Nigeria - The Predatory Self Betrays the Ritual of Peace, Luring Victims into the Illusion of Dialogue

Event Baseline: In Zamfara state, Nigeria, armed bandits invited villagers to a meeting to discuss peace negotiations, then abducted between 39 and 50 people.

The bandits’ action demonstrates the complete failure of shared meaning. They exploited the ritual of negotiation—a sacred attempt to bridge division—to enact predation. This is the observer and the observed: the bandit sees the other only as prey, not recognizing the shared humanity.

The illusion of a separate self compels them to prioritize immediate power over the collective need for order. The thought of peace becomes a decoy, a piece of language weaponized to disable the target. There is no contradiction because the self is a fiction; it can believe in its own deception while acting.

This infection of thought will spread until the system collapses into total war of all against all. The failure is not tactical but cognitive. Unless the mechanical identification with the predator self is dissolved, every invitation to dialogue will be a trap.