You "have your own mind" when you "do your own thinking."

Man is a triad. He is body, mind and soul. Each of these components has its own function and when they function according to their design man becomes a self-actualizing being. Conversely, when they malfunction he experiences destructiveness, quite often poor health, and sometimes premature death.
The focus here is on the mind but before I discuss the mind allow me to say a brief word about the body and soul. The body is the organized physical substance, the material part of man. It houses the mind and, in a certain way and to some extent but not entirely, the soul.
The soul is the spiritual principle or actuating cause of the individual's life and the seat of all moral and ethical matters that pertain to right and wrong, including empathy, goodness and badness, love and hate, and so on. The soul is eternal, having existed before its possessor was born, during his mortal existence and it will continue to exist during his life after death. It never ceases to have a connection with the Cosmos.
The mind, sometimes call the psyche, is best understood by considering the three things that it is actually designed to do: (1) Receive and process information. This involves actuating awareness and impressions. The mind does not feel or judge. For examples: feeling joyously and deciding what is right or wrong are not the fruit of the mind. The mind processes and arranges the data it receives, putting some things on the front-burner and others on the back-burner, so to speak. Or, it may relegate some things to abide in the subconscious or unconscious.
(2) Memory and remembering. The mind holds on to, if not all, much, of what it has received and it can usually recall some of the information.
(3) Thinking and imagination. With the help of the soul the mind can do problem-solving and reflecting. Imagination and fantasy are also in the purview of the mind. The soul is a collaborator or companion in any creative act performed by the mind.

"Have your own mind." The UNCF, an African American organization, dedicated to the proposition of supporting and enouraging young people to attend college, has popularized the slogan: "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." As long as I can remember, I have heard the expression, "Don't lose your mind." Not to have one's mind is, mind-boggling. Such seems to be close to mindlessness, a condition that exists when a person is no longer able to think.
Among the forces currently working night and day to make people mindless creatures who no longer have their own minds are:

(1) The Marketing Wave. Although productivity, distribution and buying and selling are parts and parcels of the marketing process, the main objective of marketers, promoters, advertisers, buyers and sellers is to persuade people to become consumers of the goods and services they represent. People are influenced to buy good and services that they do not need and, in some instances, do not want. Sometimes this results from them having received false information about the goods and services they buy. Half-truths and lies are disseminated about many products and services. Some of them bear the Government's seal of approval and/or sanctioned by universities that allow falsehood-ridden so-called scientific studies to be made at their institutions, usually for the money, lending credibility to these studies and guaranteeing an increased consumer population. Those making these studies should be required to publicly declare who paid for them.
The media is also a culprit of erroneous advertising that is designed to entice people to consume more goods and use more services. Pschologically-based developed advertisements cause people to believe that they are sick, ugly, messed-up by nature for having lived long enough to get freckles or wrinkles, grey hair or become bald. And, of course, the promise to deliver people from their demons and monsters that hold them captives, if they will just buy their products and use their services. Often they promise or guarantee transformation. Many products have built-in obsolescence that makes it neccesary for people to buy similar products earlier than they should have to. The would-be consumers are bombarded with "correction-in-flight-like information that sometimes sends them screaming and scurrying to purchase the latest "make-it-right" products that are supposingly faster, better and have more capacity, capacity that consumers are not likely to use any more than they are likely to use the full capacity of their minds.

(2) This second force I call the "Politics of the Third Wave." What is currently going on in America, especially politically, best describes and defines the "politics of the third wave." In today's society there is high-anxiety, chronic fear, and a terror-possessed paranoia. Controllers, in and out of the Federal Government, including on the Courts, in the military, and in some state and local law enforcememt agencies, are promoters and enforcers of the terror-consciousness that possesses many Americans. It reminds me of when I was a boy growing up in the South; I feared racist terroists who mistreated and abused people of my complextion. Now, it appears that in America there is "equal opportunity terroism."
People who do their own thinking have no need to succumb to the "terrorismmania" that is rampant throughout America. Despite the current propaganda aimed at making people who do their own thinking believe and feel that they are not good Americans, unAmerican, and unpatriotic, because they disallow others to control their minds, these people need not surrender to the terrorists or fear their adversaries who adjudge only themselevs and their captives to be honorable Americans. Don't you believe that for one moment. You represent America's hope. For they are enemies of America and their actions will damn future generations. Henry David Thoreau spoke well when he said, "The Government has no power or control over my person or property but what I concede to it."
Have your own mind. Do your own thinking.

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Send corresondence to:

Uriah J. Fields
P. O. Box 4770
Charlottesvile, VA 22905

Copyright 2003 by Uriah J. Fields