« “It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is
if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost
their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to
himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and
dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be
misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”
– Steven
Biko
This is a “personal
piece”. It allows me to write from the heart – avoiding some of the tedious
rigors of academic writing while maintaining the same commitment to both facts
and Truth, as I see it. A few days ago a cousin of mine posted a question to Facebook
asking what it means to be Black. While it was certainly a trigger for this
“piece”, it is really more like the detonator for a charge that has been
building up inside me for quite some time. I distinctly remember my first main
“Black Experience”. When I was barely four years old two White teenage brothers
from North Carolina tossed me from the top of a ten foot incinerator, just to
see a “nigger fly”. I remember how frantically
and hopelessly I fought against their grip; how desperately I pleaded for them
to stop and let me go as they hoisted me up the back of the building where the
roof was a short three feet off the hillside. I remember how, from sheer
terror, I suddenly blacked out moments after I was released into midair. Left
for dead, I remember how the horror continued unabated when my maternal
grandmother finally woke me up some time later. Barely able to move, much less stand,
I continued to scream from the excruciating pain in my neck that left me unable
to turn my head for weeks. I was barely four years old then and it was certainly
a turning point in my life, a Rite of Passage, of sorts. ‘Passage into what?’ you ask. Certainly not into manhood, but then
again after that day I was never to be a boy.
Over
time I have come to understand just how the desperation, the impotence, and the
wanton brutality of that experience embodies so much of Black History itself –
all the way back from the Middle Passage to the present day. Sadly, I would have
many further opportunities to become intimately acquainted with the dark side
of White culture – but I will not write about White culture today. Today I have
something else in mind.
Perhaps
the next thing I should state, now and in good academic form, is my purpose: A cry for change! But exactly what kind of change? The most difficult kind, and yet
often the most necessary kind: cultural
change. Why? Because, as I will prove in my upcoming book “Broken Arrow: The Rise of Third World Immigration and the Demise of
Western Liberal Democracy” the single greatest predictor of a nation’s (or
a community’s) “Golden Trinity” – what I call its combination of economic prosperity, political stability, and social wellbeing – is its culture. What aspect of its culture is
particularly most relevant to the Golden Trinity? Its religious worldview.
My
first disclaimer is that I am speaking in statistical terms which apply only to
populations, and not to individuals, but when we want to know about culture we
are not concerned with individual achievements or cases – what we are concerned
with are generalities. Example:
generally speaking the taller you are the heavier you will be, but this is not
always the case. Many basketball players are tall yet thin and lean so they are
not as heavy as a member of the general population would be given the same
height. That being said, much of what I am going to say is likely to upset many
if not most Black readers, statistically speaking of course, particularly members
of my own family, most of whom are deeply religious. Frivolously upsetting
people is not my goal: getting people to reexamine themselves and their beliefs,
however, most certainly is.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to accomplish the latter without the former:
to score in soccer you have to kick some balls.
Before
I start tackling the elephant I just dropped in the room – namely, what does
religion have to do with economic prosperity, political stability, and social
wellbeing? – It’s time I said something about myself, as well as my academic
background and life experience. My birth certificate states both my parents’ Race
as Negro. Of course those who have
seen a picture of me or actually know me realize that this is evidently not
entirely true. My father is indeed “Negro” – but he is also part Native
American as well as White. Anyone familiar with US history understands why,
under American hypodescent laws (often referred to as the “one-drop rule”) my
father, and so many other African Americans of mixed racial heritage, were (and
still are) labelled as “Negroes” (or Blacks, if you prefer), no matter the
nature of their complexion, the color of their eyes, the texture of their hair,
or the features of their face.
My
mother, however, is a somewhat different story. She was a white Spanish woman
of matrilineal Jewish descent dating back to a group of Jews known as
“crypto-Jews” who managed to secretly evade century after century of intense
religious persecution by hiding their identity and customs. My mother’s motivation to have herself listed as
Negro was simple: she insisted that she would not be registered as belonging to
a different race than her child and her husband. Her rationale for claiming to be Negro was simple, and it logically
followed the one-drop rule. Parts of Spain were occupied, as well as intensely
populated by North Africans for almost eight centuries. Many if not most of
these Muslim invaders had a good measure of “Black blood”, and they contributed
linguistically, culturally, and racially (genetically) to the land they
occupied for many generations. In fact, natives to both southern Spain and
southern Italy, where Muslim presence was most pronounced, are known to be far
darker in complexion, eye and hair color than their northern counterparts. In
acknowledgment of this historic period, for example, we have the popular
Hispanic dish known as “moros y
cristianos” – Moors and Christians – comprised of black beans cooked in
white rice. Hence, claiming descent from those African moros or Moors, my mother rationally justified being “Negro”
despite her light-skinned appearance. (Of course, according to the same
rationale all human beings are “Negroes” for we all descend from Africans.) All my life, and even shortly before her
recent death, while keeping me mindful of my diverse heritage my mother would
repeat to me: “Son, never forget that in the end, no matter
where you are or who you are with, you are Black.”
So
there, I can officially state that I am a Black or African American – despite
the fact that racially, and far more importantly, culturally, I have many identities: Black, Hispanic,
Jewish, and Native American. Additionally, I can even in all sincerity state
that a good deal of my cultural programming has nothing to do with my heritage
because it is the result of many years of Far Eastern study and practice – Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and particularly
Japanese martial philosophy, psychology, as well as what some would call
“spirituality”. To that effect, over the years I earned black belt or
instructor-level certification in a dozen or so martial arts, won the title of
Best Coach in judo in Canada three years in a row, and was inducted into the US
Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 2006 for the creation of the martial paradigm I
called MAMBA – Mastering the Art of Mind-Body in Action. Certainly I have spent more time
in martial arts training halls and in meditation than most devotees have in
Church or in prayer. As far as where I have been, I have lived throughout the
United States, Eastern Canada, Spain, England, Puerto Rico, and Northern
Mexico, and have travelled through France, Germany, and Brazil.
My professional
and academic background is about as varied as my racial and cultural history. I
began working as a programmer/analyst at the age of 18 in the Canadian National
Research Council on a project for my father’s company; later, I worked as a
programmer/analyst and systems analyst for Hydro Quebec in Montreal and for
Honeywell in Toronto; finally, I embarked on a two decade stint in academia
which included five universities, various undergraduate as well as graduate
programs and degrees, and numerous teaching assistantships and lecturer
positions. My academic completion scorecard includes a Bachelor’s of Arts Honors
in Spanish and Latin American Culture and Civilization (which includes history,
literature, geography, and economy); a Master’s of Arts in Spanish and Latin
American Literature – my master’s thesis on shamanism and literature was
published in various forms in academic journals and encyclopedias; a Bachelor’s
of Science in General Science; a second Master’s degree in Cognitive
(Neuroscience) Science leading to a project and an original theory on the neural
correlates of mental imagery which was published in the International Journal
of Mental Imagery. I am a native bilingual English/Spanish speaker, and
although I was once fluent in Italian and (Brazilian) Portuguese, nowadays I
only retain an intermediate level of reading comprehension in Portuguese.
During
my graduate student years I taught (at the university level) world history,
philosophy and culture, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, world
religions, and the psychology of religion, a course which I designed myself. As
an offshoot of my experimental research in mental imagery and the imagination I
also became a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, a profession which I practiced
for many years. My groundbreaking article on the relationship between
imagination, shamanism, and clinical hypnosis received an international award
from the UK Hypnosis Research Society,
and was printed in their journal, reprinted in the academic journal Shaman, and later was the basis for an
entry article in the encyclopedia “Shamanism”. I served a year as a
psychological intern in the Girls Rehabilitation Facility – a juvenile
correction center for adolescent girls – in San Diego. There I performed
individual, group, and family therapy on gang-bangers, prostitutes,
drug-pushers and drug addicts – our socially fallen. Nearly 90% of my patients
were either Blacks or Latinas. Unfortunately, a near-death struggle with cancer
in 2007-2008 put an end to my final academic pursuit of a PhD in Clinical and
Health Psychology – one year short of its completion.
Since
then I have mostly dedicated myself to an integrative and productive approach
to researching, teaching, and writing, which has resulted in the publication of
15 titles – all of which but one (“Mandated Report”) is in the Spanish language
– and has ultimately lead me to a paradigmatic appreciation of the human
condition that I call “Biopsychocultural
Theory”. From the perspective of Biopsychocultural Theory, culture performs
several critical functions; the most relevant of those functions to the present
piece is that of communal or group survival.
Broadly speaking, biology provides the hardware, while culture provides much of
the software – software which in turn comes in the form of the transmission of
key patterns of behavior, of thinking, of feeling, and of believing. It is
precisely these key patterns that allow us to identify with others who share
our culture, distinguish ourselves from those who do not, and finally survive. Worldview, particularly
religious worldview, is critical to the nature, the content, and the manner of
dissemination of these cultural patterns.
Most
cultures around the world attribute to themselves some kind of supernatural
genesis – an origin story of divine or mystic proportions. It is their way of
feeling like they have a special place
and a special purpose in the known
universe. Of course, for those outside the culture these origin stories are just
that: stories, myths. Nevertheless, one must recognize that these myths (psychologically
and socially) serve to propel a People forward and unite them in their quest to
overcome the adversities of their shared existence, thus ultimately serving to
continue to perpetuate future generations of their kind. Culture is therefore,
fundamentally, an adaptation of a group of people to a physical, social,
economic, or political environment for the purposes of successfully passing on
their genes, memes (kind of like cultural genes), and of course, their identity,
to successive generations: nothing more, and nothing less. Of course, religious
beliefs and traditions play a key role in this process. To summarize: culture
equals place, purpose, identity, distinguishing customs, and patterns
(behavioral, intellectual, and emotional) for survival.
So far,
so good. Now for the part that will start to sting: whereas one cannot
objectively state that one culture is unequivocally superior to another, one
can most certainly state that one culture is better or more adaptive than another for any given
environment. For example, if I was dumped somewhere in the middle of the Amazon
rainforest, I really couldn’t care less for French or Russian or Scandinavian
or Mexican culture, for they will all likely be equally useless in my quest for
survival; I would need to learn the ways of the Yanomami or the Guarani.
Equally, not much about the tribes of the Amazon would help me survive in
London, or Madrid, or Sao Paulo, or Toronto, or Los Angeles. Furthermore, when
one analyzes the issue of what makes one culture better adaptive, or equivalently more competitive than another, it frequently relies on the nature
of its religious worldview, which
determines what is sacred, how one relates to the sacred, and how one organizes socially with respect to the
sacred. It is in relation to the sacred that people tend to derive answers
to the questions: what is the meaning of
life, how shall we live, who should we become? Religion pertains essentially
to being. However, cultural issues
that are fundamentally of an economic and/or political nature pertain primarily
to doing – to doing what we perceive
– what we believe – is necessary to
survive. Both religion and politics/economics are interrelated but are steeped
in opposite extremes of the being-doing
spectrum. What we do because of religion is primarily
due to whom and what we believe is
sacred and how we are to relate to it. Change our beliefs, our notions of the
sacred, and everything pertaining to religion changes. What we do for politics
and economics is primarily due to surviving
– and ideally, to thriving. Issues of survival are rooted in our biological
needs as a species trying to cope with its environment. Nothing – save the
lengthy and tedious process of evolution
itself – can change our biological needs. Biology evolves; culture (fashion, diet, music, literature, religion,
architecture, society, etc.), science, and technology – all human creations –
can revolutionize. Biology cannot. Evolution
equipped us with the ultimate survival tool – the human brain. The human brain is by far the most sophisticated
complex system in the universe for doing
the business of survival: propagating our species. However, the exigencies of
this ultimate system came with a tremendous cost: the cost of providing meaning to our doing. While every other species on the planet that ever existed has
been simply concerned with the doing of
survival, humans are the only ones equally tasked with being – with attributing meaning to our existence.
Hence,
any given culture’s being and doing are obviously interdependent, and
in some cases very much so. Indeed, here is where things begin to ruffle
feathers and hurt feelings, because some cultures are so committed to their being (relating to their notion of the
sacred) that their doing is way too
distant of a concern to be able to compete successfully with other cultures.
This is where and why some religious worldviews are simply more conducive than
others to establishing an optimal Golden Trinity for their nations and
communities. One may completely disparage the concept of comparisons between
cultures or between religions, but in the increasingly interdependent and
competitive international social, political and economic human ecosystem many have
called the “Global Village” it is impossible not to do so. Bottom line: as a
culture you will either sink or swim – do poorly or do well – according to your
set of values, preferences, and beliefs.
Which
religious worldviews are more compromising or limiting to the economic
prosperity, social well-being, and political stability of their respective
cultures? The rule of thumb is that the more heavily invested a given culture
(community or nation) is in the concept of a supreme being, in the active
belief in supernatural forces, and in the existence of otherworldly dimensions
(e.g. Heaven, Hell, or Paradise), then the worse off those communities, groups,
or nations of that culture are. You simply can’t compete with a group who spend
their time studying advanced mathematics, multivariate statistics, macro and
micro economics, civil engineering, medicine, international finance, business
administration, etc., when you are enthusiastically retelling the same ancient
myths that pretend to guide your life. Furthermore, if you are busy concerning
yourself with earning a place in your “afterlife Paradise” while your
competitor spends all of her time focusing on how her company will earn a major
share of the market, you will eventually go out of business and work for her. I
can hear you: “Being rich or successful
doesn’t make them a good person!” Well, I have news for you: I have yet to
see any statistic that demonstrates that poor people are morally superior to
rich people, or that religious people are more law abiding than non-religious
people or even atheists. Actually, the contrary has been demonstrated to be
true: Bible belt residents have been proven to engage in more “deadly sins”, (such
as downloading gay porn off the Internet) than non-Bible belt residents; while atheists
are practically non-existent in American prisons. Furthermore, again, statistically
speaking, the poorest people on the
planet are not only the most intent on (theoretically) doing the will of their
Supreme Being, but they are also the most violent, the least educated, and the least
politically stable.
Of
course, correlation is not causation. Just because the statistics show a strong
relationship between being poor, being a criminal, being undereducated, and
being religious, does not necessarily
mean that being religious causes
people to become poor, to become criminals, or to be undereducated. Perhaps it is the opposite. Perhaps being poor,
being a criminal, and being undereducated leads people to become religious? Some
have argued this very point, pointing out that the belief in an other-worldly
religion is to a society or a community riddled with poverty and social and
political disarray what a bacterial infection is to a body with a compromised
immune system: people, communities, or entire nations overrun with hopelessness
in this reality will be far more vulnerable to grasping onto otherworldly hopes,
beliefs, and aspirations. Certainly this is why Christianity became so popular
amongst the slave and servant classes of ancient Rome. In a classic society of
honor and shame, in which the lower classes had little or no hope of rising
above their birth station, there is nothing like the Sermon on the Mount – which
many interpret as establishing the moral superiority
of being socially, economically, and/or politically inferior – to get the underclasses on board. Thus, otherworldly
religions which emphasize an afterlife reward for human suffering are bound to
be far more popular amongst the poor than the rich. What is the obvious benefit
here? Religion offers a coping tool for mentally surviving the horrendous
ordeals of their day to day existence.
This
was no doubt the purpose that Christianity served the African slave upon
arriving to America in chains to a life that made chemotherapy seem like time
off at the country club. I have no judgement or criticism to offer here. Just
as sometimes you need to do what you need
to do to physically survive, sometimes you need to believe what you need to believe, or believe in, in order to
mentally, psychologically and spiritually survive. That is not the problem.
African American religiosity or spirituality had its place – and that “place” socially
and politically expired half a century ago with the Civil Rights Movement.
The
problem is that African American religiosity or spirituality – in its
traditional, monotheistic or deistic form – has long overstayed its welcome. It
needs to concede that “place” to another pivotal worldview or ideology that
will lift the vast majority of African Americans out of the depressed social,
political, and economic state – statistically speaking – we are in. What once aided
the African American in surviving, now equally prevents him from thriving. The
bacterial infection of supernatural religious belief is more like the AIDS
virus that compromises the immune system itself, therefore impeding any form of
recovery. Indoctrination into the Christian religion was the leading tool of
both African American enslavement as well as Latin American colonization. I
will rephrase it in case you were not paying attention: in the case of both the
African slave and the colonized Indian and mestizo
(Indian and Spanish racial mix), Christianization was the culturally
embedded guarantee to prevent any form of effective social, economic, or
political revolution. The colonized man, the enslaved man, can abruptly rise to
his own feet for a fleeting moment of violently expressed indignation, but the
Christ virus will sabotage his efforts and bring him back to his knees – pun
intended – every single time. Forget the Willie Lynch myth – look around you and
see the Christ God reality. As Beowulf states to his sidekick Wiglaf: “The time of heroes is dead, Wiglaf – the
Christ God has killed it, leaving humankind with nothing but weeping martyrs,
fear, and shame.”
The
Christ God is the leading cause of both African America’s and Latin America’s
economic, social, and political stagnation. Statistically speaking, even in
Europe, the most economically, socially, and politically compromised nations
tend to be the most religious, while the most prosperous are the most
non-religious. In America, the more Christian (regardless of denomination) the community,
the poorer, the more violent, the more dangerous, the less educated the
community – once again, statistically speaking. The only religious worldview
even more maladapted to the exigencies of the modern socioeconomic and
political Global Village than Christianity is Islam. (Note, I have a chapter
dedicated to a statistical evaluation of the Muslim world in “Broken Arrow”.)
There
are many reasons why African Americans and Hispanics occupy the lower rungs of
the social ladder in the United States, just as there are many reasons why
African and Latin American countries are also amongst the poorest nations in
the Western Hemisphere, and also why Islamic nations are amongst the poorest in
the world. Some of those reasons are external to those nations and communities,
beyond their present control; however, what one often finds amongst the highly
or devoutly religious nations and communities are justifications for not
exerting a measure of self-restraint or control over their own resources: while
I can’t control the racist White cop that shoots first and asks questions never, I can however stop killing people
of my own kind. Again, statistically speaking, as a Black male my chances of
being killed by another African American male are far greater than being killed
by a police officer of any color – or even than being killed by an Islamic
terrorist for that matter. The point here is that before we expect to even
begin to successfully influence factors over which we presently do not have
direct control we must exert power over those we do. The problem is that supernatural
religions such as Christianity (particularly Black and Latino versions of
Christianity) and Islam are highly fatalistic, God or Allah-affirming, and human-denying.
Human successes are attributed not to one’s own efforts or to the efforts of
other human beings, but to God. How many times does one hear an African
American athlete, for example, after an extraordinary performance give thanks
to God rather than to his own superb genetics, his superior coaching, or his own
extraordinary self-discipline? The God-centeredness of these communities and
nations serves only to deny human self-empowerment rather than to foster it. Absent
human self-power, equally absent is a
sense of personal responsibility. Is
White racism really, directly, responsible for our teenage pregnancy rates, or
for our communities’ drug addiction and alcoholism problems?
Supernatural
religions deny the value of life. As long as your mind is on some illusory
afterlife existence, everything in this life is of necessity devalued in
comparison. Like the song says: “If you
believe in forever, life is just a one-night stand.” This mindset may make
some degree of psychological sense when faced with the social, economic, and
political conditions of slavery, or of colonialism, or of the Third world in
general; mentally escaping an intolerable reality when it is beyond your human
possibilities to do otherwise can make living so much more tolerable. However, it
equally creates an atmosphere of apathy and indifference that makes changing
the conditions in this life, in this world, virtually impossible – even when you are no longer physically or
legally a slave. Indeed, the chains and shackles can be physically removed
but remain mentally there for generations. As far as I am concerned (as Black
History month is once again upon us and we can boast the accomplishments of
many distinguished individuals) we should be far more concerned with – and
ashamed of – the lack of accomplishment of our community as a whole.
As far
as religion is concerned, the entire moral program of Jesus’ teachings can be
summarized in two parables: the Parable of Talents and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It is
always curious to me how deeply religious people, individuals whose thoughts
and expressions, whose purpose and justifications never stray far from Jesus or
God, are nevertheless among the least observant of either one of those two
parables. As I was raised to understand it, the Parable of Talents clearly
emphasizes the moral obligation one has before God to make the utmost of one’s aptitudes
and opportunities. How then can (statistically speaking of course) the African
American call him or herself a good Christian and still trail nationally in
academic achievements, intellectual distinctions, and family or individual income?
The Parable of the Good Samaritan on the other hand, teaches us that the
morally superior person is not the one who talks
the talk, but the one who actually walks
the walk. How then can the African American call him or herself a good
Christian and yet be the greatest threat to the security of his own people? Despite
the many claims regarding the moral value of religion, the facts remain that
religion seldom breeds true, honest self-reflection, but rather more often than
not it leads to an indulgent form of self-righteousness and complacency that
bespeaks far more of arrogance than of anything resembling real humility.
What was that about the Truth shall
set you free?
(John 8:32)
Supernatural
religions impose a necessary conflict between their religious worldview and the
dominant scientific paradigm which empirically refutes the existence of a Supreme
Being or of an otherworldly domain: evolution or creationism, one or the other,
not both. Therefore, in order to maintain their religious worldview, religious
people often (even unconsciously) seek out professions that avoid a scientific
one. The problem is that in this day and age, scientific literacy is the key to
the economic success of a nation or of a community as a whole: Blacks and
Hispanics – the most highly religious groups in the US – are notoriously
underrepresented in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
professions. Nationally as well as globally, the result of the massive
cultural commitment to a non- or even anti-scientific worldview is an ever
increasing community of people worldwide who are trapped in a world they can
never fully comprehend, in which they are increasingly relegated in numbers either
to menial or poorly paid forms of employment. Even that small minority who
manages to chance their way into the highly paid entertainment professions –
such as sports, singing, acting, and dancing – have little knowledge, or
interest, to change the social, economic, or politically decline of their
communities or nations.
Supernatural
religion has compromised the intellectual capacities of the highly religious,
fundamentalist person to the extent that he or she cannot even stop to ask
themselves such basic questions as: If
God really helps the poor, the deprived, the downtrodden, why is it that the
same nations and the same communities around the world, generation after
generation, century after century, have continued to be poor, deprived, and
downtrodden? How much has Jesus-worshipping really helped Blacks resolve
the issues that are directly related to the vicious social cycles of ultra-high
teenage pregnancy rates, low academic standing rates, and sky high juvenile
delinquency (gang membership) rates – all of which are intimately tied to
poverty? Indeed, how many have asked themselves the following key question: If
God really does exist and if He is so all powerful and mighty, then why does He seem to want us locked up,
killing each other, poor, disunited, and fatherless? Does God hate religious Black, colored, and poor people?
Statistically speaking, the answer is clearly “Yes, yes he does!”
My
father was not a particularly religious man when I was growing up; quite to the
contrary: he was directly responsible for the largely utilitarian outlook you
see before you today – a fact that is perhaps an embarrassment to him today.
Nevertheless, despite the many talents I showed growing up, my father insisted
that we – Black Americans – didn’t
need more singers, dancers, actors, comedians or athletes. What we needed were more
philosophers, thinkers, professors, scientists, inventors, and engineers – men
and women who could demonstrate to the world that we are more than mere entertainers: that we could hold our own
intellectually against any White man. He wasn’t asking either: he was
demanding. It was not a debt I owed any god; it was a debt I owed myself; it
was a debt I owed him – for the many sacrifices he made so that I could have
the opportunities he never had; and it was a debt I owed to my People, the
Black People. Paid in full.
He also
said that no matter what I became, “Be
the best”. He wasn’t asking either. And so I am.
Hence,
in response to my cousin, that is what it meant, and that’s what it means, to
be Black to me. Regrettably, statistically speaking, I don’t see that meaning
shared among very many Black people nowadays.
What is
the change that we need? What we need is a lot less God, and a lot more real Black leadership; we need a lot less
Heaven and a lot more community; we need a lot less divinity and a lot more
humanity; we need a lot less religiosity and a lot more sociology and
philosophy; we need a lot less prayer and a lot more useful, productive
activity; we need a lot less Bible and a lot more study; we need a lot less
complaint and a lot more discipline and self-restraint; a lot less asking of
others, and a lot more demanding of ourselves. We most certainly need to remember
the accomplishments of our “talented tenth”, but we must also be mindful of the
destitute majority they are supposed to inspire and elevate.
There
was no God to save me on that roof top, as there is no God to save us now – there
never has been, there never will be. And our situation is truly dire! On our
own, trapped behind enemy lines, thrust into a war – a veritable form of racial
genocide – whose true nature most cannot even begin to comprehend, the only powers
we can count on are ourselves and each other. Assurances of “afterlife” or
“otherworldly” compensation plans are worse than meaningless. They insidiously
rob highly religious nations and communities of the only thing that should
really matter to them: the crucial
fighting spirit and the will to power they need to successfully compete in the
here and now of this world.
Can I get a
witness?
Shodai Sennin James Alexander Overton-Guerra
