Appreciating Epictetus

Born into slavery. Sold as a child. Constantly whipped by a vicious master...

Out of this came a diamond mind that greatly influenced generations upon generations.
The following quotes are taken from "The Art Of Living" which is a collection of wise sayings by this extraordinary philosopher:



All religions must be tolerated... for everyone must get to heaven in his/her own way.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death and hardship.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

Freedom is the right to live as we wish.

God has entrusted me with myself.

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

No great thing is created suddenly.
Epictetus

No man is free who is not master of himself.
Epictetus

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

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OneLove

:::MixMasterE:::

Hip-hop and the Corporate Function of Colonization

Having elsewhere looked at the function of mass media as primary mechanisms of the maintenance of colony, recent events have again emerged requiring further investigation into the function of corporate control over the cultural expression of colonized populations. Though not specific to hip-hop the example as explored through that most popular of cultural expressions may help to make more clear the imperative of organization and political struggle in 2007. Within the last few weeks alone we have seen recent decisions and trends evolve demonstrating the intent and need among those in power to further ensure that mass media will perform its primary (only?) function of manipulating popular consciousness for the purpose of manipulating behavior of the audience (victims). These developments can only be understood in the context of a continuing process of subjugation in which media play a primary role in suppressing dissent.

Most recently examples of this include the successful lobbying (legal bribery) of congress by Time Warner to increase postal rates for magazines making new or small magazines unable to start or compete for national distribution. There are the continuing efforts of EMI to sell itself off to either Warner Music Group or the newest media trend of a private equity firm. And then there was the Copyright Royalty Board issuing its new policy of charging commercial and non-commercial terrestrial and internet broadcasters per-song royalty fees which have been estimated to mean that 85% of internet broadcasters will fold unable to afford the cost of operation. This decision, it must be noted, also affects my own beloved Washington, DC Pacifica Radio affiliate WPFW whose song royalties fees, based on this decision, will no longer be covered by the right-wing-led Corporation for Public Broadcasting meaning further economic hardship for the network.

To this must be added the recent exposure of Interscope Records' "lyrics committee," who have determined that the recently released album from Young Buck would not include a track called Fuck tha Police due to its "violent content." These examples form a segment of what is the need of those in power to maintain intellectual boundaries established for their own protection. This elite uses the structure of corporate governance to maintain this control in relative anonymity where CEOs and commercial spokespeople become mere illusions masking their position as modern-day colonial administrators. At times called the petit-bourgeoisie, or even the Black bourgeoisie, they are simply that group which, as administrators, administer to society that which limits or confounds ranges of thought so as to keep people from stepping – intellectually or literally – beyond acceptable parameters. In thiss case these administrators become the intellectual equivalent of the guard at the gate telling you beyond this line you may not cross, that is, not without serious repercussion.

Continued references to Frantz Fanon, too often made with no equal reference or focus on what prompted his brilliant analyses, ignore the fundamental colonizing process still underway. This corporate-led lockdown of mass media and popular culture is part of a long historical process to maintain "order" over populations whose ability to produce and popularize a revolutionary culture and, therefore, conscious behavior would mean the end of established power. This threat, one that is and should be feared, is mitigated by a corporate structure designed, as Fanon explained, to not "destroy the culture of the colonized" but to instead allow certain forms to be carefully selected for promotion and popularity. This popularity then encourages perceptions of the colonized that support their colonization and, in fact, encourage a behavior among the colonized which produces self-inflicted wounds that while in reality result from externally-based oppression are justified via perception. Here, again, is how a Viacom-owned radio station would broadcast Don Imus while also broadcasting the very hip-hop later blamed for his remarks on BET, MTV, and here in Washington, DC on WPGC 95.5 FM, the city' s leading Black-targeted radio station. "We play what the people want and produce" is their claim. Yet when DC-area artists, such as Head-Roc, DJ EuRok, Pookanu, Asheru to name too few, produce high quality hip-hop critical of our colonial status, police brutality, impoverished schools, etc. or even make music that is just fun-loving and brilliantly worded they are suppressed. Censorship is political not linguistic. It's not the "fuck" in Young Buck's Fuck da Police that was censored.

The sociology of a corporation demonstrates its function. Boards of directors with interlocks that extend the influence of this tiny collective, themselves selected by controlling holders of stock, elect Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) who – as employees of those stockholders – work at the bidding of their further removed and mostly anonymous (certainly to us) bosses. What those bosses want is well beyond money, which itself exists only to manage/manipulate the behavior of the majority who have none, they want security and safety. Both require a popular consciousness or "manufactured" opinion which supports this by preventing even the idea of the righteous – even if forceful – redistribution of wealth and service. This is why songs saying "fuck the police" must be censored, attacked, omitted or demonized even if, as is the case with Young Buck, a video may picture Huey Newton but is actually more about an individual self-defense of selling dope than a collective self-defense in the furtherance of revolutionary intercommunalism or Black nationalism.

Corporate lockdown of popular media is a political necessity and scientific inevitability requiring further description of this process, along with suggested avenues of resistance, which will be the focus of subsequent columns. Our approach to the study of and response to media must be akin to that of Huey P. Newton who said he "studied law to become a better burglar."

Jared A. Ball, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of communication studies at Morgan State University. He is editor-at- large of the Journal of Hip-Hop and Global Culture from Words, Beats and Life

This Fatal Complacency by Desmond Tutu

What if dealing with climate change meant more than a flick of a switch? Would our friends in the industrialized world think differently if the effects of climate change were worse than extended summer months and the arrival of exotic species? Cushioned and cosseted, they have had the luxury of closing their minds to the real impact of what is happening in the fragile and precious atmosphere that surrounds the planet we live on. Where climate change has occurred in the industrialized world, the effects have so far been relatively benign. With the exception of events such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the inhabitants of North America and Europe have felt just a gentle caress from the winds of change.

I wonder how much more anxious they might be if they depended on the cycle of mother nature to feed their families. How much greater would their concerns be if they lived in slums and townships, in mud houses, or shelters made of plastic bags? In large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, this is a reality. The poor, the vulnerable and the hungry are exposed to the harsh edge of climate change every day of their lives.

The melting of the snows on the peak of Kilimanjaro is a warning of the changes taking place in Africa. Across this beautiful but vulnerable continent, people are already feeling the change in the weather. But rain or drought, the result is the same: more hunger and more misery for millions of people living on the margins of global society. Even in places such as Darfur, climate change has played a role. In the semi-arid zones of the world, there is fierce competition for access to grazing lands and watering holes. Where water is scarce and populations are growing, conflict will never be far behind.

In so many of the countries where the poorest live, governments are ill-equipped to cope. Katrina was a challenge for the US, so why should we be surprised that the annual cyclone season off the east coast of Africa continues to stretch the governments of Mozambique and Madagascar to their limits? Where governments are weak, the reliance on humanitarian agencies is greater.

People who work for bodies such as the UN World Food Program are finding their work is a humanitarian “growth industry”. Indeed, the numbers of people who know what it’s like to go hungry stands at more than 850 million, and they are still growing by almost 4 million a year. The increasing frequency of natural disasters makes the fight against hunger even more challenging. The World Bank estimates that the number of natural disasters has quadrupled from 100 a year in 1975 to 400 in 2005.

In the past 10 years, 2.6 billion people have suffered from natural disasters. That is more than a third of the global population - most of them in the developing world. The human impact is obvious, but what is not so apparent is the extent to which climatic events can undo the developmental gains put in place over decades. Droughts and floods destroy lives, but they also destroy schools, economies and opportunity.

Every child will remember the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. In the world we live in, the bad wolf of climate change has already ransacked the straw house and the house made of sticks, and the inhabitants of both are knocking on the door of the brick house where the people of the developed world live. Our friends there should think about this the next time they reach for the thermostat switch. They should realize that while the problems of the Mozambican farmer might seem far away, it may not be long before their troubles wash up on their shores.



OneLove 


:::MME:::

Being Poor, Staying Poor

People are poor because they choose to stay poor.
People should stop complaining and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
People have too many excuses.
People should just get a job and be productive members of society.

..aaaah yes...

Sheep are so imitative, so dull, so fucking ignorant. It's tempting to just turn around and walk away from all the bullshit floating around and let the foolish and ignorant just rot where they stand, but what is the value of doing that? Is it not better to engage and exchange viewpoints with the hopes of expanding one's vision and deepening one's awareness/compassion towards the poor & downtrodden, the disenfranchised and abused, the hungry and maligned, the deluded and compromised? But to do this, one has to make a choice to change focus and actively educate oneself beyond "accepted truths". Miseducation cuts deep, deep, deep......No wonder the rich are having the time of their lives! And as long as we waste our time on shit like how much weight some fat slob celebrity lost on Jenny Craig or on Paris Hilton's anorexic, dumb-as-bricks-heiress shenanigans or on American Idol (I see more talent at a Metro station), systemic forces (not blind by any means) will continue to drag us along the slipshod road of Diversions.

Check out this documentary which is a case history of massive exploitation that occurs all over --Latin America, Africa, Asia....






Let's make connections........

by MixMasterE