Tuesday, January 31, 2017

MODERATION

MODERATION IS MASTERY I don't care much for folks who don't care much for me. I care about folks who care about me. Therein is a balanced synchrony. This concession-confession may not conform to someone's tenets. That is no concern of mine at all. I derive my notion of synchronized balance, naturally, as it feels good internally. I have reaffirmed it recently from three sources: one is Euclid's Elements; one is Ayi Kwei Armah's "The Eloquence of the Scribes;" one is Booker T. Washington's "Character Building." Naturally undergirding them all is the Biblical injunction for us to be moderate all things, whatsoever. Such moderation includes people. 1 Cor. 9:25 says: "The man who strives for the mastery is temperate [or moderate] in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible ." "Euclid's Elements," Book 5, Proposition 14, says and proves: "If a first magnitude have to a second the same ration as a third has to a fourth, and the first be greater than the third, the second will also be greater than the fourth; if equal, equal; if less, less." "Consciousness of the situation," as Ayi Kwei Armah writes, is first and foremost. My "achievement of consciousness of the situation" as a black man includes the fact that: "Given that the colonial enterprise required as its intellectual basis the proto-Nazi Hegelian contention that Africans were a part of nature quite apart from humanity, the recognition of the artistic genius of any African writer or thinker would have strained the self-regarding worldview of any educated European beyond tolerance." P.164. In his chapter, "Two Sides of Life," in his book, CHARACTER BUILDING, Booker T. Washington, fabled founder of Tuskegee University, writes: "Now it is not wise to go too far in either direction. The person who schools himself to see the dark side of life is likely to make a mistake, and the person who schools himself to look only upon the bright side of life, forgetting all else, also is apt to make a mistake. "Notwithstanding this, I think I am right in saying that 'persons who accomplish the most in the world,' those to whom on account of their helpfulness the world looks most for service -- who are most useful in every way-- 'are those who are constantly seeing and appreciating the bright side as well as the dark side of life.'" Moderation promotes mastery !