The detestable descent into indecency, disrespectfulness and general lawlessness by Ghanaians is a clear sign of our collective and individual loss of common sense and it comes at tremendous cost. Stay in Ghana for a day or travel a decent distance in any of our cities and, it is more difficult to miss, than to see, the general lawlessness that characterizes every aspect of our lives, as a people. Motorists almost without exception - have their own rules, which is, ignore all decent motoring rules; those on zebra crossing; the right of way for other motorists, those on parking, speed limits, and all other rules in the book, while quite a number of people, including some high and mighty, take delight in driving on the shoulder of roads to demonstrate their impatience with traffic jams. The cost of such recklessness is staggering. A loss of ¢1.2 trillion annually, representing 1.6 percent of annual GDP, accounting for 10,000 fatal accidents out of which 1,600 people die and 15,000 get seriously injured. You can't miss the teeming crowd of street hawkers (worse on ceremonial streets), selling all manner of items, from food stuff to sophisticated electronic products. And certainly not the open air food vendors who are taking over every available space at the bus stops. It used to be the orange, roast plantain, and the occasional waakye seller, now it is more of banku, and tuo zaafi sellers. Wooden shacks, kiosks and stalls with rusty corrugated roofing sheets are strewn all over with reckless abandon and even competing for space with critical infrastructure such as roads and rail lines. Ghana's capital, Accra, is now reputed to be the dirtiest city in the sub region with the unenviable reputation of belonging to the dirtiest regions of the world. The least said about the competition for who displays publicly, more of what is considered to be private body parts, the better. However, it is nauseating to see adults sporting clothes only fit for their teenage grandchildren. And if you haven't gotten over the bad habit of eating supper during the evening TV news, more often than not, your meal will be spoilt by a news item, either of people doing dirty things just anywhere and anyhow, or a gruesome accident with the cameras showing all the gory details. Indeed, you cannot help noticing how efficiently the Ghanaian system works in a sort of reverse order. Just attempt insisting on the right thing to be done and you come under such flak you begin to wonder if you are not the one who has really lost his mind. Foolish pride Time was when Ghanaians prided themselves in being ladies and gentlemen, in being disciplined and courteous. Now, all that has changed. A couple of weeks ago, a lawless driver used the shoulder of the road at Weija Barrier and ran into a group of lawless street hawkers, killing four of them and injuring many more. TV showed all details of the accident, leaving nothing to the imagination. Believe it or not, the blood stains had not dried up before the hawkers were back with their plantain chips and pure water. That, which is meant to shock our sensibilities, does not shock us any longer. Perhaps Marx was right in saying that a moribund society creates its own morbid gravediggers. And just the week after that, there was extensive TV coverage of elderly women wailing because their homes had been demolished at Kasoa. I had a serious challenge explaining to a seven-year old that this occurred because someone decided to operate by their own law. The worrying thing is that these are not isolated cases. On a regular basis, people are suffering, needlessly, in one way or another because most Ghanaians have decided they will act outside the law and it seems no one is prepared to uphold the law. Indeed, there is such a thing as foolish pride. Not that beautiful, natural and humble pride vested in a real confidence stemming from knowing truly who and what we are, what our true destiny is in life, and in a disciplined manner, work at achieving our goals. We seem to prefer cunning over common sense, irrespective of its dire consequences. But how many more lives should we lose, how much unnecessary suffering should we endure before we realize the sorry state into which we have descended, how much we have lost that basic sense of self preservation; common to all humans, which allows us to design and operate under good• laws to everybody's benefit. Bloated egos What is most unfortunate about our situation is that we tend to think that it is the outcome of somebody else's misdeeds and therefore, somebody else's responsibility to fix it. Rather than highlighting the wrongfulness of indecent, lawless behaviour, we are quick to jump to the defense of the lawless. How many human rights activist haven't jumped to the defense of 'victims' of law enforcement, because such enforcement is not being carried out with a 'human face' irrespective of the fact that, more often than not, such 'victims' may have applied every inhuman trick to have their way, little caring about the negative effects of their misbehavior on the community from which they are demanding humane treatment. It is no great coincidence that in these times of our insistence on our individual rights, to the neglect of our responsibility and duty to our communities and society, at large, that our country is experiencing such untold environmental degradation, unsanitary condition in our towns, the haphazard development of our towns and cities, and a high level of general lawlessness. I was shamed to the bones when an elderly illiterate commented that we, these days spend good money and time to educate people only for them to come out to argue over certain behaviors that, in the past, common sense dictated that it never happened. The point is this; the misplaced self-centredness and self-importance of the ignorant in our society, is also reflected in the highly' educated and well positioned, thus making it difficult for us to have that communal sense that allows for a healthy and positive development of our nation. No matter how highly we think of ourselves, the more we condone and defend lawless behaviour, the more lawless we are ourselves. We are how we behave. And the level of disrespect we show for each other and the laws that govern decent bahaviour are not only a reflection of the degree of our descent from common sense, it is a reflection of the degree of our self respect and the national pride we feel. Author: Emmanuel Kwablah e-mail: emmanuel@bizandft.biz