Part 2: Series on “Privilege, Power, Position, Secrets to Divine Intervention” and the Need for “Critical Thinking”

The ill Mind of Hopsin 7 by Hopsin is where we will begin this second part of a series on “Privilege, Power, Position, Status and Secrets to Unlocking Divine Intervention.”

Hopsin rap suggests that he’s at a place where he is experiencing critical thinking at work. You see, that’s what happen when you begin to expose oneself and think critically, it clashes with beliefs that you had once held because those beliefs came to you as a top-down approach with no ability to question them for yourselves which locks your brain in a particular reality. Until you are able to break free from that. When you are able to, it challenges you to a point of distress and frustration. But that is good, because it means now you are open to tremendous possibilities and the understanding of all things beyond any particular perspectives that were borrowed at best and had monopolized the mind so as to make it complicit and a willing participant in external abuse. That is what we must guard against which is why we should develop the individual so that he can think for him or herself without the possibility of being hijacked. 

As we think about Privilege, Power, Position and Status within the development of human society overtime and the challenges they pose for progress, critical thinking and communication become absolutely necessary because knowledge or the ability to think critically, while having access to information that is decentralized and de-monopolized are key to augmenting the individual so as to avert external manipulation and discrimination. The lecture that I did on Critical thinking at The Jamaica Theological Seminary for the course “Caribbean Thought” sometime ago, is worth sharing as we explore the issue of privilege and power, position and status and this drive to want to regulate information and to create laws about teaching critical history. 

Certainly, as we think about how to protect against disinformation and manipulative power, while we realize effective communication which is “to make popular what was the monopoly,” critical thinking becomes paramount. When others seek to create laws and policies or regulatory methods, which would suggest that people can’t think for themselves, we are about facilitating learning geared towards augmenting thinking that do the critical thinking that is needed to filter news, narratives and perspectives. More laws and regulations do not necessarily change anything, they more than anything centralize ownership and limit access. Which then create or expand an underground market, that people can still access.

Recently, Former President Barack Obama said, “The way I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for healthy, inclusive democracy.” He went on to say that, as part of this, tech platforms need to recognize that they play a unique role in how people consume information, and their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. Each of us has to pick a side. Do we allow our democracy to wither? Or do we choose to make it better? That’s the choice we face, and it is a choice worth embracing. Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all that ails our democracies or tears at the fabric of our world. But it can help rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make democracy stronger. It’s up to each of us to decide what we value, and to use the tools we’ve been given to advance those values. I believe we should use every tool at our disposal to secure our greatest gift – a government of, by, and for the people – for generations to come. With that power comes accountability – and the need for some democratic oversight.” Barack Obama.

Several persons responded to Mr. Obama via his twitter, and I will lift up a few of their posts here

AverageC: “I think your viewing this the wrong way President @BarackObama. Decentralization has been the theme of the 21st century. Decentralized news is just the next opportunity. It empowers our democracy by ensuring the 1% can’t own us by buying out a few news channels.”

RenaldoMcKenzie: Ok let’s talk about it. I have written an article and did a podcast show on this issue and cited you. I’d love to explore the issue with you. Because how can we reconcile the issue of free speech & monopoly of the news or media and media responsibility not just singling out 

RenaldoMcKenzie: What does that mean? We’ve heard great intentions to regulate when it does the opposite of the intentions. How do we guard against that? And what of peoples own responsibilities. It’s assumes people can’t think for themselves and can’t filter news for themselves

SydneyE: “A solid working assumption.  If people could think and filter news for themselves, QANON and support for a coup built on one man’s lies wouldn’t exist.  There are no pedo pizza parlors, so case closed.  There MUST be a fact check step built into the system.  Lies are too easy.”

RenaldoMcKenzie: But who determines this, when perspectives are pragmatic at best. We don’t need to build another system or institution based on financial backing to fact check. Fact checking can also be sabotaged. Who fact checks, the fact checkers? What are their positions on all things? People like QANON are driven by that messaging because they’ve locked into.

RenaldoMcKenzie: People choose to believe the truth or the lies. We are responsible for our actions. We do not need another policy to regulate our actions or to take away personal responsibility.

SydneyE: “From your info, it looks like you’ve thought about this before, so I’m curious… what is your solution to weaponized disinformation?  Ignore it? Pretend it doesn’t exist?  Tell people to ‘be responsible!’  If you recognize it as a problem, what is your solution. Serious question.”:

That was from a thread regarding a post that Mr. Obama had posted about his work to help fight disinformation. But to respond to Sydney E, he asked if you recognize it as a problem, what is your solution. Serious question.

Answer: Teach people critical thinking skills – to think for themselves…. 

 Therefore, facilitating Critical Thinking is necessary and what is Critical Thinking? It is thinking about thinking and what was previously or is the current thought that build on or debunk information that leads to new discoveries of thought and positions that improves life. It is deliberately and intentionally reflecting on truths, challenging oneself whether through introspective discourse or engagements with others. 

Critical Thinkers aren’t born for critical thinking is a skill and vocation that is developed over time. To do Critical Thinking is to do analysis. It is looking at things in a metaphysical way. It dissects and does surgery. It is a way of thinking that looks at patterns in action and explore thoughts. It examines and evaluates what is the obvious and what is not. It does not take sides. It involves having trained ears and eyes that hear and see far and wide. 

Critical Thinking is developed through the training of the mind to think in a certain way as it is explorative thinking. It challenges your own thinking and beliefs. It uses logic common sense and reason. It benefits from expansive thoughts and sequencing of present and past knowledge. It builds on past information. Critical Thinking is coherent and clear. It follows the laws of logic and reason. It is fair and open. It is sharp and cuts. It goes deep and deeper. But is focused and direct. Critical thinking may seem to “hurt one’s brain” but such thinking is left to those who are devoted to such discourse and vocation as they are “philosopher kings/queens” working to pay their part and make their mark towards revolutionary improvements on the totality of life. 

Note: Take for example if you were to read my blog, many of the matters discussed are really explorative and challenges all sides and what is the current thinking. It is a journal of critical thinking that is in the roughest of drafts at best. But it has provided many opportunities to rethink old thoughts as I engage with these posted thoughts on social media. 

———However, this need to create rule of thumbs, doctrines and regulations is a strategy or ideal loophole for power, because as we have argued, that this idea of power, privilege and status usually evolves to take on more sophistication overtime especially when you revisit philosophers, Theologians such as St. Agustin’s, and I reference this early church father particularly to point out that his confessions, whose writings were incorporated within the Christian doctrine over any other as it provides a convincing and reasonable basis to transform and develop Christianity into a huge hegemonic institution or capitalist franchise under the guise of piety. Moreover, as we think about this natural development of privilege and power from the formative years within intellectualism and academia, since the Patristic periods leading up the medieval eras and beyond, politicians or noble men (leaders of a society) who created or sensationalize tales about the Sacred and profane contained within Homer’s Illiad, Hesiod’s Theogany, Platos Republic or Socrates within the Phaedo, the Bible, Quran etc, continue to develop the theme of privilege, position and status as it takes form from Homer to Plato, Aristotle to Aquinas and Agustin, when we attempt to study the foundations and evolution of human society. When we delved into Plato’s Phaedo and his other projects; It would seem as if Plato could not escape this human condition/nature described by Kant, and this (special interest) “intellectualism” eschewed by Gramsci. Unlike all the previous Greek poets and the putative historians before, Plato downplayed hearsay and was more methodical; utilizing reason and his brand of logic to tell and arrive at Greek “truth”. Herodotus and Thucydides had already begun to challenge the truth or myth of the Greeks contained in Homeric literature and the Hesiod poems as nothing but “fake news” that justified Greek chauvinism and wars couched in ethnocentrism about Persians and the other peoples. Plato may have been inspired by this, his love for Socrates and the mountain of new literature that challenged traditional Greek thought exposed in Homer and Hesiod; so that he approaches all things through “philosophia”. This search for the truth since it has been lost in Greek myths highlighted by Herodotus and Thucydides and Sappho/Pindar and the difference in their themes of war, heroism, love and strife that serves as a basis for this new Socratic-Platonic interest of the day where reality is never before split in two between the soul (the immaterial) and the body (the material). 

In the reading of Phaedo, unadulterated knowledge (truth) is attained by the philosopher who is overtaken by philosophy by rejecting the pleasures of life and devoting self to learning. It can be concluded from reading Phaedo that previous Greek poets accounts would have been tainted by the “body” for they had not attained “philosophy” to write properly about anything. So, we must assume that Homer and other Greek literature had errors so that the Socratic-Platonic era is here attempting to put Greek ideas and literature in their proper perspective as a response to the challenges from Herodotus, Thucydides and the influence of Euripides et al. 

In fact, Socrates is considered to be an iconoclast breaking the tradition that imagines the Greek hero as our Achilles to promoting the philosopher as king and as hero. Euripides, Socrates contemporary, and the other iconoclasts had begun writing plays that suggested that the Gods were mere humans who like Dionysus had to die to attain a seat at Olympus. It is therefore not inaccurate to assume that this idea found way into Socrates’ and Plato’s Philosophy of reason in their dialogues about reality. Moreover, this new assumption about a dualistic reality may not have been a universal concept during the middle period in which Socrates lived—And Echrechates pressing for credible witnesses to corroborate Plato’s story, a form or evidentiary logic by multiple eyewitnesses was a new way of writing and arriving at truth. Thus, this was a departure from the hearsay contained in previous Greek literature about events. Further, this mind and body dualism of all things was almost identical to the Apollo-Dionysus dichotomy in Greek tradition prior to this and up to that point and beyond. So, we may assume that Socrates and Plato are taking a Greek story to improve upon it because within the basis of their argument they have recovered what was lost and are more aware of things. And it is in reason based in philosophical dialogue that this is achieved as part of the philosopher’s preparation. 

The Iliad is said to be an epic composed probably in the late eight or early seventh century B.C. by Homer, whose life and or reality is still a mystery. Written with some type of Greek identity, the Iliad utilizes “lines of hexameter,” for entertainment or imagination. All we have is the tradition, what the Greeks of historical times believed they know about Homer. There are those who question whether Homer was even Greek such as Joseph Ben Matthias who asserted that he was Jew because the Greeks did not learn to write until very late in their history; and The Trojan war was ignorant of present day mode of writing, for Homer’s songs were transmitted by memory and not unified until much later.  Moreover, Hesiod’s Theogony is also met with scrutiny: In Hesiod’s case we also have to concern ourselves with the question of influence from the civilizations of the Near East, which had older, elaborate creation myths of their own. Although the Theogony is our earliest surviving account of the origins of the Gods from the Greek world, it must always be remembered that there were other contemporary accounts, but it is not possible to say that it represents “what the Greeks believed” or even “what the Greeks of Hesiod’s time believed.”

Further, there are those who would admit that earlier Greeks were concerned with Future Greek actions so that their stories were aimed at creating a “legendary Greece” For the Iliad had a different name in German traditions – “Urlias” – and appeared earlier than Homer’s Iliad. In fact, it is said that earlier Greeks did not put much credence into the stories of Homer and Hesiod until later, thereby underscoring Kant’s assertion that history is for the future and its philosophy and methods are purely based in human nature and circumstance. Thereby, resulting into what we have today, one Greek history that parallels the Germans which is different due to nature and circumstance — which I propose is that drive to promote a particular identity for a people. In fact, in the Sappho/Pindar fragments in 630-580 BCE we are told: “some say a host of Calvary, others of infantry, still others of ships are the most beautiful thing on the black earth-but I say it is whomsoever one loves…. By implication this may be seen to suggest that to write about love is more worthwhile than to write about war.” Essentially, in Sappho/Pindar we see the early beginnings of this Kantian observation that human history is based on human nature and circumstance. This leads me to hypothesize that in times past men such as Homer, Hesiod and early Greek men in one epoch or time period valorize war and wrote glowingly of war. But then the matter or theme turns from war to love. Homer’s Iliad is one of war. The New Testament Bible speaks of the Hero of Love where Christ willingly/heroically dies to save those whom he loves as against Achilles in the Iliad who heroically dies fighting. Nature and human circumstances in various periods turn poems and tales from war to love depending on what the goal is for humanity in a particular period in time based on their position and place in society/life. 

In fact, it is said that ”The ancient poet plays with his cards on the table; the modern dramatist conceals his hand…. But he does it in such a way that the imagination is quickened to create for itself.” In effect, the tales of Homer and Hesiod and the few that is known or written or discovered are already known by an “inner circle” of Greek/scholars. The reader was always one of the “inner circle,” so that Homer artistically and poetically imposed an epic upon the known so as to produce his Iliad and Hesiod’s Theogony. Which leads me to assert that such works are their imaginative work on a monotonous story. A story that is reimagined and reinterpreted with their epic and later men have themselves reimagined and reinterpreted to produce what we have today as Greek myths. 

But what was lifelike then, that it needed epics?  I do not pretend to be a Greek Scholar, as I do not profess to be a part of any “inner circle”, as I am limited by time and space and can only rely on assumptions about the past driven by facts that aren’t themselves unique to a particular time. But as I seek to understand “Power” in its shape and form and neoliberalism as a representation of that in my dissertation, I have come to find tremendous value and interest in exploring the foundations of Greek exceptionalism and its connections with power, privilege, and position in society and how these takes shape throughout various epochs and periods in human history to the present. 

It then leads me to ask, is history and its products (poems, art, artifacts, traditions and archives) a true representation of the past given limitations of time, space and geography; and human nature to privilege, possess and to continue a particular position of power and exclusion? With all the problems of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod’s Theogony, and the Genesis Stories concerning the Sacred and the Profane regarding revelation, interpretation, transmission, meanings, symbolisms, human nature and circumstances—one must ask, is history universal or limited to a particular people, place and nationalists? I’m here exploring whether we can have a history that is universal or one that is national or particular to the times without drawing universal conclusions about all things sacred and profane. If historical things such as Homer’s Poems and Hesiod’s Theogony are more credible in the future than in the past, what guideposts can they provide and what reverence can we put in them? For if the past approaches its present with scant regard, how then can we trust what we have now? Yet there are those who have sought to rescue the truth of history saying that those before them wrote to flatter or within a turbulent time that necessitates such writing. Yet, whether for flattery or truth we get to understand the issues and dynamics of the day so that those ahead can continue to build on what is left.

And “Secrets to Unlocking [My] Divine Intervention,”

When I started this Essay project which may form the basis of my Dissertation, it was never The Secrets to Unlocking my Divine Intervention but just secrets to unlocking Divine Intervention, which is part two of the two volume book: Privilege, Power, Position, Status and Secrets to Unlocking Divine Intervention. But having read and explored the foundational history of the sacred and profane mixed with my understanding of certain things from Descartes and Kant Gramsci and Foucault and Marx, I’ve been given deeper revelation of this divine intervention so that it’s more personal and not necessarily a universal rule and I’m of course against privilege and glorifying any particular status or view over another unless it’s one that dehumanizes. Yet one’s experience can be a powerful story that may inspire and even change lives in a positive way. I have come to accept that God reveals himself to people in various ways. That is the conclusion from my readings in the foundation of all things Western or Eastern up this point. Descartes said we can only be certain of ourselves and in time God has personally showed himself personally to have an intimate relationship that is not designed for the world. So, we are to assume then that Homer’s was personal and not meant to be for all. But men have tried to make it universal and added their perceived intellect so as to privilege their knowledge of things. And Kant has asserted rather convincingly that knowledge is based in human nature and circumstance. From Homer/Hesiod with their theocratic view of things that privilege Greek society or not, and whether they exist to Sappho Pindar anthropomorphic idea of the sacred immortalizing love and strife over war. To ethnocentrism of orientalism and its response Occidentalism which began with Herodotus in Persian occupied by Greek who is fixing history. The Jews and the romans with their religion of a god of rules ethics and miracles and a hero who saves the day by dying which continues the love theme.  What if Homer was not meant to be anything. Yet we are told that the Greek poet shows his cards so as to allow for imagination. So, it’s an imaginative piece of epic. Which sensationalizes an old dull cliché story, or it was a made for “TV” special. 

So, the intervention I speak about here is not one of privilege or rubric based on any system. It is a personal story that is not fictional but experiential and based on actual events. Now the events May bear conclusions that I’m here purporting that it is the Divine that has intervened to save the day. Yet it could have been accidental or coincidental. But it is my position of personal truth where I cannot deny for myself the facts which maybe either trained or internal. But when you hear these events, you may decide for yourself whether they are myths or truths or glimpses of the Divine, and how these testimonies or stories can be connected to a Divine that is personal relatable or universal and connected wherever they bear any understanding in how we can look at the divine in relationship to our own lives. 

To be continued…. This article will be available on our podcast later today, The Neoliberal Round on any podcast stream and at https://renaldocmckenzie.com and https://theneoliberal.com. This is part 2 of a series on Privilege, Power, Position, Status and Secrets to Unlocking Divine Intervention.

See Part A in The Neoliberal Post at https://renaldocmckenzie.com

We also did a podcast presentation on Part A of the series via The Neoliberal Round Podcast at https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal

This Commentary was Written by Rev. Renaldo C. McKenzie, Author of Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance. The book is available in all formats worldwide and can be accessed via https://theneoliberal.com/ bookstores or via https://renaldocmckenzie.com bookstore. The book is also available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Ingram Spark, Ebay etc. Here’s a link to the audiobook via the audible.

Contact Renaldo C. McKenzie at theneoliberal@renaldocmckenzie.com, renaldomckenzie@theneoliberal.com, renaldocmckenzie@gmail.com or at:

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