I’d like to thank you for becoming the first Black president of the United States of America, even though your mother is a white woman. I’d like to thank you for striving for change, even though there has been little evidence of much difference. I’d like to thank you for bringing the first Black family into the bedrooms of the White House, even though it represents nothing more than a mirror of our past presence in the so called white house. I’d like to thank you for gracefully assimilating into American elite culture, although integration will not bring us true liberty. I’d like to thank you for standing for our hopes and dreams, even though reality is far more apparent now than before. Last but not least, I’d like to thank you for showing us the ugly truth about our existence amongst those who want to destroy us, even though you make it look so good.
It was brother minister El Hajj Malik El Shabazz who when returning to America from his journey throughout the continent of Africa, on his great mission to unite the global Black nation, publicly introduced the term African American, which was commonly coined Afro-American. It was in 1964 when he created the Organization of Afro-American Unity, whose goal was to educate and rebuild the power and wealth of the Black nation within the borders of the United States of America. If it were not for brother minister El Hajj Malik El Shabazz and his courageous, selfless, powerfully driven, love for his people and their history, I sincerely believe there would be no such thing as an African American.
El Hajj Malik El Shabazz was assassinated in 1965.
It was not until 1977 when the United States of America government, through popular opinion, changed the choice ethnic identity for the “Negro” to Afro-American, which was later revised in 1997 to Black or African American.
The African American is not a label. It is a symbol of power and unity. The African American represents the ripest fruit of the global Black nation. The African American is not a reactionary label to a Eurocentric ideological categorization system. The African American is proactive ideal of an individual who is a part of a great and powerful nation of thinkers, builders, visionaries, intellectuals, nurturers, explorers, philosophers, originalists, artists, kings, and queens. The African American represents more than a country’s flawed sense of identity and wayward social thinking. The African American is a symbol of truth and progress. The African American is one of the great people of the Sun. The African American is the keystone of humanity. The African American is the genetic representation of human excellence at its highest echelon. The African American is the pinnacle of all things in human history. The African American is power.
Tell him what he can do and not what he cannot. Tell him what he should do and not what he should not. Tell him what he will do and not what he will not. Tell her who she is and not who she is not. Tell her who she will be and not who she will not. Tell her who she can be and not who she cannot. Tell them where they will go and not where they will not. Tell them how they will do it and not how they will not. Tell them that they are it and not that they are not. Tell yourself who you are and not who you are not. Tell yourself what you can do and not what you cannot. Tell yourself what you will do and not what you will not.
On my way to work tonight a young man stopped me and asked if he could use my phone. I asked him who was he going to call. He said he needed to call his mother because she was inside Harlem Hospital, which we stood right outside of, in order to get her out of there. I asked why he couldn’t get someone inside to help him? He said they told him since he was a minor that he couldn’t go inside without an adult. I said let’s go back inside because that didn’t make any sense. I asked him his name. He said Malcolm, then I introduced myself. I made sure he understood that asking strangers to use their phone in the manner he did was inappropriate. He said he knew, but I could tell his circumstances demanded desperate measures. He added that he really needed to get his house keys from his mother so he could go home and get ready for school in the morning. He couldn’t have been older than 14 years old.
Once inside the hospital lobby I noticed the first problem. There was no one attending the front desk besides a female NYPD officer standing behind a podium. I saw two office phones sitting on the counter, but before asking could he use them, I told the officer of the young man’s problem. She told me that he came in earlier but she can’t let him through without an adult escort. So then I asked could he use the phones available on the counter. She made sure to inform he could only call a number within the hospital. He dialed, but got no answer. I looked towards the officer to see if she was willing to further assist, but there was nothing from her.
Malcolm went to sit on the lobby bench, defeated. I offered him my phone to call his aunt. By some stroke of guilt the officer asked us to come back to the podium. She then interrogated Malcolm about his day from leaving school to how he ended up at the hospital, as if she wasn’t speaking to the definition of a lost child who was in her presence with a stranger he just met off the street. He explains to her how he went home from school and his mom was home, but then he left to go to his recently deceased grandma’s house to pick up some things. When he returned home he was surprised to find out his mother had been rushed to the hospital and he had no keys to get back inside the house. The officer, seemingly needing my presence as a catalyst to validate his story, picks up her wall mounted phone and asks him for his mother’s name. The simple act of verification which could have been done the moment he entered the hospital the first time they encountered each other. She informs us casually that Malcolm’s mother is in the emergency room. With more nonchalant, she instructs me to pretend to be an adult, of which I graciously assured her of my apparent adulthood, and escort him to the emergency room.
On the way there I felt obligated to advise Malcolm of the difficulties of being a young black male in the inner city, especially when dealing with black adults at times. He seemed to understand. He reiterated how negatively the officer treated him the first time he walked in. I asked him was his face twisted in a frown like it was at that very moment? He assured me it wasn’t and that he had a regular face. I reiterated the need for him to always behave and appear presentable. He understood.
While waiting on the desk attendant to locate his mother, Malcolm asked me what time I needed to be to work. I waved it off and said don’t worry. It was then I recognized he wasn’t interested in not being a burden and holding me up. He was concerned with how long I could stay with him and not leave him alone. After some assistance from the emergency room front desk we finally reached Malcolm’s mother. I immediately could see Malcolm’s major problem, his mother. She was more than ill. She was obviously dealing with some substance addiction and did not appear to be struggling with fixing it for herself, based on the small talk she offered. Malcolm glanced at me and I could see he was embarrassed and ashamed. He asked her could he have the house keys so he could go home. She replied by asking him where were his. He reminded her that they were locked in the house. She changed the subject and told him she would be out shortly and that he could wait in the lobby. Interesting how the lack of concern for Malcolm was universal. He asked her again for the keys. She reinforced that the set she had were hers and that she thought she just gave them to him. The negotiation was disheartening. He finally got the keys and he and I left the hospital together.
Once outside I asked was he going straight home? He said yes. I asked him where did he live? He told me on 145th St. Before parting I left him with some lasting words of wisdom which I think every young black man should have the opportunity to hear from an older black man. I told him to use his education to one day open his own company and employ his people, black people. We gave each other a firm handshake and bid each other farewell.
I can honestly admit that there was a time before now when I would search the web for internet fight videos to see what craziness people would post of street fights and school students pouncing on one another for the world to see. Since then I’ve grown to disgust these videos as they’ve become more and more popular over these short years. It appears now that people are in the streets taunting and instigating these fights now specifically for the camera. I don’t look at the sensation of the violence the same as I did before. Nowadays I see the images as a stark reality of what we’ve degraded to as a society and what poor future we have in store for the following generations. Aside from the slightly present anti cyber bully campaigns that are out to curb the foolishness there doesn’t seem to be a foreseeable end to the display of ignorance we’ve come too accustomed to lately. There needs to be an end somehow someway.
My biggest problem is when I see inner city people of color engaging in senseless violence on camera. The root of the fight is almost never revealed and it only looks like a bunch of dummies out to brutally kill each other all while the camera person chuckles, heckles, and instigates the violence further and further. As time has progressed I’ve noticed a key difference in what these videos used to be and what they are now. Today people are prepared for the camera and the camera is the true judge. If the camera wasn’t present I seriously doubt the violence would be as brutal. The individuals in these fights are now performing for an audience they know is larger than the one physically present. The desensitization has reached a point when people are dying on camera and nobody flinches. When will people realize we are our only enemies?
As we continue to perpetuate what is a new phenomenon of instantaneous access to viral violence, we will get entranced by something that is not healthy for our own senses as well for our culture. Everyone will find it absolutely normal to stop what they’re doing on a quiet day out in town to record a street fight and upload it onto the web from their recording device, laugh and share the images, then go about their day. No one will stop to think, what about the innocent who saw that and now think it’s okay to move along and allow violence to supersede peace? Ignorance cannot be the answer to random violence.
As law enforcement becomes a larger presence in the social atmosphere, who will protect children from the grips of police who don’t mind apprehending the young people they see engaging in the stupidity of these videos? No one will, because ironically their parents will also be apprehended due to the fact they are in the same video. There has to be a correction to this. I’m ashamed of the dumbness possessed by people who share my skin color in these videos. Every last one who still thinks it’s not their problem, but those in the videos should feel just as ashamed.
I believe we’re embarking on a time in America when racial inequality will take a backseat to social inequality full and out right. People of color will be hanging on to the argument of racial inequality for dear life, meanwhile society will say, “but look at how stupid most of you act in public.” A video will be shown of a school fight, an apartment complex fight, a fast food restaurant fight, and a fight between a family. Everyone will look at each other and say, “well that’s just those types of people.” The idea that there is a racial divide will be diluted and those who are ignorant to the fact will be forgotten. This is not what we should wish for. We can’t allow our actions to be the reason we are denied access to the gains of our society. It’s time for our cameras to display something more important. Until we find out what that is then we need not press record.
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.
Call me to set up a time and day to view this apartment.
-hardwood floors
-voice intercom
-closet space
-renovated bath
-stainless steel appliances
-dishwasher
-microwave
-balcony
-elevator
-part time doorman
-across from Central Park
-near A, B, and C trains at 96th St
Let’s get you moved in!
erick@bohemiarealtygroup.com
**Applicants should have GOOD credit and make 40x the Monthly rent – or have a Guarantor who has GOOD credit and makes 80x the Monthly rent!
Call me to set up a time and day to view this apartment.
-hardwood floors
-voice intercom
-closet space
-renovated bath
-stainless steel appliances
-dishwasher
-microwave
-elevator
-part time doorman
-across from Central Park
-near A, B, and C trains at 96th St
Let’s get you moved in!
erick@bohemiarealtygroup.com
**Applicants should have GOOD credit and make 40x the Monthly rent – or have a Guarantor who has GOOD credit and makes 80x the Monthly rent!
Erick's Brain 