Independence

DON’T SURRENDER IT ALL TO AI

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

The primary aim of artistic expression is inner clarification of self, as well as personal spiritual development. The secondary aim is communication and sharing of ideas, which in any case always happens automatically as a by-product.

If you outsource all your artistic creativity to Artificial Intelligence, then, yes, finished works of a certain mould will be generated, but your spirit will not grow. And the purpose of your earthlife – the very purpose of life itself – will not be fulfilled. This lies alone in the continuous development of your “I” through self-exertion, self-clarification and the constant effort towards pure and accurate self-expression of intuition via thought into word and deed.

AI will produce works that resemble beauty, but will lead to the atrophy and death of the human spirit – unless you critically interrogate those works and then correct, reject or surmount them with your own personal effort, your own intuiting and reasoning. Don’t surrender to AI. Learn it but remain above it. Artificial Intelligence will make you look good, make you feel good, but only you can become better by yourself, by your own effort. The ancient rule is still the same, there is no short cut to success.

It is very imperative, in this era of artificial intelligence, for each person to remain personally creative, as well as spiritually and intellectually active and independent. Make the effort to think your own thoughts through to the end, and formulate and write them down by yourself. Compose, rehearse and record your own music. Make your own art. Draw the inspiration not just from others, but also, like before, from within the fathomless depths of your immortal spirit. Spend time in the silence of your heart, listening to your inner voice, hearing yourself by yourself and not from the programmed algorithm of an AI companion’s voice.

And also continue to do as many things with your hands as possible. Build. Make. Write. Go out into the world. Use your physical muscles, use your brain muscles, use your heart muscles, use your soul and use your spirit. And also, PATRONISE THOSE WHO DO SO, THOSE WHO STILL PRODUCE BY THE EFFORT OF HUMAN CREATIVITY. When you do this, you are not doing them a favour, but you are doing yourself and humanity and our future a SERVICE!

This is the only way they will grow. This is the only way we will grow. This is how we survived as a species over millions of years. This is how we got here. By the agency of Natural personal Human Intelligence. WE have always been the ones evolving, the ones plumbing our own depths, the ones developing. Thus: Woe betide us today if we now, tempted by convenience, hand that task now over to a self-programming and self-learning artificial algorithm we fashioned. Like the Zauberlehrling who can no longer deactivate or control the witchcraft he awakened. We would thereby have marked the beginning of the end of the story of the human spirit on Earth.

We are the generation that must tame the beast we have created, and ensure that it remains a servant and never becomes the cold lifeless master of our destiny, literally and figuratively. AI is wonderful for sourcing and collating information, and sorting and delivering it coherently. It is also marvellous at generating alternative versions of expressive output. But it cannot see the light. It cannot produce that individual unique recognition that can only come from deep within you. And it cannot produce the NEW, a truly new and different future. It can only regurgitate and re-permutate the past.

The production of Newness is still the purview and the task of the living and active human spirit. Let AI not be our last invention. Let us continue to bestir ourselves to intuit, imagine, innovate and invent even greater creations in the future, greater and higher than AI, and which also come from us – or through us. For WE are human spirit.

Retain your primary art-form in your hands. Don’t outsource it in the name of comfort, or vanity, or convenience, or competition, or materialism. Save and continue to develop that which is most valuable to us – our spirit. Let art, intuition and inspired thinking continue to be tools for personal inner growth through the joy of effort.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

REJECTION

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When people reject you 
They don’t realise they’ve done you a favour;
You can move on from the rejected you
And metamorphose into a higher nature. 
Had they accepted you 
You would have remained the old creature
In that lower state unaware that you
Could have activated this new extra feature
That has deepened, strengthened, elevated you.

Rejection is ejection into motion,
An injection of self-reflection 
Towards redemption and transformation. 
An injunction to move, and motivation 
To self-improve in a new direction
With grit, with purpose, and with intention.
On the path towards self-realisation
and self-actualisation, every new rejection
Is another tiny course-correction. 

Che Chidi Chukwumerije 
Poems from the inner river 

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

YOUR STRENGTH

~ Che ~ Leave a comment 
When they hit
The reason why it
doesn’t hurt is not
because it’s soft
but because you’re
tough to the core.

Laugh the loudest
When they hit you the hardest
Stand the proudest
When you face their mockery test

Your strength won’t bring you victory
Your strength IS your victory.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

DON’T LOSE YOURSELF IN THE CROWD

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Never join the crowd
Let your silence be loud -
Never yield to the crowd
Let your humility be proud -
The opinion of the crowd
Is a blindfold, a shroud -
We’re all parts of a crowd,
But each with a spirit endowed.

Don’t lose yourself in the crowd
Because when you were allowed
To come into being, you vowed

To become an individual, unbowed.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river

GOING SOLO

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Once he doesn’t care anymore
All the beauty in the world becomes a bore
Every tender touch pinches a sore
Promises of true love sound like folklore.

He walks out forever through the door
He totally overturns what he is living for
When he has been wounded to the core
Every woman now seems to him to be a whore.

Fitting in with the act turns into a chore
He rips off the mask which once he wore
The mask his heartbreak from his heart tore
And breaks away from the naive days of yore.

An angel or a demon? Neither nor.
Be yourself or die trying? Either or.
Whatever else life may have in store
He’ll carve his own way now to heaven’s shore.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

FRONT AND BACK

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Some will want
Wanting will be their front
Some will taunt
Taunting will be their front
Some will flaunt
Flaunting will be their front
And some will be gaunt
But it won’t be a front
It will be real, for wont
Of everything they want.
Everything they lack -
A place to call their own,
The feeling of being at home -
They want it back.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

UNMISSING YOU

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I miss you but missing you
hurts less than kissing you
So I miss you for missing you
Is how I get to stop missing you.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

Poems from the inner river

NIGERIA: STILL STRUGGLING FOR INDEPENDENCE

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Nigeria

Which will be the first modern, post-colonial Black African country to become independent?
– To stand as a First World country in the midst of global leaders.
– To take the leap from extractive economy to highly productive, manufacturing, innovative and invention-leading economy.
– To develop and run a nation-wide, all-encompassing and unconditional Social Security scheme.
– To become an Export world champion, exporting not just natural resources, but finished products.
– To take its place at the cutting edge of technology and information technology.
– To become a favoured global destination for medical tourism and university education.
– To have a currency that rivals USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CNR.
– To develop and take a leading role in the building of a new economy and new industry around the concept of sustainability. Because that is the future.
– To entrench legally protected civil and human rights.
– To engender independent institutions of democracy.
– To defeat the evil of tribalism.
– To stop begging, taking and being dependent on foreign aid.
– To stop allowing foreign religions to drive it to hate, exploit, oppress or kill its fellow Africans.
– To stop producing economic Refugees in droves.
– To hold regular free and fair elections, free of rigging, where votes count.
– To hold its richest and most powerful accountable.
– To fight corruption impartially, and stand without exemptions under the Law.
– To eradicate extreme poverty, and democratise and ensure education and opportunity for all.
– To work tirelessly for peace and unity on the African continent.
– To push, power and perfect intra-African trade, tourism and transport to the same levels as on other continents and in other world regions.
– To have a modern, disciplined military focused on defense of borders and values, as well as upholding of peace, and not full of megalomaniac dreams of coup d‘etats and executive power all the time.
– To have a depoliticised Police Force that serves the people rather than being used against the people.
– To maintain a hardworking, well-functioning, digitalised, detribalised, highly educated Civil Service.
– To own its own narrative, with its own independent media, on the global stage.
– To become a global lender, instead of a global borrower and beggar.
– To export technology and new technology to the rest of the world.
– To have a power, economic and civil infrastructure that matches every other First World country‘s.
– To become one of the decision makers in the UN, in WEF, in the G8.
– To break the culture of waste, squander and exhibitionism.
– To support and grow small and medium-scale enterprises all over the country.
– To develop a large and economically virile middle class.
– To feed itself independently.
– To power itself independently.
– To ensure electricity 24/7.
– To become a center of future-birthing research and development.
– To become a part of the space community.
– To find its own local solutions to its own local, as well as global, challenges.
– To be a part owner, and controller, of the global market.
– To produce proud citizens who have greater opportunities in their own Black countries than they would in foreign countries where they are never fully accepted.
– To turn around the historical burden of slavery and colonisation, and transform it into global leadership.
– To stand as a First World country in the midst of global leaders.

Which will be the first Black African country to become REALLY INDEPENDENT?

This is the silent question that hangs unanswered in the global imagination of all humankind, and floats inchoate through the heart of everybody of Black African extraction anytime another Black African country celebrates its annual so-called Independence Day.

Today’s it’s Nigeria’s turn. Country of my birth. 1st October.
Happy Independence Day, Nigeria.
Or should I rather say:
Happy Future-Independence Day.

Because only Self-dependence, Self-reliance, is truly Independence.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije

AFRICAN OPPRESSORS

~ Che ~ 1 Comment

The ironic tragedy about Africa is that foreign oppressors got replaced by African oppressors. An oppressive system needs an oppressor to run it, it is designed to be run by oppressors, and only oppressors can successfully run it.

The colonies were oppressive systems created by foreign interests to exploit the nature, the resources, the people and the dynamics within Africa. To successfully do this, they had to create or midwife or empower an intermediate class of African oppressors to be their remote controlled agents of oppression. In some cases they subjugated and then used already existent mini-powers of local imperialism existent on parts of the continent. Together with the new ones they groomed, using the divide and rule strategy, they created a comprehensive across-board layer and class of all-too-willing African oppressors.

At “independence”, underneath all the chaos that came afterwards, this class of African oppressors remained conscious, self-aware, ruthless and bent on replacing their masters; and eventually the leadership of these oppressive systems cynically called “African countries” were taken over by this class of African oppressors. In situations where a really freedom-minded African managed to be the first post-colonial African leader of these post-colonial entities – like Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana or Patrice Lumumbah in Congo – they were quickly and easily killed or ejected by that same class of African oppressors under the guidance and with the support of the foreign oppressors and imperialists. They secured thereby their agents of neo-colonialism and eventual recolonisation. Even until today, anytime non-oppressive personalities or tendencies seek to manifest in the leadership strata of Africa, this class of African oppressors frustrate them or eliminate them.

This is generally the situation that has reigned in Africa until today. Originally sovereign indigenous African peoples and nationalities were conquered, de-sovereignised, broken up and dispossessed. In their place, new territories of foreign authority were drawn up by the foreign imperialists, with new borders, new laws, new governments, new structures, new raison d’etre, new system of thought and of operation – all geared towards the imperialistic Exploitation of Africa. The education of Africans henceforth also was geared towards the production of the different levels of servants required to fulfil this uncivil servitude. The originally de-sovereignised African states have never again got back their Sovereignty even until today.

After the 2nd World War, when the political wind of change reduced support for a system of “colonialism” and “imperialism”, this was a temporary blow to fascism worldwide and forced a withdrawal from the visible driving seats of their colonial empires. However, the oppression-continuums they created remained in place. And their position was simply taken over by the very class of African oppressors whom they had either midwifed and empowered, or whose formation they had not prevented but had deliberately instrumentalised. And they are still with us today.

That class of African oppressors – and, more importantly, that philosophy of African oppressors – is still with us today, generationally and sequentially reinforcing itself at the helm of affairs in these colonially designed systems of oppression cynically still being called “African” countries today. Neither military rule nor democracy, neither communism-socialism nor capitalism, Islamic nor Christian fervour have changed or eliminated this nefarious class of African oppressors nor can do so by themselves. The problem is in the very soul of this system of thought, it springs from Greed, Avarice and Selfishness. Greed for material wealth and comfort, military power and political authority. The desire to play god.

Only the People themselves, the Masses, can do away with theses classes of African oppressors. Only when the people unite, become adequately conscious, and are resolved, can they destroy and banish this class of African oppressors forever. Thereafter, however, the people will need to go into themselves, into their own hearts and minds, into their own newly emerging systems, and ENSURE that that same philosophy of the erstwhile African Oppressors has not taken root in the masses too and reproduced itself in new emergent systems and nations or in old or presently existent sanitised nations. If we want a break from the past, then we have to change from the ways of the past.

Until we do away with this class of African oppressors and their way of thinking as well as change the very internal structure and logic of these Trojan horses left behind at “Independence”, i.e. until African countries are properly internally restructured – either gradually through the progressive efforts of a succession of non-oppressor leaders, or through radical changes in constitutions – Africa will continue to be the last great bastion of fascism on Earth which it is today.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

NEEDED: QUANTUM LEAP IN OUR LIFETIME

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

Nigeria IS a Crisis.

It‘s been almost 50 years since the civil war ended; … and today someone was dejectedly complaining of being without electricity for 24 hours straight – and of just feeling as if she was still in the civil war devasted Biafra zone where everything broke down under the onslaught of war. Sitting in the dark. Feeling unsafe. Not knowing when the Danger will manifest. But you know it’s out there, coming at you, waiting for you. Nervous about the present and the future. All you have is just your resolve to survive, and the depressing certainty that the difficulties are far from over. You struggle to find hope. Only the super rich can afford a more or less uninterrupted self-supply of the basic necessities. Normalcy becomes a luxury. But this is not Biafra 1969. This is Nigeria 2019. On the day on which you should celebrate in exhilaration, you just feel miserable as you see the state of your country.

Almost 50 years after the Civil War. From Gowon to Murtala to Obasanjo to Shagari to Buhari to Babangida to Shonekan to Abacha to Abdulsalami back to Obasanjo on to Yar‘adua on to Jonathan … back to Buhari. It‘s like we have just gone round in a vicious circle back to darkness and hopelessness and sadness. On Independence Day, on Nigeria‘s 59th Independence Day – and in fact a full 121 years after street lights were first installed in Nigeria – millions of people in Nigerian towns and Nigerian villages are sitting in darkness in their homes on Independence Day 2019. This is Nigeria‘s sad and shameful report card.

People, we need a QUANTUM LEAP forward. But this is the question: Who will trigger it? Who will chaperone and manage it? Who will deliver and anchor it, and safeguard it and programme it with the software of the internal logic of self-perpetuation, so that it will keep on leaping forward henceforth? The people who created Nigeria did not design it for the people who live in Nigeria today. We were not on their minds. Nigeria was designed to function as a Colony, not as a self-governing Entity. At so-called Independence in 1960, the White leadership of that Colony was simply replaced by Black leadership. But a Colony by nature it remained and still remains until today.

And because Nigeria, at its heart, in its design, in its internal logic, and in its set-up, is still a Colony and is still wired like a Colony, it thus lends itself most easily to be conquered by and to be subservient to imperial leadership, to ANY imperial Leadership. And that is why any tribe or clique or gang or cabal that is versed and experienced in the ways of Imperialism will always find it easy – both in military and in civilian times – to work their way into the center of government and snatch the power and keep it to themselves, and there will be no mechanisms or dynamics or institutions in place to stop them from doing this. Even Democracy by itself will not stop them. Because Nigeria was designed for just this purpose: to be ruled by an Imperialist. The foundational nature of the animal itself, Nigeria, is that it was designed not to be a free King in the jungle, but to be the broken, driven, crazed and manipulated servant of an Imperator. Always remember this. This will explain to you why power, real power, always keeps returning to or remaining with a certain type of people. This is the DNA of Nigeria. Imperialists understand this. Republicans don‘t.

Until this system is broken up, a new kind of nation-being will not break through from our midst. A new kind of leadership will find no space to emerge. A new philosophy of followership will not be able to manifest itself. The united upbuilding will not take place. We all feel the right way things should be done – but the system just keeps on sabotaging every new attempt to correct Nigeria.

How much longer can Nigeria bear the weight of this chain? The World is galloping ahead. And one day the difference between where Nigeria is and where Nigeria should be, will tear Nigeria apart. If it ever comes to that, which would be the worst catastrophe that would have ever hit Africa, then, from the broken parts left behind, Biafra will strive again to rise again out of the darkness into which war once plunged her, rise again, rise up like the Rising Sun.

And I bet you, others will do the same too. Unless Nigeria can make that Quantum Leap, in our lifetime, away from the imperialism-prone colony-at-heart country she still is, and restructure herself into a balanced continuum that liberates her peoples’ internal powers of invention, organisation, self-correction and equal-footed association which can propel her forward. Forward into that future that is about to leave us behind.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije