The Silence That Speaks: What Arendt and Ifá Teach Us About Ethical Amnesia
When Leaders Forget the Story, Conformity Becomes Complicity
“Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”
— African Proverb
In a fluorescent-lit courtroom in Jerusalem, a man named Adolf Eichmann stood on trial for his role in organizing the Holocaust. He didn’t appear evil. He didn’t sound fanatical. He claimed he had simply followed orders. “Just doing my job,” he said.
This moment would give birth to one of the most haunting insights of the 20th century.
Hannah Arendt, observing the trial, coined the phrase “the banality of evil.” Evil, she argued, is not always perpetrated by monsters. Sometimes it is executed by quiet bureaucrats, polite managers, obedient professionals—people who stop thinking for themselves, stop questioning, stop remembering.
It’s not always hatred that destroys civilizations. Sometimes, it’s indifference.
And this is where the sacred African tradition of Ifá—the philosophical and divinatory system of the Yoruba people—offers a parallel that is both urgent and timeless.
Ifá and the Memory of the People
Ifá is not just a religion or a ritual—it is a living archive of wisdom passed down through poetic verses called Odu Ifá. These verses carry stories, ethics, cosmology, and warnings. They serve the same function that strategic planning documents or organizational histories aim to: to remind a people who they are, what they’ve survived, and what they must not forget.
At the heart of many Odu is a concept called Ìtàn—story, memory, history.
In Ifá, forgetting the Ìtàn is not simply a cultural loss. It is a spiritual and moral failure.
Odu Ògúndá Méjì tells us:
“The one who forgets their story has already misplaced their destiny.”
It’s not nostalgia that Ifá encourages. It’s accountability. Because where Ìtàn is absent, ethical judgment erodes. Where stories go untold, wrongdoing goes unchallenged. And where memory is erased, power becomes unmoored from responsibility.
Ifá and Arendt agree: when thinking stops, and memory fades, evil does not need to march—it only needs to blend in.
Boardrooms, Best Practices, and the Modern Machine
We live in an age of optimization. Metrics rule. Playbooks proliferate. Leaders are trained to ask, “What’s the ROI?”before they ask, “What’s the story we’re shaping?”
In this machinery, something subtle happens.
A marketing team fails to flag a harmful stereotype in a campaign—not out of malice, but because the brief didn’t say to check.
A multinational expands into a region with a traumatic colonial history, but the strategy deck never mentions it.
A diversity report is shelved quietly after a change in leadership. No one protests. It simply disappears.
This is not about villains. It’s about silence.
We often think evil requires intention. But Arendt reminds us—and Ifá insists—that evil sometimes only requires forgetfulness, convenience, and conformity.
And the boardroom, just like the courtroom, can be a stage where forgetting is rewarded.
The Lion’s Story: Leadership as Ethical Memory
Here is where Ifá provides a path forward—not just a warning.
The Babaláwo, or diviner, is not merely someone who predicts. They are custodians of communal memory. They recite the Odu not to entertain, but to recall truths that have been hidden, misused, or ignored.
In many ways, the modern executive must become a kind of Babaláwo—not in ritual, but in responsibility.
Because leadership, at its core, is not about control.
It is about narration.To lead is to decide which stories are told, which are silenced, and which are worth remembering even when they are inconvenient.
The hunter always has a strategy.
But the lion has a memory.
And in today’s organizations, the lion is often everyone who has been left out of the story: the frontline employee, the whistleblower, the intern with a bold idea, the elder with context, the client who remembers a broken promise.
Returning to Ìtàn
So what does this mean for you, as a leader, a strategist, a founder?
It means the next time you're in a meeting where the convenient narrative is being served, pause. Ask: “What are we forgetting?”
It means when someone shares a story that challenges the official version, resist the urge to smooth it over.
Let the discomfort teach. Let the silence be broken. Let memory return.
Because in breaking the silence, you do more than just protect others.
You protect your own humanity.
You resist the machinery.
You refuse the banality.
Closing Reflection
Both Arendt and Ifá are clear: The greatest danger is not hatred. It’s forgetfulness.
To remember is an act of resistance. To speak, when silence feels safer, is an act of courage. To lead with story is to lead with soul.
Share Your Voice
What stories in your company or community have been silenced?
Who remembers what others prefer to forget?
When have you seen silence become complicity?
Ashé!
Tilo Plöger de Àjàgùnnà
DAILY IFÁ BUSINESS