There was Haiti and now Chile, guess whose fault it is…I’m guessing global warming, theologians, and academicians, I’m kidding about the academician part and the rest remains valid, global warming and theologians, faux alike.

Maybe I’ve lost my sympathy–but people are dying by the thousands everyday and the economist in me is saying: “maybe it’s a good thing.” Remember, we’re all going to die and actually that’s what makes us the lucky ones. Before I heard the news of the Chile Mag. 8.8 earthquake, I wanted to talk about the “littleness” of life, a lot like George Carlin would do. We humans are taking ourselves too seriously.

It perhaps comes to mind that I might be reacting differently if me or my acquaintance is involved in this disaster; I might, I might not. My heart goes out to those who might have been affected and for those who are not affected, I wrote this a long while ago and I’d repeat:

We are going to Die!
And that makes us,
the lucky ones.
Most people are never going to die,
because they are never going to be born.

The potential people who could have been here in my place
that would in fact not see light of day,
out number the sand grain of the Sahara.

Certainly,
those unborn greats exists.

Greater Poets than Keith,
greater scientist than Newton.
greater minds than Einstein.

We know this because the set of possible people
allowed by our DNA outnumbers the set of actual people.

In the teeth of this stupefied odds,

it is You and I in our ordinariness,
that are here.

We privileged few who won the lottery of birth against all odds

How dare we whine!
About our inevitable return
to that state which the vast majority never saw.

Yesterday, I was imagining things and some might think I take religious hate rather too far. But let’s me share this video and you might understand a bit of where I’m coming from:

You maybe don’t see the need to watch it, or you probably did and wonder  what religion has up its selves. The point is, this strong Christians strongly believe that their recently dead [two] pastors will rise again  with enough prayers from them–reminds me something I said about prayer a while ago, …mmmm.

You are probably not convinced about my points yet, now watch this and get a decent laugh..

While still in Black History Month, something comes to mind: niggers and blacks.

I was chatting with one of my Asian friend a while ago wondering on my [then] upcoming visit to China (considering I’m black, consider me naive or whatever and if you’re curious on how my China trip went, you can read about it here). She at some point recalled the “thing” that comes to her mind when she thinks of black people–those ignorant fucks! I unfortunately can’t blame her after she told me how she came to that conclusion, we’ve asked for it.

The bad niggers get more publicity than the good blacks (think rap videos and Hollywood); I attempt to clarify [fore her] a few things–this was an article I wrote a while ago differentiating niggers from blacks (really?).

A nigger is the one you see and say to yourself: “thank God I’m not that fellow–so ignorant!” and a black man is that you admire and enviously desire his success.

A nigger is that who doesn’t know the difference between correctness and correct-yes, very ignorant and a black is that whose has a desire to learn and overcome challenges.

A nigger brags about his rims, his chics, his “flowz” and being tough and for the black man-he needs no bragging because his actions are louder than thousand of words.

A nigger knows the shortcut to everything and anything, no matter how crude, stupid and insane, he’s still ballin’. The black man knows the reward of hard work, he even recognizes more the fact that thousands of miles walk down a wrong road never make it right.

A black man knows, admits and corrects his mistakes, faces the challenges and move on; Niggers believe they are in prejudice.
You know their uniforms: over sized shirts and dropping pants, colorful shoes and huge “dog-ties” – that’s a nigger rolling; even if it means robbing you to acquire all this, a nigger gatta “bling.”

A black knows he isn’t supposed to do drugs, he knows he is supposed to obey the law, knows his duty to the society,  his duty to his family and does so accordingly. A nigger feels surprised if he doesn’t do drugs, go to jail or get shot ‘cuz, that should be a nigger’s life!

Success to a nigger is big rims, swags and blings. So, even if a nigger can’t afford a day’s meal – gotta big shiny rims, all’s cool. Black men knows that all that shine isn’t gold and most often empty barrels make the loudest noise.

Some situations is just out of a black man’s control and he knows there are better ways to solve the problem than blame, get violent and get victimized. First of, every niggers problem, he claims, are from white people and violence and some ballistic action can solve some issues, just plain ignorant Niggers!

Niggers breed niggers, a “nigger baby mama” has tons of kids, doesn’t know their dad, on welfare and wouldn’t stop having even some more sex – a black has a dad, one mom and a loving family-that’s the real black man.

Why get a real serious job when as a nigger you can “sling” and make decent living? A black man has an answer: as stated earlier, no shortcuts and zero jail time policy for a black man. A black man works hard, holds a job maybe two and leads an accomplished life.

A nigger thinks: being polite, honest, gentle, thrifty, intelligent or [legally] accomplished is “acting white.” A black has no idea what “acting white” means but he does know that skin color does not predict decency or, even if stereotyped as the inferior classes, that doesn’t stop us for achieving and beating the odds.

I can only suggest the differences, now you can decide when that fellow who you’re labeling a nigger is in fact one.

My school (UMASS Boston) will be resuming soon and of course that invites my criticism of school and schooling, to which I always argues there is need for a change in paradigm of our we approach ‘learning’.

Learning in the sense of the ‘real’ world and the ‘academic’ world. I’m still surprised that even as a senior, many of my colleagues still don’t know that this two worlds don’t  translate. There is the academic world where we learn all those facts and soon forget, the world where there is only one right answer, the world where your goodness or badness is based on some letter grade, the world where there are clear failures and successes [predictably]; and, there is the real world.

A world where preparing impromptu-ly gets you burned, the real world where the path, or answer, is unclear, a real world, very unpredictable, one you cannot drop out from just because you don’t ‘like’ it.

Welcome to the real world newbies. Seniors of the academic world and super freshmen of the real world.

While I can’t make the perfect world happen, I at least can imagine it; or I can at least imagine what I can do to make the world, in my imagination, perfect, or better put:

If we were a Painter,
We’d paint a picture of a perfect world.
Some sort of – no evil, better world and a brightened horizon.

If we are Sailors,
We’d go into the oceans, seek the calmest peace.

If we were Pirates,
We’d discover the treasure lying in our dreams.

If only we are Dreams,
This happens – We’d Allow every good dream come true.

If We were a Promise,
We keep every of our heart-sought promises

If we are Magicians,
We’d just snap our fingers and make all our trouble vanish —-

If we are Preachers,
We say of peace, follow peace and live in peace.

If we are Doctors,
We’d heal this world, prevent it from getting harm.

If we are Psychics,
We’d just erase the past, go into the future and set everything right.

If we are Soldiers,
We’d defend our souls, mind and body from getting any hurt.

If we are Feeling down,
For this – we have the power to never be let down.

If only ….
If we can be these things,
If to make us Happy,
If to make us Peaceful,
If to make our World a better,
If only we can be these things.

I was with a group of friends the other day and some one raised the question on what how ‘mission’ HERE is. And one of my friends noted, our mission here is where we are now—there is no point on considering the past, or the future; the only place you can be is where you are now.

As simple as that idea seems, it seemed I never heard it before, it breath new life into my ideals. Slowly, my consciousness is being raised on appreciating my now.

I’ve written about this here and there, tried to think out loud on how I feel about how life and now I’m brought to understand, the only place I can be is where I am now. Of course, with where I am now, I can work towards reaching a better place (or worse) depending on how much I recognize my now.

The issue is, it seems to me, we are often overwhlemed by what will happen later; how the past has been, so much that we forget to appreciate the Now.

Unfortunately, as humans, its hard to completely ignore the past or the future but, as I’m starting to learn in Eastern Philosophy [buddhism],the only way to archieve that ‘goal’ is to forget about the goal and concetrate on the small steps you’re taking now; thinking about that ‘goal’ strongly would not let you achieve it, considering the strong attachment you’ll have to it.

Very contrary to the advice I’m used to getting in life. We’re constantly advised to stay focused and keep our mind working  towards the goal; carefully we carry this philosophy through every areas of our life and forget, the only place we can be is here. Not there, or then.

I’m learning to shape my now in small increments with which I’m slowly finding peace using this philosophy.

I recently ran into John Maxwell’s Ethics 101 and I recollect those days when I was all socked up in books on leadership *not exactly sure of they helped), the one I read that will never escape my mind [anytime soon] was “The 360° leader” by John C.Maxwell. This days I’m often more involved technical books and situations but it always comes in handy to be a person who commands respect, gives respect and follows respect – who doesn’t like that feeling? Come along then

As much as we may think that it isn’t much of anything, or some may think, it’s much of an ease, almost everyone today have little or no sense of commanding respect(s). I’m not refering to respect one gets by default from being in a position of authority but respect in terms of how much of it you’ve earned by the virtue of how much you have given which I present here that you can lead irrespective of your position in any group.

Being respected, someone whom when you talk, people have a sense to listen, everyone thinks you exclusionary, you are watched and often imitated – in short, you command: Respect! I will, for the sake of making this explanatory, exclude the set of people who are in position of authority who are regardless, respected. I intend to address a regular person, one who isn’t satisfied with being pushed around, or for some reason has lost a sense of self-worth.
The act of gaining respect lies on just one principle, this principle is golden: “Give and it will be given back to you.” This means that when you give respect, respect will be given back to you – no more, no less. When one can get around gaining respect, it will get clearer how one can lead irrespective of one’s position in whatever situation you find yourself.

Few considerations:

1. Your Acts: Looking after one’s acts is a must. The way you conduct yourself, your dressing (more on this later), your reaction to situations and those little acts of courtesy that we think doesn’t count. People watch and unconsciously judge you based on this and will unconsciously determine if you deserve their time, merit and importantly, respect or maybe not. Some practical tips include, always appearing calm and composed, listening attentively to others and giving valuable feedback, allowing people’s rude actions pass and the likes.

2. Your Talks: What can ruin or make one as fast as one’s talks? None! It is important that one watches his/her talks. Don’t try to “be cool” by talking carelessly, those careless talks that we make and really think aren’t of significance can build up and gradually act against one. As words, once spoken, cannot be taken back. This in turn should make anyone willing to be a 360° leader re-think, re-evaluate, weigh cause and effects of what will be said. Most importantly, as a rule, leaders are listeners and not talkers. The more you take your time to listen to others, talk less, people will value more and more of your opinion when you tend to give one. Everyone values more of what is less – use this principle in your favor. Who doesn’t like a little bit of mystery?

3. Your Composition: While almost all the “leader’s-acts” I will state comes down to composition, I will prefer to give one’s composition as your outward appearance. Believe it or not, the way one dresses, speaks loudest (at least before personal encounters and talks). At all times, a leader would give proper attention to his/her appearance, the kind of dress you wear should be decent (both in price and looks), one should dress to suit occasion and in modesty. These situation include – those around you, where you intend to appear and your persona. (Leaders often prefer less attention than too much; little wonder they are often dressed in lighter wears than bright, flashy ones).

4. Your Intellect: It’s a most, leaders must be sharp and intelligent. Fortunately, everyone has the potential to be both sharp and intelligent (except in extreme cases where this might not be feasible). To get to this potential, a prospective leader must at all times assume that he/she is ignorant, always constantly needing to learn. In this case, the saying that “a mind that stops learning is a dying mind,” is the leader’s motto. Seeking ways to improve one’s knowledge could include, listening to great minds, learning from humans (there is so much lessons to learn in this life that it’s just so impossible to learn it all yourself), reading books, writing and other ways to continuously seek knowledge.

5. Your Simplicity: A leader has to be simple and modest by default. Since most leaders are usually the best around their mates, they are usually more accomplished and more focused, there’s usually a strong tendency for them to get immodest (proud?) in their conduct. This, differentiates the boys from the men. Irrespective of their achievements, 360° leaders don’t and never think they are better than anyone else – they have the general mindset that whatever they have is a service to someone else, it’s a privilege not a right and one they have a duty to serve with.

6. Your Thoughts: To catch a monkey, you have to think (and act) like a monkey. Likewise, to be a leader, you have to think (and act) like one. Most (if not all) actions first place of occurrence is on our mind. Any prospective leader most train his/her mind to continuously think like a leader, hence act accordingly (even copying another accomplished leader’s act). So, how exactly is thinking like a leader? A leader solves problems no one else is interested in, they act unconventional, they think of themselves as servants who can influence people by serving them, most importantly, they think of their neighbor’s best interest.

7. Your Life: For a leader, her life is a book before everyone’s eyes. Which means, one must consider every step taken exemplary. No time wasted or unnecessary aforementioned abrupt behaviors. Most accomplished leaders have so trained their minds that it’s almost impossible for them to waste their time, there is always something to fill the time. This takes lots of discipline and denial, but the pay-off is great, no doubt.

8. Your Time: Time, it is said, is the soul of business. A prospective or I’d say a 360°leader knows that every moment in time wasted is one less chance to set him/her-self apart from the rest. A leader considers it his soul concern to account for her time, as spent in productivity.

360° leadership is not about the way you can command people and have them “fear” you, it’s a respect earned that gives you the privilege to lead anyone, anywhere irrespective of your position in your company, school, organization or any other relative settings.
Anyone can be a leader, it’s a status that should be converted and earned, statutory privilege aside, – through service and diligence to others with a taming of one’s own self.

In my growing years as a teen, suffering from a broken home and extreme lack of focus, I was critical of humans; Oh! Not just humans but anything that can be criticized. With today’s technology, we have even become more retracted than ever. We emerge in internet-ary, alleviate fears with calls to “pals,” fill in our voids with text messages – the result?

Depreciated human relationships.

We as a generation have lost touch with humanity. In which I mean, we can’t understand how to genuinely love, hate, be affectionate, console, compliment or show regular human emotions. Now, we are more comfortable with social-networks and IMs, we understand the language of a/s/l (age, sex, location), lol (laugh out loud), ttyl (talk to you later), ilu (I love you), hashtags and “Like” buttons, more than physical interaction. We can’t appreciate ourselves anymore, we take ourselves for granted and abuse ourselves, and other human’s existence.

For we who are willing to stand out; willing to touch the human nature, willing to return to the originality of our emotions – forsake the [inter]net-motion, transfer the net-affection to human affections. How much do you express gratitude to others? How often do you compliment? Do you truly adore human’s uniqueness? Do you care about others? Do you tolerate others? Imagine how much better you would feel if you were truly loved, truly appreciated, truly adored or truly complimented. This is a call to make it start from you.

Begin the chain of happiness, share it, show joy to others, and bring kindness with you wherever you are. Irrespective of situations, sincerely cater for others need. As infectious as your emotions began to get, there is enough of true emotions to go around.

I have found that there is no greater connection to souls than this: The more you give; the more you will receive.

Economist are fond of poking their nose into every matter, and very rudely do they do so, I’m not one, but let me fake it.

Statistics has shown that AIDS is now an epidemic especially in most developing countries especially in African countries*

As scary as AIDS or this statistics seem, in a countries like USA or some other countries, there is still a low percentage of people infected with AIDS comparable to healthy people (all things equal) and upon this fact, I should propose a solution on combating the spreading of this deadly virus.

On discussing with some friends I mentioned: “Don’t you think encouraging people to have more sex can actually curb the spread of the Virus?” No matter how I try to prove my logic, almost everyone I have proposed this solution to finds it very ridiculous. A disease that is primary spread through sex: “how is having more sex going to curb its spread? You must be such an insane joker to even think of such a thing.”

Let dive straight into this argument:

Once again, let’s take the hypothetical market of reLove where all things are equal and (comparably similar to the real world where the figures of those living with the virus is significantly lower§) we have 96% perfectly healthy people and 4% infected with the HIV/AIDS Virus – we will be working with this data for working on my economic cure for this disease.

Let suppose, we have a guy in reLove named Jim who has tested positive for the virus and another guy Jack a perfectly health male. With the situation of things now, while the marginal cost of Jim having more HIV is almost zero, this alone can serve as an incentive for Jim to have more sex.

In what sense will Jim’s HIV incent him to have more sex? For Jack, he has the fear of contracting the virus hence he chooses the safest escape – abstinence from having sex, this simultaneously increase the chances of Jim having sex with more partners and spreading the virus to uniformed partners.

The Jacks in reLove (perfectly healthy) each on their own would not know they are disrupting the market and indirectly promoting the transmission of this virus for just the fear that another perfectly healthy female, let’s call her Jill would supposedly have a virus then transmit it to him and this false hopes drives a rather healthy female who would have otherwise had sex with Jack to have sex with Jim thereby getting the virus and so forth.

Since this may read confusing, let me just put it this way: For every less sex that the 95% of the Jacks and Jills don’t have, they almost double the chances of the Jims and Janes (HIV/AIDS infected) of spreading the disease – the 80/20 rule works here too.

Since the obvious solution might be to encourage the Jacks and Janes to have more sex (though this has obvious flaws which I would highlight in the next article), maybe even go even more wild with this idea and offer to pay every healthy person for every additional sex had with another healthy person. Yes, this sounds absolutely ridiculous as my friends have often pointed out but then, I have decided to think outside of the conventional box.

As fun as the idea of encouraging more sex to cure HIV, I have even being faced with greater bugs (as computer programmers would prefer to call it) in my logic of thought which I intend to tackle in the next part of this post. If you’ve enjoyed this radical thought so far, stay tuned, or catch up on my other re.

I originally composed this 3 years ago, I’ve grown considerably since this was written; debuting my blog with some edits, here is my wailing wishes:

I wish I could walk around nude like in it is Stone Age, but I can’t – it is against the law–maybe I can refute the law.

I wish I can get my share of every rich person assets, No! I can’t – they are too greedy–I will be robin hood.

I wish everyday were a “Free Hugs Day”; but it wouldn’t – everyone has decided to hoard hugs [and maybe kisses].

I wish I could sincerely tell people how I really feel about them; but I can’t – I need to be politically correct.

I wish we don’t have to learn anything, but No – we were born stupid.

I wish I could drop out of western education, instead, learn the way nature designed my brain to think, but I can’t – I have to accept the conventional western styled education, stock my brain with information I might never use because I never understood them in the first place.

I wish I could ask God few question, but I can’t – Humans invented God, it lives in our brains.

I wish everyone could be good, loving, kind and all those good things, but they can’t – the world will be too boring and everyone, predictable (not a good thing).

I wish the World was governed by one ruler, but it can’t – everyone considers their idea superior.

I wish people can accept good judgments, but they can’t – all are regarded as sentiments, no one knows any better.

I wish there was no death or the fear of it, but that can’t be – this is nature recycling mechanism I have come to appreciate.

I wish I am multi-talented, having the brains of Einstein, Beethoven, Picasso and the likes, but I can’t – there is need for diversity and individualism.

I wish I can instantly eradicate annoying persons, who are most especially pest, but I can’t – the laws permit their existence.

I wish I can take out the World’s troubles, but I can’t – this world must have troubles, and someone needs to have them.

I wish there were not so much bosses, allowing not bottom-up, but side-side communications, but it can’t be – there’s always a call for differentiation.

I wish I can be lazy and get away with it every time, but I can’t – the principle always stand, what you give in is what you take out.

I wish we can all be equal, maybe not, I’m asking for too much.

I wish I didn’t have to write this, but I did – Now, it’s off my mind!