Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Civilisation Is Overrated
That's it, really. In the context of the ammount of human suffering that's been created with each advancement in civilisation, Western and Eastern, we would probably be better off today if we had just remained hunter gatherers.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Fear: The Universal Capitalist Whip
Written in response to this opinion piece : http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/FEAR-The-driver-behind-white-economic-power-20120624
perfectly normal paranoia drives capitalism in every part of
the world, but that has nothing to do with why whites still dominate the south
african business scape. hundreds of years of exploitation and benefitting from
basically free black labour has put the majority of the country's wealth in
white hands.
the reason it will continue to remain in white hands is that the
vast majority of blacks don't learn the lessons about delayed gratification and
entrepreneurship you are teaching your kids until much later in life. a lot of
blacks are still caught in the baas mentality instilled by the apartheied
system; "sell your labour cheaply to Umlungu, be grateful that he's giving you work at all, and brown nose at every given opportunity to ensure that you don't get fired ." blacks need to develop a different attitude/culture towards money
and work. and it is happening. slowly. generation by generation.
white south
africans: can we stop skirting around the issues, making scathing
generalisations about political parties, and give frank, constructive criticism
of the state of the nation? Our shared past is not just history, it has a very
direct influence on the lived experience of millions of south africans, so stop
trying to sweep apartheid under the rug like it never happened. It's the reason
there is such a small percentage of market participation among our majority population
grouping.
you'll realise soon enough that the issue here isn't black vs white
or anc vs da but growing the nations's economy so we can all have a seat at the table.
black prosperity equals south african prosperity.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
a salutation from the heart
Written September 17, 2007
I’ve always promised that I would take a minute out of my “busy” schedule to appreciate all the people I’m fortunate enough to call Friend, to in some small measure translate the experiences I have shared with each one of you and the incredible joy I’ve derived from every second of every chill session, jammie convo, games of touch at kops fields, fb wall-to-wall, arb encounters in the food court, beach 'n hubbly jams and all the nights out that honestly would have meant nothing without the mates who were there to help create and preserve the memory’s of those nights.
Coming up to the end of a year that will see most of us graduating and embarking on our respective journeys into the working world and all that comes with it, I thought it appropriate to make my hearts' salute to you all in the only way I know how; I wish I could paint a wall mural on the high-way or pen a song but alas the gods have chosen to impart those gifts to others.. so in the absence of any other medium of expression I will use what I have been told I have some skill with, words..
Nearly losing a good friend and comrade in the fight against the tyranny of social suppression (you know who you are) sparked an internally directed inquiry into what, in the conflagration of life's constant exchange of losing and finding, we will be allowed to carry with us when all else has turned to ash.. a good eight months later I’m moved to say that I have not found anything that would have even the smallest meaning to anyone who hasn't lost someone they love, but I will do my best to convey the conclusion I have come to none the less.
The fundamental question mankind's existence has been the source of unquantifiable amounts of discussion and literature, all with little evidence of a final solution or indeed; the answer to life, love and everything else. I've come to the realisation that we all have to find within ourselves the reason for taking all the crap we have to put up with, sift through it and find something on which to base the conclusion that in the end , it’s all worth it. I think it the height of hubris for any individual to assume (and in far too many cases assert) the right to dictate to others what to do (or not to do) to be happy or lead what they call a “good life”, we’ve got enough psycho-social constraint placed on us from birth without any of that, thank you very much!
“So what has this got to do with me?” you might be wondering at this point, the answer is simple; everything! We’ve all, at some level, given thought to the dual nature of life and death, the inevitability of the latter and the idea of immortality. I’ve decided that being immortal wouldn’t be all that much fun unless everyone else was as well (which brings up it’s own set of problems); watching generation upon generation of friends and family flower and wither while you subsist would be an empty and hollow existence. So what alternative is there? I was reading the epitaph written on my father’s tombstone when I recently went to pay respect to his memory, and it struck me as strange that the whole of someone’s existence could be compressed into a sentence of a few lines, possibly even more shocking was the hyphen between his dates of birth and death; “that’s it?!” looking back on that moment I gradually came to realise that ultimately all we have, when the pursuit of fame and material wealth have been rendered irrelevant by the Great Denominator, is the memory we leave behind in the hearts and minds of those who have gotten to know us most intimately.
If ones’ life can be circumscribed by a single line between to sets of numbers; would it be foolish to assume that to be the answer to (or at east a plausible stab in the dark at) the question of the meaning of life? Possibly, but following the logic of this idea has formed the basis for my recent thought on the subject and ultimately what you are reading right now. How simple would life and all the endeavours of the human heart and mind seem if we were all to live on the premise of being able to dictate how much weight or gravity is carried by that short line between our two most significant dates? Think for a second, of being able to write, in the present, what will be read on your epitaph when your soul no longer has a place to call home on this plane of existence.. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks and let me tell you it’s been a mind trip to beat the effects of any hallucinogen! (not that I’ve ever used any :P) I’ve decided to do a bit of the only plausible form of time travelling I’ve come across and make conscious effort to make sure that the lines (both kinds) engraved on my bit of granite will be read with fondness and warm remembrances.
So, you might still be asking what this has to do with you. I’ll explain in as simple a way as my limited eloquence allows; if you hold to the idea that all of the experiences we go through, consciously and otherwise, are all recorded in a part of our minds called our souls, and that this part of us is what traverses the boundaries of this world when we leave it, it becomes almost painfully obvious that our memories, and those others have of us, is the most important thing in the world! (There is evidence in psycho-analytical research that lends weight to this idea; it’s all more scientifically phrased but the logical parallels are hard to ignore, so I’m not just sucking my thumb on this one ^_^ ) The sights, sounds, smells, sensations of touch and taste all form a single image that is recorded in crystal clarity and stored in our memory banks for us to recall, with varying degrees of ease, at any time we want to! With this in mind, it makes perfect sense to me to flood this part of our minds with as many ‘good vibes’ memories as we can, ‘cause later in life all we’ll have are those memories we’ve created along the way.
There’s so much unnecessary shit we are forced to trudge through because of the socio-economic system we live in, things we may have no real desire to do (at the time) or remember later on. Shining to eclipse these with the brightness and fervour of a million suns are all the memories made with friends and family; of unadulterated, unconditional love; glowing serenity, peace and contentment… these are what I hope will figuratively form the line between 25/02/1986 and the day that I take my last breath. In the past few years (especially the last three) i’ve been lucky enough to find a whole treasure-trove of friends (some of whom have become like family) to help create these gems with, and if you’re reading this, you are one of them. This is my way of saying, in quite a few more words than I originally intended, that it’s been f#&@ing awesome jamming with you!! A slightly sensationalised translation of the meaning of the Hindu greeting 'namaste' reads a little something like this,
"I honour the place within you where the entire universe resides,
the place within you of love and light, of peace and truth where, when you are
in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us."
I wasn’t entirely sure of the meaning of this until last week, and that in itself lead to the realisation that I may never truly understand the full import of the phrase, but I thought it an appropriate ending to this salutation. Whether we see each other as often as we’d like to, or stick to the plans we make to hook up, I want you to know that, from my heart of hearts, I honour you.
I’ve always promised that I would take a minute out of my “busy” schedule to appreciate all the people I’m fortunate enough to call Friend, to in some small measure translate the experiences I have shared with each one of you and the incredible joy I’ve derived from every second of every chill session, jammie convo, games of touch at kops fields, fb wall-to-wall, arb encounters in the food court, beach 'n hubbly jams and all the nights out that honestly would have meant nothing without the mates who were there to help create and preserve the memory’s of those nights.
Coming up to the end of a year that will see most of us graduating and embarking on our respective journeys into the working world and all that comes with it, I thought it appropriate to make my hearts' salute to you all in the only way I know how; I wish I could paint a wall mural on the high-way or pen a song but alas the gods have chosen to impart those gifts to others.. so in the absence of any other medium of expression I will use what I have been told I have some skill with, words..
Nearly losing a good friend and comrade in the fight against the tyranny of social suppression (you know who you are) sparked an internally directed inquiry into what, in the conflagration of life's constant exchange of losing and finding, we will be allowed to carry with us when all else has turned to ash.. a good eight months later I’m moved to say that I have not found anything that would have even the smallest meaning to anyone who hasn't lost someone they love, but I will do my best to convey the conclusion I have come to none the less.
The fundamental question mankind's existence has been the source of unquantifiable amounts of discussion and literature, all with little evidence of a final solution or indeed; the answer to life, love and everything else. I've come to the realisation that we all have to find within ourselves the reason for taking all the crap we have to put up with, sift through it and find something on which to base the conclusion that in the end , it’s all worth it. I think it the height of hubris for any individual to assume (and in far too many cases assert) the right to dictate to others what to do (or not to do) to be happy or lead what they call a “good life”, we’ve got enough psycho-social constraint placed on us from birth without any of that, thank you very much!
“So what has this got to do with me?” you might be wondering at this point, the answer is simple; everything! We’ve all, at some level, given thought to the dual nature of life and death, the inevitability of the latter and the idea of immortality. I’ve decided that being immortal wouldn’t be all that much fun unless everyone else was as well (which brings up it’s own set of problems); watching generation upon generation of friends and family flower and wither while you subsist would be an empty and hollow existence. So what alternative is there? I was reading the epitaph written on my father’s tombstone when I recently went to pay respect to his memory, and it struck me as strange that the whole of someone’s existence could be compressed into a sentence of a few lines, possibly even more shocking was the hyphen between his dates of birth and death; “that’s it?!” looking back on that moment I gradually came to realise that ultimately all we have, when the pursuit of fame and material wealth have been rendered irrelevant by the Great Denominator, is the memory we leave behind in the hearts and minds of those who have gotten to know us most intimately.
If ones’ life can be circumscribed by a single line between to sets of numbers; would it be foolish to assume that to be the answer to (or at east a plausible stab in the dark at) the question of the meaning of life? Possibly, but following the logic of this idea has formed the basis for my recent thought on the subject and ultimately what you are reading right now. How simple would life and all the endeavours of the human heart and mind seem if we were all to live on the premise of being able to dictate how much weight or gravity is carried by that short line between our two most significant dates? Think for a second, of being able to write, in the present, what will be read on your epitaph when your soul no longer has a place to call home on this plane of existence.. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks and let me tell you it’s been a mind trip to beat the effects of any hallucinogen! (not that I’ve ever used any :P) I’ve decided to do a bit of the only plausible form of time travelling I’ve come across and make conscious effort to make sure that the lines (both kinds) engraved on my bit of granite will be read with fondness and warm remembrances.
So, you might still be asking what this has to do with you. I’ll explain in as simple a way as my limited eloquence allows; if you hold to the idea that all of the experiences we go through, consciously and otherwise, are all recorded in a part of our minds called our souls, and that this part of us is what traverses the boundaries of this world when we leave it, it becomes almost painfully obvious that our memories, and those others have of us, is the most important thing in the world! (There is evidence in psycho-analytical research that lends weight to this idea; it’s all more scientifically phrased but the logical parallels are hard to ignore, so I’m not just sucking my thumb on this one ^_^ ) The sights, sounds, smells, sensations of touch and taste all form a single image that is recorded in crystal clarity and stored in our memory banks for us to recall, with varying degrees of ease, at any time we want to! With this in mind, it makes perfect sense to me to flood this part of our minds with as many ‘good vibes’ memories as we can, ‘cause later in life all we’ll have are those memories we’ve created along the way.
There’s so much unnecessary shit we are forced to trudge through because of the socio-economic system we live in, things we may have no real desire to do (at the time) or remember later on. Shining to eclipse these with the brightness and fervour of a million suns are all the memories made with friends and family; of unadulterated, unconditional love; glowing serenity, peace and contentment… these are what I hope will figuratively form the line between 25/02/1986 and the day that I take my last breath. In the past few years (especially the last three) i’ve been lucky enough to find a whole treasure-trove of friends (some of whom have become like family) to help create these gems with, and if you’re reading this, you are one of them. This is my way of saying, in quite a few more words than I originally intended, that it’s been f#&@ing awesome jamming with you!! A slightly sensationalised translation of the meaning of the Hindu greeting 'namaste' reads a little something like this,
"I honour the place within you where the entire universe resides,
the place within you of love and light, of peace and truth where, when you are
in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us."
I wasn’t entirely sure of the meaning of this until last week, and that in itself lead to the realisation that I may never truly understand the full import of the phrase, but I thought it an appropriate ending to this salutation. Whether we see each other as often as we’d like to, or stick to the plans we make to hook up, I want you to know that, from my heart of hearts, I honour you.
some existential pepper with your primordial soup?
Written in response to a friends' posts, October 1, 2007:
Dude this is the thing I’ve been grappling with for the last three years... if God is in everything, why does so much of the worlds strife seem to centre around Him? I think I might have found an answer, not THE answer, but something to help me sleep without nightmares of a world that is nothing but the Greatest (I don't say this lightly) Practical Joke of All Time [check out he nebula pic]
Let me start at the end, which is the also the beginning... sorry my mind is leaking, haven't slept in 36. Yes, the beginning: God is in everything, ergo God IS Everything.
Scientists haven't been able to determine the exact point in time when the Soul enters the human body, or where such an entity would reside, or even where it goes when the heart has given up... the reason for this i think is scientists flat (in my opinion self-defeating) refusal to acknowledge anything that smells even a little like metaphysics ... let's leave that be for now. So this leads us to the question of what the vital essence of the human being is, what's missing when all the other necessary conditions for the sustenance of human life still hold?
Looking at the human brain and it's normal functions while man subsists, the most exciting thing for me are the synapses that are constantly firing off; from your medulla oblongata which regulates your heart rate and breathing without your conscious volition, to the signals being shot along your nervous system at mind-bending speeds telling individual muscles in your entire body to move in perfect unison enabling you to take a single step.. all this is electrical energy, a kind of energy that is self sustaining, irreplaceable, perfect..
Thinking of the human body as a machine complicated beyond our ability to fully understand, you've got to be drawn logically to a design, and by extension a designer.. follow me into the designer's mind, to look at the Purpose that is programmed inherently into the child of His thought. A knife is designed to perform a specific function, the same with a tennis ball or pencil or kite; these objects can be put to many other uses, granted, but they were designed with one Purpose in mind. Apply this to mankind’s design; try to envision the Purpose in our design, Divine purpose if you will.. What is our purpose? Back to this later..
Back to the energy which moves us; Einstein could find no other justification for the idea of an afterlife except for the principle of Law of Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, simply transferred from one form to another.. Postulate with me that there is an energy transfer that takes place, guided by God's hand, at conception, into the human body, 'sparking' life.. This same transfer takes place at death, out of the human body, 'extinguishing' life.. Where did this energy come from? Where does it go? I think that the source of this divine energy IS God...
If there were some sort of Budget of energy for this universe (which I believe there is); I can't accept that OUR universe is infinite, this notion is flawed in the same way that the IDEA of time is, it's all relative. The same applies to distance and other physically measurable dimensions (I’ve got an argument to support this, but it would take waaay too long to explain here). back to the Budget; all of Creation ( as far as we are able to perceive it) is connected through this Energy, and this Budget needs to be maintained (give or take) the same way that the Earth's energy budget is maintained (ask an EGS student for an explanation, I read about it but can't explain fully yet, give me time) and the bits of it that all these small bits of Gods creation hold while they occupy this plane of existence have to give back their Energy when they're no longer using it, to maintain the balance.. Think for a second of where that Energy goes. In my mind it goes back to the Source, the very Spark of energy that set the 'Primordial Soup' to boiling, Creating, from the lightest element to the heaviest (and back again) what we now know to be our Universe.
God is the Source, the Beginning and the End, the Energy, the Architect...Everything!
But we are still no closer to having an idea of what the Purpose that he programmed into us is... if you figure it out dude, let me, know...
Okay, I actually came up with an answer: http://frustratedutterancesofabrokenmind.blogspot.com/2012/07/let-there-be-love-part-i.html
Dude this is the thing I’ve been grappling with for the last three years... if God is in everything, why does so much of the worlds strife seem to centre around Him? I think I might have found an answer, not THE answer, but something to help me sleep without nightmares of a world that is nothing but the Greatest (I don't say this lightly) Practical Joke of All Time [check out he nebula pic]
Let me start at the end, which is the also the beginning... sorry my mind is leaking, haven't slept in 36. Yes, the beginning: God is in everything, ergo God IS Everything.
Scientists haven't been able to determine the exact point in time when the Soul enters the human body, or where such an entity would reside, or even where it goes when the heart has given up... the reason for this i think is scientists flat (in my opinion self-defeating) refusal to acknowledge anything that smells even a little like metaphysics ... let's leave that be for now. So this leads us to the question of what the vital essence of the human being is, what's missing when all the other necessary conditions for the sustenance of human life still hold?
Looking at the human brain and it's normal functions while man subsists, the most exciting thing for me are the synapses that are constantly firing off; from your medulla oblongata which regulates your heart rate and breathing without your conscious volition, to the signals being shot along your nervous system at mind-bending speeds telling individual muscles in your entire body to move in perfect unison enabling you to take a single step.. all this is electrical energy, a kind of energy that is self sustaining, irreplaceable, perfect..
Thinking of the human body as a machine complicated beyond our ability to fully understand, you've got to be drawn logically to a design, and by extension a designer.. follow me into the designer's mind, to look at the Purpose that is programmed inherently into the child of His thought. A knife is designed to perform a specific function, the same with a tennis ball or pencil or kite; these objects can be put to many other uses, granted, but they were designed with one Purpose in mind. Apply this to mankind’s design; try to envision the Purpose in our design, Divine purpose if you will.. What is our purpose? Back to this later..
Back to the energy which moves us; Einstein could find no other justification for the idea of an afterlife except for the principle of Law of Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, simply transferred from one form to another.. Postulate with me that there is an energy transfer that takes place, guided by God's hand, at conception, into the human body, 'sparking' life.. This same transfer takes place at death, out of the human body, 'extinguishing' life.. Where did this energy come from? Where does it go? I think that the source of this divine energy IS God...
If there were some sort of Budget of energy for this universe (which I believe there is); I can't accept that OUR universe is infinite, this notion is flawed in the same way that the IDEA of time is, it's all relative. The same applies to distance and other physically measurable dimensions (I’ve got an argument to support this, but it would take waaay too long to explain here). back to the Budget; all of Creation ( as far as we are able to perceive it) is connected through this Energy, and this Budget needs to be maintained (give or take) the same way that the Earth's energy budget is maintained (ask an EGS student for an explanation, I read about it but can't explain fully yet, give me time) and the bits of it that all these small bits of Gods creation hold while they occupy this plane of existence have to give back their Energy when they're no longer using it, to maintain the balance.. Think for a second of where that Energy goes. In my mind it goes back to the Source, the very Spark of energy that set the 'Primordial Soup' to boiling, Creating, from the lightest element to the heaviest (and back again) what we now know to be our Universe.
God is the Source, the Beginning and the End, the Energy, the Architect...Everything!
But we are still no closer to having an idea of what the Purpose that he programmed into us is... if you figure it out dude, let me, know...
Okay, I actually came up with an answer: http://frustratedutterancesofabrokenmind.blogspot.com/2012/07/let-there-be-love-part-i.html
Socio-ecnomic change, one generation at a time
Written October 4, 2007:
You see the issue here is that although the black people of South Africa have won their political freedom, we are still miles from achieving economic emancipation. One might argue that there are plenty of Black millionaires in the country, but as the statistics above show, this is still far from an equitable distribution of this country’s wealth. Until the proportions of wealth and resource distribution are reversed, we cannot claim to have achieved true freedom.
What needs to happen is this; young, Black, educated South Africans need to rise up and take their rightful place in South African society. They must play the role that only they can, thanks partly to their unique historical legacy, in the transformative movement already building up steam. They must prove, once and for all, that one should not depend on others to for help in changing the adverse socio-economic circumstance one might find themselves in (regardless of the causes), but should devise means of lifting themselves and their community out of poverty and indignity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating the kind of forced seizure of resources that has left our neighbours in Zimbabwe with the highest rate of inflation in the world. No. I’m talking about educated Black men and women using the tools they’ve gained through Universities and Technical colleges to re-order the power balance in this country.
In addition to this, workshops need to be established in our communities on a massive scale, promoting the spirit of entrepreneurial ambition and establishing a culture of saving; it gains our country nothing learning to make money without knowing how to spend it wisely. The government needs to make it’s presence felt through the media, actively playing a role in the kind of programming being fed to us on a daily basis; if the right kind of messages are being broadcast over the media and reinforced in the home environment, the media can play a pivotal role in ensuring that the perception of wealth is changed in the minds of our people. The images and messages need to encourage education (by extension knowledge production) firstly, initiative and ambition secondly, and thirdly contextualise them in the spirit of Ubuntu. These values are to create the foundation for an ideology that will transform the perception surrounding Empowerment, not to be thought of as means with which to grow individual/personal wealth, but to benefit the families, communities and ultimately the country of those who will pioneer this new generation of (mentally) Empowered Blacks.
These are necessary measures, and I am unapologetic about advocating the fundamental principles underpinning them. If you think about it you’ll see that the results of a process of this kind will in time benefit not just the Black grouping of our population, but the whole; it will increase the number of economically active citizens, raise the level of competition in the market (not for jobs, but for contracts), allow this level of competition to produce world class specialists in a variety of fields, attract foreign capital, strengthen the economy, give the government more lateral space for social spending (focusing primarily on education, centrally engraining the concept of, what I will for want of a better phrase, call socio-capitalism) on schools, health care (including nigh aggressive HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns, I will outline some plans I have drawn for this in a later document) housing, venture capital (Umsobomvu etc.), strategically designed disability grants and pension funds, basic amenities and motivational seminars on community development (the latter will play a critical role in fundamentally changing the perception that the majority of the country has of them selves). If all this is geared towards enabling a shift in focus from base survival to betterment (through education), it will begin the cycle all over again; sustainable development, perpetuating itself so long as there are men and women willing to give of themselves to see this ideal achieved.
[I’ve put the words educated and education in italics to denote a different concept of knowledge giving, not necessarily bound to institutional learning, but encompassing a broader array of gained wisdom; what remains when the facts have been forgotten]
A phenomenon that has disturbed me, not because of its’ advent, but it’s general acceptance and even promotion by most of society, is the Debt Trap so many newly empowered Blacks find themselves inextricably caught in. However it may have come about in individual cases, it exhibits a fundamental flaw in the thought processes propagated by a capitalist society; that money and the material possessions it can afford you will make you happy. It doesn’t help that pop culture, through various forms of media, especially music and television, have made this an almost primary assumption of the frightening majority of the youth in the world today.
This perception needs to change if we are ever to free ourselves (South African society as a whole) from debt, as impossible as this might seem. How, you might be asking, will we ever achieve this lofty goal? It’s simpler than you might think. The truth is that Black South Africans have never known what it is like to have excessive amounts of money, and quite frankly we’re handling it badly. How many of the Black Fat-Cats you see rolling around in S-class Merc’s paid for them in cash? How many of them are ‘in the black’ on their credit ratings? The plague of newly empowered Blacks is the desire to show the rest of the world how much money they have, by buying flashy cars and mansions in exclusive neighbourhoods, Armani and Gucci suits, Breitling and Rolex watches, whether or not they really can afford them. We live in a society of debt, just another form of slavery that so many of our young Black professionals have fallen into. We’ve learnt to love the wealth of the White man without learning how to use it effectively; we have new money, not real wealth.
So how does one go about curbing this trend? The answer is simple; education. Teach money management from the earliest stages of cognitive development, this way our children will grow up with an understanding of how money works, learn to manage theirs properly when they enter the working world and avoid the debt trap. Feed this into the model of social spending I outlined above, and maybe, just maybe, we might be able to turn this country around and realise the Dream our Fathers and Mother bled and died for, in our life time. If not, we can always rest easy in the knowledge that we have helped to sketch the plans for a better society for all South Africans, one in which our children will be the architects and engineers of a kind of Social Change that will lead the rest of the world along the path that will spark the next step on mankind’s evolution. I believe quite firmly that in the same that fire, the wheel, the telephone, electricity, the internet all helped shape and give direction to Man in his collective evolutionary trek along the vastness of time, global social change (beginning with individual, cognitive change) will be the determining factor in our survival or ultimate extinction
You see the issue here is that although the black people of South Africa have won their political freedom, we are still miles from achieving economic emancipation. One might argue that there are plenty of Black millionaires in the country, but as the statistics above show, this is still far from an equitable distribution of this country’s wealth. Until the proportions of wealth and resource distribution are reversed, we cannot claim to have achieved true freedom.
What needs to happen is this; young, Black, educated South Africans need to rise up and take their rightful place in South African society. They must play the role that only they can, thanks partly to their unique historical legacy, in the transformative movement already building up steam. They must prove, once and for all, that one should not depend on others to for help in changing the adverse socio-economic circumstance one might find themselves in (regardless of the causes), but should devise means of lifting themselves and their community out of poverty and indignity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating the kind of forced seizure of resources that has left our neighbours in Zimbabwe with the highest rate of inflation in the world. No. I’m talking about educated Black men and women using the tools they’ve gained through Universities and Technical colleges to re-order the power balance in this country.
In addition to this, workshops need to be established in our communities on a massive scale, promoting the spirit of entrepreneurial ambition and establishing a culture of saving; it gains our country nothing learning to make money without knowing how to spend it wisely. The government needs to make it’s presence felt through the media, actively playing a role in the kind of programming being fed to us on a daily basis; if the right kind of messages are being broadcast over the media and reinforced in the home environment, the media can play a pivotal role in ensuring that the perception of wealth is changed in the minds of our people. The images and messages need to encourage education (by extension knowledge production) firstly, initiative and ambition secondly, and thirdly contextualise them in the spirit of Ubuntu. These values are to create the foundation for an ideology that will transform the perception surrounding Empowerment, not to be thought of as means with which to grow individual/personal wealth, but to benefit the families, communities and ultimately the country of those who will pioneer this new generation of (mentally) Empowered Blacks.
These are necessary measures, and I am unapologetic about advocating the fundamental principles underpinning them. If you think about it you’ll see that the results of a process of this kind will in time benefit not just the Black grouping of our population, but the whole; it will increase the number of economically active citizens, raise the level of competition in the market (not for jobs, but for contracts), allow this level of competition to produce world class specialists in a variety of fields, attract foreign capital, strengthen the economy, give the government more lateral space for social spending (focusing primarily on education, centrally engraining the concept of, what I will for want of a better phrase, call socio-capitalism) on schools, health care (including nigh aggressive HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns, I will outline some plans I have drawn for this in a later document) housing, venture capital (Umsobomvu etc.), strategically designed disability grants and pension funds, basic amenities and motivational seminars on community development (the latter will play a critical role in fundamentally changing the perception that the majority of the country has of them selves). If all this is geared towards enabling a shift in focus from base survival to betterment (through education), it will begin the cycle all over again; sustainable development, perpetuating itself so long as there are men and women willing to give of themselves to see this ideal achieved.
[I’ve put the words educated and education in italics to denote a different concept of knowledge giving, not necessarily bound to institutional learning, but encompassing a broader array of gained wisdom; what remains when the facts have been forgotten]
A phenomenon that has disturbed me, not because of its’ advent, but it’s general acceptance and even promotion by most of society, is the Debt Trap so many newly empowered Blacks find themselves inextricably caught in. However it may have come about in individual cases, it exhibits a fundamental flaw in the thought processes propagated by a capitalist society; that money and the material possessions it can afford you will make you happy. It doesn’t help that pop culture, through various forms of media, especially music and television, have made this an almost primary assumption of the frightening majority of the youth in the world today.
This perception needs to change if we are ever to free ourselves (South African society as a whole) from debt, as impossible as this might seem. How, you might be asking, will we ever achieve this lofty goal? It’s simpler than you might think. The truth is that Black South Africans have never known what it is like to have excessive amounts of money, and quite frankly we’re handling it badly. How many of the Black Fat-Cats you see rolling around in S-class Merc’s paid for them in cash? How many of them are ‘in the black’ on their credit ratings? The plague of newly empowered Blacks is the desire to show the rest of the world how much money they have, by buying flashy cars and mansions in exclusive neighbourhoods, Armani and Gucci suits, Breitling and Rolex watches, whether or not they really can afford them. We live in a society of debt, just another form of slavery that so many of our young Black professionals have fallen into. We’ve learnt to love the wealth of the White man without learning how to use it effectively; we have new money, not real wealth.
So how does one go about curbing this trend? The answer is simple; education. Teach money management from the earliest stages of cognitive development, this way our children will grow up with an understanding of how money works, learn to manage theirs properly when they enter the working world and avoid the debt trap. Feed this into the model of social spending I outlined above, and maybe, just maybe, we might be able to turn this country around and realise the Dream our Fathers and Mother bled and died for, in our life time. If not, we can always rest easy in the knowledge that we have helped to sketch the plans for a better society for all South Africans, one in which our children will be the architects and engineers of a kind of Social Change that will lead the rest of the world along the path that will spark the next step on mankind’s evolution. I believe quite firmly that in the same that fire, the wheel, the telephone, electricity, the internet all helped shape and give direction to Man in his collective evolutionary trek along the vastness of time, global social change (beginning with individual, cognitive change) will be the determining factor in our survival or ultimate extinction
Piscean mythology and psychology...hmmm
Think I found and edited bit of this, November 7, 2007:
The Pisces Myth
In many fairy tales there is a peculiar and enchanting figure, sometimes called an ondine or melusine, sometimes called a mermaid, who lives in the depths of the sea or a vast lake, and falls in love with a mortal man. This legend may also be seen in the legend of the Swan Prince - although here the creature from the 'other realm' bears feathers rather than scales. And these ancient stories, in all their various forms, have the same basic theme: the union of a mortal, an ordinary flesh-and-blood human, with something from another level of reality. The meeting is fraught with difficulties. There are always conditions attached. And it usually ends in disaster or difficulty, not because it is doomed from the start, but because of the ineptitude of the mortal who attempts to impose his own laws or values on his mysterious, other-worldly partner.
Usually the melusine agrees to live on dry land, and inhabit a mortal body, so long as her mate observes one special condition. He must not ask her a particular question, or look in a particular box, or enter a particular room at a particular time. In other words, there must be respect for the mysteries of this other realm. And the mortal, driven by ordinary human curiosity and lack of respect for this magical dimension, inevitably asks the question or opens the box. So the bond is broken, the melusine disappears into the depths again, and he is left to sorrow. Or, sometimes, she drags him down with her, drowning him in her embrace.
The motif, which we can find in several myths and fairy tales, is am story which has special meaning for Pisces. As we have seen, Pisces is the last sign, the completion of the cycle. Every sign leaves its trace in Pisces; there is not so much a particular Piscean dilemma as that Pisces embodies the human dilemma. In this last of the zodiacal signs is represented all of man's helplessness, his longings, his dreams, his needs, his powerlessness in the face of the universe, his delusions of grandeur, his longing for love, his sense of a mystery or a divine source which he strives for, yet cannot wholly reach without great sacrifice.
You might say that in every Pisces, symbolized by the two fishes trying to swim in opposite directions yet bound together by a golden cord, there is this dilemma of the meeting of two dimensions. There is the ordinary mortal side, which is used to facts and realities of a tangible kind. Eat, sleep, make love, and die - or bread and circuses, as the Romans used to say. And there is also a melusine - or, in the case of Pisces women, the masculine equivalent - which inhabits the dark depths, and which occasionally flashes its tail above the water, catching the sunlight, entrancing the mortal on the shore. How this meeting is dealt with is the story of each Piscean life. Some Pisceans simply follow the mermaid down, forgetting that human lungs cannot survive underwater. Here we have the derelicts of humanity, the lines of the junkies and the chronic alcoholics and the hopeless, the waster, the despairing, the abject. It is these whom Christ, in Christian mythology, declared blessed, for they have sacrificed everything of ordinary life and for their suffering have earned the key to another realm.
For other Pisceans, the fairy tale has a different ending. It is here that we can see the genius of men such as Einstein - where the melusine, the glimpse of other realms and of a universe barely comprehensible to the ordinary mind in its majesty and infinity - is translated through the human brain, offering to the world a charting of the unknown waters.
Obviously, not every Piscean is an Einstein or a drunkard. But perhaps the task of every Piscean is to come to terms in some way with the transpersonal realm, and to have the courage to be its mouthpiece. Here we find the poets and musicians, the great actors and playwrights, the visionaries and mystics who attempt to bring to ordinary life a glimpse of something else. This can be through a work of art, or it can exist in the humblest expressions of human love.
It is not easy, perhaps, to be born as Pisces. Many Pisceans simply cannot accept the size of the challenge. And, after all, who can blame them? It is not easy to make peace with melusine; and our education does not help us, since it tends to emphasize that anybody with the secret life of the Pisces must be at best a lazy daydreamer, and at worst emotionally disturbed. The fairy tale world in which many Pisces children live is criticized, bludgeoned, mocked or argued out of them very early. And it's important to remember here that Pisces is a mutable - that is, a changeable - sign, malleable, easily influenced, often hungry to please. Pisces is more easily distorted, more easily pressured by a hostile environment, than any other sign. So the melusine calls unheard from the depths of the soul, and the average Piscean disguises himself from himself by a rationalistic attitude toward life.
Another important mythological motif that tells us something about the Fish is the Christian myth itself. When I use the word 'myth' here I do not mean to imply something true or untrue, but mean it in the sense that all myths are apertures into another world. If one is a Christian, then the New Testament is truth while the religious symbols of other faiths are myth; if one is either non-Christian or open-minded, one can see that all myths describe God. So let's look at the Christian myth.
The Christian era is sometimes known as the Age of Pisces. Without going into lengthy explanations about precessions of the equinoxes and other astronomical phenomena, let's just say that about every two thousand years a new zodiacal sign colours man's history and culture. You can see the traces of this sign at work particularly in the religious symbols that emerge during the time it is in power. The Fish is one of the great symbols of Christianity; and in this symbol can be found many important themes that pertain to Pisces, both in this broad way and in the individual life of the person born under the sign.
Firstly, there is the aspiration. Before the coming of Christianity, man and God were two different things; there could be communication between them, there could be enmity or friendship; but man was not like God and God was not like man, and never the twain could meet. But one of the essential meanings of the Christian myth is that God incarnates as man: that there is a halfway point, an intermediary, a bridging of the two worlds. We are back to our friend the melusine here. But, instead of melusine, read soul or spirit. So, we can, if we want to consider the religious aspect of Pisces, say that there is a strong awareness in many Pisceans, especially the more mystical ones, of themselves - and the whole of mankind - being some kind of halfway house between animal and divine.
You can imagine that this creates problems. Being aware of two dimensions like this is pretty confusing, especially when the one tends to pop up when the other should be operating. No wonder Pisces is said to be confused a lot of the time.
Second to the aspiration is the urge towards self-sacrifice. Now this can be of the noblest kind, and one of the characteristic renditions of this can be found in the lives of the Saints. These figures - whether one believes in Saints or not - are in a sense the epitome of this side of Pisces. Everything devoted to the ideal - whether it is God, a country, a people, the poor, the suffering, or whatever. Pisces may often be found searching desperately for a cause to which he can devote himself, even sacrifice himself. It is an ecstasy which the other signs want no part of, since they all still have left some shred of a personal sense of their own 'I'-ness. Pisces doesn't. It's the completion of the cycle, the end. And there's a very strong tendency to want to give up everything, offer it up, disintegrate, disappear.
Compassion and love of an impersonal, unbiased kind are also Piscean virtues extolled in this last era. Love thy neighbour as thyself, turn the other cheek - these are Piscean aspirations. Of course you have to remember that there's another fish to the pair, too. But much of the history of religion in the last two thousand years has forgotten about that second fish. It's locked down in the basement, and popularly referred to as the Devil.
Even if you don't subscribe to astrology and i's associated beleiefs, or even Christianity as a religious institution, this might help explain why us Pisceans constantly seem so torn up inside.. at this point i can't decide what's stranger, truth or fiction
The Pisces Myth
In many fairy tales there is a peculiar and enchanting figure, sometimes called an ondine or melusine, sometimes called a mermaid, who lives in the depths of the sea or a vast lake, and falls in love with a mortal man. This legend may also be seen in the legend of the Swan Prince - although here the creature from the 'other realm' bears feathers rather than scales. And these ancient stories, in all their various forms, have the same basic theme: the union of a mortal, an ordinary flesh-and-blood human, with something from another level of reality. The meeting is fraught with difficulties. There are always conditions attached. And it usually ends in disaster or difficulty, not because it is doomed from the start, but because of the ineptitude of the mortal who attempts to impose his own laws or values on his mysterious, other-worldly partner.
Usually the melusine agrees to live on dry land, and inhabit a mortal body, so long as her mate observes one special condition. He must not ask her a particular question, or look in a particular box, or enter a particular room at a particular time. In other words, there must be respect for the mysteries of this other realm. And the mortal, driven by ordinary human curiosity and lack of respect for this magical dimension, inevitably asks the question or opens the box. So the bond is broken, the melusine disappears into the depths again, and he is left to sorrow. Or, sometimes, she drags him down with her, drowning him in her embrace.
The motif, which we can find in several myths and fairy tales, is am story which has special meaning for Pisces. As we have seen, Pisces is the last sign, the completion of the cycle. Every sign leaves its trace in Pisces; there is not so much a particular Piscean dilemma as that Pisces embodies the human dilemma. In this last of the zodiacal signs is represented all of man's helplessness, his longings, his dreams, his needs, his powerlessness in the face of the universe, his delusions of grandeur, his longing for love, his sense of a mystery or a divine source which he strives for, yet cannot wholly reach without great sacrifice.
You might say that in every Pisces, symbolized by the two fishes trying to swim in opposite directions yet bound together by a golden cord, there is this dilemma of the meeting of two dimensions. There is the ordinary mortal side, which is used to facts and realities of a tangible kind. Eat, sleep, make love, and die - or bread and circuses, as the Romans used to say. And there is also a melusine - or, in the case of Pisces women, the masculine equivalent - which inhabits the dark depths, and which occasionally flashes its tail above the water, catching the sunlight, entrancing the mortal on the shore. How this meeting is dealt with is the story of each Piscean life. Some Pisceans simply follow the mermaid down, forgetting that human lungs cannot survive underwater. Here we have the derelicts of humanity, the lines of the junkies and the chronic alcoholics and the hopeless, the waster, the despairing, the abject. It is these whom Christ, in Christian mythology, declared blessed, for they have sacrificed everything of ordinary life and for their suffering have earned the key to another realm.
For other Pisceans, the fairy tale has a different ending. It is here that we can see the genius of men such as Einstein - where the melusine, the glimpse of other realms and of a universe barely comprehensible to the ordinary mind in its majesty and infinity - is translated through the human brain, offering to the world a charting of the unknown waters.
Obviously, not every Piscean is an Einstein or a drunkard. But perhaps the task of every Piscean is to come to terms in some way with the transpersonal realm, and to have the courage to be its mouthpiece. Here we find the poets and musicians, the great actors and playwrights, the visionaries and mystics who attempt to bring to ordinary life a glimpse of something else. This can be through a work of art, or it can exist in the humblest expressions of human love.
It is not easy, perhaps, to be born as Pisces. Many Pisceans simply cannot accept the size of the challenge. And, after all, who can blame them? It is not easy to make peace with melusine; and our education does not help us, since it tends to emphasize that anybody with the secret life of the Pisces must be at best a lazy daydreamer, and at worst emotionally disturbed. The fairy tale world in which many Pisces children live is criticized, bludgeoned, mocked or argued out of them very early. And it's important to remember here that Pisces is a mutable - that is, a changeable - sign, malleable, easily influenced, often hungry to please. Pisces is more easily distorted, more easily pressured by a hostile environment, than any other sign. So the melusine calls unheard from the depths of the soul, and the average Piscean disguises himself from himself by a rationalistic attitude toward life.
Another important mythological motif that tells us something about the Fish is the Christian myth itself. When I use the word 'myth' here I do not mean to imply something true or untrue, but mean it in the sense that all myths are apertures into another world. If one is a Christian, then the New Testament is truth while the religious symbols of other faiths are myth; if one is either non-Christian or open-minded, one can see that all myths describe God. So let's look at the Christian myth.
The Christian era is sometimes known as the Age of Pisces. Without going into lengthy explanations about precessions of the equinoxes and other astronomical phenomena, let's just say that about every two thousand years a new zodiacal sign colours man's history and culture. You can see the traces of this sign at work particularly in the religious symbols that emerge during the time it is in power. The Fish is one of the great symbols of Christianity; and in this symbol can be found many important themes that pertain to Pisces, both in this broad way and in the individual life of the person born under the sign.
Firstly, there is the aspiration. Before the coming of Christianity, man and God were two different things; there could be communication between them, there could be enmity or friendship; but man was not like God and God was not like man, and never the twain could meet. But one of the essential meanings of the Christian myth is that God incarnates as man: that there is a halfway point, an intermediary, a bridging of the two worlds. We are back to our friend the melusine here. But, instead of melusine, read soul or spirit. So, we can, if we want to consider the religious aspect of Pisces, say that there is a strong awareness in many Pisceans, especially the more mystical ones, of themselves - and the whole of mankind - being some kind of halfway house between animal and divine.
You can imagine that this creates problems. Being aware of two dimensions like this is pretty confusing, especially when the one tends to pop up when the other should be operating. No wonder Pisces is said to be confused a lot of the time.
Second to the aspiration is the urge towards self-sacrifice. Now this can be of the noblest kind, and one of the characteristic renditions of this can be found in the lives of the Saints. These figures - whether one believes in Saints or not - are in a sense the epitome of this side of Pisces. Everything devoted to the ideal - whether it is God, a country, a people, the poor, the suffering, or whatever. Pisces may often be found searching desperately for a cause to which he can devote himself, even sacrifice himself. It is an ecstasy which the other signs want no part of, since they all still have left some shred of a personal sense of their own 'I'-ness. Pisces doesn't. It's the completion of the cycle, the end. And there's a very strong tendency to want to give up everything, offer it up, disintegrate, disappear.
Compassion and love of an impersonal, unbiased kind are also Piscean virtues extolled in this last era. Love thy neighbour as thyself, turn the other cheek - these are Piscean aspirations. Of course you have to remember that there's another fish to the pair, too. But much of the history of religion in the last two thousand years has forgotten about that second fish. It's locked down in the basement, and popularly referred to as the Devil.
Even if you don't subscribe to astrology and i's associated beleiefs, or even Christianity as a religious institution, this might help explain why us Pisceans constantly seem so torn up inside.. at this point i can't decide what's stranger, truth or fiction
Human BEEing
Written October 4, 2007:
I wrote this as part of a set of short essay questions on my application to an int. youth leadership conference next year. I had no idea what it would come out as but feel the need to share this epiphany with as many people as possible. Please feel free to criticise it or in whatever way you can add to the debate, i think it's vitally important that we start taking cognitive note of this issue (and many others that i will write on as time permits) as it will, in my personal opinion, determine the kind of world we're building for our children:
Measures of socio-economic redress as they have been applied in South Africa have proven themselves to be contentious to say the least; I recently witnessed a debate between the Cape Town city mayor (also head of the major opposition party, the Democratic Alliance) and the MEC of the ruling party (African National Congress), and was surprised by the manifold levels of the arguments they presented. Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Affirmative Action (AA) have become almost cliché in academic circles but it's frightening to think of how many of our youth have little to no conception of the impacts these policies will have on their futures.
The majority of White students of my generation (from my personal interactions) view BEE and AA as parts of a system of reverse Apartheid, while the majority of Black students think that the policies are justified considering the active and purposeful oppression previously imposed on Blacks, both socially and economically. It seems that neither group (apart from the politically conscious within them respectively) has taken the time to think about the meaning nor implications of the policies that are intended to ensure equity (if not equality) in our divided nation. What bothers me are the underlying attitudes that govern most young people’s perception (especially frightening as we are meant to be the next generation of intellectuals); most of the arguments I’ve hard talking to my peers centre around ideas of entitlement, citizenship and ownership. One will talk of the government owing him/her some form of compensation for the suffering our parents endured, while another will counter that they were not part of the oppressive regime and don’t deserve to be punished for it. Again, one will speak of placing South Africa’s wealth in the hands of true Africans (in so implying that any white south African is simply a second or subsequent generation European, and will therefore never really be African), while another will argue that their parents fought for the cause of Black South African’s, and is just as much an African in heart as any person with darker skin. As long as this sort of thinking is allowed to perpetuate itself in the minds of this country’s youth, Nelson Mandela’s dream of a Rainbow Nation will never be realised.
What this country needs are passionate and committed leaders who are able, and perhaps more importantly, willing to cross the boundaries of race, gender, and culture (I would have liked to add to this litany political affiliation, but that would indeed be idealistic). Once leaders are able to penetrate these self- made bubbles of identity and thought, and successfully inspire those within to help create a culture of exchange and co-operation through the sharing of ideas (in so doing shine light into the den of that ancient beast called Ignorance). Our nation will then be able to harness it's intellectual energies into forging and shaping a future that is as rich as the legacy we have inherited, that will honour the sacrifices of those who came before us, and ultimately make this country a place we can all be proud to call home. This, I believe, is the great need of South Africa; perhaps then we can teach the rest of the World how to live together in relative peace and harmony.
Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m going to learn at the conference; it would be ludicrous for me to think I’ll find the answer to my country's problems in five days when it has taken greater minds than mine decades to come this far. I do though, hope to interact with other like minded individuals, sharing ideas that may be limited by experience and/or cultural and (to some extent) ideological principles. The very notion of democracy (in my opinion) rests on the idea of people collectively finding solutions to their problems through consultation, fighting to protecting the human rights of all in a politically pluralistic environment. I hope to come back with tools that will enable South Africa's youth to 'speak the same language', to talk not of 'us' and 'them' but to see the nation's (by extension the world's) future as something we are collectively responsible for.
I want to be able to help open young peoples eyes to the fact that we're not all that different; fear is of ignorance, the more we know about what our respective (in my opinion collective) concerns and needs are, the more we'll come to understand, accept, and respect each other. This respect will hopefully be the foundation for a system of social thought that goes far beyond notions of fairness and due process, a system in which we will see each other without the emblematic ‘lenses’ of the socio-politically separatist definitions we have invented for ourselves; in this system no man will see the needs or concerns of another as being less than his, nor endeavour to oppress or impede him in his personal search for spiritual self-and-whole-actualisation (this is based on my belief that in furthering mankind’s collective understanding of our purpose on Earth, we simultaneously give ourselves the same service)… this is my eutopia.
I wrote this as part of a set of short essay questions on my application to an int. youth leadership conference next year. I had no idea what it would come out as but feel the need to share this epiphany with as many people as possible. Please feel free to criticise it or in whatever way you can add to the debate, i think it's vitally important that we start taking cognitive note of this issue (and many others that i will write on as time permits) as it will, in my personal opinion, determine the kind of world we're building for our children:
Measures of socio-economic redress as they have been applied in South Africa have proven themselves to be contentious to say the least; I recently witnessed a debate between the Cape Town city mayor (also head of the major opposition party, the Democratic Alliance) and the MEC of the ruling party (African National Congress), and was surprised by the manifold levels of the arguments they presented. Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Affirmative Action (AA) have become almost cliché in academic circles but it's frightening to think of how many of our youth have little to no conception of the impacts these policies will have on their futures.
The majority of White students of my generation (from my personal interactions) view BEE and AA as parts of a system of reverse Apartheid, while the majority of Black students think that the policies are justified considering the active and purposeful oppression previously imposed on Blacks, both socially and economically. It seems that neither group (apart from the politically conscious within them respectively) has taken the time to think about the meaning nor implications of the policies that are intended to ensure equity (if not equality) in our divided nation. What bothers me are the underlying attitudes that govern most young people’s perception (especially frightening as we are meant to be the next generation of intellectuals); most of the arguments I’ve hard talking to my peers centre around ideas of entitlement, citizenship and ownership. One will talk of the government owing him/her some form of compensation for the suffering our parents endured, while another will counter that they were not part of the oppressive regime and don’t deserve to be punished for it. Again, one will speak of placing South Africa’s wealth in the hands of true Africans (in so implying that any white south African is simply a second or subsequent generation European, and will therefore never really be African), while another will argue that their parents fought for the cause of Black South African’s, and is just as much an African in heart as any person with darker skin. As long as this sort of thinking is allowed to perpetuate itself in the minds of this country’s youth, Nelson Mandela’s dream of a Rainbow Nation will never be realised.
What this country needs are passionate and committed leaders who are able, and perhaps more importantly, willing to cross the boundaries of race, gender, and culture (I would have liked to add to this litany political affiliation, but that would indeed be idealistic). Once leaders are able to penetrate these self- made bubbles of identity and thought, and successfully inspire those within to help create a culture of exchange and co-operation through the sharing of ideas (in so doing shine light into the den of that ancient beast called Ignorance). Our nation will then be able to harness it's intellectual energies into forging and shaping a future that is as rich as the legacy we have inherited, that will honour the sacrifices of those who came before us, and ultimately make this country a place we can all be proud to call home. This, I believe, is the great need of South Africa; perhaps then we can teach the rest of the World how to live together in relative peace and harmony.
Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m going to learn at the conference; it would be ludicrous for me to think I’ll find the answer to my country's problems in five days when it has taken greater minds than mine decades to come this far. I do though, hope to interact with other like minded individuals, sharing ideas that may be limited by experience and/or cultural and (to some extent) ideological principles. The very notion of democracy (in my opinion) rests on the idea of people collectively finding solutions to their problems through consultation, fighting to protecting the human rights of all in a politically pluralistic environment. I hope to come back with tools that will enable South Africa's youth to 'speak the same language', to talk not of 'us' and 'them' but to see the nation's (by extension the world's) future as something we are collectively responsible for.
I want to be able to help open young peoples eyes to the fact that we're not all that different; fear is of ignorance, the more we know about what our respective (in my opinion collective) concerns and needs are, the more we'll come to understand, accept, and respect each other. This respect will hopefully be the foundation for a system of social thought that goes far beyond notions of fairness and due process, a system in which we will see each other without the emblematic ‘lenses’ of the socio-politically separatist definitions we have invented for ourselves; in this system no man will see the needs or concerns of another as being less than his, nor endeavour to oppress or impede him in his personal search for spiritual self-and-whole-actualisation (this is based on my belief that in furthering mankind’s collective understanding of our purpose on Earth, we simultaneously give ourselves the same service)… this is my eutopia.
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