Lessons from Odysseus as we confront the monsters of complacency and despair

Odysseus, who, thanks to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, is back on the silver screen, famously had to navigate between two sea monsters, the six-headed Scylla with her 12 feet, and Charybdis, the voracious whirlpool, on his return from fighting in Troy.

To avoid one meant sailing perilously close to the other. His first passage cost him the lives of six of his crew, who were captured off his ship and eaten. The second time Odysseus had to cling to a tree while his raft went into the whirlpool, only for it to be spat out and sent back to him when the monster discovered it was empty.

We all have our own Scylla and Charybdis to face, and they are as potentially devastating – despondency and complacency. As our lives progress, and if we have achieved what we set out to, we can become comfortable and get sucked into the whirlpool of complacency.

Equally, if we are still hustling but failing to make our mark, to have our voices heard and our achievements seen, we can be minced up in the machine and become totally despondent. That’s just in our personal lives – there’s plenty in the outside world to drag the most rational of us all down with the four horsemen of the modern apocalypse: planet extinction, identity politics, war, and greed – all around us at home and abroad.

Tap into the power

We don’t have to be subsumed by despondency and despair, and we certainly shouldn’t allow ourselves to be cosseted by our complacency either, because that can often be a Trojan horse in our consciousness. We must tap into the incredible power that we all have to make a difference, in our own lives and in the lives of others. I saw this again recently at our mid-year graduation ceremony, capping graduates in our executive education programmes.

They are not in their early 20s like the typical student demographic – they are in their mid-30s and 40s. They are seasoned adults who have been tested by life, who have built up hard-won experience in the workplace. They have power. They have energy, and now, hopefully, they have the tools to harness that power more efficiently and effectively as they venture forth.

We need to remember, as we gather over the braai fires and try to make sense of the various commissions of inquiry and their litanies of institutional failure and low-level insurrection, that giving in is precisely what best suits the architects of this chaos, because by complaining and moaning, we dissipate all our energy and give up instead of organising and fighting back.

Lee Kuan Yew, the father of modern Singapore, was ruthlessly pragmatic in his pursuit of a better life for his fellow citizens through his vision for a modern city-state. The moment we allow ourselves to let go of our dream, we allow a change in our standards and capabilities. Turning that around brings the fear of losing opportunities or even friends, because we have to take a stand. But any loss is short-term and minute compared to the gains you will make by holding your course.

Buying our way out of municipal failure through private power, water, and security offers only temporary relief. Retreating into self-funded isolation merely delays an inevitable broader fallout.

To truly change our trajectory, we must realise that capacity is useless without capability. Consider Kenya, where an international donor provided the aid and the people to build wind farms to resolve its power crisis, but ordinary Kenyans were never trained to run or maintain them. It’s like education – the Chinese once sent their brightest and their best all over the world to get taught, and now they teach themselves. Malaysia and India did the same, and now the UAE is doing it; in the process they’re attracting students from elsewhere, and increasingly from Africa.

Critical qualifications

Africa is the continent with the fastest-growing population, the fastest rate of urbanisation and the fastest-growing middle class. The need for education is exponential, but how many are finding those critical qualifications in Africa? The reality is that Africa is buying in foreign capacity, but not building capability. Unless we build capability, Africa remains just a market, open to being exploited as it was during the phases of colonisation, from direct to economic, over the past 300 years.

Lee Kuan Yew set up the Singapore model of educational and economic development when he took office. Singapore had very little when Malaysia summarily expelled it from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965. Singapore was a swamp, while the newly liberated Malaysia had all the natural resources, but Lee had a vision, and with it discipline; within a generation it became a reality.

It’s a lesson that can be applied anywhere and by anyone, especially when it comes to individuals. Education does not end when you leave school. Executive education allows for training and credentialling at any time, empowering students to transform their lives, restore their dignity, and reignite hope. We have the skills and the institutions to drive change. We don’t need a distant leader exhorting us – we are all leaders in our own right, starting with ourselves.

Together, fighting the pull of desperation or the empty allure of contentment, we can avoid our own Scylla and Charybdis and finally make it home to Ithaca. It took Lee Kuan Yew 30 years; it took Odysseus 10 years. If you start now, you might even get a PhD in seven years.

But it doesn’t take that long, and you don’t need a doctorate to be the change you want to see in your own life and the world. Whatever discomfort or risk the journey demands, the outcome will more than justify the cost. DM