EVOLUTION NOT REVOLUTION

I have been too busy to blog anything myself, but I want all you inveterate, got to to put your thoughts out here for the rest of us, got to keep your ears to the streets and spread the word, everyday or every week blogging individuals, to know how much I appreciate being allowed to eavesdrop on the exchange of ideas. I so rarely hear anything worth listening to in real world conversation, so this may be the only thing keeping me sane (more or less) in this insane world,

So Field Negro , got me back to blogging this morning, with a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, Change. FN passes on an interesting perspective from a blogger I have not had the pleasure of reading before, Asabanga. Here is an excerpt, go to FN for the fully.

So what are we left with… well let me suggest that we employ the mindset of the Spartans…. as seen in the movie “300” (Tafari—quit drooling!). Let’s have a real revolution of thought and practice. Let us create a community of Black/African men and women who from birth are trained to be warriors, and by this I mean have a warrior mentality where their only… I repeat and emphasize, ONLY commitment is to this community. Two very difficult choices will have to be made for this to work. First, those who can’t or don’t measure up physically, emotionally, spiritually and/or make a real contribution to the community… we cut them loose. So those who are chronic substance abusers, societal and moral deviants (i.e murderers, abusers of women and children, etc.), those who are unteachable, those who cannot/will not develop a community first attitude, those who are weak willed and/or weak minded, and anything else that is an anchor to our progress…. we turn them out. Second, we don’t get hooked into other peoples/groups struggles. Let white women (feminists) fend for themselves. Let the homosexuals fight their own battles for their civil rights. Let the Native Indians (who owned slaves and are more than willing to disentangle themselves from that history) engage the white man in their own struggle. Let the poor white trailer trash agitate for their own political/economic empowerment. F*CK THE RAINBOW COALITION! It’s a burden on our advancement! It should be all about us and ONLY us. I contend that ONLY by this type of revolution, can even START to develop a strong and progressive Black/African community. Purification of community values. Single-mindedness of community purpose. Revolution of community focus.

The good news is the subject matter is at heart “CHANGE”. Asa, FN, and most everybody else feels strongly that some sort of change, doing something different, is needed to bring us up from the depths we currently inhabit.
The bad news is that even in our discourse about the need for change we are still stuck in the most vicious cycle. Revolution by definition is coming back around. I think we are not really looking at this “change” thing deeply enough. Ever hear the phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same”? That’s all revolution can bring us, is back around to the same old thing again. There have been revolutions throughout human history, but in the time since we first began recording our history, there has been very little evolution. So what if we manage to change positions somewhere during the cycle. Our “oppress or be oppressed” mentality is going to be the death of the species we know as mankind. We do not need a Revolution, we need an EVOLUTION.

P6 got me reading Octavia Butler again. Her particular genius, especially in the Xenogenesis series, is the idea that we need to evolve beyond the hierarchical social and cultural instincts that cause us to view the world the way we do; that cause us to interact with each other the way we do. Let me give you a real world example of what I mean. Almost all religious systems currently practiced among current cultures are a derivative of ancient Egyptian Sun worship. (Some of you desperately want to jump right in and dispute this point, thus rendering the remainder of my diatribe so much worthless drive. As Asa so eloquently put it, this is not the time or the space for that discussion, although I am more than willing to have it. For the moment, let’s just agree that you reserve the right to challenge this assertion at a later date.)

We have developed intellectually, scientifically, and technologically to the point where most the things that our ancestors even 150 years ago would have relegated mythology, legend, magic, or spirit related explanation, we know consider commonplace knowledge. We have advanced to the point where we know of the existence and vastness of the universe, yet the large majority of us still cling to the mythology of the Sun (Son) God’s return. The social and cultural instincts and drives that served to make humanity the dominant species on Earth are quite simply, genocidal in their basic principles.

This is where we have to evolve. We can’t make the same mistakes that Sparta did, however heroic they were. They were appropriate to that time, and this is a new day and age. We have got to come together simply because it is the only way to survive. We have got to make the survival of every organism of this planet our paramount driving concern. We have got to change how we think about family, money, community. It shouldn’t be that hard to see that there must be a better way to live on this world than the one that currently has some people with more than they could ever possibly use, and others with not enough to survive the day. It doesn’t take a legion of social commentators, movement leaders, or messiahs to see that the entire race is in a self destructive slide, from young people killing each other in the streets to old people pushing the buttons to kill entire cities. We haven’t changed, evolved, enough to even make this simple truth the central topic of discussion. It isn’t really about black and white, or even rich or poor. It’s about the socio-cultural instincts that make all the nonsense seem not as bad, as long as you and yours are not the ones suffering.