4 ms·
>Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness Thes
by camdat 3y ago
>Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness
These are all acute problems in Western nations. The fundamental impediment which Africa faces are it's rich natural resources and the nations which exploit them.
Any "anti-corruption" cultural efforts will be snuffed out long before it becomes a threat to this lucrative expropriation
There is no cultural solution to the boot of political and economic struggle.
- boeingUH60 3y agoI’m not buying this but sure, we Africans never take responsibility. We’ll first blame the other tribe, then the country next to us, then long-gone colonial powers, and finally the devil when we run out of excuses. As if it’s not our leaders selling out the country to foreign interests for pocket change. Maybe they could pick up a book from Lee Kuan Yew and learn how he rejected a bribe from the CIA.
- camdat 3y agoAnd these leaders are all fairly and democratically elected? Without the influence of the money of former colonial states (or their puppets in the form of expropriative enterprises)? Consider the trillions of dollars made by other countries from Africa's people and resources. Why _wouldnt_ they spend a fraction of that killing any chance that a cultural movement picks up. This isn't fantasy, Nestle, Chiquita, etc have a long history of funding anti-revolutionary agencies for exactly this reason. One man rejecting one bribe will do nothing, a single cup cannot drain an ocean.
- boeingUH60 3y agoI wonder why those rich Middle Eastern petro states aren’t being controlled and kept poor by the Western powers if that’s the case. We can all go back to the past and find excuses of how someone did bad and blame them for the present even if they’re long gone…we Africans are very good at that. What we’re not good at is ever taking responsibility for f**ing once instead of blaming invisible conspiracists hiding in thin air.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoYou’re getting these responses because Americans have been trained Pavlovian style to never ever claim that some cultures are better than others. This is despite most, including those who think they don’t, implicitly believing this
- camdat 3y agoI'm curious which cultures you believe are worst than others? Which one is the worst?
- churchill 3y agoRadical Islam for one is rabidly anti-intellectual. The only conservative Muslim countries that are anything to write home about are oil-rich and have extremely small populations. As a result, it's easy for the government to subsidize their citizens heavily and build lots of shiny skyscrapers to attract western tourists without developing human capital significantly. Call me Islamophobic but I say this as a Nigerian, living in a country with the largest Muslim population in Africa (second-largest in the world after Indonesia) where people still get lynched and burned for "blasphemy."
- Karrot_Kream 3y agoRadical religious groups are always rabidly anti-intellectual. The better question to ask is why there are so many more radical Muslims than radical Christians. That's where I think a wider view is important.
- mrkstu 3y agoThe main difference is that you can fully implement a 'Christian' values state and it isn't going against the grain to base it on mercy, equality, and not 'othering' those who don't agree. In other words a fully Christian society can fully implement the teachings found in the New Testament and not be considered 'radical' in any sense by a non-Christian living in that society. While it may be 'missionary' oriented it also wouldn't require exporting its philosophy. It also is comfortable separating civil and religious law - 'render unto Ceasar.' Islam, fully implementing the Koran, is basically the opposite. It requires fidelity at the threat of death and the forced conversion of outsiders. It requires civil and religious law to be the same. Iran for instance instantiates the tenets of Islam in fact. The Christian theocracies are basically historical dead letters at this point- and were mostly overlays on existing government structures: The Roman Empire for instance continued to be Rome after the Emperors became Christian- it never really, despite the Pope's best efforts, become more than a light overlay on existing government structures, with King's utilizing theories of 'Divine Right of Kings' as a useful way to perpetuate their existing hierarchies. Even countries like Armenia that claimed explicitly to be Christian states aren't actually ruled by the priesthood- they have established national religions in many historical instances, not a truly religiously run state like Iran where the mullah's are the ultimate authority. Rome/Papal States, Peter the great, Geneva/Calvin, some slice of the Byzantine empire, along with pre-United States Utah (and in a smaller scale the city of Nauvoo,) where you have had the clerical and government structures completely united in a Christian state that I can think of off hand. England in a much looser sense qualifies. And in these cases you generally again have, relative to Islam, a non-radical, especially as it relates to outsiders, experience.
- argentinian 3y agoThe same description can be applied to many South American countries.