Thursday, May 30, 2013

The State Of Womanhood


                Humanity is at a critical juncture in its history.  Forces that are shaping society have waged war upon its very foundations.  The current post-Modern era hails these ideas as the final liberation of thought and mind for every human being on the face of this planet.  The fight has been brought to your doorstep, your dinner table, and in the intimacy of your bedroom.  The fight is for the way your children think and for the way they shape the world to come.  It is the way they perceive themselves, their fellow human beings and the future that they create.  This is your legacy and the lives of your children.

                The “empowerment” of women and the decline of traditional manhood are two sides of the same coin.  Aggressive advances made by radical feminist movements had been attempting to turn women into men for decades.  As late as the previous decade, their attempts were largely unsuccessful.  Since the dawn of the new millennium, the precipitous decline of manhood has left a large void in society that women have been desperately trying to fill.  There is a crisis of true masculinity while authentic femininity has been overstretched and eroded to compensate for the vacuum.  Both sexes have become fundamentally weaker and taken on the traits of the other.  In either case, men and women have been struggling and ultimately failing to execute their authentic gender roles.  The failure is striking and disturbing compared to only a half a century ago.

THE BETTER HALF

                The strength of a woman as a partner, equal in dignity but different in role, is losing its palatability in society.  The exemplary feminine qualities of patience, generosity, magnanimity, resilience, persuasion, and understanding have been usurped or distorted.  A woman’s ability to ease the heart and the mind of a man by her mere presence is sheer power.  Her core strengths are her abilities to listen, counsel, influence, encourage, comfort, and sympathize.  As wives, young women today lack the fierce fidelity and unbreakable loyalty to their husbands that their counterparts possessed merely 50 years ago.  Women have an immeasurable gift for nurturing, sensitivity and tenderness that cannot be quantified or explained by any human language.  A woman’s identity is deeply intertwined with her actions.  She lives, does and gives of her very self; body, mind and spirit.  Her powerful passions allow her to perform brilliant acts of kindness, sacrifice and selflessness without hesitation or inner doubts.  This is real womanhood.  It has been subverted in favor of a false & meager caricature of masculinity.  The darker aspects of the feminine nature have been misused by humanity to the moral degradation of Western society and the entire globe.
                The role of woman as wife and partner to man has evolved according to the ebb and flow of society but largely towards a detrimental shift in recent years.  There is a large divide between being a wife and being a mother when compared to women in the past.  This stark dichotomy stems from the vast epidemic of children born out of wedlock, especially to teen and/or psychologically immature young women.  Compounded with the sharp rise of negligent and absentee fatherhood, the effects of this plague run deep into the core of families today.
                The traditional understanding of a wife has been warped by the evolution of economics and transformed by new social trends.  In recent years, women have excelled in academics and the job market at a sharply higher rate compared to previous generations.  Women’s rights groups over the past century have opened many new doors and avenues for younger women today.  Even though the elite upper echelon jobs still remain an ‘all-boys club,’ the ascent of women to high-ranking positions is noteworthy.  The economic success of women has empowered them financially and psychologically but eroded their femininity instead of supplementing it.  Stress in the workplace combined with the pressure and maintenance of home life takes a heavy toll on the hearts and minds of women.  It makes women more manly and masks their authentic, powerful feminine nature.  Their capability of managing both tasks is not the primary question here.  It is an analysis of the effects that strenuous and consuming employment can have on women and their families.  While manhood has declined almost to the brink of failure in the Western world, true femininity has become a disfigured and fragmented shell of its former grace.
                A lasting legacy of the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960’s has been the myopic emphasis on physical, mental & sexual pleasure.  It has become acceptable for women to be used as sexual objects for the gratification of others.  Many women take pride in their sexual prowess and welcome many admirers.  The feminist backlash encourages women to mimic the foolish behavior of men by engaging in promiscuity, repressing shame, followed by a misguided pride.  As women encounter greater difficulty in finding suitable life-long male partners, they assert a measurable yet weary and cynical sexual dominance over the men who court them.  The void of manhood in the society is creating an abyss that is severely corrupting and slowly erasing authentic womanhood.
 
MOTHERHOOD
                Motherhood is power.  It is the quintessential and encompassing definition of femininity.  The towering glory of what it means to be a woman.  Even as children, little girls emulate their own mothers by playing with and adopting baby toy dolls to act as their children.  Most young girls seek to foster and understand maternal action and instinct from a very early age.  Such behavior is often welcomed and encouraged by the parents and siblings of girls.  Authentic motherhood is a woman’s magnificent power to shape her child’s worldview even before the wiring of the child’s brain is complete.  She can mold the personality and harness her child’s innate strengths.  Being a mother requires immeasurable self-sacrifice and self-donation.  She gives generously of her time, talents, love, dedication, body, soul, and character to her children. If paired with the consistent and constant presence of a strong father, the child is bound to exceed both parents in achievement and acumen.  Every parent’s dream is for their child to do better and to live better than they did.  Motherhood is not only the epitome of true womanhood but it is a pinnacle of excellence for all of humanity.
                Authentic motherhood truly covers a wide scope but it remains deficient without proper fatherhood to complement it.  The reverse is equally true but less prevalent in society.  The legal system largely protects a mother’s rights commensurate to children she has given birth to.  In the situation of a pregnancy out of wedlock, the child grows up seeing a false and distorted image of male-female interaction and relations.  The father is already at a disadvantage.  He is a mentally weak man who has engaged in reckless behavior and failed to formalize a marriage with the woman before impregnating her.  He is morally weak by default and deemed inept by the woman, by their child[ren], as well as by families on both sides.  The unwed mother is usually charged as the primary caretaker and then glorified to improper heights as the father becomes vilified.  Neither parent is truly a successful parent without the full support & presence of the other.
                The reverence for mothers and grandmothers has increased exponentially wherever the curse of absentee fatherhood has flourished.  The sons of these single mothers become overly emotional, effeminate, moody, and patterned strongly after their family circle comprised mainly of women and no authentically masculine men.  While the daughters who are raised in such environments exhibit an inflated, substantively weak and false imitation of male bravado, similar to their mothers.
                The single mother herself is forced to adopt pseudo-masculine traits in order to ensure survival of her household.  This survival requires her to maintain a firm disciplinary authority with her children, a traditionally paternal trait.  If strong paternal discipline is non-existent or lacking, then it becomes much desired by the children in later years.  Maternal discipline is always less feared by children if a strong father is present in the family home.  A mother’s heart is malleable, more understanding, more visceral, more accepting and sympathetic.  A single mother’s discipline may be respected but not feared as her children grow older.  The warped masculine traits she exhibits are eventually recognized as weak imitations of real masculinity and the image of her motherhood becomes distorted.  Her image as a woman is also distorted in the eyes of her children.  In the absence of one parent, the basic family unit falls into shambles.  Without balance & cooperation of both sexes, the demise of the society is not far.
 
LOOKING FORWARD
                As time passes & attacks on the family further escalate, it is imperative to never lose a fixed frame of reference or ideal.  The days of men as the heads of the house and women as the heart of the home seem long gone.  It has become the stuff of myth and folklore of our grandparents and great-grandparents.  We forget that they were flawed men and women of flesh and bone just like us.  We are their children and should exceed all previous generations in every conceivable way as our children should surpass us.  This means financially, socially, politically, academically, and yes, morally.  They made it work but we should make it work better.
                Today’s world is polluted with momentary sensationalism, instant gratification, exorbitant materialism and consumerism.  This is the self-serving Tower of Babel we have built in the 21st century.  There has been a harsh metamorphosis in the moral culture of the West.  Men and women are the building blocks of family.  Family is the cohesive unit that builds communities into cities, cities into nations, and nations into empires.
                A woman is figuratively and literally the life-blood of the family.  She is innately gifted at completely integrating and investing herself into the demanding needs of her family.  As a mate and wife to man, she is the rock of their mutual love.  She gives birth and she is a fountain of life.  Through her as mother, the family multiplies and grows strong under her shelter and influence.  A woman can radiate her entire heart, soul, and life-experience through her caring, nurturing, and noble service.  This is a definition of womanhood that needs to be embraced again if we desire a better world for our children.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Inferno (Music Video)

The lead single "INFERNO" by Korleone a.k.a The Steel Hammer from his forthcoming mixtape "Unleashed."  Fierce lyrics combined with a powerful delivery.  Korleone flows with power, conviction, and an emphatic zeal. Uplifting music composed by Epic Score.  Video directed by Tha Profitt of Profitt Productions.


Connect with this artist:

www.twitter.com/TheSteelHammer
www.youtube.com/user/TheSteelHammerMedia
www.facebook.com/TheSteelHammerPage
www.soundcloud.com/TheSteelHammer

Hollow Men

A spoken word poetry piece: "Hollow Men"  On the state of human leadership in the 21st century all across the world. These are the kind of men rising to power today. Hear it & read the complete text below the link.

 
 
 
HOLLOW MEN
by Korleone The Steel Hammer
 
Hollow words of hollow men

Shallow hearts buried in shallow graves

The hollow bones of shallow men

When we follow thrones in astonishment

Wealth, Power and the Punishment of sins

With the reputations of fallen and tarnished men

Tactics of diversion, division and half decisions

Illusions of permission, election and submission

Then we all grow up to follow them

Formed and fashioned in the aura of corruption

We’re trained to follow them into consumption

The trained leaders of tomorrow barely even function

As sons, daughters, mothers fathers brothers sisters

This is what we can to look forward to

Unless a flash of brilliant magnanimous humanity sweeps through the nations

Yet there is hope in the eyes of an infant, the steps of a toddler

That we will get it right, set it right and see it more clearly in the dead of night

Many say there was more light

In generations before us

More fight in generations before us

More right in generations before us

I tell you we shall rise with more substance than those before us

These hollow men shall fall like ashes before us

When darkness pervades the lands and the world can’t ignore us

This is just a love-letter to those who believe in a better world

And better things for us

These are scattered verses, let children sing a chorus

I am just a voice crying out in the wilderness

Greater men shall rise after us

Even if we die in the wilderness


Saturday, September 17, 2011

Friday, September 2, 2011

The Greed Factor

“The gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought to have - and that is a moral problem, not an economic one.”  - Dr. Paul Heyne (Economist)

Greed is the force that drives world markets as it corrupts the human heart.  The accumulation of wealth is the motivation behind some of the world’s greatest achievements as well as some of its greatest atrocities.  Greed is facilitating the demise of the very system that it is alleged to animate.  Masked as advancement and technology, materialism rules the Western world while propelled by greed.  Some say that greed is the ultimate motivator for competition, self-reliance and individualism.  Cutthroat competition is inhumane at its core while self-reliance is the misguided phantom ideal of capitalism.

THE FACE OF GREED
As evidenced by recent headlines, the capitalistic free market is in a fight for its very existence.  Fatal stock market & housing market collapses have challenged the economic norms of the Western powers.  The elite civilized nations have been severely tested along with the competence and character of those deeply entrenched in global markets.  The unquenchable avarice of the wealthy has finally surfaced troubling questions of morality onto the economic horizon.  The practice of selling market derivatives on a person’s home mortgage is gravely immoral.  Those buying such assets are essentially betting against the home buyer and hoping the mortgage will default due to delinquency or nonpayment.  The infamous ‘credit default swap’ is one human being profiting from the downfall and utter failure of another human being.  The basic livelihood of the common man is now a casino money chip in the hands of those who can afford to play.  Those who profit from immoral greedy investments do so at the risk of fomenting fear and birthing a cataclysmic economic avalanche.  The lavish destruction of all economic infrastructures is the path of greed.

It is not only the wealthy who have been conquered by their materialistic lust, but also the impoverished.   Greed is a lurking menace that darkens the hearts and minds of those living in meager means.  Even the simplest cases of armed robbery in lower-income inner cities attest to this dynamic.  There is usually no significant wealth gap between the assailant and the victim.  The thief is robbing his already-impoverished neighborhood for the acquisition of fluid capital that flows through the area but never rests there.  This capital never seems to penetrate the deepest workings of these neighborhoods.  Substantial volumes of currency and commodity move through the poorer areas but always end up in the hands of wealthier individuals outside.  Greed is the fleeting illusion of grandeur for the poor.

Ambition and profit drive market competition that compels one business to outperform a rival and provide a better product or service.  Competition remains healthy as long as it improves the lives of consumers and the business owners and workers involved.  As greed enters the picture, competition usually turns cutthroat and immoral.  It degenerates when a business looks to monopolize its market and maliciously attacks or forcibly purchases its competitors.  Institutional conglomerates such as banks may fall prey to bureaucratic clutter and immobility during times of crisis.  The regional monopolies of these banks decimate all competition and suppress new banks from rising.  A monopoly in any market will generally lower the quality of the product/service for the consumer, lower the wages for the worker, and maximize profits for the owner.  This will inevitably damage the quality of life for the society at large.       

The extensive use of cheap labor, child labor, and outsourcing are all different heads of the same leviathan of greed.  These practices may increase profit margins but they hurt the fabric of the business by undercutting its workers.  They weaken and disband labor unions and guilds while trampling upon their rights.  In the cases of job layoffs or pay reduction, it impedes individuals from being able to respectfully provide for their family.

THE HEART OF GREED
Greed feeds the faulty notion that one’s own desires and well-being always supersede those of the society.  Greed destroys altruism in the segments of society where it is most needed.  It weaves disunity and pins a man against his fellow man.  It violates the dignity of human work whose value emanates from the person, not from the nature of the work.  Greed is blind to the concept of a just wage which is always an exact number based on specific inflation and cost of living, among other factors.  Those ensnared by the lure of greed may even be willing to take crippling short term losses for a promise of vast riches in the long run.  Greed kills empathy and nullifies sympathy.  It is a flawed myopic vision with oneself in the center.   

Greed is born out of an underlying pride & arrogance that touts individualistic self-reliance.  Self-reliance is a virtuous concept as long it does not become self-centered and vain.  At times, the individual desires wealth, power and praise, detached from their own family and peers.  One must acknowledge that true self-reliance is a launching point for a person to help those who are still lacking.  This implicit generosity is a foreign concept for the capitalist paradigm.  The sensitivity towards a commonly shared human experience is declining in mankind today.  In an era where financial independence is fading, it is human virtue that will bring prosperity back, not stimulus packages and bailouts.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Times of Tyranny

The origin of tyranny can be credited to Greece, the same geographic land that is credited with the birth of democracy.  Tyrants in archaic and classical times were viewed by the Greeks in a neutral shade and colored by the temperament of the ruler.  In essence the word “Tyrant” was used by early Greek city-states as a title in the same manner we use the titles “President” and “Prime Minister” today.  Plato and his pupil Aristotle were the first ones to present tyrants in a negative light.  They deemed a tyrant to be "one who rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects, and uses extreme and cruel tactics -- against his own people as well as others.”  Henceforth, “tyrant” was no longer a neutral term that denoted administrative executive power, but rather, reflected the deep character of the man in power.  Tyranny, as we think of it today, was born 2400 years ago.

Tyrannies have grown more ruthless and damaging to the fabric of humanity in recent centuries and have degenerated in linear fashion.  History has seen many ruthless tyrants over the ages, from Caligula, Nero and Genghis Khan, to Hitler, Stalin and Mao.  Technological advances and the weapons arsenals available to modern oppressors put the vaunted Roman legions and Mongolian cavalry archers to utter shame.  The propaganda tools and media control in the hands of Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il would be the envy of Atilla The Hun and Ivan The Terrible.  The hordes of “barbarian” clans that pillaged and raped Europe after the fall of Rome have been put to shame by Soviet tactics and aggression in the last century.  It is safe to say that mentally unfit rulers with psychotic tendencies have risen and continue to rise throughout history.  However, tyrants who seize power in these times are capable of wreaking unfathomable havoc upon their own population as well as the entire globe.

THE MODERN WORLD
Tyrants thrive on the vulnerability and fear of their people.  In our times, the aftermath of World War II has left the entire civilized world in fear of new dictators that employ ruthless methods of governance.  History records that the League of Nations was born after World War I to prevent any future large-scale global conflicts.  Unfortunately, the brutality of the Treaty of Versailles put an end to the hopes for lasting world peace.   The treaty imposed a crushing war debt on Germany, leaving it humiliated in the global community.  This would eventually lead to the rise of National Socialism (Nazism) and the Third Reich.  In the same manner, the United Nations was birthed after World War II, in order to avert future global wars.  The nations of the world swore to never let another Hitler rise from among them.  They vowed to never let another tyrant consume an entire continent as Hitler had consumed Europe, but instead, the world became soft.

The trend of concession began with policies of appeasement towards the tyrannies of Stalin and Chairman Mao.  Clash and confrontation with global juggernauts such as the Soviet Union and Communist China was not deemed advisable for world peace.  U.N. recognition of dictators such as Fidel Castro and Pol Pot is further evidence of the world’s descent into darkness.  The cloak and dagger tactics of the Cold War brought out the worst in humanity.  From frenzy in food ration lines and torture in the notorious Gulags of Russia, to rampant McCarthyism, black-listing, interrogation and imprisonment in the West. 

The global community and its lone superpower have no firm moral footing for its political endorsements.  This is demonstrated by their support of the autocratic rule of the Shah of Iran and in the same breath, validating the oligarchic theocracy of the Saudi royals.  Military or political alliances are mostly forged due to economics, resources, or geography.  In forming alliances, the moral measuring stick has been thrown out in favor of a utilitarian approach.  Certain tyrants are tolerated due to perceived advantages by their allies.    Oppressive regimes who do not overtly demonstrate conquest or imperial expansion remain unchecked.  Tyranny continues to thrive inside the borders of “civilized” nations while global unrest foments.

THE POST-MODERN WORLD
The guise of global and universal “tolerance” has proven effective for a new form of tyranny to rise.  It is the moral tyranny of relativism, which is cementing into a dictatorship.  This tyranny is born out of fear and a taboo of offending others.  No individual is permitted to make any form of judgment about another individual’s actions or lifestyle.  Even if the actions may be abhorrent and/or leading others to follow a destructive behavior.  Any individual or media outlet found in violation is harshly reprimanded and sometimes ostracized.  Tyrants of these times feel very liberated in admonishing others not to judge for the sake of freedom.  This is not freedom for all; this is open license to follow one’s own whims and passions, without any objective truth. The advocates of this open license have transformed into the oppressors themselves

Unbridled subjectivism is the greatest movement towards human egotism in the history of the world.  Compounded with the exponential rise of technology, the culture of immorality has become a direct threat to the progress of humanity.  Our early human ancestors toiled over thousands of years to advance our species out of caves, jungles and savannahs; now human progress is truly threatened as we fall into the lull that our technology can protect and save us from every threat.  Moral tyranny today enforces this lull and impedes any uniform objectivity, considering it a relic of primitive, ancient times.  Any universal code of ethics has been discarded, especially the religious and institutional.

On the surface, the concept is masked to be noble and just.  Making a damning and final condemnation against any person is not acceptable by all the major religions in the world today.  Those tyrants fearing judgment use this false premise as a foundation for their fight against objective moral values.  The world, especially the West, has failed to promote the family values system exercised by the “greatest” generation of WWII. 

Humanity has become weaker, more sensitive and afraid of being labeled, judged or categorized.  The new tyrants of humanistic relativism are moving to obliterate the moral ethics code and create a chaotic world where everyone is their own guide and their own ultimate god.  This is the tyranny that will plague the current generation for many years.  It is imperative to resolve these tyrannies before the time comes for us to lead humanity into the future.