The Demise Of......Huh?

(Very alarming stats in this presentation. His interpretation of the data, though entertaining, was a bit oversimplified, in my non-expert opinion, but it does make one consider the disastrous implications.)

OneLove

:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: "The Ear Is An Organ Made For Love" by E. Ethelbert Miller

It was the language that left us first.

The Great Migration of words. When people
spoke they punched each other in the mouth.
There was no vocabulary for love. Women
became masculine and could no longer give
birth to warmth or a simple caress with their
lips. Tongues were overweight from profanity
and the taste of nastiness. It settled over cities
like fog smothering everything in sight. My
ears begged for camouflage and the chance
to go to war. Everywhere was the decay of
how we sound. Someone said it reminded
them of the time Sonny Rollins disappeared.
People spread stories of how the air would
never be the same or forgive. It was the end
of civilization and nowhere could one hear
the first notes of A Love Supreme. It was as
if John Coltrane had never been born.

I met E. Ethelbert Miller many moons ago at Howard University where he was the Assistant Director of the African American Resource Center. He helped many of us with our term papers and always had a positive word to say. When I was a budding poet back in the day, he provided me with many tips on how to write from my depths. He is perhaps one of the most unassuming and self-possessed people I ever came across. This particular poem pretty much sums him up. It expresses what many of us feel about the world we live in today.

OneLove

:::MME:::

MME's Jam of the Day

(Whoa! Sounds better than the original....Someone sign this dude!)

OneLove

:::MME:::

A Reminder of What We Are

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

"If one wishes to be instructed--not that anyone does--

concerning the treacherous role that memory plays in a human life, 

consider how relentlessly the water of memory refuses to break, 

how it impedes that journey into the air of time. 

Time: the whisper beneath that word is death. 

With this unanswerable weight hanging heavier and heavier over one's head, 

the vision becomes cloudy, nothing is what it seems...
How then, can I trust my memory concerning that particular Sunday afternoon?.

..Beneath the face of anyone you ever loved for true--

anyone you love, you will always love, love is not at the mercy of time 

and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other--

beneath the face of the beloved, however ancient, ruined, and scarred,

is the face of the baby your love once was, and will always be, for you.

Love serves, then, if memory doesn't, and passion, 

apart from its tense relation to agony, labors beneath the shadow of death.

Passion is terrifying, it can rock you, change you, bring your head under, 

as when a wind rises from the bottom of the sea, 

and you're out there in the craft of your mortality, alone."

— James Baldwin 

Anthem For Our Times

MADE Blog on Vimeo.

With millions of people unemployed, underemployed and/or just plain broke (or newly graduated with no job prospects in sight), this cut by one of the most underrated artist of our times, Aloe Blacc, accurately captures the turmoil of our times. When he sings:


Bad times are comin' and I reap what I don't sow
Well let me tell you somthin' all that glitters ain't gold
It's been a long old trouble / long old troublesome road
And I'm looking for somebody come and help me carry this load..


You can viscerally feel the pain & disappointment of millions whose lives have been overturned by the current economic crisis.

His "Mama Hold My Hand" is another brilliant piece which he delivers with a distinctively rough-hewn timbre showcasing the unmistakable voice of experience, sincerity & love. This cut ranks up there with "I'll Always Love My Mama" by The Intruders, "Song for Mama" by BoyzIIMen & "Dear Mama" by 2Pac. Check it out:
MADE Blog on Vimeo.

OneLove


:::MME:::

Dostoyevsky : Notes from an Underground Observer

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's. 

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. 

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.


The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month. 

The soul is healed by being with children.
 
Beauty will save the world.

The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!


Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery..

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unraveled, and if you spend your whole life unraveling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

(Note: Funny how the wise from every race & culture tend to encircle the same eternal flame).  


OneLove


:::MME:::

A Sadistic Love Story

                                               




                                            Capitalism- A Love Story

(At some point, all the pathetic apologists for a dying paradigm will have to burn their illusions & reclaim what has been taken.....)


OneLove


:::MME:::

Musings

Winston Churchill

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -Winston Churchill

(Ironically, this quote is taken from a man with a notorious lack of principles and scruples. According to many historians, he was involved in one way or another in nearly every disaster that befell the 20th century. That he could have a moment of clarity and utter the above is quite a strange paradox).

OneLove

:::MME:::

MME's Jam of the Day

Youssou N'Dour has a voice that really penetrates to your core. I've written about this amazing Senegalese artist on a previous post, but this particular cut, "Hope", was not included in the playlist I created at the time. I don't understand what he is saying in the song, but judging from the title and his emotive vocal delivery, you can sense its positive vibe. It was taken from one of my favorite Youssou N'Dour albums, "Eyes Open"which has a number of timeless compositions on it. Check out the award-winning documentary, "Return to Goree" which is a travelogue of Youssou's global tour to study jazz music and its place in the African diaspora.



OneLove


:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: "Lies About Love" by D.H Lawrence

We are all liars, because

the truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow,

whereas letters are fixed,

and we live by the letter of truth.

The love I feel for my friend, this year,

is different from the love I felt last year.

If it were not so, it would be a lie.

Yet we reiterate love! love! love!

as if it were a coin with a fixed value

instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud. 

::::MME::::

The Invisible War

This is a very good documentary that is well worth your time to absorb & reflect upon.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Inventing Reality

Stay alert..

:::MME:::

Wither Education?

 "We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."

- Carl Bernstein


If you think the teacher cheating scam was disgusting enough, check this out:





OneLove


:::MME:::

MME's Jam of the Day

St Lucia's own Khrys Bailey & Ronald 'Boo' Hinkson do a fantastic job on this chilled & conscious flow entitled "Blessings". 


OneLove


:::MME:::

Musings

“A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”~~Dr Martin Luther King

OneLove


:::MME:::

Living Beyond One's Means (An Infographic Nightmare)

(Click to enlarge for greater clarity)


Be cautious...

OneLove

:::MME:::

The Wisdom of the Original Americans

Hopi Native American Elder (C)DanielStainer.com

Shaman Catching Dreams 

"Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorney or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. We were in a really bad way before the white man came, and I don’t know how we managed to get along without the basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society."


- John (Fire) Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

" Treat the earth well.
It was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children.

- Ancient Indian Proverb

"When you were born, you cried
and the world rejoiced.
Live your life
so that when you die,
the world cries and you rejoice."

- White Elk

"Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect."


- Chief Seattle, 1854


"May the stars carry your sadness away,
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty,
May hope forever wipe away your tears,
And, above all, may silence make you strong."

- Chief Dan George

Earth, Teach Me
Earth teach me quiet ~ as the grasses are still with new light.
Earth teach me suffering ~ as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility ~ as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring ~ as mothers nurture their young.
Earth teach me courage ~ as the tree that stands alone.
Earth teach me limitation ~ as the ant that crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom ~ as the eagle that soars in the sky.
Earth teach me acceptance ~ as the leaves that die each fall.
Earth teach me renewal ~ as the seed that rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself ~ as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness ~ as dry fields weep with rain.

- An Ute Prayer



"What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset."


- Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator 1830 - 1890


Lakota Prayer


"Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery,
teach me how to trust
my heart,
my mind,
my intuition,
my inner knowing,
the senses of my body,
the blessings of my spirit.
Teach me to trust these things
so that I may enter my Sacred Space
and love beyond my fear,
and thus Walk in Balance
with the passing of each glorious Sun."


(According to the Native People, the Sacred Space
is the space between exhalation and inhalation.
To Walk in Balance is to have Heaven (spirituality)
and Earth (physicality) in Harmony).



"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion;
respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life."



Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.


When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.


Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision."

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled
with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."

- Tecumseh (Crouching Tiger) Shawnee Nation 1768-1813

"O' GREAT SPIRIT
help me always
to speak the truth quietly,
to listen with an open mind
when others speak,
and to remember the peace
that may be found in silence."

- Cherokee Prayer

"When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money."

- Cree Prophecy

"Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other,
thus should we do,
for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World."

- Black Elk

"Certain things catch your eye,
But pursue only those
that capture your heart."

- Native American saying

"Give thanks for unknown blessings
already on their way."

- Native American saying

"There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled,
which leads to an unkown, secret place.
The old people came literally to love the soil,
and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of
being close to a mothering power.
Their teepees were built upon the earth
and their altars were made of earth.
The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.
That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of
propping himself up and away from its life giving forces.
For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply
and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of
life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him."


- Chief Luther Standing Bear




OneLove


:::MME:::

A Child Under Different Skies

(By the time you've read this caption, three of these children will be gone)

In seperateness lies the world's great misery, in compassion lies the world's true strength.~~Buddha

The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5, according to U.S. estimates. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished & has declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones, bringing the total number to five. Out of a population of roughly 7.5 million, the U.N. says 3.2 million Somalis are in need of immediate life-saving assistance. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated to fight the hunger crisis, but the U.N. says it needs hundreds of millions more.


It's a crazy world we're living in: More attention is paid to the vanities of some vacuous celebrity than to critical issues that require immediate attention. Starving children do not have the luxury of waiting for the world to pay attention to their need. They are slowly starving to death as their loved ones look on, hopelessly.


Here's how you can HELP

OneLove 

:::MME:::

E=MC² : Equation Of Life and Death

(Excellent documentary which highlights Mankind's propensity for evil as well as good.)

OneLove


::MME:::

Bullshit

Bullshit. We know it when we hear it and we can sometimes sense that we're about to be hit upside the head with it. Sometimes we even offer up some bullshit ourselves just to pass the time or exit out of a bullshit conversation we no longer want to be part of.  Oftentimes we regurgitate bullshit without even knowing it (like saying deregulation is bad for the economy) & every now & then, we find ourselves in a loop when we realize we can't bullshit a bullshitter & things just fall apart (stalemate). It's all part of the human experience, I guess. There is a form a bullshit, however, that one has to be careful of : the odorless & invisible bullshit that destroys families & brings down entire nations. 

With all this bullshit in mind, I stumbled upon a classic work by moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt entitled "On Bullshit" which echoes much of what most of us already know. Here are some choice quotes from this 67-page gem:


- "Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about."

- "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction."

- "For the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that is phony. In order to appreciate this distinction, one must recognize that a fake or a phony need not be in any respect (apart from authenticity itself) inferior to the real thing. What is not genuine need not also be defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong."

- "Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, of the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the responses of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are".
  

- "Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures, are indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as

We will forever be surrounded by bullshit & it's almost impossible to get rid of it as it is ingrained in our culture. According to the author,  "to combat bullshit is to make it clear that you recognise it and then to ridicule it.Make the bullshitter feel humiliated, not simply because of his failure to hoodwink you but also because of the silliness of what he says. We might not be able to stamp it out altogether, but we would certainly be able to reduce the stench".


Gotta love it!


:::MME:::

 

Musings

Che Guevara

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

- T.E. Lawrence, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

OneLove

:::MME:::

Something Wicked This Way Comes.....

(Idiot Savant)

(Bill Maher offers some insightful commentary here).

Stay awake....

:::MME:::

Overturning Educational Paradigms

(This is a very interesting animation. It was adapted from a presentation given by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert. I was reminded of the work of the great Paulo Freire ("Pedagogy of the Oppressed")throughout the presentation--Great stuff!!)

OneLove

:::MME:::

Musings

(devolve)

"Our faith in the inevitability of human progress constitutes an inability to grasp the tragic nature of history. Human history is one of constant conflict between the will to power and the will to nurture and protect life. Our greatest achievements are always intertwined with our greatest failures. Our most exalted accomplishments are always coupled with our most egregious barbarities. Science and industry serve as instruments of progress as well as instruments of destruction. The Industrial Age has provided feats of engineering and technology, yet it has also destroyed community, spread the plague of urbanization, uprooted us all, turned human beings into cogs and made possible the total war and wholesale industrial killing that has marked the last century. These technologies, even as we see them as our salvation, are rapidly destroying the ecosystem on which we depend for life."

~~Chris Hedges

MME's Jam of the Day

OneLove

:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

Nelson Mandela on Robben Island

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

(Nelson Mandela, perhaps the greatest statesman in modern history, once stated in an interview that during his darkest moments in prison, his spirit was lifted and sustained by the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley, and that he would not have made it through prison if not for the words of this poem.)


OneLove


:::MME:::

Failed State

“The Republicans have been absolutely determined to make certain that the rich and large corporations not contribute one penny for deficit reduction, and that all of the sacrifice comes from the middle class and working families in terms of cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, LIHEAP, community health centers, education, Head Start, nutrition, MILC, affordable housing and many other vitally important programs.
I cannot support legislation like the Reid proposal which balances the budget on the backs of struggling Americans while not requiring one penny of sacrifice from the wealthiest people in our country.  That is not only grotesquely immoral, it is bad economic policy.” ~~ from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ website:

(With America’s wealthy as rich as the tycoons of the Gilded Age & not a penny from them to help with the massive U.S deficit? This is a bold-faced hijacking & the caviar-munching bastards are laughing all the way to the bank! This debt ceiling fiasco confirms for me that the U.S has officially (&shamelessly) become a banana republic. Check out Paul Krugman's piece in the New York Times).

OneLove

:::MME:::

Carl Jung's Illumination

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."- Carl Jung

When asked whether he believed in God, Carl Jung paused to think about it then admitted that he could not answer the question because it was not a matter of belief-he responded, "I don't believe - I know". His response reminded me of something the late great James Cleveland bellowed in one of his songs (I forgot which one) that has always stuck with me, "When you know what you know...". Bob Marley also responded in like fashion when he said, "Rasta don't believe, Rasta know". No arguments needed--spiritual truth is spiritual truth, take it or leave it.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Notes on Apathy

Science may have found a cure for many evils,
but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all-
the apathy of human beings.

                                        The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy  
                                     is not so dangerous to the public welfare 
                                       as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.

Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.  

It's way past the hour.....


OneLove

:::::MME:::::