I have always believed that human beings are by default good. We are all saints, we will go the extra-mile to embody actual saintliness, we will bend over backwards to radiate and propagate the perpetual beauty of Godliness. This is what I believed in the past, what I believe now and will probably believe forever barring an existential plot-twist that erases or supplants this belief.
This is the human being I know. This is the human being I have experienced on my journey through life so far. How do I substantiate this hypothesis? Cogito ergo sum: everybody actually believes they are doing the right thing and when they aren’t doing the right thing even according to their own standards, they believe they have a valid extenuation, they have a valid excuse. There is an exception to every rule, and they are right on the money on that one. Yes.
A human being is noble by birth. As a Muslim, I know that man represents the embassy of the Almighty on earth – and that speaks volumes indeed. Nonetheless, the contemporary circumstances of mankind remind me of a saying where I come from: “inda ba’asan asalin kolo ba, da yace daga Makka yake” – “if no one knew where the vulture actually came from, it would have claimed (noble) descent from Mecca”.
Something important to note is that this same noble human was the same noble human that was banished from heaven because he could not control himself enough to not eat from a tree he was not supposed to even go near – on the pain of exile! So, it turns out that, even though mankind is indeed of noble stock, he is certainly not from Mecca. Where I come from, this means that you are actually JUST human. Petty, perverse and downright hopeless.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, those who insist they are indeed from Mecca, pettiness is more or less an undue concern with trivial matters, especially of a small-minded or spiteful nature. Pettiness can be subtle as opposed to its more obvious relative, revenge.
A 2009 social experiment conducted by researchers at Harvard University gathered groups of people to play a financial game. In each group studied, one experimenter was placed specifically to cheat so that the other people playing would notice. The scientists found that when given the opportunity for a no-fault chance at revenge, everyone playing who was cheated took a chance at revenge. Virtually everybody was angry over what happened to them, and everyone given the opportunity for revenge took it.
Revenge and pettiness are such common aspects in our interpersonal relationships because they both trigger the law of obligation. This is also known as reciprocity, which is the practice of exchanging things for mutual benefit. Reciprocity is one of the universal principles which creates automatic, unconscious responses. It is the principle of mutual exchange. In our evolutionary past, reciprocity was a vital principle because we relied on other people to assist us through fair exchange in order to do tasks and get basic human needs met.
Once you start looking for it, this particular kind of pettiness is actually everywhere. All you need to do to see it is to look in the mirror. We watch it on NTA Parliament, we read it in the news… I have seen it on Zoo Road in Kano, Broad Street in Lagos and on Kalambaina Road in Sokoto. I have seen it in with the relationship minutiae of my cousin Aminu’s courtship with his betrothed, my colleagues at work dealing with the mundane cycle of elation and confusion and jealousy of the early stages of dating. The same goes for our rapacious hunger for the details of political scandals at the National Assembly or the State House(s) and the ministries and departments orbiting them.
The thing about pettiness is that it’s not an important mode: that’s the point of it. It’s a small impulse by definition, and all too often a mean one. But it is also human (or maybe vulture-esque), something that in a culture that accepted and allowed for nuance we might be able to tolerate, and even sometimes indulge. Because it is unavoidable, and there’s joy in getting to recognise what you thought was just your terrible, unspeakable secret self in Baba Adamu’s case of stolen bales of hay, Aminu’s insistence that if Ramatu can’t love him then she can’t love at all, and in the brittle bravado of a Fulani “kado”, he doesn’t let it go until it blows up in everyone’s face.
It is exhausting to try to be big all the time, to feel only the things that flatter our rationality, or our sense of who we want or ought to be. The world is full of people trying to pretend away their own smallness, which only makes it more pernicious: you cannot change or kill the things you won’t give a name to. Pettiness’ ugliness is not destroyed by denying or degrading it — though I don’t mean to suggest that it deserves grandeur, either.
So, especially in the light of everything happening in the world today, from Ukraine to Senegal, from Gaza to Colombia–I have no illusions that I come from Mecca. I don’t know about you; for all I know you are from Makka even if you are not from Mecca. The solution? There is always a mirror on the wall somewhere near you. Look into it, but don’t hold me responsible for what you see.
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