One of the best lessons I ever learned as a youth in NYC was to pay attention and to differentiate what I call the street angle and the straight Anglo. My first lesson of differentiation was perhaps the starkest, but through it I came to understand that a lot of people refuse to believe what is obvious to others, many prefer formality over truth. I was about 12 when I moved to Manhattan and I remember being warned by the older kids on the block to stay away from Catholic priests. Back then nobody was talking about it, nobody wanted to address it, priests were getting transferred to keep it quiet and probably mad different people faced confrontation in ways we don't know for trying to reveal rampant priest pedophilia. But the streets knew a long time before I moved to the block.
At the time if someone told the wrong person about how Catholic priests were abusing kids, there could be trouble. Tell the wrong straight Anglo, institutionalized, dare I say brainwashed person, no matter what color they are and they will lose it. But on the streets, you could speak openly and freely warn your peers. No matter what people believe the truth is the truth.
What are the unmentionables today among the straight Anglo celebrators of formality? What are the streets talking about, on an international level, today, that the straight Anglo won't touch? To sum it up: corruption of corporate and government oligarchical collectives ravaging human rights and destroying Earth Mother in ways that equate to war on humanity and creation itself. The street angle knows first, always. And being on the street, aware of the melting pot mix, the street angle realize that not all priests are evil and not all corporate/government oligarchical collectives screw people all the time, but they know it happens often enough that they ought to say so.
The main part of the street angle is paying attention. And no matter how you can demonstrate the philosophy of looking before leaping or explain how to read your surroundings people have to learn through experience. The first thing though, to be a street angle veteran is shedding the straight Anglo societal training we all have. It's like this: in Japan, the first step in ninja training was untraining. People are trained to react in certain ways and ninja can use that to one's advantage. And when you drop trained reactions you can see with your own eyes, you can predict what people are going to do by understanding their training and predictable reactions. In martial arts it means always being a move or two ahead. As applied societally one needs to only understand the recent study suggesting people who swear tend to be more honest than people who don't. Liars use clean language, whereas the truth can arrive in unclean language and not be detracted at all. On the streets you hear things like, "war is fucked, f*ck war. f*ck the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about.' But you just can't say things like that in straight Anglo institutions. You can't just say, "f*ck war' or "f*ck nuclear experimentation' even though the situation is plenty dire and drastic enough to justify any and all expletives.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/hell-yes-the-7-best-reasons-swearing
The best warning I ever got was related to molesters, look out for the straight Anglo, the westernized and institutionalized, no matter color or creed they are, no matter what uniform they're wearing. When there is a canyon of discrepancy between what the streets talk about and what trained people believe you start to pay attention. I learned a lot of lessons that cost me a pound of flesh and a pound of cash in the school of hard knocks. And you either walk lightly and stand firmly and pay attention to learn or walk through and get pushed into gauntlets where you still learn, only in a more costly manner.
Everybody wants to graduate the school of hard knocks, but nobody wants to enroll. One way to learn how to pay attention, besides enrolling in the school of hard knocks is a game, like a fight club. From what I understand it's straight out of Harlem. There is no other game that will make you aware and pay attention like Spike Bad Habit. The game was designed by New York City children in the nuclear era, so you know it's violent. But compared to building weaponry, polluting the world and the whole war economy it's pretty tame.
Spike Bad Habit is simple and yet is part of why New Yorkers are able to read you up and down just by how you walk or talk. You have to bet in the game and be bet out. That means you have to shake hands to make a deal to start or stop the game, otherwise you are always playing, 24/7. Whenever you sit down you have to say "Spike.' And whenever you curse you have to say "Bad Habit.' If you do not say Spike after sitting or Bad Habit after swearing you are punched until you do. This can lead to great hilarity as you are only allowing to punch arms and legs, moments where people brain fart and are hit without saying anything and conversations that go something like: "yo I know Monsanto be doing some evil ass sh*t --Bad Habit, with that rogue f*cking--Bad Habit, wheat and yo the cops is out here busting f*cking weed heads --Bad Habit, yo. What the f*ck yo? -Bad Habit.'
And in the end when the game is over, when everybody is over it, a veteran Spike Bad Habit player is not only aware of what they do and say, but they can spot somebody about to sit down three blocks away and can listen to somebody talk and tell when they're about to curse. But more than that, Spike Bad Habit makes you hyper aware, where you could tell if somebody's lying by how they talk and if they are a liar by how they walk. The street angle has long been aware that swearing is demonstrative of honesty if anything, while clean and intellectual language is the best sort for covering up some bullshit. --Bad Habit.
Ethan Indigo, author of The Terraist Letters and The Matrix of Four among other works, will be on Conspiracy This Week with Dave Boyle discussing writing and current events without FCC restrictions. Listen or call in: click here
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