sue wrote:
> This brings to mind "Oklahoma", but no one is singing. Gordon
> MacGrae and Shirley Jones will not ride into the sunset in the
> surrey with the fringe on top. The land I imagine the grazers
> being allotted roughly resembles my neighbor's lawn last summer
> after the sod web worm attack. Wonder if any tribe will think
> ahead to food shortages if this generational stupidity continues.
> John, how much if this is territorial/economic and how much
> religious enmity?
When economic problems get bad, people look for someone to blame. In
a generational Crisis era, this could grow into full-scale xenophobia
targeting another identity group, leading to a generational crisis
war.
Identity groups are defined by fault lines, separating groups by such
things as ethnic group, religion, skin color, geographical location,
language, even lifestyle.
The ethnic fault line is more powerful than the religion fault line
because you can theoretically change your religion, but you can't
change your ethnicity. However, often they coincide, because two
different ethnic groups usually have two different religions.
In the case of the identity groups in Nigeria, they actually coincide
in three ways -- ethnicity (Faluna vs Bachama), religion (Muslim vs
Christian), and lifestyle (herder vs farmer). In this case, it seems
that the lifestyle fault line is really driving things, even more than
religion or ethnicity.