When we had their level of understanding of science and health we did the exact same thing. These villages are like travelling back in time. We can rightly call it evil and we have to stop them and educated them. But you have to understand it in the context of their culture. I’m not making excuses but do you see a distinction between these people doing this and an educated middle class family in Chicago doing it?
Why reply to a comment you either didn’t read or understand. You’re speaking with emotion rather than your brain. In the politest way possible, these aren’t people from 2024. They’re from 1524. I never mentioned poverty. Their culture is in the equivalent of our dark age. We did the same thing. It’s disgusting and evil from our perspective. If a person in our culture did it we can call them evil. Because we are certain they’ve been educated to know this is cruelty. These people haven’t. Your sense of right and wrong is not innate. It comes from your culture. As does there’s. Google moral relativism rather than throwing tantrums that demonstrate your lack of ability to think.
None of the people replying to you have stepped out of their comfort zone and visited a real third world country. They literally cannot comprehend what you're saying.
Hell, I've never been anywhere with less infrastructure than certain parts of mexico or the balkans... which is no where near that bad, but I can still wrap my head around this because I've read a bit of history and realize how this type of superstition and disassociation/dehumanization is a very common phase of cultural development just about anywhere you throw a dart at the globe.
Edit: the user /u/AsideConsistent1056 is a coward that replied to me and immediately blocked me.
But I want to clarify:
I am not making a noble savage argument. The action is evil. My point is that writing off an entire group of people with a "fuck them" isn't as useful as a "fuck this" and donating a few bucks to organizations that are trying address this fucked up aspect of their culture.
https://landofhope.global/en/support/
It's paternalistic to relegate people to the role of noble savages. There are profound differences between historical isolation and today's hyper-connected world.
We can forgive a community in 1524 for indulging in ignorance due to isolation, but in 2024, where even remote villages have access to satellite TV and the internet is a tap away on ubiquitous smartphones, clinging to harmful superstitions like witchcraft becomes a conscious choice, not a historical inevitability.
It's intellectually dishonest to equate past unavoidable ignorance with today's willful blindness. When a wealth of global information is at one's fingertips, continuing to perceive one's cultural practices as superior despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is a failure to be introspective; it's an active decision to reject progress and enlightenment.
In this era few cultures are an island (North Korea or North sentinel Island style), they have both the resources and the moral duty to question, reform, and improve their traditions.
I mean, look at you! You've done zero research. You've had no exposure to these people and cultures and yet here you are showcasing your ignorance! There's a beautiful parallel here: with all the information at your fingertips, you're willingly ignorant of the reality of these people. It's honestly something to behold. Huge applause to you! #confidentlywrong
again, your ancestors very very likely did the exact same thing when they were in a similar cultural/educational state. Yes, it's evil. yes they need to be educated to stamp that culture out.
"fuck them" doesn't do that. It just makes clear your opinion on the matter as you walk away from the problem feeling superior, leaving that evil culture to perpetuate.
Except our ancestors and everyone else's didn't know better. We're living in the 21st century, we don't compare ourselves saying, well they did it back then it's ok now. And yes, if letting 3 year olds starve makes my culture superior than so be it. Otherwise why else would be calling their actions abhorrent if it wasn't inferior and monstrous.
This has less to do with the year and more about access to information and religion.
Your culture is still murdering homosexual and trans people on religious grounds...
Yes this is all evil, and what they are doing is evil, and no one is saying it's okay.
But you haven't the slightest clue who "them" is when saying "fuck them", and the masturbatory self congratulation does nothing but ensure you continue to ignore the problem so that it can persist.
My stance isn't "fuck them". it's "Fuck this." and then donating a couple bucks to the orphanage that's helping out here, https://landofhope.global/en/support/
or picking an educational organization in Akwa Ibom to donate to. (though many of these are also religion backed, so do your research before contributing, as swapping one set of superstitions for another often just leads to another brand of persecution and depravity.)
So for example when entire towns in the American South would lynch black people, all with huge smiles on their faces, you think that’s just because every single person there was born innately evil, and it’s just a coincidence that they also happened to live in a violently racist culture?
It is. It an actually used to be way more insular and wierd and meaner and angrier and more porn obsessed and whiny sophomoric atheisty. But it’s stupider and less serious and less organic a bit more homogenized as well, it’s watered down in a way. It’s a trade off kind feels like the best and worst aspects have both been lessened from where it was like a decade ago.
For all we know, 100 years in the future people will think we were barbaric and evil for eating meat from animals, keeping pets, or using products with plastic packaging made in sweatshops from less-developed countries. Moral standards evolve, and just as an animal doesn't know right from wrong, someone raised in a culture that teaches them that some babies are evil witches won't know any different.
Many countries in Africa have a major disparity between what life is like in rural areas and what life is like in the capital.
I am from Ireland. Only 50 years ago we still had villages in the countryside with no electricity. Change does not happen at the same rate everywhere or at the same time.
They still have contact with modern people and modern technology in those rural villages. These pictures were taken by people who flew over in a plane probably with a smartphone camera. It’s asinine to compare the conditions these people are living in to the 1500s.
What do you mean by "forgotten"? If you are meaning that this behavior should be discouraged, and they should instead be encouraged to educate and elevate out of superstition, then I agree with you.
This comment is genuinely one of the worst things I've read in a while. Ethnocentrism, dehumanization, and justification of genocide, all wrapped up in pseudo-humanitarian language. I really don't even know what else to say, I'm truly disgusted by what you've written here.
If me believing that not letting 3 year olds starve is racist, then so be it. People should have some base level of morals and those people clearly don't have it. You should be more disgusted with the people who be ok with murdering a 3 year old.
The fact that you projected the word "racist" from what I said just further exemplifies your lack of understanding on this topic, and is pretty telling in that you seem to expect that response.
Child abuse happens in every community. I have no doubt that there are far too many well-educated, middle-class Americans who abuse their kids. Wealth does not prevent you from being a waste of carbon.
I’m sure there are lots of people in that community that feel compassion for those children, but don’t do anything out of fear of social rebuke. Im also sure in the US, lots of people turn a blind eye to abuse every day. People will whisper about a woman being hit by her husband or a kid not being treated very well and they do nothing. The way this boy was treated was awful, but it isn’t all that different from forcing a child live in an abusive home.
Where do you see random homeless children wandering around in the US? I'm not saying it doesn't happen I'm just saying I've never seen homeless children wandering the streets. And I mean like 3 years old not 16 where you may not know. I can almost guarantee if there was a 3 year old wandering around the streets alone someone would intervene fairly quickly.
Where do you live that you see homeless children alone and being ignored?
If they’re with a parent then they have a caregiver. You have shelters and other infrastructure to ensure they survive. People will regularly give to the homeless. If the child was alone, nevermind alone and starving, the surrounding community would help that child and the authorities would be called. Trying to compare the two situations is ridiculous
Anybody can have access but you need to be educated to know what you're looking for and to sift misinformation out.
We can see when something is obviously a wack conspiracy theory but they can't. They'll believe anything they read and it'll just feed into their already difficult beliefs.
Yep. And so do the 100 million yanks about to vote for a child raping fascist who tried to destroy their democracy. Access to information is not the same as being informed.
No idea. I worked in South Africa with disabled kids who were locked in cages because people in the villages thought they were cursed. The way I saw it was religion was the problem. When you use belief and indoctrination to educate people you take away their ability to think. You force them to conform. But I’m a layperson with a heavy bias against organised religion so my opinion ain’t worth shit. The best thing to look at is the conditions that allowed the European enlightenment to gain traction.
Acknowledgement of systemic issues in a population cannot be considered racism or it risks getting into situations where it would be racist to criticize Israel for their actions in Palestine.
Saying "fuck them", which is directed at people and not a system, and refusing to even consider any "excuses"... is racism, not acknowledgement of a systemic issue.
This reminded me of the description I read of the novel Things Fall Apart, where Christianity gained ground with the locals (and local culture was eroded) because they taught that, among other things, twins weren't evil and didn't have to be abandoned in the wilderness. I guess it's no surprise when I just looked it up again that it was also Nigerian.
Fuck that. It doesn’t take any understanding of science to know you shouldn’t treat a child that way. If “we” did the same thing then we were also shitty humans.
375
u/RustyNewWrench 5d ago
I know people will make excuses for the locals, but fuck them. Anybody that can ignore a starving 3 old deserves everything bad in the world.