Food For Thought: Divine Truth Lies in Pure Darkness (Melanin)

Excerpt from “The Diamond Approach” concerning Divine Darkness:

(Words and statements underlined or in bold are at my discretion.)

Becoming Increasingly Intimate with the Divine Light, the Absolute Transcendent Truth

Clearly, the nature of this process and its accompanying experience can lead us to the conclusion that the absolutely transcendent truth is unknowable. When absolute transcendence is taken to mean true nature totally apart from any manifest form, this is true. However, we see this as one possible understanding of this process. While it is true that our experience is such that we feel we know less and less as we are enveloped in the divine darkness, we are actually becoming increasingly intimate with the divine light, the absolute transcendent truth. We perceive and discriminate less, but this decrease of discrimination is not an increasing ignorance. It is the increase of a different kind of knowledge, a knowledge that is in its nature beyond discrimination, beyond the recognition of qualities and attributes. It is the simplicity of the source, which is so single that its knowing is an unknowing. As we become more enveloped in the divine darkness we are actually enveloped in divine light, for the divine light is dark. It is black light, the source of all light, not colorless but pre-color. We might think that clear light is the ultimate light, as is asserted by some Buddhist schools. However, clarity is an attribute, albeit a fundamental one. It is the absence of color, but not the ontological antecedent of color. Black light is the luminous divine darkness, the source of all light, and the origin of awareness.

The Inner Journey Home, pg. 255

 

Moving Away from Manifestation Toward Transcendent Truth We Lose Consciousness of Anything

This experience of no perception, internal or external, is reported by advanced practitioners of most wisdom traditions. This indicates that we cannot know true nature in its absoluteness, because as we move away from manifestation and toward the transcendent truth we lose consciousness of anything. Such a conclusion is supported by the fact that the movement deeper into pure true nature, as awareness relieves itself of the perception of manifestation, is an experience of being increasingly enveloped by darkness, a divine darkness that feels like grace. The sense of the experience is that the light of true nature darkens the consciousness of the soul, liberating her from the perception of phenomena, as it draws her nearer. The soul feels increasingly close to the source as she feels more enveloped by darkness. At the point of complete nearness, that of unity, the darkness is complete, and there is no perception or awareness of anything, including darkness.

The Inner Journey Home, pg. 255

 

a repost: The Only Worthwhile Investment We Ever Make

Article originally posted on Waking Times (click link for original)

 

By: RJ Spina

We are all perpetually bombarded with an endless array of investment opportunities, be it an investment of our attention, energy, money, skill, sweat, emotions, knowledge, etc. But what if there was only ONE investment that perpetually yields an everlasting, incalculable, limitless dividend? 

Would that not obviously and always be the best investment, regardless of circumstances or context? But what if we simply can’t distinguish this ultimate investment opportunity from all the rest? It would be impossible to know if we have chosen this perfect investment unless every possible observed investment opportunity came with OUR direct knowingness that the speculative, transient, alluring concept of potential profits and mitigated losses were temporary and provided zero enduring benefits whatsoever.

That kind of awareness would be priceless beyond all measure. 

What if the Mind/Ego/Identity that makes, weighs and ultimately decides which investment to make was a SHADOW, a transitory illusion in and of itself? Would this knowingness not shed total illumination on the entirety of the investment playing field? 

Perhaps this transitory ‘I’, our physical existence and our outer personality, ONLY cares about preserving ITSELF because it is INCAPABLE of recognizing nor understanding what is ETERNAL? Maybe the ego/mind/identity, which receives, processes and interprets energy from the limited sensory realm only, simply cannot decipher nor recognize what ‘actually is?”

Is it possible that our ego/mind/identity construct, a flight or fight based program utilizing the five physical senses interpreted by the finite Human Mind, which are all transitory themselves, prevents us from ever touching our eternal WISDOM, our Sentience, heretofore making it impossible to ever recognize and make the best and ONLY eternal investment? 

Is this why we keep repeating physical incarnations with individual and societal empires rising and falling again and again with no real spiritual evolution unfolding? Is it the perpetual and feckless chasing of sensory pleasures, the fear based avoidance of pain and the illusion of security actually yielding nothing but repetition creating the experience of time?

Could all this be because we keep our Consciousness and therefore our opportunities and decisions confined to those that ONLY perpetuate the existence of our transitory ego/mind/identity and its sensory realm domain? 

If so, where are we to go from here? How are we to locate and subsequently spend our resources on THE single investment opportunity that always yields the greatest and ONLY true ROI? And does this supreme investment opportunity even exist? 

It does…

What is it the only thing that endures? Certainly not your mind or body. Certainly not your physical possessions. Certainly not your beliefs, concepts or your expectations. What is it that OBSERVES all of that phenomena, lifetime after lifetime? 

The Immortal You. Your Consciousness.

Maybe everyone should invest in the ONLY thing that endures, this Immortal YOU. The Awareness itself. Your Sentience. Your timeless, immortal Consciousness. 

When the body and mind dies, the REAL YOU does not and cannot ever die. The REAL YOU, the WITNESS to every thought, feeling, action and experience your body and mind ever has simply endures.

But am I not my thoughts, feelings and experiences? No. How can one be the witness and the victim/perpetrator of the thought at the same time? This WITNESS (Soul) is on a perpetual expansion investment strategy with no endpoint, ever, and your SOUL is the ONLY thing that endures so why not go all in on the only thing that is REAL? Why not cut out the middleman, your transient, fake identity and all its desires, fears, expectations and beliefs, and invest directly in the REAL YOU?

Afraid of what you will lose? The prison of your ego/mind and your suffering is what will be lost forever. This ‘You’ who has the fear of loss doesn’t really exist and IT (your ego/mind) knows its time is running out. This illusionary, transitory identity who owns nothing, ever, has nothing except DOMINION over your immortal consciousness. This entity/identity, the ego/mind, must have your attention to even exist.

Have you deluded yourself into ‘thinking’ the outside world will change by analyzing it?

There’s an investment strategy that will yield only more analysis. And then more. And more. Shed yourself of that investment strategy now. Get out of it once and for all. Stop leaking all of your power, wisdom and courage on an illusion. 

If you cannot figure out how to invest in the REAL YOU, your experience in this life will be a perpetual struggle. If your commitment to your TRUE SELF is not followed up with the expenditure of tangible and intangible resources you have not made a commitment at all. One does not test drive spiritual evolution. It isn’t something to dabble in like the stock market, a new concept or so-called knowledge.

It requires skin in the game, so to speak, and you are already incarnate so your SOUL has everything to gain (Wisdom, Love and Power) and absolutely nothing to lose except its own self-imposed ignorance, greed and attachments. Everything we identify with prevents us from experiencing true freedom and achieving cosmic consciousness. All the concepts, beliefs and expectations you have invested in yield only more concepts, beliefs and expectations. More prisons for the Mind. More mental constructs. More Suffering. More problems. Grander Delusions. 

Invest in the ONE true investment opportunity directly, your Consciousness. The greatest technology that ever was, is, or will be is our developing SENTIENCE and it’s our ego/mind (desires and fears) and its preoccupation with its own survival that prevents us from this direct investment. Let’s divest ourselves of our transitory portfolio of short term investments; our expectations, our beliefs, our concepts, so-called knowledge and our identity. These investments only serve the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ that does not endure. Do not invest in striving towards acquiring more information or learning how to become capable of some skill but rather invest in the expanding of your awareness which deepens our eternal wisdom and enhances our power to act with compassion and courage.

When we pursue the desires, and avoid the fears of the outer personality, we are utilizing what appears to be our free will in a most inefficient manner. We are living perpetually in the past. Your identity is transient and so is its sensory realm experience and pursuits. These desires and fears are not worthwhile investments. The identity/mind/ego/thought is simply a conglomerate of past impressions from the sensory realm. Mimicry of the past. Knowledge itself is really justified belief; a recollection of the past, an imitation which simply leads to vanity and identity reinforcement. Bad investments across the board. Sell! 

Anything acquired via the sensory realm, the realm of illusion, is not a real investment. Instead, invest in the ONLY thing that ENDURES. In the only thing that IS. The only thing that REMAINS. The only thing that is REAL. The IMMORTAL YOU. Your CONSCIOUSNESS. All the books, articles, blogs and videos in the totality of all possible existence can never illicit the direct experience and knowingness of what a LIFE actually is. The very majesty, awe, vitality and divine intelligence that courses through us all in perpetuity. When does the investment of energy, in all its tangible and intangible forms, towards any object (goods, thoughts, concepts, beliefs) within the sensory realm do anything other than temporarily satiate a desire or momentarily quell a fear produced and experienced by our Mind/Ego/Identity? Is this not an investment strategy that should be avoided at all costs since it yields nothing except for that which does not endure? It’s not bad investment strategy, it’s more akin to insanity. 

If one has no direct experience of the TRUE SELF, then one can never choose the right investment. Is this why ‘civilized’ society is perpetually inundated with stimulus? Phenomena, by definition, is that which comes and goes and therefore an illusion. All poor investments then. Entertainment, technology, philosophy, information, beliefs, concepts, physical goods, experiences, ideologies, so called ‘knowledge’, spirituality, all sensory realm phenomena… What of this endures? It’s all very Human.

Does all of this not serve to keep us from our TRUE SELF and cosmic consciousness?

Then HOW do we invest in the one thing that endures, that is real, that perpetually yields the flowering of love, wisdom and power? 

Silence THAT which was born/produces/feeds on a need for stimulus in order to exist. Your MIND. Start there. We cannot deeply invest until we do so first. Fall in love with your own inner silence. It’s time to put the toys away. They may very well be taken from us anyway. Now we can begin investing in the limitless inner expansion of the only thing that endures…The REAL YOU. Awareness. Your SENTIENCE. Cosmic Consciousness. 

Meet me within that place. I remain in all eternity for you there…

a repost: ‘Drowning the Land of the Ancestors’: In Sudan, an Ancient People are Fighting to Stop Their Culture and Legacy from Being Washed Away

Article posted on Atlanta Blackstar (click link for original)

 

Nubian Sites

By D. Amari Jackson

Several hours north of Khartoum by car — a mere 100 miles south of the Egyptian border — lies the sand-swept Sudanese town of Amara. Although its western half, Amara West, now appears as a desolate stretch of desert with little activity, the site was once the Nile-bound island home to the ancient Nubian kingdom of Kush and served as the administrative capital of Upper Nubia. And beneath the seemingly endless sands that now dominate the area lies the extraordinary remnants of this ancient people, their communities, their cultural and daily practices.

Over the years, through sporadic excavations, archaeologists in northern Sudan have unearthed thousands of artifacts, including pyramids, decorated tombs, circular buildings with large rooms and paved floors, and villas with garden plots, some well over 3,000 years old. Given recent attention to the area by the British Museum and their use of advanced magnet technology to measure telltale energy patterns in underground features, additional burial mounds, stone temples, communal structures and the bases of pyramids have all been detected beneath the sand.

“The magnetometry survey of 2008 revealed the hitherto unknown western suburb, with a series of large villas,” reported the British Museum as part of their Amara West research project. “One of these was excavated in 2009, and featured rooms for large-scale grain-processing and bread cooking, as well as private areas with brick-paved floors and whitewashed walls.”

However, the remainder of these submerged historic treasures might never reclaim the light of day. The Sudanese government has planned the construction of three hydroelectric dams in the region at Kajbar, Shereik and Dal to generate electricity from the Nile Valley, the sole stretch of fertile land in northern Sudan. Although two-thirds of the population lacks electricity, the massive reservoirs created by the projects will carry both dire and lasting consequences for the region. The Kajbar project alone would create a reservoir of 110 square kilometers while submerging some 90 villages, displacing more than 10,000 residents, and washing away more than 500 archeological sites, including thousands of rock etchings dating from the Neolithic to the medieval era.

Nubian residents have long protested these plans as the Sudanese government began wooing Chinese firms to their construction proposal well over a decade ago. In 2007, government security forces killed four and injured dozens of residents peacefully protesting the proposed Kajbar Dam, a brazen act the United Nations criticized as “excessive force” with “arbitrary arrests and prosecutions to stifle community protest against the Kajbar dam.” In 2010, the government awarded a $705 million, five-year contract to build the Kajbar Dam to Sinohydro, a Chinese company and the world’s largest hydropower contractor. However, the project lost steam due to a combination of popular resistance, politics and money until late 2015, when Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir convinced Saudi Arabia to finance the construction of all three dams.

Many residents believe, that along with gaining access to additional mineral resources like gold and iron ore, the dam projects are al-Bashir’s way of destroying Nubian heritage, culture and opposition through displacement and “Arabization,” the intentional spreading of Arab culture, language, identity and Islam to non-Arab populations. The controversial leader was charged by the International Criminal Court in 2010 with three counts of genocide in Darfur, where he was accused of trying to eradicate non-Arab ethnic groups in the region, and where hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced. That same year, just weeks before the referendum where southerners chose secession from the country, al-Bashir delivered a speech in the southeastern village of Al Qadarif where he clarified, “If south Sudan secedes, we will change the constitution. Sharia and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language.”

For their part, the Nubians, a people with ancient roots in both current-day Egypt and Sudan, are not planning to relinquish their land or culture without a serious fight, especially given how much they’ve already suffered from such construction projects. The Merowe Dam project in Sudan was completed in 2009, increasing the nation’s electricity but displacing and impoverishing more than 50,000 indigenous people from the Nile Valley. Many of those displaced never received the electricity or the compensation they were promised by their government. And it wasn’t the first time, as large Nubian territories in Egypt have already been lost to similar projects.

“We will never allow any force on the earth to blur our identity and destroy our heritage and nation,” proclaimed the Association of Nubians, a group opposed to the project, in a November 2015 statement. “Nubians will never play the role of victims, and will never sacrifice for the second time to repeat the tragedy of the Aswan Dam.”

The construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt over a half-century ago flooded hundreds of archeological sites while displacing over 100,000 residents from their homes, many of them Nubian.

“If the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s served as a warning, if you will, then the repercussions are going to be terrible, not just because of the loss of an untold number of archaeological artifacts, temples and tombs, but also because of the effect on the environment and human life,” stressed Anthony Browder, a cultural historian, author and educational consultant who researched ancient sites in northern Sudan in 2015. The popular international lecturer has traveled to Egypt 55 times and has conducted 23 archeological missions to the region since 2009. Browder is currently excavating two 25th Dynasty tombs of Kushite nobles in Egypt as the first African-American to fund and coordinate an archeological dig in the country.

Browder pointed out the dire and ongoing consequences in Egypt, including a mass “displacement of tens of thousands of Nubians from their ancestral homeland,” a rise in the water table that is now leaching water into and dissolving many of the country’s priceless stone monuments, and additional environmental impacts that have polluted the Nile, hampered local agriculture and been associated with increasing rates of pancreatic cancer. “I’ve lost two very close Egyptian friends to pancreatic cancer within the last eight years,” revealed Browder, noting the “same type of things will happen in Sudan when these other dams come online.”

As further confirmation of the history at stake, the eleventh-hour international effort prompted by Aswan to salvage as many artifacts as possible led to one of the great discoveries in archaeological history. In 1962, a research team led by Keith Seele of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition uncovered a pharaonic dynasty in Sudan which predated the first pharaonic period in Egypt. However, Seele buried his extraordinary findings from Qutsul (Ta-Seti) which included the beginnings of the Medu Neter sacred writing system later called “hieroglyphs” by the Greeks, an incense burner with pharaonic markings, and the royal crown of the south depicted on the heads of a dozen pharaohs prior to the unification and first pharaoh of ancient Egypt (Kmt). Almost two decades later, the find would further confirm the well-documented Black African foundations and lineage of the pharaonic Egyptian dynasties despite ongoing and often pathetic campaigns by the white and Arab Egyptology establishment to claim otherwise.

Outside of this historic find, explained Browder, what made the situation even more significant was that the Oriental Institute “made discoveries that Seele refused to release. It was only after he died in an automobile accident that his protégé Bruce Williams brought this information to light.” If it wasn’t for Williams, added Browder, “we wouldn’t know about Ta-Seti, the oldest monarchy known to man, the Qutsul incense burner, and other evidence that has proven the Kushite influence on Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) civilization.”

Such rich history is, once again, in need of rescue. “When I was in Sudan two-and-half years ago we found that a number of sites had in fact been built during the 18th Dynasty when Egyptians had control of that part of Nubia, that part of Kush,” said Browder. However, he stressed that both Kemetic and Kushitic cultures recorded their common belief that Gebel Barkal in northern Sudan was the home and birthplace of the major neterw — loosely translated as “gods” or deities — Amen, Djehuti, Ausar and Auset. The ruins of the Temple of Amen are still visible in Gebel Barkal today. So, suggested Browder, “it stands to reason that the oldest temples to Amen, Ausar and Auset are in Kush and Ethiopia and probably have yet to be excavated.”

Still, even with the serious and ongoing threats to these rich historical sites in present-day Sudan and to the ancient Nubian culture that both reflects and reveres them, Browder’s optimism is reflective of the adage that “truth crushed to earth shall rise again.”

 

Having a Moment: The Black Panther and breaking away from decoding/analyzing the movies of our enemies

 

 

From The Melanin Man:

Disclaimer: This is not a spoiler alert. There will be no DECODING/ANALYZING conducted on this post. I refuse to waste precious energy on decoding such tomfoolery.

(For those of you who wish to read that, click here, here, here, here and here. And here. AND here. There brothers and sisters of mine have already done a beautiful job of that.)

Reluctantly this morning I accompanied my wife to watch probably (let’s be honest, it is) the most hyped Black movie of all-time Black Panther. Previously I told myself I wasn’t going to rush and watch the movie, in part due to the obscene amount of hype it has received thus far. The other reason was because I felt it was not worth the price of admission.

And of course I was right. And why do I feel this way, you ask?

I certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don’t need to be entertained like I’m a child (why do we feel the need to still be entertained, fam? why are we STILL exhibiting childlike behavior?)  Maybe I’m in a different space mentally and spiritually right now. Maybe I’ve separated myself from the pack to the point that simple pleasures such as observing Black-African cultural symbolism in a positive light on a stupid 2-D screen does not even move me anymore.

Leave it to Disney (yuck!) to get us to feel good about being Black!

I’m through with all of the faux symbolism and feel-good stories we see in fantasy TV-land that we cannot seem to figure out as people to actualize in our REAL LIVES.

Sometimes I wonder when that time will come when we will cease to decode and analyze the foolishness that is thrown to us by the powers-that-be and begin to apply that knowledge in reality. For those of us who are NOT caught up in that entertainment mentality, how many more movies do we have to study and breakdown before we get the picture and make the changes that we need to change?

I’m not excluded from that question. I’m holding myself accountable as well.

Do we really get what’s going on? Or are we feeling special because we know a little something something?

Now don’t get me wrong, for the majority of our people who are literally SPIRITUALLY DEAD there is obviously a need to do such a thing.  But I’ve realized awhile ago that a individual’s return to consciousness (whether they’re  melanin-rich or not) should be left to them and them only. At some point, for the few of us who are privy to the madness, we may have to shun DEAD WEIGHT until it decides to LIVE AGAIN, so we can do real work.

I mean, there is no way The Black Panther should be the cultural phenomenon  that it is amongst our people. A superhero movie? REALLY?!

There may be one truth that I’ve learned from the movie (or rather reinforced since I’ve been feeling this way for a awhile now) and the hoopla that surrounds it, and that is this:

The greatest trick ever pulled by an oppressor to the oppressed is to have them think they’re oppressed in the first place. “

Once you know who you are and where you come from, you cease to be a victim no matter the circumstances.

Learn your history, fam. Preferably through a book performed through intense research and scholarship (don’t get stuck on white-man validation, either) and not some damn fantasy flick.

 

FUCK BLACK PANTHER! There, I said it.

 

 

 

Peace and Love to my melanated family,

The Melanin Man

“Ignorance is NOT bliss. Willful ignorance breeds COWARDS to responsibility.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

a repost: On the Black Panther Movie and the Limits of Our Imagination

Article originally posted on Black Agenda Report (click link for original)

 

Black Panther riding subway car

Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor

The new Marvel Black Panther movie premieres this Friday. I’ll get around to seeing it maybe this weekend or soon after. I read a lot of comic books when I was very young, Fantastic Four and the first Spiderman among them. The Black Panther character came along after I discarded comics as something for kids, in favor of paperback science fiction and fantasy. By my junior year of high school I gave up science fiction too. A lot of it was frankly racist, and even when it wasn’t the authors would depict humanity hundreds or thousands of years in the future, spread across the stars and galaxies but still ruled by kings and queens and princes. I knew just enough about the world to know that was looking backward, not forward. Why couldn’t the authors of science fiction see this? Most places on earth had already thrown off rule by royalty and hereditary elites, and even when they didn’t mean it they were obligated to pretend they practiced or believed in something more democratic.

The Black Panther movie’s main characters are black and beautiful and all, but the lead guys are still a king and a brutha who wants to be king. The king is one of the richest people in the world – except for Spiderman I never heard of a comic book character worried about where next month’s rent would come from – and he rules over a fictional African country called Wakanda, a place loaded with technology so advanced it’s able to conceal its wealth and achievement from the rest of the planet.

I’m a senior citizen now, and it’s a little sad that apart from making the sheroes and heroes black and beautiful, which is sort of necessary but not nearly sufficient, comics and sci fi, at least the stuff brought to us by capitalist corporate media pretty much fails to imagine what a better world, or even the struggle to get there might look like.

If it’s so difficult for creative writers even to imagine a better world, or the struggle to make it better that might say a lot about about why it’s so difficult to move the needle out here in the real world.

Growing up on the south side of Chicago and attending a high school on the west side I caught the subway – the el to locals every day to and from school. I noticed all the cars had plaques telling us they were made by the St. Louis Car Company, except a new model subway car with no identifying markers introduced in the 1960s. 20 years later I got a job at Pullman Standard, the site of the historic 1893 Pullman Strike where we manufactured Amtrak cars, NY subway cars, Boston transit cars and such.

One day I ate lunch alone out in the yard, and getting up I looked at what I’d been sitting on. It was a mold of the end of one of those unidentified Chicago Transit Authority cars. I ran into the nearest building to ask the old timers had they ever manufactured CTA cars here. Absolutely, they said, pointing up at the row of CTA decals.

That day, instead of going home I detoured up to the 95th St. station, the end of the line. I waited for one of the trains with no markers of origin to pull in, and when the passengers stepped off the train I stepped on looking for identifying plaques saying that this train had been manufactured not two miles away by south siders of my dad’s generation. No luck. I asked the mostly black CTA workers who operated and maintained the trains. They didn’t know either, and were frankly surprised when I told them these were built right down the street.

I thought it was a lot like Star Trek, with all the people are flitting and flying back and forth around the galaxy in marvelous machines but we never see the workers who built those machines. Obviously the folks who ran Chicago in the 1960s didn’t want us even imagining that we possessed the power to build, perhaps to rebuild the world around us.

So I’ll go see the Black Panther movie. But I’m not looking for a black royal family. We already had one of those. If I was writing fiction, I’d want to show real people the power they have over the real world. But that’s just me.

a repost: How This Black Dominatrix Uses Her White Male Clients for ‘Emotional Reparations’

I found this interesting.

 

 

 

Article originally posted on The Huffington Post, by way of Atlanta Blackstar (The entire interview is on The Huffington Post website.)

 

 

 

 

black dominatrix
Mistress Velvet initially began her dominatrix career for financial reasons. (@MissVChicago/Twitter)

 

 

 

A dominatrix is using her career to transform how white men see Black women. In what she describes as an “emotional sense of reparations,” Mistress Velvet employs Black feminist theory to help push her mostly white, male clients from fetishizing Black women to having a deeper understanding.

The Domme’s relationship with her submissive subjects has had profound implications for her clients.

“I describe it as a form of reparations ― not in a systemic way like we’re getting land back, but definitely on an individual level, it provides me with an emotional sense of reparations,” she told The Huffington Post in a Tuesday, Feb. 13 article. “That’s because of the nature of the dynamic ― that [my clients] usually are white men, that they’re straight, and they’re usually pretty well-off to be able to sustain a relationship with a Domme.

“I started to think more about my relationship with them,” the Chicago PhD student continued. “A lot of them were asking questions. Some people were saying, ‘This is really impacting me in terms of how I think outside of our sessions.’ A client said he started to notice he would only hold the door open for Black women. One client started an organization for Black single mothers in the South Side of Chicago.”

Still, Mistress Velvet said she wants more of a drastic shift in her clients and “just allowing them to be submissive” doesn’t always do the job. That’s when she employs Black feminist theory from books like Audre Lorde’s “Sister Outsiders” and Patricia Hill Collins’ “Black Feminist Thought.” The chapter on controlling images is one Mistress Velvet definitely has the men read.

“Then, it’s moving from them simply fetishizing Black women, to realizing: This is a systemic issue I’m contributing to by the virtue of being a white man and being rich,” she said.

“In terms of unpacking their way of fetishizing Black women and stereotypes about Black women, I ask them, ‘Why do you want to be in my presence, why do you find me attractive?’” she added. “And sometimes they might say things that then remind me of stereotypes of Black women ― like a jezebel or something ― so I’ll have them read a piece about how what they said is related to this historic phenomenon about thinking about Black women. I say, ‘Here are its roots. Here’s why it’s problematic.’ That way, I can say, ‘You can idolize me, but we need to have it be done in a way that isn’t also problematic.’”

 

a repost: The Illusion of Reality

Article originally posted on Waking Times (click link for original)

 

The Mandela Effect, and Memory

A new internet meme, related to confabulation, is known as the Mandela Effect. This is a situation where a number of people have memories that are different from available evidence. The term was coined by Fiona Broome, who says she, and other people, remember Nelson Mandela dying in the 1980s, rather than in 2013.

She argues that common memories which appear mistaken could be explained by the existence of parallel universes that are able to interact with each other. A common thread of discussion regarding this “effect” is misremembering the Berenstain Bears being spelled as, “Berenstein Bears.”

The “Mandela Effect” is named after South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela, who became a topic of interest in the year 2010 by people noticing with surprise that he was alive at that time–since many people remembered him having died while incarcerated.

Observations of dead people alive again are just one of many types of Mandela Effects, with other notable examples including changes to song lyrics, movie dialogue, movie scenes, physical geography, physiological anatomy, and product names.

The Mandela Effect is one of those things most people won’t believe in until it happens to them. Like falling in love or going through heartbreak, the Mandela Effect is something you have to experience in order to fully embrace.

And even then, it often takes more than one or two experiences to break through the resistance most of us have to accepting the existence of something that fundamentally challenges our unspoken foundational assumption that facts and historical events don’t change.

When we encounter something indicating evidence that in fact, history has changed–it feels shocking to discover some of the lines have been canceled and washed out! We seem to be approaching ‘tipping point’ where it’s getting harder for scoffers to say there’s no such thing as the Mandela Effect / reality shifts / alternate histories.

Some scoffers have leapt to the conclusion that Mandela Effect experiencers who are noticing long- familiar words in movies, TV shows, books, and products are most likely suddenly sharing ‘false memories,’ due to the fact that human memories are not fully reliable.

When we consider the matter of “confabulation” and “false recollections” at this dawning of the new Quantum Age, we see that we may eventually call such things “alternate recollections,” in recognition of awareness of the fact that we know that each and every one of us exists in a superimposed state, with access to many possible alternate histories, presents, and futures.

The idea that the many worlds of quantum physics might be one and the same as the multiverse has been proposed by such esteemed physicists as Dr Yasunori Nomura and Dr Raphael Bousso of UC Berkeley, and increasing numbers of scientists are feeling optimistic that we might yet find evidence that we indeed live in a multiverse.

Matrix Simulation

The whole idea that we are living in a simulation (which is another explanation for the Mandela effect) has been becoming mainstream. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch report from September suggested that there was a 20 percent to 50 percent chance we are living in a simulated virtual world.

Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer. This idea has gained traction in recent years with the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

“If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will become indistinguishable from reality.” – Elon Musk

Earlier this year, Elon Musk said that there’s “a billion to one chance we’re living in base reality,” suggesting that the billionaire thinks the odds are that we are living in a computer simulation. He argues that some technology is becoming indistinguishable from real life.

READ: Books by Dr. Richard Alan Miller

Timelines – There are no multiple time lines being created when we choose one choice over another. Scientists have been discussing the possibility of alternate timelines running simultaneously with the one we currently experience. Some have even suggested that when we choose one option over another, we have left multiple timelines in action that are running on all the other choices we could have made.

The known universe is both frugal and precise in its application. It appears to use basic structures in multiple applications in order to create itself. As a result we find basic geometry (such as tetrahedron, the circle, the square, the triangle, etc.), as the breakdown components of the structures of life.

The choices we make in everyday life is a simple matter of going into the field of all possibilities, which exists in wave form only, and collapsing our choice into particle form… thus adding to the time line we are experiencing now.

All the choices that we collapse from wave to particle remain as an ongoing record hence the formation of what we refer to as Akashic records. Our future choices or time line, personal and collective, is being formed by the sheer volume of the energy generated out of our previous and current choices.

We collectively confirm our physical reality (the furniture, the trees, our stuff of everyday life) on an ongoing basis, so it continues to exist in time with us based on a principle of mass.

If we personally and/or collectively (all inclusive in the greater cosmic sense) agree that any part of this reality taken by military dark ops suggests that many attempts to create alternate timelines has been undertaken but have not been successful.

These attempts can only fail as the full-on energetic mass required to propel a timeline forward is unattainable without all sentient beings here on Earth participating.

Here is the spoiler alert. Because we have free will we can make choices outside of all the mind control attempts. This is why those who think they have control struggle so hard to limit our choices as this is the only way that they can ensure future outcomes of their own design. It creates a major interference pattern when we individually or collectively collapse the wave form of all possibilities into a reality other than the one they have chosen for us.

This whole discussion around multiple time lines created out of the
no longer serves us and we discontinue feeding it any further energy (thought) it diminishes in kinetic mass and becomes a component of static information.

An example of this is our past life history, the events remain as a record of collapsed waves to particles in time but can only be reactivated in the present experience of time through triggers or choice. It has not been running alongside of us in another time line as it is only static particle energy. The other choices that we did not make remain in wave form only and do not construct other timelines in of themselves.

Not excluding the possibility that other worlds, organisms, or creations that we are not aware of that may exist in the third dimension are creating their own time lines. The greater possibility is that they most certainly are. What is challenging is that timelines are not created out of the choices we did not make.

This then leads to comment on the possible attempts at creating alternate timelines for us unsuspecting folks here on earth. Revelations of possible actions being misconception and a diversion intended to mitigate our understanding of how powerful we really are in manifesting the time equation. The rest is just mind clutter.

It is only a question of what we choose out of the field of all possibilities and collapse into the current manifesting timeline.

Continuing to collapse the wave form of our greater inspired choices will create an energetic mass equivalent that will manifest for us in current time.

Consciousness Lives in Quantum State after Death

The Ba and Ka of Ancient Egypt – Dr Robert Crookall, a geologist, became a well-respected investigator with his book Out of the Body Experiences (1961). He advanced a theory linking astral projection to survival. He agreed with Professor Hart (others) that the survival of the human personality after death was nothing more than permanent projection of the astral body.

He saw various degrees of projection involving two distinct portions of the human psyche. One, was conscious but immaterial, and had some objective existence. In OBE either or both of these portions may be projected.

Dr Crookall’s beliefs have some interesting parallels in the Ba and Ka concepts of the ancient Egyptians. They believed that the Ka was a “double” of the individual and that it was composed of very tenuous matter. It was supposed to live for some time after death and both the process of embalming and various funerary practices were intended to ensure that it lived on in the tomb. If the required practices were neglected the Ka was thought to emerge from the tomb to haunt those responsible.

The Ba was the soul of the Egyptians. It was conscious but immaterial. In life it was contained within the Ka. In death it left both the Ka and the body. There is some scientific evidence to support this concept. Dr Duncan McDougall of Haverhill, MA arranged to have dying patients placed on a sensitive weighing apparatus.

He found that there was a weight loss of from 2.0 to 2.5 ounces at the moment of death. The data could not be explained except in terms of something having left the body. Two Dutch Physicists, Dr J.L.W.P. Matla and Dr G.L. Zaalberg Van Zelst report similar observations and data.

They further reported that the proposed “astral body” appears to have a specific weight of 12.24 mg., that it responds to gravitation, and that it appears to be composed of particles that are small, heavy, but very widely separated.

How the human consciousness lives on after death – We man not know exactly what consciousness is, but British physicist Sir Roger Penrose believes that it’s just a packet of information stored at a quantum – or sub-atomic – level. He claims to have found evidence that this information, which is stored in microtubules within human cells, leaves the body after a person dies.

Penrose has argued that when a person dies, temporarily, this quantum information is released into the universe, only to return to the body’s cells if the host is brought back to life. He argues that this explains why people can have near-death experiences, and believes that this quantum information amounts to a soul leaving the body.

If the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.

And Sir Roger is not alone in believing this, since his theory is backed by researchers at the renowned Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. Experts there argue that our physical universe is just a perception, and that once our bodies die there is an infinite life beyond.

What we consider the here and now, this world; it is actually just the material level that is comprehensible. The beyond is an infinite reality that is much bigger. The body dies but the spiritual quantum field continues. In this way, I am immortal

Testimonials from prominent physics researchers from institutions such as Cambridge University, Princeton University, and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich claim that quantum mechanics predicts some version of “life after death.” They assert that a person may possess a body-soul duality that is an extension of the wave-particle duality of subatomic particles.

Wave-particle duality, a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics, proposes that elementary particles, such as photons and electrons, possess the properties of both particles and waves. These physicists claim that they can possibly extend this theory to the soul-body dichotomy. If there is a quantum code for all things, living and dead, then there is an existence after death (speaking in purely physical terms).

Just as a particle “writes” all of its information on its wave function, the brain is the tangible “floppy disk” on which we save our data, and this data is then “uploaded” into the spiritual quantum field. Continuing with this analogy, when we die the body, or the physical disk, is gone, but our consciousness, or the data on the computer, lives on.

“It is consciousness that creates the material universe, not the other way around.” ~Dr Hans-Peter Dürr

Biocentrism – In his book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe, Dr Robert Lanza proposes the notion that life does not end when the body dies, and it can last forever. Biocentrism teaches that life and consciousness are fundamental to the universe.

Lanza points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life, implying intelligence existed prior to matter. He also claims that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding.

Lanza says that we carry space and time around with us “like turtles with shells.” meaning that when the shell comes off (space and time), we still exist. The theory implies that death of consciousness simply does not exist.

It only exists as a thought because people identify themselves with their body.

They believe that the body is going to perish, sooner or later, thinking their consciousness will disappear too. If the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies. But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals, then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle.

In fact, consciousness exists outside of constraints of time and space. It is able to be anywhere: in the human body and outside of it. In other words, it is non-local in the same sense that quantum objects are non-local. Lanza also believes that multiple universes can exist simultaneously. In one universe, the body can be dead.

And in another it continues to exist, absorbing consciousness which migrated into this universe. This means that a dead person while traveling through the same tunnel ends up not in hell or in heaven, but in a similar world he or she once inhabited, but this time alive. And so on, infinitely. It’s almost like a cosmic Russian doll afterlife effect.

This hope-instilling, but extremely controversial theory by Lanza has many unwitting supporters, not just mere mortals who want to live forever, but also some well-known scientists. These are the physicists and astrophysicists who tend to agree with existence of parallel worlds and who suggest the possibility of multiple universes.

The Multiverse

The Multiverse (multi-universe) is a so-called scientific concept, which states that no physical laws exist which would prohibit the existence of parallel worlds. The first suggestion of this concept was put forth by science fiction writer H.G. Wells who proclaimed in his 1895 story, The Door in the Wall.

And after 62 years, this idea was developed by Dr Hugh Everett, in his graduate thesis at the Princeton University. It basically posits that at any given moment the universe divides into countless similar instances.

The Nature of Choice, as a gift from God – And the next moment, these “newborn” universes split in a similar fashion. In some of these worlds you may be present: reading this article in one universe, or watching TV in another. The triggering factor for these multiplying worlds is our actions, explained Everett.

“If we make some choices, instantly one universe splits into two with different versions of outcomes.” ~Dr. Hugh Everett

In the 1980s, Andrei Linde, scientist from the Lebedev’s Institute of physics, developed the theory of multiple universes. He is now a professor at Stanford University.

Space consists of many inflating spheres, which give rise to similar spheres, and those, in turn, produce spheres in even greater numbers, and so on to infinity. In the universe, they are spaced apart. They are not aware of each other’s existence. But they represent parts of the same physical universe.

The fact that our universe is not alone is supported by data received from the Planck space telescope. Using the data, scientists have created the most accurate map of the microwave background, the so-called cosmic relic background radiation, which has remained since the inception of our universe.

They also found that the universe has a lot of dark recesses represented by some holes and extensive gaps. Theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton from the North Carolina University with her colleagues argue: the anomalies of the microwave background exist due to the fact that our universe is influenced by other universes existing nearby. And holes and gaps are a direct result of attacks on us by neighboring universes.

The Nature of the Soul

So, there is abundance of places or other universes where our soul could migrate after death, according to the theory of neo-biocentrism. But does the soul exist? Is there any scientific theory of consciousness that could accommodate such a claim?

According to Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a near-death experience happens when the quantum information that inhabits the nervous system leaves the body and dissipates into the universe. Contrary to materialistic accounts of consciousness, Hameroff offers an alternative explanation of consciousness that can perhaps appeal to both the rational scientific mind and personal intuitions.

Consciousness resides, according to Stuart and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose, in the microtubules of the brain cells, which are the primary sites of quantum processing. Upon death, this information is released from your body, meaning that your consciousness goes with it. They have argued that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in these microtubules, a theory which they dubbed orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR). Consciousness, or at least proto-consciousness is theorized by them to be a fundamental property of the universe, present even at the first moment of the universe during the Big Bang.

In one such scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity.

Our souls are in fact constructed from the very fabric of the universe – and may have existed since the beginning of time. Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time.

So is there really a part of your consciousness that is non-material and will live on after the death of your physical body? Dr Hameroff told the Science Channel’s Through the Wormhole documentary

Let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large.

Robert Lanza would add here that not only does it exist in the universe, it exists perhaps in another universe. If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says “I had a near death experience.”

If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.”

This account of quantum consciousness explains things like near-death experiences, astral projection, out-of-body experiences, and even reincarnation without needing to appeal to religious ideology.

Dreams and the Multiverse

In this world there could be a copy of yourself making different decisions and seeing places that somehow later manifest themselves in your dreams. For thousands of years people have wondered about the meaning of dreams. Why do some people dream about future events? Why are some dreams full of hidden meaning?

The energy of your consciousness potentially gets recycled back into a different body at some point, and in the mean time it exists outside of the physical body on some other level of reality, and possibly in another universe.

Can some of our dreams be glimpses of events taking place in an alternate reality, a parallel Universe? Our ancestors were as curious about dreams as modern scientists are today. Ancient Greeks and Romans believed dreams provided messages from the gods. In ancient China people treated dreams as a way to visit the world of dead. Ancient Egyptians were convinced that those who could interpret dream possessed special powers.

Many Native American tribes and Mexican civilizations believed dreams were a different world we visit when we sleep. The word “dream” comes from an old word in English that means “joy” and “music.” Today we know that dreams are often expressions of thoughts, feelings and events that pass through our mind while we are sleeping.

When we ask a profound question about the nature of reality, do we not expect an answer that sounds strange? Evolution provided us with intuition for the everyday physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, so whenever we venture beyond the everyday world, we should expect it to seem bizarre.

About the Author

Dr.  Richard Alan Miller is a physicist, writer and polymath. Please visit him on the web at,  www.richardalanmiller.com and www.docram.com

This article (The Illusion of Reality) is copyrighted by Richard Alan Miller, edited by Ruth Parnell, and was originally published for Nexus Magazine. It is reposted here with permission. 

 

 

a repost: There’s a Major Difference between Black History and African-American History

Article originally posted on ThyBlackman.com (click link for original)

Do we really know what the past was, what actually happened, or is history “a fable” not quite “agreed upon”? Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. “Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.” Which brings us to a question about Black History and African-American History…is there a difference? And the only answer that should matter is the one tendered by African-Americans and NO ONE else.

If it’s left up to white historians the answer would be a resounding no there isn’t any difference. The ruling class objective…isn’t to bring black people closer together…but rather extract the unity from us. The truth of our condition is that those that can shrewdly indoctrinate thoughts into our collective minds that serves their nefarious interest are doing so as a means of protecting white dominance. Black people are constantly inundated with fraudulent negative information about themselves that’s designed to create Black self-hatred, self-doubt and disunity.

Unequivocally, African-American history is the part of American history that looks at the African-American ethnic group in the United States, correcting the misrepresentations, and stereotypes of Black life throughout the country, and vindicating African-Americans by celebrating our extraordinary achievements as Americans. Most African-Americans are the descendants of Africans forcibly brought to and held captive in the United States from 1525 to 1863* (or early 1960s*).

The term Black History encompasses African history, the Caribbean and South America as well, not just African-Americans, and as supposedly liberated men and women we should have no problem acknowledging the difference, regardless how others may try to control the narrative. The [white lie] of both African-America history and Black History devaluing black people in general must not go unchallenged. African-American History is ancillary to Black History it’s imperative that African-Americans know the difference and not be in denial.

Negro History Week, the precursor to Black History Month was created in 1926 in the United States, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History…not the U.S. government…announced the second week of February to be “Negro History Week.” In 1976, when Black History Month was officially acknowledged by the U.S. government, and President Gerald Ford gave a very brief speech it resonated with paternalism. Which raises a question, are we a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because we love servitude?

Black History…which is connected to Ancient Egypt…doesn’t begin with slavery; whereas, African-American History does and to allow the oppressor to get away with trying to intertwine the two histories as one is tantamount to mental ineptness lacking the fortitude to either think for ourselves or the intestinal fortitude to stand up and define our own reality. The intent is to keep us scared, to keep us subdued. Stop being scared, start standing up! You cannot enslave a mind that knows itself, values itself, and understands itself. We as African Americans need to initiate some critical thinking and stop believing the same BS that was forced upon our enslaved ancestors? They had no choice of the falsehoods they were made to believe, but today we are supposed to be free with access to all sort of computerized information. No longer is it necessary for us to believe as our enslaved ancestors were intimidated to, we should be doing our own research.

Often-times an argument is made that enslaved Africans didn’t come from Egypt but from West Africa therefore no connection. Yet, American and World History teaches that Greece and Rome are the Cradle of Western Civilization, which has nothing to do with most white people, but they lay claim to the cultures anyway. White people have their history, heritage and culture and it begins with Greece and Rome, the Black race also has its history, heritage and culture and it commences with Ancient Egypt.

Servitude ignorance is the highest form of mental slavery; if we insist on conforming to a world full of lies, we don’t have the right to complain about intimidation…as we never fought back…instead we let it go on. Your failure to think for and govern yourself gives oppressors permission to rule over you.

Anyone who is convinced his or her past is empty, backward, shameful or, indeed, totally negative, will normally resist any attempt to revisit that past. Such a person will have no lucid identity, despise self, and have no real awareness of his/her culture and heritage. This same person will refuse to consciously participate in or relate to any cultural customs and will resist any attempt to validate any [facts] discovered. They remain in darkness, the sunken place, helpless, and dependent, which is why so many succumb to embracing the N-word n**ga/n**ger.

Some people contend that black people were present on this land when Columbus supposedly arrived. To that I say…let’s do our due diligence…connect the dots and see what kind of shape it takes, and not assume there’s nothing to it. Most African- Americans have no clue what “The Moorish-American Treaty of Peace Friendship of 1787” was all about and its significance to African-Americans and how it may shed some light on things. Does the “Burrows Cave” mean anything? Supposedly it serves as a link to Africans arriving in America approximately 1500 years before Columbus. This and other clues could very well provide enough dots to connect and see what shape materializes.

In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 1964 speech “I have a Dream” he states that “the Negro finds himself exiled in his own land.” What was behind this comment? Was it just a trivial comment or was there some esoteric meaning behind it?

The African-American population owes it to self and their forefathers to unearth the truth. Black African-Americans have been bamboozled and hoodwinked long enough. To determine a real future for Black America, the entire race of people must learn about and embrace their past far back across the waters to use that as a foundation and a source of life for future progress. African-Americans must not wait to learn about Black history when it is convenient for the rest of America, but must become owners of their own enlightenment, keepers of their own achievements, and missionaries of their own salvation.

Americans in general are constantly subjected to images of a war-torn, famine-ridden, rampantly illiterate, and disease-stricken Africa. These deplorable depictions of Africa displaying only its poorest communities are in fact designed to make African-Americans feel grateful that their ancestors were enslaved and bought to America, therefore, they’re the lucky ones to have been taken away from the backwardness of Africa. Many countries in Africa have beautiful contemporary cities but seldom are these cities given exposure by mainstream media.

This psychological subterfuge and chicanery is extended to Black students during their educational development wherein they’re taught they have no significant history beyond the enslavement of their ancestors; most are mis-educated to respect and admire white culture and achievements above their own. Movies depicting mostly white heroes have the same psychological affect.

The antithesis is actor Danny Glover when he presented his script about the Haitian Revolution to Hollywood was turned down because there were no white heroes. The Haitian Revolution is significant and requires the attention of all African-Americans for without it there wouldn’t have been any freeing of the slaves in 1863. This is an illustration of how attempts are made to keep African-Americans dumbed down about Black History, and to embrace Eurocentrism.

African Americans must consciously and sub-consciously understand that what we are taught in public schools isn’t for our benefit but is what serves the best interest of the oppressor. History translates into “his-story”—the way one understands or interprets history from his or her own perspective to his or her own benefit. Today, African-Americans are living witnesses as to how both real Black History and African-American History have been—by “his-story”—distorted, misleading, deceptive and mind controlling.

Evidence all around the world suggests that Black civilizations were far more advanced than what’s portrayed to the black community by the oppressor. The ruling class and others want African-Americans to believe that the Black race past is limited to huts, spears and jungle life with no trace of civility, culture, organization, and self-sufficiency. Research exposes this narrative as a gross fabrication.

We must become more proactive in disseminating the truth among ourselves…especially with our youth. We have a choice…the tumultuousness of liberty…or the quiet of servitude, there is no gray area, it’s either one or the other.

 

Staff Writer; H. Lewis Smith

 

a repost: The American system is not capitalism

I had a thought earlier this morning along this same idea. Low and behold I come across this article articulating that thought down to the T.

Ain’t that weird?!

 

Originally posted on  Personal Liberty (click link for original)

 

the word "capitalism" marked out

Posted on

One of the great myths of our time is that America is a capitalistic country. It is not, and has not been close to capitalistic for more than 150 years.

Capitalism is a social system in which an individual’s rights, including his rights to own property, are recognized and all property is privately owned. In a capitalistic society, governments acknowledge that individuals and companies can and should compete for their own economic gain, and the prices of goods and services are determined by the free market. The role of government in capitalistic societies is to ensure that markets function without interference and to protect individuals from fraud and/or the use of physical force by others.

Capitalism is not about greed. Capitalism is about human freedom, or as we term it, personal liberty. As Adam Smith posited in Wealth of Nations, when individuals are permitted to pursue their self-interest through markets, they are amazingly good at finding ways of bettering not only themselves but society as well.

In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand writes:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control… In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate. They can deal with one another only in terms of and by means of reason, i.e., by means of discussion, persuasion, and contractual agreement, by voluntary choice to mutual benefit. The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree — and thus keeps the road open to man’s most valuable attribute (valuable personally, socially, and objectively): the creative mind.

Americans no longer have property rights. Think you do? Try going a year or two without paying tribute to the king (via property taxes) and you’ll see who owns your property. The local sheriff will evict you; the state or local government will seize your property and sell it to the highest bidder or its favorite crony.

Try building a structure on your property… or even remodeling your home. If you don’t obtain the proper permissions (approval for your design, building permits and inspections), you will be fined and forced to tear your structure down. Failure to do so will result in armed agents of the government invading your property, assaulting and incarcerating you until you comply with the government’s demands.

Try damming a creek, tampering with the watershed or capturing water for a pond on your property. You will get a visit from federal agents representing the Environmental Protection Agency and the result will be fines, expensive court costs and possible visits by armed federal agents who will forcibly escort you off your property and into a prison cell.

Try growing livestock or certain plants on your property. Unless you live in an area zoned for agriculture, you will likely get a visit from a local or federal “inspector” who will order you to dispose of your animals and/or uproot your plants in favor of others approved by the local authorities.

Try selling a product you grew or made. You will be forced to comply with regulations regarding harvesting, production, packaging and distribution. You will be forced to act as agent of government and collect government tribute (taxes) which you must then pass along to government — regardless of the time and effort required to comply. Failure to do so will result in fines and/or imprisonment.

Want to inform people about and sell a protocol that experience and use has shown to be beneficial to good health? You must first obtain permission from local and federal agencies, provide proof that your protocol has been tested, tested and retested, regardless of the expense or inconvenience to you. You must then comply with any and all regulations regarding marketing, production, packaging and distribution. Failure to do so will result in seizure of assets, fines and/or imprisonment.

Want to not sell your product for a reason — or no reason at all — not approved by the establishment? That is not allowed and you will find your business shuttered and you will be subject to fines and revocation of your previously-acquired permission to conduct business.

The establishment will tell you that once enter into business you have surrendered your individual rights to the collective, and all your activities must be geared toward the collective good. This is the very definition of force — government force, which is anathema to voluntary exchange and individual liberty.

The federal government works overtime to ensure we are not a capitalist system by passing legislation and enabling federal alphabet soup regulatory agencies to create rules favorable to certain businesses and unfavorable to others. Congressweasels pass tax laws to encourage and discourage behaviors.

The federal government subsidizes certain products, driving up prices and encouraging unsound business practices that skew the market. There are still price controls on food products that were put in place during the Great Depression.

The Federal Reserve, which is not a federal agency but a privately-owned bank, prints money to infinity, which encourages mal-investment and skews the market. It is depreciating your currency.

Here is what has happened to the American people: The money creators, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury as symbiotic partners, are creating non-substance (fiat money) and “buying” (stealing) substance with it.

Has anyone wondered why “federal money” never gives out? As admitted in congressional testimony and in Federal Reserve publications, the federal money creators can create any amount of “money.” Of course this money is non-substance fiat. It is imaginary numbers that appear either on green pieces of paper called dollars or as computer symbols.

The key word to describe fiat non-substance is infinity. This imaginary money system can be created to infinity and indeed is on its way. The American people (and the world) believe that this non-substance is real money. This is an exercise in an unbelievable and unimaginable delusion that is accepted by the mind as real.

This is socialism at its most perfect creation and it is doing exactly socialism’s work of transferring the wealth and savings of the American people to the state without payment.

Every writer, commentator politician in America refers to the U.S. as a democracy of free enterprise capitalism with individual privacy and property rights. We live in a fiction of freedom perpetuated with semantic corruption that has evolved us into economic fascism. Language and words that support a free society have been turned inside out.

The American economic system, and in fact the world’s economic system is failing, and that failure is being attributed by many on the left (and some on the right) as a failure of capitalism. This is a big laugh to any sober person.

All governments are fronts for monopoly capitalism, and monopoly capitalism has many names: fascism, socialism, communism and democracy. Big business has and will promote every ideology and philosophy known to man to disguise its madness for profits. But one equals the other. They are all immoral systems that use the power of government to exist and to suppress human freedom.

Capitalism is the only moral system. It was American free market capitalism that fueled the growth of the U.S. economic engine beginning in the 1800s and raised the standard of living around the globe, before monopoly capitalism began to exert greater and greater control over the U.S. economic system beginning in the mid-1800s and accelerated after the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

The extraordinary level of material prosperity achieved by the capitalist system over the course of the last 200 years is a matter of historical record. But very few people are willing to defend capitalism as morally uplifting.

Sadly, it’s not just the progressive left and ignorant millennials that oppose free market capitalism. In any discussion forum where true or laissez-faire capitalism is discussed, “conservatives” are quick to make the disclaimer that “we must have some regulation” or, “we can’t have unfettered capitalism.” In truth, most so-called conservatives are really closet socialists. This is a testament to the powerful propaganda we are subjected to.

Throughout history there have been two basic forms of social organization: collectivism and individualism. In the 20th century, collectivism has taken many forms: socialism, fascism, Nazism, welfare-statism and communism are its more notable variations. The only social system commensurate with individualism is laissez-faire capitalism.

The return of capitalism will not happen until there is a moral revolution in this country. We must rediscover and then teach our young the virtues associated with being free and independent citizens. Then and only then, will there be social justice in America.

a repost: The Call for Black Collectivism

 

“Couldn’t have said better myself!”

Article originally posted on ThyBlackman.com (click for original)

https://i0.wp.com/thyblackman.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/123collectivism.jpg

(ThyBlackMan.com) There is a popular axiom that states, ‘A fool and his money shall soon part.’ There is quite possibly no more succinct means of describing the current economic state of Black America. Put simply, we have been foolish, if not completely reckless in regards to our collective economic dealings. Things are in such a state of disarray that a reasonable person would question if the term Black unity is an oxymoron.

The issue of economic collectivism among African-Americans is a topic bantered in venues varying from Black Nationalist gatherings to Black barbershops/beauty salons. All seem to agree that in regards to collectivist economics, the Black Community has been in a downward spiral since our educated class decided that their path to survival was via assimilating with an economically unified white community that has historically displayed via every means possible that they had no desire for any relationship, outside of an economically exploitative one, with Black America.

One is left pondering how Black political leaders, business people, intellectuals, educators, clergymen, the population that William Edward Burghardt Du Bois characterized as the Talented-Tenth allow this to occur? Was the elite too preoccupied with accumulating material possessions to comprehend the mounds of evidence that made the words assimilation synonymous with economic servitude?

Were they focused upon giving their offspring everything they never had and in the process failed to provide them either the crucial elements that facilitated their success or the understanding that the descendants of enslaved people are eternally inextricably linked with each other? It appears that African-American leaders are the only racial/ethnic leadership group that has failed to deliver the point that collectivist economics is crucial to group survival. Failure to understand this reality places African-Americans in the peculiar predicament that the great Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes expounded upon in his poem,

I, Too
I, Too
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed –
I, too, am America.

(Langston Hughes)

One of the most amazing occurrences in today’s highly contemptuous battle for survival in a rapidly diversifying nation has been African-Americans inability to understand that economic survival, let alone prosperity or winning, hinges upon collectivism and group cooperation; and until those lessons are learned we will continue to dine in the kitchen that Hughes writes about, eagerly waiting for a kind invitation to dine at the table of America. That invite has never, and will never, come out of kindness. Put simply, life is analogous to a board game where players, meaning various races and identities, attempt to increase their holdings [political and economic power] through strategic maneuverings, the ability to coordinate with other players, who are invariably receiving some benefit from the coordination, increases one’s opportunity for success.

Considering this analogy, it appears as if other groups — Alternative Lifestyle [Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, Queer], Women [Wealthy, Middle-Class, Working-Class, Asian, Latina, White, Black], Asian [Chinese, Japanese, Filipino] Latina [Mexican, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Cuban, Dominican] White [Irish, Anglo-Saxon, Russian, Italian, Polish, German] — are able to make decisive logical moves on this crowd game board and forge alliances to advance their interests.

Now, it is not that persons of African descent [Nigerian, Jamaican, African-American, Ghanaian, Black Brits, Haitian, Cuban, Brazilian, Caribbean] are not involved in the game, it is that they are the least likely to forge an alliance with other groups, including their own racial group. Predictably, their attempt to navigate the game of life solo leads to not only frustration but also the total loss of their political power and total dependence upon others for material survival; they become in a word, parasitic.

In time, this population will make what they consider a logical move to get in the game, a decision that drives home just how uninformed they are in regards to how this game is played, they will shun others in their racial/ethnic group and attempt to join with another group, thinking that such is an appropriate strategy to extricate themselves out of an increasingly deep hole. Little do they realize, they have made what is akin to a Faustian deal that guarantees them nothing more than a few politico-economic crumbs that the larger players will offer them once their appetite is satisfied!

In their defense, I must add that the primary reason they never turn within their own group to forge coalitions is that they have been taught in classrooms, media, and through experience that, “Niggers don’t know how to handle no business.” The vast majority of movers and shakers within the Race will relate such feelings as they bask in their self-created position as the only Negro who is about making moves; we all know that this fool, thinking that they can take on the world alone, what they invariably discover is that they are simply busy with their myriad pyramid schemes and quick rich scams that are actually enriching other groups.

The reasons for considering African-Americans economically parasitic are obvious, however, a pressing query remains; that being, why does it seem that only persons of African descent remain steeped in these dire straits. And more importantly, what is the solution to reversing this unfortunate reality?

The path for group empowerment is always the same; groups close ranks for a period, mobilize their economic resources, and focus their energies upon hard work and educating their men, women, and children with an eye toward political power, economic self-sufficiency, and a liberating theology.

Despite the reality that such uplift programs occur within the public sphere, many African-Americans are naïve enough to believe in an ethos of individuality. Their logic is that if they work diligently as an individual they will succeed; nothing could be further from the truth. I had a professor who once highlight the fallacy of such thought when he remarked, ‘If hard work were all that you needed to succeed in America, Black folk would run this nation because no one has worked harder than us’; hard work and diligent effort, although a part of the equation, is in no way the entire equation. I must admit that I am amused when Conservative groups such as the Tea Party stand in the midst of their collective group and advise others to seek political power and economic freedom individually, please do not be seduced by the lie of either American individualism or laissez-faire, let alone trickle-down economic schemes that other groups endorse. They are actually collectively mobilizing their political resources to enjoy the fruits of their labor individually.

Considering the current position of African-Americans, it is foolish for us not to focus our energies on studying, mobilizing, and then executing a plan to help uplift the race. Failure to do so will most certainly result in a continuation of the dire consequences currently affecting the community.

Please remember that life is like a game, with multiple players with the same goal, securing as much political power and money to not only operate today but also to flex their muscles when need be and force others to do what is not necessarily in their best interests. It will not be until we understand that other groups are not only organized and executing plans that not only accentuate their strengths but also exploit our collective weaknesses that we will even begin to be prepared for this game. The question is, how long will we allow the game to operate before we begin mobilizing our game pieces and develop a plan to decisively enter the game in a way that matters?

So the question remains, are African-Americans prepared to not only understand the game but also participate in it at its highest levels? Or will they continue to serve as little more than relatively insignificant pawns in a chess game? It is only through issuing a significant challenge to the prevailing economic power structure that African-Americans have any chance of surviving, let alone flourishing, economically. And there is no doubt that it is impossible to even issue a challenge until we are able to unite, close ranks, strategize collectively, develop and then execute a logical plan aimed at uplifting the race. Failure to do so will eventually lead us to be wiped completely off of the board of this game called life and signal our collective failure at issuing any challenge to the prevailing economic tyranny that we have experienced since integration occurred.

 

Staff Writer; Dr. James Thomas Jones III