Kony lives and exists as someone other than himself, he is in the minds of all of the rebel leaders, an influence to all of them. He is the biggest criminal reflecting leaders of organizations like his own LRA, showing how there are no moral values to these crimes. But what made him this way? Why is Kony such a terrible person? Taking this mysterious leader and trying to comprehend them, sympathize and empathize with them is hard, and like the Invisible Children - Kony 2012 video, this is an experiment, but for myself, to see if I can sympathize/empathize with a person so terrible. To try and understand who he was, to get why he is the way he is.
In 1961, a baby boy named Joseph Rao Kony was born to two farmers who lived in a Ugandan village, in Gulu, as a member of the Acholi people. He wasn't somebody you would expect to be a terrorist; he was an aggressive kid, sure, fighting with his siblings and sometimes resorting to physical violence. But a terrorist? His mother said that he brought a curse to the family, constantly making trouble, giving the family a bad name. His sister, Gabriela Lakot, said "as soon as he was born, he was standing on his own two feet." the rest of the village saw him as a strange little boy.
The rest is cruelty, cruelty that Kony inflicted on his own people, even from the start. I guess you could say that it is history too, Kony's climb through the "ranks" finally making it as his own in the LRA, being on top. But although he seemed a curse, a terrible awful child in the beginning, you can't help but see that he was and is only human. We all share who he is, a human, a person, a homo sapien, whatever you want to call it. I would imagine that his strangeness as a child, which lead to him being called a curse to the family, must have sparked his anger, or a fuel in him to be "better". Imagine being shunned or hated in some way or another by your family, who are certain that you are a devil's child, someone to be wary of. It would hurt, which doesn't (of course) give him an excuse to hurst others, especially children and babies, but you can understand.
It must have started with the fighting with his siblings, which is normal, I fight with my sister (rarely my brother or my oldest sister, close to never), it is a part of being a family. You disagree, you have your arguments, but in the end, they resolve. In Kony's case, they never did. He fought with not only words, but physical violence, which most likely wasn't tolerated that well in his village, especially seeing as his father was Catholic and probably didn't want his son causing such kinds of trouble. he dropped out of school taking over his brother's job as a witch doctor, which wasn't exactly Cathloic, but it wasn't so unusual either. This must have led to some sort of disagreement or another, and then most likely ended up making him leave, joining his first organization.
Honestly, Kony deserves to be the world's most wanted in my opinion, he not only deserves to be in jail, but soemthing more. He was born under circumstances that may have not been in his favour but he could have made the best of them, trying to show that he wasn't a devil's child, he was jsut a boy, trying to make it in his village. But he didn't. He acted upon the beliefs of his family and neighbours, making them probably resent him more and more, finally leading to today, where he wants power, wants to change something, but for himself, not for others. He has no cause, mo moral values, and although he has a sad(ish) backstory, it is no reason for him to have inflicted such pain.
Wow, Moira. This is really well written and I can tell that this is your voice speaking the whole time. I love the way you try to see the point of view of Kony. This must have been challenging. I can tell that you actually took time to think about why Kony might have become what he has. I thought it was very interesting how you combined the two ways of thinking. On the one hand, you do realize that Kony is a terrible person who has no right to do what he does. But you also can see that he had a difficult childhood and some of that may have effected some of his terrible decisions. The one think I noticed about your post though, is that you include a lot of summary. I think that you could have explained your thinking a little more and/or taken out some of your summary. But the summary does work with the way you wrote your post so this hardly bothered me. Plus, it is such a long post that you do include enough of your thinking. This is an excellent blog post.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Tiv! I will take your comment in mind when I write my next blog post! Thanks for reading my post, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
DeleteMoira,
ReplyDeleteI find your article extremely well written. I like how you actually looked into the back story of the criminal Joseph Kony, because after all criminals, though they might not have the few key human emotions like guilt for their actions, are still human just like us; which you show the understanding of. I like how you try to understand Kony, not only with what happened in his life, but also in his emotions. You say that if Kony was hurt by being thought of as a devil (or something like that, a curse or whatever), he should try to act in a way that would make people stop thinking that. I personally, have had people say that I thought myself better than others when I was once bullied, sadly. They never said it directly, but they whispered it, and that in itself made me angry, and slowly started changing my thinking into agreeing to what they say, as in, I slowly did start to think myself better then them in times of anger. I of course caught myself, and heavily berated myself in that sort of thinking. But really, when I read the book "The Self Illusion" by Bruce Hood (too long and hard to finish reading all of it though xD) he says, that you aren't what you think you are, but what you think others think you are. Kind of confusing, but I guess this could apply to Kony as well. I really do like your post though :D
-Terri the AWSUMEST PERSON EVER (Awesome was spelled that way on purpose)
It's really cool how you try to find out Kony's past insted of dissmissing him as good or bad without a thought to previous events, and how you collect evidence from his past as to why he may have become what he is. I also liked how you describe Kony in the begining as someone who "lives and exists as someone other than himself." The language and strategies, the fact that you can relate to the young years of this evil man, and the fact that you go so much deeper into the problem then the average teenager, make me believe this is probably the most advanced blogpost I've read from anyone. Can't wait for your next post!
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