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𝐀𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀 𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐄𝐃. 𝐀𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀 𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐄𝐃.
𝗡𝗢 𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗘 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗕𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗠𝗘𝗡
𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐖𝐀𝐘, 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐈 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐀𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀 𝐎𝐑 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐘 𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟕?
Question asked by confidants, cynics, and the disdainful alike. To the extent that the current existential reality of the world, and that of myself as an individual remain unimproved, I’ll stay in Norway. I couldn’t live in Africa. Suffering from chronic post-colonialism Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Africa is a place just too messed up for me. I’ve lost all hope for the future of Africa as a progressive, equal geopolitics partner.
Acknowledging the presence of exceptional individual African minds; also, the potential of imparting good citizenry awareness to children and youth, my hope is not really totally lost. Addressing the attendant transgenerational trauma with a view to healing it is a long parallel process.
Were I to be a national political leader in Africa, I’d become a tyrant overnight as I’d be brutal against the corrupt, incompetent, and insolent ignoramuses. I rather prefer working at the grass-roots.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
09 September, 2022
𝗢𝗡 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗜𝗜
ɪɴꜰᴏʀᴍᴇᴅ ꜱᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴏɴ ᴡᴏᴍᴇɴ’ꜱ ꜱᴇxᴜᴀʟ ʀᴇᴘʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ
I came to the world via South Africa, where I spent the first fourteen-and-half years of my life, June 1960-January 1975. As I get older and older for each new year that comes and goes, the impact that growing up in that country has had on my fundamental views of life becomes ever more glaring. That as I strive to make sense of the multitudinous manifestations of horrendous sociological choices outcomes in the world today. In that sense, I was born at the right place, in my time.
The horrendous sociological choices outcomes I mention above arising from apparent mental derangement states in which some of our national and global political leaders thrive as they pathetically engineer society to perpetual dysfunctionality. They think out, formulate, and work to impose outrageous rules and laws that are obviously detrimental to the well-being of society. In fact, these lunatics present an existential threat to human and other life on earth. This as evidenced by national social upheavals owing to ever degenerative leadership quality across the world.
Social collapse attendant to dominant degenerate ethico-political leadership characteristically culminate in civil and international wars, ill-management of potential and actual natural catastrophes, including pandemics. The current Covid-19 pandemic is supposed to have given the world a wake-up call. Of course, this is an outlandish idea to many a national-global leader, and, not in the least, a segment of the new socio-cultural influencer class at the same scale. The latter extensively prevalent in the vast and ever so rapidly growing internet social media platforms sphere.
In the world today, Rocket Science knowledge is not a pre-requisite for the ability to pinpoint where on the globe the scum of society are all out to deprive people of the right to live free and happy in the abundance of survival resources existence provides for all. It’s all on Google. It’s all in the news. If you read and/ listen to conspiracy theories news publications, you are no different from the scum of the earth. Wretched souls beyond redemption. Shame.
Growing up in South Africa, I was from an early age mentally conditioned that I might at some point have to sacrifice my schooling opportunities for the benefit of my younger sister, Sisi. Prime assumption being that misfortune could somehow befall my parents. In that event, they would eventually fail to finance my siblings’ and I’s education, caught up in the doldrums of endemic Black South Africans’ poverty-stricken existence.
Seen from a global human perspective, parenting and all that it entails is what it is by default. It is not my intention to want to trivialize the challenges of parenting elsewhere. But parenting in the then inherently doomed, dysfunctional, systemically racist Apartheid South Africa was an arduous, unpredictable endeavour for Black people: unemployment, disease, violence, rampant sudden death. Other than the new faces on drivers’ seats of post-Apartheid South African socio-economic transformation state machinery, not much has changed for the masses of the underprivileged in the country, though.
It was never difficult for me to understand that in the event that some tragedy would befall my parents, especially my father, I’d have to stop schooling, go find work, and earn some money to continue where they’d have left to financially support the family. The idea that I’d defy the misfortune fate of my people had already been long engrained in my head. Therefore, it wasn’t accidental that my mother encouraged me to earn my own pocket money by selling oranges on the streets during school holidays. I was ten years old the first time. Three years later, 1973, I landed my first ever formal employment job as a junior waiter at a then Whites Only Italian Restaurant in my hometown, Welkom.
I’m still alive. With variable rates of success over the years, I have lived to fulfill my obligations as a supportive elder brother to my two surviving siblings from my mother. Owing to circumstances beyond my control, I haven’t been able to be there for my half-siblings from my father’s other procreative endeavours exterior to my mother, prior to or after their marriage.
Any fool ought to know by now that education is a historically powerful facilitatory tool to appreciable degrees of progressive participation in, and gain from socio-economic activities of our modern, digital age global society. Indeed, some guys with all the luck and some other special attributes will become economically and politically high and mighty without having gone far by way of academic education attainment. These may or may not be partners in crime vis-à-vis upliftment or destruction of society.
The unabashed manifestation and relentless growth of misogyny in the later years of my life boggle my mind. That’s because I grew up aware that upon having weighed the options in time, it was a trend in my neighbourhood that priority was given to pushing girls to acquire as much education as possible. The girls could be nurses and teachers when grown up. Costs of more specialized education in medicine, engineering, and other such related fields of academic or professional training were prohibitive. This fact, combined with generally demotivating Apartheid state policies towards Black education, created a major barrier for my people’s pursuit of higher education ambitions.
It made sense to empower girls because, ideally, they grew up to be mothers of the nation, starting with their respective family units. An educated girl subsequently getting married to a well-bred young man was worth gold to her family. In my then community’s perfect world within the context of the imperfect Apartheid world then, boys having sacrificed their own education for their sisters could always come back and continue schooling once their sisters had at least completed pre-university studies. If the plan didn’t succeed, the boys would simply continue working, get married, have children, and see the latter go through the same cycle of sacrifices with little prospects of sustainability in practice.
From my generation in my childhood neighbourhood in Thabong, Welkom, I don’t know of even a single girl that ever obtained at least full high school education level. Although possibly true in some instances, this is not necessarily mainly a result of family economic constraints nor personal cognitive inadequacies.
My only concern, if not fear, about the idea of me delaying my academic advancement for my younger sister’ sake was the potential of her getting pregnant whilst still at school. In that case, that’d be the end of dreams, for both of us, of a better life derived from well-paying jobs education aspiringly led to. Experience showed that once the boys entered the labour market, not many ever got the opportunity to continue with their educational ambitions later on as life progressed.
If anything, the boys would also soon make other girls pregnant and then get caught in the trap of lasting poverty as they get overwhelmed by economic hardships of their own. Paradoxically, once a young girl got pregnant, that was it: she was finished. No more school. Never. As a general observation, which to a large extent remains true to this day, early-age pregnancy totally destroyed girls’ lives. The situation would be worse if the impregnator refused to take responsibility for looking after or supporting the immature mother-to-be.
My mother-tongue, Sesotho, is the most disparaging, derisive language I know. In Sesotho, a young girl getting pregnant is described as ‘o senyehile’. It means that ‘she is destroyed’. And she’ll be treated as such by both her family and the community. She’s brought shame not only to the family but everyone around her. At worst, she’d be treated with much disrespect. Boys and men now seeing her as cheap, and, therefore, reduce her to a readily available sexual object moving forward. Consent not a concept adhered to by the male sex predators in this case. Many a girl’s life has been destroyed this way, culminating in suicides in the extreme.
‘O ntshitse mpa’ translates as ‘She has taken out the stomach’. Abortion is described as ‘Ho ntsha mpa’ in Sesotho, therefore. Graphically, ‘Ho ntsha mpa’ as a process means ‘to remove the stomach’. Consequently, I’ve since my childhood days associated abortion with excruciating physical pain for the girls concerned. As I grew older in my mid-late teens, I began to be cognizant of, and think independently on ethical and moral issues. It was at this point that I concluded lastingly that regardless of the circumstances prevailing around a pregnancy, it must be an extremely tortuous decision for a woman to choose to terminate it.
As a firmly held philosophical stand-point, I concluded that it took much resolve and courage for a woman to choose to endure the physical and emotional pain that abortion necessarily entails. This is one area in which I feel and think that women manifest magnanimity deserving the highest and unreserved admiration. To force a woman to carry to the full a pregnancy that’s uncontestably detrimental to her physical and mental health, if not life-threatening, ought to be the crime.
Abortion as a medically defensible procedure to safeguard and enhance the well-being of women in the living ought to be a right understood from a woman’s perspective. Stupid old men who have no practical idea at all about what it takes and feels to be pregnant and subsequently give birth must stay out of promulgating laws that interfere with women’s sexual reproductive health rights. Anti-abortion women dancing to the tunes of stupid conservative old and young men are traitors against their own kind. These women need help. When one woman appallingly postulates that another woman can opt for abortion at the point of actual birthing, it suggests some serious mental imbalance issues. Another one is about women aborting children already born. Jeeezzuzzz!!!
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
July 25, 2022
TO BOOSTER OR NOT TO BOOSTER
SCIENCE WORKS
I didn’t announce my Covid-19 booster jab uptake in the second week of December, 2021. There were more important matters to give priority to at that time. Besides, I’m under no obligation to fuss about my vaccination status. It isn’t as if I’m an attention-seeking freak on the radar of 15-minutes of fame news media platforms, or some socio-politico special interests groups. Neither am I promoting nor am I linked to any commercial or industrial entities in the pharmaceutical and medical business spheres.
I am an independent thinker and observer of my world; a one-man intellectual and creative powerhouse. Nobody owns me. I own nobody. I autonomously synthesize my life philosophy out of all the knowledge resources accessible to me at any one time in my free world.
Some people in my various social and professional networks wonder about where all this Corona hassle and the vaccine hysteria will end. They ask me if I shall take jab number four should yet another significant Coronavirus disease variant emerge. But, of course, I shall, yes!
I will happily take all the jabs that official medical and state authorities recommend according to the situation as it unfolds. That’ll be so to the extent that my physical and mental health does not fail me. The assumption being that, in the latter wellness state, I continue to be able to discern crap from science and reason. The day I cease to think about, and see my world from a perspective of science and reason, I might as well be dead.
Science doesn’t stop working. Science in all its natural and sociological branches is about querying the nature of our material and conceptual existence. Science is ever curious about elements of existence concerning the extent to which our senses relate to our existential realities within the accessible universe and beyond. This is called Scientific Research. The basic idea is the need to understand the workings of nature contra our place in it.
In the pursuit of knowledge acquisition, science travels millions of light-years into space, defies suboceanic and subterranean pressures, and breaks down matter to the smallest particles. Human progress as we know it today is a living showcase of the workings of science applied in the total upliftment of the human condition worldwide. How equitable or not that human condition is across the board is a matter for discussion at another time, another place.
In a perfect world, therefore, it’s through understanding maximally possible the essence of nature and its attributes that we can harness its potential to enhance our quality of life on earth. In the hands of screwed-up minds, knowledge of the potential and limitations of nature is, indeed, used to degrade, if not destroy life on earth. In this case, knowledge is worse than ignorance. Ignorance is the conduit of ill intentions of the malevolent.
Working hand-in-hand, malicious knowledge and inherently uncritical ignorance make for the prevalence of detrimental conspiracy theories in times of uncertainties and imminent paradigm shifts in society. The latter may be due to man-made, or natural calamities at any level, necessitating that we, humanity, have to dig deep into our knowledge base to find solutions to existential threats pertaining. The current Coronavirus pandemic and the Global Warming crisis are relevant examples. Also, not in the least, the pandemic of pathological ignorance that’s characterizing many a calamitously dysfunctional, tyrannical national leader in the world today. This is where and when science shines through Research and Development. In-depth sociological research and analysis seek to find and correct incongruencies societal engineering mechanisms as developed and applied by the state and its relevant functional units.
Science doesn’t stop working because it’s not an end in itself. Science is not absolute in its dynamics and outcomes. For anticipated scientific outcomes to be true, certain material and operational parameters have to be defined and fulfilled. Science work starts from known facts or assumptions, natural or constructed, regarding the phenomena to be investigated. For science, its methods, and subsequent outcomes to remain true, they have to be functionally and outcomes constant. Moreover, and decisively, they have to be universally applicable.
When things go wrong, as they will always do, science pauses and checks for any errors that may have led to the disruption. Once identified, the errors might be rectified accordingly, or modifications might be effected as necessary. It’s the nature of science to ever strive to find universally applicable solutions. In cases of perfect states of operations leading to perfect outcomes, science strives to improve processes to take the outcomes to the next level. This is scientific innovation: making it better all the time to achieve higher productivity and product efficacy levels.
The element of positive chance outcomes does occur in scientific work. These positive outcomes arising may be integrated to take the current work to the next level. That only to the extent that the former remain universally constant according to standard, or relevantly adjusted parameters, as well as routines.
Just as science anticipates and warns across the world, people not taking recommended Covid-19 vaccinations are dying like flies caught up in insecticide spray mists. My sympathy extends to those that couldn’t take any vaccines due to scientifically justifiable reasons. From a basic humane perspective, though, I do feel for anybody else dying of their skewed suicidal knowledge of science and nondysfuntional societal management principles.
Although it’s perhaps difficult to quantify the value of a lost life, death makes perfect socioeconomic’ sense. When we die, we are buried at a certain one-time monetary cost. And that’s it. Written off as in Bad Debt in business. Where applicable, the bereaved get fat Life Insurance policies pay outs, inherit big fortunes, and live happily ever after.
Hospitalizing, acute sickness is too costly for society. Just as temporarily or permanently incapacitating illnesses and injuries are atrociously costly for society. On the surface, to deliberately choose to fall ill, and/ or die from scientifically manageable diseases in 21st Century affluent societies beats me. However, the day I got to understand the physiological dynamics of how our thought processes and our outward manifestations of the same as to our choices and actions work, I found inner peace.
Author/ Storyteller/ Poet/ Publisher/ Warrior/ Machona Son
I’ve come to adore life more. We live as we are. We die as we live. I live with a smile on my face. I’ll happily wear an anti-Corona mask. Some say I smile with my eyes. I can live with that. I cannot die with a ventilator over my face.
The hustler in me is propelled by my Warrior Ethos of Live Well. Die Fighting. Open your mind, apply all the science, philosophy, artillery, and common sense at your disposal.
Officially proven anti-Coronavirus vaccinations and recommended preventive measures contra the virus are in sync with my Warrior Ethos. Works for me. Bring all the boosters on. Corona must fall. I want my life back!
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
January 09, 2022
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, MACHONA POETRY – Rage and Slam in Tigersburg
VREDE
HVA VET JEG
Hva vet jeg
Jeg, som du sier
Er en primitiv mann
Preget av afrikanske jungle kultur
Der mennesker spiser hverandre
Er jeg da her
For å kannibalisere deg
Glemm det, mann, sier du
Her i riket ditt
Er det sivilisasjon som herjer
Her finnes det lys
Noe som er gunstig
For hjerneutvikling, sier du
Som om hudfargen min
Oppsluker lys hvor jeg kommer fra
Tvert i mot, egentlig
Det er ikke tilfeldig at
Dere skriver og leser bøker
Dere som er verdens
Kulturelle elite som nasjon
Noe som jeg ikke er
I stand til å forstå
Med min mindre utviklede jungelhjerne, mener du
Hva vet jeg
Om likestilling
Jeg, som du sier
Som forakter kvinnfolk
Jeg som er ute etter
Å overta ditt liv
For å utnytte deg
Som kjæledyret mitt
Glemm det, mann, sier du
I kvinnerettighetenes navn
Forlanger du at
Jeg skal respektere deg
Egentlig, insisterer du videre at
Jeg må beundre deg
Du er min gudinne
Jeg skal være slaven din
Slaveri tendens ligger jo i afrikaneres gener
Det burde jeg vite, påpeker du
I helvete, svarte fæn
Våken opp
La deg integrere i sivilisasjonens land
Kvitt deg med
Dine primitive vaner
Hør på meg
Gjør som jeg sier
Uten meg er du ferdig
Du er ingenting
Skal du leve lenge
Og nyte det gode livet
I dette verdens beste
Hviteste hvite land
Må du oppføre deg pent
Sitt i ro og fred
Under mine vinger
Din sjel er i mine hender
Vær ydmyk og snill, slaven min
Mamma skal ta godt vare på deg
Snille lille gutten min
Kjære slaven min
Jeg bjeffer
Du hopper
Avtale
Sier du
Si noe, da
Brøler du
Ikke bare stå der og glane
Gjør noe
Vil du slå meg
Vil du pule meg
Gjør ett eller annet
Eller dra til helvete
Hva gjør du nå
Stans
Du drar intet sted
Før jeg er ferdig med deg
Mann, du er stygg og dum
Skam til den kvinnen
Som måtte føde deg
Stakkers dame
Hvor uheldig kan en kvinne være
Ved å føde deg
Så stygg og dum som du er
Og du kaller henne for mor
Fy søren, er det mulig
Ikke kom nær meg
Bare ta et steg frem
Og da skal du oppleve
Hvordan vikingenes vrede flytter fjell
Og skaper tsunamier i verdenshavene …
(Continues in the book MACHONA POETRY: Rage and Slam in Tigersburg)
©Simon Chilembo 07/05-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Telephone: +4792525032
September 20, 2021
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
I REFUSE – A Poem
Fairytales in My World
Must I look away
From children
In my daily
Living spaces
On 2021 17 May
Norway’s National Day
Show-casing tangible
Children’s worth and joy
In a free world of peace
Whilst other children perish
At this very moment
In ravages of war
In baby Jesus’ world
Where peace is but
A concept in foreign vocabularies
Studied in Military Sciences
At Ivy League universities
Of this world
Jesus was a child of the wind
May be reason why
Nobody cares about
The fate of
Children of the soil
When the missiles rain out there
Must I obliterate myself
From the scene
The moment I hear
Children’s voices
In my proximity
Must I sing
I would rather go blind
Than to see
Children’s eyes on me
In their fields of vision
Fields of play
Must I be
Malignant angel
To a child
Warming my heart
With their purity of emotion
As I sense them
Must I suppress
My paternal instincts
To want to assure
A child that
I want only to
See them happy
Exuberant and free
Must I refrain from
Singing for a child
Dancing for them
Clowning for them
Reaching out
To touch them
For them to feel
The warmth
The honesty
Of my actions
My intentions
Must I ever look over my shoulders
In children’s presence
For fears
Of my actions
My intentions
Being misconstrued
By eyes
Seers of whom
For reasons obtaining
From their own fears
The nature of their lives’ journeys
Has taught them
To see only evil
In the acts of
The joyous
Glowing in the light
Of children
Yet to know
The sentiment of envy
The force of hate
I refuse
‘cause
I don’t know
How not to suffuse
Pure affection profusion
In view of children
I refuse
To succumb
To malicious fairy tales’ pitfalls by
Delusional prejudicial minds
Seeing reality
Through
Diabolic colours-tinted lenses
Tainting my honour
In view of confrontations with
Their own insecurities
In which their design
Their display
My hands
Never had a role to play
Could never want to
Never
Never
Never
On the contrary
My hands sought
Only
To build
Pillars of strength
Towers of power
Alas
In a moment of
Attention gone astray
Monsters were birthed …
(Continues in the book MACHONA POETRY: Rage and Slam in Tigersburg)
©Simon Chilembo 16/05-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
May 30, 2021
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
COLOUR OF MY SKIN – A Poem
AS IS COLOUR OF MY SKIN I AM
I’m ‘y skin colour
I waste no light
You see no colour
You’re out of sight
Light shines through you
Your
Condescendence
Ignorance
Insensitivity
Superficiality
Ubiquitous
I walk
My colour
I talk
My colour
I breathe my colour
I live my colour
You see no colour
I run over you
My voice colour laser
Pierces your eardrums
You choose not to see
You choose not to hear
You’ll never learn
You’ll stay colourless
Dumb
You might as well
Be dead
Bigot
Your words say
And I quote
Oh, dear
I am indeed white
And that is a fact
God-given
My blood is
Racism pure-red-free
White is my world
Pure and clean
I do not see
Black in the people of God
Black is the colour of shame
That notwithstanding
Black is the appearance of the colour of the skin of my lover
When we perform coitus
I shut my eyes closed
Really
I do not see colour
I feel only delight
Primal pleasures of the flesh flavour
Close quote
Clearly
Your vision
Is twisted
Your hearing
Is clogged
Even then
I invite you
To read my lips
If you can
For one last time
Vocalize my words
Inside your head
For you to hear
What I have
To say to you
I’m colour of my skin
I give meaning to light
Black define’ space
In your time
Black colours
Contours of your life
Black contrasts the universe
For creation’s diversity
Ever unfolding
Inside of you
In everything
Your senses perceive
In your world
Big or small
I’m colour of my skin
I stand here
A plural faced prism
I disperse light
In all directions
In all its
Spectrum splendour
Colour possible tones
Imagination unbound
When some call me
A person of colour
It’s because
They see something
Of themselves
In me
In all corners of the world
The day you decide
To open your eyes
Come into me
Find the colour of your skin
For who you truly are
Walk with me
Your colour
If you want
As I walk mine
Walk my talk
Your ears might heal
Talk my colour
Your ears might hear
They might be
Receptive
To Black person
Dancing
In the light
Singing
You cause me harm
For colour of my skin
You harm yourself
See my colour
See yourself
Feel your pain
For the day
Light might cease
Falling on me
In the dark
Everything is possible
You created Satan
Made it
My alter ego
And yet
Satan is
The face
Of your fear of my skin
Of your hate
Of the colour of my skin
I’m shining bright
In the light
Of the smart
Come in sight
Self-knowledge is might
Sit tight
Time is right
Waste no light
I’m infinite
By right
I’ll teach you right
Colour of my skin is erudite
Just treat me right
I wish you might
Expedite
Be contrite
For your spite
Immortal is
Colour of my skin
Get used to it
See colour
If only
For your longevity
Life is good
For the colourful
In a world
Tainted by
The
But me
I don’t see colour
I see people
Oh, yeah
People come in
All colours
All shapes
All sizes
You blind
To that reality
Move to the side
Stay out of sight
Moron
END
©Simon Chilembo 23/ 03-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
March 29, 2021
Tel.: +4792525032
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
ALL IN THE HANDS
The Hands Know
It’s all in my hands
I see her
Call her Stella
I clasp the hands
To feel the mutual pull
Of the palm middles
Pulsating onto each other
I get to feel
Balance of
The center of the universe
Heat of
Fire of belly of the earth
That I feel in the hands
Gets my little finger
To twitch
Telling me that
My heart
Is with me
I’m in love
My ring finger
Kicks out
Telling me that
Stella’s wife material
The middle finger
Itches
Telling me that
We have to ensnare her
Into our love kingdom
Knock onto her heaven’s door
Trigger off
Her fires of desire
The index finger points
Straight out at her
To single her out from the rest
Stella sure is the one
By any measure
Better than the rest
She is the one
The thumb’s up
It tells me that
It’s all systems go
It’s now or never
She disappears
Over the horizon yonder
We’ll never see here again
Images of her
Flash in my mind
My hands tremble
Non-stop
I put my hands together
Porcupine quills tingle
My skin
Goosebumps pervade
My body surfaces
From toe-to-finger-to-head
If
I can’t breathe
It’s not for
A man’s knee on my neck
Love sighs for Stella
Take my breath away
My hands get epileptic
I can’t reach out
To touch her
The seizure goes
I fold my arms
Hide my hands
Under my armpits
The warmth soothes me to sleep
I dream
Stella’s back tomorrow
My hands wake me up
END
©Simon Chilembo 22/ 11- 2020
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
March 08, 2021
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PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
THE 500K CASE – A Poem
PANDEMIC FATALITIES
This year 2021
I’ll hit
My second life
500 000 kroners
Fortune mark
Beyond which
I’ll stop counting
As the zeros grow’n’grow
I’ll start kicking creditors
In the butt
Big Daddy
Mr Big Money Maker
Back in town …
…
What you gon’ do
When 500 000 ghosts
Nightmare your sleep
One night at a time
One spectre at a time
When your
500 million dollars creditors
Get on your case
Fight like hell
Want a noose[1]
The Capitol is calling
Save your pennies
END
©Simon Chilembo 14/ 02- 2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
February 14, 2021
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
FURTHER READING: “List of unproven methods against COVID-19” on Wikipedia.
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
[1] The Atlantic, It Was Supposed to Be So Much Worse, Godfrey, E, Author, https://bit.ly/3u1IMW7, (accessed 14 February 2021)
DOCTORS OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES
KNOW THY DOCTOR
From a societal existential, functional, and progress contributary perspective, we become what we become and do what we do out of an interplay of various constant and vicissitudinous factors. Listed not in order of significance, the latter may include:
- Planetary geographical location. That in consideration of the impact the diversity of planetary ecologies has on us in our survival endeavours over time and space. For example, people living in tundra regions of the north organize themselves and relate to nature differently from those living in the Equatorial zones. And those living in the desert as well.
- Inherent personal attributes. These form the basis for our ability, or lack of, to make choices towards the attainment of certain pre-determined or chance outcomes. The quality and impact of the outcomes may be understood regarding the individual’s attributes as manifest through, amongst others:
• Overall state of health.
• Cognitive capabilities.
• Stated, or perceived wants and needs: ambition.
• Communication skills at various levels: day-to-day verbal interaction with others; creative expressions through a variety of mediums according to personal proclivities – multimedia, art and design, literature, artistic performance, athleticism. - The station in life. This determines access to resources necessary for sustainable holistic existence. Access to resources being, in turn, a function of privileges attendant to the hierarchy of social relations giving rise to stations in life, or status: the food chain.
Those in the highest echelons of the food chain, often a minority relative to the general populace, have the greatest access to all kinds of resources across the board. They sustain their positions’ privileges by deliberately limiting the lowly stationed access to, if not total exclusion from access to even the most basic of survival imperatives resources – landed property and derivative productive and mineral resources thereof, health services, education, defence from enemies, and protection from natural or man-made catastrophes.
The above explains historical and contemporary societal inequities the world over, giving rise to classes: privileged upper classes contra subjugated lower classes. Depending on analytical perspectives taken, this societal class stratification can be viewed in terms of wealth or poverty owing to land ownership or land disenfranchisement; the former enabling political domination backed by superior military capabilities.
Brute military and economic might are ever applied to tilt societal inequities in favour of the privileged upper classes, also referred to as the ruling elite. This is consolidated in the land-grabbing phenomenon of imperialism. Colonialism is the settling in of imperialist subjects and agents to secure and further the interests of the imperialist foreign powers.
Short of needing lower classes for labour exploitation as slaves and performers of menial chores, as well as subjecting them to other abuses such as rape of children and adults of both sexes, privileged classes would rather see the former eliminated from the face of the earth: genocide. To justify and defend their dominance and its resultant privileges, the ruling elite develops and propagates manipulatory social control methods through religion and philosophy.
Religion presents ideas of a God that has designated power to the chosen elite. According to the doctrines of God, as in Christianity, those that are oppressed are enduring suffering because of their inherent sins against God. Their salvation lies in serving the elite in the name of God. They shall be rewarded in heaven if God forgives them after death. Unforgiven sinners shall burn in the eternal fire of hell upon their demise. Theories of some racial or ethnic groups being superior over others, that being proof of their enjoying God’s favours, are more often than not rooted in religion.
However, as history shows across the epochs, the oppressed shall at some point rise to claim their freedom and right to live on equal terms with or depose those of the dominant classes on their lands. Also, historical and current civil and international wars across the world are fundamentally about competing forces seeking either to maintain their hegemony one over the other or the oppressed seeking to overturn the status quo.
In their efforts to sustain morale amongst their own and to garner support locally and abroad, the antagonistic forces will each device their unique information strategies: propaganda, PR (Public Relations). This is Communication Skills in action as highlighted in item no. 2 above. It can make or break a cause. - Fate: luck, misfortune. Things just happen or just don’t happen.
Therefore, anybody can be anything, including a doctor, in the world today. It’s a function of where we are at any one time, and the choices we make as to our personal cognitive abilities. It’s also about how empowered we are from the point of view of access to relevant resources in response to available, or in search of opportunities; and sheer luck. The latter relating to one being at the right place at the right time when opportunities present themselves as if from nowhere.
Doctors in any field of study are only human like everyone else. The only difference is that they’ll have endured long study careers; spanning at least seven years in many cases. In their research endeavours, doctors will read more books and write more texts than few unlearned people can ever fathom. Medical (MDs) and veterinary doctors (DVMs) will have dissected scores of human corpses and animal carcasses during their studies.
In subsequent professional work, doctors will continue to cut and put together bodies in connection with surgical procedures required for the treatment of certain illnesses and injuries. There is a socially constructed mystical aura about doctors arising from their perceived power to act as if they are extensions of God in so far as, in some situations, they can decide whether or not people shall live or die. We are all at the mercy of doctors’ goodwill, thanks for the presence of professional ethics and the law when we require medical attention. A humbling reality.
Doctors command much admiration in society. And, by extension, they are extremely influential as role models and trendsetters. This entails far above-average levels of responsibility, integrity, ethical and moral awareness.
To stay relevant, doctors read and write all the time; constantly honing their intellectual knowledge and professional skills. As such, doctors are fountains, curators, and purveyors of knowledge. Attainment of a professional doctor title (MD, PhD) is no mean achievement. It denotes ownership of superior knowledge in a given field of study.
Regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, race, religion, colour or creed, a doctor is a doctor when so officially qualified and recognized. The unsolicited address “Doctor So-and-So” is as legitimate and as deserved to Jill, James, Mohamed, Aisha, Wang Yu, or Qaqambile. The world needs more doctors.
On the other hand, doctors do not have a monopoly over knowledge, even in their particular fields of study, or professional work. Hence the imperative of constant reading and research, publications, lectures, public appearances across as many platforms as possible, and collaboration with peers within their and across other disciplines. The human knowledge database and its potential are infinitely vast. Outstripping the walls of all libraries of the world put together, it grows exponentially every day. This is especially true in the 21st Century, the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The unfortunate reality, though, is that human capacity to acquire knowledge, to learn, is only so much. Much as is the capacity to integrate the knowledge, see and explore the interconnectedness of the wider and stupendously diverse planetary knowledge bases. The ability to apply specific knowledge acquired as a foundation for understanding other branches of knowledge is a mark of a sophisticated doctor-title-holder, if not any other individual that has attained higher level academic education, for that matter.
Things get even better and more exciting to the extent that the highly educated individual with the fancy “Dr” title can synthesise new exploratory and explanatory models to contribute not only to the growth of knowledge, but to its curation, as well as conveyance for the universal betterment of society, ever enhancing the overall quality of life for all on earth.
There are holders of multiple PhD degrees the only value of which is in their hanging in golden frames on the wall as if they were acquired solely for decorative purposes in the home or places of work. Bad taste. Useless knowledge acquisition. That to the extent that their owners are lacking in the capacity to apply the knowledge that the degrees symbolize in the development of their immediate and distant world communities.
- Dr McBrain Stalebreadpride, “You know, I am a very much highly educated man. I have more PhDs than all your tribesmen put together.”
Mr Simpleton MacHumblepie, “What does that mean?”
- Dr Stalebreadpride, “I am the cleverest man this country has ever produced. All my degrees are first-class from UK and America, not Russia, by the way.”
Mr MacHumblepie, “Is that it?”
- Dr Stalebreadpride, “Oh, yes, I am the chosen one. Praise God Almighty. Amen!”
Mr MacHumblepie, “O-oooo…, I see. Bless you! You are lucky, heey?” - Dr Stalebreadpride, “Sure thing. When you’re hot, you’re hot. Come, I buy you beers, you poor peasant. I can buy you and sell you at a loss. Doctors make money, my friend!”
Enhanced quality of life necessarily implies saving human lives ever threatened by disease, crime, wars, and natural or man-made disasters. Thus, fulfilling mankind’s apparent innate aspiration for longevity, if not immortality, and the creation of a paradise on earth. In this paradise on earth, all shall live equitably happily ever after. All shall optimally enjoy the abundance of the bounty of the earth without fear and hindrances from any source. In these conditions, human knowledge base potential can only thrive on and on in an infinite loop of self-perpetuation. This is where the value of doctor level education lies. It differentiates socially intelligent, cultured higher education graduates from the mediocre.
Talking about saving human lives brings to mind the fallibility of doctors. As I have put forth above, doctors are only human just like everyone else. Moreover, doctors are not absolute wells of knowledge. Doctors are not gods. Through active learning of natural and social sciences, they have worked to acquire superior knowledge about what life implies and how it thrives and ceases on planet earth. Comprehension of how life on earth relates to the wider universe and beyond is an important content of the higher learning encapsulated “Dr” title superstardom.
Needless to say, therefore, that, like ordinary mortals, doctors will have the same fears, insecurities, idiosyncrasies, health and wellness issues that we all have in variable degrees of manifestations at various stages of life; also, in different circumstances. Some will be passive, some will be moderate, some will be extreme. Doctors will be as narcissistic, vain, and attention-seeking as everyone else.
Outside of, but can also happen within the protection of the bubble of the intellectual superstar mystic bubble, doctors can be just as shockingly superstitious, paranoid, controversial, irrational, shallow-minded, myopic, vulnerable, manipulative, corrupt, injurious, treacherous, obstinate, and arrogant as everyone else. It is in this category that Doctors of Conspiracy Theories are found.
Doctors of Conspiracy Theories are the most dangerous of conspiracy theories, truth falsification peddlers. That is due to the high regard society affords doctors and other influential, highly educated individuals. They come from all corners of the world. Therefore, in the current Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic debacle with countless denialists and anti-vaxxers* doing the rounds on the internet and other fora, it is of utmost importance to know how to identify and discard factual falsehoods against verifiable scientific information**. I address this matter in my newest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
February 05, 2021
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
FURTHER READING: “List of unproven methods against COVID-19” on Wikipedia.
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
*JANUARY 21, 2021: BREAKING NEWS – Responding to reports that African and Eastern European immigrants in Norway are sceptical to vaccines; and have the highest rates of Coronavirusdisease (Covid-19) infections in the country, particularly Oslo, the capital city. Video response introducing the book and my thinking behind it:
**MARCH 09, 2021: BREAKING NEWS – The Covid Vaccines Work, Which Means… | A Doctor Explains: Latest YouTube talk from ZDoggMD
CONSPIRACY THEORIES: TO BE OR NOT TO BE SUSCEPTIBLE
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
From the outset, our physical and physiological attributes as humans are coded in our DNA. Our unique individual manifestations of our conscious and unconscious socio-cultural traits are directly linked to the workings of our visceral systems as dictated by our respective genetic make ups. Personal genome sequencing can reveal actual or potential states of our physical and mental health.
Our overall health status has a bearing as to how we relate to nature; how we carry and present ourselves to society at any level, at any one time. The potential that we have to execute both physical and mental work necessary for our survival in any setting in nature and society is crucially dependent on our state of health.
We shall be robust and function well, living in peaceful co-existence with others to the extent that we are in good health. Though not absolutely defined, but for purposes of this presentation as a starting point, good health presupposes normal, balanced functioning of the visceral system. Meaning that, for example, the physical and chemical functioning of the digestive system from the intake of food to elimination of waste is normal: homeostasis. That supported by as normal and balanced central nervous system. The latter consists of the brain and the spinal column, through which the body’s necessary internal functional reflex signals are transmitted in response to stimulations from the hormonal system.
The brain’s work is manifest through outward expressions of motoric abilities, sense of orientation, feelings, thoughts, language, and recollection. That in the beginning we are what we are as social beings, and that we can only be what we are presently is a function of how the brain works given the nature of its wiring, or development.
All things remaining equal, the ever-complex interplay of human developmental processes from fertilization to birth to subsequent growth into adulthood, determines how the brain shall interpret for us what it makes of reality in our immediate and distant ecologies. In order that we shall instinctively or consciously respond accordingly in any given context, the brain shall respond and structure our behaviour according to messages conveyed through the central system. These messages are conditioned by specific hormonal responses. The hormonal responses are transported in the bloodstream.
In joyous moments, we shall express happiness through various ways – laughter, dance, storytelling, and much more – because the brain has come under the influence of happiness hormones: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins. In moments of fear, the brain is powered by adrenaline. Closely related to the latter is cortisol, the stress hormone.
The brain constantly feeds and reinforces our behavioural attributes, as well as expressions thereof in given situations. It conditions our view of the world. As the brain works, qualitatively developing in sophistication or degenerating depending on circumstances, our world view may stay parochial or variable over time. This defines an individual’s mental disposition.
Things fall apart when, out of a myriad of potential causes, the brain is either not fully developed or it both cognitively and physiologically degenerates with time. Things don’t get any better when the brain serves, or is serviced by a body in obvious pathological disorder. Things get even more interesting when the brain is stimulated by visceral, central nervous, and hormonal systems chronically out of balance. Meaning that the systems either individually or collectively do not work optimally as a synergic functional order to ensure good health for the individual.
The visceral, central nervous, and hormonal systems may be out of balance as an inherent outcome. They may come out of balance as a result of external factors also: diseases, aging, intoxicating substances, electro-magnetic radiations, amongst others.
That we are as we are as individuals is not an accident, therefore. Through our constant or variable behavioural attributes, we are expressions of our mental dispositions as an outcome of, or in reaction to given existential circumstances. As human beings, our personal genomes are a subset of the grander human genome.
The human genome is the key determinant factor that ensures successful sexual reproduction amongst people of the world. That irrespective of race, colour, religion, or creed. This fact essentially crushes racism to pieces because the oneness of humanity is imprinted in the core of, if not in the fundamental building blocks of the human organism.
Humanity’s oneness is not visceral in a manner of speaking; it is visceral for real. It is in our blood. Differentiation in blood types is more an evolutionary response to the body’s ability to resist infectious diseases. It also enables adaptation to durable ecological transformations either in one location, or consequent upon relocations from space to space in search of better and more life-sustaining environments.
Response to hunger, sexual drive, variable climatic conditions, fear, affection, and numerous other survival imperatives sensations are a common factor across humans the world over. Humans are driven by the same needs and wants. Differences occur in the competition for the fulfilment of these needs and wants by way of ownership of resources or circumstances facilitating this. Ownership ensures lasting control of supply and distribution of resources and facilitative circumstances.
Ownership entails power. Power, actual deliberate exertion of effort energized by applicable material and conceptual resources, entails domination. Domination entails suppressive rule over weaker competing parties, unilaterally determining the latter’s often undesired, destructive destinies. Suppression ultimately gives rise to rebellions as the oppressed rise to claim their rights to access resources and circumstances imperative for survival: wealth, liberty.
It is in this competitive environment that external human characteristics and cultural practices are applied to justify domination, laying foundations for imperialism and establishments of colonies over generations all over the world. At the same time the human genome and its intrinsic attributes remain a constant.
In terms of human power relations contra survival imperatives fulfilment or lack of, people of identical mental dispositions attract one another. This attraction cuts across all unnatural power barriers instituted to justify domination and dehumanization of others. Political orientations arising in the organization of society are instituted upon people’s mental dispositions influencing and expressing their value judgements. As such, Conservatives don’t like change to the extent that they rule. Whereas Liberals seek to overturn the status quo inhibiting liberty, justice, and equality in society.
Level-headed people are of calm mental dispositions. They are inclined to reason and conventionally held testable truths in the pursuit of finding life-supporting solutions to the ever-present human life existential questions. These people appeal to the like-minded also. The mind being the encapsulation of our total individual view of life as manifest in how we think and act according to how we relate to our existence in the universe
Overt and private choices and activities we engage in by way of vocation, or simply in response to ever-changing realities of life reflect the workings of our minds. The nature, magnitude, qualitative, and intentional aspects of manifestations of the workings of our minds determine the degree to which we shall impact society, both locally and globally.
Great minds are those which inspire and support sustainable human progress in all life’s endeavours. That may be through political thought and philosophy, science and technology, arts and culture. Great minds are not only sensitive to the suffering of mankind; they strive to eliminate that suffering. Benevolence is a trait that knows no irrational, bigotry boundaries created amongst people of the world in their physical but superficial diversity from the point of view of the right to exist for all.
Small minds are destructive. They are prone to lack of capacity to, or interest in thinking about the big questions of life in a humanity unifying, uplifting manner. They are narrow-one-track-minded. Small minds are self-serving at the expense of others’ wellbeing and right to life worthy of dignity and honour. They ever conspire to create and sustain alternative universes of factually false truths contra mainstream paradigms in society, or against certain individuals, if not certain interest groups.
Small minds thrive on fear, uncertainty, lies, rumour-mongering, deception, manipulation, threats, cruelty, hate, chaos and violence, amongst others. Small minds derange. Small minds are delusional. This mental disposition has its kind of people across the board the world over. It explains how even one of the most blatant, most obnoxious of white supremacists and his white nationalist cohorts have black supporters and apologists. Also Latino supporters. And Asians too.
Above is the premise upon which I base my take on the generic conspiracy theories phenomenon as propounded in my newest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
January 11, 2021
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
JANUARY 21, 2021: BREAKING NEWS – Responding to reports that African and Eastern European immigrants in Norway are sceptical to vaccines; and have the highest rates of Coronavirusdisease (Covid-19) infections in the country, particularly Oslo, the capital city. Video response introducing the book and my thinking behind it:
FURTHER READING 1: “List of unproven methods against COVID-19” on Wikipedia.
FURTHER READING 2: Vaccine misinformation: What to do when it’s coming from leaders – By Tian Johnson• 28 February 2021, Daily Maverick
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Simon Chilembo 