FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

THE ROCKY ROAD OF AMERICAS EXPERIMENT WITH FREEDOM

OPPRESSION, RESISTANCE, LIBERATION AND RETALIATION:
An Simple Formula For Quantifying The Human Struggle For Freedom
 THE RUINS OF AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN/KUSHITE METROPOLIS 



In order to see culture you need only open your eyes. In order to comprehend culture one must stand back from it and taking one’s time… endeavor to identify and connect its myriad patterns.

AN EGYPTIAN PHARAOH VANQUISHING HIS ENEMIES 


Who needs a formula to assess whether they are free or in danger of losing their freedom? Certainly not most individuals. Where this formula of critical analysis becomes helpful is when freedom is assessed on a larger scale such as with the example of a cultural model. It is possible that peoples become blinded by the banalities of everyday life causing them to miss important trends in time to act to reverse them. In many ways, mainstream culture can be a social anesthetic and barbiturate.

A CARAVAN SOJOURNS AMIDST ANCIENT EGYPTIAN/KUSHITE RUINS


Culture is a continuous phenomenon. There remain elements of every distinctive culture of men in what we call modernity. Modernity as quantified against American standards is still heavy with vestiges of Victorian and far more ancient cultures thereby defining its diversity and complexity. We are in observance of the collision of multiple cultural patterns that have gained momentum over the past three centuries. The cultural convulsions playing themselves out globally today follow an ancient pattern of oppression, resistance, liberation and retaliation that gained momentum in our lifetime during the twentieth century. But these convulsions were the after-shock of far earlier events that can be traced back to Suleiman, Moorish Culture in the Mediterranean, to the European Enlightenment and reformation.  

A MOORISH KING RETURNS HOME


Look at any culture and you will find at some point its peoples freedoms were threatened and they became oppressed. In the next phase of this social drama the peoples resisted oppression, obtained liberation and thereafter were forced to defend their freedom by disgruntled factions of the failed oppressive forces seeking retaliation. It is an ancient social model. This model played itself out recently in American history during the Civil War, Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction.  It is clearly playing itself out again in response to The Civil Rights Era of the mid twentieth century.

AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN BATTLE SHOWING THE CASUALTIES OF WAR BETWEEN NUBIANS AND ARABS


Ayatollah Khomeni was a resonant marker for what has become a global movement against modernity in our time. But America cultivated a similar brand of fundamentalism disguised as religious zeal but focused on the repression of basic human rights justified by a religious doctrine that had become culturally obsolete. The cultural bias of Americans toward Christianity caused American culture to whitewash and its fundamentalist movement as morally and ethically positive while demonizing its twin, the Islamic movement. The two movements were identical in philosophical dogma, they both sought to wrest freedoms from women, ethnic and religious factions they did not like based on culturally obsolete interpretations of religion. Like the devilish culture of slavery that claimed legitimacy by divine right the undercurrents of American religious fundamentalism has always kept close ties to a racist socioeconomic and political structure that has historically enforced its dogma. The American brand was marketed then as the moral majority and now as the evangelical movement. Today it lustily hisses and grinds its teeth at us poised beneath an umbrella of other fascist and racist factions that look, talk, and walk like the Muslim fundamentalist movement it pretends to despise.  Both are equally evil! Having licked their wounds and sharpened their fangs for decades in the shadows they lunge out at an unsuspecting America caught doting on hard-won freedoms… The lesson to be learned is that before freedom fighters can rest they must cultivate protégés thereby ensuring freedom and democracy will not be erased…

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN/KUSHSITE WOMEN DANCERS AND MUSICIANS


I make no distinction between the Muslim Fundamental Extremists and the American Fundamental Extremists. The former has defaulted to terrorism through bombs the latter has defaulted to terrorism through policy. They are equally evil…

AN EGYPTIAN/KUSHITE COUPLE


The election of Donald Trump is a queer but timely reverberation of the cataclysmic culture that spawned the unholy rise of the moral majority during the Reagan years. American liberals closely fastened their coats against the winter then and ever since have enjoyed a veritable summer of democratic resplendence until this very year. A tide of ultra-conservatism and repression, of religious extremism and intolerance has been idling for 37 years in these United States but this tide is also a resurgence of a familiar tsunami of hate which provoked the civil rights movement 50 years ago. It is a graft from the same tree of cultural barbarity that precipitated the American Civil and Revolutionary wars. The formula has never changed.
AGRARIAN LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT/KUSH

Every human being learns differently, we learn through multiple intelligences. Some of us are kinesthetic learners, others visual learners, some of us learn through mathematics others music, we are all blessed to understand our universe through different lenses. I am a visual learner I see things in 3-dimension, volumetrically and often mathematically when the 3-dimensional concept is abstract such as this example. Here is a formula for social progress the way I see it:

SOCIAL PROGRESS = {((-1) OPPRESSION + (+1) RESISTANCE)} ÷ (LIBERATION (+1)) + RETALIATION (-1))

Where:
1.       SOCIAL PROGRESS = A positive evolution of culture that asserts and implements the egalitarian freedoms of all people.
2.       OPPRESION = A negative, aggressively forceful arrest or removal of the egalitarian freedoms of all people.
3.       RESISTANCE = The positive, peacefully assertive maintenance and procurement of the egalitarian freedoms of all people.
4.       LIBERATION = A positive, temporary state or period during which the egalitarian freedoms of all peoples is enjoyed.
5.       RETALIATION = A negative, temporary state or period during which the egalitarian freedoms of all peoples is being aggressively challenged or threatened.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN/KUSHITE MINSTRELS


This equation is just a re-statement of pure and simple common sense.  Essentially it is a push/pull theory that asserts social progress requires continual maintenance or it will deteriorate or be dismantled by tyranny unless protected.  Its premise is a defensive theory asserting that forces of oppression will ultimately challenge and defeat human liberties if they are not actively maintained. A wise man does not require such elaborate mathematical equations, theorems and postulations, all he needs is to understand human nature and the causes of evil. A just man understands that evil is not what he does not like it is a force larger than himself which continually struggles to erode the triumphs of human social progress and harmony. Nor does he hate evil men driven by forces they do not understand to whom they have relinquished their power to do good.

EGYPTIAN/KUSHITE FARMERS


The cold fact is that we are at this perilous point in human history again because we have not been good stewards of freedom! Europeans who watched policemen become a deadly militia as the SS and Gestapo during the last two world wars have unarmed their police and set into place political safeguards against a one party fascist system. I understand that all of you already know this but what you do not know is how to turn the tide peacefully. The purpose of this article is to identify the snake in the garden. As a community, we must gather our resources in order to remove it. There will always be snakes in the garden my friend there is no garden of Eden for men. That does not mean that we must accept living in hell on earth either. We must work together to counteract the negative work of evil men who delight in poisoning the lives of other men!

KING AKHENATEN AND HIS WIFE NEFERTITI AT COURT


So where are we now? Can we isolate our location along the historical pattern of oppression and injustice in America? At what stage are we and is there any room to turn back before all is lost? Is all lost?

KING TUTANKHAMON AND HIS WIFE AKHESENAMUN AT COURT


Today democracy is at a perilous point where those who are free have lost control of the legal tools required to sustain their freedom. They are forced to react to threats aimed at removing their freedoms by those who now monopolize those legal tools and would not hesitate to sink to despotic oppression.  These men actually believe they are doing good and that is what makes them a danger to all humanity. Our one-party government has two years to wreak havoc on the freedoms of Americans until they can remove senators, congressman and governors in 2018. So in the interim protest and make your voices heard so that congressmen expecting re-election will understand how closely they will be held accountable for their actions between now and re-election.  Remember zealots do not operate the same as normal men. They will sacrifice everything in the name of an ideal, a theoretical construct! There is no balance, rationality or even humanity in their mind all they see is a burning icon of hate and anger! God protect us from such men!

A MEMPHIS DANCER ENTERTAINS AT COURT


But that is why I write! To help undo the evil of other men… Make no mistake! A one-party government and an economy dominated by the monolith of big-business is neither democratic nor free-market capitalism it is fascist! This is the model of government and commerce branded by Hitler and Lenin! I am afraid to even utter the possibility that this glorious nation would be so close to communism as to have only one political party in power without any checks and balances… what kind of democracy is that? It brings tears to my eyes that a nation founded upon the separation of church and state has reverted to feudal medievalism! Certainly, the august founders of this great nation Washington, Jefferson and Adams are convulsing in their tombs at the disgrace bought upon democracy by the rule of a one party controlled government with no checks and balances! I say it is simply Un-American!

ANCIENT MOURNERS AT A ROYAL FUNERAL


No wonder American streets are filled with protestors angry at the utter failure of democracy. The anger overflows into international streets there is a cry and that sound is growing and will be heard in the end. Better that we now make ourselves part of that voice even in the simplest way that we can but in some way. We may not lay idle watching the play of oppression, resistance, liberation and retaliation!

ANCIENT EGYPTIOAN/KUSHITE WARRIARS


FIN


Written by BIGDADDY BLUES



A MOORISH MAN IN CONTEMPLATION