Uganda is a country in motion. I, and I believe most Ugandans, would hope for it to be forward motion and not regression. But it takes more than hoping. For the good ideals that drive a society forward (e.g. checks & balances, recognition of bodily autonomy, valuing lives, democracy) do not sprout from a vacuum.
They come from a number of background applied philosophies interacting. So if we only try to propagate great ideals without grounding them in the concepts they're derived from, our work is likely to be superficial & temporal.
Yet if those among us who fancy themselves advancers of society opt to demonstrate how values are derived, we will find it too steep a task. This is because raw philosophy is too scholarly for lower unscholarly classes and that is the main point of this piece. The need for simplification of philosophical thought for the masses to understand & consume so that we can attain the societal ideals we aspire to. The word "simplification" will likely prompt a negative gut reaction from someone who has invested their mind in ploughing the depths of complex philosophies.
But, the most effective way to bend the consciousness of the masses to a field so grand and intertwined with the trajectory of human existence itself—philosophy—is to emphasize narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. This phenomenon in popular culture has come to be colloquially known as to "popify" (the prefix "pop" for popular, & the suffix "ify" for causing something to become.) It can be applied to any field, e.g. pop history like "History's Greatest Escapes" by Morgan Freeman on the History Channel, or pop science like "Bill Nye, the Science Guy" on MTV. In our case, I will simply focus on pop philosophy and the possibilities to explore that approach in the Ugandan context.
For clarity's sake, such a mode of simplification would not be aimed at scholars or philosophers. Neither is this a call to strip philosophical scholarship of its complexity within the academic/theoretical context. In those contexts, complexity befits the subject matter many a time. Rather, pop philosophy is to be aimed at the masses across their social classes in their lived contexts. It would be a means and not an end in and of itself. The goal of such a strategy would be to give a grounding foundation in society's collective psyche for great ideals (like the dignity of personhood, the importance of empowered institutions over individuals, & the prizing of liberty) to have a cultural longevity about them once they are propagated in a setting like Uganda.
As to how pop philosophy can be engrafted into our mainstream pop culture, it would all start from a point of curating desired ideals, the corresponding philosophies at their core & the art media to embed them in. In this respect, it would be strategic to first harness some pieces of low-hanging fruit, so to speak.
There are already existent platforms on the close edges of Ugandan pop culture that merge recreation with an informational impulse such as the themed quiz nights in suburban hangout joints. The scale of the concept can be upped, and an incremental diet of prior-communicated philosophical themes can be infused into its content.
Another avenue is through broadcast programming on legacy & cable TV. It would then be necessary to assess how to adjust the content for demographic variations like age. For instance, Ugandan animators who buy into the cause could target a children's audience in their formative years, for generational impact. This would not be an untried approach. It has been done in other societies, like the US, that value the consequential nature of ideas. They have animated children's shows like "The Amazing World of Gumball", infused with philosophical undertones, using both comedic allusions and short exact quotes, in the context of universal and civic values. The skilful narrative built around it doesn't strip it of its child-friendly nature, and neither does it lose the potential to ground the young viewers with the foundation on which end-goal ideals like freedoms are meant to thrive, later in life. The same template can be emulated and contextualized for Uganda.
Another already existing framework that can be utilized with legacy media are the slots on local FM radio stations for stories in our own languages. These range from programming akin to audio sitcoms, folk-styled tales in a continuous format, and unfortunately sensationalized global pseudohistory. On the point of the latter, if simple-minded dwellers of rural vicinities far from Uganda's capital can religiously tune in to sensationalized world history by "Omwana W'omwaami" formerly on Impact FM (as I personally witnessed several times in the past), then they can consume a light de-scholarized telling of the origins of democracy. They are surely not too dull to understand that "demokulasiya" means "amaanyi g'abantu mu lurimi Oluyonani". Neither is it unreasonable to believe that they would follow the logical link of democracy to an individual owning their own existence & thereby having a say in what affects them, if it were conveyed in a radio play within a local dialect. Just like that, you have simplified a philosophical tenet about the self-ownership of personhood.
The beauty of drama is that it can distil a layered concept into a relatable story arc. It can take a protagonist & build a situation around them where they have to assert their right as an extension of their worth. That they are under no obligation to offer profuse thanks or to be servile towards whoever hands them what already belongs to them. The dramatic arc may not even be civic within the story, but the parallels clearly are. Overall, this medium is favorable for reaching the rural semi-literate and illiterate portion of the country's populace. A decision to “popify” philosophy is great because there would be no reason to leave out of this cultural project the illiterate and semi-illiterate.
There are several other platforms that could be avenues of simplified philosophical thought (pop psychology), as a means to ensure genuine cultural longevity of the great ideals we desire for our society. These would include Edtech companies leaning into a philosophy-driven edutainment angle, or civic organizations leaning into art collaborations with liberty ethos. Whatever the choice, for this entire approach to be broadly successful on a generational scale, there would be need for a coordinated multi-disciplinary network of benevolent and resourced collaborators working to infuse pop philosophy through art, culture, tech, media, and education.
It would require passion and enthusiasm towards the project and in the background, robust scholarship in the fields of philosophy would provide the necessary fuel for behavioral psychology and culture theory, in all their complexity.
It is okay for the backend of the project to be complex, in fact it must be, so that its simplified front end is grounded in authentic analysis. It is only the front end of this cultural project that is to be popified (loosed from its complexity, popularized). There would be a network of scholars and practitioners in the stated fields guiding and steering the project from the backend, while a network of popularizers champion it from the frontend. For continuity's sake, both networks should be bigger than singular personalities, but that would take another piece to elaborate.
Of course, I can anticipate some objections to this entire strategy. One may say, for instance, that philosophy simplified from its complex premises loses the vital precision, which is often necessary to the spirit that prompted it in the first place. That the resultant product is far removed from the initial philosophy. To this, I say this cultural project, as outlined, would make no pretensions of being a purist one.
Then again, another may anticipate danger of quenching the populace's thirst for real robust philosophy because they are wrongly satisfied with the adulterated "deficient" version of it. That is easily refutable since pop philosophy, as a facet of entertainment, would be designed to tease concepts with brevity and therefore likely to send a fascinated inquirer into a search for more elaborate, and consequently less adulterated sources. Still, a skeptic may assert that the success of such a project would mean a regression of philosophical scholarship in our society. To that, a clarification is due that; this project would steer from meddling with scholarship and theorization & only concern itself with the masses who are unscholarly anyway. In other words, it is a net positive. Now I do not know about you, persistent reader, but I for one would take a net positive any time, especially the kind with the potential to lend a cultural longevity to the many ideals that the noble and foresighted among us strive for.
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