprising.
It is in this moment that you realize somebody, an Oludo, has gotten into a position of power. An Oludo is someone who is running things. And so under their regime, under their watch, you can see that a fantastic innovation that requires mass production, this is a no-brainer.
But a human being who can also qualify as a no-brainer would not see that no-brainer. I'm reading Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, and every single person who made any kind of change or had any kind of effect on culture was intellectually inclined. They read the new history, the new philosophy.
They had interest in politics because they knew the importance of it. And eventually, it became a selective group of those black South Africans who were intellectual, educated, and enlightened that brought about the freedom or the liberation of black people. It was them, because it was intellectualism over everything else, purpose and the sense it took to achieve that purpose.
That was what was prevalent in society. And it's not the rise of the internet that has made intellectualism more cool anymore. It's just generally the population has been dumbed down by easy life.
Tough times create strong people, and strong people create good times, or good times create weak people. Well, in this case, dumb people. And dumb people create tough times that we are either in or we are about to experience.
And so for people who say school is a scam, if they had seen, for example, a research institute in Ileifere comes up with an antidote for common cold, something that clears it instantly, like instantly your nose is running, you have that uncomfortable feeling at the top of your throat, but they came up with something that once you take that tablet in within five minutes, your nasal cavity is cleared. Everybody in this country suffers the common cold. If different things like that is prevalent in our society, nobody will say school is a scam, because you can see what the academic institutions are doing to affect your life experience in real time.
And if it shows itself across different facets of the country's economy, it will be unignorable. The idea that school is a scam would be preposterous. They could beat you up for even saying it.
And this would have been the case if those innovations that those 14-year-old boys would make and this invention from this place and that place and that place they were taking up and built upon. We'll reach a place where innovation is welcome, but we worship money. We worship money over everything else.
But the reason this issue still festers is one, we lack empathy for stupid people. It's almost like the level of sympathy you give to somebody who is physically challenged, a blind person or someone who is on a wheelchair, the depth of empathy you feel for those people, we convert that into disdain for stupid people. It's why I believe the reason people who are clamoring for the APC and re-election of this government in 2027 are so annoying is because we fundamentally see them as stupid.
And that is why they upset us. I can't think there is no other reason why you're upset with them. At the end of the day, it's like, how can you be this stupid? And then they come on the TV and you can see the stupidity fester.
And what emotion does it generate in you? It is not sympathy. This is the intellectually challenged, but it is not sympathy you feel. It is anger.
And so how can you bridge a gap like that when two or few cannot agree? And you know, the lower you go on the intellect ladder, the easier conflict is. The smarter you are, the less energy you allocate towards small or minor inconveniences and violations. I've grown smarter over the last few years, and I can tell because of the quality of my decisions.
And I try to track what are the things that have changed, really. And it is simply the things that I focus on adjusting. It's almost like I have credits.
Credits like you have when you're using cloud or some of these AI tools, you know. And it's like, what are you spending your time and energy on improving and changing and optimizing that can give the best and most abundant outcome? If I order a coffee and you bring tea, that should be a problem if I order it and I'm paying for it. But there's really a certain amount of credits I can spend in an effort to change that situation.
And if I spend all that credit, which could be one or two sentences and the situation cannot be changed, I leave it. It's okay. Because changing that does not really affect my life in a positive way in the long term.
And so I will save those credits for situations, negotiations, and activities that I know would affect my life in that way. But if you do not have the cognitive ability to think in that framework, every conflict will be chased down with every credit in the bank. And so if you want to reason with people like that, you have to have empathy because they're most likely to generate feelings of anger within you.
And so this is why it is still growing. This is why the Olodo Uprising, because the Olodos, when you call them Olodo, they are so upset. They hate you.
They hate you. So show empathy. It's a challenge.
And we are all affected by our environment. So you probably have a better lot in life than them. Remember when I talked about how innovations were being ignored all those years ago and that was proof that people from the Olodo Uprising were already in positions of power? Well the problem was that those people were not in the culture shifting generation.
And that's because culture shifts when the demographic with the most influence decides it should. The demographic with the most influence on culture are the younger ones, the people below 30. And if you already have people in power who are Olodos, it means there is something for those younger ones whom at pre-culture shifting age, they can project and see and say they want to be like that Olodo in that high place.
And so when those people grow up and get to a culture shifting age, the Olodo mentality manifests itself in different ways. Now the attractions are different. Now the things that attract the majority of this demographic that shift culture is different and they are more attracted to the things inclined to stupid.
And they make those things popular and they make them cool. And the smart people capitalize on it for personal interest, money and whatnot. Leaving the society intellectually bankrupt.
Nigerian music, yes it's getting popular. Yes Afrobeat is going worldwide but what are we saying inside it? It's a conversation that gets drowned out by noise and the argument about money. And now if culture shifted in favor of the Olodos who are running the culture shift themselves now because they are the ones dominant in that demographic, you see evidence of it like news of people's personal lives dominating national discourse as opposed to laws and policies that actually affect human lives.
And the reversal of this trend can come by making intellectual capacity cool again and that is the whole essence of good living. I believe that I am cool by traditional standards but I also want to take it a layer deeper by showing that using your head, being curious, learning more and applying it in your life is much more cooler much more effective and satisfying to have a fuller life than just being cool on the surface. In fact if you're one of those that are curious and inclined to learn you will find out that you inevitably become cool outward by being cool enough inside in your head by learning more by knowing more by you know you just become more efficient, you become cooler at the end of the day and so that should be made the goal.
If you know that people are looking up to you, the younger generation are looking up to you, you are a sort of role model. Make yourself embody the physical things that they admire. What are the teenagers into these days? What is cool to them on a surface level? If you embody that outward you can draw them in and then from there you can show them the value of sound mind and a good intellect and then they can have the idea of what is actually cool, the full sense of it.
They can now know that oh he is this cool or she is this cool, this person that I look up to because they read, because they study, because their priorities are this that and the other as opposed to this that and the other and then by the time a new generation comes up and gets into that culture shifting age, their demographic will do the job of shifting back the culture towards intellectualism and then maybe then when they get into positions of power an innovation will be taken up like that and turn into something spectacular. Studies will be done that would improve the lives of citizens and then nobody will be able to say school is a scam because this generation did it.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)