Traditional belief affects development

THE belief in sanguma (witchcraft) is still rife and is one of the many obstacles that is preventing us from progressing as a society.
The recent cases of swine flu up in the Highlands is being shunned as witchcraft by villagers.
Even though the science is there to say otherwise.
It is the same when someone dies of a disease.
People are quick to pointing to witchcraft.
When you get to the centre of it, this is nothing more than fear of the unknown.
Fear makes people irrational and irrational people do stupid and dangerous things.
But it’s not just stupidity (although that’s a huge factor).
It’s also about never acquiring sufficient intellectual skills to understand any of the world around you.
But I do have to point out that the ability to find intelligence is limited by our methodology.
Education isn’t an indicator of intelligence, rather, it’s an indicator of training and development.
Aptitude may exist without education and education may not create aptitude. Back on topic, the people that believe in witchcraft, I do have to cut them some slack because us Papua New Guineans, we are superstitious by nature.
We still have respect for the mama graun and papa graun in our villages.
Our ancestors were a very superstitious people and that was why they easily converted to Christianity.
Science is not our strong suit.
Also, literally the whole world is as incomprehensible as magic.
Ask any scientist in any field and they’ll tell you we still don’t know much about anything.
To some, this piques interests and curiosities.
But to others, this is threatening and frightening, and in threatening and frightening circumstances, lashing out gives back (to some people) a little sense of power, a sense that they can have some form of control over the unknown.
We are not going to fix this with facts or education and neither with religious intervention, although that was my position some time ago.
Probably, and this is my opinion for the short term, the only way is to give these people a new mindless distraction or a new lunatic conspiracy to chase that’s preferably far less harmful.

Philemon Kaisa,
POM