Mos Def: "We are in Critical Times"

Thought's on upheaval. In light of the happenings in Ferguson and other parts of America.

Racism, inequality, imbalance of power, Yasiin Bey responds. 

"Free the people. Free the land.

My country is Earth."

Speak only

"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."

D. H. Lawrence

Gary Cooper with his wife Rocky, 1930s.

I am part of the sun

"I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water." D.H. Lawrence

Not I, But the Wind

"Be definite, my dear; be detailed, be business-like. The love is there - then let the common-sense match it."

- D. H. Lawrence to his Frieda

We are golden, caught in the devil's bargain

We are stardust, billion year old carbon. 

We are golden, caught in the devil's bargain.

- Joni Mitchell

Alan Watts

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves." 

"When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way."

“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.” 

“The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.” 

- Alan Watts

That love

"How can one change one's entire life and build a new one on one moment of love? And yet, that's what you make me want to close my eyes and do..." Greta Garbo

Jimi Hendrix knows

The Family of Man

I came across this book today while organising the library at work. I opened it to see which category it should go in, and I couldn't close ita. It's such an engaging, beautiful collection of photographs that tell so many stories, from the deeply distressing, to the sensationally heart warming - it really is a must-see/ must-read/ must-own!

I recognised one of the pages as I have previously pinned it on Pinterest, and even included it on one of my blog posts on here, not knowing where it originated.. now I do, and I'm so glad. Every page stirred emotion in me just as this one did a while ago. 

I include a few of the quotes and images that I particularly love from the book...

Painful world

The night before last I watched a show about ISIS recruitment, specifically a look into the way the radicalisers brainwash and groom girls, encouraging them to decide to leave their entire lives to join ISIS as Jihadi brides.
This World: Britain's Jihadi Brides

I also watched the first quarter of a show (I couldn't bear to watch any more) about people who own Pitbulls and train them up to fight, usually to defend their owners. The show highlighted the sweet nature within the dogs while showcasing the absolute incapacity of these people to look after their dogs responsibly. I only watched about 15 minutes of it so there is a chance it may have become a beautiful story for all I know.
Dangerous Dog Owners and Proud

The next morning (yesterday morning) I experienced some unpleasant road rage on my way to work, an ignorant self-righteous man thinking he was the only person trying to get somewhere, I won't waste my energy typing the details.

This unpleasant chain of events and my deepy impressionable ways left feeling a little hopeless about the state of humanity. I told my dear mate Dave all about it, and he sent me this perfect quote, now I'd like to share it with you if you haven't seen it before:
“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
Howard Zinn

Immigration Street

Setting the tone of the post...

Last night I watched the Channel 4 documentary, 'Immigration Street'. I really enjoyed it and it got me thinking again...

I don't know what the real objectives were for making the documentary, I'm sure there were a mixture of good and bad intentions from the different people involved in the making of it. Perhaps it did have more of a negative impact on the street it was based on, even if it did intend to send out a positive message. A lot of people didn't like the idea of it, some wondered why it was called 'Immigration Street' when a lot of the people living on there had been born there, perhaps their parents had emigrated. The producers wondered why there was such a negative feeling around the word 'Immigration' - they argued that it could be viewed as a positive thing. Many of the residents were happy to take part in the documentary as they were proud of the community they lived in.

Personally I do enjoy the odd lifestyle documentary and while I do agree that some of these production companies try to project a more controversial version of reality in order to get people talking, I still think that if they are done right - these shows can be a great way to create debate: Not just an opinionated statement made by a politician, which may have even been misconstrued by the media and then sprawled as an ugly newspaper headline. These documentaries can show real people living their lives, allowing us to see what's really happening, and in this case the majority of the residents getting on very well in a diverse community.

I don't know an awful lot about politics or current affairs, I'm always learning, I like to be open minded, taking in information from many different sources including conversations, articles on blogs, documentaries, the news, books, scripts in movies, lyrics in songs. I have ideals in my head that have developed over time and I know what is right and wrong; I know that we shouldn't believe everything we hear on the news, I know that there is a lot of good in this world but there is way too much bad, and that's all we seem to hear about - it's very easy to lose faith in humanity. I am not naïve or easily swayed, but I know that there are always so many sides to the story so we mustn't presume we understand a situation just by what we hear on the news - often one news story will be told in a completely different way in every country and even every channel - it's all part of the media mind control. I suppose my point here is that humans often talk a lot of bullshit so it's up to you as an individual to gain and maintain that ability to have an open mind, to continuously learn and not let your personal feelings get in the way of what you know to be right - it's always useful to take a moment to consider the circumstance from another perspective. We are all born innocent and vulnerable, blank canvases, open minds... only with our survival instincts. Apart from that, everything is fed into us, taught to us - our minds are constantly evolving with new information. My friend Christine said the other day "we are not born with empathy, we are taught it" empathy is crucial to living in peace in humanity.





When we scrape away all the details of our complex human world, we are all just living things on this planet for a little while until we all die and our energy dissolves into the universe. All this 'immigration' talk is only an issue to the economy, it only takes common sense to realise if everyone migrated from one country to another, it would become a problem to both countries. The issue we have now is that many people want to 'close the door' to immigrants, 'no more' they say. Well, it's not as easy as that... it's not that simple. We benefit a lot from immigration, it's just we only ever hear about the negatives, the bad eggs. An interesting comment made by one of the residents on 'Immigration Street', a man from Jamaica, he said something along the lines of "when God created the world he made no walls", while I don't necessarily believe in a God creating the world, I do agree that the planet Earth does not belong to us, it's not up to us to build walls and decide who should live where. We are all immigrants somewhere down the line. I'm also sure that many 'immigrants' would rather be in their home country living a prosperous life but perhaps their home country is war torn, which could have something to do with British invasion somewhere down the line. Many British people choose to migrate abroad too, so it's inevitable really. Difficult to manage, but inevitable.



Watch this clip from Stewart Lee's stand up show (it's brilliant):

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23yv5y_stewart-lee-on-immigration-paul-nuttall-and-ukip_fun

“People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the fucking thing. It's all fucking crap. We're all human beings, we're all mammals, we're all rocks, plants, rivers. Fucking borders are just such a pain in the fucking arse.”

― Shane MacGowan

“As I would learn later on, developed countries will always welcome the Einsteins of this world -- those individuals whose talents are already recognized and deemed to have value. This welcome doesn't usually extend to the poor and uneducated people seeking to enter the country. But the truth, supported by the facts of history and the richness of immigrant contribution to America's distinction in the world, is that the most entrepreneurial, innovative, motivated citizen is the one who has been given an opportunity and wants to repay the debt.”

― Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon

“All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic immigrant grudge against the next boatload approaching the shore. To defend one’s home and fields and ancestral graves against invasion seems a right. But to claim unique possession – to compound the fact of settlement with the aspect of a landscape into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership – is a joke.”

― Neal Ascherson, Black Sea

“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson: Writings




What a beautiful world though, eh?

Rumi

"Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you."

ride'um

"It's alright letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back."

Mick Jagger

A sunburnt country

"It brought me a new understanding of how, unless you're connected with the land, you're not really connected with yourself or the nation. And Australians, I think, are slowly beginning to realise that the land owns us, we don't own the land. It's taken climate change to achieve that. And you get this sense of forces which are outside your control."

"But it was in Australia that I gained my first impressions of the beauty of the world, and it was the Bush that taught me. "

Bill Bryson

Amen!

i love love

 

 The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

"The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively."

Bob Marley

one

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will live as one

Good advice

 

“Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work. Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency. Life is like a roller coaster ride, it is never going to be perfect. It is going to have perfect moments and rough spots, but it’s all worth it”

Patti Smith

Rocknrolla

“That’s the thing about greed, Arch, it’s blind. And it doesn’t know when to stop”

"All you need to know about life is retained in those four walls. You will notice that one of your personalities is seduced by the illusions of grandeur - the gold packet of king size with a regal insignia, an attractive implication towards grandeur and wealth, the subtle suggestion that cigarettes are indeed your royal and loyal friends, and that, Pete, is a lie. Your other personality is trying to draw your attention to the flip side of the discussion: written in boring bold black and white, it's a statement that these neat little soldiers of death are in fact trying to kill you and that, Pete, is the truth. Oh, beauty is a beguiling call to death and I'm addicted to the sweet pitch of its siren. That that starts sweet ends bitter, and that which starts bitter ends sweet. That is why you and I love the drugs, and that is also why I cannot give that painting back. Now please, pass me a light."

Personal revolution

 

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.” Jim Morrison

a nice thought