‘A Writer Who Has Nothing to Say Has Nothing to Write’
The second thing I hope to see from writers of my generation is sustained critical thinking about the state of Nigeria and Africa. It is good to have some capacity for political contextualization. And we must be bold enough to decentre the American and Western perspective and get back to discussing the world from a strictly Nigerian, or broadly African, perspective. Capturing Nigeria from Nigerian eyes is the only way for our work to benefit Nigeria. It requires us to pause and think deeper about our place in the world; we cannot progress without that humble acknowledgement that we have been slower than we are able to. It is precisely what our forebears fought for, a mental space for Africans to think for themselves, and yet we are drifting back intellectually and emotionally to the West and laying waste to a Nigerian ideal. It is true that rampant corruption and insecurity and the breaking of dreams have forced young Nigerians to seek belonging elsewhere, but it is a problem when our new intellectuals speak and all that comes out are ideas that are not about how Africa can be better but about how the West envisions itself. There is a new ‘we’ and they have hitched their allegiance to that, while continuing to mine the old ‘we’ for literary and traumatic material for career-branding. Stop. This issue of point of view originated in culture and politics—fields that resisted it—but is now finding new growth in literature. It is a weird performance, done for watching Westerners at the expense of your own people. When done intentionally, that, too, is betrayal.
OBITUARY: Doyin Abiola, pioneer female editor who birthed Nigeria’s first Saturday newspaper
“I have never met any other human being as good, caring, and loving as him. If you ask me, if I have to do it all over again, I will go for him. He was a good human being.”
Deconstructing the Worldview of Peter Thiel
The outcome is not a coherent philosophy but a sophisticated rationalization, a veneer of intellectual depth masking a project driven by personal grievances and anxieties transformed into cosmic dramas, where his fears become universal truths and his preferences, moral imperatives. Thiel’s philosophy is not a product of intellectual rigor or profound insight but rather a symptom of an arrested development, a retreat into a fantasy world where he can play the role of a hero and where he is not forced to grapple with the messy realities of human experience. His worldview, like an elaborate make-believe game, is ultimately incoherent, and profoundly out of touch with the actualities of human existence. It is not a philosophy for adults, but rather like the musings of a resentful child who clearly struggles to grapple with the complexities of modernity, and who has therefore permanently retreated into a realm of fantasy.
Obama’s Journey from Arrogance to Incompetence
I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln.” (The use of the word “possible” is priceless.) Mr. Obama has compared himself to LeBron James; his aides compared him to Michael Jordan. He clearly conceived of himself as a world-historical figure
Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America
Yarvin has little to say on the question of human flourishing, or about humans in general, who appear in his work as sheep to be herded, idiots to be corrected, or marionettes controlled by leftist puppeteers.
Peter Thiel, Irresistible Pariah
He believes that the truth exists, that the truth is rare, and that the truth is almost always obscured by the majority and the minority alike. They are locked in their own battle for power; whichever narrative is more fashionable often passes for the truth in any given milieu.
Johnny Depp : “I was a crash test dummy for MeToo”
He is a man who cannot help but be excellent company, largely because he appears to treat his entire life with enormous incredulity.
This sentiment is borne out in Adichie’s novels, which have long taken aim at the frivolity of Western speech: its overconfidence, sanctimony, surfeit of politeness, and fuzzy ideas.
While the row revealed the author’s heterodox politics, it was also, in many ways, an age-old trap: Adichie was certainly not the first high-profile West African artist urged to weigh in on a context-specific hot-button issue in place of a qualified expert from the same region. Her pluralist perspective can also shroud the unique cultural context in which Adichie—an Igbo woman from an academic family in Nigeria—is situated and which has shaped her ideas.
Asake on Success, Spirituality, and Searching for Peace Amid the Chaos
“Even me, I did not know that I would be that guy. I was dreaming, the way Nigerians dream that they will be a superstar one day.”
The real Kemi: what everyone gets wrong about the Tory leader