24-Feb-11 News -- Nigeria clashes pit Christians vs Muslims

[John]

24-Feb-11 News -- Clashes in Jos, Nigeria, pit Christians against Muslims

Iran's Ahmadinejad tells Arab leaders to respect protesters

** 24-Feb-11 News -- Clashes in Jos, Nigeria, pit Christians against Muslims
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 24#e110224

Contents:
"Clashes in Jos, Nigeria, pit Christians against Muslims"
"Additional links"
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[Guest]

John,

I love your site and read it every day. Over the years I've come to realize you're dead on (here it comes) but.......

I believe you tend to look at a "generation" from the view of the west. Our generations are long (compared to many parts of the world) and therefore, changes tend to be slower.

For example, in today's weblog, you write:

Nigeria's last generational crisis war as the Nigerian civil war, or Biafran war, fought from 1967-69 between Muslims and Christians. The survivors of that extremely violent, bloody, genocidal war never want to see anything like it happen again. 40 years have now passed. The young post-war children are the Christian and Muslim gangs that are going out killing each other in gang fights. But as long as their parents are around, the gang fights will not take the next step into full scale civil war.

So you seem to think that a "generational crisis war" is pretty far off in Nigeria due to the fact that their last crisis war was ended 42 years ago and, as such, much of that generation is still alive an will prevent it.

Now, I know that average are just that... averages. But a quick lookup shows me that the average life-expectancy in Nigeria is just 46.9 years (46.4 years for males).

Therefore, I would think they're close to another "generational crisis".

If I'm misunderstanding something, please let me know!

[John]

> So you seem to think that a "generational crisis war" is pretty
> far off in Nigeria due to the fact that their last crisis war was
> ended 42 years ago and, as such, much of that generation is still
> alive an will prevent it.

> Now, I know that average are just that... averages. But a quick
> lookup shows me that the average life-expectancy in Nigeria is
> just 46.9 years (46.4 years for males).

> Therefore, I would think they're close to another "generational
> crisis".

The average life expectancy is actually irrelevant, since there are
always older people around. What's important is the length of a
maximum human lifetime, and that's been around 80 years for millennia.

The average life expectancy usually has to do with infant and child
mortality, which is irrelevant to the generational model.

Interestingly, it could plausibly be argued that a decreasing average
life time actually means that they generational cycle length should be
longer, not shorter. The argument would be as follows: If the average
lifetime becomes shorter, then it probably means an increase in infant
and child mortality, which means that older people have greater
influence for more of thair lives.

However, I don't really believe that the average lifetime has
any relevance at all, one way or the other.

John