As I patiently but anxiously wait for my Kindle Touch 3G to arrive in the mail, I realize I have surrounded myself with a couple of nifty tools to make my content consumption addiction easier, faster, and more efficient. Although I consider my self the Jamaican Muslim version of Henry Bemis from the Twilight Zone, I still need a little bit more than just a “brick and mortar” Library to satiate my diverse content consumption needs.

You are probably already familiar with many of these apps, but I have found them extremely helpful in covering 3 simple areas:

1. How do get access to tons of content?
2. How do I organize all this great content?
3. What type of tools will help me organize all this audio and textual content?

Instapaper. This app has been around for a while but I only recently started using it about 3 weeks ago. Instapaper is a simple app that allows you to save web article pages from any web browser, Smartphone, Tablet, E-reader and just about any other device. Any article that you “Read Later” with Instapaper (irrespective of what device you used to save the article) goes into the “cloud” and you can then access that web content from anywhere that is connected to the internet. All your devices that are connected to the internet do a short sync via Instapaper and now you have all that content stored on your device locally. Once the content is on the device, no internet connection is needed. It’s all on the device. You can read content on any one of the devices that have downloaded the web content from Instapaper’s cloud. With my third content device (Kindle Touch) on the way, I can now sync content from my IPhone, Mac Book, and Kindle Touch. (or any other computer that is connected to the Internet). It really makes it easy to consume a lot more long form article content online, or maybe I should say offline.

Goodreads. Yet another “cloud” content based app, Goodreads has several Android and IPhone apps that compliment the goodreads.com website. Goodreads is basically Amazon’s book recommendation engine, wishlist, and book reading history turned into a full blown website. They are not affiliated with Amazon, but it’s probably where Amazon should have taken their recommendation/wishlist app. The site allows readers around the world to share books they’ve read, books they want to read, books they are currently reading while allowing users to rate, review and comment on any book. The site (and the complimentary phone apps) have a wonderful recommendation engine that is separated by a variety of categories (they call these categories Genres). You can then customize this Genre list and Goodreads will select books that match these Genres. The more you submit to Goodreads the better it gets at giving you books that match your interests. The site is extremely social. You can read books from your friends and share your book lists. Once again all this activity is synced between all your devices that are using the Goodreads app and website.

Calibre. Actually found this app searching for an article Bookmark app that would sync with a Kindle device. Calibre is basically the ITunes version of e-book management tool. It allows you to update the covers of e-books, titles, topics, categories, publisher date and tons of other meta data. It also syncs and converts all your e-book files to the appropriate format for your e-reader device. For those who want to fine tune their e-book library I really don’t know another piece of software that is more easy to use and efficient than Calibre. It covers just about all e-book devices and it’s…wait for it…FREE.

Flipboard. Yet another recent addition to my content consumption tool kit, Flipboard has really transformed how I consume content. It was initially built for the IPad, but now it’s available for the IPhone (sorry folks, no Android yet but I’m sure it’s coming). It’s a social magazine app that allows you to easily flip (literally) through tons of content from hundreds, if not thousands of publishers. You can also pull content from your Twitter and Facebook feed. This app is all about making content beautiful while making it easier to share that same content on your favorite social networks. Like an infographic that visually beautifies raw data to make it easier to consume, Flipboard is no different.

Audible. I think audible.com has been around long enough for most people to be familiar with the website and the complimentary app for Android and the IPhone. Getting into audio books via audible has allowed me to consume so much more content. The best thing about audio books, is unlike regular books you can listen to these books while being somewhat idle with other things. Whether you are washing dishes, cutting the lawn, going for a walk or run, or just listening to an audio book at work. (of course while doing work). Other than the standard audio player options, you have the ability to bookmark (somewhat of an electronic dog ear) any part of the audio so you can refer back to it later. What is truly missing from Audible is the ability to sync your e-bookmarks with an audible app or maybe an Audible plugin for ITunes. All your audible purchases are still in the “cloud” which makes for an easy way to download your audible files to your phone or computer.

In September 2009 I wrote a post about learning the roots of the 2008 Financial Crisis. It really gets to the crux of why I was compelled to go on somewhat of an economic “expedition” to find out what went wrong with the U.S. economic system in 2008. Prior to the crisis there I wasn’t aware of any body of economic work that intelligently outlined the causes (not just the symptoms) of the financial crisis than the Austrian School of Economics. As I’ve said in earlier posts, I truly believe that the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) is by far one of the most complete descriptions of the “science”, if you will, of economic booms and busts. In addition to the ABCT, I believe that the Austrians have a way of interweaving a healthy amount of skepticism when it relates to the government intervening in the broader economy.

Unfortunately many other economic disciplines make wild assumptions, often very overly optimistic assumptions about the value of government intervention. At the same time, I have my own skepticism on the benefits of a 100% Libertarian approach to our social and political problems, but they clearly have the right pulse on many of the causes of how financial markets and economic incentives can be distorted by “well intentioned” governments. Private corporations don’t get off the hook, but in the context of the financial crisis, they worked in tandem with the government to completely destroy the economy.

I want to make a couple of points:

1. Be an economic policy skeptic. All policy isn’t created equal. As a matter of fact, many of the policy “prescriptions” by the government were completely backward and financially destructive and/or these policies were instituted to benefit a few while impoverishing many.
2. Read some of the suggested resources below. As a matter fact, read as much economic policy as you can. Many times you’ll get to the “real” intentions behind a lot of these policies.
3. Your Congress is bought (Thank you Dylan Ratigan from MSNBC). Please watch the video below and make sure you listen to every single word. If it’s not clear after you watch this video that voting for these cronies is a waste of time, then just off yourself. Okay..that was a joke..don’t off yourself but really understand that depending on our “do nothing” Congress is a waste of time.
4. The only option left is civil disobedience. What I like to call “soft” anarchy. Be an active participant in the economy. Vote with your pocket. Our government was not always enslaved to corporate interests. This can be undone, but it’s going to take a lot more than marching, waving hands, and holding creatively snark protest signs in different cities. There’s trillions of dollars at stake and if a high level of creative destruction doesn’t take place by the people, then we are playing a very dangerous, albeit participatory charade of musical “armchair revolutionary” chairs. Instead of sitting at home or in a cafe we are sitting in the streets.

Books

• Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi
• Greedy Bastards: How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry by Dylan Ratigan
• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
• Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek
• The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 by Paul Krugman
• America’s Great Depression by Murray N. Rothbard
• Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse by Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Ron Paul

This blog post below was a comment I posted from an article my wife shared on her Facebook wall. My boy Clarence, suggested I turn the comment into a blog post. The article, Black Unemployment Highest in 27 Years appeared on Roland Martin’s magazine/blog website. It seems like you have three typical responses when someone sees these type of “Blacks have a more destitute situation than __________ (insert race of choice here)” articles. The first response is “America is racist, ergo if there wasn’t racism we wouldn’t have such high unemployment”. The second response is, “Blacks are a bunch lazy fry chickin’ eating watermelon cologne wearing, hip hop lovin’, overspending, loud mouthin’ government lovin’, drag on the economy havin’ monkeys that are unemployable who will continue to be the last hired and the first fired.” The third response is, “Oh these ____________ (insert race of choice here) keep taking our jobs. They’ll take so much less to work ______________ job”.

These absurd responses don’t get us any closer to solutions. They are simple knee-jerk reactions to a long-standing problem. I have seen these types of “high unemployment among blacks” headlines since I graduated from college (and before college) and it’s getting worse. The technology shift was supposed to be our golden parachute into prosperity. Didn’t happen. Happen for some but not many and clearly not enough. I wish I finished my If I Had My Own Black Leadership Forum series, but I still have 2 parts left to do. If you’re interested in reading the first 3 parts, you can start here However, I give you My Thoughts on Black Unemployment.

There are no short turnarounds for the high black unemployment rate but at the root of our problems is a misallocation of economic resources. Whether you believe the misallocation of economic resources was driven by a bunch of klan sympathizing racists in corporate america (and the general workplace) and our political system or self inflicted by the black community, we are clearly dealing with a misallocation of economic resources in the black community. This situation has been going on since our “inclusion” into the main economy. Many of you have heard me say this before (and I’ll say it again):

The total GDP of the African-American community makes us the 13th largest economy in the world. That’s right, only 0.6% of planet earth (African Americans) represents the 13th largest economy in the world. The African American/Black Market profile from the Magazine Publishers of America has slated the purchasing power of African Americans to hit the 1 trillion dollar mark by 2012. How can the 13th largest economy in the world, have one of the highest unemployment rates in America? Umm..misallocation of economic resources. (I said it in my quiet e-typing-voice so you don’t get annoyed by me saying this a billion times. I might say it a couple more times)

There are only a few individuals that have actually outlined real solutions and they are the following:

• Powernomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America by Dr. Claud Anderson
• Black Lies, White Lies: The Truth According to Tony Brown by Tony Brown
• Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political, and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century by Amos N. Wilson
• The Entrepreneurial Secret To Starting a Business: Without A Bank Loan, Collateral or Revenue (Volumes 1, 2, 3) by Cedric Muhammad

Although I have huge issues with their past prejudice/religious theology, the other organization is the Nation of Islam. With all it’s past faults, prejudices, and warped theology, Message to the Blackman by Elijah Muhammad was the first book that had me thinking about how my income and productivity in the economy made other folks rich and not my local community. I repeat, the book’s religious theology is rife with shirk, misinformation, hatred and black supremacist theology. However, it’s economic prescriptions are 21st century. The book should be republished, minus the hatred. If I was part of the NOI, I would include a public apology in the introduction of the book.

If you look at many black media communication vehicles, including Black Enterprise mag and BET (Viacom), many of them [black owned or not] have never mentioned any of these individuals. If they mentioned them, there hasn’t been any real effort in promoting their ideas. The average black person has no idea who these individuals are. That is not a simple oversight. It’s intentional. Not in a conspiratorial way, but in a “these individuals will upset the apple cart” type of way. Unfortunately, Amos Wilson has passed on but his rich wealth of economic information lives on in his seminal work, Blueprint for Black Power. It might be tempting to dismiss many of these individuals as a bunch of black supremacist separatist who long for a day when the black seperation movement will transform itself into a 21st century authoritarian movement. No, this is a immature characterization of their intent and economic ideas. They were concerned with the flimsy social contract that America promised it’s black citizens and wanted to usher in a concrete economic platform which we could depend on with certainty. Clearly we are in uncertain times and the social contract that America had with it’s black citizens is gone.

If Black America studied these ideas in these books with vigor and dedication, I believe we can significantly lower black unemployment into the lower single digits in about 20-30 years while becoming a viable and powerful economic engine for growth. There are no easy answers. It’s going to take time, skill reallocation, and a lot of money from those wealthy black individuals to invest in this plan. The government and non-black corporations have already moved on. This is what many of the individuals I mentioned above were trying to say 50 years ago. There will come a time when African Americans will be completely on their own. No jobs programs, no social institutions, no nothing. So in short, they were saying we have to build our own institutions and local economies of scale because the “support window” is going to eventually close. Now that the American economy is in such disarray, its going into hardcore economic Darwinian mode.

Obama and any other government employee can do very little for the black community. His jobs bill cannot overturn hundreds of years of economic mismanagement and social degradation. The government and too many “black leaders” are absentee landlords, time to look within our own community for answers. If they had your back, you would of been out of this mess a long time ago. We are on our own.

If there is any one question that was asked (or implied) before I left, it was “Is it Safe?”. Some other more indirect rhetorical questions/responses sounds like this:

– Really? Wow (But like Wow, as in “He’s sending his family to the equivalent of Iraq)
– Are you sure? (translation: Are you sure you want to work in a war zone?)
– I’ve even had folks suggest that they fear being kidnapped or forced being wrapped in a burqa like Taco Bell wraps burritos. Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with the burqa or the niqab or any other covering. Women have the freedom to wear what they want, but they shouldn’t be forced or unduly prohibited from wearing these types of coverings. For more information on this. go here.

I have no idea what other warped ideas swirl in people’s minds when you mention any country in the Middle East, but the ones above are the more obvious fears. At the same time I can’t be too hard on folks being that their main intention is concern for my safety. But like an over-protective parent can be for their children, some of this concern is grounded in a bit of fantasy, xenophobia and misinformation.

I do realize that there are a lot of revolutions/upheavals going on in the Middle East, but we have to be able to distinguish one county from another and one region from another. Yes the Arab Awakening (known in the states as the Arab Spring) is in full effect. Yes there are wars and civil wars going on in Iraq, but that doesn’t mean it’s happening all over the Middle East nor does it mean that these skirmishes have the potential to bleed everywhere in the Middle East or North Africa. I’m going to address two things in this post. The proximity of some of these skirmishes and some basic demographic data of Qatar.

Although there have been other incidents in Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, the main players in the Arab Awakening have been Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. Now keep in mind that the Arab Awakening is about reforming policy in the Middle East and North Africa. People are fighting for their right for freedom and the pursuit of happiness just like any American during the American Revolution. However, the whole entire region is not going up in smoke which might be the perception being that the MSM (Main Stream Media) presents just the conflicted areas of the Middle East without presenting the areas that are politically and economically stabilized.

So now to answer the million dollar or riyal question: Is it Safe?

Yes. It’s extremely safe. People leave their cars running while they hop inside and outside of stores. Yes gas is $1.00 a gallon and yes it’s really hot (people keep their cars running to keep the A/C on), but the safety is there. You guessed it, the country with the highest per capita income is Qatar and has been for the last 10 years. And can you take a wild guess which country has one of the lowest crime rates in the world? Um..Qatar again with a score of 1.0 while United States has a score of 5.0 and has a higher homicide rate that close in numbers to such countries as Yemen and Ukraine. Iraq, a U.S. occupied country, has a score of 7.3.

If you look at the 10 most dangerous cities you’ll be surprised by the cities that made the list. You can go here, here, and here. Although the list is different for each site (in regards to which city is the most violent), there are two American cities that make the list. Detroit has 43.7 murders per 100,000 and New Orleans has 52 per 100,000

If you take the distance between Qatar and Libya we are looking at a distance that reaches from New York to Las Vegas. [2233 miles] [show diagram]. If you take the distance between Qatar and Tunisia you are reaching a distance that almost spans the entire length of the United States of America.

Distance statistics:

• Distance between Qatar and Libya [2100 miles]
• Distance between Qatar and Tunisia [2500 miles]
• Distance between Qatar and Cairo, Egypt [1300 miles]
• Distance between Qatar and Bahgdhad, Iraq [680 miles]
• Distance between Qatar and Bahrain [70 miles]

Below you can click on the map below to get a sense of where Qatar is located and it’s proximity to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. I specifically highlighted those countries that are tied to the Arab Awakening.

Now when so-called “super powers” share a list with such countries like Mogadishu, Somalia, Karachi, Pakistan and Baghdad, Iraq (650,000 civilians dead since 2003), Cape Town, South Africa (50 murders a day) in regards to the most violent cities, you have to wonder who is really safe? I do understand that the proximity of many of these awakenings or uprisings are probably closer than any one individual would like but I can assure you, I do not see burning tires and bellowing smoke from my window. I don’t hear gunfire and I don’t see a legion of militias driving banged up Nissans pickups with AK-47s. The only Nissans pick ups I see are from construction workers. The only thing that lights up the sky is the moon, not tracer fire from a machine gun. Notice that the only Middle Eastern country that made the most violent city list is Iraq and this is an occupied country. The countries violence is attributed to U.S. occupation and not necessarily something inherently violent in Iraq. Suicide bombing didn’t start until the 2003 invasion of Iraq. More on that that here.

It’s time to separate fact from fiction. Many people are doing themselves a disservice by limiting their world view to the border of the United States of America. Com’ on over to the Middle East where the sun is always shining and the diversity is as beautiful as the people who live here. I’m not here to spin away the problems from the region, but put some context and clarity as to what is going on in the Middle East and North Africa. In the next installment of Qatar Times, I’ll give a bit more detail about the people of Qatar and how our experience has been.

Bonus Infographic

If you want to get a sense of the size of the North Africa and Middle East, click on the image below. I’ve layered the United States of America over the map. The length of the United States is about 2900 miles across. Depending on where you are measuring it could be less or more. I tried to scale this as best I could. Enjoy!

I know it might seem a bit odd having the word “chunk” and “workout” in the same headline, but it will all makes sense in a couple of paragraphs. After I finished P90X (more than a year ago), I kind of fell into a funk. After running high on the fumes of my P90x completion, I fell into a lethargic anti-workout ethic. Not really sure where it come from, or how it happend. However, it happened, and I just stopped working out.

Fast forward several months later and I’m now back on the workout grind. Not necessarily P90x, but a hybrid of P90x and my own personal strength training workout routine. I’ve basically “Malikified” my workout with timings and specific locations, while managing small exercise routines that fit into my life schedule.

So what is chunking? In the psychology world chunking is a strategy used to improve your long-term memory. In short, if you group or list similar pieces of information together it will help you retain the information. Here is an example.

In the context of working out, I have now chunked my exercise routine. In the large scheme of my workout, I’ve broken down bits and pieces of my routine by location, body part, calisthenics, strength and time. I’ve broken up my location between my living room and the Planet Fitness Gym.

Here is what I do:

Planet Fitness in the Bronx

• Body Scultpting
• Machines and Free Weights
• Chest, Arms, Shoulders

My Living room in the Bronx

• Strength training (Pushups, Fitness Bands, Pull-ups, etc)
• Calisthenics
• Legs, Abs, Back

This simple chunking formula has allowed me to “see the forest through the trees” for my workout routine. Once you get the ball rolling it’s all down hill (of course in a good way). Over these last couple weeks, I feel I have the vision and the discipline to push myself a bit more.

Happy Chunking!

So who are the “Bickersons”? (the first time I heard this used is from the book Spousonomics) In my view this is any couple who quarrel a lot. It’s like walking around with steel shoes through a field of egg shells laced with magnetic dynamite. No matter what the topic, an argument is going to pop off and more than likely it will be explosive. It’s taking the most nuanced issues and blowing them up into stellar battles of galatic proportions. In most instances the root of the “bickering” is something else, but these smaller issue serve as “death by a thousand cuts” to the relationship which can leave both people extremely unhappy.

I’m reaching the last couple books to round out my research on my beige paper (We’ll it’s actually a white paper but I’m not a professor or a man with a P.h.d so it will be a beige paper for now) on the Science of Relationships. What started out as an idea for a blog post on some of the neurology and psychology behind how men and women interact in their relationships eventually grew into a “beige paper” on this same subject. One of the books is called Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes by Paula Szuchman. Wait…now before you run to the hills and say “There’s no way I’m taking relationship advice from some economist”, you should realize that out of the 15-20 books that have contributed to my research over the last 3 years, this book is one of the most pragmatic and helpful books on rooting out some of the underlying dysfunctions of many relationships. I’m not saying this because I love economics, I’m saying this because the information is very straight forward, honest and pragmatic.

Many of the problems that are identified in this book have been painstakingly researched over decades and although the book has a “economics” wrapper, you don’t have to know anything about economics to understand how to run your relationship like an economy that is experiencing robust growth instead of a depression (which unfortunately many relationships are). Below you’ll find two audio snippets from the book that highlight a couple issues that bring about much angst in too many relationships. Suprisingly one of the biggest pain points for most relationships (that eventually lead the decline of the relationship) is household chores. Before you dismiss this as some strange aberration, check out this quote from the book Spousonomics:

If arguing over chores seems petty to you, consider this: In 2007, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey that asked “What makes a marriage work?” The number one answer was faithfulness, followed by sex. Makes sense. But third, ahead of everything else, including kids, money, and religion: sharing household chores.

Other research backs this up. According to a 2009 survey of working women by the Boston Consulting Group, the second most common thing people argue about with their partners are household chores. That’s behind money but ahead of sex, work, and raising kids. In our own Exhaustive, Groundbreaking, and Very Expensive Marriage Survey, 73 percent of women said they did more than 50 percent of the housework, whereas only 40 percent of men said they did more than half the housework (you have to a least give the men credit for honesty)

A couple days ago I was on a thread talking about relationships and many of the complaints were related to the roles and responsibilities of the house. To be honest, that was about 50% of the complaints. There seemed to be a wide dichotomy (of Grand Canyon proportions) on who should do what in the house. However, enjoy the audio snippets:

50/50 Household chores vs Comparative Advantage

The importance of changing the Rules in your relationship

I’ve spent the last couple weeks cruising through the documentary Collapse on my IPhone. The documentary is on Michael Ruppert, a police officer turned independent reporter who predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter, From the Wilderness.

There is some pretty scary stuff in Collapse. Mr. Ruppert goes way beyond just fractional reserve banking, fiat currency and Federal Reserve monetary policy, but spends a substantial amount of time on the potential societal impacts for the human population because there are limited resources on planet earth.

This documentary serves more of reality check than another boilerplate conspiracy theory piece. As Mr. Ruppert so eloquently stated:

Of course I’ve been called a conspiracy theorist but I don’t deal in conspiracy theory, I deal with conspiracy fact

The audio above is by far some of the truest and honest reality check I’ve heard since Alan Moore’s Culture of Steam quote regarding the doubling of information.

Another other choice quote from the documentary so you know what we are dealing with:

If your in a camp with a bunch of campers, and a bear attacks, you don’t have to be faster than the bear. You only have to be faster than the slowest camper. – Michael C. Ruppert

Use History as Guide to Help Your Present Situation

If you’ve made it this far, then I applaud you, and if you haven’t then I applaud you anyway. In today’s modern day junk food culture it’s extremely difficult to keep anyone’s attention-even when the information is ripe for the picking, like picking a succulent mango off a tree on a hot day in Kingston. Su, whua yu a wayt fa, pik it, nuh man? (patois translation: What are you waiting for, pick it?)

Knowing the TRUE history and it’s related value is like having a homing beacon in the vast darkness of unchartered space. It’s there as guide to direct you to safety. Why? Because history is a set of examples that that give you a foundation to build an intelligent blueprint for self-mastery and cultural development. As Malcolm X so eloquently stated:

History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

I have broken this post up into 3-mini parts. This is 3a and 3b/3c will be coming in the next couple weeks. I’m trying break up this post into smaller chunks to make it more digestible. In this very integral part of the BLF, we are going to utilize this segment to enlighten people with the seeds of historic truth. We will bury the hear-say and uproot the facts based on empirics. We must all remember that no matter how wise we think we are we will always be students. In this segment we will not only expound on cultural history, but economic, religious, mass-media and nation-state history.

To shorten up the post I have added show/hide buttons on the details of the Forum Participants. Just toggle on/off the more button to see the participants for a particular topic.

A Brief History of African Civilization

Unfortunately, there is no way we can cover the 10,000 years of African Civilization in one segment, but what we can give is a window into some of rich cultural history that Africa has laid for present day societies. Contrary to popular belief, Africa is not only the starting point for civilization, but has contributed an immense dearth of cultural and spiritual enlightenment for today’s societies. This segment is not about “Africanizing” areas in history where there was no African contribution, but to simply give credit to where credit is due. We must understand that Africa was not at the foot of civilization, but one of many heads of civilization that help lay down advanced societal frameworks. Some might scoff and say “Yeah right, look at Africa today, no way a continent like this was part of anything great”. Under this same upside-down logic we can use that same yard stick for many Westernized nations today.

Look at the current economic state U.S, Japan, and many European countries. Currently saddled with so much debt they have to print fake currency and maintain their fiat based scam economy to pay their bills. All your hundreds of years of resource plundering, cheap labor (and slave labor), financial schemes, ponzi political system, draconian usury system, ethnic supremacist legal system and “crony capitalism” cannot save your economies. Where are you now? These are advanced civilizations? Inflating away your problems by printing money out of thin air? Imploding the global food supply by subsidizing your failed agricultural infrastructure with more printed money? Is this what you call a “free market”? Creating financial schemes and hiding behind debt with your off-balance sheet antics? Murdering people in other oil rich countries because you don’t have the courage or the brains to revamp your current energy needs? This is civil? Here’s a reminder from Dr. Henrike Clark on what civility is all about:

Civilization is the art of being civil. The word civil means being peaceful, and there’s nothing peaceful about aggression.

Presently there are many areas of Africa that are going through an economic revolution. All is not well, but there are power centers that’s transforming the entire continent. Now that the past IMF and World Bank loan schemes of gargantuan debt have been forgiven for some countries (rightfully so, because these were draconian and unjust sovereign debt schemes in the first place), many African countries have a bit more wiggle room to use that extra capital to rebuild their country. The goal of this segment is to put the history of African civilization in it’s proper context.

The History of Race and it’s Socio-economic Impacts

Although many would like to deny the acute relationship between race and economics and the rampant level of inequality that still exists today, this section is by far the most insightful. Why? One of the most important systems for wealth preservation is a system known as “generational wealth transfer”. Unfortunately this is social structure that African Americans have been privy to only in last 50 years, and by comparison to other cultures are generational wealth transfer capacity is extremely weak. In short, wealth that was generated at one point in history is systematically transferred to future heirs and family descendants so they can use that same wealth and generate more wealth. A colloquial term for this is “old money”. Old money has been sloshing around for hundreds of years-earning interest and being re-invested in the economy within certain cultural circles. Although many would like you to believe that everyone who is in power today “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps”, I believe that certain circles have “pulled themselves up”, but have hidden the story of how they received the bootstrap in the first place. Some might bask in the self-serving glow of this idiom, but let’s remember that someone needed to produce that “bootstrap”, so you could pull yourself up in the first place.

In this segment we dig in on several types of history-ranging from religious history, history of wealth generation, socio-cultural history, and how the power of media transforms cultural identity. In order for any individual to understand the cultural and social paradigms of today, you HAVE to go back hundreds of years. There is no way around it. However it does not have to be a precarious “Where’s Waldo” approach. History leaves it’s cultural imprint on the minds and behaviors of the masses. It’s akin to tracking your lineage, but instead of “DNA” the empirical imprint is left on the people that you interact with on a day-to-day basis. The people of this world are a dynamic and living embodiment of history in action. We just have to pause and identify why and how we got into our present day situation.

Any questions, comments, or suggestions for this series are welcome. If there are subjects that you believe should be included, let me know. Thanks for reading.

A few days ago while I on the 1 train, I was brought to tears; these tears streamed down my cheeks as I tried to fathom the lack of compassion in so many hearts. My sweet son looked at me with a sort of confusion in his eyes as I inconspicuously wiped my tears away, smiling at him pretending to read a book.

An obvious addict and a young man, no more than 35 years old, was in the same car as I was, sorrowfully telling the story of how he contracted AIDS, how he was jumped by a couple of men a few weeks back, how he could not afford hospital payments to remove fragments of glass from his skull and how he was homeless. I don’t know how much of his story was true or how much of his story was a lie nor was his story the culprit in releasing such sad emotions within me. What I do know is that compassion should never be removed from our hearts regardless of one’s choices in life.

What brought me to tears was not the fact that this young man was an addict or HIV positive or homeless. It is what happened before the train stopped at the 96th street that upset me. This young man shuffled through the car holding up a brown paper cup asking for anyone to help. I personally do not give money to people who ask but I will buy a meal for them. I just don’t know where that money will be end up; maybe on a bottle of beer or on a 5 dollar hit.

As this man shuffled through the car on his bad leg supported by a cane he fell down. He landed right on his back unable to pull himself up again. He landed at the feet of a mid-aged woman and a young man. It might have been hard for him to get up because he lacked strength or maybe he was high or even a combination of both. But why do we as a society not feel the need to lift a finger and assist this man up? Have we become so cold and so disconnected than a human being is so easily neglected? One man actually got up, looked at him like a dog and walked right over him to change seats.

Now, I am all for not supporting those who choose destructive paths in their lives. However, I am also not for leaving someone to roll around like a dog on the floor while he apologizes and struggles to get up. Where is our compassion as a people? This man is still someone’s son and he may even be someone’s father, brother and/or husband. He may not deserve a dollar but he definitely does deserve a helping hand and a little bit of compassion. When the train came to a stop he eventually struggled to pick himself up and waddled of the train.

A reminder to us all!

The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said:

Those who are merciful have mercy shown to them by the All-Merciful.
Show mercy to those who are on earth, then He who is in Heaven will show mercy unto you. (Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi)

Don’t Believe the Hype. Healing comes first.

Hopefully you had a chance to read Part 1 of this series and get an idea of why I’m creating this series. if you haven’t I would suggest you read Part 1 first. so to continue the Forum I would start of with the first segment Don’t Believe the Hype. Healing Comes First.

So what exactly does this mean? Here is a re-cap from the first post:

Without the proper spiritual and mental healing, the next 3 parts of this post won’t mean much. This is about cleaning the mind, body and soul of all the toxic psychological and lifestyle impurities that divert us from greatness. So many of us talk about being powerful and independent but forget about having the proper dignity, candor, and humanity about themselves and the world around them. I believe this will help folks remove the self-hatred, spiritually deadening and self-defeating attitude that undermines our future.

In my eyes, outside of the most obvious barriers to proper self-development (institutional racism, poverty, inequality, pollution of religion, etc), there are three areas that I see have pinned the black community against itself:

1. Self-hatred
2. Loss of cultural history
3. Assimilation

I wish I had time to explain every single area but this is the top three:

Self-Hatred

The weird thing about self-hatred is it can take many forms. Some forms of self-hatred are more muted, while others are move obvious, like changing your skin color or getting a nose-job that reflects the ethnicity of another race. Some forms of self-hatred can take the form of socially or culturally distancing yourself from the ethnic group that you consider is a reminder of “your perceived” inferiority. Notice how I said, “your perceived” inferiority. It’s not that the inferiority actually exists, but that is how the dominant group has made you feel. Like a young women who considers herself inferior because her natural body weight is 160 pounds and anyone below that weight makes her feel like her body is inadequate. The brand of self-hatred I’m referring to is physical self-hatred. Like repressing the hatred you have for your nose, hair texture, skin color, lip size, or even how your body is shaped. These physical forms of self-hatred transform themselves into behaviors called “racial tweaking”. Racial tweaking is not redefining the whole self. It’s just changing a part of the self. Just changing enough to get beyond their own lack of self-esteem. Not necessarily by their own doing, but they have been cultured by the dominant social cultural paradigm to feel inadequate. The mechanism for identity change can be your social environment, entertainment, and other forms of “stereotype threats“. Now self-hatred is not a zero sum game. It’s extremely difficult to address, not to mention realizing you actually suffer from any form of self-hatred. It’s not like you can go to the doisufferfromselfhatred.com and take a test to score yourself. Not easy to tackle and usually requires years upon years to identify. Many of the individuals in this segment of the forum are experts at not only identifying the roots of self-hatred, but offering a plan to remove these mentally unstable stereotype threats.

In short, self-hatred pulls the community apart. Self-hatred does not allow the community to rise to it’s highest potential. Self-hatred breeds other bi-products like mistrust, low self-esteem, and in some extreme instances the coveting of the cultural traditions outside of your own, irrespective if that outside cultural tradition is destructive to you and your surrounding community. Self-hatred raises doubts about what you are personally capable of and the people you consider similar to you in culture, behavior, and tradition. I’ve seen it too many times to dismiss it as some psychological aberration that seldom invades our social space.

Loss of Cultural History

A person who doesn’t know their history is like a fish out of water. History serves as a guide to show you how to handle the future. The beautiful thing about history is we can learn from our ancestors on what worked and what didn’t work. In many instances, we can learn from the mistakes and triumphs from past civilizations while duplicating what worked and abandon what failed. In many instances I see problems of today, that were problems centuries ago. We ignore the past while trying to plant seeds of the future that are dependent on the lessons of the past. We have to recognize that history serves as a blueprint to master self-development. Many of you have heard me say, there is history, then there is “his-story”.

For many years I was a victim of “his-story”. For many years the only thing I was taught about my history was that people of African descent were “willing” slaves and then Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, the Black Reconstruction happened, and then Civil Rights, then Black Power Movement, and then Black people assimilated into America and everything was great. I’m sure for many black students today, you can add Obama is the First Black President then “everything is great”. My first introduction to real “Black History” was in college. After getting in to the specifics of the real history of people of African descent from the Mali and Songhai Empire, to the Universities of Timbuktu, our inventions and cultural footprint, the close ties to Islam and Africa, Kemet and it’s cultural contributions to the world stage, slave rebellions, the entrepreneurial and social successes of Tulsa, the thousands of inventions that created by inventors of African descent, and the list goes on, I was transformed.

Now some might say, ‘Well many ethnicities aren’t aware of their contributions of their ancestors and where they contributed in history”. They seem to be doing fine. That’s easy to overlook when you “haven’t” been implicitly or explicitly written out of the halls of historic significance. When the presidents of the most powerful country are your ethnicity and the faces that appear on one of the most powerful currencies are your ethnicity, and that same ethnicity has reaped the monetary gains for hundreds of years, it’s easy to say, “What’s the big deal?”. This is not an attack on any ethnicity, but a reminder of how history does play a role in how you see yourself. After getting the “Real Story” of what happened over thousands of years leading up to today, I was transformed. I wasn’t the same person I was before. My outlook on what was possible had changed forever. I’m mentioning this because there was a significant change in my social identity which impacted my sense of self. I now knew my place in the world stage and no one could take that away from me again. (inshallah)

Assimilation

Some might say assimilation is all bad. Like most things in life, it depends on where you are standing in the pool. If you are in the shallow end you are okay, but if you are in the deep end (and you can’t swim) you are going under. At the root of assimilation is identity. Who am I and Who do I want to be? The part of assimilation I’m referring to is culture and tradition. What type of social cultural constructs and traditions have we inculcated in our day-to-day life? What are the long term impacts of these decisions? Are these choices to our benefit or our demise? What are the historic roots of these traditions and practices that we’ve chosen or have been subtly coerced to chose? Who are the owners of these traditions and practices and who is the supreme beneficiary if I decide to inculcate a particular behavior into my life? In addition, what are the incentives to abandon my own set of principle for something else? Because the benefits and/or consequences of assimilating is not a zero sum game, you can see that there are a variety of questions one should ask as they develop their cultural and social identity. I don’t have a smoking gun, but I would encourage everyone to incorporate a reductionist approach about where you get your cultural values and social cues from. Seek out the root and sources of your behavior and traditions. Why do you associate yourself with certain cultural ideas? How have you been socialized or in some instances conditioned to believe a particular social idea? How is your identity tied to your social and cultural environment? Once again I have more questions than answers, but this reductionist exercise will serve as path to revealing who you are and to a certain degree, why you are?

Forum Participants:

Dr. Joy Degry Leary – Author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing.
Forum Topic: Self-Hatred, Assimilation, Loss of Cultural History
The first time I heard the term Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS), was I skeptically curious. In my head I felt, “Well slavery was a long time ago, and something that happened hundreds of years ago couldn’t possibly have any significant impact on my behavior or how I see things culturally?”. Well I’m here to say, I was wrong. Props to my home girl Melissa Alvarado for blessing me with this book. Dr. Joy Degry Leary’s books and related media have had a dramatic impact on my life that I now buy this book for different friends and family, and yes, not just black people. All my friends, no matter what their ethnicity, have been introduced to this book. As I said in the past, this book could very well be called “Why Slavery in America has Subconsciously Impacted Everyone in the Country, but Because We (Everyone) Had Cognitive Dissonance About the post-impacts of Slavery, We (Everyone) Thought the Long Term Psychological Collateral Damage did NOT Exist”.

Dr. John Rich – Author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men
Forum Topics: Self-Hatred
I read John Rich’s book a couple months back and what I found was a window into some of the psychological trauma that is endured when black men our held hostage by the violence that surrounds them. In some instances, these incidences of violence became the accepted norm. Now we’ve all heard about the bad news about violence in the black community, but is there any good news? The good news is that we can address this psychological trauma but it’s not easy. Being in an environment of violence creates a lingering feeling of Post-traumatic stress disorder. Like a soldier who has come back from war, it’s hard to turn off that heightened state of awareness and caution because this feeling of insecurity/fear/rage has been baked into the wiring of the mind. What Dr. Rich does is “levels” with us on the severity of violence and cautions us by explaining how dangerous it is to blame the victim. The community has to rally around and support our friends and families who have been victims of ultra-violence.

Sandra L. Bloom – Author of Creating Sanctuary: Toward the Evolution of Sane Societies
Forum Topics: Self-Hatred
I have not read this book yet, but Dr. John Rich was inspired by Sandra Bloom’s work which eventually led to Wrong Place, Wrong Time. What I really like about Sandra Bloom work is she’s attempting at resolving past social and psychological conflicts that destroy communities and tear way at human bonds. Nothing clearly demonstrates what she is trying to accomplish than the description from her book:

“Bloom and her colleagues have come to believe that unresolved, multi-generational, often forgotten trauma leads to a compulsion to repeat that is a powerful force in individual and social history. Because of this unresolved legacy of trauma, all of our social systems are “trauma-organized,” producing institutions which are unresponsive to and often directly counter to human needs.”

Tim Wise – Author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
Forum Topics: Assimilation, Loss of Cultural History
When it comes to articulating the depth, complexity, and history of inequality it doesn’t get better than Tim Wise. Obviously Tim Wise being white and having such a honest approach towards understanding the roots of ethnic privilege in America gives us an an insider view that we seldom hear about. In short, where does ethnicity play a role in the policy choices of America? Where does ethnicity play a role in the control of scare resources on planet earth? How are we all impacted by this “chess game” of self-interest and modern day tribal lines that in some instances fall along ethnic alliances? Tim Wise’s insight is akin to a placing a high powered microscope on racial and ethnic lines that have grown out of the imbalanced and often oppressive roots of America. Our cognitive dissonance about these critical matters is a form of self-medication. If I don’t think about it, it doesn’t exist, but Tim Wise shines a big ole introspective bright light on that dissonance and breaks it down in areas where many so-called “social inequality” commentators fall short.

Dr. Claude M. Steele – Author of Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Issues of Our Time)
Forum Topics: Assimilation, Self-Hatred
The one thing that is really amazing about life, is you reach a point where you think you have absolute insight into a particular area, then someone comes along and knocks you out with a perspective that changes your life forever. Dr. Claude M Steele did that for me. His insight into the roots of what he calls “Stereotype Threats” and how they impact our behavior is worth it’s weight in gold. If the Board of Education had any heart they would make this required reading for every single teacher. I’m actually going to suggest this book to the Board of Education. It should also be required reading for students. The biggest problem with identity dysfunction and how we’ve been culturally socialized, is the roots of our issues are repressed. We wrap these foggy layers of repression around our identity problems in hopes that we can cloak them indefinitely. Once again, more dissonance. It’s extremely dangerous and can have long term effects on how we see ourselves in this grand social experiment, called life. Dr. Steele identifies these stereotype threats with clarity while offering honest solutions. Many of the authors and doctors in this forum offer answers. We are not left holding a bag of problems without having the proper solutions to help us to remove the items in the bag and putting them in a safe place so we are not directly impacted.