FOLLOW THE OWL?

As it wings Deeper and Deeper into the Dark, searching for Light

I was born in the middle of the country; in those flat lands where the three great rivers meet.  There, great story-tellers like Mark Twain and Walt Disney were also born, and it is reported that they learned their story-telling skills from the old slave-descendents  they knew.  I am a descendent from former slaves; although, by today's standards my Great-grandmother would not be taken as such, because as the saying goes, she was "whiter than Nancy Reagan".  Only in America (or the Americas, more correctly) is this phenomenon so common.

I've lived long enough, it seems, for research in the field of psychology to catch up with what many people on my side of the color line have known for centuries.  The current copy of Reason  magazine carries an article entitled: Born This Way?.  Check it out, and you may, as I have, find the article fascinating and enlightening.  I wrote a paper for my first college course in pyschology in 1961.  A lot has changed in the practice and understanding of psychology since then. But, as the article notes, "the human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor."

THE OWL attempts to use story-telling as a technique to permit the reader to delve deeper and think more about the various subjects covered; always from a viewpoint from the dark side of the dark/white divide that persists in the world today.

The author of the Reason  article visits many of the topics I included in my 1972 Master's Thesis.  He fails to realize, however that buried in what he describes as the religious, "sanctity" element lies the grand design for white supremacy.  That Rubicon is almost never crossed in academic or popular writing.  Most topics broached for public consumption are approached so as to appease and appeal to the typical white reader, viewer, and listener.

The sad outcome, from a psychological view, is that people who clearly are not white and don't benefit from the global color divide, nevertheless become trapped into accepting views from the white side because of a child-like, un-questioning acceptance of the southern version of Christianity in the U.S.  This phenonomenon produces freaks who behave in ways not in their self interest.  Jews in Nazi camps, known as "Sonderkommandos assisted the Nazis.  They received favorable treatment,  but most of them faced death anyway.

As I noted in the 1961 paper for my psychology class, psychologists provide their services only to those who can afford it.  At that time, it rarely benefitted non-whites.  They have had to rely on the music they invented to console and heal themselves.

The music seems to have done an astounding job; but more learning and insight by all will help us find a way forward from our present circumstance.