Know thy neighbour

I woke up this morning to a raucous noise outside my house. My neighbor was quarreling  about a suppose bottle that was hurled at his gate and on contact with his grill turned into smithereens. He is a person who believed deeply in sorcery and was therefore convinced that this bottle broken at his gate was steeped with malicious intent. 

I guess his perception of the shards was in reality a direct attack on him on an astral plane. Knowing the history that he has with my family he assumed that one of us through malignance or ridicule must have thrown the bottle at his gate. 

He heaved his chest and spoke about how he is a killer and when he stokes his fire death must come into those who offend him. I looked at him completely committed to his belief of supernatural potency. He like many people who worked Obeah thought themselves impervious. 

They were invincible because they dealt on a realm that was unknown, feared and misunderstood by many. In the grand scheme of things I have understood one thing in life and that is what others do to you is their karma and what you do to them is yours. No nefarious deed whether physical or spiritual has ever gone unpaid. 

I would not say only fools believed in the occult because albeit the incredible unlearned have for the most part more confidence in their actions bringing to manifestation their desires. I am always of the opinion that if good people could become committed to goodwill and righteousness the way wicked people flaunt their malignancy and Mayhem then we would have a better place.  

This man in the decades that he has been on this earth has not learned or understand the true meaning of life. He like many who share his belief are irrational in their way of thinking, interpreting every action as a form of attack on themselves. They know what they are capable of and have a misconception that every one must be thinking like them and herein lies their biggest deficiency in thinking every one must be against them. 

Normal people I know would be upset about a broken bottle but not angry as to threaten death. Normal rational people would enquire about the bottle but not with threats of death and violence. Those who deal in the occult are mad people and should be treated with extreme caution because of their irrational inclination to violence. 

They revere badness over good. Believing often through the perceived predominance of wickedness that the diabolical nature of man often survives the good.  

They are puffed up in evil doing. Thinking good people or those who are quick to quell an irrelevant argument or war are weak and become targets for wicked perpetration. 

Evil thrives in a negative environment. Even though you may be taking care of your spiritual needs but without creating an aura of positivity and goodwill, you will not dispel the negative forces that swirls through the universe. 

Some people might say supernatural forces do not exist. People in the thirteen century would marvel and call our airplanes, cell phones and Internet witchcraft. Imagine we would be burnt at the stakes for witchcraftry mistaken as technology. I often liken the ability to speak and believe engendering palpable results, the laws of attraction or the think and grow rich formula to our technological advancement.  Satellite pictures are sent from space along some imaginary lines into signals on our computers as images we can identify with our eyes. We don't see how it happens just as how we don't see how our message is sent in an email but we know it happens based on the manifestation of that the intended recipient got the message. How we send our messages is not tangible, it is not visible but we know it can happen because the results are manifested. It is within this same breadth our cellular phones keep us connected around the world, we don't see our voices being sent across the medium to the other receiver but we hear each other and we communicate.  Now I believe magic or spirituality extends from the same medium of thought over matter, if we think, meditate and concentrate on our desires then they will be manifested. These are the tenets that I used to govern my life. 

To invite positivity in your life, you must operate from a standpoint of optimism which includes detaching oneself from negative people and disadvantageous environments that will give rise to evil thought forms. Evil cannot thrive where there is light so try as much as possible to let your light shine from within you. You cannot dispel the forces of darkness by keeping negative, pessimistic and fatalistic people who speak detriment into your individual astral aura creating problems for you. I don't know if you ever experience that after an argument or a flare up feeling, how drained one feels physically because that is what negativity does, it saps your energy physically. 

You cannot be protected from bad karma if you continue to do bad things to other. Just as how we have day and night so too your recompense will be spun back into your own astral destiny. You cannot expect to sow bad seeds and not reap a bad tree full of fruits. 

Next Article writing now... Revisit for final post....

I wish not to be thrown out like the waste humans that pile like garbage at the front of the lanes whose usage in society has long since evaporated.  There are two things constant in the Ghetto, death and destitution. Happy days are in the form of rum drinking and baby making. Everybody loves you until you become their competition.

The heartaches of these streets will have you mopping up your tears off it's pot hole rippled surfaced. The depression of hopelessness clogs stream light of faith and puts a damper on your optimism for the future. 

Lessons from my Landlord

I used to live in a delapidated, squalid apartment before I started publishing. I remember being ashamed of where I lived so much that i often hid my address from people. In my opinion nothing was wrong with the building. It kept the sun and the rain off my back and at nights I was warm and sheltered inside. I was more worried about what people thought about someone as talented as me living in squalor. I knew people unknowingly without question judged you by your residential arrangements or appearance. 

I am a liar if I said I didn't care about what society thought of me. I do but not as much as I did before. I've become committed to my own thesis that people spend their lives looking for weaknesses and strengths in others to highlight or pick apart. I deny them access by giving zilch regards to their opinions. People have a misconception about education as it correlates to wisdom. There are many educated people who cannot think for themselves. They blindly subject themselves to the second hand knowledge of others who they respect without questioning their ideologies. Nobody not me or Albert Einstein should force anyone to buy a philosophy that sounds fatuous or irrational. In this world you may not have a option in everything but you have an choice in how you think about life. Don't let anyone tell you how you should think or control your thinking. 

Conversely I've noticed many people swinging around this notion that talented people are worthless if they fail to maximize their potential. People often in their own misguided estimation to make something of themselves may murmur over the slow progress of those with perceivable great  pontentials but non-talented people are allowed to blame the imaginary systems that oppressed them and find comfort in being victims than admit that they are responsible for their own decrepit of a life. They are never held accountable for failing because they weren't bright enough but a brilliant man who becomes a failure should be dragged through the town in chains and hurled into the chasm of societal jails. 

They seem to believe that successful

People enjoy some kind of astral

Nepotism and gracefully move from one good experience to another without struggles or impediments. They are belaboured with misfortunes because they were maligned for failure from birth since they were not born with any special talents. Everybody is looking for a one way ticket out of their circumstances. Talented people are born with an advantage and those without talents endure an endless stream of unintentional mislucks. It is the grandest fallacy of the Jamaican minds. People who fail believe they are victims of a malignant oppression often unforeseen and those who rise above gain success through some form of assistance or favoritism. 

Back to my first apartment. 

I liked that old house. I learnt many a lessons around my computer listening to the squeaks of the mices in the ceiling or staring at the blank empty wall. I am grateful for the time I spent there. I am never one to hurl urine into the faces of those who buoyed me during my roughest voyages. I am eternally grateful for the bridges that take me from one ether to another because we are all great energies shifting from one plane to the next. For now I am merely grateful to be alive. 

I remembered one day the owner of the house came from abroad and vilified me with profanity over some misunderstanding with money owed for rent. I watched half abashed and amused as the lady in her rampage heaped ropes of feacea on my head. I will never forget the verbal onslaught, it was an eye opener for me. 

This lady was the type who you could tell had stumbled into success.  She had that Jamaican "frighten" aura about her, the pompous way she carried herself or how she spoke with bombast, You could detect by the subtle nature of how she interacted with  her peers that she somehow thought herself better than them. She was empowered by looking down on those who were spawned from the same dreary circumstances she came from. She was the first of many people I meet in this life who are like that, who granted a small rectal of an achievement bask around in arrogance and condescension from their own self made importance. You cannot be very important when you life is not worth more than that of the average man. 

She extended her contempt to

me. I get those despicable looks a lot when people appraise me with their eyes trying to figure out whether or not I am deserving of the talents they believe I have and in my humility must be undeserving of such inborn gifts. How dare me have the power of knowledge and treat it like it is nothing? It is same look my clients give me when they question the veracity or legitimacy of my businesses. Everybody believes success or talent ought to look a certain way and people like me do not in so far fit the archetype. 

I sometimes wonder if these expressions of disbelief or discontent stems from my appearance or where I am from, two things I believe I had no control over. I shake my head a lot at people who would have me hate my body or the way I look so that they can keep me trapped in their stereotypes. I pity those who spend their lives pointing out faults in others so that they can feel better about themselves. 

 They would rather see me miserable in this one body on my life's journey by virtue of their opinion. What about my opinion? I would like to think that what I think about myself counts as good as valid than anyone else. 

I probably think too highly of myself. In my naïveté, I see myself as being more than I actually am and it is society's duty to remind me of where I stand. 

Back to the story of this lady and her vitriol. I gave her the money for the fees she said I had incurred as a tenant and to my surprise she started handing out the money, I worked hard, selling herbalife products in the sun to procure those funds and she was giving it away  to various friends, all drunkards and rum drinkers while I wither away like a wall flower without a male admirer wishing I could disappear into the walls of the house. 

This lady made it clear to me that she did not want my money. It meant nothing to her. Why did she disrespect me in the process to get it.  She took it from me and gave it away like it was nothing was like rubbing salt into my wound ego.  I understood the principle she probably was trying to teach me but the uncouth behavior drench the lesson with negative emotion and vibe. 

What was intriguing was how my neighbors'would rather whisper in delight among each other than intercede the crudeness that this lady was subjecting me to.

Today I know my neighbors didn't know any better. They are like her. She's is like them. She has only managed to change her economical standards but given the opportunity she would roll around in the mud, tossing flecks into your face like them. I find no satisfaction in unnecessarily hurting people's feelings maybe that is the reason why I abuse my Facebook like button. It takes nothing to be civil, kind and supportive of others. We all go through life wanting to feel needed and valued by the people we come in contact with. It matters not much to me, nor do I consider it a monumental task to be nice to others even once in a while. 

Working women will find love

People might say I am a little hard on women albeit I am female too. I believe Jamaican women are lazy. This maybe one of the contributing factors to why we have so many suffering children and one of the key variables why men tell me they sometimes desert a woman. It is not right to leave a woman with a child but a man has no choice when every woman he meets is trying to trap him into a financial situation by giving him a baby, so he runs away not because he does not care for the child but because most men today don't want to start a family with a woman who can't complement them economically. 

When I was a teenager and out of job, I joined the Herbal Life Distributor Programme and walked the streets selling herbal juice blended in cups to women so that they could lose weight. I sold them fifty dollars per cup and made enough to buy new mixing material for tomorrow and my dinner. There was nothing that made me prouder than knowing that I could support my own subsistence. I was an adult in a family home and people begin to show you bad face as soon as you reach working age and not doing anything with your life. 

I started two successive relationships and learned two crucial notions from both men. One was working class and our relationship quickly dissolved because he was looking for a woman who was heading somewhere in life and not a struggling 19 year old with a lot of prospects but no money. The second was middle class and was not interested in pursuing a long term union when he discovered that I had nothing to bring to the relationship but sex and somehow I felt as if he was the best thing that ever came into my life. Those two men taught me that a woman who does not hold her own will never be taken seriously. 

Not that women with nothing to offer don't get men to lay the world at their feet but the average looking woman like myself know that if you can't help yourself then you are vulnerable to the whims of men. 

When I walk on the street I don't care about which man wants to call to me or who ignores me. I don't care because I am providing for my child. I am not fazed by the transient men in my life and if the one I am with now,decides to leave. See you can't bargain with men if you do not have anything  to measure up with. You will be weighed and found wanting. 

I believe once a woman has a child your pride should go. Simple you should not be too proud to "hustle" for you children. I have a whole lot of accolades for the girls who walk and sell their commodities so as to

Provide for their fatherless children than those who spent their last dime titivating to lure some man who might leave as soon as he comes or she is pregnant. Nuff respect to the women who have them priority straight. 

The truth and the devil is a liar...

They say sleep is the brother of death. Sleep and death might be related but they are not by any means identical. I often envision death as a strong swig of rum, burning as it passes through my throat, difficult to digest. But there are far more worst things than death, envy and jealousy will slowly strangle the life out of you. When the tentacles of covetousness entangles you like an enormous octopus, your demise is bipart swift or slow and painful. There are some human beings whom nothing brings greater joy or satisfaction to them than to see others fail. 

It's not like they gain anything by hurting you since what you have will never be there's but in their minds they have prevented you from becoming all that you could ever be by taking your life from you. They gain satisfaction from knowing that you have failed. They are myopic, unlearned yet committed to a vague idea that happiness can come from seeing others fail for there will always be men and women greater or lesser than they. The mask of covetousness will spend their entire lives tripping over corpse and unhappy because they cannot see himself from the ground up. He can only visualize what it must be like from the top to where he stands below. 

I often wonder why diabolical people wear mask. Metaphorically the mask supposedly is the false front but there are many people whose real face is worst than the mask they wear. The face of evil cannot be hidden, evil is not a quiet personality or emotion. It likes to gloat and puff it's chest up so that the pacific and the soft hearted can skulk away into obscurity. The mask understands ironically that people are both intrigue and intrepidated by either faces, it engages their senses on a deeper level: they are baffled trying to figure out what is real from which is only an imprint of a mask. 

The truth is not always a loud voice. Sometimes it is silent. It whispers or stands still like a phantom. You cannot get away from the truth. It slowly manifests itself like sun bursting from behind the clouds on a dark, misty morning. The Buddha says there are three things you cannot hide from the sun, the moon and the truth. 

Women from the Jamaican Ghetto

Women where I am from have the same stories. Many times they have the same endings and daughters are prone to make the same mistakes that their mothers made. They had a bright future in mid-teen until they met someone who impregnated them and never looked back. Before they know it,  they have several children for an assortment of men who leave as soon as they are pregnant. 

Girls never learn. It doesn't matter much how beautiful you may think you are, a daughter of the Jamaican working class knows that without any iota of bargaining power or qualities to complement a prospective partner, her chances of finding a fairy tale relationship with a man is just as probable as the next girl. 

The Ghetto woman knows that the more children she has, her value lowers on the relationship market. The older she gets her relationship prospects depreciate. Men value goes up as they get older because they might accumulate a house or wealth. A woman with no education, unemployed and several children will find it harder to convince a man to stick around. She might find someone who loves her but a woman rejected by other men becomes a playing ground from every man she meets. It is one of the reason why men will easily label a woman as a whore because he is by some unseen social contract expected to turn away a woman who   everyone knows has been around the bushel a couple of times. 

Sexual relations in the Ghetto is a laughable business. Venerable diseases will thrive because people often sleep around with each other and before you know it everyone in a particular district are related biologically. Women often believe the men in their districts belong to them and hate on women outside of their area. Some community women see a man's choice of exogamy as indication that he may be dissatisfied with women in his community. 

The ghetto girl knows by social contract that being desired by all men and sleeping with them all is the fastest way to fall off the good girl list. She knows she can never be charitable with her sexual gifts. To be kind with your vagina is to open oneself up to make contempt and disrespect.

 Men will feign interest, be an ingrate to get in the bed with the "kind" girl and then leave faster than he came in. They will

Promise you the world because they know that instinctually you want man for yourself. Men are largely complex creatures, they would like to get into

A woman's clothes the fastest way he can and then dumps her just as fast for sleeping with him so quickly. A girl in the Ghetto has to be smart. She cannot leave her jewels on display got all to see. She has to measure a man and only the most deserving should she risk her love and reputation on. 

Who failed our boys? The system or the society?

They say the Jamaican system is built to crush the dreams and desires of the poorer class by instilling mental

Suppression and fear which keeps the poor even the educated few in lower end jobs. The poor always blames the system, this imaginary dictorial network seems responsible for the transgenerational failures of the inner city community

Youths and their inexorable pursuit of crime  and violence as a means of livelihood. 

Some will say JAmaica's Education system has failed the youths. This education cannot get them a job because there are no

Jobs. Truth is we have an education system that is post colonial, a classroom formula designed to create workers to turn over the cogs of an industrial society. We have people going into the teaching profession because it is the easiest or cheapest faculty, teachers without creative abilities, frustrated with their jobs and in the end the student loses out. Children should

Be encouraged to use their imagination and creative knowledge instead of rote memorization and pumping their heads with information that may not help them

In day to day survival. 

It's a miscondition of thinking brought on by uninformed parents who tell children born into poor families that "the system" is perpetually against poor black people in Jamaica. From their formative years these young men are under the impression that very few of them will ever amount to nothing. Parental socialization has a lot to do with the notions that these boys embrace. So they grow up seeing successful people and rich people as oppressors. I think its wickedness because they often prey on people in the same fragile, conditions like them who are hustling to make a living like them. Something I am writing about in my new book. I am not saying that the government is not responsible for failing to produce new jobs for its growing youth population or that we have a backwards education system that was geared at providing workers for a thriving sugarcane, banana and small business industry but if you tell a child from the get go to see others in the society that he lives in as constantly fighting against his upliftment then you will create a social menace.

The people are in Darkness... Most of what happens here could never happen in other countries where enlightenment of the masses is central. I don't understand how we do not see that it is unintellectuality combined with superficiality and savagery that are the main cause of our problems why we can't solve our differences and conflicts amicable and why we have no qualms about taking someone's life over triviality. We are all ate up by nothingness.

We like to move from one good experience to another without effort or responsibility got what is lost to

us along the way. I am still trying to decipher how one can justify killing unarmed people or innocent children. 

Parents in Jamaica have kept up with too much almshouse with their children, subtlety encouraging deviant behavior until it brims over into the killing of their own. I often wonder if people do not consider the children who are left without

Parents when they decide to take the life of another. Who is going to take care of those children? Is it ok for those children to suffer and to be denied a relationship with their parent?whatever long suffering you brook upon a next family shall

be extended tenfolds upon yours. 

I have brothers and innumerable male relatives in my extended family and truth is we were never socialized to be violent. We had to go to church every Sunday and I know despite the gun fingers that they put up to a Tommy Lee song that none of them are really dangerous people at least not that we know of. We know that they only push badness to ease off the step pon them attitude of men from other communities who exhibited consistent aggression towards them. I remember a particular time my cousins were afraid because other hostile males often challenge my kins. because they knew that none of them were essentially

bad men. They are largely pacific, it was painstaking when Gussy was murdered by the police because we knew Gussy was more afraid of violence than anything else. His death pointed to the vague idea that many young men have of placing confidence in the protection of outlaws than in the Police Force. It is for this reason why he is lost to us forever.

I am upset with his killing but I know that his death is not solely the responsibility of external forces. He choose to associate with certain elements and was killed by association. He had a choice and he chose in my estimation when the clouds of grief and sadness passed, he opted for death. His death was as much his choice as it was that of the individual who decided to take his life that dreary Thursday morning. 

Boys are socialized different from girls. My sisters and I were encouraged by my father to seek an education so that we could escape the fate of so many pregnant peers. Gussy's sisters were also educated including a sister who is a teacher. We don't pay much attention to the education if our boys. Most mothers are more concerned with ensuring that their daughters have a better bargaining power in a relationship and bigger pool of men to choose from so they emphasize female academical pursuits and not male. They claim men will find a way to fend for themselves. We need to

 pay more attention to our boys because for too long as parents we have neglected and ignored the

Emotional development of our male child. We have to be careful about who our boys associate with because they won't listen to what we say but adapt the behavior of other male role models on our communities. We must emphasize that our boys must never put themselves in a position that their lives become indispensable. 

Parents don't have conversations with children so that they can understand what is going on on a child's mind. Children are mostly physically abused until they reach a certain age when parents realize they are too big to be beaten to conform and disregard their behavior. Our biggest issue is not that the system has failed our children but that our families, the collective values of our communities, the media,music and matriarchal family has failed our boys. 

Sometimes I wonder if we were a more morally inclined or educated society if we would have the issues that we are facing today. I think " almshouse" as one blogger stated it thrives in Jamaica because everybody in Jamaica loves the "almshouse business". How can we

encourage our boys become good citizens when their is a pervasive idea being reinforced among them

that only money crimes brook profits in our country. 

I sat recently with some little boys who my family and theirs do not get along. As I stared into their faces I concluded what I have always believed that our children are born a blank state. These boys were not afraid of me but more

Concerned about what their

  Parents might say if they saw them talking to

Me. Their parents had

already chosen sides for them. Parents create enemies for

Children on the basis that are more

Interested in winning an argument than acknowledging truth and doing what is obviously right. 

What does your Search Engine Rank Mean?

People often ask me about search engine rankings and what does it mean. It pays a lot to be at the top of search results for your niche especially if you are selling a product. You do not want your customers or readers having to search several pages past the first results page to find your site. We know that people rarely past the first page, most individuals simply refine their search or give up altogether. 

Search Engine Optimization is not only ranking highly in your niche search results but ensuring that relevant key words associated with your particular blog or Website service directs your customers or readers categorically  to your webpage. 

Last year I placed a bid on a website that was for sale on Flippa.com and what struck me about the website was how low it ranked. Caribbeanvacations.net was found on the tenth page of google and probably still is albeit the owner took my advice and tweaked the site. When you google "Caribbean Vacation" you are suppose to see the domain with the keyword on the first page. Other domains were ranking higher than the domain with the central keyword because they have more optimized web content than Caribbeanvacations.net. 

I often used myself as a keyword to discover how optimised my sites are to my name. There are thousands of Crystal Evans in the world so we have narrowed it down to my niche. Crystal Evans Jamaica. When you google the keywords "crystal Evans Jamaica" you are liable to see my LinkEd page ranking higher than others but I am almost sure my blogs and websites will dominate googles search engine results. 

I often use different keywords to get an idea of ranking of the websites. I googled " crystal Evans book" and two of my books came up on the first page and when I search for "crystal Evans writer", I have at least two results on the first page. 

One day I hope not only to top my niche but dominate the entire global search Results for the key terms people use to search for my blogs. 

Traffic is important to ranking on search engines. If no one visits your page or if you do not add fresh contents then google bots don't stop by and pick up you URL. 

I tried other search engines like Yahoo and Safari to see what the results are like. And they were similar. Search Engine submission is also key to getting your site noticed on the World Wide Web. Some domain brokers and sites sell this service but there are many sites wherein you can submit your website for free on any particular search engine. Always maintain credibility in your area as search engines can blacklist your site. You do not want to be spammy so that even Facebook blocks your site from even being linked to post. It is one of the reasons why I prefer organic traffic as oppose to buying leads and  spamming forums. 

Don't be too hard on yourself !

Weirdest things in life is how lofty people always make their ideals for you yet set average standards for themselves. People have always judged me above standard because of my brilliance not understanding that I came from unborn opportunities like them and was never in my estimation given any special tools for them to expect more from me than they expect from themselves. In hindsight people only place you on a pedestial so they can in the end tear you down. 

We spend our entire lives judging ourselves against others. If we measure people and they fall short we believe we are license to

Insult them and tear them down. If they buoy on a float of accomplishments, we begin to feel small within ourselves and murmur above how

Insignificant others feel when they don't even really recognize us. We feel inferior in light of others success without them doing anything categorically for us to think ourselves short but we use their lives as a yardstick and when we come up

On the short end we feel others notice when in many cases if it is not pointed out then no one sees it. Sincerely successful people do not have time to notice the idleness of minions. The idle nature of the average man always forces him to see the deficiencies in others but not within himself. He spends his entire life trying to highlight the defects in others so as to shy people away from his own inadequacies. When he accentuates others short fallings then he can feel better within himself. It soothes his deflated ego to show others that he is not alone in his inferiority. 

They sit and lurk to hear if your life is going wrong because nothing is going right with theirs. The most gossips,lies and rumours are to be found among people who are just merely alive. They tell stories to past time and when they get bored of telling stories, they start to create lies and sensationalize opinions as truth. They believe that because other low minded people share their opinions then it must be a fact. Facts created by not reason but by preconceived notions often supported by bad mind and lies. No one cares about the truth only about what sounds good to their ears. As long as it supports their kind of thinking then they are okay with it of course. 

I have observed a phenomena about women in this community and is how quick they are able to form opinions and "ideas" about other women without any knowledge  of their character and just by virtue of some preconceived notion often fueled by envy, bias and downright bad mind which in many cases have no basis or truth to it.i hate when biotches try to use their lackluster lives as a yardstick for mine...

I don't have time to watch other people's lives because I am too busy trying to make ends meet in my life. I have become so committed to

My own individual development and dependency that most of my friends think "mi switch" because I no longer dedicate to myself to sitting and measuring my life by the successful passerbys that swish pass. 

Compliments are free, don't be so stingy with them. Those who are reluctant  to compliment others sit at the helms of haters. They only want to compound others weaknesses, always quick to insult and denigrate but never swift to compliment and inspire. It is good to encourage people by validating their successes and reaching out to them in their aspirations. You will assist them in building their strength of character and improving their talents. 

Black people and the belly full laughter

I am often surprised at the way unaccomplished people use laughter, often loud ululations to bring attention to themselves. They could never be laughing at me, I know their laugher is a sham to divert attention away from the paucity of a life. They like that belly full laugh. It means they are not hungry, at least not hungry for the right things. 

I was never given more tools than them so how come my success is responsible for their downfall. I never cheated, facilitate their failure and usurp success out of their hands. I merely sought to develop myself. People can hate others for their ambition, my grandmother would say that it's not her fault that they are theirs. 

Human's may seem as if they cannot make up their minds. They already have decided where they want you to be. You see if Oprah never made it out of Mississippi she would always be reminded about what happened in her past and most of her peers would use her past to discredit her. They will be like  "oh there goes Oprah thinking she better than us when she got pregnant in school or her relative raped her". You see your own will not love you until strangers start claiming you. They just trying to benefit from your stardom. Hoping the stardust will rub off on them when they tell people they know you from way back when. Oprah is a celebrity now, she's out of their reach, she's a real star because strangers heaping praises on her. They will celebrate her accomplishments because she's not near to outshine whatever reflected light ounces off them. 

When it comes to black people you cannot blossom in their eyes, it reminds them too much of their own inadequacies when someone from their own dirt paved streets makes something of themselves. It simply means they didn't try enough. Don't think they do not gloat with malicious satisfaction when the girl who is doing well in high school gets pregnant and become a drop out like so many of her peers. Do not let them fool you, we all know black people are crabs in a bucket, they are happier seeing everyone crowded at the bottom. I don't know if it is slavery that made us so distrustful of each other and insecure about our brothers prosperity. White man tricked us by dividing and conquering, but our insecurity is bigger than that it stems from our parents who indoctrinated us to only seek success for ourselves so that we might be considered socially superior to our neighbors. We become discomfiture with others success because we think that they view us in the same light that we were socialized to frown upon failed people. We think they look down on us and we create problems, distractions to keep the attention off our pitfalls. 

It is true there are many black people who believe they live better lives among whites than among their own. While they might have a point, and good reasons to get away from their own kind, we wished those who get out of the bucket would turn around and help a few good crabs out. 

Where ever you are in your life, it is truly a milestone for you. I don't know how far you are coming from and I genuinely believe you deserve every ounce of happiness and success that you have now because you have proven yourself worthy. 

Don't allow anyone to ever make you feel ashamed of your success because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Make the most of your life because chances are you will die alone. 

Are your philosophies your own or are they borrowed?

Where did I first get my philosophies? They were mostly second hand ideologies I borrowed from the numerous authors who through reading have influenced my perspective on life. I hate hearing others use second hand opinions, the ideologies of others or hearsay as truths. If the original ideologies of olde were not challenge we would still believe someone else second opinion that the world is flat. 

I think Jamaica need a revolution of consciousness. We need to stop subscribing to second hand opinions. Most Jamaicans embrace most political ideologies because of hearsay and secondhand opinions of  people with influence. By influence we mean people who have money. We take on the doctrines of others without questioning the issues at hand. We never stop to assess what philosophies are dished out to is because the education of slaves makes it necessary. 

We do not engage in critical analysis of what politicians dish out to us instead like most educated fools we would rather denigrate the thinker who seeks to guide our mind's eyes to a greater perspective. We don't listen to the reasons of the people we dislike not because they are talking bullshit but because we are conditioned never to give credence to our enemies. It is like on Facebook, there are some people who will never like anything you post just because you wrote it, it doesn't matter how profound or realistic your status update is, they won't press the like button because of how they feel about giving credit to you. 

Without the revolution of consciousness we won't produce better citizens. Better citizens equal to greater politicians, more credible professionals, honest police officers and less criminals. 

We need to teach our people to think for themselves. Not to eat off the crumbs of the philosophies of others. When we begin to seek a higher consciousness then we will be able to guide our lives and better identify people who are not beneficial to us. 

What is wrong with my generation 11???

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A lot of elders complain that they do not know what is wrong with today's black generation. I beg to ask them what was wrong with theirs? Children don't become what you want, they become who you are. Our elders should reflect upon what went wrong during the era when today's young adults were children. Maybe just maybe they might find the answers to the problems of this "generation".  They raised a world of children who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. A money grabbing, instant gratification over profundity seeking and "step pon them" culture of people. 

Maybe my generation went wrong when our fathers abandoned us and our mothers in her quest to provide for us was either working hard or chasing men to earn a dollar to feed us and send us to school. During these crucial times of parental abandonment we were left to be socialized by the television and other people who instill worthless values in us. If I could count the many times,I was influenced by people other than family members during my parents absence to engage in something debauch, I would be searching for numbers. 

I often wonder who taught our young men to believe that shooting an unarm, defenseless person made them a bad man. I think a bad man or rather in Olden days a real soldier admired by others often had to go through battles and conquer other armies before he would be feared and revered by other young men. He had to shed blood honourly and not with the blatant disregard, sacrilege and foolish actions of the modern Jamaican badman. To kick off the door of a hapless victim and take their life does not make one a soldier or even a badman, in theory one is simply a butcher, murderer and a savage. 

What turned our generation of black intellectuals into empty barrels who like hearing the sound of their echoes and subscribing to mindless illusions of superiority than liberating their brothers and sisters can be laid at the feet of parents with misinterpretation about the value of an education.  Parents encourage children to seek education as a way out of poverty. Academical attainment was a source of upliftment and social upward mobility over the hated neighbour and their dumber offsprings. We forgot to teach our children that for every child who fails during our school years, we are witnessing the insidious rise of adults that will be a detriment to our society. The same neighbour pickney that so many parents are so inclined to "tun down" will be same child that becomes a menace to society later on.  You cannot wish for your child to become a doctor and for others to fail, to become gunman and thief. Those same gun man and thief will stick up your child, your doctor will have to build tall fortress to keep out his uneducated, semi-literate, mad at the world peer. 

 It's so much harder to free a slave when he does not see himself as one. It is more difficult to free a slave who cannot visualize himself free. Education is not an opportunity to look down on our ignorant brothers because we were all born ignorant. To be educated in books and not in humanity is to arm a indomitable menace to a society. Most of the problems black societies have is due to so many educated fools and menaces running the societies into

the ground. 

They say my generation has no manners or morales. Maybe when our elders start respecting themselves then maybe my generation will learn some respect. Children become what you are not what you want. Maybe if we did not see so many corrupt politicians, police and professionals then maybe many of my generation youths would veer away from criminality but everywhere we look around we see people thriving from dishonesty so what do you expect children to do. Monkey see Monkey do. Only hustlers seem to be making money so my generations simply join the ranks. The more things change, the more they remain the same. 

They complain and say that my generation is lazy and won't work. I think our parents were so used to handouts from politicians that they didn't bother to want to make something of themselves but wait for the pork and "this and that" from the MP.  We internalized that system of survival and  today many young people are waiting for people in power to hand them opportunities to uplift themselves. 

Many of us have parents who are dream killers. They kill our entrepreneurial and innovative spirits by shooting down out experimental nature. We don't have much inventors because if a black child says he wants to make paper out of leaves, his parents shoots him down and tell him to focus on traditional careers because "that nah make no money inna Jamaica". We end up with a lot of teachers and nurses with limited job vacancies for them and not enough innovators to contrive business opportunities, provide jobs and create employment for our youths. Innovators would stimulate our economy and engender financial growth. 

My generation loves materialism.Money over everything because we were conditioned by our poor parents to believe that money and material accumulations was the grandest of validations.Money will make us happy.  Not only that but our society telegraph a notion that success was not gradual, happening overtime but quick and rapid. It made the young woman who didn't have a car by twenty five feel as if despite her small business success, she has not achieved anything without a flashy expensive vehicle to show. We have socialized our children to measure success in dollars and cents and not to pay homage to the hurdles that people cross to get where they are or value personal efforts that transcend lives. We don't support a working progress, my generation was conditioned to only recognize progress in material possessions. It is funny how our parents didn't build a house until they were in their thirties yet expect us to be rich before we are twenty five. 

Society likes to talk about the Echo-babies and forgetting that each child black or white was born a blank

Slate. We might have some innate qualities and congenital predispositions but we became what we are today because of our experiences and the notions we internalized as a child. I would be a liar if I said the people who I've met in my life have not influenced me one way or the other. A lot of times when I think about all the bad things people have said or done to me I consider "preeing evil" as my peers would say but I chose to live my life as an example to those who are trying not to stray from the path. 

Crystal Evans posters 11

Comin from where am from excerpt from book

I look at these youths and I know that they aren't fools. What are they? They are my brothers, my cousins and my friends. I've known most of them all my life.They don't have degrees , they are for the most part incapable of any intellectual depth or abstract thinking but they are some of the smartest people I know. They know about life. They don't pretend to be what they are not. Their friendships are real and their conflicts even more intense because life on these dirty avenues are harsh. They are very loyal to their own, I know because I've never seen so many grown men who act as tough as they do cry over the killing of one of their own brethren.  They are not perfect but they are human beings. They accept this one life for what it is and hope for the best. I won't say that they have not strayed but each one of us know that they have come a far off these dirt roads. They are more loyal to their own than most who claim to have that virtue. 

Lessons learnt Today : Crystal Evans

Have you played in the rain recently? I like when the rain falls. It's like human activity and this world is forced to stand still and marvel

 at Mother Nature. 

I walked home on the rain today acutely aware of the people on the passing cars who must have questioned my sanity when they say a grown woman, soaked, skirt dripping wet in the pouring rain. 

I didn't care, truth is I was only half aware of them but my interested was fixated on the misty mountains towered abroad the grey sky at the edge of my horizon. I wondered how many of my ancestors must have walked this road, staring into the picturesque view of the undulating green shrubs and trees that look tiny and clustered from afar.

No doubt these mountains have seen more people in their lifetime

than I could

Ever begin to

Imagine or

Concieve. 

It's like the movie of Bob Marley's Funeral, I see so many faces of people who no longer graced these streets with their feet. A whole culture lost to graves and tombstones, undocumented experiences, stories only those mountains and trees if they could talk would perhaps be spurred to tell. 

I have been a walk foot for a great part of my life. I know what it feels like to be going at a slow pace while the world squishes past you. 

I understand the discontent that the eyes of the mobile traveller projects when it lands on the meandering pedestrian or for those who are flung a wheeled trough of water by an inconsiderate or speeding driver. 

It is primitive form of reasoning to believe that those who walk are somehow inferior to those who travel in an automobile. I guess it has a lot to do with socio-economics. Wealthy bankers and publishers in New York City take the cab. Transportation should be a mere convenience not a symbol of status. We cannot all be the same, we are not born the same but we emphasize our differences so much that in the end we create a world not of diversity but of same people. 

My hairdresser thinks black people cannot handle success. She's probably right, Vybz Kartel is his own management and maybe it is his downfall. She alluded to the scammers who in her opinion, don't have any ambitions, only goals, never prepared for money and thus have no clue what to do with it. In the end, the devil creates work for idle hands. 

A police car slowed down to speak with a little boy whose face was completely covered with a face rag. It is a fashion mode today for young men to dress like hoodlums wearing mask like head coverings. The little boy barely 19 years old told the cop in a superior gesture to "circle back" and turn come and speak to him. The senior cop was intellectual, he laughed and shook his head. And for the first time in my life I understood why a cop with less intelligence and tolerance would have slapped the shot out of him because as an observer, I felt like going over there and shake him asking him what virtue or medal he seeks to attain by being boorish to an officer of the law? 

Not just being uncouth to the officer but by glorifying his disrespectful behavior. Hasn't he learnt from all indications including the dismantlement of gangs and their accomplices that gangsters die young? I am on the good people side but if that officer had offered him a few punches for his impudence, I would not waste my sympathy on him. 

Crystal Evans, Quotes

Don't tell me what was said about me. I want to know why the talebearer felt comfortable saying it to you. Obviously you must share or have expressed similar sentiments why he would not be uncomfortable discussing me with you. 

I don't keep women friends for too long not because I think they cannot be trusted or because I hate gossip. A lot of times I am on the outside looking in and people might say if they are not all talking to me then something must be wrong with me but I beg them to look at these female groups and to see the lies and pretense that keeps these friendships glued together. For all I know they probably secretly hate each other. I don't want to have any part of that because I am not very good at pretending or lying. 

I don't think any child should have to be afraid of where he was born. It's the first place he should think of running back to when he is in trouble. Why would anyone make a birthplace uncomfortable for a child is beyond me. Make your home a happy place. There should always be one safe place in this world where any child can feel secure and that safe place should be in their home. 

Don't teach your children to hate without a cause. Don't create enemies for them and get them tied up in dramas and battles that they will fight or might die for without reason. You may not always be there to defend them and it is never prudent to raise children that people are distrustful of because of your parental values. Teach children to be cautious but loving so they will never add to harshness of this world and at the same time he wary of the inherent evil intentions of some men. 

What is wrong with today's black generation ?

What does black history month mean to my generation? 

A lot of elders complain that they do not know what is wrong with today's black generation. I beg to ask them what was wrong with theirs? Children don't become what you want, they become who you are. Our elders should reflect upon what went wrong during the era when today's young adults were children. Maybe just maybe they might find the answers to the problems of this "generation".  They raised a world of children who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. A money grabbing, instant gratification over profundity seeking and "step pon them" culture of people. 

It all went wrong when my Dad's generation decided that they would no longer allow individuals outside of the family setting to scold their children. Children grew up feeling as if there is no societal repercussion for their behavior and that as long as family members do not express dissent then to hell with society. The results we have are young people devoid of values and parents burying their children.