OPINION: KULIKULI AJIMOBI, GUGURU PENKELE: THE THEORY OF THE FALSEHOOD OF THE MIND || ISIAKA KEHINDE

"What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive"  Sir Walter Scott.

The most pathetic person in life, to me, is not the inventor of falsehood, but he who spreads it parrot - fashion like invasive cancer. The first person to sell a dummy may do so to 'entertain' himself or to test the depth of the analythical mind of his target audience. If nobody falls for it, there it ends. That people naively accepted the lies and took time off their duty to spread it  might just turned out to be what Karl Popper called "the unwanted consequences".  A case of a joke stretched too far.

Truth telling has been one of the recurring issues in analytical philosophy. I know for a fact that if we all allow our hearings to credit lies and open our minds to accommodate them, then, we are indirectly calling our rationality to question. This notion of reconstructive thinking is further reinforced by the French philosopher, Rene Discarte who posited the famous Latin quote  "ego corgito, ergo sum- " I think, therefore I am. What this presupposes is that as a moral agent, we cease to exist when our thinking faculty becomes so vitiated as not to perform the function of logical analysis. In a simple analysis, lies pass as nothing challenges them. Just as fake notes circulate when no one refuses them. Simple logic.

What provoked this post was the thought of those who have taken pulling the wools over other people's faces as a nice  pastime. It's so heart wrenching that lies are now a common trend in the political community.  Our society abhors truth telling. It's so bad that many  people will not accept anything as true unless it's clothed in fashion or gentrified.  Exaggerated truth and half truth are lies defined in different form.

Therefore, when I saw some people posting the pictures of "kulikuli Ajimobi and Guguru Bayo Adelabu on social media" my spirit became flattened. Not only because it makes nonsense of the correspondence theory of truth but it portrays, on  a worrisome note, the heft of the  gullibility of the deceased minds that  lack the  big eyes to easily note big lies. Unfortunately, not only rampant among the illiterates, the elites, to say most of them, also fall cheaply to the banana peal of the pathological liars particularly on social media. The lies are perfected to resemble the truth. In fact, it takes a diserning mind to detect the fishiness in them.

Hatchback to the 2011 Elections, we were all rudely awoken one fathful day to the rumour of the then governor  hypnotising school children with spiritual beancake and rice. Like a bonfire, the rumor spread in no time and every parents filed out to pick their children and wards in haste  to prevent the catastrophe of being used for rituals for the sitting  governor to win the election. Till date, nobody bothered to ferret out the source of the falsehood. The lies assumed "a talk and stuck" disposition. But truly speaking, it sulks.

We are in the same bus today, just as the general election was approaching in 2001.  The political climate has begun once again to  clouded with tissue of lies, barefaced lies. Our  social media is inundated with nothing but either 'masked truth' or pure lies. Many unsuspecting public take those lies hook line and sinkers. That's the tragic burden our democracy suffers.

For crying out loud, how can someone convince me that a sitting governor would not find any other thing to lure  voters other than by doling out a packaged kulikuli or Guguru. How do we connect this preposterous  preposition with rationality?. Or put in another way, why do we as a people love to hear lies and spread lies?  When does that become our natural propensity.  I was pushed to demand from one of the promoters of the "Kulikuli  Ajimobi ' concorted lies for a proof. Of course, as expected, the only proof he could muster was that he copied it from another person's post. How glib! When society tend to stay glued to falsehood and accept it as truth,   Of what impact is the identity theory of truth postulated by Morro and Russell?

Not until we all developed the mind to sheave truth from lies, we will keep encouraging the spread of what philosophers call "a lie of commission". We should begin all enquiry, like Rene Descartes advised, with a doubt. To doubt is to double check information. And this is the only way we can put inveterate liars into shame. Falsehood of the hearts deprave all good dispositions.

The inventors of "kulikuli Ajimobi and Guguru Bayo" might whimsically shrugged it off as another "ibon oselu", any right thinking person will see it as a product of  falsehood of the heart. The height of moral depravity.

That's what it is.