“Our spirituality should be a vitamin - not a drug.”
Dear friends,
Looking back into this nation's history, with little property or access to being able to feed Ourselves, due to the discriminating behaviors of Our European American fellows, most African Americans, whether captives or freedmen were forced to look elsewhere for their salvation. For the first two hundred years, or eight generations, of our existence in North America, Africans used a theology of hope and liberation as Our strongest asset.
Unfortunately, after the Civil War, Black ministers started betraying their congregations and started to water down the sentiments of freedom on Earth for the more acceptable "white" mission that would have Black folks being more concerned with the Hereafter. Consequently, although messiah-type saviors have long been in the hearts and minds of oppressed peoples worldwide since time immemorial, it was at that point in North American history, roughly a generation or so prior to the North American Civil War, that led by Black clergy, the search for "Jesus" became the new spiritual sentiment among the African American populace. Moreover, for many African Americans, since manumission five generations ago, their religion has been no different than a narcotic. Webster's Dictionary defines the word narcotic as, "a drug that dulls the senses, relieves pain, and produces sleep." In fact, it is not uncommon to hear the refrain from some African Americans, "I'm high on Jesus."
Of course, We now know that there is little evidence to support the notion of the existence of an historical Jesus, outside of active imaginations. Moreover, a number of scholars have traced the origins of the Jesus myth to Ancient Egypt. Mythology helps people deal with uncertainty. Through it, We make Ourselves feel that we have some understanding of the world in which we live, and, consequently, some ability to control natural forces.
Dr. Charles S. Finch says about Egyptian mythology, "the powers of nature, whether animal, vegetable, or elemental, were not worshiped but provided images to fashion mental concepts and make the world comprehensible." (Journal of African Civilizations, Vol.4-No.2)
Professor John G. Jackson cites, “Two principal types as savior-gods have been recognized by hierologists - vegetation gods and astral gods...The vegetation cults were the most ancient, but they were later blended with the astral worship" (Journal, op. cit., Vol.4-No.2)
Jackson uses a passage from Dr. David Forsyth's book, Psychology and Religion, to illustrate the abovementioned vegetation theory, “Many gods besides Christ have been supposed to die, be resurrected and ascend to heaven. This idea has now been traced back to its origins among primitive people in the annual death and resurrection of crops and plant life generally. This explains the world-wide prevalence of the notion...It is from this erroneous belief of primitive tribes that Christianity today derives its belief in Christ's Death and Resurrection.”
In addition, about astral worship, Jackson says, “In primitive sacrificial rites, the victim was originally the king or chief of the tribe or clan. The prosperity of the group was supposed to have a magical relation to the health of the king; if the ruler became old and feeble, it was thought that the nation or tribe would suffer a similar decline, so the king, considered to be a god in human form, was sacrificed for the good of all, and then replaced with a younger, and more vigorous successor.... In even later days a condemned criminal replaced the royal victim. The culprit was given regal honors, for a time, then put to death. After being entombed, he was believed to rise from the dead within 3 days; the 3 days being based on the 3 day interval between the old and new moons." (Journal, Vol.4-No.2, ibid.)
Many people picture Jesus Christ as a living being, not an imitation of Egyptian mythology. However, at least some Egyptologists seem to share the view that Jesus Christ was a figure created by imaginative scholars who studied the Egyptian deity called Horus (whose story was being told centuries earlier than that of the historical Jesus.)
In fact, the renowned Gerald Massey's work, "Ancient Egypt", reveals nearly 200 "similarities", as it were. Dr. Albert Churchward, one of Massey's disciples, has extracted a few of these parallels. Among them: “Horus was with his mother, the virgin, until 12 years old...Jesus remained with his mother, the virgin, up to the age 12...From 12 to 30 years of age there is no record of the life Horus. From 12 to 30 years of age there is no record in the life of Jesus. Horus, at 30 years of age, became adult in his baptism by Anup. Jesus, at 30 years of age, was made a man of, in his baptism by John the Baptist. Horus in his baptism, made his transformation into the beloved son and only begotten of the Father, God, the Holy Spirit, that is represented by a bird. Jesus, in his baptism, is hailed from Heaven as the beloved son and only begotten of the Father, God, and the Holy Spirit, that is represented by a dove." - The Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man (Journal, Vol.4-No.2, op. cit.)
If the above mentioned is true, did Jesus really exist? Dr. Charles S. Finch has an interesting perspective, “A man named Joshua Ben Pandira (Joshua means “Jesus” in Greek) did live more than a century before the gospel Jesus was supposed to have been born. He was an Essene who learned "magic and wonder-working" in Egypt, traveled through and performed wonders in Palestine, and was tried and crucified by hanging on that account by Jewish magistrates in the city of Lydda on the eve of Passover (Christian Easter). (op. cit.)
This crucifixion happened about 70 years before the historical Jesus Christ was supposed to have been born. Dr. Finch continues, “If there was an historical Jesus, he was it. There was an almost universal expectation of the appearance of a savior in the world's religions of the time and perhaps the life and work of Joshua the Essene provided the germ around which the vast savior mythology - in existence for thousands of years-coalesced (united
We know too, from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other revived documents, which Christianity evolved directly from Essenism and eventually supplanted (replaced) it entirely." (Journal, Vol.4-No.2, op. cit.)
In the overall North American experience, the notion of people appreciating African spirituality as a basis for liberation has been largely erased, although periodically there are Black clerics who continue to struggle against social injustice towards African Americans.
Additionally, "religious" thinking is so pervasive in our society that even when the idea of liberation does enter the dialogue of the Black experience, each outstanding African American leader that appears is appreciated only in the context of “Jesus” Hence, Martin Luther King and others are spoken of as "saviors", instead of individuals who have been or are merely part of a centuries-long liberation movement. Even Barack Obama, the current US president is thought of that way.
As a result, nonsensical comments are made such as, “If it wasn't for Martin Luther King, We'd still be riding the back of the bus. “Never mind!”, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois would have said. It took the sacrifices of thousands - locally - and millions of African Americans - nationally, to make the Montgomery Bus Boycott work, not the eloquence of a few charismatic leaders.
Civil rights professionals/hustlers and corporate media people alike have been pushing the same type of Jesus sentiment. Yet, perhaps, one day, all of humankind will wake up, stop the pretense called religion, and finally admit that we no longer believe in a Supreme Being or a world-ruling personality. After all, who lives their lives according to the tenets of religion? No one! Nevertheless, such a confession will introduce a new period of human liberation, which will, in turn, allow us to reach a new level of humanity and consider "higher aims."
For, as Maurice Cornforth put it so eloquently in his important work, The Open Society and The Open Philosophy, “We (humans) are deeply concerned with 'spiritual' things - and impoverish themselves if they ignore them...(But) if people's material life is impoverished, they do not get much chance to cultivate the things of the spirit-just as they do not do so either if they fail to appreciate the real character of human relations and concern themselves with nothing but their own individual material satisfactions. If only we can better inform our practice - by getting better to know ourselves, our needs, our dependencies on one another, we stand at least a chance of finding how in practice to cultivate all the higher human capacities, the things of the spirit"
Finally, at least to me, our spirituality should be a vitamin - not a drug. Peace.
G. Djata Bumpus
Read full post
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Time, Music, and Liberation
Dear friends,
Certainly, it is difficult for most of Us, particularly young people, to envision time periods of the past. Therefore, with the idea that a generation is about 25 years long, by assuming that a grandmother's age represents two generations or an average of roughly fifty years, We shall look backwards in terms of so many "grandmothers ago". Accordingly, if looking back 200 years, then We're actually talking about four grandmothers ago; that is, the grandmother of one's grandmother's, grandmother's, grandmother. In other words, We are speaking in terms of each grandmother's grandmother as representing 100 years.
Also. for many generations past and to this very day, many Early American Native women (so-called American Indians) have said and continue to say of their menstruation period, "My grandmother is visiting." Consequently, Our use of grandmothers to represent time periods is reasonable.
In any case, for African peoples everywhere, being musicians has been part of Our cultural and psychic structures or internal labor processes, for millennia or scores of grandmothers' lifetimes. Lorenzo Johnston Greene further confirmed this assertion in his timeless book, The Negro In Colonial New England, "Zelah, a Negro of Groton, Massachusetts, who later fought in the American Revolution, became famous in his neighborhood as a musician.".
Greene also refers to Newport Gardner, "...the slave of Caleb Gardner of Newport, Rhode Island, was given music lessons. He soon excelled his teacher and later opened a music school of his own on Pope Street where he taught both Negroes and white persons." (Certainly, the music school that Gardner opened was made possible after he had freed himself from chattel slavery...Greene indicates that, a little more than 200 years or four grandmothers ago, Gardner "purchased" the liberty of himself and most of his family members after winning two thousand dollars in a lottery.)
Finally, it was common for earlier African Americans to look out for each other, by buying Our fellow sisters and brothers out of chattel slavery, if the former received some kind of economic windfall. But like their descendants of today (Hip-hop moguls and wealthy drug dealers, for example), some African Americans used newfound wealth to purchase captive workers (or-called "slaves"). Let's keep things in perspective.
"One Love!" - Bob Marley
G. Djata Bumpus Read full post
Certainly, it is difficult for most of Us, particularly young people, to envision time periods of the past. Therefore, with the idea that a generation is about 25 years long, by assuming that a grandmother's age represents two generations or an average of roughly fifty years, We shall look backwards in terms of so many "grandmothers ago". Accordingly, if looking back 200 years, then We're actually talking about four grandmothers ago; that is, the grandmother of one's grandmother's, grandmother's, grandmother. In other words, We are speaking in terms of each grandmother's grandmother as representing 100 years.
Also. for many generations past and to this very day, many Early American Native women (so-called American Indians) have said and continue to say of their menstruation period, "My grandmother is visiting." Consequently, Our use of grandmothers to represent time periods is reasonable.
In any case, for African peoples everywhere, being musicians has been part of Our cultural and psychic structures or internal labor processes, for millennia or scores of grandmothers' lifetimes. Lorenzo Johnston Greene further confirmed this assertion in his timeless book, The Negro In Colonial New England, "Zelah, a Negro of Groton, Massachusetts, who later fought in the American Revolution, became famous in his neighborhood as a musician.".
Greene also refers to Newport Gardner, "...the slave of Caleb Gardner of Newport, Rhode Island, was given music lessons. He soon excelled his teacher and later opened a music school of his own on Pope Street where he taught both Negroes and white persons." (Certainly, the music school that Gardner opened was made possible after he had freed himself from chattel slavery...Greene indicates that, a little more than 200 years or four grandmothers ago, Gardner "purchased" the liberty of himself and most of his family members after winning two thousand dollars in a lottery.)
Finally, it was common for earlier African Americans to look out for each other, by buying Our fellow sisters and brothers out of chattel slavery, if the former received some kind of economic windfall. But like their descendants of today (Hip-hop moguls and wealthy drug dealers, for example), some African Americans used newfound wealth to purchase captive workers (or-called "slaves"). Let's keep things in perspective.
"One Love!" - Bob Marley
G. Djata Bumpus Read full post
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Drug dealing is biggest form of entrepreneurship everywhere
“Drugs are perfection. If you produce narcotics, you control the land, if you transit narcotics, you control the authorities, if you sell narcotics, you control the courts, the police and, of course, the government itself”
Dear friends,
The constant talk by politicians about “jobs” totally ignores the drive for entrepreneurship that is sweeping much of the world in the so-called “developing” countries. That is, if one looks at the ratio between the amount of people who have traditional jobs and those who are self-employed in both the “developed” and "developing"countries, the US is way down the list, regarding entrepreneurship in the overall citizenry. In other words, most people here work for somebody else. Few take either the initiative to or the risk of marketing and managing their own skills.
Notwithstanding, it is an absolute lie by these political charlatans, of both of the two major parties, to suggest that capitalism has any interest in full employment. How could it? After all, the less workers needed to produce commodities - whether goods or services, the more profits garnered.
Nevertheless, here in the US, for almost three generations, dealing illicit drugs has been the prominent form of entrepreneurship in the African American urban experience, especially. And African Americans, just as all other people, make great customers for drug consumption, due to the fact that drugs tend to relieve people, albeit only momentarily, of their feelings of depression and anxiety that life in this overall unjust society brings, along with the lonesomeness and separateness felt by each individual in all human civilizations.
In any case, the studies on drugs tend to ignore, if not evade, the US government’s role, in cahoots with wealthy traffickers, in making this happen.
Moreover, while researchers argue that entrepreneurship among African Americans is low, they ignore the fact that that assertion simply does not represent the reality of drug dealing and entrepreneurship, a multi-billions of dollars industry. Besides. Outside of food, what industry is more consistent in fulfilling its customers' dependency? And what's a better way to control populations?
It has been said by an internationally-renowned security specialist, Gordon Duff of Salem-News.com, “Drugs are perfection. If you produce narcotics, you control the land, if you transit narcotics, you control the authorities, if you sell narcotics, you control the courts, the police and, of course, the government itself…Arms and oil count, money is still worth counterfeiting, oil worth stealing but all this is so ‘yesterday.’ ” It is drugs, and has been for the past three generations – both here and abroad! And not just illegal. In the US alone, please think of all of the “legal” drugs for various ailments that the gigantic pharmaceutical companies peddle, with the help of medical doctors, and the stamp of approval from the FDA. That’s an even bigger prize. So many are in a constant state of dependency.
Still, “the government?”, you ask. If you don’t believe that, then try bringing drugs from, say, the Caribbean, by boat or airplane to this country. When the DEA and the Coast Guard get through with you, you’ll be wishing that pirates who are all over the Caribbean Sea, instead, had come to rob you!
After all, the real issue is: How do we transfer a form of what has been, conveniently, deemed by our unscrupulous government as “illegal” entrepreneurship that enriches government agencies like the DEA, Coast Guard and others, into enterprises that are legal? We can’t! The government has the threat capacity of the police and military to keep everyone in check!
Now, to be sure, servicing the government’s Crime Industry, our prisons are loaded with mostly African American and Latino males (fodder), especially, those whose major crime was, mostly, dealing drugs, trying to acquire their material means of survival - both wants and needs. Obviously, educating themselves is crucial. However, these folks,incarcerated or not, already have many of the skills required for successful entrepreneurship in the “legal” context.
Moreover, by first thinking in terms of “We”, as a people, all Americans, African, Asian, Latino, or European must embrace value judgments other than those of our enemies (corporations and their government stooges). For example, we can cooperatively set up businesses and the like that reflect a combined desire to promote good for all.
Let’s face it. In the ante-bellum South, for two generations prior to the North American Civil War, there were, literally, thousands of Black slave masters. Following the war which was allegedly won by the North, the only “reward” for African Americans and others (initially including Irish, Polish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants) was White Supremacy. Look. The latter groups just mentioned that came to the US were not even considered "white" until the Nazi era of WW2. Consequently, maintaining the current type of value judgments, by trying to copy the practices of the greedy corporations of today, in both the short and long run, will only help a few – NEVER a community, much less a whole nation.
Cheers!
G. Djata Bumpus Read full post
Dear friends,
The constant talk by politicians about “jobs” totally ignores the drive for entrepreneurship that is sweeping much of the world in the so-called “developing” countries. That is, if one looks at the ratio between the amount of people who have traditional jobs and those who are self-employed in both the “developed” and "developing"countries, the US is way down the list, regarding entrepreneurship in the overall citizenry. In other words, most people here work for somebody else. Few take either the initiative to or the risk of marketing and managing their own skills.
Notwithstanding, it is an absolute lie by these political charlatans, of both of the two major parties, to suggest that capitalism has any interest in full employment. How could it? After all, the less workers needed to produce commodities - whether goods or services, the more profits garnered.
Nevertheless, here in the US, for almost three generations, dealing illicit drugs has been the prominent form of entrepreneurship in the African American urban experience, especially. And African Americans, just as all other people, make great customers for drug consumption, due to the fact that drugs tend to relieve people, albeit only momentarily, of their feelings of depression and anxiety that life in this overall unjust society brings, along with the lonesomeness and separateness felt by each individual in all human civilizations.
In any case, the studies on drugs tend to ignore, if not evade, the US government’s role, in cahoots with wealthy traffickers, in making this happen.
Moreover, while researchers argue that entrepreneurship among African Americans is low, they ignore the fact that that assertion simply does not represent the reality of drug dealing and entrepreneurship, a multi-billions of dollars industry. Besides. Outside of food, what industry is more consistent in fulfilling its customers' dependency? And what's a better way to control populations?
It has been said by an internationally-renowned security specialist, Gordon Duff of Salem-News.com, “Drugs are perfection. If you produce narcotics, you control the land, if you transit narcotics, you control the authorities, if you sell narcotics, you control the courts, the police and, of course, the government itself…Arms and oil count, money is still worth counterfeiting, oil worth stealing but all this is so ‘yesterday.’ ” It is drugs, and has been for the past three generations – both here and abroad! And not just illegal. In the US alone, please think of all of the “legal” drugs for various ailments that the gigantic pharmaceutical companies peddle, with the help of medical doctors, and the stamp of approval from the FDA. That’s an even bigger prize. So many are in a constant state of dependency.
Still, “the government?”, you ask. If you don’t believe that, then try bringing drugs from, say, the Caribbean, by boat or airplane to this country. When the DEA and the Coast Guard get through with you, you’ll be wishing that pirates who are all over the Caribbean Sea, instead, had come to rob you!
After all, the real issue is: How do we transfer a form of what has been, conveniently, deemed by our unscrupulous government as “illegal” entrepreneurship that enriches government agencies like the DEA, Coast Guard and others, into enterprises that are legal? We can’t! The government has the threat capacity of the police and military to keep everyone in check!
Now, to be sure, servicing the government’s Crime Industry, our prisons are loaded with mostly African American and Latino males (fodder), especially, those whose major crime was, mostly, dealing drugs, trying to acquire their material means of survival - both wants and needs. Obviously, educating themselves is crucial. However, these folks,incarcerated or not, already have many of the skills required for successful entrepreneurship in the “legal” context.
Moreover, by first thinking in terms of “We”, as a people, all Americans, African, Asian, Latino, or European must embrace value judgments other than those of our enemies (corporations and their government stooges). For example, we can cooperatively set up businesses and the like that reflect a combined desire to promote good for all.
Let’s face it. In the ante-bellum South, for two generations prior to the North American Civil War, there were, literally, thousands of Black slave masters. Following the war which was allegedly won by the North, the only “reward” for African Americans and others (initially including Irish, Polish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants) was White Supremacy. Look. The latter groups just mentioned that came to the US were not even considered "white" until the Nazi era of WW2. Consequently, maintaining the current type of value judgments, by trying to copy the practices of the greedy corporations of today, in both the short and long run, will only help a few – NEVER a community, much less a whole nation.
Cheers!
G. Djata Bumpus Read full post
Esther Phillips sings "Home is where the hatred is"
"You keep sayin' 'Kick it - Quit it, but have you ever tried?..."
Dear friends,
Gil Scott-Heron "covered" this classic by Esther Phillips. The lyrics are incredible. Please enjoy!
G. Data Bumpus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvdnMzQGbEQ Read full post
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
