Ethiopian needs a Spiritual Warrior as a leader

By Teodros Kiros 

Desperate times need leaders who lead us through compassion and understanding, and not leaders who inflame our passions and ignite our prejudices by refusing to forgive and forget. Ethiopia is yearning for the arrival of a messiah, in the form of a spiritual warrior, a warrior who leads by forgiving, a warrior who wishes total strangers health in body and mind, a warrior who instructs that we must learn how to love and how to wish others to live in ease.

This spiritual warrior combines the moral purity of a good person, with the astuteness of a psychologist, who is profoundly aware of the imperative of nurturing peaceful citizens who can think clearly their souls are in order. The internal interaction among reason, courage and desire is in perfect balance, and their everyday lives are in ease, their minds and bodies are in good health, and they understand love and its dangers. Such citizens hate lightly but love deeply.

In these turbulent times, we Ethiopians must look deep into our rational hearts and think about our beloved Ethiopia and its traumatized population, particularly the poor, who spend their nights gazing at stars and getting burned by a nothingness, which does not speak, the quiet nights, which oppress through their stillness, when the rich and powerful are driving on the ring highways and drinking away with thirteen year olds at our marbled hotels and motels.

The spiritual warrior as a leader knows the interiors of pain, the corrosive effects of prejudice and leads by helping the citizens to confront the drone inside and seek spiritual healing Reconciliation, for example, is an attempt at self-purification; it is a very difficult but necessary step at moving forward from frozenness in hate, suspicion and mistrust towards the sunlight of loving the other, who is your other part, the part that non-spiritual warriors have fostered into un enemy.

The Spiritual warrior can outsmart the material warrior, who is dividing us, and invite him to the spiritual table of communicative rationality. A new spiritual warrior can change this situation, and we ordinary Ethiopians can help her by wishing every living Ethiopian good health in mind and body, the right to live in ease, and the ability to love profoundly. I challenge us all to be existentially serious and not let the DDT of Ethnicity destroy our historical Ethiopia.

Teodros Kiros Professor of Philosophy and English (Liberal Arts) Berkley College of Music