Using binaries of “advanced (i.e. Western) cultures” vs. “primitives” in divvying up societies is cringe-worth neocolonialism. This isn’t the 1860s. Nigerians own iphones, blog, and – dare I say it – even contribute to global innovation instead of passively receiving all advanced technology from the West. They aren’t sitting around a campfire using iPads to bludgeon their prey over the heads. That text quote could come from anywhere on the planet suffering from ethnic tension.

And check out Youtube’s comment section if you really want to see globalized hate proliferated through technology!

Or John McCain doing the same?

Anyway, technology from a different and dare i say more advanced culture introduced into a less civilized one is used to advance a war based in primitive thought.

i thought the post was less about the mass text than it was about the fact that someone in a culture like that could recieve an anonymous text saying kill and be incited to kill!

oh and my desire to rip on avatar for the stupid plot tragedies i mentioned earlier might have muddied my ability to articulate my original thought. sorry my misinterpretation made it seem a little troll-y.

sorry.

Common Sense seems to have become nearly extinct.

(Please note, this observation applies in no way only to Nigeria. At a population level, even the “technological” west is in a pretty ghastly state. Having a cellphone in a demon-haunted world is still barbaric and premodern, even though the cellphone depends on advanced digital signalling, packet radio, and compression techniques.)

“War, war, war. Stand up and defend yourselves. Kill before they kill you. Slaughter before they slaughter you. Dump them in a pit before they dump you.”

This is the singular sentiment that escalates intragroup tension to violence: Reflexive fear of violence. This acts in conjunction with the very human tendencies to evaluate threats and generalize based on pattern-recognition. Meanwhile, people really cannot avoid creating the very in-group and out-group categories that are so frequently the very cause of enmity- between groups. Our tendency to create these strong associations is so overpowering that we cannot even speak in terms that exclude them.

Oh, I’m sorry, I’m supposed to say something simple and contemptuous and thoughtless like, “*Sigh*…religion”

Oh wait, did I say “bless”? I meant “help us all”.

We of the US can now kill indiscriminately from 7500 miles away using drones. This technological feat is not an indicator of superior humanity.

Most human beings don’t think up things like this. But so long as they can be manipulated into consenting to trade their humanity for mere survival, or the illusion of power, they will never be allowed to be free, and none of us will ever know peace.

Oren: Don’t kid yourself, the people in your grandmother’s time were just as stupid and suggestible as people today. The Spanish-American War was waged on grounds just as shaky as our rationale for invading Iraq and the “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast convinced many thousands of Americans than an alien armada was at hand.

This latest Nigerian text message phenomenon makes me think about how local talk radio stations were able to incite an entire genocide in Rwanda. Same murderous assholes, different media.