BlackEconomics.org®
To resolve the “Black American Problem” there must be an amazing vision that informs a strategic and long-range plan. Hence, our efforts to help develop and implement the Long-Term Strategic Plan for Black America.(i) Given that life has a way of continuously undressing before us and revealing new knowledge, insights, and information means that visions and plans can be clarified and enhanced after their initial development.
Black Americans have “struggled” for over 400 years as a problem for the nation and for our very selves. There is a long list of elevated minds, warners, and prophets, who arrived, saw, planned, implemented, and then departed without producing a comprehensively satisfactory resolution of the problem. It has been an analog-type process as we made slow baby steps in the direction of our desired roles and goals.
But the world has shifted dramatically—moving from analog to digital systems that can facilitate rapid accelerations in our realizations of desired roles and goals. Unfortunately, Black America appears to be locked into a slow analog system and is not benefiting from the lightening-quick pace of digital systems that are benefiting other Americans.
How can Black America perform a self-transformation: Moving from “analog speed change” to “digital speed change?” As you might suspect, we believe that there are at least two methods that may help us achieve such a transformation.
We can select an organic (natural) or a non-organic (unnatural) method. The non-organic method can be harmful because it incorporates artificial transformation techniques. Therefore, it seems prudent and wise to select an organic approach for completing the transformation.
To characterize the potential harm from an artificial, non-organic approach for achieving an analog-to-digital transformation, please recognize that we could leverage, inter alia, psychology, biology, neurology, and engineering to design, develop, and implement appropriate techniques to produce the transformation. As already noted, however, this approach would likely produce unnecessary injury. How do we know? By considering Black Americans (our minds, bodies, and souls) today. Artificial methods have been part of the grand American experiment. From debunked “Willie Lynch Letter” methods, to the implantation of computer chips in human brains, and everything in between. It is all about mind control and ensuring that as much of the population as possible operates as zombie students, workers, retirees, and consumers. The tricks that have been perpetrated against Black Americans have not only enabled our egregious exploitation, but they have also thwarted vigorous expression of our discontent. What we know is that when young, gifted, and radical Black Americans decided to complain loudly and forcefully during the 1960s, change occurred. Thereafter, however, our “leadership” stepped in, or was drawn in, and wittingly or unwittingly acquiesced to strategies that blunted significantly our leverage, power, and ability to manufacture change.
It is transparent that newly available operational capabilities should be used to confront extant problems, issues, or concerns. In this case, new capabilities made possible by an analog-to-digital transformation can be directed at the “Black American Problem.” However, we should take care not to cleave to analog-ish expectations and fail to realize the new world of possibilities that are producible by new operational capabilities. Also, as we consider the benefits that can be generated after experiencing a transformation, we should be certain to apply the new capabilities to questions and problems heretofore absent from our problem set. Under the just imagined circumstances, we could very likely to find that by applying new capabilities to old and new problems we may produce previously unimaginable and very favorable outcomes.
We believe that the organic method for achieving the analog-to-digital transformation should be viewed as a new practice that many Black Americans are adopting for greater self-awareness and improvement. It is a “new religion.” And like the best of religions, it is a simple process. Like good religions, it is a process that permits each adherent to evolve to expected higher states of awareness and insight at their own pace. Some may be systematic in their practice, while others may leap upward from plateau to plateau, and even others may experience flight to new peaks bypassing intermediary plateaus. Only individuals who undertake the transformation will know when they have achieved their ”nirvana, bliss, or deep peaceful state;” a condition of sublime comfort. That is, as is the case when identifying optimal conditions for nonlinear functions using differential calculus, there may be multiple local maximums. Practitioners can reach a stage of satisfaction, rest for a while, later conclude that there is additional space for elevation, and then begin the process anew.
What is the organic method for producing the analog-to-digital transformation? Meditation on (prayer about) “Why?” According to an old Japanese saying cited by Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa in their 1999 book Smart Choices, “You don’t really understand something until you ask five times ‘Why?’ Simply ask ‘Why?’ and keep asking it until you can’t go any further.”(ii) When there are no more “Why” questions, then you will be able to know and answer all questions about the “something.”
Of course, the “something” here is the Black American Problem. Imagine possible and probable outcomes when all Black Americans and their related households engage individually and collectively in mediation on (prayer about) “Why?” In a limit of time, we could come to comprehend fully the “Why” of our condition. Moreover, by expanding on the “Why?” meditation by meditating on the results of the “Why?” mediation, we could identify paths from the status quo to much more satisfactory conditions for all our problems/concerns.
We believe that this meditation can lead us all to the realization of the fundamental steps required to own and implement to produce change in our lives and problematic conditions: (1) Determine beyond a shadow of a doubt in our minds and hearts that we deserve better conditions; (2) determine that we want to change our condition; (3) determine the level of our commitment to change our condition (the costs that we are willing to bear to produce change); (4) determine individually and collectively the nature of our new short-, intermediate-, and long-term conditions; (5) commit to developing the related short-, medium-, and long-term plans for achieving our desired positions/roles in the world (these plans must include methods for counteracting forces designed to prevent us from reaching our desired positions/roles); and (6) commit to an unflinching, unrelenting, and unyielding implementation of the just described plans.
Two paragraphs back we mentioned individuals and their “households.” However, households form areas of influence or communities; communities form cities and regions; and regions constitute states that form our Black nation. At every level of “governance” righteous leaders must rise to help coordinate the transformation.
We should not fear the transformation process because we are likely to find that a complete and comprehensive transformation is relatively easy to achieve because of the undying commitments that some of us may make to produce change at all costs during the transformation process. Those commitments may become contagious and may serve as motivation for Black Americans to provide all resources (material and financial) and other requirements for identifying leaders, and forming requisite institutional units to coordinate, integrate, implement, and man-age the change.
This analog-to-digital transformation process may appear to be simplistic. It is! But the following two sayings and their interpretations should serve as cautionary warnings to Black America about undertaking and benefiting from the transformation: (1) “To know is to act!” and (2) “Information is power.” (iii)
First, it is important to comprehend that transformation using “Why?” should be thorough. For example, if one meditates on “why one is poor,” then many responses may rise to consciousness. The first saying above may cause us to conclude that knowing why one is poor (because one has no money, income, or wealth) should motivate us to begin acting immediately to remedy the poverty using all available methods to obtain money. However, if we halt the meditation after identifying the first remedy that comes to mind—obtaining money—then we might spend a lifetime (as so many do) chasing “money” for money’s sake, which may not be favorable. So, as stated, transformation using “Why?” should be thorough—being certain to not grab for answers impatiently, but to be sufficiently meditative and deliberative to ensure that our responding plans of action to answers derived from meditation on “Why?” are proper and have high probabilities of producing the most favorable outcomes.
Second, transformation using “Why?” may engender a veritable wealth of knowledge. Individuals are not likely to possess ready answers to all questions that arise as “Why?” questions unfold. Rather, they will likely need to gather information to produce appropriate answers. The new information or knowledge that is amassed during this process should not be misconstrued to be “power.” No doubt, information is a key to power. However, a more accurate statement is: “The proper use of information can produce power.”
To clarify further this economic meditation to achieve an analog-to-digital transformation using “Why?” readers are reminded that, although economic considerations occur mentally and can be spurred by the “spirit” (righteous or unrighteous), the common view is that economics is grounded in the material. Relatedly, and as the transformation process using “Why?” may reveal or help us all comprehend, each human is a part of creation, which is divine. That is, as recorded in the Holy Bible, and as reinforced by Theosophists, “we are all gods, Children of the most High.” (iv) As divine beings we jointly create our world in real time each day (now making it even more material by posting much of it online) each day.
For those with an elevated view and who have risen to control voluminous wealth and power, their goal is to influence our thinking so that the world that we create each day is beneficial for them—irrespective of whether it is beneficial for us. Consequently, the transformation achieved through meditation on “Why?” is not a desired outcome for those now benefiting from our unelevated and unawake state. Hence, we must prepare ourselves and those who accompany us in completing the transformation to be prepared to combat attempts by the opposition to prevent our transformation.
Most importantly, an analog-to-digital trans- formation using “Why?” can engender the power to create a world that is favorable for us. That world will be both a mental world that reflects our spiritual nature (righteous (positive) or unrighteous (negative)) and a material world characterized by an economy in which we will live and operate. Therefore, Black America should extend due consideration to this new information about how to produce an analog-to-digital transformation using “Why?” and then to leverage it to resolve once and for all the “The Black American Problem” for both the US nation and the Black American nation.
©B Robinson
032825
Endnotes
i To learn more about the Long-Term Strategic Plan for Black America, visit: https://ltspfba.org/ (Visited 03/23/25).
ii John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa (1999). Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions. Harvard Business School Press. Boston. (p. 38).
iii Mr. Carl Nelson, host of The Carl Nelson Show, which is heard daily nationwide on selected radio stations and on multiple podcast platforms, includes in one of his mantras the statement, “information is power.”
iv The quote reflects closely text in the Book of Psalms, Chapter 82, verse 6.