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This is a beautiful (and very true) passage: "Among Nigerians, complaining about our problems is an art form. Most conversations quickly become a litany of com
by veddox 8y ago
This is a beautiful (and very true) passage:
"Among Nigerians, complaining about our problems is an art form. Most conversations quickly become a litany of complaints – about government corruption, no light, no water, etc. But if a foreigner were to say the same things, to recite the same litany of complaints, Nigerians would become defensive, sometimes angrily so.
"I have always been curious about this brand of defensiveness – which I myself often exhibit, by the way. It seems to me that we have it because we assume that the complaining Nigerian is aware that Nigeria is not only about its problems, is aware of the human complexity, knows of the intelligence and ingenuity of people, knows how they cry and laugh, knows what motivates them and what they aspire to and what they find meaningful. And we suspect that the foreigner does not know these other stories about us and so we worry about being defined solely by what we do not have and by what we are not. And so our defensiveness emerges."
- iqy 8y agoYeah, no. No matter how much romanticism you want to throw at it, this kind of defensiveness is simple tribalism.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoI believe the passage was to imply that tribalism isn't simple.
- wenc 8y agoThis is true of many kinds of people (e.g. New Yorkers, Parisiens, text editor/programming language aficionados, etc.) They complain about whatever it is they hold dear, but take umbrage when outsiders do so. I hate to use a NNT-popularized phrase, but it's partly because outsiders don't have "skin in the game", and their complaints don't come from a place of shared adversity and knowledge, but from a place of unearned superiority and ignorance. In most areas in life, you have to earn the right to complain.