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DOCTORS OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

KNOW THY DOCTOR

©Simon Chilembo 2020

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:

  1. 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.  
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

©Simon Chilembo 2020
Project Management

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

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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.

©Simon Chilembo 2020
Project management

*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 NEWSThe Covid Vaccines Work, Which Means… | A Doctor Explains: Latest YouTube talk from ZDoggMD

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FALSIFIED

I KEEP ON PENNING
 
So
I
With pure heart
Write books
People misunderstand me
 
Powers that be
I cover my mouth
They think they got me
Simon Chilembo

©Simon Chilembo, 2020 – Author/ Forfatter/ Publisher/ CEO 

 
So
I write more books …
(Continued in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)
 
©Simon Chilembo, 23/ 07- 2020
 
 
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
July 24, 2020
 

PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.

Project management

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SYSTEMIC RACISM

BLACK PEOPLE’S FIGMENT OF THE IMAGINATION?

If it is systemic it is broad based according to its time, space, and driving forces. It is enduring. It is transgenerational. It is endemic. It is prolific. It is a constant. It is predictable. It is routine. It is structured. It is devious: transparent one moment, subtle the next.

If it is systemic it is its own universe. It has its own domain of interconnectedness, its own self-preservation, self-perpetuation dynamics, its own fallacies contra conventional wisdom.

If it is systemic it is the noun system in applied form. The term system defines particular arrangements of processes, objects, and concepts designed to deliver set outcomes; precision assuming fulfilment of given pre-determined conceptual and operational parameters. A system represents methods to follow in order to achieve certain outcomes. A system may be natural or man-made.

If it is natural, a system may never fail to the extent that applicable natural laws remain constant. Man-made systems may never fail to the extent that they do not seek to defy the laws of nature.

Racism is a man-made system of thought and behaviour that promulgates and applies ideas that there is, by divine providence, a non-contestable unequal relationship amongst the diversity of ethnicities comprising the human race on earth.

Racism is a political power instrument. It’s a social control force exercised by elite classes to explain and justify their oppression of the weakened and broken for economic domination purposes. Racism as we know it in our times is an off-shoot from the growth of modern capitalism from the 16th Century onwards.

It functions on the irrational classification of human beings according to physical attributes, starting with skin colour and purported cognitive endowments differentiations in favour of dominant classes.

An arbitrary distinction was introduced to classify light-skinned people of Eurasian extraction as being of higher intelligence with the God-given right and power to dominate others of darker skin complexions.

According to racism postulates, the darker-skinned were meant to be at the permanent servitude of the light-skinned. This justified European colonial endeavours the world over, with Africa taking the brunt of it all through the ensuing slave trade that took multitudes of African people into plantation slavery in the Americas.

Racism appears in different forms all over the world. For purposes of this presentation I look at the Eurasian anti-Black racism. This is in view of the current state of global Black Lives Matter debates sparked by the horrific visuals of George Floyd’s heartless murder in Minneapolis, USA, on May 25, 2020.

Along the way to the Americas, millions of other African people perished at sea. As a total dehumanizing experience, colonialism and the Afro-American slave trade have left an indelible trauma in the psyche of African people in the continent and the Diaspora.

At the same time, the White Power movement that grew out of the Eurasian economic might class in North America continues to use the partly successful crushing of the Black African spirit as proof of their superiority.

Fragility of racism as a system starts already with the man-made divine providence principle. Devine providence has no basis in natural law precepts. It lacks consistency, therefore; opening itself to non-ending enquiry leading to infinite inconclusive findings. Doomed to failure in the long term.

Racism’ systematic application of manipulation and overt extreme violence as tools of oppression have persisted, hence systemic racism.

In the White Supremacy racism against the Black world context, systemic racism is the complete set of conceptual and practical tools devised to sustain the status quo of the racists’ unnatural dominance of the Black race in order to perpetuate the one-sided capitalistic exploitation of the subjugated.

The set of tools sustaining White Power systemic racism have long permeated the amoral fabric of Western society and its satellites the world over. Appearing in unique forms in the Middle East and Asia, the methods of subjugation of the downtrodden are the same, amongst others:

  • Part to total disenfranchisement of the oppressed
  • Limitation or total denial of access to education
  • Limited access to wealth creation opportunities
  • Sub-standard living conditions
  • Sustenance of squalor through deliberate minimal to zero provision of social amenities
  • Application of effective brutality against any real or perceived rebellion: police, military
  • Development of a powerful propaganda machinery across society: educational system, culture and sport, media, faith, family
    SYMBOLS: Monuments!
  • Devise a state machinery to ensure functionalities of all the above: bureaucracy – INSTITUTIONALIZE!
  • Teach, reward, and protect agents of state machinery: impunity

Systemic racism is a living reality. It’s not a creation of novel minds. Neither can it be explained away with rhetoric. We use fine language and sophisticated wordcraft to describe it in order to demonstrate that we know well what we are talking about.

Through our articulation, we seek to give systemic racism a face so that those with eyes to see, with brains that think can have something tangible to relate themselves to as we invite them to step into our shoes to learn about our existential realities.

Systemic racism is a well-oiled machine of bigotry and ignorance. It therefore has to be addressed with superior intellectual firepower if we are going to eliminate it from the face of the earth.

In terms of application and experience, racism is a very personal trip. As an object of racism from birth in formerly officially White Supremacist Apartheid South Africa, I know racism when I see it; I know racism when I feel it. I can smell racism from afar.

My personal sensitivity to racism transcends the active or passive practitioner’s ethnicity. Racism comes in packages as colourfully diverse as the human race is. It’s only about degrees of application, and extents of actual or potential damage caused.

Given my background, it goes without saying that I know more about Eurocentric White Supremacist racism than any other form. And, that is my personal experience, and mine alone. Nothing, and no one else compares to that.

No one can define, no one has the right to want to define for me what racism is or what it is not. Doing so is in itself symptomatic of the oppressive, imperialistic nature of racism. At the individual level, application and experience of racism are relative modalities for the aggrieved.

Systemic racism is racism collectivized. Systemic racism steps over the individual and contaminates the group for eventual total domination, if not genocide at worst. In this case, racism is applied institutionally in one-size-fits-all formats.

Meaning that, for example, in the eyes and power tools dispensation of anti-Black White Supremacists’ worlds, when you are Black you are Black. It doesn’t matter how cultured or uncultured, enlightened or non-enlightened you are with regard to integration or non-integration into these worlds.

You may be a shining star highlighting values of White Supremacist ideology with pride and pomp. But, in the end, when you are Black, you are Black: arbitrarily designated as inherently inferior, primitive, savage, divinely cursed to slave for the Whiteman. It’s just the way it is with systemic racism.

It makes sense, therefore, that, to be effective and produce lasting effects, the anti-racism struggle targets systemic racism states institutions, their functionaries, and their symbols.

Because the systemic racism state is ever so strong and intrinsically inclined to apply immediate brutal force to quell dissent, it’s not strange that carnage and destruction to property shall often accompany uprisings against the system. Contemporary and historical examples of that abound in the USA, South Africa, and several Latin American countries.

In cases of extreme indiscriminate systemic racism state violence against the people as we’ve witnessed in the USA lately, the people’s rage will be such that they’ll even target their destructive energy towards “their own innocent Black-owned businesses”.

Self-harm as a form of expressing frustration, hopelessness against overly strong, insensitive forces resistant to change is called self-flagellation in the Bible, the book of systemic racism proponents, even if they hold and read the holy book upside-down.

Manifestations of the socio-economic collapse of post-colonial, post-slavery societies cannot be understood detached from the overall destructive consequences of White Supremacist systemic racism consequences.

Apparent degeneration of moral and ethical values as evidenced through rampant corruption, sexual abuse and violence against children and women as we see across the world today has a direct link to systemic racism practices over the years.

Racism as relentlessly pushed on by White Supremacists has created monsters in its victims.

Violence begets violence. Those who live by the sword die and promote death by the sword. Is this really the kind of world we want to live in in the 21st Century?

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
June 30, 2020

STORM OUTSIDE – A Poem

STORM OUTSIDE

Storm outside
Not of atmospheric pressure variations
Rage of the people
Rumbles through
Earth’s atmosphere
Turbulences the world
From pole to pole

If you circumnavigate
The globe
Precise as a
Substandard complication clock
Marching against time
The people’s rage
Will entangle you
Every minute of the way
In the 21st Century

It is a ferocious storm
It’ll embroil your insides
In degrees
Immeasurable
Unpredictable

It’ll obliterate
Your comfort zones
You’ll run into your bunker
You’ll find it full of your shit

You puke
See
If you can breathe now

Were you ever to
Come out of your delirium
You’d find that
There is order
In the heart of
The storm outside

Rage of the people
Has a cause:

Bullets
Knees
Nooses
Strangleholds
Denying oneness
With the atmosphere
Must cease

I can’t breathe

You kill me
I glide into
The valley of death
My body joins
My ancestral spirits
In the soil

In an instant
My soul trajects
Into outer space

There is no peace here
There is no rest here
All souls I find here
Are floating non-stop
Bouncing on to
Bouncing off
One another
All crying

Where is the love

They say that
We were coerced here
Far too early
When we arrive
Prematurely
Into
The kingdom of God
We land into hell
This is zombie land

This place here
Has no room
For our pains
For our tears
We are far too many
Arriving one after the other
Some souls arrived
Multitudes upon
Multitudes-in-one-at-a-time
Over time
Spanning six hundred years

God cried
Storms rumbled
Across the universe
Ancestral spirits
Hold center of
The earth together

Rage outside is
The people
In the eye of the storm
This is
The mother of all storms

If you thought
Hurricane Florence
Was a tough one
Wettest ever seen
Yes, in your words
From the standpoint of water
If hurricane Dorian scared
The wits out of you
In yet another bizarre display
Of your delusional
State of being
You ain’t seen nothing yet

This time around
The storm is called
George
In this name
Pulsates heartbeats
Of slain Black lives
In your vain pursuit
Of
White supremacy
Dances with the devil
Over six centuries

In
George Floyd’s name
The people say
Time has arrived
To say
Enough is enough
Gianna’s words
Aren’t empty words
When she sang
Daddy changed the world
Either you are with us
Or you perish

Look into
The eye of the storm
The order
In there is simple
Valid for all times
We want equality
We want freedom
We want justice
We want peace
We want solidarity

Let’s breathe!  

Do you wan’ to pray

Go down
On our knees
On the ground

Ever danced in a storm
Play
In the name of love

Hate is subdued
For life

Breathe
Man
Breathe

END
©Simon Chilembo, 05/ 06-2020
In memory of George Floyd, MHSRIP

Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
Tel.: +4792525032
June 05, 2020

PLANT KNEE ON NECK – A Poem

PLANT A KNEE

PLANT A KNEE

You don’t kick
A man
That’s already down
Hands locked
In his back
Chest down
Belly loose
Genitalia nowhere to hide

Prayer
Out of the question

I can’t kneel!

If he is Black
You wanna kill him slow
In Minnesota
On Africa Freedom Day
May 25
Plant your knee
In his neck

I can’t breathe!

Smirk to the world
In front of
2020
Google Earth
Eyes wide open

What can anybody
Do to you

You are white
You are police
You are the power

You breathe
The illusion that
This world is yours
Yet
In your mind’s eye
You fear
To see
Black light
You hallucinate
That
Black depowers
Your world

If your eyes
Could see
Light in black
You’d see
Red on the ground
That is black blood
Red as yours

If your eyes
Could see
Light in
Black eyes dying
You’d see
Your fate

The day
Black Power
Loses sight
Of the soil

The day
Black Power
Sees no point
To rest the knee
Eyes down
Hands clasped
Not in fear
But in humble protest
Against your opaque eyes
Ruled by
Blind thirst for
Black blood
Smelling red iron
Like your blood does
You’re vampire
You ought to know better

Black eyes
Dying today
See
A mind switch
Tomorrow

You just played
Your last trump card
Trump Tower just Blackened
Pit-black energy
Of masterminds of
American Gangster
Cambodian Killing Fields
Hotel Rwanda
Movie’ story lines origins
Liberian civil wars
The Biafra war
The Congo-Zaire-DRC
Rivers of blood
Zimbabwean Gukurahundi
Is coming for you

Vengeance is calling

And then
There goes
The world under
Collapsing in its own
Terrestrial black hole

What are you
Gonna do now
Pervert
Put your hand
In your pants
Rub your dick
For the last time
Coming soon
Is
Your demise

END
©Simon Chilembo, 01/ 06- 2020
In memory of George Floyd, MHSRIP

Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
Tel.: +4792525032
June 01, 2020

 

THE UNTHINKABLE – PT1: A Poem

THE UNTHINKABLE – 1

The unthinkable happens
When it happens
And we pay the price

It’s simple
To kill
One hundred thousand people
In a spring of
One year

Move slow
Like a ship
Sinking in icy waters

Be Stupid: 

No, the ship won’t perish
Water shall freeze
It shall keep the vessel together
Iced machines don’t move, see

We’re doing great
Great job
We won’t drown
Maybe summer will come
Maybe it won’t
We’ll see what happens
You never know

And, yes,
Maybe ice shall turn into water again
Maybe it won’t
Who knows
We see what happens

All we got to do is
Move on with our sailing
We were made to sail
The world over as we want
We are the greatest people ever
In the history of mankind
It’s our right
We deserve it
I won the election
It was perfect
Perfect like
The letter
The call to Ukraine
You know
Perfect like never before

Don’t be sorry:
When
The unthinkable happens
The sea thaws in silence

Ferocious as a tornado
In a silent movie
It swallows down the ship
A hundred thousand people die
Right in front of your eyes
But this is fake reality to you

For each dead person
A hundred thousand pairs of eyes cry
They shed tears
Enough to raise the sea level by
A hundred thousand millimeters
A hundred thousand more
People are going to die
We are all going to perish

Your eyes are dry
You are so stupid
Your brains are so dry-iced
You don’t know
How to cry

Your brains cannot see
That
The solution is
Noah’s ark
The drawings are here
So are the engineers
There is a bit of time yet
Teach people how to swim
Build boats
Train sailors

Your brains are so dry-iced
Your hearing capacity
Is impaired
You cannot listen to reason
When you speak
Your speech spews
Sounds of cracking
Contaminated
Dry-ice that forms your brain …
(Continued in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)

END
©Simon Chilembo, 01/ 05- 2020

Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
Telephone: +4792525032
NB:
Deadliest day, USA – https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/02/who-us-just-reported-deadliest-day-for-coronavirus.html (Total, 02/ 05- 2020: 65,173)
See also: “US coronavirus death toll surpasses 100,000,” https://youtu.be/CVLpAMlaoM8 

PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.

Production management.

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LANGUAGE AND DESCRIPTION OF EXPERIENCE: COVID-19 OUTCOMES CASE

IT IS WHAT YOU SAY

More talk on how to cope with survivor issues around outcomes of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on a personal level. Talk structured around principles of my COOL Coaching (Chilembo Optimal Outcomes Life Coaching) method*.
Pivotal point in awareness of language usage: “Reality manifests itself with impressions that the mind creates as from the language it processes,” Simon Chilembo.
E.g.
1. Ahmet Altan: “… like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through walls with ease.”
2. Mwamedi Semboja, Twitter account tagline: “You can travel anywhere, just by closing your eyes.”

Earlier presentations:
1. SHOULD I DIE: COVID-19 Reflections 
2. CORONA VIRUS DISEASE COVID-19 SHALL FALL: My Reason for Optimism
3. Ode to Manu Dibango: WALK SOUL MAKOSSA
4. SIMON’S KITCHEN IMPROMPTU COVID-19 QUARANTINE VEG STEW

*Subsequently edited and presented in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories

 

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
April 14, 2020

PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.

©Simon Chilembo 2020
Project management

RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!

SHOULD I DIE

COVID-19 REFLECTIONS

In 1998, my father died solitary in a bachelor quarters in Tshwane, South Africa. My mother followed twenty years later. Pneumonia related complications in both cases.

©Simon Chilembo, 2018  Author, President  ChilemboStoryTelling™

©Simon Chilembo, 2020 Author, President, ChilemboStoryTelling™

There were about eleven other fellow patients in my mother’s ward at the hospital in Thabong, Welkom. She had kept everyone awake all night with her moaning in pain, crying out an unknown name all along. Nevertheless, she managed to eat her 0700RS breakfast that fateful Sunday morning; much to everyone’s delight since she hadn’t had much appetite the two previous days. After eating she fell asleep.

When my nephew, Kgosi, and I went to check on her during the morning visit hour between 1000-1100HRS, we found her sleeping peacefully. Apparently. After hearing the report by fellow patients about my mother’s restless night, we thought it wise not to immediately awaken her. She could have her full sleep during the course of the morning, and we’d come back to see her again in the afternoon as per routine.

Fifteen minutes into our arrival in the ward, an impatient family friend found that my mother was cold and lifeless. A few minutes later, a doctor declared her officially dead. She had probably died two hours earlier. No one had taken notice. It was one of those cases of “She died peacefully in her sleep”, I guess. Perhaps the same may be said about my father. He had been dead for about two days by the time his corpse was found in his residence.

I opt to convince myself that, indeed, both my parents died peacefully in their sleep when their respective times to go arrived. Neither was surrounded by their loved ones upon breathing their respective lasts.

The thought of whether or not my own death will pounce on me in solitude has been on my mind since February, 1991. I had for the first time ever gotten ill with what I later understood to have been an acute attack of the flu. Bedridden with high fever and profuse sweating for three days in my single student room, I was so weak that I was unable to lift a telephone sitting beside me on my bed to call my school or doctor in Oslo.

One week later I had recovered without having had received any medical attention. An older, more knowledgeable friend told me that I had actually had a close brush with death. Perhaps I should consider getting myself a wife, he suggested. He argued that many people who live alone tend to die unnecessarily because there is often nobody there to render immediate assistance in times of emergencies.

In the northern hemisphere spring of 1995, I had a first-time mean attack of hay fever. I didn’t know what it was at first. For many days I kept sneezing like what I thought was like a mad man. Then I began to cough as inexplicably madly. What I thought sounded like a small cat soon started mewing in my chest. This made breathing painfully difficult even at the mildest physical exertion. Then I knew I was in trouble.

At great financial cost to me that I could afford regardless, a former lover at that time then finally hastily made it possible for me to acquire an emergency cocktail of various tablets, capsules, and an assortment of asthma medicines. Had I been alone at that critical time, I could have died from pneumonia, the former lover said later.

Today, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, moving at a frighteningly fast pace is threatening human life across the globe. The United Nations and national governments are taking drastic and, in some cases, Human Rights defying draconian measures in individual and concerted efforts to isolate, treat, control, and eventually effectively manage the disease. The ideal situation would be to eliminate the disease, of course. But it’ll take time to develop necessary relevant curative and preventive medicine. Researchers the world over are currently working at break-neck speeds to achieve the latter.

Millions of people are under various levels of quarantine throughout the world, depending on suspected or actual infections and severity. Much of the industrialized world is under lockdowns. People whose immune systems are compromised from before are dying rapidly. Some people are quarantined in their private homes with their near family units. I am alone in my abode.

I am feeling well and strong. I can’t help, though, but think about my mortality in the event that my health should take a sudden, COVID-19 related downturn. Some other shit could happen too. One never knows when shit will hit the fan. I can’t help but think that were I to die now, I sure would do so peacefully. I’d die with no beloveds of mine surrounding me. If it happened to my parents it might as well be the same with me. Family solidarity. Family tradition. I’m their eldest child after all.

Like my parents, I leave no great fortunes behind. It’s just as well for me that, unlike my parents, I leave no children behind. As to whether or not it’s a good thing to die as my corpse shall be in a cremation oven, I shall find out upon arrival on the other side.

In the meantime, I can’t help thinking about one of my all-time favourite songs: If I Should Die Tonight, by Marvin Gaye … (Continued in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)

SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
March 15-16, 2020

PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.

©Simon Chilembo 2020

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SELF-DOUBT

WHEN I’M HERE 

NOTE: Contributing to discussion on UNSTUCK – The Refinition of Manhood

“I live with no doubts. If I have any doubts, I don’t do it. If I do it anyway and get burned as a result, too bad. What’s done is done. If I die, I die. Closed chapter. If I don’t die, no regrets. I pay the price I have to pay, and move on; assuming that I can still breathe, stand, walk, and think,” Simon Chilembo.

©Simon Chilembo 2017

©Simon Chilembo 2017

It was as a four-and-half-year-old on my first day at school in Lesotho that I first became aware of my hereness. That was as an immediate response to the awareness of my differentness. The latter arose from my consciousness awakening to find me surrounded by many people. I somehow just understood that all were school children of all ages. There were numerous of my age, and others older. My guide, Dineo, was an older girl from the estate where I was staying not so far away from the school.

I found Dineo alternately being aggressively protective of me, and talking proudly about how far smarter I was compared to local children: I was of course tinier and blacker than all the other children because I was not one of them; I was not of their blood since my father came from a land far, far away in the north. In this so distant land, no Lesotho person had ever been. Dineo emphasized.

She went on to remind everyone about how ruthless her father was. So, if anybody was unkind to me, her father would come and destroy their lives the whole lot of them! Also, my father could do terrible things to them using powerful wizardry from his lands. Otherwise I was a sweet and happy child easy to be with, Dineo concluded.

This was a strange and fascinating scenario I could only watch without uttering a word. I did not only not know what to say or do, the atmosphere was also overwhelming in its simultaneous bewilderment and euphoria. The following day my grandmother took me to another school. I recall hearing whispers that word had been going around in the village that it was not safe for me to be at the first school. The alternative Peka Catholic school would be a safer bet for me, therefore.

At Peka Catholic school I recall being initially received by a group of nuns and the parish priest, Father Hemmel. The next thing was that I found myself in a room with several other children. We were singing “I am a tea pot. This is handle. This is mouth. Pour me out! Pour me out!”

Tracking animal pictures pasted up and around the walls of the room, I recall us repeating after the teacher, Mme Blandina, “A baby cow is called a calf. A baby sheep is called a lamb …”
And then, “A cat mews. A bull bellows. A hen cackles …”

Such began my school career. I would be at Peka Catholic school for four years, 1965-69. These remain the happiest years of my school life. This is the time I understood that I somehow grasped lessons faster than the lot of my classmates. I further found out that the teachers were extra fond of me. All nuns. The warmth they afforded me is unforgettable.

My popularity extended to older pupils, especially girls, in higher grades. At the same time, though, there were older boys that were not fond of me at all. They used to engage me into fights almost every day after school. I got my beatings much as I gave my share of the same. It ever infuriated everyone so much because I was unusually strong and stubborn for my age and, especially, body size.

I never thought too much about limitations of my personal attributes. All I knew was that I could never allow anybody to beat me up and get away with it. This was particularly so from age six, after my mother had instilled in my head the warrior heart attitude of learning to fight my own battles and settle scores alone.

I was already a seasoned fighter by the time that in my older youth years, my Karate teacher, in response to a report about a legendary fight that I had put up against some of the most notorious and dreaded street-fighters of Lusaka, Zambia, said, “If you must fight, fight. But don’t lose!”
That ethos drives my survival instincts in all situations to this day.

In the commotion typical around street fighting scenes, I would pick out ludicrous utterances that I was the way that I was as a hard-fighting child because of the strange blood that I carried from my strange, alien father. I was a little wizard that had to be killed whilst I was still a child because I was going to kill everyone else if I was to be allowed to grow up into a man.

These were really not nice things to hear for a child not even eight years old then. Now I’m a grown-up man soon to be sixty-years-old. Not a single person has perished in my hands yet. On the contrary, I have in my work saved more than one lives.

I thus learned how to balance getting unwanted extreme attention very early in my life. That, together with receiving much love on the one hand and buttressing myself against prejudice and hatred on the other, inculcated in me a strong sense of awareness of where I am at any one time.

Therefore, when I’m here, I’m here. What has to be will be. I shall do what I have to do to sustain my hereness for as long as possible, or for as long as it is necessary. If I have to love, I shall love. If I have to fight, I shall fight. The assumption being that my presence is valued here and now, and that my being here is not detrimental to my continued real and conceptual existential imperatives.

It’s not uncommon for me to hear that I take too much space when I’m here. It’s of little interest for me to seek to impose my hereness to personal and conceptual spaces that cannot, or are not willing to accommodate my being here.

If I’m here for a specific reason, I’ll do what I have to do to the best of my ability according to expectations, if not instructions. If it is really fun, I tend to go beyond, though. I’ll perform and deliver to the extent that what has to be done is compatible with my values and defined obligations vis-à-vis the given situation.

If I succeed, I succeed. If I fail, I fail. If the latter is due to factors I can correct, I shall do so accordingly. If it’s beyond my powers to correct, or do anything else in order to attain the original desired outcome, then I let go and move on to next level challenges; paying the price I have to if need be. It is what it is.

I never carry on with regrets. I carry on with new learned experiences that often empower me to perform better in the next level, even if the next level may not be related to the previous fiasco in any way. What matters is the new mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical fortification I’ve attained for the new way forward.

Throughout my life I’ve lived with the consciousness that I’ll meet all kinds of resistance in my endeavours to live my life as I see it, and as I wish to live it within the parameters of established life-supportive societal norms. I learned very early how to exert my presence with all my outward expressive faculties. This was an important skill to develop given the fact that I, as earlier stated, was a tiny child in a partially but grossly cruel world. In my adult years I never grew up to be the physically biggest man around either.

My mind, my intellect is my weapon. I load my mind with knowledge acquisition pursuits. I fire with my words: I write, I speak. I can sing too. My body is my combat machine. In this state of being, self-doubt is a known but non-applicable phenomenon to me. That is how I’ll always rise above negative forces working against me. Indeed, I might fall and lose one thing or another.

Actually, I have lost a lot of tangible and intangible things during the last twelve-to-fifteen-years. If I don’t die, I’ll rise again. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, but I will rise again. I am on the rise again as it is. My death can wait. I ain’t got no time to die as yet.

It happens time and time again: for each knock and fall I get, for each loss, at least tenfold new options for the better present themselves upon my rising again. For that reason, I never cry over spilt milk. When it is clear that the milk loss is inevitable no matter what preventive measures I may apply, I let go without shedding a tear.

No resistance. When change is gonna come, it’s gonna come. If one of the new options emerging after the milk loss will be a dairy cow, I hardly ever get surprised. Nevertheless, I remain ever humble in the face of continuous favours bestowed upon me by nature, my ancestral spirits, and my God. The resilience I put forth in times of trouble, in my darkest hours, does wonders for my ego. But that resilience is of origins far beyond the realms of my ego’s mind games’ current manifest performance and ultimate potential.

Deep down inside of me I know that constant pursuance of being a decent human being is my inclination by default, much as are my human fallibilities. When I get a knock for my own failings, my inadequacies, I shall with dignity take the punishment I get. My sense of dignity gets even more profound in the face of injustice and malice directed upon my person. Always.

I am cognizant of my strengths and vulnerabilities. These two qualities annihilate any sense of self-doubt I might have in any given situation. Because I know, i.e. my personal cognitive and intuitive data bases are adequately supplied with relevant information and energy, I’ll always have options in both good and challenging times.

The phrase Machona Awakening came not only from that moment I finally understood for myself that a place called home can be more a function of thoughts and feelings, contra its being one’s place of birth only. Machona Awakening is also about that moment in time it dawned upon me that I, indeed, am that I am. I am that I am with all the beauty and the ugly that define me in the eye of the beholder. That with respect to the conscious and unconscious display of my deeds as I dance through the intricacies of my life for as long as I live.

Fear I might have. Insecurity I might have. These may arise in times and situations where I lack applicable functional and conceptual knowledge. When and where I don’t know, I’m likely to be invisible; silent. If I’m ignorant relative to a given reality, it may perhaps be because it’s neither interesting nor important for my existential needs here and now, or there and then. Knowledge is power over fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. It’s about knowing what branch of knowledge is relevant where, how, and when.

I’m not a thrill-seeker. As such I’m not given to blind pursuits of the unknown at any cost. So, let it pass. Ain’t no love lost. No regrets. Self-doubt possibilities eliminated. But does that not limit maximal growth potential? Well, all things considered, I can only grow to the level I reach today. The next levels of growth tomorrow and beyond are only dreams with today’s growth experiences as their launch pad; as certain as the sun shall rise tomorrow for all living creatures of the earth. No doubt from the self, neither from nature. Solid knowledge. Self-doubt expunged.


SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
March 02, 2020

IN THE FLESH

IN THE FLESH, IN THE BLOOD

©Simon Chilembo 2020

Found myself in her territory
Saturday night
She was in full
Flesh and blood splendour
She was blonde
She was brunette
She was rouge
She was melanin rich
She was petite
She was medium
She was voluptuous

LOLLY!

Then I hear a voice say
Look
Don’t touch
Keep your mouth shut

She came to me
She caressed
My face
She kissed me
She whispered
You are so sweet
Into my right ear this time
My left ear the next time
Many times  

I held my breath
I imagined
I was in a straight jacket
I wished
I was words
In the book
Of her life story

I’m still in a daze

END
©Simon Chilembo (17/ 02- 2020) 

Simon Chilembo 
Oslo 
Norway 
Telephone: +4792525032 
February 17, 2020