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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Speak To Minds Yet Unborn

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

 Speak To Minds Yet Unborn

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When I was 13, Ralph Waldo Emerson reached across time to grab my young mind and changed my life forever. That is my ambition - not to gather wealth and fame by telling my contemporaries what they want to hear, but to help minds yet unborn to gain wisdom through seeing my world, and my time, through my eyes. Injustice should be made to pay dividends.

                                       -Eric L. Wattree

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 It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion, and it is easy in solitude to live after one’s own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude.

                                                 -Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Thank you, Ralph.

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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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A Sensible Response to White Supremacy

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

A Sensible Response to White Supremacy
Let Excellence Do Our Swaggerin' 

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ADVERSITY MAKES YOU
MORE, NOT LESS

I'm sick to death of continuously hearing so-called Black "intellectuals" talking about how the "White Supremacist" system is holding the Black man down. While we should always be at war against any and every kind of supremacy - White, as well as religious, ideological, sex and class - can't these so-called intellectuals see that if they concede that White Supremacy can hold the Black man down, they're also conceding that the White man is indeed superior!!!?
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The complaint is directly analogous to a man going home and telling his wife and family that he can't feed them because "Willie won't let me." Any real man would die before he'd go home and admit that, because he'd immediately recognize that if Willie can prevent him from feeding his family, that means that Willie is more of a man than he is. Thus, every time we say, "The 'White man' won't let me," we’re admitting cultural impotence, and also reinforcing the idea in our own minds that the White man is indeed superior to us. It shouldn’t take Socrates to see the simple reality in that logic.
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The White man is not our daddy.  We're the masters of our own fate - or should be, unless we think of ourselves as children - so it's time for these "intellectuals" to come clean with the Black community. Nobody's going to GIVE us anything, and that includes justice. The only way that the Black community is going to get its piece of America's pie is to make ourselves strong enough to demand it, and competent enough to hold on to it.
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But there's a reason that these professional poverty pimps won't tell us that - because they know that once we begin to realize that reality, we will no longer need them as our highly paid envoy to the White man. So instead of telling us what we NEED to hear, they're telling us what we WANT to hear, because that's what they get paid to do, to make us feel comfortable in our misery, and in our rapid decline into irrelevance.  Isn't it curious how they can continuously tell us that it's the White man's fault that we're in poverty, yet, they're just as Black as we are, but none of them are in poverty. Why is the White man giving them a pass?
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While I understand that "the White man" has a system in place that is designed to give him the upper hand, all the whining in the world is not going to change that system. How long have we been whining so far, and what has it done for us? It hasn’t done us a damn bit of good, has it? No it hasn’t, and it never will.
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The fact is, we will never be able to out-whine, out-scream, or out-fight, the White man. The only way we’re going to overcome the denigrating affects of his system is to OUT-THINK him. So what we need to do is shut up and stop telegraphing our every thought, turn off BET, MTV, and ESPN, and then start educating ourselves so we’ll have something of substance to bring to the table. And this is the perfect time to do that.
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The powers that be are currently embarked upon an agenda designed to dumb-down the entire poor and middle class segment of this society, because the fact is, we’re currently knee-deep in a not so covert class war. What the paleo-conservatives (social bigots) fail to realize - at least, at this point - is that the fiscal conservatives (corporatists) don’t care any more about them than they do Blacks, gays, or women. So while the corporatists are engaged in dumbing the rest of society down, if the Black community had the insight to start quietly embracing education and knowledge, that would serve to level the playing field that we’ve been traditionally complaining about - and what makes this the perfect plan is, knowledge is free. The only thing necessary to obtain it is to want it, and to have sense enough to respect it.
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The root of the problem that we’ve traditionally had in the Black community is our attitude toward knowledge. As a direct result of our history of slavery, we’ve developed a sort of aversion to knowledge. We tend to equate the pursuit of knowledge with selling out. We see knowledge as part of the White man’s domain, so we look upon Black people who have a love of knowledge with disdain, because we see them as "trying to be White."
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The reason for that is simple. During slavery the only Black people we knew who spoke anything close to proper English were the "house niggas," and many house niggas had a tendency to look down their noses at those of us who worked in the field. As a result of that experience, today, even highly intelligent Black people will often try to hide their intelligence, because, ironically, over the years we’ve developed an attitude where many feel that we have a moral obligation to remain ignorant in order to prove that we take pride in being Black.  Think about that. Isn't ironic that many of us embrace ignorance as a sign of Black pride? That's why you hear educated young Black people going around saying things like, "What it is?" or "What it be like?" They know that's improper, but they see it as giving credibility to their pride in being Black.
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That’s one of the weapons that’s being used against President Obama by many envious Black intellectuals. They’re trying to convince the Black community of the following:
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"I’m cool - see my long, wooly Afro, how cool I act, and how I can quote Lil’ Wayne when I’m on stage? I’m one of y’all. I just have enough intelligence to speak the White man’s language, so I’m keeping an eye on him for the people. But that Obama, he’s not like us. He don’t have no Afro, he don’t never quote Lil Wayne, and he’s obviously much too intelligent to be trusted as a genuine Black man."
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People like those mentioned above, while posing as intellectuals themselves, are reinforcing a negative attitude towards knowledge that we desperately need to get past. And at the same time, they're promoting a negative stereotype of the Black male that even we embrace. Instead of quoting Lil' Wayne, they should be on a mission to get the kind of ignorance he's spewing banned from Black households. But they can't do that, because in spite of the damage that his message is doing to Black youth, they're afraid that if they speak out against him too aggressively it might damage their street creds.
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Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that we should go on a mission to destroy the careers of hip hop artists like Lil' Wayne, because he's a victim of the system as well. But it is incumbent upon the community to place pressure on artists such as Wayne to modify their message and image so as not to send ten minute commercials around the world with their every video that negatively profiles the Black community.
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That sort of pressure is nothing new. During the sixties and seventies even James Brown had to cut off his process and start sending the message that "I'm Black and I'm Proud," and any Black activist, entertainer, or athlete who didn't actively support the dignity of Black women and the upward mobility of the Black community didn't get our support.
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It is essential for all high-profile Black people to represent the Black community in a serious and dignified manner, because most of what we think we know about ourselves comes from the very same sources and stereotypes that informs White Americans about who we are. That's a serious problem in our community because we've allowed ourselves to buy into a negative stereotype of ourselves that’s destroying the self-image of our youth, and our popular culture has not only embraced this negative stereotype as a romantically heroic image, but it’s embellishing upon it.  Then we complain about being profiled by society, when we’re actually profiling ourselves! Much of our popular culture is nothing less than an updated version of Stepin'- Fetchism.
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So instead of benefitting from the luxury of defining ourselves in a positive light like every other culture in America, many Black people have quite literally embraced a form of gross ignorance regarding our own character. Thus, it is imperative that we take the time to stop just long enough to consider who we really are. Then once we become cognizant of that truth - warts and all - we should address our issues, and then teach our young people to embellish our assets rather than our dysfunction.

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Who Are We As Black People?

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An excellent example of who we actually are was reflected around the turn of the 20th Century when you could find Black musicians sitting along the side of the road playing washboards, tubs, and anything else they could put together that would make a sound. When people passed them by, including White musicians, they would simply smile, and sometimes even throw them a few pennies for the modest effort and industry that they displayed for even attempting to make real music with such crude instruments.
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These simple music-makers were looked upon as "quaint" at the time. There was no hostility towards them at all, because they weren't a threat. After all, they were no threat to the White musicians, since they could never hope to get any real instruction in music. Most of them couldn't even read their names, so why should anyone ever worry about them learning to read music; and they had to struggle just to get through grade school, so what threat did they pose to White musicians who had access to the great music conservatories of the world?
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Well, little did the world know that in the very near future those simple little ragtag musicians with their makeshift instruments would develop into some of the greatest musicians the world has ever known, and they would contribute one of the most important and harmonically complex forms of music to the world in the history of all mankind - modern jazz, and as an offshoot, Big-City Blues, R&B, Rock &Roll, and literally, everything that most people think of as music today.
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Few knew at the time that one day Universities, musicologists, and music conservatories all over the world would struggle to understand the complexity of their musical genius, and even fewer could have guessed that many of these "quaint" musicians would someday become world renowned, and synonymous with their respective instruments–Louis Armstrong, Jellyroll Morton, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, just to mention a few.
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What we've got to recognize and absorb as a community is that creativity is not restricted to just music. The reason that the creative genius of Black people has been reflected more in music than in business, science, or technology is because it was an area where we didn't have to depend on the approval of others, and more importantly, we were rewarded in the community for its development. We've also got to recognize, as any scientist who studies cognition well knows, that creativity is not stagnant - it has associative properties that allow it to be transferred from one endeavor to another. Thus, as Barack Obama is clearly demonstrating, Black people have much more to offer the world than a twelve bar blues.

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The Pursuit of Excellence is the Key to Black Viability

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So today the Black community is in a similar situation as those early musicians were in their day, but this time we have the advantage of not having to sit on the side of the road. We have a supportive Black man in the White House, an economic environment that's thirsting for innovation, creativity, and new ideas, and no one to hold us back but ourselves. Therefore, all that's left for us to do now is to recognize our potential as a people, shed all of the defensive excuses and bad habits that were a part of the old paradigm, and get to work.
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And our very first task should be to reassess and rid ourselves of the negative cultural mores that we've developed over the past hundred years or so. That involves discarding, and refusing to reward or romanticize the image of the Black man as an urban predator - that's what directly contributed to the racist attitude that the brutal murder of an innocent Black child constituted a public service.
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Mass ignorance is at the very root of our problem. How can we possibly expect to raise a well adjusted generation of young people when they're being sired by idiots running around in unlaced tennis shoes, wearing baseball caps sideways, and whose most heartfelt ambition is to be looked up to as serial abusers of Black women (the very womb of our culture) and successful gangsters? It can't be done. This is the real world. We can't base a culture on trying to relive the life of Al Capone. It's time to grow up. So we've got to stop rewarding such behavior, and make that a community effort.
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When I was a kid my grandfather use to tell me, "All I want from this whole damn nation is a pretty little wife and a good foundation." I didn't realize it at the time, but he was relating the key to life to me in that one little lyric - the foundation of happiness and success starts with a solid family.
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So we need to start with our girls in order to get the attention of our young men. We've got to start teaching our young girls from birth that young men who assume the gangster image are bad news, and we've got to keep such images out of our homes. We must also create an environment where if BET wants to continue to enter our homes, its call sign will have to be changed to mean Black Excellence Television.
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In addition, we've got to demand more responsibility from our other community institutions. We've got to make it clear to our churches that if they expect to take collection money out of our community on Sunday, they'd better be prepared to put some kind of service back into the community during the week. Our churches should be serving as low-cost childcare facilities for working mothers during the week. They could then employ unemployed mothers, and at the same time hold classes in child rearing. So the community should send the following message to our preachers -"Don't just preach me a sermon, live me one."
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And we should also encourage the promoters of these awards shows, like the Soul Train Awards, to be more responsive to the needs of our community. We don't need yet another parade of swaggering millionaires staggering up on stage, snatching microphones, and acting a fool. We need to start placing more emphasis on honoring young scholars, educators, and the people in the community who are helping to move Black people forward. That isn't to say that celebrities and entertainment shouldn't be involved in the shows (I'm a musician myself), but they should be the "help," not the honorees. After all, if all our young people ever see the community honoring are singers, movies stars, and athletes, why should they aspire to be anything else?
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The only hope for the Black man is to make knowledge, the new "soul" of our culture, because God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. Thus, it’s no longer enough to simply say "I’m Black and I’m proud." It is long past time for us to start investing in our excellence, so we’ll have something to be proud of.
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The axiom that "Knowledge is power" is no myth. The truth of that assertion has been repeatedly proven throughout human history. For that reason, with very few exceptions, it has been the most knowledgeable who have ultimately prevailed, not the coolest. Thus, those who simply continue to advocate what’s been repeatedly tried and has failed miserably - attempting to whine, complain, and protest their way to equality - are on a fool’s errand. It's time to give the novel and completely obvious a try - the stability of excellence, and the strength of knowledge.

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LET EXCELLENCE DO OUR SWAGGERIN'
MILES DAVIS/JOHN COLTRANE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqNTltOGh5c

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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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A Message to the Hood

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A Message to the Hood

(Knowledge is the Key)

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Some people take umbrage with my defining myself as a hood rat. They say that by doing so, I’m not only demeaning myself, but I’m also demeaning other Black people in the process. But people who think like that are violating one of the most important principles in life - that we should always seek to be independent thinkers. That entails being self-defining, never giving the thoughts of others priority over your own, and never allowing others to define your terms.

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Thus, people who see the phrase "hood rat" as demeaning have been brainwashed. They no longer think for themselves. They've allowed the attitude of others to take priority over their own, and they've also allowed society to define their terms. As a result, they've embraced the belief that people with their background are somehow less than others.
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I take pride in challenging that contention because the fact is, I grew up in the hood, so that's what makes me who I am, and since God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man think, in order for anybody to contend that I'm less than human, they're going to have to demonstrate that they can out-think me. You see, it's not enough to merely SAY, "I'm Black and I'm proud." We must put enough work into our intellectual development to say it, and mean it. Therefore, I proudly embrace the phrase hood rat as symbolic of my challenge to society to come SHOW me that I'm inferior, since it's my contention that it's society that's guilty of flawed thinking, not I.
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A perfect example of the flaw in society's thinking can be found in the fact that attendant to the negativity that society assigns to the term "rat" is the false assumption that a rat is something nasty, and therefore, beneath man. But the fact is, man himself is the nastiest animal on Earth. While a rat may leave droppings in his environment, and one might consider that nasty, man is so prolific with his own droppings - in the ocean, in the air, in space, and within the Earth itself - that he threatens the very survival of everything on the planet. So what’s nastier, a rat, or man?
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That illustrates why it’s so important to clean man’s droppings from our minds, and become independent thinkers. Because much of what we think of as true, is actually the corruption of truth that we’ve been taught by other men in order to promote their own self-interest.
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So while others are scrambling among themselves in an attempt to service their corruption and greed, it presents the Black community with the perfect opportunity to spend that same time becoming independent thinkers, and reassessing the mores that we've inherited from this corrupt society. Thereafter, we should replace the meaningless pursuit of the "American Dream" (bling), with the pursuit of character, wisdom, and knowledge. Because since knowledge is power, one invariably leads to the other, and much, much more.
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I’ve been fortunate enough to obtain a small measure of the American dream, but it was certainly not as a result of any kind of pursuit. I only stumbled upon it while on a mission to educate myself, because along with education comes skills. But also during my educational process, I found that what I was actually looking for was not so much the American dream, but happiness and self-fulfillment. Yes, I wanted to live a comfortable life, but along with a TRUE education, you tend to develop a new definition of what that entails. And one of the things that I learned was that the American dream is only the illusion of happiness, since the mere acquisition of "things" can bring you neither happiness, nor fulfillment. True happiness and fulfillment can only be found in becoming the best that you can be. Our failure to understand that is the primary problem that we have as a nation - we're in much hotter pursuit of riches than we are of character.
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I wasted literally all of my teenage years - those years between 12 and 19 years of age, when I should have been educating myself - running the street. I spent that time dropping out of school, going in and out of various institutions, and using any kind of drug that I could get my hands on.
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But fortunately, I was arrested as an adult (at 19 years-old), and an insightful cop and a benevolent judge joined forces to get me to agree to go into the military (the army, I thought) in return for not being sent to prison, and the promise of expunging my record if I came out with an honorable discharge. Naturally, I eagerly agreed. But it was only later, to my complete shock and horror, did I learn that they had also managed to get the Marine Corps to ignore all of its regulations against accepting an illiterate delinquent. But once I got in there I found out why - they needed a warm body to use as a close combat dummy in order to train the "REAL MARINES."
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But once the marines finished showing me what a gangster REALLY was, they had me take the GED, and to everybody's amazement, I did really well on it. Although I did a lot of guessing, I scored much higher than anyone expected, especially myself (I'm still convinced it was a fluke). So they sent me to the Army/Navy Academy to get an actual diploma and further my educational development (I'll be eternally grateful to them for that).
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But fluke or not, that's where I learned a couple of very valuable lessons - you are what you think, and that knowledge is power. Instead of being called dummy, I was making a fortune writing love letters for other marines, and later I started working for the battalion commander. I did all of his writing, including the officers' fitness reports, which gave me a tremendous amount of clout ("Come on, Wattree! Why be so formal? There's no one around, so spare me the Captain crap. Just call me Larry."). Later, it was arranged for me to get out 90 days early to attend college - which, by that time, was just a matter of staying awake and filling in the dots.
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But during that process I fell in love with knowledge, and I also began to realize that since what I loved most was free, it couldn’t be denied me. And as I became increasingly more independent of thought, a couple of other things also began to come into focus. First, contrary to our national values, the only mature and productive form of competition is to compete against the person that you were the day before. And secondly, I learned that the only true road to perfect happiness and fulfillment is to dedicate your life to becoming your own hero.
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That’s the knowledge that I would like to pass along to my brothers in the hood. Because our failure to understand those two very fundamental facts are not only the source of most of our misery, but to 99% of all of our problems in general. We rightly complain that we’re deprived of a level playing field, so why not dedicate ourselves to the acquisition of knowledge to equalize that situation? And by the way, that's the message that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West should be preaching, instead of helping to elect Republicans by attacking our first Black president.
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So yes, I’m a hood rat, and I never let myself forget it. But I’m a hood rat with the understanding that the White man's water is no wetter than our own, and his knowledge is no more knowledgeable. In addition, since every experience in life is a source of knowledge, the experience of overcoming the adversity that we’ve endured as hood rats makes us more, rather than less. It's that very knowledge that Obama is killing them with in Washington as we speak. They could probably handle him if he was dealing with them using the knowledge that he pick up at Harvard, because many of them went there too, but he's whippin' 'em with a source of knowledge that they know absolutely nothing about - the knowledge he picked up trying to survive as a Black man in America. That's a knowledge that's unique to us.
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Thus, the bottom line is this - with very few exceptions, we cannot depend on others to help us, Black or White. We're engaged in a class war, and it's everybody for themselves. So we've got to combine the unique knowledge that we've gained in the hood, with the education and wisdom that we obtain thereafter, to become the masters of our own fate. Thus, knowledge, is the key to our survival. Period.
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Think about that.

THE HOOD RAT

I’m sure you know that I love you;

You’re everything I need.

You fit the bill of all my desires,

a perfect match for all my dreams.

You’re everything I’ve always craved,

that luscious vision from across the tracks;

that delicate flower, just beyond my grasp,
and here you are at last.

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But what you ask is foreign to me;

You need something that I'm not.

You said, if I'd tweak my nature, just a bit,

you’ll give everything you’ve got.

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But that "tweak" you need is who I am;

It's my essence, can't you see?

You want to abolish the hood rat from my life,

the very thing that makes me, me.

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While a hood rat may seem trite to you,

a hood rat’s what you see;

So forget about what the other’s say -

here’s what it means to me:

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I’ve been brutally dragged through the pits of Hell,

yet, managed to survive,

well educated and fully functional,

when I came out the other side.

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I scrounged the lessons taught at Harvard,

because knowledge, I found, was free;

But Harvard can't teach the lessons I've learn -

that knowledge is unique to me.

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While they've heard the sounds of a mournful Trane,
and Miles moaning in the night,

not against the backdrop of hunger and pain,

or injustice, hatred, and blight.

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Yet, these are the things you want me to purge,

and spurn the life I’ve led.

Well, I’m sorry sweet thing, as much as I love you,

the soul of a hood rat is my edge.

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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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Wattree’s Pearls of Limited Wisdom

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Wattree’s Pearls of Limited Wisdom

God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think, so the pursuit of knowledge should be a lifelong endeavor and used as a primary assessment of all men. But we should never confuse credentials with knowledge, because some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, while some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge.

*Knowledge is free, so one must choose to be ignorant.
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*Self-Esteem: Never Doubt Yourself. You should always dedicate yourself to truth, and be free of  ugliness, mean-spiritedness,  and spite.
Then when others hate you, you know it's due to their ugliness and aversion to truth, not your own.
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*Never be afraid of failure. The only reason you can walk is because you got tired of falling down.
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*The greatest lesson in wisdom, intelligence, and class is the understanding that one doesn't corner the market on any of them.
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*Intrinsic to every zealot's passion for justice lies the seeds of tyranny.
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*An efficient thinker gives truth priority over ideology, while ideologues give ideology priority over truth.
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*The contemplative must always endure the pestilence of mediocrity.
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*The petty is forced to view life through a microscope in order to find their virtue.
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*Wit without wisdom is a waste.
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*An unexamined life is a waste of skin.
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*Socialism: Any government policy that impugns my right to swindle others.
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* Freedom: The right to deprive others of their rights, freedom, and equality.
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* Religion: The pursuit of God's approval to hate all those who don't look, think, and act like myself.
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* Faith: The embrace of something that doesn't make sense, but it's convenient for me to believe.
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*History: The romanticized account of ordinary men engaged in routine stupidity.
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*American History: The often exaggerated, and invariably sanitized account of ordinary men committing unconscionable atrocities in the name of God.
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*Seek to become your own hero, and never allow anyone to remove your cape.
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*To Black people: The establishment doesn't recognize the power of your intellect. Use that to your advantage, because your history lies before you.
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*The very rules designed to curb the excesses of irresponsibility, also tend to restrict genius within the boundaries of mediocrity.
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*Ask not, what your country can do for you. Ask, what YOU can do for yourself.
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*Hostility is a sign of a weak and frustrated mind.
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*There are only two kinds of people in this world - good people, and bad people - and ignorance is the dividing line between the two.
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*The only true road to perfect fulfillment is dedicating your life to becoming your own hero.
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*Without mistakes we would never grow; so we shouldn't mourn our mistakes, we should celebrate our growth.
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*You must recognize who you are, to visualize what you can become.
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*The difference between a discussion and a debate is in a discussion both parties have the maturity to understand that since neither corners the market on either wisdom, knowledge, or intelligence, the point of the encounter is to share their respective points of view - not to win, but to learn.
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*Money is the root of small people.
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*Never seek recognition. Always seek excellence, and allow recognition to seek out you.
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*What an individual says is meaningless - always watch what they do.
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*When you choose to live in a fantasy, you're forced to view reality as a myth.
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*You can either speak the truth for the sake of humanity, or be popular. You cannot do both.

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*Efficient thought requires that we first, see life as it is, and only then, as we would have it.
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*There is no status more lonely than that of an exceptional Black man - he’s hated by the White establishment because he’s a threat to the status quo, and he’s hated by the Black "aristocracy"  because he’s a pie in the face of their delusions of grandeur.
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*The subconscious mind doesn't deal in self-assessment, so what you tell it you are, it believes, and begins to work on that assumption.

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*You are what you think, so if you refuse to think, you're nothing.
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*We all have a burning desire to impress others with who we are, but more often than not we try to express that need through what we have, and there's a huge difference between the two.
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*Pseudo-intellectual: One who imparts common knowledge like he's telling you something new.
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*American Exceptionalism: "Of course we believe in the Bible, EXCEPT when it's in conflict with our greed, prejudice, and self-interest."
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*It's one thing to feel superior, that's merely high self-esteem, but when you begin to believe it, that's arrogance.
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*Guns are a metaphor for penises, and "American exceptionalism" is a sexual fantasy.
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*Waiting on happiness to make you happy will insure an unhappy existence. Be happy now!
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*Never confuse hedonism with happiness.
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*The only mature form of competition is against you're last best effort.
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*God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think - but fish have sense enough to adhere to their nature.
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*Never give anyone else's ability to think priority over your own.
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*It's not the system that's dysfunctional, we are - we're so apathetic that we're allowing the craziest among us to control the system.
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*Heroes are for kids - they don't have bills to pay.
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*Poverty Pimp: One who has an overwhelming need to buy a homeless man a sandwich - but feels an even greater need to bring a camera crew along to record the event.
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*Conservatism: 21st Century pretexts for 19th Century thinking.
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*Demagogue: One who's quick to give you all he's got - but all he's got is a passionate desire to manipulate you.
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*Compassionate Conservative: A Christian conservative who's morally, and fundamentally, opposed to lynching - so he'll starve you to death instead.
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*Donald Trump: Hitler in a wig.
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*Never fully trust ANY politician - after all, they've dedicated themselves to a life of crime.
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*Political Rule of Thumb: Trying to find a politician who's not self-serving is like searching for a homosexual who's not gay. 
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*In order for ANY politician to get the majority of votes from people who disagree, he must lie to at least some of them - so if your favorite politician is holding office, he's a liar by definition.
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*One's intelligence rises to accommodate one's level of curiosity.
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*Ninety-nine percent of the people are petty, self-serving hedonists. I only hope the remaining one percent can save me from myself.
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*When you feel obliged to lock out differing points of view, you incarcerate yourself in a prison of ignorance.
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*Never become so enraptured by other people's thoughts that you fail to formulate your own.
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*Soaring rhetoric is only as meaningful as the backbone that sustains it.
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*We often confuse literacy with intellect. Intelligence is the capacity to assess and creatively manipulate information that the literate merely regurgitates.
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*Indulging in name-calling is a waste of both time and energy, because fools have a tendency to do all the heavy lifting for you.
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*Some of the best money I've ever spent was on the gratitude in the eyes of a homeless man.
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*Truth was the very first victim of American Exceptionalism.
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*Politicians are not our leaders; they're our employees - and we're grossly neglecting the business.
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*Friends are at their best when rewarding our failure to succeed.
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*True love is always having your lover's back, and knowing you don't have to worry about your own.
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*Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores.
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*Some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia giving the pursuit of credentials priority over the pursuit of knowledge.
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*Before you point your finger at another, you should smell it first.
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*The only difference between Arab terrorism and American terrorism is the cost and efficiency of the delivery system.
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*The great institutions of learning can only certify that one was present in an environment where knowledge was shared. But no institution can confer either intelligence, character, or common sense, nor can it certify that the knowledge shared was absorbed.
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*Man's innate thirst for knowledge will someday overwhelm his passionate lust for stupidity.
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*Show me a man who believes that Moses parted the Red Sea, and I'll show you one whose grip on reality can't be relied upon.
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*More often than not, the happiest moments in your life won't cost you a dime.
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*The only difference between you and Socrates is that you're still capable of correcting your erroneous beliefs.
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*The key to Black liberation is to practice excellence as though it's a jump shot.
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*State's Rights: We demand our constitutional right to lynch whomever we wish.
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*Libertarian: I demand my individual right to abridge the rights of whomever I please.
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*The GOP: Liberals are un-American - they're engaged in a socialist plot to protect your family.
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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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*We accept the Bible as the word of God because the Bible says it is. Go figure it.
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*Question: When we're asked to "have faith," are we being asked to have faith in God, or to have faith in what man tells us about God?
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*Question: Can one believe in God, yet have no faith in man?
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*Question: If we can only be "saved" though Christ, did God condemn everyone born in non-Christian nations before birth?
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*Question: If God knows all, and he knows before Billy is born that Billy is going to Hell, can Billy do anything in life to make God wrong?
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*Every experience is a source of knowledge, so having to endure adversity makes one more, rather than less.
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*One should take great pride in being the product of adversity, because your mere survival provides you with unassailable credentials.
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*Unfortunately, man is most generously rewarded for his collusion in the conspiracy against mankind.
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*If one can’t find happiness in poverty, wealth will prove to be an ineffective mentor.
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*It is always gratifying to win a debate, but losing one is of much more value.
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*We’re Black and we’re proud - right up until we escape.
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*Question: Why is it that we allow our children to watch murder and mayhem all day long, but if a woman's breast is exposed we feel they've been irretrievably corrupted?
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*We must buy a license to marry, but we're free to hate with impunity. Go figure it.
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*I love you madly, my brother - until you succeed.
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*Black people are the product of the very same racist environment as White people. Thus, we're just as racist toward other Blacks as any Hillbilly.
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*Corporatists: It is always a delight to take so much credit for what so many others have done.
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*Always follow truth, regardless to where it leads, or whose ox it gores.
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*Older women aren't quite as frisky as young ones, but at least I have someone to talk to when I'm done.
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*The perfect woman: One who only tells me to go to Hell half the time.
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*An epiphany: The triumph of common sense over wishful thinking.
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*A personal epiphany: Never publish without running spellcheck.
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*Truth: You know you're aging when you've got the hots for the lady in the Depends commercial.


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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