Second of X Part blog on decision making, and how to deal with Boko Haram and other self-righteous bullies. Can understanding faith and belief help us understand the fanatic's game? This essay was written over 2-3 hours in the middle of the night, and contains some big ideas that are going to have to be tamed and homogenized for public consumption.
Sorting Gods from Bullies
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Jesus spoke in cool parables and analogies, and got into these Platonic debates (
Pharisees trying to "test him"). He'd ask questions with "
Does not...?" as the prefix. It was nurture-logic. Jesus used integrity, virtue, and nurture to elicit mercy towards people at the bottom of the pecking order.
The philosophy of mercy and charity went viral. A mere thousand years or so later, that power was harnessed to build cathedrals, burn witches, and wage wars. Today, Christianity has been made safe for the pecking order of the wealthy.
And we all know that that's what Boko Haram is about, it's about an under-performing group in a rapidly-developing nation. It's about pecking order, and keeping women at the bottom. It has about as much to do with Islam's teachings as the Ku Klux Klan, for all its crosses and robes, has to do with Christianity. There's a perceived threat that a subjugated minority - women in the Sahel or African Americans in reform period Georgia - is left to ripen into mob justice.
Any pure religion can be harnessed to achieve
bullboys ends. Environmentalism, as it becomes a Taoist or Shinto expression of western ethics, must not consider itself immune. Rural areas are not immune from heroin, small governments are not immune from embezzlement, and recycling non-profits are not immune from profit motives.
Televisions and computers are giving a voice to people - such as women in Nigeria - who were never allowed to even enter the mosques of power (any more than they can enter Catholic priesthood). A group in power hundreds of years ago set up rules that limited access to expression of sermons and fatwahs, and affordable electronics are undermining the monarchies of communication.
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| Your continent here x |
That's right. Boko haram is a reaction to digital communication, grown from networks of surplus/replaced analog cell phone towers (replaced a decade ago on the US and Europe) and the used cell phones that communicate through them. As Frederic Somda told the Fair Trade Recycling summit a year ago, in Burkina Faso, internet and cell phones are far more important than running water and paved streets.
It's a colorful game.
Definitions aside, the "E-Waste" scare was probably the biggest environmental hoax of the past decade. Protectionists, alarmists, and gray market regulators bandied the term loosely. Two Chinese officials told me that any property once owned by anyone is considered "discarded" if it changes possession... the entire used car economy is "waste" business by that definition. I asked a Hong Kong regulator at an Interpol conference - what if I used a laptop for a week and then sold it to my friend? "Definitely e-waste" was his response. 
Generally the fallacy is applied when minimum wage or overtime policy is discussed. Limit overtime, or cut the work week to 35 hours, and more work will spill over into the unemployment line. Economists groan, as these policies limit the 20 percent who add 80 percent of value. Try applying that to baseball - limit the number of innings the best pitchers are allowed to pitch, give them vacations in the middle of the season, and pitchers cut from the team are brought back onto the field, increasing employment...? Pele, Zidane, Messi, Maradona, Beckham... please sit on the bench for awhile so that an American soccer player can earn some field time.