Commitment: A Prerequisite for Social Transformation (PART 2)

Additional Qualifications of Commitment

Commitment supersedes a worldly reward: How short-sighted is one that sets a commitment on worldly/perishable goods! The shorter the achievability of a realistic goal, the easier it is. In many ways, the faint the severity of the commitment, to a large extent, also the higher or lower the degree of maturity. For the believer, eternal life calls for commitment. The precepts laid down by one’s faith are often quite hard to realize. The good realization of the same often leads one to be looked at as a little insane. Therefore, it is not strange that those qualifying to be saints at the Church and the level of individual interactions appear to have a miss in their lives. Mother Teresa’s commitment towards the very poor, and her continued risky engagements with the neediest, left many questioning her sacrifice (Slavicek, 2007).
For the non-religious, commitments seen in nationalist leaders like Mahatma Gandhi (Wolpert (2001), and Mandela (Maanga, 2013) to the wellness of their nations, shall remain historical and to many unfathomable. The humility of Nyerere (Mulinge, 2018), his unselfish act of having to walk and mingle with his citizens, is crazy for many leaders today; they all dream of having too many enemies and dread being eliminated at any available opportunity. These nationalists were certainly committed to their countries to levels that one can hardly believe. These commitments’ effect on their citizens have left marks that generations enjoyed, enjoyed and shall continue to enjoy for long. Certainly, indeed very few leaders shall ever attain such degrees of commitment.
Social transformation calls for commitment. Certainly, salaries and worldly remunerations of many politicians in the developing world are far from such commitments. Titles of office bearers become such an illusionary path for social transformers to undertake. With this, very little, if any, is affected by their work. Social transformation is inevitable if the current and future generations enjoy the fruits of man-effected positive change. At times, or even many times, the social transformer does not live to enjoy the fruits of the work. However, inner satisfaction is much more than what any human can offer. On that note, therefore, commitment supersedes worldly rewards, and so is the case with transformative social commitment.

Commitment goes beyond instinct: Commitment goes beyond instinct. Animals are very committed to seeing their offsprings live. A mother hen will lay on her eggs with such a commitment that she shall be attacked and killed by safari ants; she will not surrender her commitment. I once witnessed an accident where a mother and her two-day infant were casualties. The vehicle that was ferrying them rolled three times. When a passing military truck saw what had happened, the occupants soon took up the task of rescuing the occupants. Out was removed an unconscious mother. However, in her arms was a two-day infant, dead-asleep and safe. The rescuing army men could not disengage the infant from the unconscious mother. This spectacle has remained in my mind 30 years down the line; such a commitment to the offspring’s life, as executed by the mother.
Commitment, however, goes beyond instinct. It is a conscious decision to pursue an end. We noted the vision; it is undivided and undistracted attention towards an individual or a goal. It is value-adding. I am not sure that it is motherly and instinctively for mothers to choose not to protect their offspring. In the present world, though, the continued infanticide leaves this statement questioned.
Nevertheless, the focus of this write-up is that cognition and volition are entirely at work. On that note, therefore, there is nothing like forced commitment. That does not Waterdown, contradict or even eradicate that commitment calls upon consequences. Even when individuals challenge consequences, though that may affect the futurity of the commitment, it does not replace it. Therefore, caution is given that before an undertaking of commitment, a clear thought process involving the consequences needs to be considered. Social transformative commitment, therefore, has also to go beyond mere instinct.

Commitment could be ignited by a crisis or an experience: A crisis is that which offers a threat (Boin, Hart and Kuipers, 2017). This threat can be to one’s comfort, to one’s support system, or one’s life. When it is to one’s comfort, one can ignore it. At this level, one may move from affording cars often driven by the elected honorable to cars often afforded by business starters or middle-level civil servants. It may also move from having inexpensive treatment in private hospitals to crowded public hospitals. While this may lead to some people going into painful conditions, one may easily overcome the stress with some maturity. All in all, the positive angle to this is that loss of comfort can ignite commitment.
The threat to one’s support system can be a little more devastating than that of one’s comfort. An example of one’s support system is friends, relatives and even work. Devastations can settle when one loses friends and even relatives through death, reduced income, or even through advancement in age and lessened morbidity. Thus one may start feeling unwanted or even rejected. One key loss to one’s support system comes with old age.

Retirement and inability to occupy the large office that one initially had, loss of guaranteed income and loss of the power to have many subjected to your docket are all sensitive matters. They need to be addressed with the seriousness they deserve. This may ignite commitment to something different. 

People can never ignore threats to one’s life. Do not be tempted to think that I am referring to a commitment by the dead. Far from it, threats do not always actualize what they purport to do, thanks to that. Again, as mentioned earlier, a threat to life can be brought about by age. Gradually smooth aging tends to cushion the threat. When, however, one has a terminal illness, it is a blatant reminder of one’s mortality, and the pronouncement of it by a medic can be a death sentence to many. I guess life imprisonment has almost the same devastating effect, though this second one carries with it self-blame if an individual indeed committed the crime willingly. A threat to life can also be brought about by a serious accident (Ben-Zur, & Zeidner, 2019). An incident may be where one’s friends or even relatives are lost. Of course, the guilt that comes with it is dependent on the driver’s state at the time. If one was under the influence of alcohol, or worse still, if one was overspeeding, the impact is heavier.
While it is hard to fathom, such threats do come in life. The way each is handled by the individual, by those around the person, and increasingly so, by the therapist who may need to journey with the individual is crucial. This handling may easily break or re-construct the individual. Lest I forget, the loss of a spouse can also be on such a level (Kiingati, 2019). Of course, this depends on the relationship that existed between the two.
Threat hence is key in undertaking commitment. However, as noted in the write-up process, not all commitments are ignited by perceivable or even realizable threats. Numerous situations may lead to commitments, and one of them is experience.
Experiences are deeper than perceptions. While perceptions remain at the level of the five common senses, when such become unignorable, it starts moving towards an experience. In that way, therefore, experiences call for some length in the perception. Experiences, in many ways, are life-changing as they affect one’s sense of mastery, openness, reflectivity, emotional regulation and empathy (Glück, Bluck, & Weststrate, 2018). When one undergoes an experience, life is never the same again. The time aspect and experience may also be cumulative. This means that another may follow perception, and eventually, an experience is realized. The effect of the discussed realizations of experiences leads to an experience leading to value acquisition or loss, behavior change or acquisition, and hence character change or formation.

An experience cannot leave one the way they were before its realization.

Experience, therefore, leads to commitment. Those recruited into the military undergo continued and repeated perceptions in the form of training. Passing out rarely, they shall not have been changed by the training experience. Those who undergo religious formation or seminary training take on their perpetual vows, and on being ordained, they are different persons. With this, therefore, they can commit themselves. In this lifelong commitment, their characters are changed, the way they relate to other people and, in turn, the way others relate to them. From threats or experiences, commitment is ignited.

Commitment is however, not sustained by the igniting crisis or experience: While threats and experiences ignite commitment, they do not sustain the commitment. Threats and experiences are temporal. They have a beginning and an end. At times, the threat or the experience may be instant and short-lived. One such example is an accident. This could be life-changing despite it happening within seconds. One that was walking may have to spend the rest of their life n a wheelchair. It could even lead to death, leaving the spouse and the children with a changed life.
It is, therefore, quite immature for one to wait for a threat or an experience for them to change and have a long life commitment. I guess this may have been the frustration in Jesus when crowds desired a miracle for them to change. Even after two or three have the same or similar threats or experiences, the following commitment is not necessarily the same. Among alcoholics, the rock bottom is different for each (Kirouac & Witkiewitz, 2018). Some may only require the spouse’s disappearance for them to commit to something different. Others may never commit to something different even when the threat to life keeps coming. Personalities influence the effect (Sanchez-Escobedo, 2016), leading to commitment and sustainability. For those in the religious life and Christianity, prayer is significant. For those that suffered immense poverty, fear of retrogression may remain a factor in sustainability. In all cases, sustainability to commitment depends on the individual’s choice and the commitment to remain on that track.

Commitment is majorly for adults:Infants, children and adolescents often have limited maturity needed in commitment because this study uses it. Children cannot make commitments in their physical, mental, and even societal abilities. Though a commitment is mainly discussed in organizations and employment (Udoh, 2020), it calls upon obligation, fear of negative consequences and affection (for). Therefore, with commitment, there is a need for complete maturity, which some struggle not only to identify but to realize. A good look at oneself, especially in times of crisis, leaves one wondering whether they truly are mature. Neither the individual nor the society can fully put the finger on the exact meaning of maturity. I guess one needs clear identifiable indicators to understand the term maturity. You will also agree with me that different communities and even cultures have different meanings to maturity.
Based on that, therefore, each individual must be clear in what is the meaning of maturity. As far as possible, if this meaning is in line with societal expectations, then there may be harmony. However, in the name of human rights, the increased individualization of one’s cognition, emotional intelligence, and actions has continued to challenge conventional ways of determining what is socially right. Due to this, it is increasingly hard for ethics, which has been hard to address since the start. Even crime-related issues that appeared clear a few years ago are increasingly dependent on the lawyer one has. Different altar bearers have interpreted Religious-based values to a level that one can hardly pinpoint what is right. All these make it even harder to indicate with precision, what maturity is, and who an adult is.
By now, there is hardly any doubt that adulthood has never before been challenged to this level. It is fluidly linked to the umbrella constitutional dispensation of who an adult is.
However, too many questions call for increased thought. The harder the definition of adulthood and maturity is, the harder is the understanding of commitment.
With that note, the harder it becomes to understand why citizens of the developing world cherish remaining in their abject conditions despite generations and generations of sufferers and the immense education-related resources spent.

Remember, the more solid one’s commitment is, the more real adulthood!

Read Part 3

Ben-Zur, H., & Zeidner, M. (2019). Threat to Life and Risk-Taking Behaviors: A Review of Empirical Findings and Explanatory Models. Personal Social Psychology Review, 13: 109. DOI: 10.1177/1088868308330104.

Boin, A., Hart, P., & Kuipers, S. (2017). The Crisis Approach. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-63254-4_2.

Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321135712.

Glück, J, Bluck, S., Weststrate, N. M. (2018). More on the life experience model: what we have   learned. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 53, 349–370.

Kiingati, J. B. (2019). World of Widows. Dar es Salaam: Claretian Publishers.

Kirouac, M and Witkiewitz, K. (2018). Identifying “Hitting Bottom” among individuals with Alcohol Problems; development and Evaluation of the Noteworthy Aspects of Drinking Important to Recovery (NADIR). PMCID: PMC6107067; NIHMSID: NIHMS1501419; PMID: 28557550. DOI:10.1080/10826084.2017.1293104

Maanga, G. S. (2013). The Relevance and Legacy of Nelson mandela in the Twenty-First Century Africa: An Historical and Theological Perspective.  Africa Journal of History and Culture, 5(5), 96-113. DOI:10.5897/AJHC12.022. http://www.academicjournals.org/AJHC.

Mulinge, P. (2018). The anchor of servant-leadership:Julius Nyerere and the virtue of humility. The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, 12(1), 195-228.

Sanchez-Escobedo, P. (2016). Personality traits and life experiences influencing highly creative people: Six life stories. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307509621

Slavicek, L. C. (2007). Modern Peacemakers-Mother Teresa: Caring for the World’s Poor. New York (NY): Chelsea House Publishers.

Udoh, E. C. (2020). Personality traits and Employee Commitment. International Journal of Advanced Academic Research, 6(1), 84-90.

Wolpert, S. (2001). Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahtama Gandhi. New York (N.Y): Oxford University Press.

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