Why do we do the things we do?

     I can understand why Malcolm was so militant at first, why he didn't give a fuck about what other people thought or how they felt about what he had to say. Martin was so peaceful in public, so gracious and forgiving and humble but it must have been difficult. When people look at you and make judgments it's infuriating to the point where you just want to grab hold of them and give them a good shake. People's biases and their inability to see beyond their own immediate world of circumstances leads to a countless number of misconceptions. To think that a person thinks they know who you are by what you look like or how you dress is just so maddening that it's sometimes even hard to understand how you feel much less to explain it to someone else. It's something that a person could never really understand unless they experience it. I can only assume that it is a similar feeling that women get when men make judgments about their character by they way they choose to dress. There is certainly something to be said about the fact that clothes can be taken off and changed whereas skin color and often times even social class stays with you for the duration of your time on earth. But even the novel idea of judging a person by what they wear is such a toxic one because the vast majority of our judgments are completely unwarranted and uninformed.
     Human beings are so malleable and impressionable that it does not take a complex lie to fool us, even a simple one can take hold in our minds and blossom into an entire world view based on an untruth. The sources of this misinformation are so abundant that we can scarcely escape being tainted from birth. Having the misconceptions and biases of our parents and all that came before them just unloaded onto us as an inheritance. We are rarely afforded the opportunity to truly think for ourselves and to truly forge our own paths. To make our own decisions about what is right and what is wrong what is valuable and what is not. Instead we are beholden to traditions, beliefs and the collective sum of all the misconceptions that our species have manage to accumulate since we first discovered our consciousness.
     This is our greatest fault and as such is the case we are bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over in hopes of achieving a different results. We allow the most egregious atrocities in the name of beliefs that have no merit as tools for teaching morality. Doctrines that often do more harm than good, that sow seeds of hatred and division. So far none of us have had enough time in existence to figure it all out yet instead of using the little time we have for progress we have chosen to be lazy and let others think for us. JFK famously said that we chose to do things like go to the moon not because they are easy but because they are hard. "...because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills...". This is how we should live, taking the hard route; not doing things because that's what we have always done or that's what we were taught to do. We should live to beat our own paths, make our own decisions and question everything until the answers are found.

Can a hairstyle change a culture?

     For most of us the way we look is an important part of who we are and how we want people to view us. Our appearances have taken on a very large role in our lives, impacting everything from the kind of mate that we can attract to the kind of job that we can land. We spend countless amounts of hours in front of mirrors just to make sure that we can present ourselves to world in an acceptable manner. Central to that presentation of ourselves to others is our hair. Hair has a massive impact on our self esteem and on our identities as not only individuals but as ethnicities and people. Just by the texture of a person's hair we can make assumptions about who they are, where they are from and what they want you to think about them. We can tell if they are studious, or if they are lazy. We can tell if they are traditionalist or if they are adventurous. We can make up in our minds an entire albeit possibly totally incorrect portrait of a person whom we in-fact know absolutely nothing about.
     TV, movies, magazines and just media in general play such a large part in out lives that we cannot help but be shaped by what we see. We spend so much time watching TV and listening to ads that we begin to want what we are told that we want and feel the way that we are told we feel. This manifest itself in everything from the clothes we buy, to the food we eat to what we feel is the right way to behave and what we think is beautiful. Beauty is one of the most subjective concepts we have as human beings so it would be foolish to think that even personal preference is not highly influenced by our society. Whether or not you are attracted to something that society says you should be attracted to or not is still a function of what society has to say. Being rebellious only means that you are choosing to do something opposite to what you are being told to do so what you are being told to do still greatly influences your decisions whether or not you take the advice.
     As a black man who grew up in America I often find myself torn between what i feel like i should be attracted to and what i feel like I am actually attracted to. The women who i see on screen and I Identify as beautiful often have a certain set of features. Skin color does not make any difference to me because i have been taught that beauty comes in all colors but i have not been taught that it comes in all hair textures. Despite the ethnic background of an actress one of the most likely things that she will have in common with any other actress is a hair style. It may not be the same color or in the same do but more than likely its long, flowing and straight; it's sort of a prototype for what American Beauty looks like. Even though i consider myself and intellectual who can differentiate what real beauty is from what Hollywood beauty is; when you are constantly bombarded with images of what you should like you will be affected even if minimally. Actresses want to be beautiful so they dress themselves according to what is considered beautiful, and the women who watch them do the same in-turn. In my opinion this has caused more than a generation of Black women to not love themselves enough to be proud of their natural hair. They don't think that men will consider them beautiful so they go out of their way to look the way they think men will like and that sort of thinking gets passed on to their daughters often directly.
     Hair has played a large part of some of the cultural shifts in America. black men and maybe men in general are never given the opportunity to fall in love with the natural hair that black women have. As a result unless black women do things like perm their hair to make it straighter and more mainstream; they don't get the attention that they want. This i think is one of the reasons that ruining the hair of young girls is such a major problem in black communities; how can black women expect men to find them beautiful if they don't even find themselves beautiful enough to be proud of their natural hair. Admittedly, black men and men in general are part of the problem because they foster this perversion of what is beautiful. They often don't appreciate that beauty is not a narrow concept but society plays a bigger role in that than most people realize. If we are to really unite as a people and as a nation then one of the first things that we need to understand is the roots of our problems. If we can solve the little issues that divide us and keep is apart then maybe we can solve the big issues also.

what really motivates people?

     Its conventional wisdom that if you want to get a person to do something then you have to offer them a reason to do it. This reason most often comes in the form of a reward or a payment of their services. As far as the history of mankind goes, this has not always been the case because at various points in time we have even gone so far as to tell a person that they have to do something just because someone else says so. There are many dark times in history where people have been held against their will and forced to do things that they did not want to do but for the most part the general contract between two parties is such that if you do this then you will get that. But is that the way that the most impressive things have been accomplished in the past? Is that what got Einstein to create the Theory of Relativity, or what inspired Beethoven to write his famous 9th Symphony? Was it merely the promise of a reward, a payment for services rendered that produced such exponential leaps forward in our culture? 

     For the longest time I think that people truly believed even to this day that the best way to motivate a person is to offer them a reward. Writers like Daniel Pink have referred to this approach as the carrot and stick approach. The carrot being the promise of reward and the stick being the threat of punishment. If you do what you are supposed to do and you do it well then you are rewarded with this carrot that you want. But if you do not do what you are supposed to do or if you do not perform to the required standards; then you are poked or hit with the stick. If you look at the way businesses are set up then you can see that this is the exact philosophy that they have employed to run their businesses. They pay you do do your job and they punish you if you do not do it well enough. This has led to an economic environment where people just do jobs to survive and to pay their bills rather than doing the things that they truly enjoy doing. 

     If as a child you truly enjoyed building furniture but were led to believe that the only way that you could make a good living and provide for a family was to be a doctor; then a pragmatic mind would choose to be a doctor foregoing doing what they love. The greatest things that we have been able to do as a race have come out of the pure desire to do so; an intrinsic need for self fulfillment. Charles Darwin did not create the Theory of Evolution because someone was paying him to do so, and Plato did not write The Republic just for a paycheck. These great men and thinkers were able to accomplish what they have accomplish because of the inner drive to fulfill themselves and leave the world a better place than they found it. People have a need to do things, make things, fix things, and be useful. Inside every person is a drive to do something. There is a passion in some area and in some field that has not been nurtured and given the opportunity to flourish.

Are tanks more valuable than schools?

     Common sense would dictate that in order to insure the survival of your species you would aim to get as much knowledge as possible and build for the future. However as it turns out we do not place as much value in the future as we do in studying the past. It has been said many times that history repeats itself and that man is just doomed to make the same mistakes that he has made before. Even if that is the case it should not be what we use to decide how to move forward. Granted there is wisdom in learning from your mistakes but i am given to believe that this can only work up to a certain point. If we are constantly looking backward, how are we supposed to see what is coming towards us. The human species has in the past been a slave to many character flaws such as greed but in my opinion that is just a product of economics. If you do not have enough to feed your self and your family then it is only natural to want to secure this protection for yourself. Because of this need to procure protection we get things like war where one side is simply trying to ensure its own survival. If for some reason early human beings lived in abundance as far as the eye could see then what would be the motivation for war? Why pillage and plunder when you have more than enough to eat and to feed your family right in front of you? There would be absolutely no reason to fight wars except for the occasional psychopath who loves killing without rhyme or reason. Studying and modeling your behavior on a history like this which occurred under vastly different circumstances than today is similar to the the British being ready for WWI at the start of WWII. A completely different set of circumstances are bound to present themselves wherein there is no clues from our past on how to handle them at all.
     It seems to me that our civilization has its priorities mixed up when it comes to the value of work. Why is it that the highest paid among us are not the teachers; those who instruct our young ones and hold the keys to our future as a species. It would certainly be much more conducive to the progression of our species if we focus our efforts on the future as opposed to the past. Our future lies in our children and their children who will inherit a world that was scared by the primitive wars of their ancestors. It is in our best interest to make sure that they will be orders of magnitude more capable than we are or our parent were. The only way to do this is to invest in our education with the same fervor that we hunt down terrorist after they attack our home. Why isn't a college education both mandatory and free? How do we expect to produce productive members of society when something as essential as higher learning is only accessible if you can afford it. Should we not be educating people from all walks of life in hopes that we can find more Albert Einsteins and Leonardo Da Vinci's? Don't we want to benefit from the promise of a more advanced future? If we do then education should be the number one priority of every advanced nation on Earth; especially one that claims to be the best among them. Instead of spending our money on military advancement we should be investing in our school system. The job of being our Teacher should be the highest paid profession in our society; so much so that only the best and brightest have the opportunity to do such important work. Instead of Ivy League grads wasting their talents on wall street they should be competing for middle school and high school teaching jobs, eager to imprint their mark on the next generation.

is the Fear the American way?

     It's absolutely amazing how fear controls the human mind, to the point that everything one does is dictated by some sort of fear or apprehension. This history of the world is rooted in the use of fear to suppress the masses, stemming from the fear that the church placed on the common person. If a person is deceived into believing that this minister of a certain religion really has the power to affect what they themselves cannot really control, then this minister is endowed with a power that rivals even Gods. The fear of the afterlife has been a constant throughout the ages, independent of race or religion people collectively fear for what they refer to as their souls. Those who realized this took advantage of it and created the most deceptive corrupt and all powerful entity in human history; the church. Besides that fear is prevalent in all facets of society take for example the current state of the American government.
     Capitalism was heralded as the right way for people to live, as gods way, as the way of truth and justice but in truth it has brought more pain and evil to the world than its worth. People lose everything that they have and have earned for the good of the free market. A concept that was never laid out by those who founded this country, but nevertheless was adopted as the American way. Fear, however,  is the reason that we cannot change to a system that is much more effective. One such as socialism; which benefits all people and immensely decreases the gap between the haves and the have-not's. The propaganda that was rolled out by those in power has for so many years painted this monstrous portrait of a system that does right by all its people. The constant association with communism and radicals like Stalin, and Chairman Mao makes socialism look like it is evil incarnate and that it is something that we must avoid at all cost in order to preserve our precious ineffective democracy. Those who have the means to do so see that people don't know the truth about socialism because it would threaten their means of life it would open the eyes of the millions of people who vastly out number the controlling percentage. Why would they want you to know that under a socio-capitalistic government homelessness and poverty is all bit eliminated. Instead they feed you a dream that you can one day become wealthy and live the American dream one day if you keep supporting the system that has oppressed you and you pay your taxes and be a good citizen maybe you could have your piece of the pie.

why don't you smile?

     When you walk the streets of New York, you ride our trains, you visit our stores; one of the things that becomes readily apparent is that no one looks happy at all. Is that really the case? How could it be that in one of the richest most decadent cities on the planet; no one is happy and everyone is just living such a shit life. So much so that a scowl is a permanent fixture on every face. It is as if we have all decided that when in public we must suddenly become upset at the world and that everyone we see is just this horrible person that doesn't deserve so much as a smile.

     The truth is that many people are quite happy but wearing that happiness on your face seems to go against some sort of social normality. Why are we all so angry and indifferent and scared all the time? Could it be that those who have to power to influence public opinion often wield that power to create a climate that would advance a particular political agenda? Using tactics such as blatant misrepresentation of facts, fear mongering and just overall misdirection seems to have become commonplace. News stations and by extension big corporations and certain billionaires stand to benefit from mass hysteria because they always have the cure. What better was to make money than to ramp up fear so that people feel that something needs to be done and you are the one who can do it. Its exactly the tactics that our resident war hero General George W Bush used to get us to invade Iraq. If people are living in constant fear then what else can show up on their face besides that fear and anger at the fact that they are so afraid.

     In addition to the Geo-political aspect of this there is the domestic pressures that come with being a member of the American society.  If you smile at someone it can easily be misconstrued and misinterpreted into something that you did not intend for it to be. If a grown man smiles at a little girl he is automatically looked at as a predator or a pedophile or some form of scum. If a guy smiles at a girl she automatically thinks that he is trying too sleep with her or rape her or follow her or worse. What ever happened to common and uncommon courtesy? We are so preoccupied with how we appear to others that we dare not do or say anything that might be deemed as controversial. We just do what is expected of us and we say what is expected of us and we do not get out of line. Even the social non-conformist are all the same; following a set of rules that have been set out for how a social non-conformist is supposed to socially non-conform. We no longer wear our hearts on our sleeves for fear of being hurt, or broken or rejected. We no longer live with passion and emotion because its viewed as being to eager. Nonchalance has become such a virtue to the point where not trusting anyone and not caring about anything is celebrated as a triumph. It is as though you have won the social lottery if you can prove that you are the person who cares the least. 

who killed chivalry?

      Siting on the train I often wonder about a lot of things, the most often prominent is about the seating situation. Conventional wisdom dictates that a young man such as myself should easily be able to get up and give my seat to one of the many females that I find standing over me looking down on me with absolute disdain. But it's difficult for me because of the problem I have of thinking way to much about things that I should not be thinking so much about, things that I should really do out of pure emotional motivation. It doesn't work that way for me however because I'm constantly plagued with the problem of over thinking every situation that I am in. Whether or not this is a futile attempt to make myself feel better about being to lazy to just lift my ass up and give my seat to a woman I'm not sure of but I seem to rationalize my own reasons in my head. 

       The most simple of these reasons being that I have no idea who this person is that I am so dutifully surrendering my comfort to. Granted we have the fact that I am young and male and probably in better physical condition but who is this anonymous lady anyway? What if this woman is the most despicable of human beings, a woman who by no means should be given anything at my expense. There is no way I can tell the character of the person who I am helping, should I just willingly help all who cross my path ignorant to whether or not they are deserving of my kindness? I suppose most would say that you should not be concerned with whether or not the person is deserving because if you do that then you would never do anything nice for anyone because you could never tell. If everyone thought that way then nothing nice would ever be done for anyone else. I sit here and I think about this, what if I am more deserving of the seat in every sense of the subject? Thus I am at in impasse because unless I spend my time trying to get to know the person that I am trying to help, a person who more often than not will not be willing to digress about their personal lives, then I will never know. Not to mention that I neither have the energy nor the desire to get to know every eligible candidate to receive my seat. 

     The more intellectual argument involves the state of the society that we currently reside in. In our American society women have rightly obtained a great deal of equality and opportunity, but still they insist on a double standard. I do not understand how a person could want to be treated equally and yet want to hold on to the remnants of an inherently unequal societal structure. To that end what do we want our society to transform into? A place where we have no real gender differences? Eventually if we continue along the path that we are on I strongly believe that men and women are going to be the exact same and there will be a complete devolution of the modern family. But in any case, why do women want to be treated like women and yet also treated like men? In past societies there was always a give and take when it came to gender roles, the woman was not always involved in decision making or considered as the head of anything but she was treated as precious. She was given honor and looked at as a work of art, something to be cherished, loved and respected. In that situation then rising to allow her to sit is a given because of the role that she plays in society. But now philosophically it seems almost unfair to treat a woman as special and yet give her all of the things that men have enjoyed. Is a man supposed to be treated specially?

are poor people really just lazy people?

     It has occurred to me that people have the wrong idea about why some people are poor and others are rich. Many of the people i have come into contact with have the notion that poor people somehow choose to be poor or are just too lazy to get themselves out of the mire. How can that be true when the thing that gives us as human beings the most joy in life is work. Not to say that all of us want to slave all day on a construction site in the hot sun or pass out from heat exhaustion while underground mining for coal but work nonetheless. The work of our choice often doesn't seem to feel like work at all because we enjoy it. We get a sense of accomplishment when we are given the opportunity to drive ourselves and pour our hearts into our passions. This could be a great music composer spending countless hours on his masterpiece, or a doctor scouring over medical journals to come up with a cure or even a chef traveling the world to gather the best ingredients for his greatest dish. People love work and they love the feeling of a job well done so to think that some people; particularly the poor, just have no drive to do anything just seems completely perverse.
     Given the opportunity to work and support themselves and their families the poor are no less inclined the work hard than the rich, they are just people. In fact many poor people are forced to work more than one full time job just in-order to be at a living wage. If that does not show a willingness to work hard what does? The fact that a person does not have the drive to be successful in the traditional sense of the term does not mean that the are completely devoid of drive. It may just mean that this person is more willing to do a more labor intensive job that they are willing to do one that is more mentally intensive. Why does this mean that their efforts are worth so much less than the work of someone who chooses the standard route. This is not to say that a person should be rewarded according to the level of contribution that they make to society because they certainly should. A person who has spent years in law school to learn and master his craft should certain be rewarded handsomely for the the time he dedicated and the effort expendid. However that does not mean that a person who instead of going to college after high school, chose to become a security guard and start a family should not be able to live relatively comfortably and be afforded a measure of dignity.
     If by some unimaginable circumstance you were given the ability to create an economic system for a society in which you would be blindly place at either the top of the food chain meaning the very rich, the bottom of the food chain meaning the very poor or at some point in the middle; what kind of system would you create? Keeping in mind that you do not know where in the system you would end up, wouldn't you want a system that is as fair as possible? Would you want a system such that if in the worse case senario if you end up poor you would still have the means to get by and to live a modest life? There is the possibility that you could end up at the top of the food chain but their really is no guarantee so it would certainly be in your best interest to make sure that you don't create a system where you can end up massively wealthy but there is also a strong possibly that you can end up in-humanly poor. Now consider if you were a newborn baby, what kind of world would you want to be born into?