the rasx big lex’

Feelings

Feelings are with every healthy human since birth. Feelings exist in a human being before it can speak or understand language. Feelings are what makes a child cry or smile when they first meet a complete stranger. Yes, we have sensual feelings for the material world but we also have feelings for the spirit world—the emotions. The materialist may want to escape their authentic emotions with the use of narcotics, food and/or other sensual distractions. We often underestimate the protective nature of our emotions. These spiritual feelings have the same importance, in the rasx context, as the fight-or-flight response to physical danger. Our humanity can keep our fingers from being burnt—and it can keep our heart from being broken.

Thang

For those of you that have read many of my writings—writings in the rasx context (scroll down the space time page), you might have seen the word thang. I am almost certain that the earliest, most famous use of this word came out of James Brown, when he said on record, “I’m ’o’ get up and do my thang!,” opening his song “Sex Machine.” So I have always associated this word with an abstraction created by the soul. My thang is something coming out of my soul. This is very near my definition of the word “art” (see below, way below). But art connotes something trapped in a cold museum someplace—but my thang is warm and right here with me!

It is very important to me that the word thang and the word thing are so similar—and that both of these words come from my country (more on this later). In my country, the word thang is looked down upon as slang. The word thing refers to material objects in a material world created by materialists. So when my fellow countrymen are compelled to replace the word thang with the word thing to make sure all is “proper,” the soul has just been paved over with concrete.

So back to James Brown: how does his “thang” fit in a sex machine—isn’t this referring to a material object? I really can’t answer this question right now. I believe it has something to do with obelisks. The simplicity is too complicated. Let’s leave that for another thang.

Normal

I use the word normal in the context of mathematics. It can be a vector that is 90° away from a surface among other things. But many of my fellow citizens use this word to describe what is socially acceptable or, in the worse case, what is culturally acceptable in a racist society based on Eurocentric mores. I believe that most people born after the 1950s in this country define “normal” with the help of the cult of television. Television fiction standardizes a finite set of personalities for people to imitate. If you fail to fall somewhere within these “standard” personalities then you are not “normal” and should be completely ignored—your show goes off the air until, of course, you do something criminal or something else sensational.

As a response to the word normal, we now have the word alternative—but it is quickly becoming normal to use the word alternative. When a “normal” person is using the word normal, I see adolescent, lunch-table politics—childish cowards trying to “fit in” and force others to conform. I think of mediocrity and mob rule. I think of a corporation trying to predict earnings to its shareholders via a positive outlook toward innovative blandness.

There was a time in this country when it was “normal” to wear flammable polyester bell bottom pants. There was a time in this country when it was “normal” to commute to work in a giant truck called an SUV that guzzled scarce and polluting fossil fuels—and this giant truck was rarely used to haul loads. There was a time when it was “normal” in this country for an entire family to take a basket of food out to a stand of trees and watch a man being burned alive—these lynchings were called “picnics” or “barbeques.” Are you acting “normal” today? And remember: if they thought they were lynching an animal then don’t be surprised if they actually ate pieces of the “animal”—think about that the next time you sink your teeth into some ribs.

U.S.A.

This word or acronym means United States of America. This is the country where I was born. In the rasx context, this word was created at the end of our Civil War when The Union was preserved despite the ingenious efforts of wealthy slave holders—who enslaved peoples from Africa. I am a descendant of these peoples. In the rasx context, U.S.A. means the end of legal slavery of my peoples.

America

Most people born in the U.S.A. use the words America and U.S.A. interchangeably. This shows almost perfect ignorance of the people in Central America and South America. In the rasx context, I do not have very good social skills so I find lively people very precious. Unlike my fellow North Americans, I cannot afford to ignore so many. I try to make the effort to use the word America carefully.

Ignorance

In the rasx context, this word means, “The state of ignoring.” It simply means not paying attention. This definition seems to agree with our mainstream, formal definitions but too many people use stupid and ignorant interchangeably. This is not constructive because an ignorant person has a perfectly healthy mind that they choose not use; whereas a stupid person may have something physical going on that’s beyond our control. I believe that most people in my country are ignorant—not stupid. Stupid people are less able to earn the money to make the payments on the SUV while ignorant people have the means to make it happen.

Hit this chief: Smoking weed makes you stupid. It is one way to induce stupor. Not getting an education and smoking weed makes you stupid and ignorant.

Education

Education is of the same effort a farmer takes to cultivate soil. The rise of industrialism removed most people from having such a direct relationship to the land so the power of my analogy is lost. Alas…

When a student drops out of school to read the books she wants to read, this student can still become educated. In the rasx context, education is a private activity. Most people think of education in terms of social institutions where they learn with a group of people. When you socialize your educational activities in a sick society, you are in some deep shit—and you definitely do not understand where I am coming from because I am not “normal” (see above) and therefore must be completely ignored.

One of the most important lessons I had to learn is that very few people—especially people of color—get an institutional education without being crippled by assimilation. It reminds of the Curtis Mayfield line, “…educated fools from uneducated schools…”

The personal computer (as an interactive and generic information appliance) is the single most powerful educational tool in the mechanized world today. It is as precious as having your own basketball court to practice jump shots every morning before you practice with the rest of the team.

History

In the U.S.A., we have schooling; we don’t have very much education. This country produces more obedient employees than independent thinkers. In my childhood neighborhood, we produced more wards of the state than free men. So, for most of us, history is a “boring” school subject. For me, history is the living answer to the questions, “What the hell just happened? How did that get there? Where did this come from?” These are the same questions children ask. Because of my peculiar recollection of my Christian upbringing, I regard the narrative form, the story, as sacred. This demands respect for history—all history—everyone’s life story. This is as close to any African form of ancestor worship I can get—under the historical circumstances.

Culture

North Americans seriously came of age in an Industrial Revolution. This means the obvious mechanical shit like train tracks and refrigerators. But more subtly, this also means mechanical thinking permeates North American society. I am only half joking when I say that most people in my home country are afraid of computers because they think like machines themselves and they don’t want any competition from other machines. Most North Americans are materialists and a thang as nebulous as culture must be linked to some kind of material object. I believe that “we” have chosen genes as that material link to culture—and, because most of us are racist (see below), we easily replace physical genes with nebulous “race.”

Now let’s translate that last sentence in the previous paragraph into the political language any hip American should understand: we use racial profiling to associate a human being with his or her cultural values. This allows us to use race and culture interchangeably. This allows us to think of people as mindless insects because we are free to assume implicitly that people are born with cultural traits instead of needing to learn them.

This also works very well in the world of sexism. When a male assumes that a female knows how to cook simply because she was born female, we can hear that American Machine rolling along—perhaps on a collision course to divorce.

Racist

A racist is someone who believes in the concept of race. This blanket definition covers both the victimizers and the victims. I find this definition extremely efficient. When I hear someone seriously use the word “race,” it is just like hearing some poor slob from the court of Ferdinand and Isabella indignantly explaining to Columbus that the world is flat—“Hey, Columbo, everybody knows da earf is flat!”

Race is a political concept and only a brainwashed weakling mindlessly accepts the use of the word. When was the last time you heard someone described as a White Russian or a Red Russian? By the way, Christopher Columbus and anyone in his posse were the original racists. Slavery by skin color was a Columbian idea. Happy Columbus Day!

When the United States officially begins to measure things using the metric system is when there may be hope that this country will begin to abandon its racist system.

Here’s another one folks: Hispanic is a word that was made popular by the Nixon administration—not the 16th century Latin.

Pre-Columbian

I use this word to describe the moment in time in the world before the ascendancy of Christopher Columbus. In this moment in time, the words black and white for the sake of racism did not exist. Racism itself did not exist—apart from the subtleties highlighted in Shakespeare’s Othello. The ease of associating the words “Black man” and “inferior” did not exist—hell, the words “Black man” as we know them today did not exist. It is very important for people to understand this. Such wonderful people should have a more fluid and graceful way to travel backwards and forwards in time without too much provincial baggage.

Note that I am not trying to make Columbus into a villain or some kind of evil genius. This little man represents a historical milestone—a token used to mark a new social consciousness. In the rasx context, he encapsulates not the discovery of the Americas but the discovery of racist slavery. So, yes, Africans owned slaves long before the Spanish had hot dinners with tomatoes but they were not racist slave owners—both slavers totally suck—but only one of these slavers have the immortal fangs of a vampire that keep on killing from generation to generation.

Puritan

By my definition, some of my best friends are puritans. I will not dare to assume that I am a master historian of the English-born imbroglio that is Anglo Puritanism. I am just looking at this word and seeing the word “pure” inside of it. And many in my society, especially those from the lukewarm church and the sterile suburbs, have a false sense of purity. These people think in black and white—binary. You are a one or you are a zero. Either they switch you on or they switch you off. It is spiritual machinery with only one moving part—a giant, Bozo Bit.

My puritans don’t like debate because the world of ideas is not something to be explored for its own sake. My puritans don’t ask deep spiritual questions because that may imply they are not the one they believe they are—and the fear of being zero is too overwhelming. My puritans end “friendships” (for various puritanical reasons) and never speak to the person(s) again as if that person magically transformed into a complete stranger. Sound familiar?

When you hear, “He is a good person… He is a bad person… That bitch is stupid…” You may be listening to one of my puritan friends. You have met a puritan at a job interview when he gives you a set of non-technical questions that are either right or wrong—and wrong means, “No discussion. You don’t get the job.” Puritans are the only people that can truly contradict themselves because they are the only people who insist that they are of this one “right” way.

White

When this word is used to describe a human being in my country, traditionally this refers to a person of European descent. In the rasx context, this word refers to a political class of citizens who are racist (see my definition of racist above) and they identify with the dominating racist group. This includes people of European descent and any other human being trying to “pass as white.” To pass as white continues to be confined, for most people, to a process that is entirely based on physical traits. But in order to deal with a more “racially tolerant” racist future, I am compelled to update this definition and permit non-Europeans (even non-Europeans that do not have physical traits that meet racist standards of beauty) to pass for white.

This modification allows me understand the mentality of many educated people of color, like Dinesh D’Souza, who subconsciously or deliberately associate the aesthetic context of their education/intellection exclusively with European cultures. So when such assimilated coloreds use Arabic numerals they do not think of the Arabs. When they think of democracy, they only think of the Greeks. When they think of Geometry, they do not think of the Egyptians. It is this thinking that reinforces the self-defeating belief of many in the non-white underclass that to try to become educated is to try to “act white.” Here we have a profound tragedy (and more loneliness for me). Not good, folks.

Here’s something strange: to describe a European as “white” should be considered a derogatory remark. It should be just like referring to someone as a Nazi. (And it is a sentence like the previous one that will keep me underemployed for many years to come—so now, I am lonely and poor.) I look forward to that charismatic, European, public figure that is sincerely offended when he or she is called “white.” Such a person will be a traitor to his/her class and people of color (including myself) will unfairly hold him/her in suspicion but this warrior/hero will begin to pave the way for a new, Euro-ethnic future.

Black

When this word is used to describe a human being, traditionally this refers to a person of African descent. No one should dispute the fact that this word came out of the 1960s to describe a social class of people in direct opposition with the dominating racist group. But the rasx definition of “racist” (see above) implies that Black people are racists. This assertion is seen as ludicrous by those who argue that, by their definition of racism, Black people cannot be racists—because their definition only sees the dominating racist group.

But I am quite confident that these same Black people may have trouble describing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a Black man—with a capital B. In the same manner that being called “white” (see above) is not unlike being called “Nazi” (or at least a “Nazi sympathizer”), it should follow that to be called “Black” means you are an anti-Nazi. The danger here is if all you have is a Black identity then all you have is some kind of relationship with whiteness and white people. What happens when the world is rid of Nazis and their sympathizers? What happens to so-called “Black culture?”

I am trying to prepare for a life after racism—even if I never live to see it for myself. Sure, I can be Black. But I can’t be Black for all time. It’s going to end. If I had to choose between Blackness and African culture—I will always choose African culture. The African world is huge, very diverse. There are even Africans in America—north, central and south. I believe that African culture has a life of its own that is independent of European-created racism. This is a life of true African independence. However, when we read the words “black African” now in common usage, I see a long road ahead.

Just imagine a young child of color, playing with a piece of high technology and thinking, “Hey, this is great technology! Wow, we humans can do great things!” This is in contrast to thinking, “Hey this is really great white technology! Wow, what will THEY think of next?” One of these thoughts comes from a Black man.

Self-Hatred

I do not have any special definitions for this hyphenated word. What I would like to highlight is its usage. This word is commonly used to implicitly associate a person with a certain social group and then declare that this person hates him- or herself based on the association. This accusation is made justifiable because the accused person has explicitly leveled criticism at the group.

So, for example, John Brown’s 1859 raid at Harper’s Ferry could be declared an act of self-hatred if we have implicitly associated John Brown with white males. It may not be in our political interests to suppose that John Brown thought of himself as a “child of God” many, many times before he thought of himself as a white male. In recent history, Michael Moore, the best Black filmmaker for the year 2003, has been hit up with this very charge—and the commentator uses the “silent majority” tactic to ostracize Moore from the sacred clique of whiteness, insisting that Moore is “alienated.”

I have not been immune from being charged with several counts of self-hatred. In each case, brought before my judgment I found myself not guilty. This is because the social group that I come from do not believe that education comes from white people; we know that the first places of learning on the planet (run by humans) came from Africa. The social group that I come from do not shun technology because of its association with whiteness when it was high technology and spiritualism that built the great pyramids. The social group that I come from knows that African American urban ghettos are not built by “black termites” genetically programmed to wrap themselves up in a hive of ignorance, drug abuse and feudal forms of hyper-violent capitalism. The social group that I come from are not the obsequious Negroes hoping for a piece of stolen loot to stand as African dictator over petty puppet fiefdoms built on cartoon drawings of African suffering and victim-hood.

I have been implicitly associated with the wrong social group by the ignorant and the schooled—so it would be “natural” for these folks to pull the self-hatred card. Instead, they should pull the let’s-pretend-you-don’t-exist card—or the let’s-keep-silent-and-conceal-our-interest-in this-different-way-of-thinking-because-are-afraid-of-being-shamed-if-we-ask-a-so-called-stupid-question card. These cards deal well on the children’s playground.

Dark

In the Occident, the word dark suggests “evil” or “negative.” This is only natural if the nature in which you were born brought almost certain death when the sun went down for those not seeking safety in numbers. If you are kicking it in the winter forests of Europe, with wolves, and freezing snow, the dark is scary shit. This view of the dark is passed down to us and we inherit from it.

In the rasx context, darkness implies concentration of wealth (e.g. the color in vegetables and fruits) or tranquil peace—I imagine people sleeping in a tropical village safely behind a wall, keeping the lions and hyenas out. Without dark matter there would be no universe, baby—in the blackness of the atoms is The Witness.

Colorblind

One can become colorblind by staying out in too much snow. In the rasx context, this word is not used to describe a medical condition. This is political buzz-word used by whites of all colors. When I hear this word, I hear a demand for assimilation—for a kind of Star Trek Federation, where we all wear the same uniform and speak with the same, nasal, posh, newsreader accent.

What is more challenging is to see a person within their cultural context, interact with another person within their context—and not disrespect that person. This is something called diplomacy within a sophisticated foreign policy. Is the United States known for its sophisticated foreign policy?

Most white people (and please remember my definition of white) came to this country to assimilate. No more peasant wheat bread; these people want white bread—and they expect you to get colon cancer too! So, how dare you choose not to assimilate!

Boojie or Boogie

In the rasx context, to be boojie is to be a “person of color” admiring the superficial values of the bourgeoisie—“superficial” meaning admiring the results of bourgeois success and caring little about the hard work behind it. The opinion here is that contemporary mainstream “America” has replaced this commie French word, bourgeoisie, with the capitalist French word entrepreneur. But down in the ghettos, outside of the mainstream, we have the word boojie. Unfortunately, in “the ghetto” the true entrepreneurial spirit stereotypically leans more toward a life a crime than the humble but honorable life of being a successful shopkeeper. Boojie people prefer to be highly paid employees rather than build their own business—and work in the realm of politics towards that goal in lieu of a technical education.

I prefer the alternate spelling, boogie, which is a word that was born with African American rock ’n’ roll, but really took off in the 1970s under the auspices of the disco craze. The “me” generation. The selfish dance of consumerism and cronyism.

Man

Man is the manifestation of spirit in the human flesh. Man was made both male and female. So it is profoundly troubling when most people use the words man and male interchangeably—including women!—including feminists!

Woman

Woman is the man with a womb. She represents the only way for human life to exist. It should now be obvious why people (of both sexes) want to dominate her. They are trying to control the only way for human life to exist.

I use this definition for both the material and the spiritual. This implies that the woman brings human life into my spiritual life as well as being able to bear children—the only authentic, intimate human life. So, when I am without a woman, I am spiritually dying—the physical goes too! You do the research: compare the lifespan of males and females and see who is livelier!

Homophobia

In the rasx context, homophobia is the fear of being thought of as a homosexual by women—which effectively translates into “the fear of being left alone.” This definition of the word has nothing to do with wanting to get into an intimate, hate-based and sometimes violent relationship with homosexuals. This is not really on my mind. What I fear are sexist females depriving themselves and/or influencing others because they think that I am not interested in having some kind of relationship with them because I fail to assert myself according to some patriarchal interpretation of masculinity.

When I was a young teenager, an extremely attractive young woman was walking down the street and everyone male on the street was looking at her—except me. I must have been distracted by something not “normal.” In fact, I was probably watching the other guys step to her and was amazed by their behavior—behavior I would call aggressive or even violent. Then at the last possible moment, after taking pleasure in brushing everyone aside, she caught my attention and as she passed she said, “You gay,” And she walked away. Now, of course, we can console ourselves by assuming that this woman is an ignorant street-urchin and should be forgotten. But my experience is that even college-educated women have been just as silly as this—they just barely had the social skills not to say shit like this out loud.

You still don’t believe me? Try out this description: there’s this Black guy with a web site. He writes poetry about male ballet dancers and essays about homosexual musicians on this website. He has not been married in over a decade and he lives alone in a relatively well-kept apartment. He is over thirty but does not have a beer belly—because he does not drink beer. He does not watch “the game” on television and likes to ride a bicycle in tight pants. He prefers to hang out with strong, independent women—all of whom hate high heel shoes… “You gay.” Still not convinced? Dig this: in the highest academic circles, there is a debate about sexual orientation of Langston Hughes. Shouldn’t this be telling?

This definition of homophobia is just a small part of the syndrome that make long-term, sophisticated, adult relationships between the opposite sexes very, very challenging. The core of the problem is that a woman considered attractive from an early age will forever be regarded as socially acceptable as long as she remains attractive. It should not be a surprise to find that a human being that is socially acceptable should also embrace the society that accepts them. But what happens when you believe that your society is sick? How can you relate intimately with a socially successful woman when you think the world she loves to live in is utterly dysfunctional? (I hate to say this folks, but older men know what I am talking about and some of them say, “Find an ugly woman and learn to love her.” Unfortunately, I just can’t do that.)

Simultaneously, rasx homophobia is the fear of being thought of as a homosexual (or anything useable) by a Texas prison rape gang!

Romance

Romance comes from the same-sex relationship among males based on loyalty and continual declarations of devotion. Romance, as we Westerners know it, began famously with Julius Caesar and the soldiers of his army crossing the Rubicon in 49 BC back into Rome. This social construct was passed down to the courtly love between noble lords and ladies of medieval Europe (see below) through the songs of the troubadours. The 19th century found the West steeped in the form of romance most of us are familiar with today.

The important thing to understand is that, in the rasx context, romance is based on the fear of betrayal—the fear of infidelity. It demands that certain acts of devotion be performed to pay “proper respect” to these fears. But, by validating the fear, the fear has potential to grow. Because of its Roman roots, romance is also based on violence, which is often mistaken for the passion of “lovers”—but can easily be measured under the statistic labeled “domestic violence.” Perhaps this gives new meaning to words “battle of the sexes.”

Empire

The empire is a society that takes people in bulk and processes them into 31 flavors of conformity—for both the common good and the elite evil. Name an empire that didn’t suck and I’ll show you a historian identifying with the minority ruling class of that empire instead of the peasant stock from which he is most likely a descendant. Empires existed long before Europeans could create the word so we can’t blame “white people” for imperial tyranny. Can you show me an African dictator that does not dream of empire?

If you think of people as natural resources then it becomes easy to understand why empires exist. Your human spirit can be cut down and sold just like a stand of old-growth trees. Artists and a few bright scientists are some of the people in our society who understand this struggle for nature as an adult. Most of us are cut down as children, inserted into the matrix and become “normal.” Hey, Norm! See the game last night?

Here’s one thing I have always wanted to say to the imperial loyalists, “Do not underestimate the power of the dark side…” Remember my definition of the word dark above.

Lady

In the rasx context, a lady is the wife of a lord. Lords and ladies come from medieval Europe when the only surplus to be had was from robbing and stealing from other Lords and ladies—and their associated peasants. It follows that a lady is a self-centered materialist that consumes the wealth of her ignorant husband and has very little complaints about being seen as an ornamental trophy as long as she is laden with stolen gold and jewels and sleeps on a full stomach of serf-cultivated produce and free-range poultry.

The mainstream media in my country has been (overtly) obsessed with heterosexual sex. This obsession is often associated with overt and covert forms of commerce (who wants to marry a millionaire?) so such relationships find males describing their female “companions” as ‘ho’s (a contraction of the word whores), bitches (or “female attack dogs”), gold diggers (obvious), flat backers (refers to the missionary position of extracting money from the willing), skanks (probably a condensation of the words “skilled at getting bank”), etc. These are all just “the ladies” to me. Hey ladies! This gives new meaning to the demand, “I expect to be treated like a lady!” and severely reduces my casual dating life with those bank tellers with a perm.

The only significant difference between a medieval lady and a lady of our contemporary world is her not needing a husband to laden herself with food, money and jewels—and, of course, she does not need to come from Europe. This is quite an achievement compared to being thought of as chattel, so many of us should be amazed that females can be (and realistically aspire to be) great white robber barons just like their male counterparts. (Yawn.)

Freedom

When the people in my country speak of freedom, I believe they speak of relating to the world through one’s ego. The ego finds misery through desire (among other spirits). This “freedom” is the opportunity to act on one’s desires—desires that bring misery. Every human being should have the right to have this experience—even if it means that one may find misery. This misery should be a personal experience and should not affect others. Unfortunately, this is almost never the case.

This rasx interpretation should strike the casual reader, deeply rooted in a steady stream of television, as a most bizarre view of “American freedom.” For these folks, “freedom” simply means not living under the control of a totalitarian government and having the ability to conduct business without any unnecessary regulation. However, I am quite confident that this same person would not disagree with the assertion that the executives of Enron were acting on their selfish desires and caused misery for themselves and thousands of others.

My personal definition of freedom is far too simplistic. Freedom is that which is not slavery. So, as an African American, I am still trying to “get over” slavery. Perhaps my grandchildren will have a better definition of freedom.

Nudity

For most people in my country, nudity means pornography. I, however, use this word in the context of being open, vulnerable, human. I have used this word in my context with many of my American “girlfriends,” ghosts of “pussy past.” I have often startled them when I tell them, “You may have had all of your clothes off—but you were never nude. A child is born nude but through shame they start to cover themselves.” Then she just looks at me and says, “You gay”—just kidding.

What I was trying to say to these chicks is that they should put aside their “reverse” sexism and not assume that all a “man” wants is your barely warm flesh. This man wants to get up inside of everything—the material and the spiritual… I have to write words like these and put them out in the public in an attempt to “prove” to the women of past and the women of future that my beliefs are not false—and I am not full of shit. You can call me crazy because you think the world you live in is sane, but do not call me a liar. I can be nude, vulnerable, human—and you can be…?

Friend

A friend is a person that helps you. Young people may have trouble defining what “help” means—but a friend is a person that helps you. A “good” or “best” friend is a person that consistently helps you—for years. One implication behind this definition is that friendship requires active participation—friendship is interactive. Many people mistake friends with acquaintances, colleagues or just fellow employees. This mistake allows these people to say that they have a lot of friends when they really don’t.

Enemy

An enemy is any person that claims to know you and does not help you. This definition should be seen as very strange or even dangerous to most people. Most people assume that an enemy plots, schemes and plans to do harm. But the opinion here is that most people “were just following orders”—or the social order. Most people form a prejudice about your identity and then begin to act on this prejudice. In my country, this happens predominantly in the context of sexism and racism.

Stranger

A stranger is a wonderful thing to be for an African American. A stranger is just a human being you know absolutely nothing about. You have no pre-judgments about this person. The slate is clean. This shows wisdom in that classic cowboy line, “Howdy stranger!”

Community

In the rasx context, a community is a physical place where people live together, intimately sharing daily responsibilities and material possessions. This is quite different from the popular use of the word “community” that can be quite ridiculous. If I say that the sky is blue then the popular use of this word suggests that I am part of the “ozone community.” This should give me a false sense of being a part of larger society but has nothing to do with authentic communion.

Warrior

A warrior is a person that meets all challenges with strategy, discipline and self sacrifice. They generate the energy to meet these challenges through some sort of spiritual practice. Romantics consume. Warriors invest. The greatest battle a warrior can “win” is the battle within.

Almost every African American is born with a little plantation and a little group of Klu Klux Klansmen in their head. Most of us want to live on that suburban plantation and shut the windows to keep the voices of the white sheets away. Great warriors burn the plantation down, kill the voices and get on with living life in the open field of consciousness—a sometimes very lonely, conscious, American life.

Success

In the rasx context, the definition of success is too simple for most people: success is finishing what you start. This implies that if you cannot even be committed to yourself then you will never be successful.

Most people let others define success for them. Socially acceptable success may mean possessing the means to possess very expensive material things and material people. It is very problematic for people of color to let others define success for them. In a racist society, authentic praise and recognition of achievement is hard to come by. The rasx definition of success is far more individualized and healthier.

Faith

Faith is the healthy way to relate to the future. The opposite of faith is fear of the future. When you ask the questions, “What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen next?” and you become afraid, then in that moment you do not know faith. Fortunately, there will be another moment.

Art

For the “artist” rasx, he likes to keep it simple: art is an “artifact” of human creativity. There are other beings besides humans in this world that can be considered quite creative but let’s stick to the egos that care about art. So, “artifacts of creativity” can be anything: paintings, bathroom tiles, pieces of metal in urine—but they all come from one source, a creative human being.

The West has a well-documented history of having trouble identifying human beings—let alone creative human beings. It should be no surprise that “we” regard the artist as a “special person” that is different from everyone else. This implies that artists are those few creative human beings surrounded by many non-creative human beings (previously described as obedient employees and wards of the state). This implication totally sucks. It is a recipe for loneliness.

To make matters worse, the socially successful Western artist (which may also be a financially successful artist) is very likely to succumb to the materialism that is within all of us. The solid artifacts become more important than the nebulous human that created them. The creativity of the artist becomes a tropical rainforest that is steadily being cut down and turned into furniture for the sake of profit. Most artists know that something like this happening but they often feel like they can save themselves at the last moment—or they don’t really care because it appears that there’s no realistic escape from this systematic underdevelopment.

In Pre-Columbian Africa, you might wake up in the morning in your peaceful village, swept clean and painted in bright colors. You are waking up in a work of art! Your daily life finds utility with works of art. You would be living in a spiritual industrial complex instead of a military industrial complex.

Judgmental

For most of us staying in line with the “popular alternative culture” of the West, being judgmental is “bad” (which a rather ironic puritan judgment). We all need to be more open and tolerant and accepting according to this popular belief. But I am quite sure that a self-proclaimed non-judgmental person has no trouble driving defensively in many of our great industrialized cities. When we see someone driving recklessly, we have a tendency to move our vehicle away from that person for our own safety. We pass judgment. For that particular moment, we pass judgment, got out of the way and moved on. Not to be judgmental, in this context, is to choose not to see what is apparently in front of you. It follows that to be non-judgmental is to be spiritually (or intellectually) blind.

Now, if you recognize that same reckless driver on the streets days later, should you have the “same judgment”? My answer to this question is no because that still would be choosing not to see what is in front of me—I would not be driving defensively. I am trying to stay alive and active within the present. This is a great struggle. My judgment needs to be present—and it should only stay in the present.

There is the judgment from a court of law that can stand for years—this is a very materialist thing. There is the living judgment from the living human being, living in the present—this is only an opinion. It follows that to be non-judgmental is not to have an opinion. So it is quite painful to see a beautiful young woman on her way to yoga class trying to be “peaceful and non-judgmental”: in my judgment, I have just met a passive woman without an opinion. How can she explain herself to all of the female Tibetan monks that sit in Chinese prisons? I am certain that these women were using their active judgment to confront an enemy.

Generalities

This entire document is peppered with rasx generalities or generalizations. I have been using the words “most of us…” or “most people…” Isn’t this a “bad” thing? Does not this play right into the hands of puritans, sexists and racists? The answer to this question is yes. These people outnumber me. And, ah, the previous sentence was yet another generality. I try not to have a puritan attitude about generalizations. You know what I mean?

In order to show the “good side” of generalities, I will admit to you that I am a computer programmer—an object-oriented computer programmer. This means that my generalities lead to abstractions—and abstraction is what puts food on my table, God willing.

Conclusion

So being a computer programmer means that the words that I use—the keywords of some language to be compiled and assembled by a machine—have real power—the kind of power that the whitest of the whitest understand—and respect. So I am compelled to respect words and language from a material point of view as well as the spirituality permeating the above.

So I sit myself on that Elementary school bench in my mind’s eye watching the other children play and I have no regrets. I have traveled a path. It has not yet led me to starvation. I picked up a few words along the way and in these words I have found a strange source of power.