Author Interview "Jo M. Sekimonyo"
Who is Jo M. Sekimonyo? Congolese roots, American fermented, globally bottled, pleasure and agony canvasser, and an Ideological Mambi (nonconformist). A machetero deliberately confronted by corybantic circumstances. If you rode the previous roller coaster, Cast Away: For These Reasons, you have been exposed to the awful rumpus going on in my head. I fondly pride myself on having a rhinoceros tough skin, safeguarding me against the usual flapdoodle. I am fiercely opinionated and allergic to poorly patched arguments. I delight in wreaking havoc on psychological and cerebral closed-mindedness just as any form of fanaticism or fallacy like a poltergeist. The older I get, no matter how much I try, the more I fail in gagging my anguish and anger over parochialism in all its shapes and forms. I cannot just bring myself to accept intolerance or prejudice as life.
Exclusive Interview
Can you please tell our readers a little about your upcoming book “ETHOSISM: Self-enslavement Abolitionist Manifesto.”
Any discussion about ethos, from which the word ethics is part and parcel of the same tree, must include the notion of morality. Ethos is also the underlying sentiment that forms values, beliefs, customs, or practices of a society which are always contingent of specific period. I press humans on every sides and sidelines to question our realities instead of agonizing about the origin of our consciousness.
By the end of the twentieth-century, every social, commerce and trade, and political constructs underwent more than rhinoplasties in a desperate effort to escape responsibility. A global system underlying the extremely unequal distribution of wealth and power has kept the profane views of the laboring class and hierarchical arrangements between commerce and trade actors the same.
In the book I point the catalyzers of the ballooning the social, economic, and social gap between the gang of robber barons and captains of industry and the rest. I don’t stop there. I wisely scribbled a prescription, Ethosism.
What prompted you to write this book?
Insomnia is the book that I planned to come out this year. Readers kept asking what the hell is Ethosism. Technology as made us efficient slave. The heavy cost of efficiency has shifted for moneyers to the self-enslaved. Sadly, humanity have yet to spot the dynamism worsening the wealth and power new one-sidedness.
I always spill my verity and discordance not to enrapture the audience but to summon contemporaneous probity and to add my voice to clamoring crowds disrelishing the modern-day social and political economy constructs. There is something between old social, commerce and trade, and political arrangement like capitalism or socialism and the twenty-first-century humankind that I can no longer pretend doesn't exist, incompatibility. For me, letting out all the anger stored inside of my brain was sincerely a cathartic exercise.
What kind of research, if any, did you do while writing ETHOSISM? Did you interview anyone, read other books, etc.?
Like I confessed in Ethosism, I no longer pore over contemporary literature like when I was innocent; I could care less about echoing or reciting past and present hopes or nightmares. I, now, continually tune my acuitas by living. To get a logical high in an unremorseful fashion one has to get to a poignant deepest level. Yes, it is an awful cerebral diet pertinent to discern plausibility and certainty.
What’s the most surprising thing you learned about yourself as a person while you were writing your book?
In my tour of the shittiest parts of the world, I pulled my hairs every time people there mentioned in their argument western economic priests of a dead religion who still cling to out of date economic models that have been proved as false as the theories they were based on. At the same time, I got disgusted by western groups who were devoid of the power of observation standing next to the very people they proclaim to want to help.
Let say, the older I get, no matter how much I try, the more I fail in gagging my anguish and anger over parochialism in all its shapes and forms. I cannot just bring myself to accept intolerance or prejudice as life.
What message(s) do you hope your readers will take away from your book?
Not only the elite, but common mortals throughout the globe are purchasing their means of participation, engagement, or involvement in an enterprise or discussion is key symptom of the twenty-first-century paradigm shift. Therefore, we ought to rethink the way we share the surplus.
Even if there is a potential benefit both the individual and society that does not change with the power elite, corrupt or bandits within any society, there is no point to concocted an alternative to capitalism unless it echoes to a paradigm shift.
Along with being an author you also have some experience in politics, correct? Please tell us a bit about your recent run for President in the Democratic Republic of Congo?
I am in a pursuing of intellectual relevance in global discussion on socioeconomic injustice. But, time to time, I find myself inapt to numb up my disgust of the excruciate daily reality of the mass and the small elite stomach-turning delusion of opulence in my home country. Couple years back, I decided to start making regular pitstop in DRC to nag the conscience of the venal and reckless elite through media. At the same time, I speak at universities to torment young minds on their fundamental nature, purpose and essence.
I sought to run for the higher office in my home country to trigger waves of national self-reflection. Most of Congolese, especially the young ones, idolize old wolves who are nothing more than bandits and rapists. And so, once again, the Congolese drama of the confusing democracy experience is going to be a thrill of partaking in the worst of the worst human-beings’ victory, the agony of common-sense defeat. I simply couldn’t gather a team with a level of passion and determination turn to the people pain into power.
Will you be on the campaign trail again in the near future? If so, what will you do differently?
For someone who has been lashed to the mast by both sides, I can testify that you can easily lose the will of rebelling against the status quo. The masters of mass manipulation obscure their logical fallacies and inconsistencies to entrench blind supporters and brown-nosers into the two camps and watch them battle it out to the death. I really mean it, to death. It is not enough to ban these meaningless gladiators’ cage fights or to banish these self-professed Caesars - Congolese are in dire need of the 21st century aspirations.
As far as on the presidential level, I will get on the ring in 2023. Meanwhile my organization, En Charge, is organizing a peaceful march to tilt the nation discussion toward minimum wage, young unemployment, universal health coverage, and dignifying pensions, and retirement benefits.
What will I do differently? Not diluting my voice or my passion because my vision comes at an intricate high tone.
Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?
My mother has a shocking compassion for all living things. Letter to Maman Vincent published in my book, Cast Away: For These Reasons, was addressed to homeless that I happen run into Nairobi Kenya. Like many others cities around the world, it has raged a war against the poor instead of poverty. It was not long ago that I came to the realization that the letter is packed with sentiments, in a subconscious fashion, that crafted by my mother agony. Her humiliating existence have so much to do with my crusade against socioeconomic injustices.
Do you have any advice for aspiring authors who may be reading this?
Everyone of one us has more than one story that other would be interested to hear. We write to be read; unfortunately, your book needs to be bought to be read. Even though technology provides an avalanche of way to go indie, the tricks of getting the right exposure and placement in a bookstore are still dictated by the remnants of the old ways. Do your homework and get seriously involve in all aspect of bringing your voice to the public. And when you write a book to be read (not a gimmick), you have to embrace your imperfections and accept insolence. What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
Well, I keep recalibrating ways of pulling the left out and excluded in the global discussions. I have conferences mainly universities throughout the third world to give the young minds a sense of wonder and prompt them to use their conscience. A number of speaking engagements is on my path to preach Ethosism on the better part of the globe.
I will be doing a lot of traveling in Europe and Latin American. In addition to been translated this year in eight other languages than English, the revised version of my older book Cast Away For These Reasons for Academia, The Metaphysical Theory of Egalitarian Economics, is also coming out at the end of the year.
No Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this year. The consolation prize would be getting Ethosism, on the New York time bestseller list when it comes out ton November 20th. It is my way of pointing out the global cultural decay; putting out there an anti-capitalism books to harass our collective consciousness on the capitalism most celebrated day.
About the book
If you have read Cast Away: For These Reasons, then you know that you are in for another rollercoaster ride in the mind of a writer who is raising hell in the political economy arena, shaking the status quo. However, I'm sure one of the foremost questions in your mind after a futile search on google and Wikipedia was: "what the heck is ethosism?" Fear not, dear readers because in this book, you will find out exactly what ethosism is. This is not part of a series, rather, it illuminates the new 21st century socially constructed paradigm. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poor on a massive global scale. what is the solution? breaking the double standard approach to recompense. It's an anti old social, political, and economic arrangement (Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, etc...)