I was reading a text book on global marketing the other day and I realized that integration is the problem in society. Not the black and white integration that comes to mind so quickly in a race conscious society like America, but another kind. I’m talking about the mix and co-mingling of people who want to misuse people and those who have no interest in that. That is one of the fundamental differences between people it seems. There are people who have a desire to fuck with other people and add misery to their lives because internally, it gives them pleasure to see another person in pain. If we all just stopped for one minute and said, “O.K. everybody for the next 5 minutes, let’s all just be good to each other.” There would be some people who were not with that. Some people couldn’t go 5 minutes without wanting to fuck with someone else and make their life more miserable. There are probably a huge number of people who feel that way.
It would be great to say, “All the people who want to steal from someone, beat someone, abuse someone or misuse another person, go stand over there.” But that can’t happen, some of those people drive buses and trains or make coffee in the morning, teach your kids, issue you a driver’s license or pump gas into your car. Those people are all over society intermingled with and integrated into, the whole population. We work with and rely on those same people at times. So, the frustration of dealing with assholes comes from the fact that our society is integrated with non-assholes and assholes alike.
Now, we can hate the fact that our society is integrated or we can realize that assholes aren’t always like that 24/7. Sometimes they’re fixing your car or selling you a pair of shoes or giving your aunt a breast exam. Assholes are everywhere. Thankfully, most are not like that all the time. In fact if you search your feelings, you too will probably have experienced the feeling of being one yourself. It’s not just in society, but in us as well. We’re all integrated. That’s why they say, “It all comes back to you, and how you see it.” We can either see an asshole or another taxpayer who helps pay for the road he just cut you off on. We don’t have to see just an asshole. It’s up to us.
The reason reading a global marketing textbook made me think of this is because, the text detailed the digital revolution. From William Shockley in 1947 at Bell Laboratories invention of the solid state amplifier or transistor, to Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby creating the silicon chip or integrated circuit, to Alan Kay, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates revolutionizing the PC, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Tim Berner-Lee’s creation of the Uniform Resource Locator or URL and the internet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), the biggest transformation of the World in the 21st century has come because of America, where pessimists say we don’t make anything anymore. Maybe we don’t manufacture the silicon chip, but there is something to say about manufacturing the idea of the silicon chip. Research facilities, universities and government facilities created the internet, not just the innovative individuals who came up with brilliant creations there. Those American institutions helped create the basis by which our society has very significantly shifted. This notion is for those who, at times (myself included), think America is full of stupid people. Not everyone in America is an gun-toting, mumbling idiot, like it would seem. It’s really integrated over here, because there are a lot of geniuses too.
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Kurt Nice
Kurt Nice aka Kurtiss Jackson is a behind the scenes pioneer in the Hip Hop Kulture, creating the first nationally distributed video mix tape series, Shades of Hip Hop, in the late 1990s. Since touring the country with the Stop the Violence Movement and the Temple of Hip Hop as KRS-ONE’s National Marketing Director, Kurt Nice has been a constant commentator on conscious Hip Hop and its relevance to the new rap music of today, through radio and cable appearances. contact Kurt at info@hiphoplives.net
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Kurt Nice aka Kurtiss Jackson is a behind the scenes pioneer in the Hip Hop Kulture, creating the first nationally distributed video mix tape series, Shades of Hip Hop, in the late 1990s. Since touring the country with the Stop the Violence Movement and the Temple of Hip Hop as KRS-ONE's National Marketing Director, Kurt Nice has been a constant commentator on conscious Hip Hop and its relevance to the new rap music of today, through radio and cable appearances. contact Kurt at info@hiphoplives.net
