Mental Evolution

No Airplay for the Revolution

Thomas Sangkara, liberator and revolutionary of Burkina Faso

Ahem, the revolution will not be televised
I repeat, the revolution will not be televised.
For centuries, humanity has swapped despots for the hallowed revolutionary, just in the 20th century, the world was truly changed by the likes of Atatürk, Thomas Sankara, Qaddafi and even Nelson Mandela. What these men have in common is that they were once enemies of their respective states and then rose to power by liberating their people from the shackles of oppressive regimes. Their methods varied, but the word that echoed was revolution. The powers that be, tried all they could to suppress knowledge of the sweeping epidemic that was the movements of liberation. The Oppressor used covert means, infiltration, executions, massacres and sabotage. All of this to no avail as the people had tolerated enough under the boots of their leaders.

“Time is a mind trip so be mindful of it ‘cos your minds full of it.”
– Influ(h)ence Ill

Qadaffi, in his more useful days

You Either Die a Hero or Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become the Villain

Indeed time is a funny thing, one step along the time-line inching along with the passing days and seasons change and rearrange the earth we once knew. Tides sweep in and mountains give way, these once mountainous men have had varied success in achieving their ideals, Qaddafi is a perfect case study. Once revered as a hero of the people and for the people, he met his death on the streets of his home town at the hands of a blood thirsty mob, ironically spurred on, as the media would have us believe, by the peaceful ideals of democracy. You see, Qaddafi, had way too much of a good thing and finally, a tumultuous relationship with the global super powers and international authorities had reached its gut wrenching conclusion. He was a liability and had to be removed. This despite achieving a revolution, removing a colonial power and using oil resources to fund free education for his people, just one of his many successes. My point is not to argue the merits of the Qaddafi regime or the decision by NATO to proceed with bombing and the implementation of a no fly zone, but rather to illustrate how a revolutionary can over time become a villain. Qaddafi is perhaps evidence, from a certain viewpoint, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

“Revolutions, never losing, in the struggle of life.”
– Sam I Am the Maximan

What about our craniums? Filled with the Toxic Past.

Revolutions have almost always eventually gone rotten as the leadership transitions from one generation to the next, the dirty seed of power corrupting from within, then comes the inevitable power grab and the slow decay from the bastion of hope, rising from the charred earth like fynbos, to the virulent Port Jackson, whose sole purpose is, to spread its filth. Change then, for the sake of change, is far from what we need. In South Africa, we had averted a civil war to attain our democracy. The so-called bloodless revolution, RIP Hector Peterson, Ashley Kriel, Steve Biko and all the forgotten dead, ushered in democracy yet nothing has really changed in terms of economic power, the same wealthy elite, now sprinkled with the obedient porch monkey, still rule and neo-colonial economics are still the order of the day. While we bicker in parliament, the men in suits play with money on a computer and decide, literally, who gets to eat and who must live in the lower part of human existence, that dark hallway where morality is in direct conflict with survival.

“Wake the fuck up, because you not a fuck up.”
– The Sage

Change, I. Synonyms.

Evolving DNA

If we break it all down, it would seem that we are doomed to repeat this cycle, indeed, revolution means rotation. Rotation, in turn implies a cyclical movement. Aluta Continua. The struggle continues, as long as we believe it will. Again, in our words we find our blockages.
Word. Sound. Power.
Indeed, life is a cycle, the cycle of life is continual creation. Life begetting life. My friends, we have mistaken ourselves into believing that life is something other than this beautiful abundance that lives off itself. A perversion of the truth. A perversion that has taught us to seek struggle. To seek trials. Attracting problems to first, ourselves, thus as a result, our communities and in turn the entire planet. We stand on the edge of a crisis. Ironically, the revolution is proof that good will prevail. The cycle is not completed and we will come full circle once again, like everything in the universe, to balance and wholeness. Martin Luther King Jnr. said, “When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” The change and the self are locked together. The next stage of our cycle is our evolution. The evolution of our being. We became conscious of our individuality and communicated it, now we will become conscious of our oneness and communicate it. This means everyone will return to balance, all that means in a practical sense is for you, the reader, to return to yourself.

“At least, I have one up on the beast, sounds and words are fun. You can’t take all my stuff from me, kak funny. Curse these days do not become a serpent slave, you followers who become hollow ones, those who are first to graze on dirty blades.”
– Allink impassing

You are who you want to be all of the time, when you required to be inspired just draw on your mind.

The Return

Again, I offer no solutions, there are many paths back to ourselves and you know which one is yours to walk. You will face resistance and it will all be your own. It will come disguised as people. Just remember it is your own. The alternative is turning your back on the truth and continuing living in struggle. It is certainly a rabbit hole of a journey and you may meet a few Alices on the road to your center. Just remember, you are who you want to be all of the time. You are not the construct of some obscure randomness, you are what you choose to be, despite all of that.

“Either way dead is what you bound to be, so it’s pointless saying your apostle’s creed, embracing greed, your riches you won’t need, ‘cos when the spirit leaves the vessel the body will be covered by dirt like seeds.”
– Son of the 021

End Game

We shall evolve, beyond this current quagmire. We believe it. We are already there. We are aligned with all.
The ego is as dead as the body.
We burn its corpse, so it may give life to more life.

Peace and Humility
The Sage

A-Om, The Cypher Divine, 360 degrees, we return

What is Freedom?

What is Freedom?

I asked, what is freedom? The sun is setting on an epoch that will be remembered as the closest humanity ever came to a zombie apocalypse. The illusion of freedom has never been stronger. Are we free if we work tirelessly for minimum wage, then commuting to and from work for hours every day, only to end up using our free time just to recover? Humanity has never worked harder and we have never had more people starving than we do now.

Political Freedom

Is freedom the ability to elect our leaders? The civil rights movements from the 50s to the 80s seemed to gain equality for all mankind through sheer will and we salute these freedom fighters and bastions of light against inequality, yet for all their struggle against oppression, We, the Y generation have seemed to turn off our ability to question our authorities in a time where it is sorely needed. Bankers play stock markets with your hard earned money, while insurance companies take gambles. The irony of an insurance company risking money is hardly humorous to the thousands of families who have lost pensions and policies that have sucked their pay-packets for decades. This goes against the very notion of the word insurance.

Free as a puppet

Insanity, it seems, has finally taken hold of reality. These industries lobby for control of your politicians by funding expensive campaigns to help them get elected by you. We have now taken politics to the realm of branding, trends and image, the artificial realm of perceptions; these constructs have no real value they just appeal to our lower selves. The ego, the part of the self that needs feeding to survive. In the USA, the cheerleaders yell, “I am a republican!” in the Queens Country it’s “I vote for the Tory!” and in the capital of inequality, Cape Town, they scream, “I vote DA”. We wear these affiliations and choices as Noddy badges, depicting our loyalty and patriotism, yet how much of these political parties public perception matches up to what they hold themselves accountable to? We have seen it all too often, elections come by, promises are made and they are never kept. Personal scandals seem to be given more attention, than the actual good of the people. This makes one wonder. What is the purpose of all this drum beating? Is it about the stated good of the people or is it about power? Like kids in a high school popularity contest, they badger their opponents with barrage upon barrage of defamation. And we watch with bated breath, this spectacle, a blood sport, it is entertainment.
And that, my friends, is the kicker. Politics, is just entertainment and entertainment was created by us as a distraction from reality. The reality is, we are the only species that pays to live on earth. And damn it, it is getting expensive.

Economic Freedom

Don’t be afraid of what you do not know

Is freedom the ability to have whatever material items we want? It seems we, the Y-generation, have seen it fit to turn the struggle into a “hustle” to the ice ages, all the while burning up the planet so we can be so fresh we smell like amniotic fluid and the rotting carcass of a mammoth. The latest kicks and the smartest phone with the dumbest apps, a farting monkey, come over here; I will fart on your head, for free, dumb arse.
The economic struggle then, ranges from the absurd insecure middle class, to the anguishing working class below and the microscopic elite. The middle class chase after their neighbours collecting debt to finance the elite’s next private jet purchase, while the lower class sustain the entire world on slave labour refitted to suit our modern definitions. You see, what truly, is the difference between a slave and a man frying potatoes at McDonald’s at 4am in the morning or, the miner who spends years, breaking his back in a mine, only to retire with a measly pension and little to no savings or, a victim of human trafficking? We have conveniently swapped the whip for labour laws and legislation proposed to defend the silent worker; labour unions provide a voice to the voiceless worker as well. All these measures exist, yet do not address the core problem; they do dress them up though, in a nice shiny coat, a black suit and tie, with a gas mask ready to send you to the chamber if your voice gets too loud.

The core of this, with mining as an example, is that a piece of paper in the form of a permit or a lease allows a man to own land and all its contained resources, then under economic subjugation he employs other people to retrieve valuable resources for him. He then claims these as his own (legally) and sells it off paying those people in his employ only a fraction of what he makes off the work on their backs. Where is the difference to slavery? The slave’s choice of cotton field?

The lunacy of it all is compounded when we look at what we consider valuable. Let us use usefulness relative to survival and life as a measure for value. Take a diamond for instance. A diamond has no real practical applications barring industrial and could be replaced with other materials if need be, they are not edible and are very expensive to dig out of the ground. Despite all of this they cost more than, say, a loaf of bread, which in actuality has way more use for a human being.

Then to compound this further, we use money as a means to transfer value, yet money is nothing more than a piece of paper and indeed in most cases just a bunch of numbers on a computer screen. Previously, money was backed by a gold standard, but in recent times it has been downgraded to nothing more than a promissory note.
I could go into much more detail but for those interested, watch this.

Economic freedom then, in an economy determined by a fictitious notion of scarcity, is something of a contradiction. For true economic freedom we would have to be free of
a.) Our psychopathic valuation of useless things
b.) Ownership of resources, also
c.) The false deity of money

I say deity, because the negative forces within yourself would have you believe that the struggle is economic. That by safe guarding your financial freedom you will have a passage to explore all that matters to you. Yet once money becomes your God, it will be all you seek to feed. We are bred to be consumers and so we would do our quest for freedom a huge favour by resisting this urge to consume unnecessarily. If we look at humanity as a whole and do not see ourselves separately from our fellow man, it becomes easy to see that economic freedom is an impossibility under current conditions, where one man slaves so another can have a useless gadget and as he plays with his neon multi tentacle dildo, you should ask yourself, is this really the best it can be? Economic freedom then, is just a phrase, representing an idea that cannot function within the current construct; it makes a hypocrite of us all.

Social Freedom

Is the right to be that hypocrite? Yet, are you free to be? We are increasingly becoming regulated by a nanny state. Governments tell women what they can and can’t do with their unborn children, where you can and can’t smoke a cigarette, what you can and can’t smoke, what you can’t take on an international flight, we have to be subjected to invasive searches and constant surveillance all under the auspices of some imagined threat.
You are socially free, as long as you abide the status quo.
True social freedom would be the ADD kid allowed to reach his full potential without Ritalin, Attention Deficit Disorder? Perhaps the poor kid just needs extra ATTENTION? How many of us have had to play small to accommodate others? We are the new age sheep, we do not need a sheep dog, and we keep each other in check.

Untitled Freedom

Perhaps then, freedom needs nothing before it and after. Perhaps, freedom is running in the hills naked and screaming about dandelions and butterflies. Perhaps, freedom is the mad man, given in to the insanity of being sane in this twisted world. Certainly, freedom should not be a word. Certainly freedom exists in that silent part of us, the part only known to us. Certainly freedom is ours, always.
Certainly. We are free. Whenever we choose to be.

You always have a choice