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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.
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SHOULD I DIE
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, 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.
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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
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
NECROCRACY
MURDER IS MURDER
We live in necrocratic world. We, the people of the world, live at the mercy of our world leaders. We may be breathing and blinking about at this one moment. The next, we are obliterated from the face of the earth. BOOM! so fast and loud we can’t see it coming, we can’t hear it land, we can’t feel it explode. Just like that. Like with the snap of a finger.
©Simon Chilembo 2018: Author, President, ChilemboInspireInsights™
Death is death. Murder is murder, regardless of who executes it, no matter for what cause. Murder sustains necrocracy the world over.
We live so that necropots can justify their existence: “But, hey, the people of my great, the greatest country in the world, have elected me. Great people, wonderful people, smart people. God bless you! I’m gonna make you great again. Greater!”
Jeeezuzzz!!!
We die so that necropots can live: “We shall eliminate all the enemies of our great nation, the greatest nation in the world. The people of our great nation, the strongest nation of them all, by the way, say that we must follow our enemies of peace and our way of life anywhere in the world. We’ll find them. They can’t hide. The only place for them to hide is their shit-hole countries’ graves once we’ve taught them a lesson. Don’t mess with God’s greatest nation on earth. We gonna getcha!”
Lord, have mercy!!!
As a concept, an instrument of power, and process, leadership is, by default, murderous. Any person that, by any means, legitimate or otherwise, depending on the dominant existential paradigm in a given domain, assumes power over others, automatically becomes a potential murderer. The probability of necropower becoming a reality for a leader is directly proportional to the joint organic and structural complexity of the organization they lead.
We see the highest of such sociological complexity at the national leadership level. Therefore, all national leaders at the top of the decision-making hierarchy will either be directly murderous as individuals, or be directly responsible for murderous acts committed by others on their behalf. All in the name of national security, in defence of national sovereignty, territorial boundaries, and in support of allies in international solidarity treaties in times of strife in various parts of the world. In this regard, at any one time, no state leader can be seen to be better or worse than any other regarding necropower atrocities; be they locally, regionally, or globally.
Murder is murder. Death is death, regardless of who dies, no matter for what cause. Death is the food of necrocracy the world over. But all life is sacred. No matter the race, colour, creed, and all the possible permutations of the condition of being human on earth.
On the grander scale of conflicts, wars allow necropots to manifest the full range of their respective psychopathic dispositions. We die, we survive, we cry, we fight amongst ourselves, we mobilize mass anti- or pro-war protests, we run away to other lands for shelter, we are pro the one necropot contra the other/ -s, we go to the United Nations, we get peace-keeping forces, and we still die; all of us: children, women, men, combatants, cats, and dogs. Observing all this, these necropots just laugh at us. They think we are absolutely crazy. Murder is such fun. It is such profitable business.
The bigger, the more enduring the wars, the bigger the party for the necropots on either side, the more the money made by the war industrial complex, the more the blood on necropots’ hands, and the blinder the necropots get. Wiping the eyes with their bloodied hands, the necropots cease to see reality for what it is. They can only smell and taste blood money everywhere, oblivious to how they have led necrocracy onto an effectively self-destructive path, taking down humanity together with it. They seem to think that a nuclear bomb is a joke. Climate change, well, let’s not go there at this stage.
And we help them, necropots, along. We take sides. Our senses of right or wrong are clouded by our ideologies, personal ideals, identities, ambitions, psycho-social attributes, and much more. We go out and intellectually, psychologically, and spiritually kill those that do not share our views of the world, as in par with our chosen necropots.
Pro-necropot logic: It’s okay, our chosen necropots are not murderers, they only, necessarily, kill in self-defence, even if those getting killed are their very own people. The enemies of our favoured necropot carry out genocide, you see. Our favoured necropots are strong leaders; they only want to achieve the best for their people. It is irrelevant as to whether or not the people approve of our favoured necropot. People are stupid.
Only strong leaders like our favoured necropots know what is good for the people. It’s okay if some of these stupid people have to be killed in the process, you see. From time to time, a bit of ethnic cleansing never hurt anyone.
Our favoured necropot is breeding a nation of sheep people. These will abide by his rules without question, you see. Wouldn’t it be nice if people understood that good leaders, like our favoured necropot, are made and chosen by God for the people? Punishment for those defying God’s will is death. By killing his enemies, our favoured necropot is only carrying out God’s will. May the wrath of God fall upon the external enemies of our favoured necropot!
We live in an age where necrocracy shouldn’t have any space to breathe. We live in an age where it ought to be crystal clear that a war on another cannot stop war, or other wars. In this day and age, fundamental human wisdom ought to be at the general understanding that, irrespective of how we colour and name organized, systematized, militarized killings of human collectives by others, murder remains what it is: murder. Murder doesn’t change character just because it is committed for a worthy cause, as the proponents may perceive it.
We live in an age of stalemates in war. National leaders of the world shall go into their graves with our blood perpetually dripping off their hands. Eternal necropots. The whole lot of them. Ain’t nobody better. Ain’t nobody worse. All as equally guilty of mass murders as hell. The only difference being in numbers. However, even one person slain is one person too many.
There is no way anybody can ever win a war lastingly in this Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) age. Albeit in variable degrees, as shall be determined by intellectual and resources capacity, any nation, or subversive group has access to all that is available of knowledge and technology to wage a war, either or both conventional and guerrilla style. Cease fires and progressive peace and reconciliation talks ought to be the order of the day in our time.
Peace and reconciliation talks assume, before everything else, humility and mutuality of respect for one another from all the parties concerned. The same should apply on the ground, from supporters and activists on all sides. Arrogance and bullying will never lead anybody anywhere. Never. Only back to war. Guaranteed.
Nobody can ever be coerced to come to sit around a negotiation table in the absence of the recognition of their humanity, no matter how banal it might seem to third parties. Outsiders can never determine what people know and value about themselves and their place in the world. This is what is at the core of all wars of liberation across the world, both historically, and in our contemporary world.
As a warrior, I know that if somebody unjustifiably hits me, I will hit them back, if they haven’t killed me. If the situation calls for it, I’ll murder them without thinking twice about it. There is a potential necropot in all of us. Nevertheless, if I ever will have to kill, it will be in the protection of my own life there and then. It will never be out of the need to sustain my power and dominance over others, in any given situation.
As a leader, I don’t need to be told that I’m no longer relevant. More often than not, I can see potential power antagonism looming from afar. If, after weighing my options, I deem it justifiable, in view of the bigger common good threatened, I’ll nip the antagonism in the bud. Otherwise, I pack my bags and leave. I, both as a matter of principle and personal proclivity, will never impose my leadership on unwilling people with whom I’m supposed to be pursuing a common cause.
As a private person, in whom it is encapsulated my warrior spirit and leadership potential, I am conflict shy. I’m conflict shy to a point of misrepresented cowardice, up until I have to fight, if and when called upon to. Conflict gives me a headache. Especially if it is over situations that do not make sense to me, or over matters that I consider not as adding value to my existential imperatives. Such conflict disorients me. It makes my body itch.
Conflict makes me want to sneeze, but constricts my chest at the same time. I’m acutely allergic to what I consider to be nonsensical conflict pursuits founded on ignorance, parochial thinking, and poor philosophical principles, if any at all. I am conflict shy not only by choice, but also by natural disposition. Therefore, I am not prone to militant activism.
It is not about lacking the guts, or having no spine. I am simply not confrontational by nature. I am just not wired for unrestrained, militant activism. Neither am I inclined to evangelism with respect to life values I stand for, and the choices I shall want to, and actually make in my life.
I speak and shout with my writings. I also often express my life views in professional, and other social engagements endeavours I’ll find myself in from time to time. It is what it is. Take me or leave me. I am anti-necropower, regardless of the practitioner, or their cause. Murder is murder. Necrocracy has no future.
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
June 21, 2018
Tel.: +4792525032
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION IN A NATIONAL CONTEXT
Guiding questions:
1. What spurs a nation or a people to attain heights of development?
2. Is it a collective that is the main driver or a leader with “Intrinsic Motivation”
©Simon Chilembo 2018
NOTE
The article below is motivated by Mr Fisho Mwale. It arose from a Facebook interaction yesterday, Thursday, January 08, 2018. I was one of the respondents to his posting, “BUSINESS IDEAS”. In it, he referred to his personal family experiences to highlight some cultural impediments towards following up emergent business opportunities in our society.
Mr Fisho Mwale, summarizing his bone of contention, wrote, “Sometimes out of the box great business ideas do not work due to many factors such as timing, cultural values and lack of guts. You have to believe in your ideas and it’s important to get ‘buy in’.”
In agreement with him, I responded:
“… Great real-life entrepreneurial development case study material, …. Thanks for the insights, Sir! I wish to also add lack of what I call “Intrinsic Motivation” to the list of factors inhibiting follow-throughs to great business ideas and, indeed, opportunities arising from given circumstances.
“Intrinsic Motivation is an active killer-instinct driven desire and determination to achieve set goals, and beyond. That arising, perhaps, from chance opportunities, or those created in response to certain apparent societal, if not bigger natural conditions and/ needs. E.g. the cholera epidemic mentioned above. It works independent of external deliberate or unintended hindrances, and is often a profoundly personal journey. Seen from the outside, people in “Intrinsic Motivation” mode can appear to be selfish, reckless, one-track-minded, and defiant, amongst other negative personal attributes.
“This kind of motivation is ignited by desperate survival need circumstances too, if not a pure natural curiosity state of being. When pushed against the wall, without any possible manoeuvre or exit, fearless, “thrill-seeker”-type-people with strong wills to live will find the most ingenious ways to survive: creativity kindled to find the most unconventional solutions that could be developed into business models, subsequently.
I believe that we have to teach ourselves to be hungry enough, curious enough, and afraid enough to ignite our “Intrinsic Motivations” in order that they, pushing the continuum farther, ignite the killer-instinct guts necessary to get us to see things through, no matter the odds. It is a mind, attitude thing, really. Doable.”
The reply from Mr Fisho Mwale was gracious. He concluded by throwing me a challenge, “Thank you and I would love for you to expand more and discuss it from a National context …”
The latter got “… my Intrinsic Motivation to find, and engage with like-minded people about national development issues, plus possible solutions …” to shoot to the roof.
DEVELOPMENT: Attainment, Nurture, Sustenance.
In Social Science, the concept of Development is defined in terms of upward qualitative and quantitative transformation of society over time. Operationally, it means that from society’s observable benefits of this positive change, people will reflect higher and enduring frequencies of subjective states of contentment, hope, and belief in an ever bright future for all.
This state of affairs will be a manifestation of societies ability to provide for all the people’s basic short-term and long-term needs and wants for successful living from day-to-day, all their days: food, shelter, health, education, security, and more. Abundance is when society has a constant surplus of all the resources that are necessary to ensure that the people’s contentment levels do not dramatically spiral downwards in cases of natural calamities, wars, and, especially, population growth in time.
The objective side of Development is, therefore, operationally seen in the growth, in sheer numbers and magnitudes, of material and service values of all the tangible and intangible aspects of societal management towards lasting prosperity attainment. Herein come elements of:
- Infrastructure – water reservoirs, food production facilities (agricultural land, food processing plants, etc), housing, roads, hospitals, schools, power stations and grids, telecommunications, and others.
- Services – the entire spectrum of social amenities and necessary operational personnel across the board (health workers, engineers and other scientists, entrepreneurs, R&D, and many more), national security (police, military), including culture, i.e. the whole possibilities field of the creative arts.
- Longevity – In sustained development states, short of mortal accidents of all kinds, under variable circumstances, people tend to live into ripe old ages. Absence of private and societal want, as well as a general sense and state of well-being in society tend to have a life prolonging effect on the people: resilience against various life-threatening illnesses, and ever improving medical treatments of the same.
Because Development is about growth, and is forward-looking, it can be encapsulated in the concept of progress. This means that stages of development can be measured, and isolated in terms of space and time. Viewed in this regard, it ought to be understandable that Development entails a rise in complications of societal management and administration.
In the context of this presentation, management is about the allocation of resources in appropriate quantities to relevant material and service needs in developmental work. Administration, then, sees to it that resources are applied for their originally intended purposes, and according to stipulated rules with regard to predetermined decisive conditions.
Therefore, from the point of definitions above, for Development to succeed, it is imperative that it is spearheaded by people of at least as intellectually and culturally progressive as Development itself is inherently, and necessarily entails on its reality.
“INTRINSIC MOTIVATION” FOR DEVELOPMENT: The Collective? A Leader?
On the one hand, human beings are inherently self-centered as individuals. On the other, because human beings are, actually, also very smart, they realized a long time ago that to survive in an inherently hostile nature, they had to learn to live in collectives. We, as humans against other earthly creatures, owe our position at the top of the food chain to our ability to work together in our necessary efforts to tame aspects of nature for our, yes, Development (-al) needs … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Tel: +27 813185271
February 09, 2018
GOD IN MAN
SCIENTIFIC MAN OF GOD
Epigenetic inheritance theory has captured my fascination in a profound way. It has cast new insight into how I now think about the nature of man. That with reference to how I relate to man in the spontaneous, continuous process of writing and playing my own story as I go through the labyrinth of life. Some call it legacy.
©Simon Chilembo 2017
But I don’t really care much about “the legacy I shall leave behind”. If I do have a legacy, it has, actually, built, and shall sustain itself for as long as time wants it alive. Nevertheless, immortality is the goal. Who wants to live forever? I do. Why not?
All I care about is the integrity of the authoring of my life story lines as I dance my way through to my exit point of the maze that far, far away.
My hope is that my life story shall be read and judged with open, scientific minds, both whilst I still walk the face of the earth, and when I’m dead.
Thanks to epigenetic inheritance theory, I have finally seen the light: yes, the human body is, indeed, a temple of God. By extension, any other creature that subscribes to, and lives according to tenets of any prescribed faith, has its physical body as the temple of God; at least in the Western world’s perception of the Deity.
Even more precisely, the philosophical duality of God and her anti-thesis, Satan, is not only a construct of the core of man’s existential questions’ thinking: their abodes, heaven and hell, respectively, are, in fact, in the DNA of man.
There is no place called heaven outside the realm of man’s existence on earth. Neither is there a place called hell in the same illusory domain. Heavenly rewards, or satanic retributions for our virtues and sins, respectively, we live them accordingly right here on earth. When we die, we are dead: our DNAs have switched off from our consciousness, and so have the ideas of God, Satan, heaven, and hell.
It is only the unenlightened that fuss about life after death for the deceased. The human soul leaving the dead is as real, as independent, and as infinite as the universe. So, leave it alone. It knows how to take care of itself. Ever heard of a buried soul? They failed to bury Jesus.
It ought to make perfect sense that life-after-death is, indeed, a reality for the living only. Life goes on. But, living in the dark, and confronted with challenges of life with nature, the survivors seek answers outside of themselves. Finding no workable solutions out there, panic grips them. Fear of the unknown rules over their lives through and through … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Welkom
South Africa
Telephone: +27813185271
December 19, 2017
FARM MURDERS
SOUTH AFRICAN FARM KILLINGS: Another Perspective
©Simon Chilembo 2017
I do not condone murder of any kind. Murder is murder, regardless of how it is classified on various platforms. No murder is worse or better than another. In the free world, we are all humans with infinite variable attributes, but equal in the face of the law of the land.
In the purest manifestation of God, we are all supposed to be equal because she created us that way, in her own perfect image.
Whilst I do not condone murder, left with no alternatives against any real, particularly unjustifiable, threat upon my life, or that of my beloved ones, including my lands, I could kill without thinking twice about it. In my world, there is no “turn the other cheek” contra injustice and evil intentions, or practices. If evil plucks out one of my eyes, I’ll pluck both of theirs, and more. It is what it is.
If I am a racist, it is more a circumstantially reactive tendency on my part, rather than it being an inherent disposition of mine. I hate racism with such passion I cannot help but want to give racists a taste of their own medicine whenever I encounter them in South Africa, and anywhere else in the world I find myself at any time; two eyes for an eye. Reconciliation modern South Africa style has its limits for me.
In characteristic, yet another demonstration of arrogance of power and privilege, a section of the white South African populace sensationalizes the killings of South African white farmers. As if these killings are a calculated, lopsided affair sponsored by the South African state, or some other organized, black peoples special interest entities.
As a humanist, whenever death strikes anywhere in the world, my heart ever goes out to the deceased and their bereaved families. The killing of a white South African farmer is no different from any other killing in the country, or anywhere else in the world. Therefore, I cannot feel relatively any more, or less empathy for the white South African farmer victims and their own … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
Tel.: +4792525032
November 08, 2017
GOD MUST BE SO WEARY
RELIGION OF PEACE?
Simon Chilembo, Chief Executive President
If I wake up blown up dead tomorrow, be it known that in all of my dear life, standing on African humanistic thought and philosophical platform, anchored on contemporary Western philosophy democratic thought, and spiced with Christian values defining my personal relationship to God, I lived with profound respect for religion in all its forms and manifestations. I had to.
It’s because, as a free man of the world and lover of all humanity, some of my best friends, sisters and brothers of all skin colours and tones of the spectrum, were from all corners of the world, and practiced all kinds of religions; worshiping and praising all kinds creatures, spirits, and gods in many different ways. Amen.
I am deeply fascinated by religion. Mankind, the most complex, the most inquisitive creature on earth, must have gotten so afraid of what they found out about themselves that they created God. God would be both a reason and scapegoat for mankind’s actions. So, it’s okay, people will kill other people, including their very own flesh and blood for God; this as prescribed by God in relevant religious scriptures. Simple. No responsibility for one’s own actions for mankind.
All’s cool in the name of God. God must be an extremely busy being, with much blood in their hands. No wonder there is so much confusion in the world today. God has no time to rest … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Riebeeckstad
Welkom
South Africa
Tel.: +4792525032
June 20, 2014
Simon Chilembo 