INTRODUCTION.
Silence, they say, is golden, because when you keep silent in some situations, you are most likely going to end up avoiding needless complications. For one, if you keep silent, your ignorance maybe hidden, as result of which listeners may not be able to know what you think or even evaluate you as a person. Despite these obvious advantages, silence can sometimes be very injurious to yourself, your future and career as a whole. So, we might as well ask: 'How does silence kill the future of many?' This article will walk you through this topic as much as possible, so that you can avoid disappointment due to any self-injurious silence. Silence, they say, kills if no one is willing to speak up, and so, make candour your core competence. It is known that checklists and clear protocols for clinical care have been highly successful in infection prevention and other fields too, but can easily be undercut just by keeping silent. It is also not uncommon for people to observe real time errors or failings and refuse to speak out for fear of the possible consequences.
WAYS BY WHICH SILENCE AFFECTS THE FUTURE.
Of course, the less you say, the more the likelihood that you will avoid any needless problems with others or the society at large. But, this depends on the situation you are dealing with. In some cases, remaining silent may not only be injurious to you alone, but to countless others as well. For instance, consider a situation where you happened to have observed very suspicious movements by strange persons in your neighborhood, but kept silent because you believe it is not really your concern. However, a few days after your observation, numerous women and children were reported missen, while many among them were killed in the process. All thanks to the strange visitors. Here, your needless silence, and by extension, your refusal to be useful, had caused the problem you allowed to thrive, because of which many dreams of blissful futures have been truncated. In fact, you might as well have kidnapped and killed the people with your own hands.
There are also instances where people may fail to talk about some important things that may be giving them serious bother, for fear of possible reprimand or public ridicule, or in fact any other mundane reason. In some cases, failure to talk about certain pertinent situations might actually end up putting your entire life and future or those of others too in serious jeopardy. For example, if you conceal the presence of a debilitating illness, which you or others may be afflicted with, the illness will not fail to ridicule and put you to shame at the appointed time. So, speak up before it is too late, which might be the only deliverance for you and others at the time.
Only those who wear the shoes know where they pinch. As a result, if you fail to reveal any ill or information which can be used to immense benefits or to stop the development of a bad situation, you will bear the consequences of what might result thereof throughout your life. So, dodge this curse and speak out timely before it is too late. It is not always that silence is a good thing, sometimes, it is suicidal or even genocidal too; just as it can save you from needless embarrassments, silence can equally be a recipe for a monumental disaster.
A typical case study on this issue is with regards to the consumption of tobacco in the United States. Tobacco related diseases kill about 178 00 women every year in the US, yet, a search for the public discourse on this fact reveals a surprising silence on the issue. As a nation, the US has failed to mount or organize a public response to the prevailing public health tragedy of the use of tobacco. The public has got to find a way to give voice to the thousands of families who are likely to experience the premature loss of loved ones due to the use of tobacco. It is imperative that, we engage a broad range of partners, both pubic and private, and assist them to raise our collective voices to promptly demand for a comprehensive action. Though many of us are activists and others are working to counteract the harm of tobacco to humans, the public remains largely silent, its lack of outrage evident in the daily news, in the public debate on smoking bans, and also in the lack of pressure on our government to protect workers, families, and children. There is regrettably very little public demand for action. Ways to spark up a national movement to demand the funding and implementation of comprehensive tobacco control programs must be found. There is the urgent need to overcome apathy and public silence. Tobacco control enthusiasts must take a cue from the AIDS activists that silence equals a continuing saga of diseases, suffering, and ultimately death. We must join together to give voice to the women and men who die every year in the US of tobacco related diseases.
Sometimes, our silence may bear profound effects and harm to us generally, and even to future generations yet unborn. Take for instance the issue of academic decadence in most, if not all, third world countries globally, such as Nigeria, the causes of this persistent malady has long been identified, but the associated silence on the issue is a sort of catalyst for its continuous growth.There is the persistent corruption where money budgeted for educational developmental is being stolen and transfered into foreign accounts owned by the very people who make such budgets, whose children neither live in Nigeria or study in Nigerian schools. Those who are left to slug it out in these dilapidated Nigerian schools and the schools in other equally impoverished countries, pay for their ways and grades in the schools. In the end, we are landed with 'so-called' graduates who are as illiterate as anybody else, but who are surprisingly always too eager for the world to be aware that they have certificates ( or better worthless certificates). To every employer of labor, our so called graduates are, to say the least, simply unemployable. They just don't have anything they can offer anyone, not even to themselves. The problem keeps worsening by the day, because we are silent and helpless. This is one major price for silence on the future of a nation and a people. Those who promulgate the laws are the most complicit in flaunting them with barefaced impunity and reckless abandon. What a shame!
The populations of Africa and Asia, for instance, are facing imminent decimation. To be specific, governments in these regions make huge budgets on issues related to the health of the general public, but sadly, these budgetary allocations will only be known on the pages of newspapers, but are never allowed to be used for the purposes they are intended. In fact, and without any fear of equivocation, African and Asian hospitals are only mutuaries, which you are hardly expected to leave alive, if you are unfortunate enough to visit them. Little wonder therefore that African leaders (or better rulers) are always in a hurry to travel to Europe or Dubai for treating headache or malaria, and in fact to any other countries whose leaders are not treasury thieves and looters. Shameless ingrates and God forsaken dictators.
We seem to be silent mostly on issues that are assuredly going to have very indelible effects on our survival and collective future as a people. In Africa, for instance, and specifically Nigeria, nothing seems to be working. The foundation of everything is deceit, deceit and more deceit. The laws exist only for the common man, the treasury belongs to the privileged few in government, lucrative jobs are reserved for only the bourgeoises and their cronies. The schools exist only in our imaginations, and you can lose your life at the behest of those who call the shots. These gross maladies, which can make even the most ardent dictators to cover their faces in shame, keep growing by the day mostly because we allow them due to our silence. Of course, one can contend that talking about them will hardly change anything. Be that as it may, we should strive to always lend our voices on these medieval behaviors of African dictators. One day, somehow, the train will unavoidably derail, and hardly will they see it coming. In time, change, true change, will come.
CONCLUSION.
Well, silence is better where you believe it may lead you to trouble. However, there are instances where silence will only compound your misery and headache, where your survival and future are at great risks. At such times, it is best to speak out, lest you have yourself to blame for the travails that will befall you. In certain climes, the people have simply got to start talking for the world to know their plight and sub-human subjugation from dictators who are poised to continue riding Africans as horses. Unfortunately, Nigeria is a typical case in point, a country where the treasury belongs to the few dictators, while the general public are left with religious and tribal jingoism to keep them company; we are more Moslems than the Arabs and more Christians than the Pope. What a pity! Talk about these things relentlessly, or else, you undo yourselves and your futures consciously.
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