The Global View
Posted: 29 Mar 2021, 17:15
I was listening to a YouTube video of two Ethiopian scholars on political discussion, I think it was Yeneta or so YouTube-Channel and one of the discussants was using the following terms to stress the need to understand something well.
He said something like “we need to understand the text, the context, the pretext and the post-text” (I am not sure if the word is like this in the case of post-text, I just understood the audio like this and I am not even sure if this word is grammatically and semantically correct) “to understand the central issue at hand and know well and judge it”.
I felt that this is really a kin observation of the young Ethiopian Scholar, I think someone who is a lecturer at Addis Ababa University, which could be very helpful to gain the right insight into the subject matter and have a global view of an issue at hand, as I understood it.
I then listened the following video of Laureate Tsegaye Gebremedhin and remembered the speech of the chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee at the occasion of the issuing of the Prize to the current Ethiopian PM, Dr. Abiy Ahmed, on the 10th of December, 2019.
In her speech I was touched more than everything else by her remark of “in this sense, we are all Ethiopians” and the late Laureate was also explaining how and why we (the residents of this planet) are all Ethiopians, eloquently and perhaps also convincingly, in my view at least, and pre-validated her remark before he departed us years before the actual speech of the Chairwoman itself was made. He is someone who had got the global view of the issues he is talking about and that is perhaps what makes a true intellectual stand out, I guess.
I am the opinion now that we fail to solve many of the outstanding issues of common concern simply we don’t try to either understand the text itself, or if we did understand the text, then not its context, or if we did that, then we didn’t understand the pretext well, or lastly we failed to understand the post-text of the issue. This must be a must have guideline for any serious person trying to know the world around him/herself and solve one of its problems.
And those who fail, fail due to the lack of this kin observation of the young Ethiopian Scholar, needless to add here.
BTW., does a context have still any relevance among many of the participants of this forum? Can someone tell me?
He said something like “we need to understand the text, the context, the pretext and the post-text” (I am not sure if the word is like this in the case of post-text, I just understood the audio like this and I am not even sure if this word is grammatically and semantically correct) “to understand the central issue at hand and know well and judge it”.
I felt that this is really a kin observation of the young Ethiopian Scholar, I think someone who is a lecturer at Addis Ababa University, which could be very helpful to gain the right insight into the subject matter and have a global view of an issue at hand, as I understood it.
I then listened the following video of Laureate Tsegaye Gebremedhin and remembered the speech of the chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee at the occasion of the issuing of the Prize to the current Ethiopian PM, Dr. Abiy Ahmed, on the 10th of December, 2019.
In her speech I was touched more than everything else by her remark of “in this sense, we are all Ethiopians” and the late Laureate was also explaining how and why we (the residents of this planet) are all Ethiopians, eloquently and perhaps also convincingly, in my view at least, and pre-validated her remark before he departed us years before the actual speech of the Chairwoman itself was made. He is someone who had got the global view of the issues he is talking about and that is perhaps what makes a true intellectual stand out, I guess.
I am the opinion now that we fail to solve many of the outstanding issues of common concern simply we don’t try to either understand the text itself, or if we did understand the text, then not its context, or if we did that, then we didn’t understand the pretext well, or lastly we failed to understand the post-text of the issue. This must be a must have guideline for any serious person trying to know the world around him/herself and solve one of its problems.
And those who fail, fail due to the lack of this kin observation of the young Ethiopian Scholar, needless to add here.
BTW., does a context have still any relevance among many of the participants of this forum? Can someone tell me?