Filipino Power and Black Power

December 30th is Day 5 of Kwanzaa: Nia (Purpose).
Allow me to share with you what I discovered when reading about a great man named Jose Rizal, and how he helped me renew my purpose as a social worker.

I. Jose Rizal Day in the Philippines.
II. Black Power & Socialism
III. The Importance of Wealth and the Existence of Institutional Racism
IV. Streets of Hope
V. God

I. Jose Rizal Day in the Philippines.

On this day in history (Dec. 30), 1896, Filipino hero Jose Rizal was executed by Spanish colonialists. Rizal is believed to be the first Filipino revolutionary whose death is attributed entirely to his work as a writer; and through dissent enabled him to successfully destroy Spain's moral primacy to rule.

Rizal was a polyglot, conversant in 22 languages, and became an eye doctor in order to personally help fix his mother's blindness, moving to Germany to study under the best ophthalmologists and to learn the most cutting-edge eye science. From Heidelberg, Rizal wrote his parents: "I spend half of the day in the study of German and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a week, I go to the bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends." He was also a sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian, playwright, journalist, poet, martial artist, and even while exiled on the island of Mindanao for being declared by the civil and Catholic authorities as an enemy of the state, he is said to have personally built and taught at two schools, one of which produced a future chief and future governor. His novels, published in Germany and Belgium, angered both the Spanish colonial elite and many educated Filipinos due to their insulting symbolism. He roasted the Catholic friars who had been controlling the Philippines, and put belief into action by forming a league for Philippines interested in reform. Among his reform demands:

Local priests instead of Spanish ones
Representation in the Spanish Cortes (their parliament/assembly)
Freedom of assembly and speech
Equal rights before the law

While Jose Rizal was exiled in Mindanao, his Philippine League became inactive. It partly morphed into a revolutionary party which kicked off the revolution in the Philippines, something which Rizal was erroneously implicated in by a group of corrupt Catholic friars, and executed for. The radical strand of Rizal's former group pushed for violent revolution, something which Rizal was against on two counts: He believed in nonviolence, for one; he also believed in prerequisites for freedom.

While imprisoned in Fort Santiago, he drew up a manifesto disavowing the current revolution in its present state and declaring that the education of Filipinos and their achievement of a national identity were prerequisites to freedom (the exact same methods used by Malcolm X). Rizal, like the founder of Kwanzaa, knew that colonialism meant to rob people of their culture, and one of the ways Rizal fought this was to argue against the negative racist images of pre-colonial Philippines that were presented by the Spanish. Likewise, Malcolm X told massive Black audiences about their legacy as descendents of kings, queens, and creators of culture- not simply hut-dwelling "savages" (not that dwelling in a hut is bad, but was stigmatized at the time). Rizal believed that the only justification for national liberation and self-government was the restoration of the dignity of the people, saying "Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?" Black Power's seeds were sown by Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Brown- who all waved the banner of "Black and Proud." The colonized Filipinos had been forced to choose Spanish surnames- oppression works by controlling things such as people's names. The 1970s saw many Black Americans choosing new names for themselves, part of the cultural reclamation that comes with liberation.

Self-labeling in a society that treats you as sub-human

II. Black Power & Socialism

Kwanzaa is about self-determination (Day 2), that which Americans, Filipinos, and countless others have fought revolutions for. In America, the way wealth gets accumulated and passed on from generation to generation has by and large racistly left Blacks out, which makes saving for college, a health crisis, retirement, or starting a business out of reach for many people without going into severe debt. Many Black neighborhoods deal with anti-democratic forces like government bureaucrats and capitalist banks and business associations who all team up to make decisions for Black communities, usually at their expense. How can a person (on a micro-scale) or a community (on a macro-scale) set their own goals for themselves and fulfill their potential based on their talents and skills without being able to determine their own future?

Thus, Kwanzaa is about collective work and responsibility (Day 3) and cooperative economics (Day 4). This may smack of socialism to some. Is it any wonder that post-colonial nations found themselves attracted to communism, socialism, anarchism, and labor unions? Why Nelson Mandela became a communist and friend of Fidel Castro? Why did the first NAACP meetings include many communists? The FBI created Cointelpro to disrupt these movements, and had a mission to put away Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King, Jr. for the untrue ideas they were communists. Garvey simply wondered what would happen if Black workers united, and Black union leaders like A. Philip Randolph helped create the famous 1963 March on Washington, where MLK gave his famous speech. The simple acts of collective work and cooperative economics, Kwanzaa's 3rd and 4th principles, were inherently radical to the established order.

Whites in America relegated to wage slaves (turned from artisans and other manufacturers into proletariats) also flocked to these ideologies, just like the ghetto of Europe (Eastern Europe) and a certain Republic with sky-high unemployment (Germany right before the Nazis took over). Some influential British and Americans, including President Theodore Roosevelt, recommended giving labor rights to keep the poor away from communism and anarchism.

On this day in history, 1905, Governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho was assassinated by a bomb explosion during period of many bitter labor disputes in the state. Also, today is the birthday of the German-American governor of Illinois who pardoned German-American anarchists who were on trial for throwing a bomb at police during the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Riot over labor unions tired of being oppressed. When Communist dictator Lenin took over Russia, he told American anarchist Emma Goldman "During a revolutionary period there can be no free speech." We see here are two strands among every oppressed peoples: those who believe in Democracy, like Martin Luther King and Albert Einstein (avowed Democratic Socialists) and Russia's Trotsky (a communist), and those who believe in dictatorship, like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Lenin, and a National Socialist named Hitler.

Thus Jose Rizal's emphasis on the prerequisites to freedom:
"Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?"

III. The Importance of Wealth and the Existence of Institutional Racism

Levittown: created in the 1947 by white people, for white people.

Kwanzaa's principles of cooperative economics for Blacks are not new, and the principle is as important today as it ever was.
When American slavery ended, folks like w.e.b. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, and progressive Northern whites seeking Reconstruction sought self-determination through education for the freedman. They debated on what such an education might consist of: liberal studies (teaching you how to think- Dubois), practical studies (teaching you how to get a job and make money- Washington's Tuskegee Institute), and ideas for development.

Blacks were given former master's plantation land on the islands of Port Royal, South Carolina as part of Reconstruction. They rejected the white bureaucrat’s plan on using the land exclusively to grow cotton, instead wanting to grow foodstuffs to create a self-sustaining community. They prospered, made enough profit to buy their own land and create their own towns, and were seen as a model of an independent Black towns.

During World War I, a Black sociologist named George Edmund Haynes, Director of the Office of Negro Economics, noticed the Great Migration of Southern Blacks (most of whom were descendents of slaves, or once slaves themselves), and decided to form coalitions of interest groups, committees of employers, bureaucrats like himself, Black church leaders, representatives of civic groups like lodges, and progressive white community leaders. He formed them on state, county, and municipal levels. The migrant laboring Blacks got similar jobs in the same plants as white workers, and also had similar rates of absteentism, turnover, and even wages.

Tulsa, Oklahoma became known as Black Wall Street because of the high level of doctors, realtors, lawyers, and other professionals- many of whom were millionaires. Harlem, New York, had Striver's Row and Sugar Hill- where the elite realtors, musicians, architects and Congressmen lived.

What happened? When Lincoln was assassinated, Vice President Andrew Johnson (who was born, ironically, the day before today- Dec. 29th) ended Reconstruction and shut down the "Port Royal Experiment" by returning the land to the old plantation masters, along with all the other old plantation land in the South. As for sociologist bureaucrat George Edmund Haynes' experiment, unfortunately, the federal government refused to continue it. Whites returned from the war more racist than ever before, demanding the jobs Blacks had. Birth of the Nation came out in theaters, a racist propaganda flick mongering fears of ex-slaves becoming dictators and showing the KKK (which was now defunct) rising to heroically put them down. The film got rave reviews from President Woodrow Wilson, and the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan was inspired to be born- and they last until this day.

These examples show how U.S. government policy could be used to help end racism, showing that racial oppression has an institutional component- the lack of energy in our government to uplift people it oppressed is to blame for structural, institutional inequalities of opportunity in our country. But it is not all the government's fault. Race riots destroyed Tulsa's Black Wall Street and Harlem's status as the Black Mecca and origin of the Black Harlem Renaissance; these riots were ultimately rooted in racist attitudes and practices of whites (the Harlem race riots were also caused by government policies). According to the meticulously researched book Black Wealth/White Wealth, Black communities on the road to wealth just like these were regularly thwarted by the often violent racism of whites, in a historical pattern known as the Black "Economic Detour."

As I mentioned before, the way wealth is accumulated and passed on to new generations in this country is important.
Blacks were racistly left out of the Homestead Act where dirt cheap land for homes was handed out to Americans encouraged to settle the West, or else they were given homes on swamps and other untenable lands. During the 1930s and especially post-World War II in the 1940s, suburbs flourished for cheap prices. But Blacks were redlined by government bureaucrats and capitalist bankers out of community investment or a chance to settle in suburbs. This was true for many Northern cities, and still happens today (look up "redlining"), explaining why Northern cities are so segregated. Also, in World War II, many Blacks were unfairly dishonorably discharged by racist Southern sergeants and thus prevented from taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, which helped many whites gain access to the suburbs and loans for colleges. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech about how Blacks were left out of these many channels for wealth, saying he wished to march down to Washington to demand his version of a G.I. Bill. He was just beginning his Poor People's Campaign, an inter-racial social justice movement, before he was gunned down.

IV. Streets of Hope

MLK knew that wealth inequality is more important than income inequality. Anger toward racism grew into even more riots post-Martin Luther King's assassination. Fires raged. Fires also raged in a Boston town called Roxbury, where insurance money-seeking landlords and criminals alike committed arson throughout the 1970s. In the 1980s, a Roxbury community group called the Dudley Street Initiative decided to take the power to control their destiny into their hands. They applied to become a CDC- a community development corporation- which had the power to use eminent domain to seize vacant land (much land was vacant, as it was charred by fire). They met resistance from politicians, bureaucrats, garbagemen, and shunned capitalists like banks and business associations who had for two long neglected the Black community out of investment. They had their own funds and associations representing local businesses, community organizations, activists representing all races/ethnicities, and religious institutions. They took the power back, and created jobs for adults and kids, redeveloped their downtown business district, and built a community center for the children that the kids themselves helped design, and everything was developed using input from the community meetings they held. The book Streets of Hope documents the fall and rise of this urban neighborhood.

I believe something like this is happening now with Unity Square in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I went to school. New Brunswick has for too long been giving a CDC named DevCo tax breaks to build things like luxury condos and student centers, focusing on the downtown district's gentrification rather than needy places like Ward 2. The poor subsidize the rich under DevCo and it is likely gentrification will price them out of the things DevCo builds. Unity Square is focusing on Ward 2. Also, many Blacks and Latinos who tried to go middle-class by settling in nearby Somerset homes off of places like Hamilton Street got tied up in the housing scandal, where client-screwing bankers and Wall St. traders sold junk and exploited minorities (especially those who spoke English as a second language).

In the summer of 2012, I participated in a movement to help the Solis  family, who had been the victims of predatory lending and were getting kicked out of their home because the organization which owned the home would not let them pay the real (non-housing-bubble-inflated) price of their home, making it too expensive for them to live in. He was also exploited by his attorney, Amro Badran, who recently was sentenced to prison for another crime. In California, people are experimenting with using eminent domain so the government could buy up all the houses that were inflated during the housing bubble and then sell them back to the victims of the scandal at the home's real-value (more affordable) price. Like in Roxbury (Boston), communities should use eminent domain to control their own wealth and, therefore, their own destiny. Occupy Wall Street, which helped get the depraved state of income and wealth inequality into the American policy debate, has an offshoot that is remarkably still thriving: Occupy Our Homes. Is there one near you?

These three books have detailed, practical guides on the process of community change

V. God
Faith, creativity, and unity are the other three principles and days of Kwanzaa. Unity is foremost: Americans of all races and class backgrounds must come together to help the working-class and especially the neglected Blacks and Latinos who, in rural and inner-city areas, were left out of wealth accumulation in our country. We need laws to spread the wealth so that the top 1% of Americans do not own 40% of the nation's wealth and keep it within the family- things like capital gains and estate taxes are important for this, and threatened by most Republican candidates. We need a higher earned income tax credit, so that the working poor do not spend most of their money on taxes and barely have any left over to save. We need creative ideas, like funds for people in poor areas which are matched by the government and not to be touched unless it is used for things like a child's education, starting a small business, retirement, or buying a home. The book Black Wealth/White Wealth goes into more detail on how to do this.

The Creative Life Force, known to many as God (who's will is to balance our living out our potential balanced by justice and may include what seems to be wrong but may turn out to be important), to others as the Tao (creation and destruction, the dark and the light, the masculine and the feminine), and still others as the forces of the universe/nature (entropy and creation), exists- or so we must have childlike Imani (Faith) in this, or simply feel with our hearts uplift from things such as gratitude, shifts in consciousness, wisdom which gives us greater perspective, good feelings when reading about the moral or skillful excellence of others or doing these things ourselves while flowing with our skills and strengths, awe, and wonder (balanced with healthy skepticism of course).

Or as the heroic Jose Rival put it, in a letter to a priest-friend of his:

"We are entirely in accord in admitting the existence of God. How can I doubt his when I am convinced of mine. [...] Now then, my faith in God, if the result of a ratiocination may be called faith, is blind, blind in the sense of knowing nothing. I neither believe nor disbelieve the qualities which many attribute to him; before theologians' and philosophers' definitions and lucubrations of this ineffable and inscrutable being I find myself smiling. Faced with the conviction of seeing myself confronting the supreme Problem, which confused voices seek to explain to me, I cannot but reply: 'It could be; but the God that I foreknow is far more grand, far more good: Plus Supra!...I believe in (revelation); but not in revelation or revelations which each religion or religions claim to possess. Examining them impartially, comparing them and scrutinizing them, one cannot avoid discerning the human 'fingernail' and the stamp of the time in which they were written... No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However, brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light. I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation which surrounds us on every side, in that voice, mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. What books can better reveal to us the goodness of God, his love, his providence, his eternity, his glory, his wisdom? 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork'."

 The Philippines

For Rizal, doing social justice on earth meant listening to God in the form of one's conscience, what the Quakers call a "still, small voice within":

"How can I doubt his existence when I am convinced of mine. Who so recognizes the effect recognizes the cause. To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for?" wrote Rizal. In his final letter, he wrote – Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I am going to die with a tranquil conscience."

Any Religion Worth It's Weight In Spit Pt. 1: Abundance, or Dealing with the Unfillable Hole Within Us

Any religion worth it's weight in spit ought to cultivate an attitude which says I don't have to look for my core sense of self-worth and happiness outside of me. It is within me.

Or hovering above me like floating fish eggs while shooting out of my chest, I'll take that too.

In my Violence Against Women course last year, I read in our textbook an article examining rape-free (little to no rape) and rape-prone tribes. First of all, the fact that tribes could report a number of rapes hovering around zero surprised me. But could we identify common characteristics of a rape-free society and apply the lessons to our own situation?

What were some similarities among tribes where rape was NOT prevalent?
Their religion's acceptance of goddesses in addition to gods,
the inclusion of women in religious rites such as their own fertility rites, and
the existence of a matriarchy instead of a patriarchy, the latter of which often ending up with women seen as mere possessions.

In contrast, in rape-prone societies,
the devaluation of women,
the lack of the female gender being included among the divine realm, and
the death-penalty-warranting offense of women being around taboo religious artifacts marked societies where
men commonly raped women, often with impunity and sanctioned by tribal custom.

But the most startling marker I found of rape-prone societies was this: the existence of scarcity.

Later we will see that the two need to be balanced in harmony

Scarcity
Men in rape-prone often competed with men from other tribes to control what little resources there were in the area. Perhaps so used to using force to get what they wanted, and celebrated as heroes for doing so, these men turned this approach on the women of their own tribe. But attacking a woman on the street was only part of it; these tribes developed an ethos, or ethic, of aggression and force surrounding masculinity. In one tribe, during the day of their nuptial sex, the new wife will hurl searing attacks on her new husband's manhood in an attempt to provoke the most aggressive form of sex possible. The men in these societies extend the idea of domination from "their" environment to "their" women.

Abundance
In contrast, the rape-prone tribes more often lived in situations of abundance. The Mbuti pygmies of the African Congo's Ituri rainforests, for example, had men who displayed aggression, but that aggression was only a display. The Mbuti, surrounded by rich resources and supple plants dangling off of trees, are egalitarian and speak of the forest as their Friend. They do not like violence or drama because of they way they say it offends the forest. The idea of dominating their environment would be silly to them; many, such as the Ashanti of Ghana, are matriarchal; and most of the rape-free societies democratically listen to male and female voices with equal weight.

Our Problem: Perceived Abundance vs. Perceived Scarcity

Now to our society. We rape with impunity. The rates of conviction for sexual assault are staggering low, between 2 and 4 percent, which are the lowest conviction rates of any violent crimes. But how could anyone say we here in America lack abundance? Yes, some of our poorest areas do have scarcity, and cross-cultural research shows an undeniable link between poverty and sexual violence- though it should be taken into consideration that it may be non-poor Johns using violence against women who see prostitution as their only option, that police surveillance is disproportionately higher among the poor, and that much upper-class rape may go unreported. But outside of urban areas, America as a whole is guilty of rape, and the armed forces, universities athletic teams and fraternities are going through epidemics of sexual assault. These places do not lack in abundance. But it may be that they perceive that they do.

In fact, our society manufactures the perception of scarcity. Do you have the latest iPad? No? What the hell's wrong with you??!!

"All the commodities catering to our basic needs are being hijacked and submitted to processes that produce artificial scarcity. These processes have been developed and refined over many decades – even centuries – through many, many organizations and agencies, most often under the guise of alleviating the very problems that are being engineered. Specialization, hierarchization and legislation have all been used in conjunction, in order to centralize control of production – allowing for the centralized control of prices and markets."- an excerpt from the brief essay Artificial Scarcity.

Scarcity Response: How It Works

The feeling of overwhelming stress among poor people has been shown in scientific studies to lead to poor decision-making. "Hunger and stress effect the functioning of the brain that determines decision making". We see the effects in children of the scarcity response manifest as hunger's effect on learning and decision making, especially dangerous for a child in the first two years of his life. Deprivation leads to desperate decisions. 

On a bigger scale, scarcity operates like clockwork on groups of people. Farmers enduring famine, as an example, are profoundly effected:
"Seeking subjects whose income normally fluctuates radically," a team of researches "decided to focus on sugar cane farmers in India. The farmers are basically paid once a year, when they sell their harvest to sugar mills, and they have to make that money last until the next harvest. The researchers measured the farmers' cognitive function before the harvest, when money was tight, and again after the harvest, when farmers had fewer money worries. Various important controls were in place, including that nutrition and the amount of physical labor were the same pre- and post-harvest. The farmers who hadn't yet harvested (and been paid for) their crops scored dramatically worse than the post-harvest farmers."

How does this scarcity/deprivation response work in the brain? "Economist Anandi Mani of the University of Warwick, along with collaborators from Harvard, Princeton and the University of British Columbia, explored the concept of cognitive load. The fanciest, most recently evolved part of the human brain is the frontal cortex, a region that mediates executive function, decision-making, emotional regulation and long-term planning — in other words, it plays a key role in many of the things rich people tend to do better than poor people."
I am not simply being classist with that remark. "An extensive literature search shows that lower socioeconomic status is associated with a range of self-defeating behaviors, including more risk-taking (not using seat belts, for example), worse adherence to protocols (such as failing to complete a full course of a medicine) and poorer financial management (impulse buying, for example, or buying on credit, which adds considerably to an item's cost).
"Naturally, the frontal cortex has a finite capacity. Extensive research shows that "frontal function" is impaired in people who increase their cognitive load with things such as distracting tasks, stress, sleep deprivation, pain or even resisting temptation (for example, if you make someone's frontal cortex work hard in order for them to resist eating chocolate, they are less capable immediately afterward of performing frontal cognitive tasks). What Mani found is that poor people, in general, have a greater cognitive load than rich people."

"This makes sense. It's more cognitively burdensome, after all, to figure out how you're possibly going to pay this month's rent than to figure out where to vacation next summer. Mani's research supports this idea with fascinating data."

The mental effects of poverty apply to scarcity more broadly, whether it's money, time or food, "When you experience scarcity, your mind focuses on that one thing." I would also add a scarcity of safety to this list, since growing up while being exposed to violence creates the same physiological effect as poverty. Exposure to poverty and/or violence in childhood has been tested rigorously and shown to predict poor health outcomes throughout the lifespan:

A study called "The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) to Adult Health: Turning Gold Into Lead,” it indicates that "the traumatic experiences her patients faced every day were producing not just emotional difficulties but also serious medical consequences, both present and future." For the study, when patients told doctors their childhood traumas, the doctors "used the data to assign patients an 'ACE score,' giving them one point for each category of trauma they had experienced."

"The correlations between adverse childhood experiences and negative adult outcomes were so powerful that they “stunned us,” study author Anda later wrote. And those correlations seemed to follow a surprisingly linear “dose-response” model: the higher the ACE score, the worse the outcome, on almost every measure, from addictive behavior to chronic disease. Compared with people who had no history of ACEs, those with ACE scores of 4 or higher were twice as likely to smoke, seven times as likely to be alcoholics, and six times as likely to have had sex before the age of fifteen. They were twice as likely to have been diagnosed with cancer, twice as likely to have heart disease, and four times as likely to suffer from emphysema or chronic bronchitis. Adults with an ACE score of 4 or higher were twelve times as likely to have attempted suicide than those with an ACE score of 0. And men with an ACE score of 6 or higher were forty-six times as likely to have injected drugs than men who had no history of ACEs."

The effect of scarcity's stress on the fetus of a pregnant mother can lead to the child being born with an altered stress response, as measured by the stress-hormone cortisol: 

"Researchers found that the greater the exposure to Mom's cortisol in the womb, the larger was the infants' own cortisol spike in response to a blood draw in the first day of life. These cortisol-exposed infants also calmed down less readily after the blood draw ended." In other words, the child will be more easily startled, and take a longer time than most people to calm down from being stressed. This exaggerated stress response in children often leads to obesity, which itself can cause poverty due to paying to treat the chronic illnesses obesity brings.

This scarcity response happens on a global scale, as well, manifesting oftentimes as instability and violence:

Global climate change causes resource scarcity due to desertification mixed with famine-inducing hotter weather. As people are pushed to the edge of their usual boundaries (physical and psychological), this leads to violence. These are but a few of the studies I have come across showing how scarcity and feelings of deprivation lead to violence.

Conversely, gratitude has been shown to increase happiness, reduce costly impatience, and, if practiced consistently enough, can rewire the brain to create a less negative pattern.

One of the Objectives of Religion
There are a good number of objectives of religion, but this one seems to take the cake for me. Any religion worth it's weight in spit ought to cultivate an attitude which says I don't have to look for my core sense of self-worth and happiness outside of me. It is within me.

I have been reading religious texts looking for themes of abundance and the cultivation of a mindset which perceives abundance. The theme keeps popping up in the Qur'an, the Gospels, and in the Jewish Scriptures of a sense of divine inner resources of strength, vastness, riches, wisdom, and peace to rely on which are intangible and go with us wherever we are. Buddhism teaches the same thing, asking us to see samsara, the world of sorrows and change, as nirvana, the world of peace, bliss, and timelessness. Buddhism also teaches that the abundant ground of all being (tathagatagarbha) also being present in all things.

Genius, right? Moses and Muhammad lived in raiding tribes that had to contend with desert scarcity, especially Muhammad's Arabia. In addition to Muhammad uniting the tribes of Arabia into one single brotherhood/sisterhood which transcended the ethic of morality and sharing only applying within the tribe, God's beautiful language of the Qur'an constantly makes references to heaven as abundance, God being in heaven, God being closer to you than your jugular vein, and that everywhere you look is the presence of God. God also spends verse after verse in some chapters simply counting the reasons why people should focus on an attitude of gratitude, rather than one of deprivation, which leads to desperation and bad decisions. And don't get me started on Rumi's poetry. To paraphrase, "There is a fountain inside you. Don’t walk around with an empty bucket."

Moses and Muhammad also spent the days as young men with rich tribes proclaiming royalty- Pharaoh's tribe and the tribe of the Quraysh, and the following words apply to them too:

Jesus and the Buddha each lived in empires of excess- the Roman Empire and the Ikshvaku dynasty, respectively. The Buddha himself was given to excess as prince of the Shakya tribe. Both he and Jesus saw not only the greed, pride, and casual violence and disregard for life of the nobles, but they also saw firsthand the poverty and feeble outcasts of society, which the nobles swept under the rug. While Jesus was an advocate for the poor and despised, teaching people to feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, talk to the prostitute, and not be materialistic, the Buddha's response to suffering was at first to renounce society and go off into the woods, Later on, he realized this was extreme. He returned with a teaching of universal brotherhood and sisterhood, According to one account, the Buddha walked thirty miles to teach a poor person, and first made sure he was fed before focusing on spiritual matters. Jesus taught that heaven was within and among us, and to store our treasures where time and the elements cannot corrupt it- within us.

But if there is heaven within us, we must also acknowledge there is hell there, too. Indeed, Jesus mentions the word "Hell" only a handful of times. In fact, the word is concentrated in the New Testament, not mentioned in Jewish Scripture. The word translated into Hell, Gehenna, is the valley of Topeth, which in Jewish scripture is a place of a constantly burning fire. Jesus speaks of getting angry with your family or having the eyes in a trance of lust as being potentially leading one to try and fill a hole within that just cannot be satisfied, and thus leads to excess. They are an unquenchable fire.

"he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire"

This essay explains perfectly that hell is not a place you go for eternity when you die if you are bad, but a state of being consumed by unquenchable fire. I would argue that this situation requires an attitude adjustment to get out of, an escape via the practice of virtues stressed by religion. Hell is not even mentioned in Jewish scripture (the "Old Testament"), but the unquenchable fire is, and it is brought up again by John the Baptist in the Gospels and is the fire commonly translated to Hell which Jesus speaks about. It can exist on a micro-scale as the void in the human heart which they are unable to fulfill, or it can exist on a macro-scale as national judgment for a peoples given to sacrificing their sense of justice (mutual rights, intention of compassion) and full potential to the fire.

Thus moderation, acknowledging the unquenchable fire within / the void within/ unfillable hole within us, acknowledging the abundance within, and cultivating an attitude of gratitude (which takes practicing gratitude) are all related.

Visions:
This two-pronged strategy to help aide mankind - take the instinct for people to share and expand their circle so that they see everyone as their sister/brother/tribe worth sharing with, and use beautiful consciousness-transforming poetry that speaks to the truth within (real recognizes real) to cultivate an attitude of gratitude and a mindset of abundance.

Prong 1: Material Needs
Many people today already believe humankind is all one race, so we can skip to the step of sharing, in this case, our resources, to help empower. I have written elsewhere of sharing assets and wealth, and decision-making about what to do with these- in communities. This is in order to fulfill the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X for community wealth building, something that can happen on any scale, including globally for third world countries. My focus here is on helping eliminate poverty through focusing on breaking the cycle among the poor, a cycle which results in the perpetuation of poverty.
Poverty Clinics are a new idea that have set to use community health practices like home-visiting nurses for pregnant women and new mothers, and poverty clinics, like medical director Nadine Burke's  Bayview Child Health Center in the poverty-stricken California town of Bayview-Hunter's point:

Burke was "seeing the same patterns of trauma, stress, and symptoms every day in many of her patients.

"Two years after her patient's first visit, Burke has transformed her practice. Her methodology remains rooted in science, but it goes beyond the typical boundaries of medicine. Burke believes that regarding childhood trauma as a medical issue helps her to treat more effectively the symptoms of patients like his. Moreover, she believes, this approach, when applied to a large population, might help alleviate the broader dysfunction that plagues poor neighborhoods.

"In the view of Burke and the researchers she has been following, many of the problems that we think of as social issues—and therefore the province of economists and sociologists—might better be addressed on the molecular level, among neurons and cytokines and interleukins. If these researchers are right, it could be time to reassess the relationship between poverty, child development, and health, and the Bayview clinic may turn out to be a place where a new kind of pediatric medicine is taking its tentative first steps.

Stress response:
"As a response to short-term threats, this system is beneficial, even essential. repeated, full-scale activation of this stress system, especially in early childhood, can lead to deep physical changes.  If the methylation isn’t counteracted, however, its effects can last a lifetime. Researchers have observed that schoolchildren who experience early trauma find it harder to sit still and to follow directions. As teen-agers, they are more likely to be drawn to high-risk behaviors. As adults, they often show increased aggression, impulsive behavior, weakened cognition, and an inability to distinguish between real and imagined threats.

"You have a girl who grows up in a household where there’s domestic violence, or some kind of horrible arguing between her parents. That triggers her fight-or-flight response, which affects the way the hormone receptors in her brain develop, and as she grows up her stress-regulation system goes off track. Maybe she overreacts to confrontation, or maybe it’s the opposite—that she doesn’t recognize risky situations, and feels comfortable only around a lot of drama. So she ends up with a partner who’s abusive. Then the pathology moves from the individual level to the household level, because that partner beats their kids, and then their son goes to a school where ten out of thirty kids are experiencing the same thing. Those kids create in the classroom a culture of hitting, of fighting—not just for the ten kids but for all thirty. Then those kids get a little older, and they’re teen-agers, and they behave violently, and then they beat their kids. And it’s just accepted. It becomes a cultural norm. It goes from the individual fight-or-flight adrenaline response to a social culture where it’s, like, ‘Oh, black people beat our kids. That’s what we do.’"

Breaking the Cycle
"At the Bayview clinic, having the patients’ ACE data, and a theoretical framework for discussing the effects of trauma, has inspired Burke and her colleagues to be more vigilant about abuse and neglect. It also makes them more likely to help children get the social services they need, and better prepared to talk to parents early about the importance of secure attachment.

"For some children, Burke prescribes one or more psychological therapies. Whitney Clarke, the psychologist who introduced Burke to the ACE study, has an office at the clinic, and regularly sees about a dozen of Burke’s patients. To treat younger children growing up in high-risk homes, Burke is collaborating with Alicia Lieberman, a leading San Francisco psychologist who is a pioneer of child-parent psychotherapy, which enables therapists to work simultaneously with children under five and their parents. Perhaps not surprisingly for a resident of San Francisco, Burke embraces alternative therapies as well. She refers a few patients each month to a biofeedback clinic at a hospital in Presidio Heights, where the children practice self-calming exercises while watching schematic representations of their vital signs on a computer screen [biofeedback]. She has steered some teen-age patients toward meditation, yoga, and a relaxation technique called Mind Body Awareness.

"The next step, according to Burke, is to combine these interventions. She has begun creating a network of resourceful and like-minded San Franciscans who want to expand the ambitions of her clinic. In 2006, Burke met a young local philanthropist named Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune; his foundation, Tipping Point Community, began contributing to the clinic before it had even opened. In the spring of 2008, Burke met Kamala Harris, then the San Francisco district attorney (and now the attorney general of California); Burke told her about the ACE research, and Harris said that she wanted to help. Harris then introduced Burke to Victor G. Carrion—the director of a research program on early life stress at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, a Stanford facility—and Katie Albright, and the executive director of the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center. Now Burke, Lurie, Harris, Carrion, and Albright are working to open a new center for child services in Bayview-Hunters Point that would include a medical clinic, family-support services, a child-abuse-response program, and an expanded staff of social workers and psychotherapists, as well as space for biofeedback and other stress-reduction therapies. Soon after meeting Burke, Harris helped direct two million dollars in city funds toward the new center. Last May, Tipping Point Community raised four million dollars for the center in a single evening. Lurie and Burke say that the new center is on track to open next year."

Prong 2: Spiritual Needs
Whether they recognize a deity or not, when a person

• relies on their imagination at the service of compassion and justice (even or especially when it requires sacrifice, even if it as something as "small" as paying attention to and recognizing someone), and their inner strength-giving sense of highest perspective ("this too shall pass," "I can learn from this," etc.), 
• knows what brings them joy, meaning, and purpose and is able to rely on enjoyment and pleasure in moderation and in a flexible manner (whether it be listening to your inner voice, or a well-researched phenomenon called "Flow"), and when a person 
• focuses on being grateful for what they have and for the opportunities and inspirations that came from outside of them, 

their lowest in them (their egos, sense of inadequacy and deprivation, and unquenchable base desires fueled by the neurotransmitter dopamine) is bowing to their higher, divine self by being channeled, molded, and refined to serve the divine self. So often it is the other way around; one's full potential and ability to be a vessel for love and justice, is sacrificed so that the same raw materials lord it over the divine crown within us.

Now lets let Kahlil Gibran spit some bars:

Sheaves

Threshing

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Yes, arguments with lovers and friends, our own fears and confusing desires, and feelings of being stripped down are a part of love.
Thus, the fire can either be a cleansing, purging fire that leads to heaven, or it is remained in due to forgetting abundance, and it is hell. In which case, we become the chaff, the refuse of the harvest, to be separated from the joy and pain of love's purpose for us, to become stable enough and full of enough knowledge to become a servant of the world, of our own needs, of the universe's full potential. Without a loving sense of purpose to guide us, we are useless, for all things in life must be become secondary and means to an end of love.

 I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

Truly, the kingdom of heaven is within- Meditation might help, it can reduce pain  greater than morphine. Dwelling on or journaling gratitude lists are a good way to start, as gratitude interventions help fight depression and insomnia:

• Prayers of gratitude can be as simple as thinking of three things daily you are grateful for, or acknowledging that there is still beauty in the world, and dwelling on these thoughts for a bit. It can get more complex:

• Think of instances of truth, love, and beauty in your life- one for each. Do this once, twice, or however many times a day as you see fit.

• You can dwell on cherished ones and think about what you love about them. Or think of all the opportunities you had which were given to you by life that you were lucky to come across at the right place and time for. Or think of things we normally take for granted: begin with your heartbeat and breath, and if applicable move on to your organs working properly and having limbs, food, a roof over your head, heat, a computer, etc.

A Religion We Need
People are praying less nowadays than they used to, but I think they still realize that gratitude is still important. There is nothing wrong with God's strategy of the two-pronged approach (unity of the competing tribes, gangs, states, political parties, corporations, nations on the one hand and spiritual transformation to perceive abundance on the other), because people will always hang in the balance between deprivation and gratitude in their mindsets. It's just a matter of how much we can take and not have society fall apart. A little deprivation is good- there is a tendency for people to make better decisions on an empty stomach- but not too hungry. Studies show that judges make harsher sentences when it is close to lunch time, and are more lenient after.

Religion has to focus on poverty and reducing income inequality to an acceptable level and be an open system- change its external shells/forms (words need to be relevant, rituals may need to change some things, new ideas need to be accepted and integrated) so that its symbols do not die in irrelevancy. I think the new pope understands this. I think Unitarian Universalism understands this. Many Baha'is understand this. I think many Jews and Muslims understand this. I think many Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs understand this.

Luke 12:22:
Jesus spoke, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Qur'an 3:173
In response to fear [scarcity], the faithful cried "Allah is sufficient to us"

Hoarding
Standing up for our truth, not feeling silly for who we are, how we do things, our dreams and our imagination- this takes courage and stubbornness. It takes a lifetime's work on creating strong boundaries, and not letting other people set the tone of our lives such that we lose our integrity of the process of adapting to interacting with them. Sometimes we get a good feel for who will not be gentle with our hearts and our dreams, and we withhold from these people. That is a good form of hoarding.

Another good form of hoarding is to collect moments of joy, beauty. laughter and peace, of real recognizing real, throughout the day, and replaying them at night or when feeling upset. That literally fits under the definition of hoarding, like what animals do in preparation for the snowy winter. Our winter is in times of stress and scarcity, and times of taking things for granted. Doing something challenging every day (if you are currently low-functioning, it might be as simple as leaving the bed, or your room, or doing laundry), something kind, or something novel, these can all be replayed when stressed out at the end of the day to remind us that we are always loved and connected, that we have done something to expand our consciousness.

Jesus is going to “gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Garner means to collect, or hoard. Normally think of hoarding as a bad thing – something that I don’t want to participate in. I (embarrassingly) hoard clothes, shoes, pictures, or even knick-knacks collected on vacations.  Items that are useless and serve no purposive value, but yet I refuse to get rid of them.  I feel selfish or like a pack-rat when I hoard.  But hoarding can be used for good and a greater purpose.

The definition of “hoard” is: (n) a supply or accumulation that is hidden or carefully guarded for preservation, future use, etc.; (v) to accumulate for preservation, future use, etc., in a hidden or carefully guarded place. I want to hoard God’s Word in my heart, soul, and mind.  I want to accumulate His teachings and have them preserved in my life so that I have God’s Word ready to use in both the present and future.  Proverbs 4:23 (NIV) says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” We are instructed to keep our heart a carefully guarded place, and it is in this place I want to hoard God’s truths, not mankind’s.  And there is a beauty in hoarding. With it comes protection.  When I hoard God’s Word in my heart, I invite and allow Him to guard me and preserve me.
- excerpt from the brief essay "The Beauty of Hoarding"

It doesn't have to be Jesus' Word, but it has to be timeless, and of course, it has to allow the person to get in touch with their inner abundance. Or else it ain't worth it's weight in spit.

And then of course there is negative hoarding, from material and manufactured/artificial scarcity. And we're all dyin' from thirst, from the streets of Compton,

Kendrick Lamar's "Sing About Me/Dyin' of Thirst"

to the bedrooms of suburban America, where mom takes away our video games and we think it's the end of the world:

Sharing Our Water, Sharing Our Dream, our Integrity, our Heaven
Guarding our heart's dream is one act of strength. It is an equally important other to share it. Learning how to listen and to share in reciprocal measure, and how to express ourselves, is lifelong work as well. Our water can be beneficial to others, a refreshment for their hearts, as their water is a refreshment for ours: