Mindfulness as a waking, walking meditation

According to Maxwell Maltz (1960) there are behaviors that contribute to a "success-type personality." He developed an acronym as a mnemonic or easy way of remembering the elements of the behaviors:

S = sense of direction
U = understanding
C = courage
E = esteem
S = self confidence
S = self-acceptance

He provides additional explanation on how each of these elements contributes to accomplishing or having a "successful" life. He states that "(t)he reason .... that a man does not simply 'find' success or 'come to' failure (is that) ....  (h)e carries their seeds around in his personality and character" (p.102)

This viewpoint is of the social construction variety. We create the social world we live in by our actions and attitudes.  Our actions contribute to what happens. Our attitudes contribute to how we feel about that happens. A basic element of his prescription for success is to focus on the process not the product. Being successful is differentiated from wanting to be a success. Maltz suggests that success is hidden in the process of becoming rather than embedded in the state of "being."

"S" or Sense of direction is related to the idea that we are happiest when we are attempting to do something or engaging in an experience. Maltz says that the human animal is a "goal-seeking mechanism." We are happiest when we are busiest working on a project or doing something which "means something." He gives a nod to concept of "flow" without ever mentioning the word when he suggests that "(w)hen you are not goal-striving, not looking forward, you're not really 'living' ."(p. 102) This immersion in goal seeking is what I am suggesting is akin to 'flow' where you are absorbed in what you are doing.

But I sat down today to peck out a hunk of what Maltz has to say about the second element of the success personality. "U" or understanding is listed second. I don't think he necessarily intended to list them in order of importance just providing meanings to correspond to the letters in the work 'success."

"U" is understainding. Maltz says that:(u)nderstanding depends upon good communication. Communication is vital to any guidance system or computer. You cannot react appropriately if the information you act upon is faulty or misunderstood. Many doctors believe that "confusion" is the basic element in neurosis To deal effectively with a problem, you must have some understanding of its true nature. Most of our failures in human relations are due to "misunderstandings." (p.105)

The idea of understanding is further explained to include the idea that (w)e expect people to react and respond and come to the same conclusions as we do from a given set of "facts" or 'circumstances.' " Maltz reminds us that he had mentioned earlier in the book that people don't react to things "as they are" but rather as we see them to be based on our own perspective, perceptions and conclusions. This is very similar to the concepts propounded in the Landmark Forum which some have characterized as a cult or commercial scam. However, counsels "there is what happened and then there is the story we tell about what happened." This is very similar to maxim shared by Maltz but also consistent with existential thought and social constructionism.

Other aspects of understanding include being able to differentiate fact from fiction. An example used is a husband who cracks his knuckles and his wife who concludes that he does it only to annoy her. The experience is explained as the wife is making the assumption that the husband is deliberately trying to annoy her  which are fiction. But her assumption affects her experience of the situation and results in her choosing to be annoyed by the imaginary intent of the husband. We make other assumptions about the intentions of others with similar results. Also, being willing to see the truth is another element of "understanding" is to "be willing to see the truth." This is meant that honesty with ourselves and with others is necessary for true understanding. It sort of suggests that if you have an incorrect (false) diagnosis of the problem it will result in a incorrect (false) prescription for the solution. A suggested attitude in this regard is "it doesn't matter who's right, but what's right."

These first two steps are preliminary but important. While we have been talking about these concepts applied on a personal basis they are also relevant when we look at collective behavior. There are behaviors that groups adopt that reflect these same problems or their corrective principles. Healing ourselves emotionally is the purpose and intent of these ideas. Change the frame and change the future.




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One World, One Aim, One Destiny

"If inner-city blacks are experiencing the greatest problems of joblessness, it is a more extreme form of economic marginality that has affected most Americans since 1980. .... solutions to problems of economic marginality in this country including those that stem from changes in the global economy; can go a long way toward addressing the problems of inner-city joblessness, especially if the application of resources includes wise targeting to the groups most in need of help. Discussions that emphasize common solutions to commonly shared problems promote a sense of unity, regardless of the different degrees of severity to which these problems afflict certain groups. Such messages bring races together, not apart, and are especially important during periods of racial tension. In comparison with the rhetoric highlighting racial divisions, however, messages promoting interracial unity have been infrequent and are generally ignored by the media." William Julius Wilson, (1997). When Work Disappears. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.


Wilson made an observation regarding public policy, public media and public perceptions that is both profound and commonplace. The role of racial rhetoric (grounded in White Supremacist ideology) in the political economy of America, the West is oft cited, well-known and axiomatic except for those who are most impoverished by its its effect. The power of dreams in the minds of those with the least to lose and the most to gain can be counter-productive and their role counter-intuitive. The assertion that racism has been the fulcrum used by the rich (which some might think includes people like Oprah Winfrey and the two Michaels - Jackson and Jordan) and the wealthy (which is clearly mostly male and virtually all White - - - in America) to keep the poor (both Black and White) in their place is both bold and pedestrian. Who can deny it, disprove it or debate it?


Many historians point to one hundred years before the hallowed American revolution for freedom and justice in 1776 to Bacon's Rebellion in colonial Virginia in 1676 as the trigger for the institution of chattel slavery for people of African descent in America. Prior to Bacon's Rebellion both Whites and Blacks were subjected to indentured servitude where they would give their labor for a prescribed number of years before being released to live as free (though often impoverished) men and women. However, the response to Black and White indentured servants joining together in an uprising against landowners triggered the faithful decision to divide and conquer the poor by relegating Blacks to chattel slaves and Whites to wage slaves. The unequal treatment of Blacks and Whites was evident in the 1640 decision resulting from Bacon's Rebellion where three indentured servants ran away. When recaptured the two Whites had their term of service extended a few years. The Black indentured servant, named John Punch, was sentenced to 'serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life.'


We see a distinction made in law that came to be a part of the cultural consciousness of America. Though you may be opressed and downtrodden, if you were of European descent you are viewed as having more rights than someone of African descent. Enshrined in law this became enshrined in the general consciousness of both Blacks and Whites. Then the wheels of social replication began to turn with Blacks relegated to lower status jobs, positions and places in society and the economy. This reinforced the role and place of both Blacks and Whites to the point where we have fallen into a trance and unthinkingly mimic our prescribed roles. However, this form of subjection and dominance was based on greed and the need to fuel the economic base with labor. Now with globalization the impact of this attitude has hit both those on the bottom of the political economy as well as those in the middle. With cheap foreign labor satisfying the need for production the White middle class is shrinking.

For American society this has resulted in the declining significance of race; not because Blacks are doing relatively better but because no-elite Whites are doing increasingly worse.







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I have seen the future . . . it is the past

The direction this country is going in has a long trajectory with a long arc and it bends towards justice. The story of the impending collapse of the American capitalist historical project is one that is written with blood, sweat and tears. A look around the dustbin of the economy will reveal much that has been hidden and much that has been revealed yet not recognized. For starters there is the new found poverty of the nation. Entering into an economic downturn the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression. This time war will not save us because we have been and are already at war. The production of armaments offers no salvation because the primary means of production have been outsourced.

We face a world that has changed much for many of us but has remained the same for most of us. The idea of community economic development emerged as a response to the American political economy that had marginalized and disadvantaged people of African descent along with other non-European residents of the country. This process extends back to the arrival of the first indentured Africans in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 and the establishment of perpetual Black chattel slavery in 1664 in Maryland. Onward to Jim Crow laws and sharecropping the economic debasement and disenfranchisement of Blacks continued unabated until the human rights movement know popularly as the Civil Rights Movement. While attenuated even then the location of Blacks in the political economy remained firmly and securely on the bottom. This was to continue unheralded and mostly ignored by Whites into the 1970s,

By the time the American African Human Rights movement had been sidetracked and misdirected into the American Civil Rights movement the social environment was rich with expectations that couldn't be met with the half-hearted attempts to pacify and co-opt the Black leadership. The youth were not connected or rewarded by the pacification strategy and bubling up from this set of circumstances was the demand for "Black Power."

This contemporary desire for self-reliance and demand for self-determination was manifest through a number of politicial and social structures and philosophies. One that emerged was 'community economic development" This attempt at creating parallel economic structures reflected a similar strategy that harkened as far back as the presence of people of African descent in the American colonies on. Dr. W.E. B. DuBois spoke of it as "double consciousness." Many early attempts at alternate institution building were limited to social and professional organizations, e.g., Prince Hall Masons, National Bar Association, etc. Early attempts to create alternate economic institutions have include mutual aid societies, burial societies, Booker T. Washington's support of the National Negro Business League and the efforts of the Washington admirer, Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Universal Negro Improvement Association  (UNIA), as well as the Garveyite influenced, Nation of Islam.

The federal agency, Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), took notice of the emerging strategy as it took shape in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland under the leadership of DeForrest Brown. The strategies and institutions were the efforts of economically marginalized and socially isolated Black communities without access to the financial or social capital of Main Street America to pull themselves us by their bootstraps. This initiative in the economic area was also occurring in the social and politcal areas as well. 

Long story short (I have been working on - and off- this post for a month) the strategies that were identified and developed or incorporated as a hedge against the hegemonic forces of institutaionalized White Supremacy that kept Blacks firmly secured to the bottom of the American political economy have been more widely applied as social practice and public policy as capitalism has gone global and the significance of being white is decreasing with declining returns. What does this mean? Yet to be seen. It may portend an alliance based on class interests or it may result in increasingly harsh and shrill racial acrimony. We will be the judge and jury, plantiff and defendant.




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China - Human Rights and American delusions

While our fearless leader George Bush is settling in for his retirement as President of the United States he is going around lecturing people to do as he says and not as he has done. We hear this loudest as people talk about China and its sweatshop human rights abuses that include denying non-Han ethnicities the right to their cultural heritage and tradition. Imagine that!

First, in terms of sweat shop economics we have only to look in the mirror as a nation to recognize the capitalist ideology that says "Greed is good" and the only good worker is an exploited worker. Isn't that the ethos of capitalism? While the Chinese factory workers are being exploited for their labor American workers are unemployed and have no access to the paltry crumbs being tossed to the Chinese workers. In fact, while the Chinese are paid a pittance for their labor, American workers are denied the opportunity to work and forced into peonage as they borrow against future earnings that they won't have and run up a debt burden on credit cards and borrow against the equity in the one (or two) assets they have. Home refinancing to pull out what little equity remains or car title loans to trade the tools required for future earnings for a crust of bread today. It is a joke to talk about slave labor in Chinese factories when the majority of Americans are indebted to whoever will extend them credit. Help! American workers have fallen into debt and they can't get out!

The capitalist owners of the factors of production are looking for the cheapest deal. They fund the Chinese capitalist labor extraction camps and hide their hand. Cheap foreign labor means no jobs in the U.S. economy but cheaper imports of consumer goods. It is stupid to think that the American economy can keep chugging along as it did for the first 20 years after World War 2 when the conditions of workers at home have been degraded to the point where they can not afford basic living needs.

Then the baloney about the Chinese repressing the identity of different ethnicities in China. What a bunch of hogwash. For those of us who have been paying attention it is clear that the United States was a forerunner in the creation of "whiteness" due to the need for suppressing the enslaved African labor force who powered its early economy. In fact, it was the melting pot idea that cleverly disguised the American cultural identity excision process. This same approach was adopted by Europeans around the world. We hear reports of the boarding schools for Native Americans in Canada. The boarding schools for the aboriginal people of Australia. American society was structured to indoctrinate all who fell under its sway to the superiority of the "White" race and the corresponding inferiority of all others based on the level of melanin content in their skin. So there were schools where the Native American was taught, taunted and trained to not be Native American. There was all of society that damned and degraded the African ancestry of the formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants and everybody else fell into a continuum from bright white to damned Black. How does Bush and his fellow ideologues (yes, I am talking about you and all the others who have internalized the white supremacist ideations or its corresponding Black inferiority degradations of American social thought and political economy) so smugly wag their finger at those who would be White? The concept of whiteness is similar to the concept of Blackness where it is more than a phenotypical feature. It is a culture, an ideology, a worldview, a manifesto that is shouted from the printed page, the electronic screen and the melanin deficient posturing of the savage beasts who have left a trail of blood and cultural destruction in their wake.

I am not pointing fingers. Externalized white supremacy through the workings of European institutions. Internalized Black inferiority through the suppression of dignity and the degradation of pride. But come on, who needs to point fingers when you know who you are!




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