Funk Master Flex made the critical mistake that a lot of Black people make in business, and that is becoming emotional. Under no circumstances was it or is it ever okay to publicize your private business conversation before you and the individual you are doing business with have collectively resolved your business matter and or subsequent business transaction. Whether Funk Flex understood that HOV was reaching out to him for business or personal matters is a nonissue. He may now have ruined a good business opportunity which could have benefitted both individuals, or at the least found out some vital information that could have aided in his further success.
As comical as the radio rant may have been, it did not add any substantial nominal gains for his brand and it probably strained a good working and beneficial business relationship. It was simply immature and exhibited poor business etiquette and lack of savvy.
I hate when people bring up something that I did in the past which they may not have liked. I probably apologized for it and expressed my will to never do it again. What is done is done and I cannot change the past. I would love the idea of being forgiven as well as having the done deed forgotten, but that is never fully the case. I may be forgiven, but what I have done will not be forgotten. The act of before and its affect are what I must now live with and deal unto accordingly, even appropriately if I desire to maintain my own peace.
No one wants to constantly be reminded of their own transgressions against others. We would all like to be seen by others as the perfect model of a human being. If it were up to all of us, our wrongs would simply be rights. That is everyone’s ideal solution to their deviated and delinquent behavior. Why else would a misdoer argue to justify his or her wrongdoing? It is only to appeal to someone else’s empathetic nature and to coerce their agreement to righten themselves being done wrong. We all do it! It is the civilized thing to do. Tell me I am a fool to my face so that you and I can continue the cooperative effort of allowing you to mistreat me. That is the name of the game. Rarely does the argument ever end so peacefully. Usually someone has to form a compromise to assuage an ensued and heated debate over the misdeed. If not, that is where violence comes in handy. “Oh, you don’t like me treating you bad? Take this ass whooping! That will show you what is good for you.” There, the fence of civility has been cleared and we have entered into savagery. It should never go there, but unfortunately it does and always will sometimes.
Enter Memory:
What if we forgot when someone mistreated us? Aha! Some of you never gave that a thought I bet. I do not mean forgot in the philosophical or theoretical sense like, “oh don’t worry. I forgot that even happen.” I am talking about in the literal and physical sense like “hold up, what happened? When? For real? You lyin’! Nah that shit ain’t happen… but for real though?” The fact we can recall traumatic experiences in life is a defense mechanism and it serves a very valuable purpose. Our cognitive recollection can remind us of what we do not enjoy and if working properly will help us position ourselves to never let or allow what causes grief to negatively affect us again. Without memory and the ability to rewind and playback our experiences, bad as well as good, we would be suffering from amnesia (a brain disorder).
White folks, the rest of this is for you:
Ironically, we all have the innate ability to forgive. The catch is we have to find it in ourselves to choose to forgive being mistreated. Forgiveness is very similar to forgetting, although the two concepts are not the same. Forgiveness allows us to say to ourselves, “you know what, I have to stop thinking about what happened in the past all the time. I’ll never let it happen again though!”
To be forgiven for mistreating someone means that we have to allow ourselves to be accountable for what we have done to that other person. When we allow ourselves to be forgiven we have to also accept that who we mistreated will probably never forget what we did to them, and from time to time will remind us that they have not forgotten for safe measure. This must be done in order for them to further remind us that they intend to never let it happen again, but will forget about it until the next time they feel the need to remind us again.
Memory lasts in time and matures. It grows and becomes a new life. It takes on different names and languages. It has homes and styles itself in the latest and modern fashions. It has children and parents. It is a living, breathing, reproducing organism. Memory is essential to a society and its order. Memory passes on to generations and raises them. It feeds them their favorite foods, sings them their favorite songs, buys them their first car, helps them raise their own children. Memory reminds us of all the good things that have happened throughout human history, as well as the bad. We are the memory of us all from before, in the present, and into the future. We are accountable for our history, whether we were physically here to witness it, or it was passed down to us through memories. We can forgive ourselves and allow ourselves to be forgiven, but we will never truly forget. That old shit matters to us all.
“Con coco o sin coco?” Is what brothers and sisters ask when you ask them if they have any weed to smoke in the Dominican Republic. With cocaine or without cocaine? In the Dominican Republic cocaine is a more socially accepted drug of choice than marijuana. Weed is actually looked down upon in the way smoking crack is looked upon here in the United States. This was a very bizarre state of affairs when I realized the ramifications of such a construct. This meant that in the Dominican Republic, I was a crack head and the coke heads were the laid back stoners. My how the truth can be malleable and ambiguously obscure.
When I went to a close friend’s potluck a week ago, who is actually Dominican himself, I kept hearing him and his cousin yell out “I’m in love with the coco!” They finally played the video for everyone and we all were glued to the monitor as we watched a man sitting at a kitchen table with his friends, seemingly spreading powdered cocaine over it with playing cards and rolling up blunts. How simply sensational of a sight I thought! Who cannot relate to this image? How can you not see how relevant this scene is? I thought all of this at the same time as I thought how disgusting the video was. The mundaneness of what Hip Hop or Rap has degraded to. Who could support such garbage! These were the conflicting debates floating in my mind as I continued to stare and listen to what one of our good friends from college described as a nursery rhyme. He was right. The lyrics were so simple a two year old could recite and comprehend them after one listen. It was actually kind of disturbing to think of the influence this video will have on younger viewers.
It was stuck in my head. I walked home with my girlfriend singing “I’m in love with the coco” out loud. We would both laugh and shake our heads at our own senseless embarrassment and juxtaposed affinity for the simple yet catchy tune. I asked her to play it again when we got home. We watched the whole thing, twice. I watched it again, alone with my headphones. I bobbed my head. I lip synced the single syllable lyrics to myself. I smiled at the screen. I enjoyed it. It was addictive.
The beat! The foundation of the auditory retention is the low frequency of the sub bass line in the background music. The engineer of the musical score synthesized the reverberations of the low tones very well, and in unison the sound effects which work congruently with the bass are mesmerizing. If there were no lyrics, the song will still have a profound affect onto the listener. I can imagine watching the video with the instrumental only and still fully understanding the theme of the song. Without a doubt, like many other current rap hits, the beat carries the song and without it I sincerely believe it would not work or feel the same. The producer and his engineer did an excellent job.
The lyrics are simple, as already stated. However, the lyrics are contrasting to what is the current political atmosphere in the Black community. Whether Genasis intended to cause a debate or not is not the question. He has most certainly done so. While at my friend’s potluck, I recall a divide amongst all who were watching the video. Some loved it. Some hated it. I did find myself somewhere in the middle. The melody of the lyrics and the cadence of the rhyme took me back to “con coco o sin coco” in the Dominican Republic. It reminded me of a time and place when and where I was unsure of my political stance on drugs and what is socially on the fence, and what is totally overboard. I will not promote violence and I believe guns should be used only for protection, however I was reminded of the G Thang video when the guy had the pistol tucked into the back of his pants while working the barbecue pit. The guns looked real and I looked at them closely. I was drawn to them the same way I have always been when watching a movie or television show. This video was no different. This was a good rap video. If we must separate Hip Hip and Rap to achieve a sense of clarity and social aptness in our culture and responsibility to our community then I say this is an excellent rap video.
Whether Genasis will stand the test of the fickle music industry is oh but yet to be seen. I for one could not care less how things play out, but best of luck to him and his family. As for this record, very disturbing yet highly intriguing. It is extremely interesting how the same thing can be done in so many ways and still one out of the million appears and feels so different. This one was like tasting something different in a corner store bottled water and thinking “wow, what is this?” Only to look and see it is Poland Spring with a new logo and feeling unconsciously satisfied with what you perceive as something new.
One day about three years ago I was laying on my living room couch and had what most would call an epiphany. Some people think that moments of clarity only happen once or twice in a lifetime, however I’m lucky to say I’ve had several in my 30 years on Earth. They’re lasting milestones in my thinking and I never forget what the memory taught me. This particular time it was a very simple concept that continued to grow and develop in my mind over the course of a year. I guess it’s still in development because yesterday it struck a new cord.
The idea is a common notion, except it is articulated very soundly in my mind. I’ll start with the basic element, which is a circle. To breeze over some deep and nerdy geometrical and mechanical physics lessons, you have to fully understand that there are no mathematical equivalents to what is considered a straight line. In short, straight lines don’t exist in nature. They are solely figments of intellectual design. What do occur in nature are fractals. To keep it simple, it is nature’s way of creating the illusion of a straight line. You see fractals when you look at a snowflake in a microscope, or when you gaze at a spiderweb. What’s interesting to one who may not know much about fractals is that they’re created by curves and semi circles, thousands of them. So until otherwise discovered thru modern science, everything in all ways are a part of and constructed by three hundred and sixty degree elemental parts.
That leads me to the first phase of my notion. Imagine a picture of a galaxy. Use a picture of the Milky Way if it makes things easier. Observe how there’s more light in the center than on the outskirts of it. Science has proven that a tremendous amount of energy resides in the center and less of it on the outlying parts. Similarly, this is the function with other observed galaxies in our close proximal universe. This happens with most sources of light in general, the center has more energy than its edges. No reason to explain why because it’s a known fact. What’s important to note is that at some point, whatever is furtherest away from the center of these systems will inevitably find its way to the center. It is also true in just about any instance of a self generating energy source like our Sun, and even the Earth. These are natural examples of self sustaining energy sources, as well as life forms.
Before I go into the next part of my thought, let me say that humans are not penguins and penguins don’t use money. That being said, I think people can learn a lot about how we use money from penguins.
I’m a capitalist. I don’t think I’d choose any other economic philosophy currently in practice today to thrive within. I believe capitalism is the best option on the market right now. I do however think there can be something better. What about something like “Circularism?” Not based on the paradigm of a triangle, but simply a circle instead. Circularism has more wealth in the center instead of the top, and the working class revolving around it instead of at the bottom holding it up. Not socialism, and heavy government regulation. Plain science and physics. Imagine an economy that distributes wealth in a natural cycle, that over time a population will have regenerated its own wealth throughout its entire self by simple geometrical forces. Take in account that goverment regulation is unavoidable to any economic philosophy, but regulation doesn’t have to be a determinate in whether a philosophy works well or not. The most crucial element to the cultivation of an economic philosophy is fear. Fear drives every social phenomenon.
Now that I’ve formed my basis, described my model, and presented my concept, let me elaborate on what I believe. As we creep into the mid part of this century, privacy will become more of a luxury to us than it is a commodity to us currently. Our privacy has everything to do with the future of our global economy. The less privacy our community has, the less value can be placed into capitalism. Wealth cannot be hoarded in a glass vault. As technology becomes more and more invasive and people become just as extraverted online, the price of privacy will shoot to new heights. The inclination of wealth distribution in this new environment will undoubtedly shift, and not in favor of the wealthy. Who does that scare? The wealthy, of course. Trillions of dollars will be spent on keeping money secure for private citizens and corporations will come in droves to cash in on the new privacy and personal data industries. As cash money digitizes and the percentages of hard cash with dead presidents printed on them grows smaller, wallets will be all the more vulnerable to pick pockets. Not only will the cyber crooks be on the prowl, but advertisers, city agencies, retailers, and anyone who needs your money will have faster and faster and faster access to your assets. This isn’t a story from a science fiction novel. This is reality.
A person’s net worth isn’t anyone’s business until they’re in the public eye. Average people don’t want anyone to know how much money they have because they simply don’t have enough of it. If they did then it wouldn’t even matter to them who knew how much they had because it’s not like it’s gonna get up and hop into someone else’s bank account without raising some law abiding eyebrows. What’s interesting is how much personal information the average person openly submits to the public via the internet, as opposed to what personal info the wealthy do. You figure hey, we know everything about the wealthy already. We do know a lot about the people who control most of our wealth, but we don’t really know details. They’d love to keep it that way. That is where capitalism wins, for now. Soon there will be a new generation of wealthy citizens who have a different perspective on what’s private and what’s public information. These people will be the people who uploaded their first profile pictures onto social media when they were 13 years old. Privacy will have a whole new meaning and people will be a lot more public about everything. That is where capitalism begins to fade into history.
Personal bank accounts will be a public affair. Maybe not the Bank of America joint account with mom, or the Chase primary checking, or the Fidelity retirement account. These institutions will hold steady as long as they can. The new accounts will be the future of our global economy, the Bitcoin account, the Paypal account, the mobile wallet you downloaded and put $15 dollars in but have yet to use. These new economic technologies are going to revolutionize the exchange of money and assets. People are currently selling their homes on their iPhones. At that rate of exchange, it will be no time before people are verifying assets for sales via instant message. Why not have your entire portfolio listed online via your “This Is Everything I Have” profile? That way people can just open that up and see if you qualify for that business loan, or that mortgage for the condo you need in Florida. “Everyone’s doing it!” Just like every trend, people will be drawn to what is popular and what makes sense to them as a person in a group and not in solitude.
Circularism is an adaptation, and not a takeover or just another revolution. You cannot regulate fear, you can only react to it. The fears I described are fears of today that will grow into the future. Capitalism can’t sustain a healthy economy in an environment where privacy is a luxury. The more people know, the less they spend. Capitalists survive primarily on the grounds of access, and keeping others away from the commodity they have access to. Access is the fundamental key to information technology. Computers are on the brink of their own turning point. The quantum computer, which relies on quantum codes or the next version of binary code, to calculate algorithms. This will also raise the stakes of how quickly we will be able to access information. The future is very bright for snooping online.
Enter the industrial snooping age. Less work, more snooping on who’s doing work and how much work they’re doing. That’s the ticket to cyclical wealth distribution. I’m not talking about little old factory worker snooping on big giant corporate CEO’s accounts in the middle of the night on a laptop. I’m talking about the freelancer on the mobile device at a coffee shop going thru lists of public account profiles of other small business owners looking for a match for a new venture, on the “Venture Match App.” Goverment economic regulators and staunch capitalists didn’t see that one coming. It won’t be an invasion of privacy that will sit capitalism down in its rocking chair. It will be publicity that will turn the tides of wealth distribution and create a free flowing cycle of economic freedom for a larger proportion of our population. The faster people trade ideas, the faster people will trade their assets, the faster people will trade their wealth.
Of course the rich will still get richer, and the poor will still get poorer, but at what rate and at what ratio? A different one. Relative to the polarity of wealth distribution today, almost anything would be more ideal. How about everyone just be poor? That would actually be better than some people having nothing while one person has everything. I don’t want everyone to be poor, but I do believe some could do just fine with less. Extravagance has always set it’s foot stern into economy. It for the most part seems to turn the wheels of the capitalistic money machine. The thing is that extravagance still looks back at fear for motivation. So the light dims on extravagance as privacy becomes less abundant. A beacon is shone on stoicism when the public is not only watching, but is also the judge. Without fail, our global economy will have to endure multiple losses in the transition into the public data age. As our thoughts become a part of the exchange of communication at the click of a button, our wallets will soon be at the whim of the tide called hysteria. We can’t avoid these certain laws of social science. We can only adapt. The good thing is there will be a new philosophy to adapt to, and I believe that philosophy will be Circularism.
Erick's Brain 