It is with the greatest sense of appreciation that on the debut of the Let’s Rethink This (LRT) website we present famed Hip Hop photographer, Ernie Paniccioli as our Creative Community’s Impact Artist of the month.

It has been declared that “If Brother Ernie has not photographed you, then you are not Hip-Hop.”

But that is not the story that Brother Ernie wants to leave behind.

“I want to be known for the breadth of my work beyond Hip Hop. I want there to be an awareness of my global, racial, political and social activism,” he states emphatically. “The press is ‘cut-and-paste’ lazy. They will put you in a box, stick you on a little postcard – and that is deadly to the person we truly are.”

For those who are not familiar with this legend, a few background snippets:

• Activist as well as artist
• American of Cree and Italian descent
• Inducted into the Hip Hop Hall of Fame
• Spokesman for the Temple of Hip Hop at the United Nations Hip Hop Peace Conference
• Featured 2021 Speaker International Indigenous Hip Hop Awards Show
• Nearly 20,000 digital versions of photographs by Ernie Paniccioli are stored in the Cornell University archives, providing an unprecedented visual history of Hip Hop culture of the 1980’s, 90’s and early 2000’s.
• His work has appeared in publications such as Vibe, The Source, Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.
• Author of Who Shot Ya?: Three Decades of Hip Hop Photography (2002) and Hip-Hop at the End of the World: The Photography of Brother Ernie (2018).
• His lens has captured legends LL Cool, Run DMC, KRS-One, Queen Latifah, X Clan, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Notorious B.I.G., “Puff Daddy” Combs and so many more.

NFT’s As Example

Ernie, with the help and guidance of his daughter and Director of the Paniccioli Group, Melissa Paniccioli, is exploring the world of Non-Fungible Tokens – and he is excited.

“I and other artists of all mediums need to get involved and put our work out on an auction channel like Open Sea and elsewhere to get experience as well as earn from our work in a way we might never have imagined.” is his take.

“Economically, it expands the artist’s ability to survive. For the first time ever, they can benefit from residual revenue should their art be sold and resold again (each sale includes a stipulation that a percentage on each sale is paid to the artists even when sold by new purchasers.)”

“Think of the expanded financial ability for artists to give back to their community,” he continues. “We use the technology of rockets and satellites to expand our ability to solve things. To rethink them. In a like manner, Monies generated by NFT’s can help with social problems like homelessness,” Ernie says. “Certainly, a donation of even a small share in the sale of a digitized piece is helpful. But it does something more important. It brings awareness of the problem.”

“So, when the time comes that I release an NFT of my art or photography to my Hip-Hop community, it will also be an attention-getter that will illuminate my other work,” he adds. A diamond has many facets – and each needs to be shined up to show value. We activists/public figures are no different.”

“An artist has to constantly rethink their life and their work in that fashion,” Ernie instructs. Whether through my work in “Indian Country” (he is of Cree ancestry) public speaking or educating the youth – I will continue to redefine myself as long as I draw a breath.”

Until Let’s Rethink This came along, one of the most overlooked ways of making the public both aware, educated and ready to take action on a social problem is to turn the problem into a cartoon and someone solving that problem into a “S/Hero.”

Not to simplify, but to “pic-tify.” You know, the usual picture-is-a-thousand-words idea. This is the approach we adopted in featuring Dr. Marion Mass as our superhero #2 in a series that we will be publishing. (The first hero: Clayton Banks of Silicon Harlem.)

Given the egregious faults found within America’s dysfunctional medical system, and the attention that Dr. Mass has attracted as a physician-advocate in her rethinking of America’s healthcare, we couldn’t have found a better (almost militant) candidate.

Dr. Mass is co-founder and Executive VP of The Practicing Physicians of America, an organization that advocates for patients by – what else – advocating for the profession of medicine. As they describe themselves: “We advocate that physicians (be able to) practice medicine that is in the best interest of their patients and not for the benefit of special interest groups that have taken over medicine.”

Hmmm, now who could those “usual suspects” be?

Easy enough to tick off on the fingers of one hand: Big Pharma, Big Hospitals, Big Insurance, Big Lobbyists and Big Business.

Almost automatically, these groups fall into the “too big to fail” category – but not in the eyes of Dr. Mass and the physician/supporters she has accumulated along the way.

Credentials?

Dr. Mass is a pediatrician in the Philadelphia region where she practiced in hospital Emergency Rooms and Urgent Care settings. A graduate of Duke University Medical School and trained in pediatrics at Northwest Memorial Hospital in Chicago, she has been writing about life inside medicine and has been published in the WSJ, Washington Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer as well as guested on radio shows and BBC broadcasts.

Oh yes, and if the legislators and lawmakers are brave enough to learn from her, she advises lawmakers at the state and national level.

The Artist and “Cartooning”

Vic Guiza, recently added to the LRT co-creation team, has his own credentials which comprise 30+ years of experience in rendering graphic novels/images that catch the eye and attention in a delightful fashion.

We can start with Disney, The Simpsons (Bongo Comics), Marvel Comics / Upper Deck and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not to mention the different awards earned for his work as a childrens’ books illustrator and that Vic holds a Master of Product Arts from Disney Consumer Products.

Everyone knows the basic plot of a comic or graphic novel. There is a s/hero, a wrong that needs to be righted, and an outcome that only someone with superpowers could possibly bring about.

That’s where LRT introduces the super-artist to the super-candidate – to take on the “Too Big To Battle” forces that are costing our country its very blood and treasure.

That’s where the magic of art and the education born of wisdom is put to its destined purpose: change-making.

And, it is you, the reader, who are the ones to make this happen. If making a difference is embedded in your genes, you arrived at the right place. Join us, and join in.

Materialism conveys a value-system and a world view that puts material values and the means to attain them above every other concern: the limitation of our planetary resources, the countless constituents, our dependencies on the fabric of our world, our ecosphere, and the vital importance of moral values and spiritual skills for the integrity and operability of society.

Materialism is the globally dominating culture that permeates and dominates every other culture, conviction, and people, no matter what geographic, ethnic or historic origin they have.

Materialism is the main force driving human beings to consume and destroy the physical world, our basis for existence and development, and the main motivator for ongoing disunity and fragmentation among the peoples of the world. Its practice renders humankind increasingly weak and unable to survive and thrive as a species.

“Materialism drives us to consume and destroy our world,
while rendering humanity increasingly fragmented and weak”

The value and attraction of material resources is directly derived from their intrinsic feature to be limited. To attain something limited leads inevitably to the necessity to compete against others who desire the same limited resources. This has profound consequences to society.

Due to this limitation of material resources, throughout human history individuals and societies have primarily been concerned with their physical survival - which first depends on their ability to attain and command material resources and services, as well as the possession and consumption of material resources and services themselves - in short material values.

Since this condition has dominated human societies for ages, material values have been at the top of their value systems. On the other hand – for the last centuries, most societies have managed to satisfy their material needs on a continuous basis but with no corresponding transcendence beyond material values.

The opposite has happened - the for every individual justified objective "secure your material means" has become "maximize your material wealth", and as such the possession and consumption of material values has not only remained the dominating value, but has become an end in itself.

Systemic Assessment: dynamics and trajectories promoted by materialism

As any human culture is a body of values, rules, and behaviors and dictates how society interacts amongst itself and within its societal and natural environment. To understand its impact on our world, we need to make a systemic assessment of its features what promotes or inhibits materialism.

“Our world is a fabric of dependencies – our world is one”

What is that societal and natural environment? Our familiar approach is to distinguish – that is to differentiatecomponents in terms of gestalt: we refer to the earth, to elements and raw materials, to continents and oceans, to animals and plants - and to human beings building all kinds of groups, societies, and nations around the world.

But when we look beyond gestalt, we see that all these countless components are connected through dependencies and relationships, immediately and mediately, together constituting an overall system of interrelated parts, our one world.

This one world not only is a fully integrated structure, it is also ruled by dynamics, some merging order and stability, others causing disorder and disintegration.

Since our world is inhabited with life forms constituting a biosphere, these dynamics are not solely incidental, subject to the elements and to elementary forces. The biosphere overall is a system capable of maintaining itself in an everchanging environment. Life forms process energy and material compounds in order to maintain the individual self where possible, and to adapt, when necessary to maintain the collective kind.

Paramount is a biosphere’s ability to establish with part of its planetary environment the ecosphere, a system in which the flow of energies and materials is organized. This is a network of circular pathways – such that life can be supported. This life support system is indispensable for its constituents.

No one life form dominates this life support system: every life form at the same time benefits and serves as part of the continuous cycle, thus contributing to its stability. Any life form developing towards dominance brings imbalance, destroys its support system, and perishes. The more diverse the constituents of life are, the more nurturing relationships exist, the more stable is the overall system, the higher its resilience and buffer capacity against adverse events and processes.

“Materialistic culture ignores the need for integrity and oneness”

Such is the natural and societal environment – the systemic context – in which hour materialistic culture has been cultivated – and amplified within the last 200 years of industrialization. When observing our world, we can identify the following features, dynamics, and tendencies inherent with materialistic culture:

Materialism is characterized by its main feature – the master-rule “maximize your material wealth”. In humans, this rule dominates all other rules, defying limitation or moderation.

This leads immediately to the second main feature, the means to maximize one’s material wealth – that is anything that helps attain and wield power. The spectrum of means to attain power is very wide and diverse – beginning with an individual’s titles, status and position to an organization’s ability to emerge as a monopoly or to a nation’s armed forces.

More subtly, power in service of predatory competition underscores every narrative that justifies to discriminate, exclude, and suppress people and groups of people - prominently visible with the treatment of women and people of color.

“Materialistic culture promotes racism”

Wealth and power come together in a mutually amplifying loop, the primary loop of materialism: the more wealth, the more power can be attained – the more power, the more wealth can be accumulated.

This self-enforcing feedback loop is operating in a context of limited resources, and consequently leads to predatory competition, however subtly or visibly evolving. Its result is a widening gap between a disenfranchised majority and a privileged minority.

“Materialism promotes aggregation and inequality – without limit”

A culture of materialism shapes the objectives, values, and behaviors of society: the maximization of material wealth, as well as in aggregating and wielding power, is condoned and outward success is applauded and rewarded. Failure is pitied and perceived with suspicion. The attributes of a successful life, respectively a failed life, are defined and promoted accordingly.

Since it is human nature to want to be a respected part of society, the majority of us engage in that game. When someone does not apply the rules, whether he is unable or refuses to do so, he or she is not at the center of societal respect but at the fringes of society.

And the ugly loop continues. Attributes like dominance and assertiveness are valued; attributes like being self-centered and ruthlessness are deemed essential. Virtues like empathy and compassion are identified as weaknesses and any relevant body of moral values are considered detrimental in any situation calling for competition. Moral values are relegated to interpersonal settings such as family and domestic partnerships.

The complaints are endless – and a desire for impactful positive change is what the majority of society is crying for, like air for lungs or light for our eyes.

This needs changing: this materialistic culture of reductionist and short-term thinking. We must see beyond our consumercentric world which sees utility and joy in a product but care little where it comes from and where it goes after its use.

As producers we care about revenue, costs and profit but not the negative impact our business activities have on this world. Wehave the greatest difficulty in seeing the side effects and ignored long-term costs to society and environment. As our world numbers countless and delicate interrelated components, this blindness to dependencies, consequences, and long-term dynamics is already altering and destabilizing our planet.

Lacking perception and consideration are the basis for lacking emotional engagement: we cannot feel empathy and compassion for something we neither see nor understand. Without that, we do not care – and act accordingly: operating with incomplete perception, consideration to imperil our future.

Here we have another prominent self-amplifying loop, the secondary loop of materialism: damage and deterioration motivate response with aggression, desperation, enmity, and retaliation – leading to an escalating cycle with progressive discrimination, fragmentation, and disintegration of society, as well as destruction of the physical and ecological environment. The secondary loop of materialism is progressing destruction and disintegration.

“Materialism promotes destruction and disintegration – without limit”

When we consider how human culture in general operates, how in a circular relationship culture emerges from society, and at the same time culture shapes society, and when we observe how materialist culture specifically operates as outlined in this article, we can only conclude that materialistic culture puts us in grave danger.

“We need to prioritize humankind and our common good
over the maximization of individuals’ material wealth”

Conclusion

Besides the certainty that our ecosphere may already be on an irreversible path to disaster – our ability to rethink our actions and our assumptions to come up with needed changes will determine our fate.

For humanity to prevail, we need to promote our awareness for the role materialistic culture plays, need to develop and embrace what is beyond our material life, and establish a new culture – a culture that prioritizes humankind and life over the maximization of any one individual or group’s material wealth.

Originally published on viablemankind.org, March 1, 2021

While not many people would compared the administration of the 45th president to Tamerlane or Stalin, one person did compare the 45th President to Hitler.

Anne Frank's Stepsister, Eva Schloss, did tell Newsweek magazine that Donald Trump Was Acting Like Hitler'. Schloss, who was 86 at the time, she didn’t stop there.

On April 9, 2021, Schloss, now 91, said in an interview that former Trump “obviously admired Hitler” and “copied him with his anti-Semitism,” according to The Daily Beast.

Schloss discussed her opinion of Trump when asked about the increase in anti-Semitism during Trump’s presidency.

“You know, he’s said so many silly things,” she told The Daily Beast. “I’ve compared him to Hitler. I even heard that he studied Hitler’s speeches and things like that, so he obviously admired Hitler and just copied him with his anti-Semitism.”

The outcomes of Tamerlane’s, Stalin’s, or Hitler’s rule may have been slightly different, the engine which drove each administration was fear. In at least one realm the second in command took the lead as happened in Germany.

Nazi leader Hermann Göring, a leader of the Nazi Party and one of the primary architects of the Nazi police state (1933–45) known as the Third Reich in Germany, explained how people can be made fearful and to support a cause they otherwise would oppose:

“The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” [emphasis mine].

Trump learned Goring’s teaching well. On July 24, 2020, with 100 days left before the election, US News reported Trump focused on instilling fear and chaos while Biden pitched stability.

Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters denigrated Biden as Sleepy Joe as they played the part of Chicken Little’s protagonist.

Chicken Little

Many people remember the story of Henny Penny.

The political lesson in the story is ‘fearmongering’.

Fearmongering – whether justified or not – can sometimes elicit a societal response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as "inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis". It has also been defined as "a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions".

Some believe the moral of the story is not to be a 'chicken' but to have courage. Others say that the story is a 'warning' that you should not believe everything that you are told.

Consequences of Government by Fear

A 2020 survey, Fear Itself: The Causes and Consequences of Fear in America reported:

“Fear of outsiders [a bad, illiberal kind of fear] also proved consequential to explain something that initially baffled pundits, scholars, and the public alike: the unprecedented political rise of Donald Trump”

‘Fear of outsiders…’ Remember the Muslim travel ban? Trump’s constant claim that “Crime was highest in Democrat controlled cities”?

No president since Nixon has deployed fear quite like Donald J. Trump. Whether it is the prospect of a crime wave at the border with Mexico or nuclear war with North Korea, Trump has persuaded his supporters that there is plenty to fear beyond fear itself.

In an interview as a presidential candidate in 2016 with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Mr. Trump said, “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”

Government by fear can result in a loss of freedom and basic human rights.

The American culture tends to reduce very complicated questions into very simple ideas. Very rarely are these simplifications appropriate or accurate.

When Barack Obama was elected, gross simplifications were made of his policies and they were rendered for the viewing audience as 31 Flavors of Doom - his foreign policy would destroy the nation, his economic and health care policy would doom it domestically, the every mysterious ‘they’ would take away guns — but none of this materialized.

When government by fear is freed to run amuck, relationships with traditional allies are weakened, taxes are raised on working people to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest, and Social Security and Medicare benefits, for future retirees, are slashed.

“Separate but Equal” is restored to the American school system. The Roberts Court has shown a disgusting appetite for the institutions of racial discrimination. This is an item that we won’t feel the effects of for decades.

Government by Fear Doesn’t Just Happen at the Federal Level

If people could fight COVID with guns, Tennessee’s legislators would be health care champions.

As it happens, the best weapons against COVID re masks, physical distances and vaccines — none of which most legislators are keen on promoting.

Instead, they are keen on blocking them.

Faced with a disease which has killed hundreds of thousands of people in America, they conclude the gravest threat to Tennesseans is — government.

With that in mind, they introduced a variety of measures to prohibit or limit the government’s ability to require masks or vaccinations, to restrict the number of people athering in churches, or to curtail business operations or travel.

Get the picture?

Some of the measures introduced have already withered on the vine. Others should. Regardless, it’s instructive to follow the reasoning — if reasoning is the right word.

For example, Senate Bill 187, was meant to prevent state or local authorities from forcing anyone to get a COVID vaccine, a prospect that no one has suggested. But the bill’s sponsor, Senator Jancie Bowling of Tullahoma, was clear when speaking to a committe studying SB187. “The bill,” she said, “ was designed to assuage the fear in many Tennessee people.” Fear that she proceeded to stoke with misinformation.

Among her asssertions, she claimed that though the Spanish flu in 1912 killed 500 million people worldwide, a figure she inflated by at least a factor of 10, “we enver shut down one school or church or business and people didn’t run around with pieces of cloth over their mouths.”

Yes, Janice, they did. In a variBowling pety of places, across the nation, schools, churches and business were closed and mask orders issued. Then, as now, there was resistance and uneven compliance. It’s history and easy enough to look up.

Senator Bowling also sought to minimize the threat posed by COVID as she claimed a fatality rate of “-.4%”.

More Bowling: “There is much research that shows that the Moderna and the Pfizer shots can be very dangerous to young people of child-producing age.”

More Johns Hopkins: “The COVID-19 vaccine will not affect fertility.”

Bowling also offered a bizarre theory of how the efficacy rates of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are calculated, and suggested people would be much better off with “ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin, Vitamin D3, C and zinc.”

The Food and Drug Administration warns specifically against the use of ivermectin – an anti-parasite – for the treatment of COVID. If my doctor recommended any of the other stuff instead of a vaccine, I’d look for a new doctor.

“So people ask why is government trying to limit the movement and quarantine 99.6% of the population that are well,” she added.

Bowling admitted to not being a doctor. She’s also not a mathematician.

To begin with, the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University show COVID’s case fatality rate in America is 1.8% or four times what Bowling claimed. Federal officials meanwhile cite COVID as the third-leading cause fo American deaths in 2020.

In any case, subtracting the fatality rate from 100% doesn’t identify the number of people who are “well”, it only identifies those COVID victims who aren’t dead.

Despite these, and other falsehoods, the bill sailed though committee 8-1. Bowling, in making her case, asserted, “People are afraid of government and they have the right to be.”

With people like Bowling in Tennessee, that’s hard to argue with.

“No classes will be held for the next two days at a school in Knoxville after a student was killed and a police officer injured during an encounter at the high school,” said the opening line on CNN.com in a story reporting the most recent shooting at a high school in Tennessee.

With each shooting in a school, theater, church,shopping mall or other public space, a predictable lament goes up and usually includes ratty statements such as: “our thoughts and prayers,” and even “…this more likely reflects a short-term contagion effect in which angry dispirited youngsters are inspired by others whose violent outbursts serve as fodder for national attention. That should subside once we stop obsessing over the risk.”

Despite a majority of Americans wanting stricter, more reasonable gun control laws, the country keeps falling like a toddler trying to ride a bicycle.

What is the 1968 Gun Control Act and why was it passed?

House Resolution 17735, known as the Gun Control Act, was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 22, 1968 banning mail order sales of rifles and shotguns and prohibiting most felons, drug users and people found mentally incompetent from buying guns.

Why do we need gun control?

We need more gun control nationwide. Having more gun control means having stricter laws and more security with gun transactions to prevent potentially dangerous individuals from purchasing weapons. As of November 2020, if you were to sell a gun in a private sale, federal law does not require any background checks whatsoever.

Why is there so much opposition to gun control in the United States?

In a recent (Skype) interview with students, Noam Chomsky spoke about American’s paranoia which leads to their corporate love of guns.

Chomsky said, “I’ve never seen a real study, but my guess is that it’s a reflection of fear and desperation. It’s a very frightened country. The United States is an unusually frightened country. And in such circumstances, people concoct either for escape or maybe out of relief, fears that terrible things happen.”

Chomsky continued, “”That’s a lot of what lies behind the extremely unusual gun culture in the United States. It’s quite unique. Homicides, deaths by guns in the United States are way outside — there’s a kind of hysteria about having guns. A large part of the population believes they just have to have them to protect themselves. From who? From the United Nations. Or from the federal government. From aliens. Maybe from zombies. Whoever it is. We just have to have guns to protect ourselves. That’s not known elsewhere in the world. Maybe in, say, Syria, a country that’s warring you might find something like that. But in a country that’s not only at peace but has an unusual security and a great degree of freedom, that’s quite remarkable.”

What’s the difference between gun control and gun rights?

Broadly speaking:

Gun rights are rights that ensure the most unobstructed possible access to firearms.

Gun control is the restricted application of those rights for the sake of safety.

However, each of these has a wide range of stances. Most people believe all Americans should have the right to bear arms on the stipulation that they take a competency course and can pass a background check.

Is there a long term solution?

In Gun Control for Bad Guys, Gun Solutions for Good Guys, writer and author Sal Mistretta advocates for significant modifications to current gun laws. Mistretta suggests:

1) A ban on all firearms (handguns, rifles and shotguns) or a ban on any of the above three types of firearms is impossible.

2) Any crime committed with illegal firearms should be considered a federal crime anywhere in the USA. This translates to much longer minimum sentences. This means less criminals with firearms on the streets, resulting in less crime with firearms in the USA.

3) There should be one federal license for handguns and longarms (rifles and shotguns) that replaces the numerous individual state pistol licenses and the few longarm licenses that now exist across the USA.

4) This new Federal H/L (handgun/ longarm) license will be linked to the person’s driver license or non driver ID, issued by their local DMV, which is linked to the nationwide DMV database.

5) Law enforcement nationwide will now have easy access to this nationwide database, and can quickly determine if a person’s Federal H/L license from any state is valid, and the firearms owned by that person.

6) This new Federal H/L license should be recognized in all 50 states.

7) All 50 states should be be mandated by the federal government to report mental health information of individuals to NICS, the federal database, to ensure people that are barred from purchasing a firearm can’t purchase a firearm.

The Takeaway

“The Knoxville Fire Department has trained for these kinds of incidents.

“Fire Department Captain Corcoran told CNN in an email that the department co-trained with the KPD’s SWAT team for incidents like this, “entering into a potential hot zone where it’s unknown if there is still an active shooter on the loose”, the story concluded.

Maybe American can wise up and just make it harder to buy guns. Its up to everyone to do their own research and figure out where they stand, but try not to lean to hard either way without considering the merits of the other side.

Do you support gun control? Why or why not?