I Hope No One Ever Finds Me

I see the African teams are, as usual, bombing out in the world cup. The SABC presenter identified teamwork as the problem - our unusually talented players don't seem to work as well together as, say Brazil, who can carry out 10 passes in the penalty box before someone feels he has a chance to shoot, and does so. The problem probably extends to the coach and football association as well. I think that each player feels that, unless he gets the glory, there may as well not be a goal. I know I feel envious and jealous of goal scorers, especially if I'm lacking in that respect. There must be a way we can play better and win, but not subvert our individualism to do so - ie win with less teamwork. I hope no one important ever reads this blog, because I know I'll be hunted down and killed - Africans don't take kindly to hearing things they'd rather not hear, especially if there is even a hint of truth in it.

African Education

We were sitting in the shebeen on Saturday night, as usual, and the talk got around to education. Why, despite 11 years of black rule, do the blacks still consistently do badly, and the whites still do well? Yes, I know, the legacy of Apartheid. But really, the answer is simple (If we are prepared to stop fooling ourselves – and we don’t fool ourselves in the shebeen. It’s a great place to hear what people are rally thinking). First, you have to accept that blacks are different from whites. They have different knee joints, different hip joints, different immunity systems, different noses. The differences are so great that the medical research fraternity are now having to differentiate between white and black samples, despite their disgust at the moral reprehensibility of it. Ask yourself, then, is it likely, despite the proven physiological differences, and thousands of years of evolutionary separation, that we think the same as whites, and that our brains function the same? Probably not. In fact, definitely not! The chances are so small that we can ignore them as negligible. So how on earth do we think we can compete and beat, or even match whites in an education system designed by them for them? The chances of that happening were always minute. I understand that we have a lower IQ also (read “Bell Curve” for proof), but again, a test designed for whites. As an analogy you might say lions are clever, because they hunt in packs and can eat giraffe, which are bigger. In an IQ test designed for lions, the lions would beat the giraffes. But the giraffes are much better at being giraffes than lions are, and similarly, the lions would score lower on a giraffe IQ test than giraffes. So what I’m saying is that we make second rate whites, but we make first rate blacks. So why keep trying to be whites? The solution then is to design an education system from scratch more suited to us. Maybe an improved version of our traditional methods, and I mean pre-colonialism. A starting point could also be to identify exactly how we differ from whites on our thinking and intelligence, and maybe I can throw some light on it, by relating to experiences I had. I spoke to this old white guy who spends a lot of time and effort training Technikon students at his factory. One day he took a dismantled Landrover gearbox, and said to the students that they must each assemble it. He had an assembly drawing for them to work from. He was disgusted that none could do it. So he showed them. After the demonstration, somewhat surprisingly to him, all of them could do it perfectly. It turned out that they had memorised what he did, and merely repeated his actions, ignoring the assembly drawing. Now apparently to a white, this is unbelievable from a few points of view. First, they can’t believe what good memories the students must have. Second, they can’t understand how the students don’t prefer to use the assembly drawing to refer to, instead of the seemingly difficult task of memorising everything. Another time I spoke to a white university engineering lecturer. He set a test, where the question was similar to that the students had done during class, except he changed the numbers. A number of students wrote down exactly the same solution from the class, complete with same figures as in class. Being white, He was astounded at their memory, even though they had to get no marks. He found it unbelievable that they chose to learn that way, and even more unbelievable that they had done so successfully. So my hypothesis is simply this; one difference (there are surely many more) in the way we think is that we have good memories and powers of recall, and we like to use it. Whites seem to have better pattern recognition abilities, therefore excel at maths. So you should always do what you’re relatively good at, for example, if you’re artistic, be an artist, not an engineer. Same with us blacks.

The universities are under great pressure to improve the pass rate, most particularly in engineering, according to the same engineering lecturer. But no matter what they try, the students are still failing in droves. Finally, under pressure from above, they are allowing students more years to complete the course, and allowing them credits for courses with only a 50% mark. This improved the situation, but not enough. This also amounts to standard lowering, and is not the right thing to do. The standards must be kept high, no matter what. A new engineering course can be designed for blacks, which is designed from the outset to work on their strengths. Then you don’t have to call the degree the same thing, to ensure you differentiate it from the traditional degree. And who knows, maybe it will become more highly valued than the traditional degree for certain job types. In any case, you’ll know what you’re getting, and you won’t end up with a second rate traditional engineering degree. Traditional engineering degrees can be maintained for mainly whites.

From what I know, all black learning and history came down from generation to generation by word of mouth, from elders to youngers, carried in excellent memories. Now we’re all thrown into white schools to learn white subjects in a completely different way. Surely, especially here in SA, we have enough whites to be whites, and we can concentrate on doing things we’re likely to be good at, maybe such as history, and biology? Maybe taught at the knee of teachers, as elders may have done? In any case, we should identify our differences, and work on our strengths. We’re certainly good at whingeing and making the whites feel guilty, so let’s get them to fill in the gaps for us to have the type of society and nation we want. Might as well make use of them, since they still seem to be hanging around. Its time to stop trying to be whites, and time to start being the best blacks we can be. And I mean the best Xhosa, Zulu, or whatever we are too.

The Importance of Pattern Recognition

I previously identified pattern recognition as the cognitive limitation of us blacks, but I may well be wrong. However, it is something of that nature related to maths and science ability. I also assumed that this was what prevents us understanding how structures in organisations within which we work these days operate, and therefore prevents us being motivated to subjugate our individual short-term goals (amassing individual wealth) against the goals of the organisation, which may ultimately reward us better. Maybe its also the reason we can’t work a democracy. A good example is Zimbabwe. Even though our vote causes Bob to stay in power, and to go on to destroy the economy and make us starve, we don’t actually make the cognitive link between the act of voting for him and our starving. Also, if we don’t go and vote for Bob, we decide to not vote at all, feeling that it doesn’t make a difference anyway. It is no wonder that we all prefer to work individually, for example, subsistence farming, or a dictator in Government, or, in my case, stealing from others. It’s also no wonder that in Africa the most ruthless person always assumes political power, since we are unable to choose our leaders according to any rational criteria, and a potential leader will be working against other individuals only, no organisations, ie strongest individual wins. Naturally our first response will be more to befriend such a person, for individual reasons, than to stand up against him, which may be personally dangerous, but the right thing to do for the country and our fellow countrymen. Until we can suppress the urge to profit personally for the sake of our country/organisation/community, how on earth do we expect to instil western-style democracies in Africa? The simple solution: don’t! Be African, be what we’re meant to be. Accept our country will be like Zimbabwe, accept it, accept that we will always have wars, starvation, poverty and disease. Make Africa into a place for Africans. Get rid of the western and white influences. Forget they ever colonised us. Form tribes, have cattle, fight over them, decimate the game, die in great battles or from sweeping diseases. Have great and ruthless chiefs who struggle to power and decimate the opposition. That’s Africa. Accept it. The only problem is that Africa will become a big reservation, and we’ll have Americans, Europeans and Asians treating it like a Safari park, feeding us, educating us and taking our babies home as pets. But do we have a choice? Not unless we can become better team players. African soccer shows just how bad we are. Despite having the most talented individuals in the world, our teams are consistently, soundly thrashed by even the B-league players in Europe. No, Africans are going to have to simply find another way.

Shebeen Talk - unemployment

We were getting wasted in the shebeen on Friday night again (funny how the unemployed always manage to get wasted), and the talk centred on unemployment, a subject close to my heart. Why? Because I have been mostly unemployed for 11 years now. And most of those I was drinking with are also effectively unemployed. First, I must dispel that myth that unemployment is a choice. In my case, I had a job for 7 years before I was compelled to resign. During those 7 years I somehow knew my days were numbered, I feared losing the job, so I worked extra long hours, dedicated myself totally to the company, did everything and anything my various bosses said. And things went from bad to worse. I remember discussing with my supervisor what was wrong. The obvious thing, the first thing you consider is that you’re technically incompetent (lack of effort was out of the question). But he disagreed, but couldn’t come up with any explanation instead. So I left wondering what was wrong with me. I spent much time analysing the situation, and talking to people, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation. Then I started a small business with my friend. I was forced to sell out two years later, despite my serious efforts to succeed. Since then I have been to see a psychologist to try to ID the problem. That didn’t work. I heard that people on Prozac often succeeded, so I had myself diagnosed with “social phobia” and signed up for a free clinical trial for some new equivalent. That caused havoc with me, because the main effect seemed to be to put you on edge so you can’t think or study, and I’m always studying something on the hope that I’ll become more employable. So I abandoned the trial. I tried to get jobs, and initially I nearly succeeded, but I had put my previous bosses name down as a reference, feeling that I should put both good and bad down. Years later I discovered that that was a mistake – he made damn sure I didn’t get any job I applied for. He died some years later, finally freeing me from that burden of the past, but by then I had lost track of what I was supposed to be, and I was too old to be a new market entrant. In other words, I had no idea what type of job to apply for. Apart from that, I had no idea how to apply. I had a CV, but I didn’t know which jobs to apply for, and the few agents I approached weren’t interested. I never heard anything the few times I did send off my CV, leading me to believe it was so bad I was not considered even remotely. So the years rolled by, each one past relegating me further into the depths of unemploydom, making my past experience and qualifications less and less relevant. Today I’ve lost it completely. I have no idea what I can or can’t do, have no confidence that I can get or hold a job, and don’t know how to apply for one. I still don’t know what caused my initial work problems, but I do realise that something was, and most likely still is, wrong. If someone were to offer me a job now, I would feel compelled to warn them that there is a reason I’m unemployed, so I couldn’t in good conscience, take them up on it. I spend plenty of time doing things for people for free, or for food, since it makes me feel useful. I often refuse making any payment arrangement in advance, since I have so little confidence, instead I will take anything, or nothing, afterwards if things work out. I end up doing a huge variety of things, some which I’m good at, some not so good at. Ie anything goes. And I think the above explains why people are unemployed. They simply just never managed to get into the swing of it. Most people with colourful childhoods, like me, have things wrong with them, and often those things will preclude them from succeeding at a job. If they can find out what the problem is, they’re lucky, because then they can address it. They often drink to mask it, either if they don’t know what it is, or if they’ve given up trying to fix it. Often they think its unfixable – they don’t even know that they can change and grow. Most, like me, with no resources, won’t ever discover the problem. So next time you see guys like me waiting at the corner in the hope of a day’s work, try and understand why this should be. Then don’t ever give them work. They’re unemployable.

Black and white more than skin deep

I read with interest the medical professions moral dilemma; they now have to differentiate population types in their research, since the differences are so significant. For example, the femur connection to the pelvis in the African black has different dimensions to whites, which means they have far less pelvic fractures in old age. Also, differences in blood make-up make them more prone to certain diseases, and immune to others. So the differences aren’t only skin deep, as everyone keeps drumming into our heads. This was obvious actually. Which brings us to another obvious difference, the ways of thinking. It’s a fact that Africans never had maths or science prior to colonisation, and therefore not surprising they in general aren’t very good at it. However, they are very good at other subjects such as history, where they excel due to remarkably good memories. If we think about it, subjects like maths and sience rely on pattern recognition. Other things that rely on pattern recognition are things like conceptualising your position in a organisation, and how the organisation fits together and operates. A white person had an interesting story he related to me. He was training a group of blacks, and had a gearbox stripped in pieces on the floor, and a diagram on how to put it together. None of them could assemble it. He therefore demonstrated in front of them, and assembled it, referring frequently to the diagram, since without it he couldn’t do the job. Then he stripped it again, and lo and behold, every trainee could now assemble the gearbox correctly. On further investigation, he discovered that none of them were using the diagram as he needed to. All had memorised the process he had demonstrated. As a white, this was amazing and totally un-understandable. No wonder blacks and whites have such a problem understanding each other.

Google Problem

While trying to work out how to get my blog listed on Google, I discovered that its impossible, since Google now requires you to have at least one other website which links to it first, and that website must obviously already be in the big linked network in Google’s database. Getting someone to link to your website can be very, very difficult (without cheating), especially for an African interest blog, since there are only about three Africans on the Internet. This made me realise why other search engines are needed. Also, why you often can’t find what you’re looking for on Google. There must be thousands of websites for niche topics, communities and businesses which will now never get onto the Google database. This suggests that I must start using another search engine, since the very best stuff is probably the least linked to. Also, I must set up a Google-linked website to allow everyone to put links to their unfound sites, and thereby get them into the Google database. Its funny that now that Google is so big, they are so arrogant, that they start losing the plot, and allowing gaps for competitors to take up.