A Tool Of Power

It is certainly no secret that Black People are the most religious people on the planet. They just love the “Word”! I know you are thinking, what is this guy saying or maybe you say its blasphemy. There should be no doubt that there is a distinct difference between religion and spirituality. I’ll talk about spirituality another time. I don’t mean to make anyone angry, which happens when I write about this subject. Nonetheless, I’ll say it, Black People out Pope the Pope!

I think of myself as a person well versed in time. When I say time, I mean history and there is also a distinct difference between “History and His-Story”. So I will begin with something that Machiavelli explained repeatedly that made a lot of sense. He said, “Religion is man-made, and that the value of religion lies in its contribution to social order and the rules of morality must be dispensed if security required it.” This is a very interesting statement in that he implies that religion is a tool of power.

I know most of you probably only know the name Machiavelli because the late Tupac Shakur often quoted him and he titled his last CD using the name. Let me share just a little background on the man who actually lived and walked the earth. Machiavelli was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance period. He was credited as being the founder of modern political science; more specifically political ethics.

As a result of his written views a term “Machiavellianism” was coined, which is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described in The Prince. The book itself gained enormous notoriety and wide readership because the author seemed to be endorsing behavior often deemed as evil and immoral.

In several writings, The Prince, the Discourses, and in the Life of Castruccio Castrucio, he describes "prophets", as he calls them, like Moses, Romulus, Cyrus the Great, and Theseus as the greatest of new princes. He called them the glorious and brutal founders of the most novel innovations in politics, and men whom Machiavelli assures us have always used a large amount of armed force and murder against their own people. He estimated that these sects last from 1666 to 3000 years each time, which pointed out by Leo Strauss would mean that Christianity became due to start finishing about 150 years after Machiavelli.Machiavelli's concern with Christianity as a sect was that it makes men weak and inactive, delivering politics into the hands of cruel and wicked men without a fight.

While fear of God can be replaced by fear of the prince, if there is a strong enough prince, Machiavelli felt that having a religion is in any case especially essential to keeping a republic in order. For Machiavelli, a truly great prince can never be conventionally religious himself, but he should make his people religious. Machiavelli's judgment that democracies need religion for practical political reasons was widespread among modern proponents of republics until approximately the time of the French Revolution.

When I read this the diabolical King James, who wrote the 28^th version of the Holy Bible came to mind. Because it was used to transform the minds of the lands that England conquered. I believe it was this evil genius that said “the sun never sets on the English empire”. Moreover, it was what the people of Europe did to the minds of the African people transplanted to the lands for the purpose of slavery by erasing their known region forcing this man-made religion upon a people making them a nation of people without a nationality.

Thereby, this idea created a condition of submission to something other than what God planned that continue to erode minds to this very day. And that’s my thought provoking perspective…