Coded Language - Saul Williams

Album: Amethyst Rock Star
Lyrics:

Whereas, breakbeats have been the missing link connecting the diasporic
community to its drum woven past
Whereas the quantised drum has allowed the whirling mathematicians to
calculate the ever changing distance between rock and stardom.
Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl, cross-faded, spun backwards, and
re-released at the same given moment of recorded history , yet at a
different moment in time's continuum has allowed history to catch up with
the present.

We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue.
Statements, such as, "keep it real", especially when punctuating or
anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or physically
or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as
retro-active and not representative of the individually determined is.

Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness of this state of
being and the lessened distance between thought patterns and their secular
manifestations, the role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased
by a number no less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal
aggressors.

Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip hops standard 85 rpm when increased by a
number as least half the rate of it's standard or decreased at ¾ of it's
speed may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the
unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season

Our cyclical relationship to phenomenon has encouraged scholars to erase the
centers of periods, thus symbolizing the non-linear character of cause and
effect
Reject mediocrity!

Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given
for you to understand.
The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the
diet of an infant.
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional and deformative
symptoms and could not properly mature on a diet of apple sauce and crushed
pears
Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness.
The role of darkness is not to be seen as, or equated with, Ignorance, but
with the unknown, and the mysteries of the unseen.

Thus, in the name of:
ROBESON, GOD'S SON, HURSTON, AHKENATON, HATHSHEPUT, BLACKFOOT, HELEN,
LENNON, KHALO, KALI, THE THREE MARIAS, TARA, LILITHE, LOURDE, WHITMAN,
BALDWIN, GINSBERG, KAUFMAN, LUMUMBA, GHANDI, GIBRAN, SHABAZZ, SIDDHARTHA,
MEDUSA, GUEVARA, GUARDSIEFF, RAND, WRIGHT, BANNEKER, TUBMAN, HAMER, HOLIDAY,
DAVIS, COLTRANE, MORRISON, JOPLIN, DUBOIS, CLARKE, SHAKESPEARE, RACHMNINOV,
ELLINGTON, CARTER, GAYE, HATHOWAY, HENDRIX, KUTL, DICKERSON, RIPPERTON,
MARY, ISIS, THERESA, PLATH, RUMI, FELLINI, MICHAUX, NOSTRADAMUS, NEFERTITI,
LA ROCK, SHIVA, GANESHA, YEMAJA, OSHUN, OBATALA, OGUN, KENNEDY, KING, FOUR
LITTLE GIRLS, HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, KELLER, BIKO, PERONE, MARLEY, COSBY,
SHAKUR, THOSE STILL AFLAMED, AND THE COUNTLESS UNNAMED

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone
Our music is our alchemy
We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full
of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down
supply the percussion factor of forever.
If you must count to keep the beat then count.
Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious.
Curve you circles counterclockwise
Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.
Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.
Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for
today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies
into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry,
crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to
uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World.
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain
Any utterance will be un-aimed, will be disclaimed - two rappers slain

Reconnecting With Life

It's about what you could do, what you should do. Not what you want to do. It's about what you could know, what you should know. Not what you want to know.

We don't make our own home. We don't make our own food. We don't even teach our own kids.

We are so dependent on external institutions that these basic necessities are no longer taken care of by ourselves. It's become increasingly customary to shove basic, crucial responsibilities onto institutions. Day Care, Schools, the Government, Corporations, Grocery Stores.

I suggest:

Put a little effort to provide for yourself. Do a home improvement project. Make a garment of clothing. Grow some food. Go fishing at eat what you catch. Teach your kids about something you know a lot about, or that they're interested in. Read to them. Build something of your own. Reconnect with life. Reclaim it.

Somethin you guys should check out, I love this dude:

Best Book Club Ever!

This is better than Oprah's Book Club. This can accomplish so much, with so little effort.

Ever feel like there's so much that needs to be done, and whatever is being done so far simply isn't adequate?

It's time to take your own step and do a little thing to spread knowledge or truth.

Think about it:

If there was any one book you could get any one person to read, what would it be? What book influenced you the most?

Well, how about actually giving that book to someone? It doesn't matter if you don't know who will appreciate it the most, or who will actually read it. Just write a little note in it to tell someone to pass it on, and literally give it to someone random, if not someone you know. Or, just leave it someplace like a grocery store or a park.






If you were walking along the beach and saw a book half-buried in the sand, would you pick it up? Anyone else would, too. Here's your chance to give someone else a gift that could change their lives, or even just their perspective.

Here's a Good Idea:

Pass it on.

Economy (Whut?)

Light It Up 2.0 prod. by Ratatat

thx Sleepynumberz!!

Lyrics:

if you hating on money, man, go on light your paper up
it's stupid funny how we fight over our wages, bro
we think we're gunning it but really we're just breaking stuff
you think you're dumb, after they stuck you with the fakest fluff
i feel it too, partner, seeping through my wallet pocket
we're in it too far to ever think we couldn't stop it
we struggle real hard, popping off and then re-stocking
we hit a real wall, now we gonna fucking drop it.

yeah
we're the illest cause we're sickened by the cash stacks
feeling like we're dealing with some acid-addled flash backs
if we backtrack, looking to the classics, issues facing us today like, shit i thought we passed that.
it's still a class act, governed by your assets
sure, they try to mask it but you know what your caste is
so make a fist like this, stop relaxing flat
i'm saying slavery, baby, now is you grasping that?
we've amassed the facts so we be blasting back
attacking wackness and the plastic plaque
as slackers slide into the rhyme slanging, time-changing education
i'm naming mind-states needing heavy elevation
yeah we're instigating definite investigation
data analyzed. what's the verdict?
fuck civilization.
ok. learn the mission - smoke the message up and pass it-
burn your currency, too - now where the crash at? (right here!)

light it up twice, brother, does you see the stakes is up?
its too frightening, trust i couldn't make this up
yeah we might die trying bringing justice, saving us
but if we fight to win it, first we must be waking up
that why i'm shouting loud, blazing like a fading rocket,
raising up amazing love, knocking hate, i know it's shocking
unlocking major topics, claiming that i heard the call -
i'm just disgusted by the stuff. i'm tryna burn it all.






do you have the guts to digest it?

College Fulfillment

It's not all about financial aid and credit hours, you know. It's not about car insurance or meal plans, not even parties and study groups. It's not about reading or writing, and it isn't even about a degree.

What's a degree anyways? It's a piece of paper saying you spent time and money. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't need a paper to prove that. I do it every day, and I can learn just as much without that institution that gave me the paper, and without paying that institution to give it to me. I suppose a degree proves knowledge too, but only in the vaguest sense.

Some say a degree is a must-have for a successful life. Well, there's two assumptions there: 1) that hardly anyone has led a successful life without a college degree, and 2) that we define success the same way. Now I'm still young, but I know of a multitude of successful people who do not have a piece of paper with a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. written on it. End even then there are many who were simply awarded degrees because of their success.

A degree says nothing about YOU. It says nothing of who you are, what you want out of life, or what you've gotten out of life so far. It says nothing about your spiritual orientation or the ways you derive satisfaction from this consumerist society you're a part of. It doesn't even say where you want to place yourself in that society.

Funny thing is, aren't those the more pertinent questions you have to answer as you're looking for your place in the world? Having a degree does not answer those questions, so why spend tens of thousands of dollars to get that paper? Money can't buy happiness they say, so how would it buy a piece of paper that can give you happiness? I'll let you in on a secret, here. Money can't buy knowledge, either. It can't buy enlightenment, it can't buy love.

Maybe I'm just caught in the system, because here I am registered for 15 credit hours and taking out a couple thousand in student loans a year, taking on a part-time job to fill in the gaps, and I find all my time is taken up in pursuit of that piece of paper.

Thing is, there's no way out. What else can I do besides fighting against people who already have degrees for a night-time job at McDonald's? That's a career, right there. For those who don't have degrees anyways, and even for some who do.

What I want to know is, how come every option I have in life at this point does not lead to satisfaction or to fulfillment? Or even to a worthwhile spending of time?

Derrick Jensen's Endgame

Premises of Endgame (Vol. 1 The Problem of Civilization, Vol. 2 Resistance). Link to the book's site

"Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.

Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.





Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.

Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.

Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.

Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature."

If that doesn't make you think a bit...