Atrocious Ads

I am not a fan of TV for one main reason, the number of ads that they shove down your throat. I have noticed that on average, adverts are given two 15 minutes segments or sometimes three 10 minutes segments every hour. So, if you are watching a program that supposedly runs for an hour, half of it will be dedicated to ads at an interval of about 10 minutes. The minutes devoted to commercials is bound to increase as time progresses, which means your television will become less entertaining and educative. But that is not the worst part. As people become more benumbed by incessant ads, the pressure on advertisers decreases. The quality of ads on Kenyan television is evidence of this.

I am rarely in front of one of these boxes, but the ads I have seen in those rare moments have appalled me by their lack of creativity and sense. Two of the dumbest ones come to mind, but I’m only going to give their gist (I don’t want to be sued, you know). One of them is a skin care product. Its plot goes something like this; a student is taken back to school by her mother, the Principal is furious because she is accompanied by someone who appears to be her sister because of her young soft skin. He later learns that she is indeed her mother, and since her skin is so soft, her daughter is hurriedly told to go back to class, and leave the two adults to take care of business. The Principal attempts what can only be defined as sexual harassment by a sane person. The daughter eavesdrops on what the two adults are doing and goes to class giggling. She too will probably start using the same skin care product that her mother uses because, you know, it will “open doors” for her. This ad is misogynistic, plain and simple.

The second dumb ad belongs to one of these many betting sites. We have a group of friends discussing the odds of the teams they are going to bet on, past match outcomes, etc. A supposedly experienced lady (Her being female is not by accident. Apparently women are more trustworthy than men, and trustworthiness is one of the many criteria used to select faces you see on ads) overhears this discussion and kindly invites these “amateurs” over with this line “Come I educate you.” She then makes the following statement “You don’t have to know all these things.” I mean, WHAT THE FUCK? Didn’t the writers notice the contradiction while working on the script? How can you educate by being an advocate of ignorance? This commercial is one of the dumbest on air.

The above examples are evidence that the marketing graduates who create these ads do not think through and review what they create. Worse still, people buy whatever these ads are selling. The complacency of consumers has taken the pressure off advertisers who are no longer obliged to make convincing arguments why their products are superior to all others in the market. The problem with these ads is that they are examples of the mediocre use of anecdotes. Advertisers use stories to trick us into buying stuff. We are more likely to relate to the story of the high-school girl or the betting amateurs than to statistics showing us who uses this particular product or how often people win bets by letting the "system" do it for them. Advertisements are not going anywhere, but Kenyan ad creators should pull up their socks and think through whatever commercials they create.

2017 Campaigns Recap: A Fallacious Fanfare

Dear Kenyans,

Greetings! The 2017 campaign season has concluded, and aren’t we glad. I am. Glad that from today the fallacious rhetoric that we have had to endure this year will at least be less prominent. Here’s three of the most abused fallacies thrown around from the camps of the statistically leading candidates, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga;

1.      Ad hominems: There has been many of these this year, but the most prominent use of this fallacy has been from Jubilee Party. Throughout the campaigns, JP has consistently been attacking Rao, but not on logically sound grounds. They labeled him the “mjamaa wa vitendawili,” and then proceeded to claim that this is a flaw, and reason enough not to vote for NASA. Also, JP has argued that Rao has been in government before, forgetting that the two leaders of JP have also been in government for not less than ten years before JP was formed. One was a deputy to Rao when he was Prime Minister, and the other was once a Minister for Agriculture under the endorsement of ‘baba’. Despite this, and the fact that JP has governed this country for the last four years, Kenya is still fucked up.

2.      Hasty generalizations: NASA has done a better job than JP in incorporating this fallacy in their rhetoric. Almost every action, whether necessary or precautionary, State organs have undertaken in preparation for the elections has elicited cries of “foul play” from NASA, who see these actions as moves by JP to compromise the elections. To them, everyone who works for GoK, from the prestigious CSs to the unknown janitors, is somehow pushing, directly or indirectly, the JP agenda. Only civil servants and state officials can better explain the frustration of having their apolitical duties interpreted as political maneuvers.

3.      Slippery Slopes: When tongues are wagging the way they have been, spewing saliva the way they do, expect the ground to be pretty wet. NASA  and JP have both played an equal part in throwing around this fallacy. However, distinguishing this fallacy from the aforementioned one in [2] above is hard, especially when dealing with NASA rhetoric. This camp, under the unenviable leadership of Rao, has been attacking State organs and accusing them of pushing the Jubilee agenda. Consequently, they perceive every small action by said agencies as somehow leading to rigging, justifying such conclusions with ambiguous and positively biased evidence. JP has also incessantly used this fallacy against NASA. In instances when NASA has raised legitimate concerns about the electoral process, JP has been quick to accuse the former of trying to jeopardize the elections. According to JP’s logic, all actions by NASA will somehow lead to a “mkate nusu” government. Just when Kenya and Kenyans became boflo, I don’t know.

The above three fallacies have been thrown down to the masses from podiums across the country, amid the cheers of supporters. There have been many of these fallacies, but the above have topped the list due to their frequent usage. By pointing them out, I hope I have helped you see the two leading “horses” in a better light. I hope you’ll make an informed decision on August 8^th.

Sincerely Yours,

Local Observer

PS: In this year’s election, we are not faced with an avoidance-avoidance conflict. Despite what you hear and see in the media, we are not confronted with the dilemma of choosing the lesser of two evils. This year, we have the chance to change this country's politics altogether. I hope you jump at it.

Atheism: Why and How

The internet has made the debate between believers and atheists louder than ever. Millions of memes, podcasts, videos, tweets and Facebook posts are uploaded daily, each contributing to this debate. In my six years as a follower and contributor to this discussion, I have come to notice that it has been mainly preoccupied with the question “Why?” Believers meet atheists and ask “Why don’t you believe in God?” while atheist almost always asks “Why do you believe in God?”  The consequence of this has been the constant repetition of the same arguments and counterarguments, often leaving the debaters bitter and more mystified by the philosophy and psychology of the other side. I’m here to propose that in addition to the why question, we should base the religious debate on another principle question that asks How? But first, we must understand why the why question is at the core of the religious debate.

We are all born atheists. Some people grow up that way; others get indoctrinated into one religion or other. However, some folks in the latter group manage to free themselves from their respective religious beliefs. Being one of this fortunate group, I can attest to the relief of realizing that religion is nothing but lies and that all your past fears had been fictional. This relief is also accompanied by the horrific fact that you once believed in such nonsense. A critical analysis of the impacts of religion on society reveals its negativity, and the atheist is left wondering why anyone in their right minds could support blatant falsehoods.

Marx was accurate in describing religion as an opiate. A more updated description would be to call religion a narcotic. It is harmful to the brain, and though it may seem a sedative, pain only makes one vulnerable and more gullible. You know how you got drunk or high for the first time and you thought “Man! I’d like to feel like this all day, every day”? It’s the same with religion. Once imbibed, one is left living the same painful reality, but in a sense of stupor. Like addicts, the religious troop to church every Sunday for their weekly fix. The feeling of euphoria that accompanies drugs also accompanies religious fervor, and it feels good. Therefore, when a believer meets an atheist, the first question in their mind is “An atheist? Why should anyone give up something this awesome?”

And so the stage is set.

However, this is not the only way to have this debate. I believe the how question should be asked more often in these discussions, and believers have more to gain by this shift of attention. This is because, while religious experiences may have a nuance of individuality, they are all the similar, especially the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). As such, hearing how one person became a Christian or Muslim, means that you have essentially heard the testimony of all individuals who profess that particular faith. On the other hand, atheism requires free-thought, and each atheist reached the conclusion that there is no God by following a unique intellectual path. If similarities exist between two atheists, they are often because of having to break away from similar fetters. As such, it would be quite beneficial if a believer asked an atheist “How?” in addition to“Why?”

Here’s how I became an atheist. My transformation began in 2004 during my final two years of primary school when I transferred to a school that had a significant Muslim population, most of them refugees from Somalia. It was then that I came into contact with kids who weren’t Christians. Although it did not mean much back then, having Muslim friends significantly expanded my worldview. It is because of this exposure that I found schisms within Christianity so petty when I finally began to analyze them critically. I continued with my Christian life, but as I proceeded to high school my mind was baffled by the multiplicity of religions. If truth is singular, as Sonmi 541 aptly put it, my religious inclined mind was keen to find the one true religion. After finding no singularity in any of the religions I researched, I proclaimed all faiths legitimate. If my pubescent intellect could not locate the singularity of truth, it would create one by finding it in everything. In retrospect, granting universal religious legitimacy was ridiculous. But I didn’t know better. I still thought religious belief, of any kind, was necessary for any worldview to make sense, and it was “so comfortable to be a minor."1 When I was 17, I began seeing the incompatibility of religious belief with reality, and the information I gathered in the four years of high school helped me break free of religious strings. I was no longer afraid of confronting the truth, which by the way, had the pleasant and unpleasant in equal measure.

That’s a sketch of my path to atheism. I hope more atheists will take their time to share how they became atheists because this will also make the reasons why they did clearer.

P.S. Although my atheism is the product of freethought, I was not entirely alone. My line of thinking on religion was significantly shaped (Chronologically) by Valerie Cuthbert whose historical novel The Great Siege of Fort Jesus introduced me to the theme of conflict between cultures. A theme I explored further through Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The River Between. The third was Vita Brevis: A Letter to St Augustine by Jostein Gaarder, a novel that watered the seeds of humanism within me. The fourth and most significant influence was Rene Descartes who urged me to cast aside all my opinions and beliefs, and only re-accept them after they pass rational analysis in Discourse on the Method. Last but not least was Immanuel Kant, whose article What is Enlightenment?  broke my last religious link and gave me the courage to pursue my thoughts to their logical conclusion.