ABOUT GOD, RELIGION, AND INTELLECT

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

ABOUT GOD, RELIGION, AND INTELLECT
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I'm a freethinker, but logic causes me to lean toward believing in a supreme force. For me, whatever force is responsible for existence and the creation of the universe is God. Something caused the universe to come into existence, and whatever that something was, I call it God. So for me, God is whatever force, entity, or process that’s responsible for what we refer to as existence, regardless of whether God is a he, she, it, or the universe itself. That’s all we know, and it’s all we need to know - and any preacher who claims to know anything more is lying. 
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But I don't think God is sitting around watching everything we do to decide whether to punish us or not. The concept of God being preoccupied with us is only a reflection of man's arrogance and exaggerated sense of self-importance. The concept of God sitting around preoccupied with trying to get man to worship him is the equivalent of man spending all of his time trying earn the respect of the germs under his toilet seat. That would be stupid, and I doubt very seriously that God is stupid.
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thus, neither do I believe in Heaven or Hell - that’s just a concept created by man to get you to dig deeper in your pocket when he passes the collection plate. The entire concept just reeks of man’s tendency to threaten and/or bribe other men into subservience. If God was indeed watching and evaluating us, he would have hit the delete button long ago.
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We can only know God’s will by what he has done, and as I’ve said many times before, he made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. He anticipated our needs when we were created, so he gave us the intellect to answer our own prayers and to live the kind of life that would create our Heaven right here on Earth, if used properly. If used improperly, we also create our own Hell, which we seem to be doing as I speak. So God doesn’t require a Pat Robertson or T.D. Jakes as his Special Envoy and Chief of Staff, nor do we need the Bible as a user’s guide to dictate how we should live our lives any more than fish need a swimming coach or birds need a compass to know which way is South or a calendar to know when to head in that direction. So as far as I'm concerned what we call "The Scriptures" are simply the superstitious rantings of 3000-year-old dead men. These men didn't know any more than we do - in fact, if they truly believed in talking snakes, they knew a lot less.
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That leads me to the concept of good and evil. Good is to use common sense, and what most people call evil, I call ignorance. It’s as simple as that. So, the key to living a good life is to be an independent thinker and to have the good sense to ignore the ignorance of other men. I've boiled it down to one sentence - Never give anyone else's ability to think priority over your own, because God uses common sense to whisper in your ear.

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Eric L. Wattree

http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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AN ENLIGHTENED BRAIN CAN'T BE WASHED

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

AN ENLIGHTENED BRAIN CAN'T BE WASHED

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While government has a role in improving conditions in the Black community, the ROOT of our problem is a lack of education and knowledge, and we can't wait for the government to address that issue, because the GOP has dedicated their very existence to dumbing America down, and with good reason - enlightened people don't vote Republican.
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But we could turn their malevolence into our advantage if we're smart. While they're hard at work dumbing the rest of America down, we should double-down on educating ourselves and making the pursuit of knowledge a way of life. That way we can level the playing field. We could make ourselves some of the most literate people in America, because our problem is not a lack of intelligence, it's an indifference toward knowledge. We need to become knowledge junkies.
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We must also educate one another in the wisdom of an enlightened way of life, just like we currently educate one another in our current toxic way of life. I've seen it done before, in the sixties - I'm a product of that environment. When I was in elementary school they were about to place me in "Special Training."  I like to had a fit, because Special Training students were separated in their own little bungalow at the very back of the school, and they marched in formation everywhere they went - the rest of the kids used to call them the Retard Brigade. I became so distraught over the idea of being placed in Special Training that my teacher, Ms. Lady Lee, convinced the principal, Mr. DeTonto, to give her the rest of the year to work with me.
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ONE GOOD TEACHER IS WORTH A BOATLOAD
OF POLITICIANS

But in the end, all she did was teach me that you ARE what you think (that's why it's so important not to think of ourselves as victims). And then she gave me a tip: She said the key to looking, and BEING, smart was to ALWAYS stay one chapter ahead of the class (that forced me to start studying and taking my homework more seriously). I was so determined to stay out of Special Training that I made studying a way of life.  I started outlining our textbooks, and giving each point they made its own place in the outline. Within a month I had outlined all of our textbooks and knew their content backwards and forward. I suspect that's why I'm a writer today, because without knowing it, I fell in love with compositional structure in the process.
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But thereafter, Ms. Lee started asking questions in class that she knew I was the only one who could answer, and I did.  At first, my classmates were amazed, and then finally, they started treating me with a new respect (and so did my mother), and that reinforced my understanding of the value of knowledge. So at the end of the semester, instead of going into Special Training, I went into an advanced class with students who were a year ahead of me, and I've been fooling people by using Ms. Lee's tip every since - because life is not about how brilliant you are, but how knowledgeable.
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Then during the sixties, the Black community went through a similar process. We spun on a dime (or maybe I should say "they spun on a dime," because I was a little late getting on board - I was "doing time" in the Marine Corps). But the community went from being filled with street gangs and crime, to being filled with dashiki-wearing street philosophers. Former gangsters became Black Panthers and joined other organizations to help enlighten and feed the poor. We recognized that we had to do these things ourselves in order to gain the political clout to FORCE the government to change its ways - and eventually it did, and the community began to rapidly move forward. Ford, General Motors, and other major corporations began to open their doors to Black workers, giving them access to the middle class, and the government began to PAY people to be educated and trained.
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We made it cool to be knowledgeable.  If a brother wasn't enlightened, he couldn't even get a girlfriend. It became so hip to be Black that White folks were trying to nap their hair up and wear naturals, and White girls were walking around in cornrows. That's how the Rock and hippie revolution got started. Before that, White musicians were going on stage in black suits and ties singing "Rock Around the Clock," and "Venus" - so we've already demonstrated that we can influence the world.
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ALL WE NEED TO SUCCEED IS
THE DESIRE

But we tend to always allow the White establishment to think 10 years ahead of us (that's why I'm so big on making education our number one priority). They introduced acid, speed, and other drugs into the mix, and the lure of these drugs began to drag us back down. Then in the eighties Ronald Reagan abolished the "Fairness Doctrine" - one of the nation's primary educational tools, which forced network and radio stations to give equal time to opposing voices every time they tried to spew conservative propaganda - and then Reagan flooded the inner cities with crack ("Just say no!!!!?"). That devastated two generations of Black people. As a result, that severed the connection of the third generation from their Black cultural heritage, because the parents who were supposed to be teaching them about their culture were crackheads. Then the establishment used the media, with things like MTV and BET to serve as a re-education tool, which brings us to where we are today.
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Thus, it is essential that the Black community come together and re-establish our connection with our cultural roots. It's no accident that we no longer see people like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, or Ray Charles coming out of the Black community anymore. The reason for that is we now have a generation of young Black people where many are just as remote from their Black roots as many White people. Yes, they have Black skin, but thanks to the machinations of the White establishment, they aren't anything like Black people once were. They're like cardboard, imitation Blacks who are reminiscent of real Black people.
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Think about it - isn't it ironic that, with the exception of people like Janet Jackson, Tyrese, Mariah, and a handful of others, one of the closest examples of old-school Black soul currently in the public domain is being put out by Robin Thick? - and I know, because I'm a lifelong jazz musician, so I'm listening . . . and Robin sounds good!  And the same is true in jazz.  If you go to a concert where they're playing REAL jazz, it looks like a Tea Party convention, because this generation of Black people don't support, or even KNOW, their own culture. (http://wattree.blogspot.com/2012/07/relections-on-stanley-crouch-mtume.html)
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So we'd better wake up, or 50 years from now the only people who are going to have the musical skills to play Black music are gonna be White, because they're devouring our music in music schools and conservatories all over the world as we speak, while we've been seduced by the dollar to spew vulgar nursery rhymes to the beat of electronic drum machines.
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That's what I mean by addressing our cultural infrastructure. We've got to stop thinking of ourselves as victims.  The word "victim" suggests weakness, and Black people are not weak. The adversity that we've endured has made us MORE, rather than less. We simply have to recognize that fact, and be PROACTIVE  in addressing our issues instead of simply reacting to cultural assaults. The bottom line is, we've got to stop telegraphing everything that's on our minds by screaming and grabbing microphones. No one is impressed by that; it just makes us look like reckless idiots. We've got to begin to use our minds to forge innovative and thoughtful approaches to resolving our issues, and we have the resources within our community to do that, right now.  And we must always keep in mind the words of Frederick Douglass - "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."
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"THE SAME BOILING WATER THAT SOFTENS THE POTATO, HARDENS THE EGG.  SO IT'S NOT ABOUT YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES, IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE MADE OF."

Eric L. Wattree 
Http://wattree.blogspot.com 
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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About Knowledge, Intellect, and Critical Thinking

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

About Knowledge, Intellect, and Critical Thinking

I was just sitting here thinking about my good friend, Playthell Benjamin. While I’m a firm believer in becoming one’s own hero, I really admire this guy, almost to the point of jealousy. I think he’s one of the great, and most under-recognized, writers and historians of our time (if you’re not familiar with him, look him up on Google). The reason I enjoy reading Playthell is because his writings always contain a wealth of information. That’s his brilliance. Regardless to what the subject, he’s a literal reservoir of information, and I’ve undoubtedly become a better writer as a result of reading him. Reading his writings have taught me to scrupulously avoid superficiality, and to look beneath the carpet of my subject matter to drive my points home.
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But we have a fundamental difference in the way we view the White academic establishment. He’s in awe of it (after all, it produced him), while I have a very critical view of contemporary academia, especially with respect to Black intellectual development. That’s one of two subjects that we never miss an opportunity to fight over. The other is the impact of sports on the Black community.
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Like most Black intellectuals, Playthell fully embraces the White academic establishment and considers being anointed by it what it means to be truly educated. I don’t. While I understand, and respect, what the White academic establishment has achieved in the physical sciences, I find it to be hugely flawed in what I consider the "Speculative Arts" - history, philosophy, politics, economics, and such. What it tends to produce is a bunch of establishment-serving clones. While the knowledge is definitely there - and every Black person alive should leave no stone unturned to avail themselves of it - it should be consumed with two boxes of salt, because it tends to be skewed toward promoting the prevailing interest of the establishment.
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Thus, we cannot trust the academic establishment to tell us who’s "brilliant," because the people who it anoints as brilliant are those who tend to embrace the establishment’s mindset. While these people often have opposing views on any group of facts, they all tend to base their thinking on the same philosophical assumptions. For example, the assumption that the White establishment’s water is wetter than everyone else’s.
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For that reason, I firmly believe that Black people should establish their own intellectual traditions, and we should put brutally critical thinking at the very root of that tradition. We should critically scrutinize EVERY fact that we’re exposed to before we accept it as a part of our data base, and any "fact" that doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny should be unceremoniously discarded, and that's regardless to whether it makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside or not. 
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For example, we shouldn’t accept the contention that Dr. Brainchild is a brilliant man simply because he taught at Harvard. We should ALWAYS listen to what Dr. Brainchild has to say, and make the determination on whether he’s brilliant or not for OURSELVES. And we should never assume that if he doesn’t seem to make sense, or if he speaks in convoluted sentences that cause us to forget the subject matter before he gets to a period, that we simply don’t understand him due to our lack of intellect or education. If we fail to do that, we’re allowing the establishment to tell us who to listen to, and that allows us to be played. We should never give anyone else's ability to think priority over our own.  Both the GOP, and Fox News', very existence is based on people's willingness to allow others to think for them, and we're all paying a huge price for it. So if Dr. Brainchild is indeed as brilliant as the establishment claims he is, he should be able to communicate clearly, logically, and on a level that anyone can understand. If he can't, we should immediately write him off as just another academic lip flapper living on dubious credentials - and there are plenty of them out there.
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Black people, and Americans in general, need to understand that knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence are very different things from merely obtaining a degree. Malcolm didn’t even go to college; he got his education in jail, but who do you think was the more profound thinker, Malcolm X, or Cornel West?
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While I’m a great proponent of formal education, we must never forget that knowledge started with individual and independent thought, and only then, were educational institutions established to disseminate that thought. Thus, we don’t get knowledge, wisdom, and intellect from institutions - they get it from us. So we should never assume that because an individual has a "receipt" from Harvard that his thinking is any more profound than our own. After all, George W. Bush has a receipt from Yale.

RELATED MATERIAL

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BLACK AMERICA:

BLACK AMERICA: OUR HISTORY LIES BEFORE US

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2008/12/black-america-our-history-lies-before_31.html

 

Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Don’t Waste Obama’s Last Two Years, America - We May Not See Another Like Him For Generations

BENEATH THE SPIN * ERIC L. WATTREE

Don’t Waste Obama’s Last Two Years, America - We May Not See Another Like Him For Generations

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In the interest of full disclosure, as a journalist, I feel ethically bound to make the following statement that should be taken into account whenever I write anything associated with President Obama:
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While I’ve written articles critical of President Obama in the past (and continue to stand by every one of those criticisms), overall, I’ve been such a huge supporter of his administration that I’ve been accused by some of his critics of being an Obama cheerleader. I’ve denied that allegation in the past, but after objectively looking over some of the articles that I’ve written over the course of his presidency, I now have to admit that I have indeed become an Obama cheerleader - but not because he’s Black, not because he’s liberal, and not because he’s a Democrat. I’ve become an Obama cheerleader because I love excellence, competence, integrity, and intelligence, and he’s demonstrated - at least to my satisfaction - that he represents all of those things. So I’m going to use this disclosure to try to help the public see what I see - one of the greatest presidents in the history of this country.
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I've studied Obama closely over the years, and I’ve found that he uses history and the strategies of past to make his decisions. As a result, he’s been brutally criticized by some on the left for not approaching issues in the way that they would approach them. But his critics tend to forget that he’s president, and we’re not, for a very good reason - he’s smarter than we are.
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When most of us are passionate about an issue, we’re predisposed to fight to the bitter end for it. That’s an emotional response, not a thoughtful one. Take the issue of single-payer healthcare, for example. Many of us would have gone down fighting over that issue, but that’s exactly what would have happened, we would have gone down, and literally millions of Americans would have been deprived of affordable healthcare.
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It’s easy to go down fighting for a cause when our home is not that battlefield. But take a moment to consider if it was. Let’s say, for example, that you had a beautiful and precious daughter who was twenty-five years old, but she had a dreadful disease that cost $250,000 a year to manage. So far you’ve been able to get by because she’s a part of your healthcare plan. But the problem is, her twenty-sixth birthday is looming, and she’ll be kicked off of your health plan on her birthday, and you can’t find another affordable healthcare plan for her due to her pre-diagnosed condition. That would mean that your precious daughter would be facing a death sentence on her twenty-sixth birthday. Would you be critical of President Obama’s willingness to "cave-in" then? 
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I don’t think so. On the contrary, I think you would get down on your knees and thank God that you have a thoughtfully practical president in office who's not so blinded by self-interest, ideology, and political concerns that he failed to taken your situation into account. That was the situation for millions of Americans across this country, all of them not quite so severe, but the quality of their lives were being devastated nevertheless.(http://money.cnn.com/gallery/news/economy/2014/03/28/obamacare-enrollees/)
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So while some are jumping up and down and accusing Obama of caving in on healthcare and other issues, the president is willing to take the heat, because he’s practical, thoughtful, and selfless enough to see the big picture, and consider the needs of those who may not have the political clout to help themselves. In short, he’s willing to take the heat for those Americans who don’t have the time, and/or capacity, to make themselves heard. I find that very commendable, and rare, in today’s political environment.
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And at the same time, he hasn’t given up on single-payer healthcare. It’s just that he’s forward- thinking enough to recognize that once the people embrace "Obamacare," and begin to recognize the benefit that it can bring to their personal lives, they’re going to DEMAND a single-payer system. So what was most important to him was getting the people used to the fact that they have a RIGHT to government-protected and guaranteed health insurance - or, "a right to life," as it were.
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SHE DIED OF REPUBLICAN POLITICS

President Obama is an unabashed intellectual and student of history, so he uses his knowledge of history in making his decisions and forging his administrative strategies - and the foot-in-the-door strategy is as old as the hills. So that’s generally the strategy that he uses to get the job done, in spite of unprecedented obstructionism by the GOP.
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He knows the Republicans don't believe in reading and consider John Wayne-like ignorance as manly, so he uses it against them. That accounts for why he doesn’t get into spitball fights with them. Many on the left have also bought into the John Wayne syndrome, so they also see Obama’s quiet competence as a sign of weakness. But it’s far from that - it’s a sign of a powerful and unique intelligence.
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The reason I’ve studied Obama so closely is because all my life I’ve loved going up against people who thought they were heavy. I used to stay in trouble as a kid for challenging the beliefs of adults that I thought were silly. My mother was constantly telling me to stay in my place. So I’ve always enjoyed debating and examining ideas, much like many men - including Obama - enjoy going out on the court and gettin’ into a pickup game, which I’ve never had any interest in at all. But I would hate to have to go up against Barack Obama brain-cell-for-brain-cell, because that brother is a quiet, unassuming, genius - it would be like my trying to challenge Michael Jordan to a one-on-one. 
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What the impatient left needs to understand about Obama is, contrary to the claims of some of his critics, he’s a very strong and confident man. He only seems quiet and docile, because when you have strength and confidence, you feel the need to prove it by trying to be overly macho. Obama is an intellectual heavy weight, so he doesn’t believe in trying to out-scream his opponents; he believes in out-thinking ‘em.
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Neither does he believe in attacking the walls of a fort head on and going down in a blaze of glory; he believes in climbing in through the windows, because he’s not interested in trying to look heroic - that’s an ignorant and immature motivation. He simply wants to achieve his objectives. That’s how he got Osama Bin Laden. After Bush failed to get Bin laden, in spite of spending seven years, over a trillion dollars, and killing over a million people - including, killing or maiming thousands of American troops. Obama walked through the door and got Bin Laden with three helicopters and a handful of America's finest, without bustin’ a sweat bubble - and, while dragging Donald Trump through the mud at a dinner party in the process - and never once, breaking that quietly disarming smile. And thereafter, did he assemble the troops and news cameras to watch him land on an aircraft carrier and strut around in a flight suit  bragging about what he'd accomplished? No. He simply walked away like it was all in a day's work.  This is an extraordinary man.
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So there’s a big difference between the GOP and Obama. The GOP believes in the power of money, strength, and the military. Obama believes in the power of the mind - and he’s killing the entire Republican Party with his intellect alone. Think about it. The scene in Washington, D.C. for the past six years has been much like one adult trying to manage a house filled with ranting and raving children. The Republicans have become so frustrated over their inability to handle his intellect that they’ve lost all sense of tradition and decorum - and they've forgotten all about the interest of the American in their blind, fanatical, obsession with bringing down President Obama.
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And that hasn't been lost on the American people.  As a result, I’m sure that there were many patriotic conservatives in America who disagree with Obama's political philosophy, but voted for him in the last election in spite of that disagreement, because their primary concern was what was in the best interest of the country.  So the GOP’s biggest problems is not how they package their message, but making the mistake of equating being poor or middle class, with being stupid.

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Fox News Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry Tried to Embarrass

the President in Front of Another Foreign Leader. Watch How Adroitly Obama Handles Him.

Again, Without Bustin' a Sweat Bubble. These People Are Out of Their League.

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So yes, I’ve become an Obama cheerleader, and I never intend to apologize for that again, because Black people - and America as a whole - have a lot to be proud of in this president. He’s one of the last of a dying breed of true, old-school statesmen, who wear their flag pin on their hearts, rather than on their lapel. And as such, no one has ever represented us better. So as an American - and particularly, and African-American - I take great pride in that.
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Show ‘em how it’s done, Mr. President. Show 'em what it means to be president of all of the people . . . President of the United States of America.
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Here’s What President Obama Has Done For America

http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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