Pre-engagement checklist in Adja culture

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11 Things families check before allowing marriage in the Adja culture :

1. There should be no thief in the family. Theft is considered a contagious disease, genetically transmitted, so one should make sure not to bring such genes into his lineage.

2. Do kids die suddenly in the family? If yes, one should avoid marrying from such families. Sudden kids death is considered a disease or bad witchcraft to avoid.

3. Does the family has a fool or mentally challenged member. Bad signs.

4. Anyone with epilepsy in the family? If yes, there should be no marriage. Albinism? Postnatal depression? Sickle cell disease?

5. Are there lazy members in the family. Laziness is a disease, which could contaminate and spread.

6. Does the family have elders which to refer to in case of conflict? If no, that family is too weak to ally with.

7. Do the women from that family divorce often or are known for adultery. Those women kill men, so such families should be avoided.

8. If you don’t like her mother, you won’t like the daughter.

9. If the father is alcoholic, you are likely to end up cheating on him and sleep outside.

10. Are they rich?… Read more

Anti-Fragile

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If you are not growing during a crisis, your way of thinking is certainly flawed and you could easily be preyed.
Evolution happens during crisis and crisis are the moment of truth about who you are.

Unfortunately, evolution is ugly!… Read more

Maps Readers versus Book Readers

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You visit a friend. He has a lot of books. You are impressed. He might be intelligent or an intellectual.

You visit a friend. He has a lot of maps. Maps of countries. Maps of cities. Maps of territories and world resources. You’d be impressed and more over, you’d have some of the best time of your life. Maps exploration alone or in group is often a very entertaining and enlightening exercise. Your friend is certainly a strategist.

Homes with books are nice. Homes with maps are interesting.

Physical maps are as important as mind maps. Through books we get to learn about models, principles, axioms, variables and derivatives. We acquire intellectual power and thinking prowess through such interactions.

With maps, you build something more powerful, a feeling of power over elements and projection, and an ability to exert power and control.

Book readers are intelligent people. They turn mostly inward to explore and understand. Maps readers are powerful people. They turn mostly outward mostly to move and shake.

Buy a few maps for your house. A map of Africa, a map of your country, a map of your region. Buy those which are progressively detailed, from socio-demograpgic data to geophysics and mines data.… Read more

Guiding Symbols

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Every year I choose a symbol which would guide me through the new year.

Year 2017 was the year of the Eagle.

It means to soar high enough to have top view, perspective of my condition, the one of my family, and the one of my communities.

The year 2018 was my year of the Ant.

From the macro perspective to the micro one on the ground, I focused on building a resilient community with organization and discipline where everyone finds a place.

My symbol for 2019 was the Hippopotamus.

The Hippo is a very cool animal but an endangered species in Africa. As symbol the Hippo is a very territorial animal, with powerful effective stealth defense mindset. If need to be, the Hippo charges only to win.

For 2020, I’ve chosen the parasite toxoplasma as symbol.

Toxo is a unicellular parasite with a level of intelligence superior to most humans when it come to organizing to get result. For example, toxo reproduces only in the gut of cats. To get into the stomach of cats, toxo would infect mice, migrate to their brain, then alter their brain chemistry removing mice fear of cat, even making mice to be attracted to cats urine and feces.… Read more

Silent Creativity

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You cannot be creative, innovative if you have strong verbal skills.

Vocabulary deals in categories, creativity sprout from breaking categories or ignoring existing categories.

Dyslexic, introverts, non talkative people are likely to be more creative than chatty folks.

For fitting in, verbal skills are essential, but out of box thinking stems from uncharted territories, yet to the categorized.

Kids are creative because they have poor vocabulary or no vocabulary. Adult are stupid because it is not easy for them to escape categories.

Childish adults are the most creative folks, seeing between categories and beyond categories.

Feminists don’t agree with this post.… Read more

Useless Activists: No one cares about your ideas

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Activists spending most of their time on awareness or consciousness campaigns are either wasting their time or are in entertainment business.

In very religious countries, the masses are looking for ‘Gods in human form’ to follow.

Strong, powerful, charismatic, provider men or women regardless of their ideologies.

They crave faces with a presence that scares but also cajoles, patronizes, and provides.

People follow people, not ideas or ideologies.

If any ideology, they already have religion which is soothing enough. To Hell, you can go with your kemetism, panafricanism, afrocentricity, communalism.

Misunderstanding this fundamental aspect of religious societies often leads to high frustration in the activists communities.

The masses don’t want discourse. They don’t want to understand. Like the God they pray to never speaks back, but in silence respond to their prayers, the masses want men, not poor like themselves, far away from their pitiful conditions, who just come to tell them what they want to hear and provide things on their wish list.

They want saviors.

Everyone else should mind their business.

Marginal, loud mouth, poor activists barely qualify as the figures masses in poor religious countries are looking for.

As reminder, they don’t want empowerment nor illumination, they want people who could provide and make them dream or relax.… Read more

Theories and Banks

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This was the idea. To reduce corruption, public workers should be well paid.

If they are well paid, they won’t be tempted by bribery and corruption.
The fear of losing well paid and secure job would logically outstrip the temptation of a quick ill gain.
Following such a well thought out, World Bank backed ideology, the togolese government chose to keep a small public administration with well paid agents.

During the last decade, wages in Togo had doubled and tripled for public sector workers, making public administration work the best paid job in the country.

For every position opened for application, there are at least two hundred people competing.
Things were working as planned until the banks came in and hijacked everything.

The banks started giving unconditional loans to anyone working in the public administration. ‘free money, come and take’, they advertised.

Quickly, the banks lured close to 98% of public workers into high interest, securitized loans, making some workers go home only with 30% of their wages at the end of the month.

Private loaners also designed clever schemes to lure many of these people into heavy loans. Often, the private loaners seize the workers bank cards and checks, and are the first to withdraw their monthly installment.… Read more

Rules for Men

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Don’t speak while standing. Or very little.

A wise man don’t do business while standing.

A man don’t talk to his children, his wife while standing.

Don’t stand up when you are angry, upset, or restless.

Speak only with your eyes when standing.

Do your talk only while sitting.

Following this simple rule will bring peace into your life.

(not sure you’d understand, if you are not from a royal lineage).… Read more

Illusion of knowledge

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There is public knowledge and there is private knowledge. Very much as there is public wealth and there is private wealth.

In a world where private wealth surpasses by folds public wealth, one must deduct that private knowledge is far superior and surpasses by more folds public knowledge.

The best knowledge warehouses are private, guarded by hundreds of men with guns in addition to access codes and physical barriers.

For exemple, I have some knowledge I’d never put in public because they are private assets.

Furthermore, a lot of knowledge is generated through interaction between knowledgeable people. Interaction fertilizes and fructifies knowledge.

People learning mainly through books are behind those who learn through interaction with others.

If you have no way to access private knowledge (knowledge locked behind heavy doors), public knowledge might give hints about how much knowledge is out there, but you are having an illusion of knowledge. You still have active interaction with knowledgeable people to access private knowledge.

Public knowledge like public wealth is very limited. Oh Shit, most states are in debt to the private sector!… Read more

Panafricanism is dead

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During the last 3 years, I’ve written several articles to warn about the danger of the panafricanist ideology and its various branches like black identity.

Those ideas are so entrenched and many have committed so much to them that it’s hard for them to step back and take a second look, let alone examine any critic or warning.

I could reference my previous posts here, but I’d like to take a bit of time to briefly restate my understanding of these ideas and critics.

Panafricanism most outstanding idea is the advocacy and a philosophy for unity between African people.

The main justification of the idea is that Africans are weak because they are divided, and achieving unity will bring them strength to face adversity and build a new Africa.

The main tool to reach that goal is preaching unity through books, seminars, discourses, social media posts, and advocacy for the formation of African organizations and groups which would work together for Africa unity and progress.

The panafricanist idea reached its most prominent stage during the years 1950 and 1960 when a few partisans of the idea reached powerful political positions in many African countries.

In term of legacy, we have mainly books, associations, songs, and the defunct continental organization like OAU (Organization of Africa Unity).… Read more