Concept Garage

President elect Barak Obama unequivocally said in his interview with Rachel Madaow few days before the election, “our politics is really not about ideology but about forming of a working majority”. Indeed democratic elections should not be about selling political ideologies but about forming a working majority of people from all walks of life, skin color, intellect, religious persuasion and income. The art lies in selling an ‘idea’, not a leftist idea which may be logically consistent but incomplete or right wing idea which proclaims to be complete however logically inconsistent; but a workable idea, that can stitch together a “working majority” out of a domesticated audience. President Obama did just that!

The question remains whether the working majority model is an efficient mode of social organization for a hard-pressed leader like Obama, who is entrusted to deliver concrete economic results. Indeed a working majority awards Obama the mandate to take huge political steps and his message of hope may also greatly contribute to ward off the cloud that has started to reign over free enterprise in this country. However the mechanics of desirable change in the US still requires strong determination and effort on behalf of government, because the fact remains that most of the systemic deadlock in America is self imposed, by self imposed I mean, imposed by the aggregated interests of TOP1% who own 50 % of the nation. If the American people, 99% of them, are to benefit from the healing power of the democratic process, as they did in this election, they need to keep the spirit of pragmatism burning and avoid ideological traps continually thrown around by the corporate media.

I however find it very difficult to imagine how president Obama can address the nation’s problems with out breaking his fragile coalition. Few months ago, we all know how people reacted to his statements about “guns and religion”. Although this might have earned him a front row seat in New York or California; People really do cling to their guns and religion here in the Midwest. Political leadership is indeed like tightrope-walking and president Obama has indeed shown super human discipline during his campaign. I guess we should continue count on his superhuman qualities to bring back hope to this nation and democracy to Ethiopia and the rest of the world as well!

Those who bear witness to traumatic events of human design are caught in conflict between the victim and the perpetrator. It is indeed morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict and there can be no bystanders to such conditions. We should however be cognizant of the two important conflicting forces that are in to play, formidably represented by the bystander.

Inertia represents aggregate systemic forces which tend to favor the status quo; which usually tempt the bystander to take the side of the perpetrator; since all what all perpetrators ask is that bystanders do nothing. The status quo is indeed a very powerful force and communities tend to given in for the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim on contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and a great deal of painful remembering, it demands justice conscious evolution. Entropy provides the means for alternative systemic arrangements, if life is to continue on this sordid planet.

Its really encouraging to see western bystander democracies voicing their concern about human rights in Ethiopia; I was very grateful while learning that senators Russ Feingold and Pat Leahy have decided to side with millions of EPRDF victims, these two great systemic agents of the US political establishment, it seems, are for change, willing to battle against aggregated western interests and values, which tend to favor the status quo in Ethiopia and else where around the world. The status-quo indeed is a very powerful force, its protectorates personified by greedy lobbyists and egg head politicians defending and nurturing brutal dictators in hopes of keeping and protecting dysfunctional and environmentally unsustainable corporate economic supply chain.

Evolution being a force of mediation between inertia – those aggregate forces behind the murderous status-quo and entropy- forces that embody uncertain possibilities of change and evolution, its is devoutly to be hoped, evolution of US political system shall bring freedom to my fellow country men and millions around the world.

Since they are too terrible to utter aloud and to painful to reevaluate, ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Traumatic experiences however, refuse to be buried under the rags of consciousness and continue to resurface, unless they are properly remembered and truthfully told. Folk wisdom is filled with similar stories about Ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves unless their stories are told. The mind it seems can only be healed through the conscious and courageous pursuit of facing reality and reconciliation.

How are we then to face and transcend from our individual and collective trauma? How are we to gather our strength, to remember and reconstruct what has happened to our hopes and fears? Who did what to whom? When and how? And how does all this affect the life we are living today? Oh Boy! I know these questions are though, but they need to be answered if we are to reclaim sanity and unbiased trauma free judgment. It may be too much to ask for a political system full of ‘Ethnic laggards’ to address this systemic deadlock.

Obviously Trauma begets trauma, and this viscous cycle has been cascading in our culture for long. We have an unbelievable Ethnic government kidnapping, murdering and brutalizing the very people it is sworn to protect, but then again, our leaders 99% of them have been brutalized and tortured for their political opinion by the Derg regime and economically traumatized by abject poverty and material deprivation, by a stagnant medieval cattle driven economy. Ironically, as we speak, Inflation is 19.4% and food prices are up by 28% that’s even from government sources, full of deception and spin. What’s distressing to me is the fact that children are hungry, meaning in essence our future leaders are hungry, its just mind boggling trying to understand how this trauma will play itself out in the future. I suspect though it’s not going to be positive.

Through personal experience of trauma in the hands of the brutal, dictatorial and repressive EPRDF regime, a stagnant culture and economic poverty. I have learned through pain, the griping force behind our individual and cultural evolution, the powerful Traumatic experiences creeping around our political, economic and social system cascading from generation to generation through cultural and environmental conduits; further reinforced by contemporary irrational EPRDF ethnic ideology and environmental degradation. Fortunately, I have been able to battle with this issue for sometime now, dwelling inside western democracies, discharging my anger through scholarship and contemplation, who knows healing may be on the horizon.

Liberation, freedom and consciousness are all out there as potentials to be tapped; fear, denial and clinging to the murderous status quo in search of refuge, refuge from imagined political and or economic danger,  only drive systems to a point of no return. To my knowledge the Derge does not exist, so does the neftegna or even the interhamuye in contemporary Ethiopia. What exist are 80 million creative forces able and willing to engage in making their life better. What exist are numerous possibilities for change and development, for hope and reconciliation!

How are we as one cohesive system, as one nation, to surmount to our contemporary cultural challenge is the one question seemingly impossible, to address with less contention by all of our political parties. The CUD disintegrated in mid air mainly because it was in essence formed out of frustration, anger, indignation, rightfully so I might add. Like its opponent, EPRDF, although it was formed out of trauma, it never the less faltered in the face of a much stronger iron willed psychotic trauma mind camp EPRDF. As the Dutch saying goes “heroism is hanging on for a minute longer”

when computing systems reach a certain thresh hold, they come out of a loop through a break, perhaps the CUD break was the right political break at the wrong time or the wrong break at the right time, either way time is closing on us and we are exhausting the systemic resilience of 2000 years of cultural experience cementing our old, impoverished nation. 

I am gripped by science and policy dynamics and how it can be enhanced and employed to objectively encrypt a just and sustainable social code of conduct. The wide belief that policy decisions can and should be made by ‘elected vegetables’ is repugnant to me. We all can testify how unfounded social philosophies and ideologies devastated and are still devastating the lives of millions around the globe. Emotional distortion of scientifically irrefutable facts is indeed a commonplace for fallible human beings, and it lies at the heart of our problems individual, national or global. Be they presidents, a king, philosophers, persists, parliamentarians or any cultural giants are not immune to cultural conditioning and are hence fallible. scientifically speaking, even though the Policy platform is infested by lumped abstractions and sweeping generalizations these are however computationally surmountable. History abounds with many examples why we cannot and should not continue to relay on conventional societal decision making apparatus.

Scientific methods of data collection and analysis have indeed proved superior and matured exponentially over last century. scientifically collected and engineered data has landed us on the moon. I believe we should also be able to extend this technique to socially gripping topics. So far however power and economic interests plague the policy platform and have proved adept in effectively using science to address their fragmented, narrow and often conflicting interests. Inherent uncertainties in science have also been irresponsibly exploited by the political elite to marginalize its effect on policy. What a reckless exercise at the time like the present where smart-algorithms and nanotechnology furnish us tools that can surmount mighty computational beasts such as policy. Science fanatics project probable trends in automation of decision making including generic government decisions.

Despite being a science enthusiast though I choose not to drown myself in the euphoria of artificial intelligence and what its societal implications maybe, however probable it’s too early to speculate! But for us Ethiopians we shall continue to gallop under Aboy Sibhat, Melese Zenawi and Doctor sheik Mohamed Al amodi.

Chear ensembet!

Know this EPRDFites what you are fighting is human evolution, the development of consciousness is purely evolutionary and on a cosmic time table and it’s not in the jurisdiction of earthly political establishments to stop it. Just like gravity it’s a force to be recognized and harnessed not retarded. The law of thermodynamics dictates that every bit of the senseless energy EPRDF is spending to stay in power shall be reciprocated. If your so called “genius” leader could follow the trend he would have packed up his quat and gone. Time is running, you guys should make up your mind. Since when did taking refuge in some idea you don’t understand guaranted existence?

I don’t know how many times it should be stated to herd mentalities at home that all proper associations should formed by individual choice and on conscious intellectual grounds philosophical, professional, political etc and not on physiological or geographical accident of birth, and surely not on the ground of tradition. There is a crucial difference between a legitimate association and a tribe. Just as laws, not men, rule a proper society, so as a proper association is united by ideas; not by men, and its members should be loyal to the ideas, not to the group. EPRDFites please get this through your head. This of course requires a high degree of conceptual development and independence, which many of you are desperately struggling to avoid. But I assure you that this is the only way men can work together justly, benevolently and safely.

One way or another, we are fast approaching the tipping point of the already gathered political storm and once again you are given the chance to elevate from poverty of reason.

The disenchantment of the modern world and the disappearance of spirits, as foretold by westerners, has not taken place, either at home or in other parts of the world. In Africa as well as in Europe, many spirits and their mediums are part of local as well as Transglobal cultures. Thus, we find Christian spirits named Hitler and Mussolini or King Bruce Lee, the kung-Fu actor, in a pantheon of new Christian holy spirits in Northern Uganda, who are waging war against the government (Behrend 1993). And, In central Africa, we find spirits of aero planes, engines, guitars and angels(see colson 1969,Luig 1993), while thunder, snakes and rain as well as playboys and prostitutes are in habiting the spirit world in west Africa(see Rouch1978:1010).

One intriguing experience of modernity is that spirit possession cults are proliferating the word over, not only in African, Asian and Caribbean countries (see kapferer 1991,Ong 1987, Little wood 1992) but also in the midst of New York (McCarthy Brown 1991), Toronto(Boody 1995) and various towns in Europe.

Perhaps we should wake up and smell the coffee ah?

In f.. credible!

I think its necessary to understand the global situation we find ourselves, the way scientific progress is heading and in retrospect what we Ethiopians were and still are doing!

“Western nations have achieved in mere span of four hundred years what we have not been able to do in four thousand years. Because our planet has become too small for them they are now moving in to the wide world of outer space. While we were dragging ourselves behind our donkeys to cover a mere seven kilometers a day, they cruse comfortably through thousands of kilometers in matter of hours. Whereas we fail to observe what is obvious and tangible they persistently investigate and probe in to the microscopic. While we purchase arms and weapons manufactured by the west to wreak havoc amongst ourselves, as if in celebration of death, they are relishing every bit of joy that life provides” prof Mesfin Weldemariam, whither Ethiopia, Vision 2020.

We Ethiopians in search for a better tomorrow, in search of economic and political emancipation, have almost tried everything. We have begged, entertained, intermarried and most of all revolted, but still nothing seems to work in this sordid continent; yet again our laughable compliance to the survival instinct animates us still. I am sure someday we the divided, downtrodden and alienated Ethiopians will find our way to the Promised Land of social security.

Injustice takes many different forms in this chaotic world! Despite the fact that the world is changing injustice some how manages to persist in the background and the problem is that here we are rather aiming at a flying target and we cannot adhere to static models and wage war on anti conceptual herd mentalities at home, science could have solved many of our problems, the problem is that there are no governing laws, theories, or principles that can cover the wide realm of social existence and all it’s eccentricities. Reality is much more mysterious and eludes capture of the mind and we are still a bunch of calculators just like those blind men trying to figure out an elephant by the part of its body they touched!

The Cosmic Bastard!

I heard in my early school years that early men were hunters and gatherers. Can anyone tell me about this subject? I am in Belgium some 5,593.60 Km away from home.

P.s I am civilized!