Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Black Man's Burden

An interesting phenomena within the black male experience is that people seem simultaneously drawn to you and afraid of you. Women often yearn for you and need you, but resent you when you make yourself available. Other men often admire you, applaud you, and imitate you while simultaneously fearful of you, jealous of you and plot against you. The more they love you, the greater the need to eventually crucify. It makes for a strange dichotomy.

10 comments:

J.C. said...

Thats funny...
I thought 'white' people had that same problem.

Well, you know what Freud said...

" Just because your paranoid, and think there out to get you ,.. doesn`t mean they aren`t.

Funny, maybe the yellow people feel the same way.

Anonymous said...

There are eight motivators of human conduct, called the eight worldly winds.They are:

pleasure and pain
gain and loss
fame and obscurity
praise and blame

These motivators are called winds because they move us in a certain direction and determine our course of action. It is important to know them, because if we are under their power we don't have freedom of action. In any given situation, instead of looking at every possible course of action, our options are constrained because we want a result that is favourable to us.

The following is an example of the way this works. Before making a decision in any situation, we think "What I am going to win from this? What is my financial gain on this? Am I going to be recognized for this? Am I going to be more popular after this?"

In Dzogchen, the highest level of Tibetan Buddhism, these eight winds are converted into two, hope and fear...and real freedom is found in refusing to cling to both.

Anonymous said...

This applies to Black women too.

Anonymous said...

Jasai, very interesting way to look at it.

J.C. said...

I find the Buddhist stuff interesting, but it is not my thing.
Its a deep well to look down, and that image is hard to see in the water below, of your face shimmering, way down there.

It is easy to look so, so far down, and then fall in.
Without making a splash.

To me there is something hopeless about it, which is what Jasai is saying, as the 'knowledge' of that is good, and there is an existential point in that, as there is in hope, then walk away from both. I do like the walk away concept. From both. Fear and hope.

Also, my experience says that it is what one does during their day that is real, and often the long long meditation, is considered the more REAL, by the practitioner, and not the real life of that person.

I sometimes refer to this as suburban spirituality.

Some people, not you Jasai I am sure, rip people off all day, and then meditate for three hours, and consider that REAL life.
In this real life society not much good happens, and there is a lot of fear, hope, and frustration.

Denmark Vesey said...

skip sievert said...
"Its a deep well to look down, and that image is hard to see in the water below, of your face shimmering, way down there."

The arrogant ignorance of the secular fundamentalists borders on the absurd. They seek to project the reality of their spiritual narcosis onto others by insisting a spiritual dimension does not exist.

Like, just because ... Skip ... can't see it, it must not be there.

2,000 years of buddhist thought and spiritual practice gets reduced to "interesting stuff".

Compared to Buddhism, Technocracy is bookkeeping.

J.C. said...

Your right it is book keeping. Thats the beauty of it. It does not try to control people with belief. Thats the beauty of it also.
Belief is left to the individual.
It can not be used as a whip, or a torture machine.
Belief is opinion. Opinion is never FACT.
No Belief is ever supported by fact.

Religion is a snare for many people. It is OK if one voluntarily steps into the snare, but many people have religion inculcated into them.

So what is the old times religion ?
I don`t know.
Maybe beating a drum around a fire with some naked women dancing their ass`s off.
That sounds like a good religion to me, and I am not against it.

As far as the GRAND MUFTI, sentencing some women to be stoned for screwing someone, that is the kind of religion most people have been injected with.

Anonymous said...

What is religion anyway?

Anonymous said...

I'm not too sure about the "women often yearn for you and need you, but when you make yourself available they resent you"

Does this statement apply to black women, or all women? And why would they resent you?

Anonymous said...

The the truest shet ever spoken!

Big J