Literacy as a tool of Revolution and Religion

I am a linguistic philosopher and a psycholinguist.  I find the history of language fascinating and the way it predisposes itself to certain emergent properties in the culture.  I am a bit of a linguistic determinist in that I do think the thought tools included in a language keep the people in that culture thinking a certain way, especially if the language is dogmatically kept from evolving.  Very few people have the ability to rise above the linguistic barrier, and see the forms of the good themselves, (plato’s cave) without the help of meditation or hallucinogenic or mind expanding experimentation.  If you don’t give yourself permission, artistic license to coin new phrases or to express yourself poetically in new ways, you will not see or do anything new or unpredictable.

Back in the day, every civilization had a priest class, and only they could read and write, languages were very complicated, 2,000 hieroglyphs in Egyptian and 80,000 Chinese characters.  Only the aristocracy was allowed to read and write and they made the laws, they were the deciders, they did all of the thinking.  I am of a particular school of thought that believes that Abraham and Brahma are one and the same person.  I am not the only person that thinks this, others have come to the same conclusion, furthermore, evidence has been found of a patriarchial ancestor matching the description of Abraham.  (http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48936742.html)  My personal theory is that Abraham created a mutation and that mutation dealt with reading.  If you observe people that do not have direct blood line with Abraham what you will notice is a marked difficulty and even disinterest in reading, sometimes even having problems like Dyslexia as is the case with Native Americans, what is interesting to note is that Mexicans from Mexico City have less of a problem with reading, and they have Spanish DNA.

If you read the Kabbalistic writings from around 300 years ago in spain you find some very interesting things on how Abraham attracted god’s attention by creating.  In the act of creating artistically he was acting like god the creator and attracted god’s attention and blessing.  There are even meditations on how to psych yourself up before setting hand to paper.

“Heresy arises as a pained outcry to liberate us from this strange, narrow pit, to raise us from the darkness of letters and platitudes to the light of thought and feeling. Such heresy eventually takes its stand in the centre of morality. It has a temporary legitimacy, for it must consume the filthy froth clinging to mindless faith. [………..] On the desolate ruins wrought by heresy, the sublime knowledge of God will build her temple.” 
― Daniel Chanan Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism

You think about literary revolutions like the Gutenberg press and how it allowed everybody to have their own bible, and then later how the printing presses were used in revolutions in order to print one’s own propaganda, or apologetics, or polemics, in order to influence the minds of others and to express one’s own perspective on reality, what sweeping changes these were.  If you think about ideas moving across continents and through time and which philosophies and concepts they retained and which they discarded that too is interesting.  Which philosophies succeeded and so were kept.  Which one’s were forgotten and so the people perished or dispersed.

Some languages allowed for things to be expressed more quickly yet more informally, causing them to sound banal or crass or low brow.

Hieratic is a cursive writing system, used in the provenance of the pharaohs in Egypt and Nubia, that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system,^[1] to which it is intimately related. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus, allowing scribes to write quickly without resorting to the time-consuming hieroglyphs.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieratic

English, for example, is currently the Lingua franca of science.

A lingua franca also called a bridge language, or vehicular language, is a language systematically (as opposed to occasionally, or casually) used to make communication possible between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.^[1]

 

Etymology[edit]

The term “lingua franca“, Italian for “Frankish language”, is from a particular example, Mediterranean Lingua Franca. Lingua Franca was a mixed languagecomposed mostly (80%) of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Old French, Greek, Arabic, Portuguese, Occitan and Spanish.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca

Not many people know this but the reason that America doesn’t have a national language is because the French, Germans, and British throughout history were constantly warring with one another.  So in order to choose a national language, that would have created a disparate impact in favor of one particular group.  Also our law code is an amalgam of french law and British law, which is why we have redundancies and invasive french terminology.

Ponder the language Aramaic…

Aramaic (Classical Syriac: ܐܪܡܝܐAramaya) is a family of languages (traditionally referred to as “dialects”) belonging to the Semitic family. More specifically, it is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. The Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to both the Arabic and modern Hebrewalphabets.

During its over 3,000 years of written history,^[2] Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires and as a language of divine worship.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic

The language no longer exists today but it was the language of a people that wandered, hunter gatherers, back and forth across a vast territory, exposing themselves to many ideas and philosophies, that was one of the languages that Jesus spoke.  No wonder he could connect with so many people and speaking their language convey something to them, touch them in a way nobody else could.  Make connections that nobody else could.

Similar to the Romani who were named after the Romans, and are also known as the Gypsies, when coming from Egypt.  Think of how much knowledge and wisdom and understanding was lost when the library at Alexandra was burned, the Treasure trove of the Gnostics and all the Mysteries of Hypatia possibly the wisest woman to ever have lived.

Now contemplate what Islam is doing, literally devolving the species.  The fastest growing religion in the world is also the least literate.  Why? They are literally devolving the species in terms of literacy.  They have re instituted the tyrannical priest class, that tells them what to think and what to do.  Saudi Arabia tyrannically controls all of the translating of books into Arabic, they control what people read, they control what people see, and they control what people think.  Not only does the language predispose itself to pretension, and arrogance, it also predisposes itself to vagueries, obfuscation, and manipulation, which is built into the language.  It allows the person speaking it to say one thing and to mean another, or to translate it differently at different times, to different people, depending on their status.  This allows the person with Authority to arbitrarily rank another person, and translate the language in such a way as it puts the person understanding it in a position of power and control.  Observe a few examples:

Islam (n.)“religious system revealed by Muhammad,” 1818, from Arabic islam, literally “submission” (to the will of God), from root of aslama “he resigned, he surrendered, he submitted,” causative conjunction of salima “he was safe,” and related to salam “peace.”  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Islam

The Religion that is spread at sword tip on threat of death is named after Peace, which also means surrender, submit yourself to God at the tip of my sword.

Harem (pronounced [haˈɾem], Turkish, from Arabic: حرم‎ ḥaram “forbidden place; sacrosanct, sanctum”, related to حريم ḥarīm, “a sacred inviolable place; female members of the family” and حرام ḥarām, “forbidden; sacred”) refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men. The term originated with the Near East. Harems are composed of wives and often sex slaves known as concubines. For the South Asian equivalent, see purdah and zenana.

Here in lies the question, Who is it sacred for?  Who is it forbidden for?  and who is “family”?

A little exert from a blog on how to learn Arabic:

I have been asked several times at my university in Oman to do a brief “cultural introduction” to native speakers of English from North America and Europe who have come to improve their Arabic. I start by mentioning that there is a large difference between learning how to speak a language and learning how to navigate a culture. Then I segue into a discussion of how to dress appropriately. My watchwords are: no knees or elbows on display in public. Usually, at this point, several of the listeners look angry, disbelieving and/or bored, especially the men wearing tight, casual T-shirts and women in spaghetti-strap underwear shirts.

But when I speak with Western students who are studying Arabic, most of them are dressed casually: sloppy flannel shirts, ripped jeans, shorts, bra straps, and sometimes underwear on display.    http://chronicle.com/article/To-Learn-Arabic-You-Have-to/132057/

Participating with the Premise.

In debate, not only is it necessary to remain rational it is necessary to remain consistently rational.  When a person makes a logical fallacy or a cognitive bias it needs to be addressed and corrected before the conversation can continue.  If you continue the debate without correcting the error you are granting equity to the other person in the conversation.  You are acting as though they have not made an error and by staying in the conversation you are participating with the premise that they are being and have consistently been rational. If the other person in the conversation is not being rational, the conversation itself is not rational.  If one person tries to remain rational in a debate while the other person is making no effort to be rational or proceed rationally, this creates a disparate impact in favor of the person that isn’t being rational.  When you get in a fight with a clown, even if you win you lose. It is necessary to proceed correctly.  The words process and practice come from the greek word praxis.  All valid philosophies have a praxis. A philosophy by its very nature has to be self referentially consistent, if it creates disparate impact it is invalid and therefore not a rational philosophy.  If a person can’t be falsified by their own philosophy it is not a philosophy and they are not rational.  So as you see they falsify themselves by their own procedure.  A rational person proceeds rationally, nothing can be proven by irrational means, that is why due process exists.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

So, I tried to do a kind of semantic clarification in which praxis—if not on the thither side of this divide—was perhaps somehow between the theoretical and the practical as they are generally understood, and particularly as they are understood in modern philosophy. Praxis as the manner in which we are engaged in the world and with others has its own insight or understanding prior to any explicit formulation of that understanding…Of course, it must be understood that praxis, as I understand it, is always entwined with communication.  —Calvin O. Schrag[1]

Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, practiced, embodied, or realised. “Praxis” may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas. This has been a recurrent topic in the field of philosophy, discussed in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Paulo Freire,Ludwig von Mises, and many others. It has meaning in the political, educational, and spiritual realms.

 

RESPONSE TO KRS-1

 

First of all let me say that I am a fan and I like edutainment and I still bump that shit as I drive down the road in my little white Toyota yaris with my Shiva decal and my om namah shivayah tattoo.  Having said that I am not going to destroy your argument, annihilation, evisceration, decimation, with my philosophy, philology, ontology, 

We’re robbin’ and killin’, your own medicine you taste 
You built up a race on the concept of violence 
Now in ’90 you want silence 
Well, I want science, not silence but science 
Scientific fact about black 
The board of education acts as if it’s only reality 
Is talking ’bout a Tom, Dick and Harry 
So now you learn your black history is questions and answers 
Every question but the Black Panthers 
Timbuctoo existed when the caveman existed 
Why then isn’t this listed 
Is this because the blackman is the original man 
Or does it mean humanity is African 
I don’t know, but these sciences are hidden 
For some strange reason it’s forbidden 
To talk about, or converse on a political outburst 
I don’t believe that I’m the first 
Or should I say the first one, or the first one that’s done 
Music like I’m still number one 
Music like that or this is the incredible uplift 
Those that oppose get dissed 
But who will oppose the teacher when society’s a wreck 
So check the blackman’s in effect 
Near the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys in Asia 
Lies the Garden of Eden 
Where Adam became a father to humanity 
Now don’t get mad at me 
But according to facts, this seems just fantasy 
Because man, the most ancient man 
Was found thousands of years before Adam began 
And where he was found, again they can’t laugh at ya 
It’s right, dead, smack in Africa 
But due to religious and political power 
We must be denied the facts every hour 
We run to school, tryin’ to get straight A’s 
Let’s take a trip way back in the days 
To the first civilization on Earth, the Egyptians 
Giving birth to science, mathematics and music 
Religion, the list goes on, you choose it 
Egypt was the land of spiritual blessing 
Egypt was the land of facts, not guessing 
People from all over the world had come 
To learn from Egypt, Egypt number one 
So people that believe in Greek philosophy 
Know your facts, Egypt was the monopoly 
Greeks had learned from Egyptian masters 
You might say “Prove it”, well here’s the answers 
640 to 322 b.C. originates Greek philosophy 
But in that era Greece was at war 
With themselves and Persia, what’s more 
Any philosopher at that time was a criminal 
He’d be killed very simple 
This indicates that Greece had no respect 
For science or intellect 
So how the hell you created philosophy 
When you kill philosophers constantly 
The point is that we descend from kings 
Science, art and beautiful things 
African history is the worlds history 
This is the missing link and mystery 
Once we realise they all are African 
White will sit down with black and laugh again 
So judge not least ye might be judged 
By the judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged 
Matthew seven, first verse doesn’t budge 
No man should walk the Earth and sludge 
If you don’t believe, you can go and check 
To see how and where the blackman’s in effect

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_k7lFYd4PE

Now, this point about Greece hating philosophers….. Above is a link to okko Behrands THE SPIRIT OF ROMAN LAW, the foremost expert in the world on the subject.  The augures were a pre Greek Minoan cult.  Their philosophy shaped and still shapes and informs the entire structure of the civilized western world.  They developed the concept of authority, auctoritas, this concept of being under the law and beholding to it.  That is why their is Praxis which became due process and practice.  It is when your philosophy informs your behavior and not the opposite.  In order to speak with authority you have to walk your talk, the high priest is not above the law and does not create the law, like plato suggests he is the philosopher king and he can see into the archetypal causal world of ideas and idols and describe the correct relationship and the correct path.  I refer to it as “equality under reason” and it is the very definition of meritocracy which is the only valid form of government.  To explain the impact this cult had on the western world would be impossible, the words that we use to think, our very thought process was created for us and given to us by this cult.  The words that we are using, the mental categories that we have, our concept of justice and truth.  Your brain is not your brain and your thoughts are not your thoughts, your brain was created by this Greek cult.  

Egypt, like all major civilizations, had a large middle class, tradesmen, craftsmen, secret societies, it is the large middle class that moved freely from country to country spreading ideas.  This is how religions spread and philosophies spread.  This is how freemasonry moves about.  You appear to be suggesting that civilization was somehow stolen from black people by white people.  Why is it that people attribute civilization to people that currently don’t have it?  and the people that do have it somehow stole it from the people that don’t have it?  Is being civilized a finite resource and white people are using too much of it?  Are you arguing for the tragedy of the commons in regards to civilized thought? 

“A man will not relay without corruption that which he has not comprehended.”  Manly Palmer Hall

This argument is part of a recurring rhetoric to marginalize the creativity and achievement of white man.  Since the white man had the intellectual apparatus to grasp the concepts and philosophies and carry that fire with him does he not own it by being able to comprehend it?  and reproduce it?  Now, if this fire can’t be handed to another without it burning them should it not be held by the person capable of holding it until such a time as the other is ready to receive it?  and should not the one that desires the fire make himself like the one holding the fire so that he also might not get burned by the fire?  Or should I put out my fire so that we are equal and neither of us has fire? 

^^^^iconographic art of joxua mourningstar^^^^

On another point, this concept of all of the music on the street being stolen from black people.  The reason people say that is because of jazz, now lets be clear, jazz is a realm of experimentation one goes into to find their unique sound.  When a person experiments to find their sound, does jazz then own that sound?  See Cornel West and i agree on this point and we have come to the same conclusion about jazz.  If a race can own a realm of experimentation that makes no sense.  Is Neil degrasse tyson stealing science because he is using scientific method which was created by white people?  

And to suggest that music and even rap didn’t exist in the white world before the intermarriage of African culture and western culture is ridiculous.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iambic_pentameter

and on a final note this concept of a rap battle being a black thing, one of my favorite scenes in literature and my favorite play it Cyrano De Bergerac.  In the first act of the play he composes a sonnet while he is having a duel.  the reason we don’t do this anymore in the west is because of white women.  They like to put our dick in a box and keep it in their closet and only let us take it out and play with it every once in a while.  Steve Martin, my idol, remade this movie and called it Roxanne.  Apparently we share a love of Cyrano de Bergerac.