The opposite of an abbreviated mind is a metacognitive empowered consciousness, or MEC. The words metacognitive and consciousness as they are paired here might strike some as close to synonymous and therefore nearly redundant.  The important difference between the two within this context is the potential passivity that may be associated with the fluid qualities of an undirected consciousness that is not actively engaged in its own reinforcement. 

The modern person who ignores the metacognition alternative by neglecting to fortify his or her capacities for informed responsiveness––as with life-affirming values, ethics-centered convictions, knowledge of self, and awareness of the changing contemporary world-- is more likely to fall prey to rhetoric based on xenophobic hatred or megalomaniacal delusions. Or: to general emotional instability susceptible to the deeper forms of depression and to self-destruction.

This is not a matter of wielding superhero-like telepathic or telekinetic abilities. Consciousness empowered by enhanced metacognition may be defined as a developed or natural capacity for assessing the complex variables of your particular era and environment––as well as your own place and adopted function within them. These variables in the 21st century would include factors like the previously-noted shifting demographics, evolving economic trends, and cultural confluences on levels ranging from the personal to the global.

The capacity to make such an assessment enables a person to consider, act on, or respond to issues that impact his or her life without with minimal distortions caused by fear or incomprehension. To take action or not to take action in the face of nearly-overwhelming change does not become a question but an option based on informed mindfulness.

How an abbreviated mind or MEC is most likely to manifest in terms of particular actions depends on the individual in question. It does not take long to determine whether an abbreviated mind or a metacognitive empowered one is at work behind the most dramatic headlines read in a newspaper or on the internet.

The documented activities of an abbreviated mind will most likely cause you to groan with pain or wince from embarrassment. The reported undertakings of an MEC may very well prompt a moment of awed admiration, friendly envy, or smiling approval.

The number and types of disadvantages of approaching life with an abbreviated mind compared to the advantages of engaging it with metacognitive empowerment may vary from individual to individual.  Below are two lists featuring five potential outcomes based on each type. These should be read as one set of examples rather than as definitive conclusive attributes:

As you can see, there is room for flexibility, expansion, and/or contraction in both sets of examples when it comes to implementing the idea of an abbreviated mind versus metacognitive empowered consciousness.

The concept of metacognitive empowerment is not new. It is, however, too often neglected where everyday living in an increasingly globalized highly-technologized world is concerned.

For more discussions of the costs of neglecting to develop a metacognitive empowered consciousness please check out future installments of this blog and look for news of the planned book title, The Boy with the Guerrilla Decontextualized Eyes.

NEXT: Summer 2016 Update.

Aberjhani
© Bright Skylark Literary Productions
May 2016

For those members of a given demographic made uneasy by the idea of eventually becoming just one more minority in America, an abbreviated mind taking note of the evolving dynamics could react with overwhelming fear. The carnage inflicted by Dylann Roof in Charleston, SC, just last month may be considered one such case. That demonstrated by the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik in 2011 illustrates how analogous scenarios are playing out across the globe.

The idea and reality of losing previously-held political power and privileged authority based on racial domination could (some would say apparently does) encourage violence against those perceived of as a threat. Certainly the ongoing violence inflicted upon unarmed African-Americans by armed White-American policemen ––the latest most visible cases being that of Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas, and Sam Dubose in Cincinnati, Ohio, does very little to suggest otherwise.  

From the opposite end of the undulating spectrum, populations growing increasingly more powerful and reacting with abbreviated minds may, conceivably, develop a penchant for vindictive behavior. It is in fact wholly possible that the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the choking death of Eric Garner in New York City, later followed by shootings of policemen described as “retaliatory,” are precise examples of the dynamics in question. Such scenarios, however, represent only a fraction of the kind of personal, local community, national, and global chaos that an abbreviated mind, especially when linked to intentional guerrilla decontextualization, can cause.

Periods of shifting demographics, along with the often overwhelming giant crashing waves of sudden historical events themselves, often create odd partnerships and dangerously extreme polarization. Fear of getting lost in the shuffle prompts many to abandon personal ethics for some semblance of security motivated by a heightened sense of raging and yet repressed anxiety.

This being the 21st century, virtually miraculous advances in science have occurred alongside fairly dismal regressions in the areas of human rights and social conduct. It makes a bizarre mash-up of contradictions that demand greater analytical and critical thought of anyone interested in living a fulfilling life.

The complexity of the issues at hand often requires in-depth examination for any kind of useful comprehension of them. Is the effort worth it? In previous times, when the saying “Ignorance is bliss” was a popular one, many might have said such a cognitive effort was not worth it. In this century where the substance of general knowledge and references  changes almost as rapidly as the cells of a developing human fetus, self-imposed ignorance can be one of the most lethal forms of self-annihilation around. 

Take a look please at the list of topics below. As you do, ask yourself how many of them stir within you enough impassioned concern to motivate you to take some kind of action, whether pro or con, regarding them:

• Generational disagreements
• Environmental stewardship
• To consume or not to consume genetically-altered foods
• Economic disparity gap
• To have or not to have children via test tubes or cloning
• Supporting same-sex marriage versus repealing same-sex marriage
• Corporate dataveillance compared to government surveillance
• To embrace diversity or cling to intolerance
• Voting Elvis Presley the King of Music or Michael Jackson the King of Music
• To accommodate or not to accommodate immigrants classified as illegal aliens
• Military intervention versus nonviolent conflict resolution
• To demonstrate compassion in a traumatized world or add to the trauma

The thing is this: whether you are passionate about a few of these issues or dispassionate about all of them, chances are each one has some impact on your life and directs the course of it to one degree or another. If you find yourself gagging over the idea that whoever is voted the “King of Music” somehow matters to your life, it might be interesting to put the idea to a simple test.

The first criticism that anyone might voice regarding voting for a proposed “King of Music” is the question of why Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson are so frequently presented as the top two contenders. Why has the great Stevie Wonder’s name not been included in the conversation, or that of Great Britain’s Cliff Richard, country music’s Garth Brooks, or the acknowledged late “King of the Blues” BB King? The answer is possibly more notable than many lovers of popular music history might think.

Presley’s contributions to 20th-century American music are as much a part of the overall evolution of musical culture as anyone of the period. Where Presley surpassed most of his peers, however, was in his dual role as an actor starring in more than 30 full-length feature films.

For his part, Jackson’s remains the voice and creative vision that gave the world the best-selling album of all-time to date: Thriller (1982).  In addition, no one disputes the revolutionary impact that his multiple talents had on the music-video industry, an impact that many to this day try their best to duplicate.   

First, try mustering enough courage and stamina to watch mainstream television evening news for a month or so. During that period, keep a record of how many times reporters find a reason to mention Elvis Presley, the Beatles, or Michael Jackson.  If the results reflect patterns observed over the past few years, you might notice that among these equally iconic celebrated talents, Presley and the Beatles are generally cited about 2 or 3 times a month compared to 0 times for Michael Jackson.

In addition, when Jackson is mentioned, it is more often within the context of “news” that may be described as negative resulting from sensationalized legal issues (no matter how thoroughly or often said issues have been disproved). By way relief-like contrast, the “news” about Presley or the Beatles will celebrate a “milestone” in connection with their career achievements. For the sake of variety, an announcement might be made about the “discovery” of a previously unpublished photograph or another collectible item long believed to have been lost or destroyed.

When he died on May 21, 2015, network news anchors honored Louis Johnson of the Brothers Johnson by identifying him as “Michael Jackson’s bassist” (on Off The Wall in 1979, Thriller in 1982, and Dangerous in 1991). The tie-in allowed them to give the great guitarist’s passing national headline status. It was an exceptional kind of recognition because references to how Jackson’s trailblazing labors made the careers of certain superstars possible tend to be rare.

So why should anyone other than hardcore media critics or die-hard evening-news fans care about balanced media reports on the Beatles or Elvis Presley versus clearly unbalanced reports on Michael Jackson, or on others whose stories are similar to Jackson’s? What difference could any of it possibly make in your life?

Well, possibly a lot.

The difference it makes is that such biased “reporting” (whether subtle or not so subtle) contributes to the maintenance of cultural environments made toxic by racism. These in turn often do the same when it comes to xenophobic fear, hatred, violence, and other forms of close-minded intolerance invoked in the name of any given ism or phobia.

If  it is your preference to live and die under conditions that promote social and political regression, then on a personal level there is no problem with the kind of mindset just described. If living under the conditions presented is not your choice, then there is a problem. Call it an unhealthy insistence on incubating aspects of the abbreviated mind syndrome through the covert practice of guerrilla decontextualization by omission.

It is the type of thing that prompts more lip-biting scowls than smile-lit selfies. As a practice, it falls into the same category as legacies of erasure and historical exclusion. Each generates an unchecked warped version of reality that is left to promote misinformation and to encourage destructive dispositions. What novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says of rejecting attempts to define places with a single story also applies to people:

Likewise, when we reject the callous dismissal of a person’s (or a people’s) greater definitive truth, we reaffirm the value of human integrity for its own indispensable sake.

Whether one is an admirer of Michael Jackson’s phenomenal music and philanthropic achievements is not the central point. Guerrilla decontextualization by omission is. Despite the ungainly cluster of syllables, it may be understood simply enough as follows: the distortion or diminishment of an individual’s professional status and legacy by excluding them from appropriate acknowledgements.

The instinct to employ such a tactic emerges as a characteristic of an abbreviated mind. The practice may be just as damaging as guerrilla decontextualization in its most basic forms, which overemphasizes fragments of a greater truth for the purpose of defaming one human being or group to the advantage of another.

Guerrilla decontextualization by omission, however, may also be described as a form of shunning which, in the end, may cause greater harm to the shunner than the shunned. The reason is because the one doing the shunning would be the person unknowingly cultivating an abbreviated mind due to his or her unwillingness to look at the larger picture. If they were willing to adopt a more expanded perspective, they might see that part of what it reveals is the possibility of becoming themselves targets of the ignominious practice and not appreciating it very much at all. 

by Aberjhani
(© Aug 2015)

NEXT: Abbreviated Mind Syndrome (Article 4)

No great amount of harm is done when a Millennial and a Traditionalist find themselves engaging in a passionate conversation about “catfishing” only to realize in the end that they were talking about two different things. Once the Traditionalist (a member of the generation born from 1900-1945) realizes her young debater is talking about avoiding online dating catfish scams, her frustrated tones then make a lot more sense. Once the Millennial (a member of the generation born from 1981-2000) understands the Traditionalist is referring to memories of catching catfish with her father in the rivers of Alabama and later cooking them for dinner, her cheerful attitude then makes more sense.

The above scenario represents a good example of how applications of language can evolve from one decade to the next and take its meaning from a generational context. It demonstrates as well how a lack of awareness regarding such evolutions can contribute to the stagnation of an abbreviated mind. At the same time, it represents a good illustration of what Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi refers to as “the danger of a single story” in her popular TEDx Talks video. In the presentation, Adichi recounts how the human tendency to focus on one facet of a situation, or of a person’s life, can lead to false assumptions and misconceptions.

The author acknowledged there had been times in her youth when she too had been guilty of reducing people’s lives to a single incomplete story. The problem with this tendency became more and more apparent when she later she traveled outside of Nigeria. Many people seemed to assume she had grown up impoverished and illiterate when in fact her childhood had been a relatively comfortable one and she had started reading at an early age.

Whereas a single incomplete story can often lead to insults and polarization, she observes the following:

A person with an abbreviated mind would be more likely to tell “a single story” as opposed to connecting multiple stories that create a composite whole. The reason why is not hard to understand. Single stories, like the sound bites and video clips used in guerrilla decontextualization smear campaigns against politicians, celebrities, and victims of cyber-bullying, support the excuses and delusions upon which abbreviated minds casually feed. They help them escape any sense of accountability for actions they know are harmful to others.  

Going back now to the interesting example of catfishing: the abbreviated awareness in such a case comes from refusing, or neglecting, to acknowledge the fact that ours is an era in which more generations than ever before are simultaneously actively engaged in different aspects of social and professional pursuits.  Traditionalists born before 1945, Baby Boomers born afterwards (1946-1964), their Generation X offspring, and the more recently-arrived Millennials may feel sometimes within each other’s company like displaced strangers in a very peculiar land.  

Members of each generational group have been shaped by experiences and values that make it important for them to understand the differences, similarities, and vocabularies created by their unique era-defined culture. Because these multiple generations are sharing work space in offices, grocery stores, community centers, hospitals, college campuses, and elsewhere it is important to expand one’s knowledge about each. What, for example, makes one generation tick like a flawless vintage gold pocket watch, or causes another to simply shut down like an android humanoid suddenly deprived of its power source?

The destiny of the current generations, to paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt when speaking about his own while accepting re-nomination for the presidency on June 27, 1936, involves a great deal more than constructing pathways of understanding leading from one age-group’s idiosyncratic preferences to another’s. They also include the huge demographic racial, behavioral, ethnic shifts taking place as people from countries all over the world immigrate to different nations. Some, like the Asians and Latinos who continue to swell the United States’ population, make the move in search of better economic opportunities and greater political freedom. Others, like those in Syria, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and various realms ravaged by military conflict across the globe, make their way to neighboring countries just to themselves and their families alive.

In regard to the United States, more and more political and economic forecasters have begun examining the potential impact of the current shifts in racial demographics.  They prompt an important question: As the dominant numbers which have characterized and empowered the status of one particular group for centuries begins to dwindle, how are people of different national origins and socially-constructed racial categories likely to respond?

Coming up next: What does voting for Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson have to do with it?

(© 2015) Aberjhani

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at this point can claim with some justification that the media’s treatment of his “47 percent” comments, made at a private fundraiser in May in Florida, fall solidly in the category of guerrilla decontextualization.

Yet, of all those powerful men and women who might have flocked to Mr. Romney’s defense in the wake of the PR nightmare that followed, only his running mate Paul Ryan did so with any kind of half-way convincing persuasive immediacy. Many former allies of Mr. Romney are now in fact performing that odd horizontal shuffle called “distancing” that politicians sometimes do so well when the word “stigma” threatens to attach itself to a colleague.  Such tends to be the case whether said colleague is wealthy, powerful, handsome, ugly, or none of the above.

Humble and Private Lives Made Public

Many have already interpreted this horizontal shuffle of distancing as an attempt by other Republicans to save themselves from drowning in the whirlpool of political backlash created by Mr. Romney’s remarks. Simpler folks might see it as a case of “what goes around comes around.” In this instance, it may be said that the presidential candidate himself cast the first stone of guerrilla decontextualization at the 47 percent of Americans he so passionately characterized in the following manner:

“…There are 47 percent who are with him [Barack Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them… And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Those remarks at this point have gone beyond viral, and whether or not they are referenced during the forthcoming election campaign debate they have apparently made their way straight into the hearts of those supposedly described. But not at all in a good way. The people to whom the increasingly popular term “47 Percenters” might be applied previously viewed their world in a very different light from the one suddenly shined upon their humble and private lives.

“Social Piranhas” and Such

Following Mr. Romney’s redefinition of who and what they are, they suddenly needed to identify themselves not as a demographic, talking point, or ordinary citizens in pursuit of the American dream but as: retired workers, single parents, military veterans, wounded veterans, men and women in combat, Social Security recipients, people on unemployment struggling to get off it, college students, workers whose modest earnings exempt them from paying federal income taxes, diligent contributors to payroll taxes, and numerous others.

Even various public figures––like CNN’s John King––weighed in with stories of how they or their parents for a time had been dependent on public assistance but did not feel they were “social piranhas, “ as some have paraphrased Romney’s words,  because of it.  

Part of the definition of guerrilla decontextualization is the attempt to intentionally misrepresent an individual’s character or intentions for purpose of decreasing any measure of influence or authority they might possess in either public or private circles. Hence: the popularity of such a technique among battling politicians.

NEXT PART 2: 47 Percenters and Guerrilla Decontextualization (Part 2 of 3): Barack Obama

by Aberjhani
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
and ELEMENTAL: The Power of Illuminated Love

 
Notebook on Guerrilla Decontextualization

• Catching up with Our Humanity
  
• Guerrilla Decontextualization and the 2012 Presidential Campaign Part 1
  
• Guerrilla Decontextualization and the 2012 Presidential Campaign Part 2
  
• Guerrilla Decontextualization and the 2012 Presidential Campaign Part 3
  
• Guerrilla Decontextualization and King of Pop Michael Jackson
  
• Considering Michael Clarke Duncan: Big Black Man Within a Nonsociopoliticohistorical Context
  
• Sampler of Dubious Guerrilla Decontextualization Ethics
  
• Poetics of Paradigm Dancing in the 2012 Presidential Election Campaign
  

          “It’s very important to keep the historical context in mind
          as you contemplate the nature of love and service required
          in the 21st century.”
                  –Cornel West, Hope on a Tightrope

To what extent might the phenomenal entertainer and humanitarian Michael Joseph Jackson have been the target of an extended guerrilla decontextualization campaign throughout the second half of his life?

Hardcore devotees to Jackson’s music and altruistic humanitarian vision would say there can be no question that he was targeted in such a manner. Hardcore doubters might say maybe he was the one doing the guerrilla decontextualizing through the evolving manipulations of his public profile as a performance artist. They point to his chameleon-like shift from a distinctly afrocentric appearance in one decade to androgynously multi-ethnic in the next, and in his final years to an almost ethereal projection––a figure solidly in the world but somehow already afloat beyond it.

The answer to the question of who was guerrilla decontextualizing whom might be answered with a simple comparison. Examine the size of the newspaper headline fonts, the amount of space allotted in magazines, and the time made available on radio and television stations to coverage of Jackson when allegations of sexual abuse were leveled against him during the 1990s and later in 2005.  Then compare those same elements––headlines, etc.–– to those utilized when it came to reports that debunked, disproved, or presented confessions of outright perjury where those same allegations were concerned. The first dominated the media to a nearly overwhelming extent while the latter remains almost non-existent.

Or try this: perform an experiment by looking at some of the more sensational media footage on Jackson with the volume turned down to mute. A particularly interesting specimen for this experiment would be the infamous “OMG-he’s-dangling-the-baby-from-the-balcony” incident. The word “dangle,” as defined in various editions of Webster’s Dictionary, means “to hold loosely and swaying.” Turn the volume down when watching the news clip of Jackson with his youngest on a balcony and you do not see a man holding his child in a loose manner.  While the choice to hold the infant on the balcony before the gawking crowd below probably was not the best parenting decision he ever made, it is clear that he had a very firm grip on his son. The idea that he did not comes from a mind other than one’s own. It also came from the media trend, well established at the time, of prepping reading and viewing and listening audiences to expect weirdness from Michael Jackson. In short, people saw and heard what they were told to see and hear.    

Slurred Speech or Not…

The essence of who and what Jackson was more than anything else––the context which likely defined him more than anything else–– may have been revealed at a moment painful to witness. It was during Dr. Conrad Murray’s trial for manslaughter for Jackson’s death, when the public was allowed to hear a recording of Mr. Jackson heavily under the influence of propofol, which the beloved icon dangerously relied on to put himself to sleep. The powerful drug acted somewhat like a truth serum. Jackson’s compromised consciousness first revealed his anxiety over the planned This Is It concert tour and then insisted through strained articulation on expressing concern for children around the world: “….I’m taking that money, a million children, children’s hospital, the biggest in the world, Michael Jackson’s Children’s Hospital… I’m gonna do that for them... God wants me to do it…”

Slurred speech or not, it was the words he struggled to speak that revealed the defenseless vulnerable core of his heart and soul.  He’s clearly referring to using profits from the tour to build a hospital for children. His years of charitable works and contributions had already demonstrated there was virtually no end to his capacity for serving and giving. Moreover, there is no overboard egoism exploding from the tape: it’s about doing what he believed God commanded him to do. Dr. Murray, although unintentionally so, added further definitive proof of who and what Jackson knew himself to be.

Scandal and Integrity

Popular culture itself, mainstream media, and segments of society in general feasted on Jackson’s seemingly larger-than-life personality and talent in a number of unhealthy ways. Scandal is often far more profitable than integrity. Many either envied him or felt threatened by the power of his increasing popularity. The marketplace mechanisms of soulless commercialism driven by heedless greed transformed his image––whether or not it was attached to Jackson’s reality–– into a kind of cash cow that got fatter by the day. Whether certain interested parties liked him or disliked him, they enjoyed slicing off whatever piece of his fame they could claim for their own. Does that mean the narrative of his actual intentions and the authentic substance of his actions were guerrilla decontextualized to such an extent that possibly even he lost––at times, in the flood of false reflections that can swallow an individual’s life––sight of his truest self? 

What may be most important to consider at this point are several questions, such as: Why was it so important for so many to emphasize negative accusations capable of destroying a man’s life over proven positive attributes capable of enhancing the quality of life for millions? And just as important: what impact has this need and the public’s enabling of it had on the psyche of those who so eagerly indulge it? What are the ripple effects waving through each of our ordinary lives at this very moment?

by Aberjhani
founder of Creative Thinkers International
and co-author of ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love


YouTube video below courtesy of  MichaelJacksonWebTV


A Guerrilla Decontextualization Notebook

Summer-Song Rhapsody for Michael Jackson
Sampler of Dubious Guerrilla Decontextualization Ethics
Dancing to the Paradigm Rhythms of Change
Modern-day Guerrilla Style Traditions
Poetics of Paradigm Dancing in the 2012 Presidential Election Campaign
Guerrilla Decontextualization and the 2012 Presidential Campaign Part 1
Guerrilla Decontextualization and the 2012 Presidential Campaign Part 2
Guerrilla Decontextualization and the 2012 Presidential Campaign Part 3