âIn order to halt foreign interference in the affairs of developing countries it is necessary to study, understand, expose and actively combat neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear. They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres.â
page 239, Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism
"If you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action."
Malcolm X
As we are all trying to be agents of change, trying our best to do our small parts in our peopleâs common efforts to improve our quality of life, both for ourselves, and for humanity in general, we must approach this task in the proper manner. The proper manner can only be the scientific method, as anything else has a higher probability of giving us incorrect data and observations, leading to incorrect, and therefore useless conclusions.
Use of the scientific method is necessitated because we need to understand the true nature of the world; the true nature of society; the true nature of human beings; the nature and the reality of our specific culture and of the larger human culture. This kind of knowledge is essential if we are going to be successful in altering our condition.
What is the scientific method? It is simply an ordered process and system of the collection and analysis of statistics, data and general information that pertain to the matter under investigation, in our case, everything that pertains to our inquiry and investigation into our condition and how we alter that condition, to the nature of human reality and existence, and especially matters of ideology and organization. This scientific method demands that we subject our research, and our findings and hypotheses, to rigorous critical assessment by ourselves and by others. Without the criticism factor, there can be no quality in the process; here I mean quality in the same sense as the word is understood in contemporary business and commercial production activities.
Our investigation into our status should be wide ranging and cover every possible aspect of our existence as conscious â unconscious beings. Everything from understanding the activities, organization and makeup of the brain: the function of the neurons, synapses, its relationship to the overall nervous system, chemical and optical factor involved in the information processing functions on one hand; to the socio-cultural factors that impact on thought and behavior, that is the material and immaterial factors, such as the natural and political economic environment; general psychological aspects, such as classical and operant conditioning, positive and negative reinforcement, learning and memory, encoding, apperceptions and perceptions; combined with a thorough assessment and study of our specific and general cultural milieu, including the day to day social existence of the individual and the larger group each of us are part of. This would include understanding how these psychological and socio-cultural aspects physically alter the brain, as well as determine the state of the mind. These factors if negative will lead to stress, trauma, cognitive dissonance, neurotic behaviors, paranoid behavior, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and other maladies. On the other hand these same factors, if guided by positive philosophical underpinnings will lead to positive activity, in the manner that Dr. Nkrumah talks about when he demonstrates the relationship of ideology to positive action in society.
In short the mind can be warped, put to sleep or awakened by circumstances. A classic example of the awakening mind is that of Frederick Douglas
Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, "If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master--to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now," said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy." These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty-to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.
--Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself
An example of the deadening and warping of the mind is evident in the way our enemies get us to accept any negative condition they decide to impose on us. For example as Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote on the subject of war.
"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
Mark Twain, 'The Mysterious Stranger'
Here Twain has pinpointed the big lie and its psychological and material consequences in the imperialists ever present drive for booty, booty which can only be acquired by force, force that is daily oppression and exploitation of people, and the special hyper-force we call war. Never mind that the lust for specific commodities, such as petroleum, never mind that the US current accounts and government fiscal position are in the red big time (to the tune of 481 and 6,198 billion dollars respectively as of 2002), never mind that the situation of the capitalist countries generally are mirror reflections of the state of the US, the wars that the capitalist embroil us in are not functions of these factors, they are functions of renegade forces seeking to destroy civilized society. Sometimes these forces are called communists, sometimes terrorist, but the one thing they have in common is an evil obsession with destroying democracy â and thus that is the cause of wars, the other guy or to be more precise the other guy and gal. What rubbish, war is a function of the material interest of those involved in the war. Revolutionaries who engage in wars of national liberation do so in pursuit of their objective, liberation, imperialist who engage in predatory wars, do so out of the avaricious drive to acquire more and more capital at the expense of the other guy and gal. It is as simple as that. This is the kernel of domestic racism, fascism and every other problem confronting us on a day-to-day basis, the activity of the numerically insignificant but the political-economically potent minority of the globeâs population that is the owners of big capital.
Malcolmâs explanation of how the imperialists, the racists, have taught Africans in the US to hate ourselves by teaching us to hate Africa; and Nkrumahâs observations on how many Africans are brainwashed by the imperialist university and other encoding structures into a futile attempt to assimilate into a narrow, so-called classical, aspect of European culture, are probably the quintessential examples for our specific purposes.
We have tried to make sure our position is overt and exposed to criticism, hence we created and maintain web sites such as the site dedicated to the A-APRP, the Pan-African Perspective, even on our business site, we carry video clips of the event we organized and financed featuring Philip Emeagwaliâs views on African culture and our historic/contemporary relationship to technological innovation. We wrote and publish a novel, Paradise: Chocolate Love, based on the putative roles of the nationalist bourgeoisie and revolutionary petty bourgeois in the construction of Pan-Africanism, and posted significant sections of the book on the World Wide Web so that individuals who do not have the book can browse significant sections of the content. In each of these activities, we were seeking to avail ourselves of the criticism, the constructive criticisms, I should add, of others. The A-APRP Dedication site can be found at http://members.aol.com/aaprp/; the Pan-African Perspective site at: http://panafricanperspective.com , the video of Emeagwali conference at: http://www.walkerautomated.com/samples/index.htm, as well as samples sections of the book, Paradise: Chocolate Love.
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
Samuel Adams
"He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Dream lofty dreams and as you dream so shall you become."
James Allen
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