The Generational Divide: Our 'Sinful & Fallen State' Whose Responsibility Is It?

Let's Go!

On a personal level, my father failed me as his father failed him. My maternal grand father(pbuh) failed me just as his father failed him. They failed because they refused to bond the best of their potential with the best of my potential. Earlier today I asked my mother what she could tell me about her paternal grand father and her reply was, “nothing at all!” Though I can only speak from my perspective, this polemic isn't just about me; this is about Humanity as a whole, and from my studies, travels, observations, and intimate experiences with every class, ethnic, and cultural segmentation, there is one constant ethos, one perpetual theme:there is a gaping chasm, a fractured fault-line, that exists and persists between the older generation and the younger generation; be they Afro-Asiatic, South American, Native American, Pacific Islander, African etc. we are all suffering from the same generational plight. To be fair, I have met older men and women who have gone the extra mile in instilling within me the vital principles and precepts of self awareness, familial, fraternal, and communal fealty and love and self-determination. These beautiful and honorable men and women have become like family to me, filling, if but only partially, the burdensome paternal void I once labored to bear. As remarkable and commendable as these people are, the fact of the matter is, people like them and character like theirs are few, far, and in between. As a result of this compassionate minority having become the accepted and expected norm, family and society in general has split at the seams, resulting in the widening of the present generational gap. Who is to blame? Whose fault is it? Better still, who's responsible? Be still and listen! Of all the trees on this beautiful but fading Earth from the smallest and frailest to the tallest, biggest, and broadest...all of them began as a seed that, in order to grow apace, needed perennial nourishment from Father Sky/Grandfather Sun and Mother Earth/Grandmother Moon. They are unquestionably the eldest! Once the Trees have reached full maturity after centuries of blossoming, withering, and blossoming again, yielding its finest fruits, and begins to deteriorate back to the soil about its root, does the Sun, Moon, Sky, and Earth cease supporting their complete transition back to its essence? NO! They continue to support life, nourish life, feed life like and as if there is no such thing as dying, no such thing as an ending to the carrying out of an eternal duty, and no such concept as a final contribution. Some trees have lived to see the rise and fall of many empires because of the unwavering carrying out of the universal principle of perpetual support. These Trees are the Families of Man! “I'm done being a mother or a father to my children: I'm no longer anyone's child:my child doesn't need a Father!” There's no such thing and this foolishness is unthinkable and a sure recipe to the youth's undoing! The same participants in the civil rights movement who championed the cause of human rights, often cast an indignant eye toward the younger generation and say, “you all just don't know how good you have it, you all have no clue, you all have it so easy, you all are tarnishing our legacy, wasting our accomplishments.” Well now, what would the enslaved African, back bent, laboring in the scorching sun, still cognizant of his regal heritage, growing weary from but fighting to stave off the yoke of the slave-master trying to tear his ancestral knowledge from his soul at the point of the bamboo, salt wrapped whip...what would he say to the arrogant, pompous heirs of civil liberties disguised as rights begrudgingly bestowed upon the recently freed slave? The same civic milestones of the 1960's held out to the younger generation today as evidence of having 'arrived' are the same vestiges of which Dr. King was referring to when he lamented, “I fear I may have integrated my people into a burning house.” Not only does a person make mistakes, whole peoples make mistakes, especially those up from slavery and alien oppression. Oh! The young still need the old...need the old to come down from that dinner table in the heavens, stop feasting on that pie in the sky, and start keeping it real with the youth, not only about what's right, but about how wrong they were and how far left they went before they regained their sensibilities thanks to someone older or younger than they! Oh! These are the last days and times alright! The last days we're going to pretend children don't need a mother AND a father! The last days we're going to perpetrate as if we're working as hard and as intelligently and as together as we could be to bridge this familial chasm and generational divide that keeps our families hovering on the brink of total insolvency. The last time we're going to look somewhere else for the authority of self-determination other than right in our own chest and within our own souls and within our own minds. Whose to blame? The Oppressor! Whose fault is it? The elders! Whose responsibility is it? The responsibility is OURS! If you're a teacher then TEACH! Stop sitting behind the desk pushing rote, outdated, irrelevant lesson plans that have no bearing on the child's immediate reality...get creative and quit milking the clock for a pay check while doing a double disservice; dulling the youth's most supple and ideal years for learning and squandering the tax payers dollars! If you're a doctor or physician or nurse, HEAL, and quit allowing the bureaucratic red tape to prevent you from upholding the Hippocratic oath! If you're a statesman or elected official, SERVE! Bravely, do the bidding of We The People's collective will and stop filibustering, philandering, and political posturing...push the necessary agendas to re institute sound faith in the political process by enforcing the Constitution! If you're a mother then NURTURE, and stop allowing television, the internet, and people off the streets to rear your children...get out of the mirror and get in front of the real mirror...your children! If you're a father, then GUIDE and SUPPORT your progeny, be it phone calls, letters, quality time, money, supplies, advice or what have you. Single parents, get out of the way of the other half, release the grudges of divorce and separation and wake up to the reality that no one will love the child like the flesh from whence he or she came. Obama being in office has not stopped the crime rate from escalating, unemployment from sprawling, profiling from terrorizing, or you from getting out of your own way to make a difference in this crumbling world most of us struggle to eke out a living in! The, “I got mine, now you get yours” mentality is debilitating at best. WE NEED EACH OTHER!!!! The old needs the young and the young needs the old, but it's incumbent upon those that know better and are capable of doing better to make the first move. Otherwise, the worst is yet to come! Most of the older generation got their 'rights', their pensions, their tenure, and comfy positions within this faltering establishment and fell back, as if the coast was clear. But lo! Just over the horizon came this teetering economy that unmistakably showed people the world over just how fragile that nest egg really was without investing in the hearts and minds of the youth! If the older generation is going to stand on our shoulders their going to have to lighten the load by giving back a whole lot more. I'm just saying.....

If you can help yourself, don't just read this...join this great debate, respond, re-post, and pass this on...add on!

PS...

Why did the emancipation proclamation only out law 'involuntary servitude' and not voluntary servitude as well?

Let's make this a viral debate!

B. Holi

1/20/2011

4:11 pm

What About The Children? By Brian Holiday-El

Let's Go!

The following is inspired by Marvin Gaye's, "What About The Children?"

As a whole, my beloved brothers and sisters, we are squandering our greatest and most sacred investment! As valuable and uncertain as Time is, it is not Humanity's most priceless possession. Though vital and necessary it may be, Riches aught never be Man's most cherished treasure. Your house will be bought and sold a hundred times or raised to the ground the moment you leave this world. Gold and precious metals have filled the tombs of deceased nobility only to be emptied the very moment the sky bats an eye. Time and riches could not be enjoyed without the soundness of good health, but even well-being is dependent on somewhat else, and all of these perish in the grave. In vain, men and women hoard material and watch it like predators do their prey, so obsessed with accumulation that their lives are over before the trappings have been made truly useful to anyone, including themselves. The ever crucial resource of attention is splurged on matters and concerns that return nothing but an even greater demand for more and more of it. And lo! They, who are destined to be be here long after you, them, the very reflections of all that you are made of, those, the truest representations of your own net worth, are placed, by far and large, toward the very least of considerations. People soon forget most, if not all, of what you do for yourself, but honor and exalt, for many life times, what you do for others. When all that you have amassed has been reclaimed by the source from which it sprung...once all that you did, by time, has been undone, the Children are the Earth's final judges as to whether you as a legacy are remembered or forgotten, esteemed or cursed, respected and loved, or scorned and hated. Guide them because they need it and afford them the good that was or was not extended to you. When they stray, know that they are taking the long way home, and Creative Fate, one way or another, will show them the straight way. They have but One mother and One father; to the deepest measure, include them BOTH! They have but one first impression, make yours the most noble. If you have many, love them equally. If you have few, love them wholly. If you have one, love one totally. If you have none then love those that are closest. But love them all unconditionally. And before you have well considered all of your ends, means, and aims, answer thoroughly the question, “What about the children?”

In The Memory Of King by Brian Holiday-El

Let's Go!

The following is inspired by a posted picture of and a question posed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put forth by Heru G. Duenas of Positive Black Stories. 
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Positive-Black-Stories-By-Heru-G-Duenas/145708032139774

The question is, "Life's most urgent question.......what are you doing for others?"

Peace and Love Brothers and Sisters! You know, in some circles King's teachings and civic efforts catch a

bad rap...some of our most prominent thinkers, teachers, scholars etc. see Affirmative Action as a step

backwards, citing the precipitous decline in African American business and property ownership following the

advent of integration as evidence of a misdirected mass of people upon the path to empowerment through

polity. The question was once posed to me by one of my first REAL teachers during my Junior year in high-

school back in the late 90's, “what's more debilitating, Economic discrimination or Social discrimination?”

What a cognitive quagmire! Here we are nearly a half-century removed from the onset of the Civil Rights

Movement and the Afro-Asiatic peoples inhabiting the Americas are still an underclass whether viewed

through the lens of Economy or Polity. The mitigates, detractors, and opponents of King's social thesis extol

'Black Wall Street' as the model for self-determination for those up from slavery, as opposed to an

acclamation of Jesus' gospel of love to all man and Gandhi’s non-violence and peaceful protest to the

struggle of the children of the Maafa. They say we traded the bank for the bus. The leveling of these retorts

are not wholly invalid or without merit and they do warrant critical consideration, but they can never negate

the resonance of King's visionary reach! His contemporary was Brother Malcolm, who began his ministry as

a staunch proponent of Separation, but later grew in thought and mind to extend his thesis for self-

determination to moderate inclusion of all peoples regardless of race, creed etc. Deserving of mention is

Cleaver with his disciplined and armed militancy by the arm of the Black Panthers. The inextricable

connectedness of our plight and the inevitable necessity of unity to unearth ourselves from the muck and mire

of social marginalization, national and international, economic insolvency and disenfranchisement from the

body-politic brought these leaders of their day together, yet shortly thereafter they all were taken out,

methodically, systematically, one by one. What world would we live in now had these kings among kings met

again? What would have been the synthesis of their converged thinking? Is it a fair deduction to conclude that

the 'powers that be' also pondered the trajectory of one such meeting of the minds? King was still a fairly

young man! He was growing leery of the gradualist on capitol hill during the days preceding his assassination.

A meeting of the minds, a consensus and subsequent handshake was clearly in the offing. King's words and

the impact of his life are nothing short of magnanimous, but it must be remembered that as impacting as he

was, he was still a work in progress that was cut down before his full maturation. So, what are we doing for

others??? I know what were not doing! We're not honoring the legacy and the struggle of our ancestors,

ancient and recent by focusing more on what unites us than what divides us, accentuating the positive more

than the negative, magnifying the similarities over the differences, reconciling the disparities more than

aggravating them. Positive Black Stories has the formula my brother! King would be proud!

What To Question

Let's Go!

Why would you think of it if you could not bring yourself to achieve it? How can you conceive of it, if you

cannot be accomplished in it? That which brought you to the complete thought of a thing hath already

endowed thee with the wherewithal to toil it into existence. Does the Sun question the Moon's capacity to

reflect? Will the feet hesitate to support the mass of the body? Does not the salt of the mouth assist the acid

in the stomach? Do your lungs require your fullest attention to breathe or your neck deny your head the right

to swivel? Man is capable of anything and incapable of nothing. Impossibilities are the phantoms of the

dreamless dastard. The pulse that proceeds from the heart of the coward is the faintest, but the bravery of

the resolute is impenetrable. Just as some birds migrate south at the onslaught of the sojourning chill, certain

in nothing save the providence of Nature and the mandate of instinct...just as the bat teases gravity in the

throes of its repose while remaining void of the fear of crashing upon its skull, so too do you, O Man, have at

your disposal the Will and the Way. The thing then to doubt is not whether or not you can, but rather,

whether or not you ought to. From hence forth, question less your capacities and capabilities and ponder

more so the merits of your objectives, “for what is a man to gain if he gathers the whole world and loses

himself in the process?” Not a dog on thing!

B.Holi