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A New Way of Seeing

The global discord that has gained intensity post-September 11, 2001 is forcing many among our species to look at the state we are in, and ask ourselves, is this where we want to be? This discord, like the ones before it, has had many of us running for answers. With so much going on, it is easy to take sides; whether it is based on what is happening in the US, the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia or anywhere in which one finds conflict. We can also add the degradation of the environment to this; as to whether climate change is a hoax or not is still being debated in many quarters.

Our predicament has brought us to a place where we are wondering if we will even survive as a species. This discord is forcing us to react. Many of us are lashing out, this is nothing new, except that in the post-nuclear age, our actions can bring organized life on this planet to an end. Remaining lukewarm is not something I think is possible at this point in our history, that is unless one is perpetually inebriated.

While I will not lay the blame solely at the feet of those in power. I as someone who has seen and felt what the powerful does to those of us with little agency, believe they should take much of the blame. This is not to say that I will succumb to the natural inclination to side with the oppressed. In fact, at some point, it is important to look at the actions of those of us who assume that we are not steering the ship and ask ourselves, is this really true. Are we really not steering the ship? Obviously, I am speaking to an audience that has the time and resources to read this post. And while we may not be among that fraction of the 1 per cent, we must admit that someone must have some degree of privilege in order to be on this platform, or any platform like this.

But concerning side, there comes a time, however, when one has to step back and assess how the powerless are reacting to what the powerful are doing. This is from violent resistance to civil disobedience—in the way of sit ins, blocking roads, disrupting speeches, boycotts, among many other things. And while I believe there is a place for resistance in whatever form, there comes a point when, after stepping back, we reassess how we fight our battles. One can even go further and ask, is it even worth fighting? Don’t be mistaken, resistance is how women and non-propertied white males got the right to vote. Resistance was a part of the anti-slavery movement. And of course, we can talk about apartheid and the modern day civil rights movement in the USA of which Martin Luther King Jr. became the poster child.

There is a common thread among these movements. They challenged the system using different approaches, Many of these resistances caused those in power economic woes. When the finances were compromised, the powers that be got scared. This is from British women refusing to buy West Indian sugar to protest slavery, to slaves sabotaging the masters’ property or citizens in many countries boycotting South African goods and refusing to compete against them in sports. There is also King telling black people to boycott US corporations, and the salt protests led by Mahatma Gandhi. When it got to this stage, the powerful, stopped to listen. They were outraged, they hated what they heard. The backlash of course, was brutal. From Cointelpro, to the ostracism of King by the liberals when he criticized the Vietnam War, to the vilification of the hippies and those of the far left to the black liberation movement by the Nixon administration when he declared a war on drugs, to the destruction of Haiti, to the embargo against Cuba and the French assault on Algeria—history is replete with instances of movements being crushed by the establishment when they find their well-being compromised.

The response was usually very harsh, efficient and most of all calculated and effective. Virtually all movements were destroyed or emasculated when the weaknesses in their movements were found. But what exactly are these weaknesses? Actually, there is really only one, and that is our inability to wrest ourselves away from the institutions that act as the enforcement arm of the dominator culture.

It would be foolish to assume that institutions like the security force, the schools etc., and the other overt forms of control are the most effective tools of the ruling class. I believe that the most pernicious are the things we invite into our lives. The things we take for granted. The things we see as comforting. Many of these things have become so much a part of our lives that we no longer even question them. And if we do, it is in a tone which says that I have resigned myself to my fate.

What if for one moment we were to take a dispassionate approach and look at these things as people who have no dog in a dog race? A place where we cannot bet, or occupy a space where our bets will not be rewarded even if we win. I invite you to tread that path with me for a while so we may assess these things, just a few. I would say dispassionately, but I am not certain I can. Let us start with:

What Are We Eating?

Dick Gregory, the civil rights activist, and comedian related a story in an interview, where he said, once, during a speech, he instructed an audience to look around them. When they did, he said, half of you will be dead from heart attacks and high blood pressure. Dr. Sebi made similar points on numerous occasions, instead he goes further in pointing out the shortcomings in the black leadership, saying that not one leader within the community gave him an ear when he talked about the appalling eating practices among black people. They do not care he opined, and indirectly asked why this was the case?

To limit this to black people in America, or Americans would be ridiculous, for all races are afflicted by this, so much that obesity is not only a national crisis in the United States and many other countries. Is it as case that we are eating too much garbage? Are we intent on corrupting the vehicle we are using to traverse this landscape we call life? Deliberately? Have we stopped to think about this?

Imagine for one moment, the nastiest, dirtiest animal being prepared in a cauldron. Imagine the pink slime being served every day on the plates of many of our children. Imagine. This is what we feed our youth and we look surprised when they end up in a crematorium or a coffin. The argument can be made that, many live in food deserts, mainly in inner-cities and poor rural areas. Many will say they cannot afford good food; this is why they eat the stuff they eat. But is this always a valid excuse though? And here I realize that I am treading on dangerous turf. I do not claim to have anyone’s experience; hence I am not here criticizing. I am merely asking. I grew up around Rastafarians, they are, by no stretch of the imagination, wealthy, nor do they have half of what many people who call themselves poor have. They, however, refuse to consume the garbage many do. They do not see this as a form of resistance, but as a means to liberate oneself from the clutches of a blood sucking parasitic system that gives us poison to ingest.

Again, I hope that I do not come off as being too condemnatory. I am not, I would just like to convey that there is a different way of looking at the perceived shackles that bind us. Instead of seeing it as a means of oppression, let us look at how this can be addressed. Now, the afflicted know this better than I do, and of course would be able to address these issues better than anyone else. I therefore charge us to look at these things and think about whether we have to eat all that packaged and processed food. I don’t remember the nutritionist who said it, but it is one of the best advice I have ever gotten. He said, eat food, not too much, mainly plants. Bad food sells because people buy bad food. The Rastafarians survive by producing their own food. Now, one is not saying that we should be as extreme as Rastafarians, but cutting our participation, by keeping their food off our tables, I assure you, will be a greater act of subversion than sit ins or picketing.

To Serve or not to Serve

If the statistics are right, many of us would like to call ourselves god fearing. To subscribe to a religion, any religion, is to give oneself over to the least among us. It is a surrender. It is to reject the highest act a man can engage in—the act of thinking. To accept religion is to give over a prized cognitive function to superstition. If one were to sift through the historical records, it would be understandable why so many chose religion, for the most part, it was our way of seeking to understand a world that confounded us. It was all many had, and despite all its warts and shortcomings it served its purpose. One wonders, however, if it is not time to move beyond talking snakes. In my case, Christianity, made sense to my grandparents or even perhaps to my parents. In the 21st century there is absolutely no reason for us to be waiting on a guy to come from the sky to make our lives better. It is not going to happen. Now, one has to move beyond that, and I am not saying this in the transcendental sense, but in the sense that we see religious dogma for what it is; a place along the way, and at some point in our journey we will have to shake off the shackles of the institutions that we carried with us.

Television Programming

I am beginning to understand how pernicious a devise this thing called television is—this is for the sole reason that it has the ability to dictate and control one’s reality. From the BBC, to CNN to MSNBC to CBS, to Fox News; these are all giving us the version of reality they care to. Maybe I should add all forms of media to this, especially print, for they are just as complicit in putting forward a reality they want us to ascribe to and stifle those that run counter to their interest. For example it was they who vilified Gary Webb when he revealed how the CIA was aiding and abetting the contras in bringing crack into the black community. They all but refused to mention the book that came out this year by Pablo Escobar’s son, who, revealed that his father was on the CIA payroll. They also said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I digress. My apologies. I just want to show that this is where we are getting our information. Given their record, do we really think that these entities are into the business of informing us? Definitely not; control, that is what they are there for. I know it seems a bit extreme, but take it from someone who has never owned a TV before—you don’t need it. I will be presumptuous here and tell you to throw it out. It is poison. I found that I have become more informed when I started reading people like, Marcus Garvey, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Terence Mckenna, Alan Watts, Carl Jung, just to name a few. They are the complete antithesis of the enforced idiocy of television and media programming.

A New Way of Seeing

There are a few more things I could add to this list, but for brevity sake I must say that the society has gone sick. Our institutions have gone dead and sterile. The ideologies which govern us have served to poison the body politic. And the body politic like any organism, when it finds itself feeling ill, automatically produces antibodies. So, when I see the upheaval all over the world, I am as happy as I am scared an outraged. It simply tells me that our species is trying to cure itself of the disease of this linear value system—a value system that convinces us that it is fashionable to be the consumers of low-grade products and superficial ideals. Many, I hope will walk away from this narrow way of seeing and embrace a new way of seeing. Already, many have. Some may disagree with this last utterance, but we are a long way from when commoners were not allowed to stare at the emperor. Even further away are we from when peasants were executed for walking on the king’s shadow. The days of people covering their mouths when talking to someone of a higher caste has gone. In many places at least. This is progress.

It is also progress when I see that, in many countries, the fastest growing sect is not a sect, but people who do not believe in a god. I am truly appreciative. This is a rejection of linear values.

When I see the proliferation of crypto currencies causing the powers that be to take stock I applaud. They are scared. Good. We do not know what is in store for the crypto world, but, if it does what many of us involved with it think it will do, then this global financial/monetary reset will go a long way in liberating us from the rapacious bankers and financiers on Wall Street, at the IMF, at the World Bank, the Exchequer and the other fiat currency printing institutions that are beholden to no one but a coterie of vampires for whom too much is never enough. This is decentralization as we have never seen it before. Coming to think of it, have we ever lived in a decentralized world? I think not. I think I see it on the horizon though.

When I see so many gains being made by those of us advocating cannabis use. I applaud that finally, my right to decide what goes inside of me is being respected. Maybe they will lift this ridiculous ban on hemp so we can use its byproducts instead of cutting down every tree in the Amazon.

I watched with a great degree of interest the breakthroughs using MDMA to treat depression. LSD was found to cure alcoholism, and Ibogaine has been found to be a great antidote to heroin addiction. Though, much of this information is being passed along in whispers, the fact is that the message is being conveyed. The message which states that the true resistance is just walking away from all of this; from politics to religion to this economic system, all these things work towards stymieing our progress. Where there is no progress an organism dies. And though many of us may not be able to convey and articulate what exactly is wrong, we are, when the time is right, inclined to revert to what is felt by the body. Our birth, our death, and what is between is what really matters. Our culture has sought to kill that through the institutions that are geared toward controlling our every being. Many have fought and died to bring us to where we are at present. They fought in the best way they could. Now, we have the tools at our disposal to emancipate ourselves from a way of being that has run rough shod over us for centuries. Now the onus is on us to take those tools and use them to create the world that is beneficial to us all, and it starts with leaving behind a malignant culture shaped by a malignant mode of thought that is intent on keeping us in chains.