“Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” – Teach Different with Albert Einstein

Transcript

Steve (00:10)

Welcome to the Teach Different podcast. I don’t even know what episode number this is, but it’s a lot. We’ve had a couple hundred of these. We’re actually approaching almost a quarter of a million listens on the podcast in the last like six years. So we’re really, really proud of that. I got two great guests from Chicago, which I’m going to call my home because I was there for so long. I’m in Springfield, Illinois right now. I wasn’t born in Chicago, but I did all my teaching there on the West side. And the gentlemen I have today are, a couple of people who are now on the West side, their community organizers, their activists. I’ll let them talk a little bit about what they do if they want during our talk today, let’s get going here for anyone new to this podcast. Here’s the drill. We’re going to introduce a quote. got a really good one from Albert Einstein about authority and allegiance and obedience. Little bit of loyalty too, I think is going to come into this. And then we’re going to discuss what the quote means and share some experiences, whether we agree with it or not, whether it rings true for us. And then we’re going to flip the script. We’re going to talk about the counterclaim and some things that offer a different perspective on the same idea, but maybe we could put it a different way and maybe there’s a way to make it even deeper and more true. And then as I was telling our guests right before we start, we’re looking for questions. Okay. We don’t need to have everything worked out. We just need to process this stuff and come up with some really good questions that maybe we can even have a sequel to this conversation on. And then we all result in a wiser group here. And hopefully our audience will also be wiser to hear from some really brilliant young men here. So with that, let’s kick it off. I’m going to read the quote a couple of times. I mentioned it was about Albert Einstein and then, you know, Jarvis or Bully ⁓ can start up and just say what they think of the quote. So here’s the quote. Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth. That’s Albert Einstein. Anybody want to step up? How about you, Bully? This is your first one. Jarvis has been around the block a little bit with us. What do you think of the quote? And introduce yourself, Bully.

 

Bully (02:52)

my name Marcus Simpson. I’m known in the streets as Bully. I’ve been had that name since I was a kid. You know what saying? I’m in the community working. I work in violence prevention. I’m an outreach worker. I’m the lead outreach worker for the Institute of Nonviolence Chicago in the Austin area. I’m also the head supervisor at One City United, a workforce development program. And then I’m also a case manager at United Builders of Youth Job Apprenticeship Program. My main focus is to work with the youth and guide them and give them some proper leadership so they don’t make the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned from my experience they won’t have to have and hopefully I can save a life and save them from going to jail. And this quote of the day is pretty much sums up my life and it sums up why I do the work that I do because the quote means to me as that’s how I lived in my life. I was following leadership blindly and not really questioning leadership. I was just doing as I was taught, following the structures, following the laws and thinking this was the way I like to be until I got older. After losing so much from living that life, going to the penitentiary, being shot, being away from my family, I realized that I was misled and guided wrong. So I didn’t want a lot of the young guys, a lot of cousins in my neighborhood, I was one of the worst of the worst. So I deal with the worst of the worst. That’s how I met Jarvis, because I couldn’t relate to him because I was him before. He used to have his episodes or whatever and he’d be ready to bug up and I had to calm him down because I was once him before and I got tired of seeing young brothers throw their life away. the last time I was in penitentiary, I was older and I was seeing so many younger guys in the penitentiary for murders and they ain’t even really lived their life yet. know what saying? Like they 17, 18, they ain’t never went out the country. They ain’t got no kids. They ain’t traveled. They never really had sex for real. They never really had no real relationship and it’s like, it’s over. And they just come to me and advice and tell me about the occasion. They’ll tell me how their friends told on them and with the details on them. And I’ll be thinking to myself, like, you just threw your life away. Cause it’s sad they talk to me as adults and stuff as they do at 17, 18 and they end up having to do so many years off of it. And it’s just a culture and a way of life that we would start to piggyback off the quote is falling authority can hide you from the truth. Like when we was coming up, they never told us like, go get car insurance. They just told me, we just go buy the car. We ain’t over just buy car insurance. You know how many cars I done crashed and it was just over with. know what I’m saying, Jarvis? Nobody never told me go get a driver’s license. I ain’t get a driver’s license till I was 35 years old from the environment. like, you get a car, just buy another one or you crack, you just gotta get it fixed. Odd man go over just buying the car. I didn’t even have a license till I was 35. And me living the life of crime, I thought going to the police station, getting a ticket, I thought that was nothing. So I had so many times, I never even went to traffic court. know how many traffic warrants out here? I never thought that was nothing I had to go to till I decided to change my life and tried to get a license. And I seen my license was revoked and I never had it.

 

Steve (06:04)

Bully, let me ask you this, at that time, before you kind of saw the way, it authority that you were following? Was it someone’s word or was it more just?

 

Bully (06:19)

It was more like a culture. It was no mean to cut you out. It was more like a culture and a lifestyle. It was like, if these the guys in play, these the guys I’m under, like these the guys I’m hustling with, I’m gonna live to their way so maybe one day I can get to them. Because when we was coming up, we looked at the big time drug dealers, the guys with the money. See, this is different era. Now they look up to the violence and the killers and shooters. And I, everyone, we wanted to have money. We never thought we needed a job. I never thought I was gonna work a job. I wanted to be the biggest drug dealer in city of Chicago, because they had all the grills, all the cars, all the clothes, all the fame. So if he had this, I’m going listen to him, tell him, try to get where he at. And I’m hoping me following him, being loyal to him, he going to help me get where he at.

 

Steve (07:00)

I got you. So it was almost like the authority was the group and the culture you’re following. It might not have been like one person per se, but it was more like.

 

Bully (07:10)

Right, cause any organization, like when any organization creates a structure, it’s an infrastructure. You have like your lieutenants, your generals, your prince, your kings, and you try to work your way up the ladder, the goal is to get to the top. You know what I’m saying? So you had to put in your work. So the things you’re doing, you think this is what you’re doing is to get here. But really a lot of stuff I was doing was keeping me down here. Cause I was studying going to jail and going to prison, catching cases, being shot, having to, having to Watch my back 24-7, then I learned not to trust nobody, you know?

 

Steve (07:43)

But there was a structure to it. So Jarvis, talk to me about the structure that Bully is talking about. There’s a little hierarchy here. It’s not just like a group of kids that you’re following and nobody has any sense of who’s over whom or who’s leading. Talk about the structure, Jarvis, because obedience to authority, that’s someone that is above you that you’re admitting is someone you need to pay attention to.

 

Jarvis funches (08:03)

Just like Bully said, when you have an icon in the neighborhood or a hierarchy player, let’s just say that, your more natural response is to look up to that player. And back then and now, we are programmed to believe that this is the way of life. And like Boogly said, once he broke his cycle and started to critically think about real life, he started to see a different ballgame. This is why you. That’s why it corresponds with the quote. A lot of us are blindly following people and not critically thinking. You’re not asking, you’re not questioning. You’re just following the trend. When you follow a trend, you don’t have to question it because you have so many people doing it already, you already feel that it’s already right. You don’t question if it’s right or wrong. That’s the bad part of being about blindly being following. You see what I’m saying? can’t… If you’re not a critical thinker, You a follower. That’s what I feel because at that point you can’t think for yourself. You already gave up your independency of thinking because you gave it to the other man because he think it for you. He telling you, yeah, put this down or do this and that. Now you following him. He program you and guess what you gonna do? If you get a little success, you gonna program the next person to think that yeah, this is how you do it and this how we gonna do it again. But in our society, it’s really a game. See. They program us to think that, but the whole time they got their thumb on us. Once you get big, like Billy said, once you get to a certain level, the rules and the regulations of the game change. Now you are a threat. Now you got a bounty on your back. From the same people you done put so much work in, you done stressed over, you done fought for, you done did time for, they done betrayed you, and even better yet, now they trying to eat you. It’s just a way of being programmed, see, and that’s what Albert Einstein was telling people back then. Don’t just be programmed. Be a critical thinker. Question what you are being told. Don’t just follow because if you just follow, they’ll hide the truth from you. Just like now and then to day and the era. Right now. That’s all we do. We get programmed, they have the truth from me. Put it in a book, they won’t find it. That’s what they think about us, for real. And that’s the truth. Because nobody out here programming us to go back to school. Like I always tell you about Michael Maxx. Martin Luther King, if these people knew what we was gonna do with the future that we got now, I don’t even think that they would do half of the things that they did. Because they fought for equal rights, they fought for liberation. Now that we get it, we throw it away like it’s a piece of tissue. It’s not the way of life you being programmed. And when you being programmed so long, you don’t even question it. It’s like being trained like an animal. You see what I’m saying? That’s all it is, you being trained like an animal. But they don’t put it to you enough. We steal slaves. But they had it and given us liberation to a certain extent. You see what I’m saying? You still being programmed.

 

Steve (11:03)

Yes. So the knowledge, someone’s professed knowledge is the authority in a lot of situations basically,

 

Bully (11:13)

and the biggest truth it had from you, and the knowledge is yourself, who you truly are, because you following a culture, you following a structure, you following certain guidelines, and bad and bad is, you can’t really grow to who you are, explore the things that you’re good at, or explore what you like, because you were told at a certain age not to do this, not to like this. Like, as I got older and got to be myself, I done met more people experienced more things and built different relationships and met long-time friends of people I probably would have never talked to when I was in that culture and that lifestyle. So the main truth it keep it from is who you truly are.

 

Steve (11:48)

Wow.

 

Jarvis funches (11:48)

That’s true. You gotta find that strength within yourself. that’s what separates the 1 % from the 99 % is when you able to find the truth within yourself. Find your North Star. Find who you is and find what you’re great at. It takes time.

 

Steve (12:03)

How do you get it? I already got an essential question. How do you get the truth? How do you find that truth in yourself and realize that you’re the one that can decide this stuff? It’s not the outside. It’s the inside.

 

Bully (12:17)

It’s like, it’s circumstances do it. Like for me, like it took for me having kids and study going to prison away from my kids. And then when you sitting in prison, you sitting and think and you really observed when you in there, ain’t nobody sending you no money. Ain’t nobody looking out for your kids. Ain’t nobody really there for you like that. You just got yourself, you get to know yourself more when you sitting in the cell, when you isolated and you get to know you some way you don’t want to be. So you start questioning yourself, why is I’m sitting here?

 

Jarvis funches (12:21)

There you go.

 

Bully (12:46)

Why is something this special? My turning point was me going back to prison last time. I said I didn’t want to come back here. Because everything I did, just for this group, yeah, I had a name. Yeah, I had a father. had people behind me. But I’m sitting in this cell by myself. So I got to know myself. And I got to learn different cultures, like even the listening to country music. Different music. I like country music. Now I never would have listened to it. It’s like things about myself I learned when I got to focus on myself more. And everybody reach a broader point where they get tired. It’s just so sad that some people never get to make it to that point, cause they might catch a murder and get 50 years or they might get killed. Lucky for me, I was able to make it to be older where I got to the point I was sick and tired and sick and tired and I wanted answers for myself. And I just decided to change and live my life my way. didn’t care what nobody think and do what I like to do. ⁓ And as I excelled and I grow and I became a stronger person and enlightened myself and I grew in life, I knew like I should have been doing it my way the whole time. I was one of the ones blindly to it like, whatever they said, they said, go get them, I’m going to get them. I want to go get them first. I want the name, I want the plus. So it was like, whatever said, been done, ain’t ask no questions or nothing. If dude never say, man, dude got to get out the way, I’m going to get dude out the way. Or this got to happen, I’m going to do it cause I’m from the line. Cause I was trying to build myself up to be at the top where I didn’t have to do it no more. So it was like, on the other side of the tree, I was one of the blind ones. I just would do anything. I was like a sin of like If you was against me or my brothers or whatever, I’m coming to get you. I don’t even know what you did. And I got sent off a lot, when it come to, when it come down to things, certain things I was doing, and I found out the backstory of it, I feel like I was bogus as hell. Like these people ain’t even did nothing. You did something to them. You went over there and took their stuff. You went and did this to them, and I’m over here getting revenge for you.

 

Jarvis funches (14:15)

I’m a critical thinker. even still doing the BS, I’m a critical thinker in so many ways. It ain’t that you in the way, it’s that God be really putting us around people like that to actually, for us to use our knowledge to help them do better. It’s not, you not there for no reason. You not asking the questions for no reason. You that person that thinks, like, surety, we ain’t got to do this. And out of every group, everybody got that one person or two people that say, man, look, I’m not down with all that goof ass shit, man. y’all go on here and do it, man, but I ain’t doing that shit. It’s because you got a sense of ⁓ nature, like, that that’s the wrong thing to do. And you not scared to embrace to say that, though. That’s why I always say, in our generation, no. A lot of us scared to do solitude, I went to jail too. That’s where I got my solitary at too though. But for even the podcast listeners that don’t go to jail, that’s not in their life or that’s not around these type of circumstances, the best way to find out who you want to be or who you is, period, solitude. Stop being scared to sit with yourself. That’s the strongest thing ever is to sit with yourself, to criticize yourself. Send a room and cut the lights off, no phone, no nothing. Your brain going to generate just to criticize you. It’s going to tell you what you ain’t doing right. It’s gonna tear you where you messing up at. People can’t sit with that. So they’d rather go sit around a gang, a group of people that ain’t doing nothing. You ever heard the saying of, folk broke niggas, you gonna be the first, you gonna be the fifth one? It’s a true saying. Why? It’s not because y’all pockets is broke. It’s not because y’all don’t have no paper cash. It’s because all y’all mentality is broke. Nobody has the mentality of development. Nobody has the mentality of investment. Nobody has the mentality of being better than the circumstances. This is why you have a broke mentality. A lot of people may think that like damn he called me broke because I got no money. No you have a broke mentality. A lot of people give him a million dollars right now. You not broke you got a broke mentality. Now in six months you broke again. Why? You don’t have a mentality to generate. You’re a follower. Critical thinkers they they we critical thinkers we naturally pave ways and just in case this don’t work. Why? Because we critical thinkers we always got an A B C and D. Why? Because everything is not going to fit to script, but you gotta be ready to move, move quick and do what you got to do. So a lot of people our age, they not willing to do that. They just rather follow. They just rather follow. They just rather, man, I wanna be a rapper. The following thing, it’s just the following thing. It’s the trends, like back then.

 

Steve (17:00)

Let me pick up on that. Okay.

 

Jarvis funches (17:05)

Back then it was one guy that you used to look up to, two, three guys that you used look up to that got all the money. You say, I wanna be like Bully or I wanna be like, like Mr. K. Now, you got 17 different groups of kids that’s all, they just all doing what they wanna do, but they all got one vision, to be a rapper, shoot, kill, or to get money. Nobody in these groups are even saying shorty, we making a thousand dollars a day off the block. Gee, let’s take this little five, six thousand, go invest it in the building. Nobody is the knowledge. Nobody has knowledge nowadays. And that’s why I stopped hanging out with my crowd because I started to at a certain point it’s that they started to feel like they didn’t fit no more like a pair of shoes if I’m making a sense like Every time I come around y’all I’m talking about positivity I’m trying to get you to elevate you laugh or you say man fuck that man We doing this and that man or man. I we gonna get on that later The crucial to the worst thing that we waste as human period no matter what ratio is is time That’s one thing you can’t get back time 50 to my man. Damn, G.

 

Steve (18:04)

Yeah, and the older you get, here’s what, let me weigh in on that one. The older you get, the more you realize time is more valuable than money.

 

Bully (18:08)

Yeah.

 

Jarvis funches (18:11)

Come on man, these two things, not fulfilling your dreams and regret. Ain’t nothing worse than them two things.

 

Steve (18:18)

There you go. There you go. And let me pick up. I’m going to get into the counterclaim right now. Okay. I’m just going to. Yeah. Followers. And that’s going to be the kind of the, the bridge, I think. But I want to start by saying this. Being a follower. I heard somebody say once that in order to be a great leader, you have to be a good follower. Like there’s nothing about being a follower.

 

Bully (18:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Steve (18:48)

And like trusting someone that is, has authority or that you have known for a while or somebody else is talking up a little bit. Cause you know, they got your best interests at heart. I don’t want, I don’t want to hit on following just like 100%. So I’m going to, I’m going to use that idea of followers and I’m going to restate this quote. And I’m going to suggest that maybe this is a better way to say what the quote is trying to say, and I want to get everyone’s feeling on it. All right. But what about ⁓ blind obedience to loyalty is the greatest enemy of truth. And loyalty is, that’s a big word, isn’t it? mean, authority is a big word, but loyalty, it may even be bigger. It feels like it’s more emotional, you know, but Talk to me about that and how loyalty can get us into a situation where we get blinded. And these, when I say loyalty, I’m talking about loyalty to your friend, the people you love. This is a beautiful thing, but you can get into situations and they started out as P.G. King. So anybody want to talk about that?

 

Jarvis funches (20:02)

I mean… In those situations, out of my personal own gain feed and my own knowledge, like, there’s nothing wrong with being a follower. Like you say, you gotta be a great follower to be a great leader. But at this time and point in the day, you got to know what you following. You gotta pick your heart. That’s what I, let me say that. You gotta pick your heart. So if I’m choosing to follow anybody, I’m choosing to follow somebody that’s not saying But standing on what they saying, like this guy’s actually moving in that way. Like, there’s nothing wrong with following a role model. There’s nothing wrong with that. what’s now is wrong. Nowadays, they following the wrong role model. And everybody making the right role model seem like a lame. then like, this daytime age, to be a lame is like to be a clown at a circus. ain’t nobody wants to listen to you.

 

Steve (20:56)

Okay, that Jarvis, perfect. That’s a perfect kickoff. I get it. Bully, what do you think?

 

Bully (21:06)

my biggest thing. I was loyal to my hood. I was loyal to my block. I felt like I owed them something. I felt like I was obligated to continue to sacrifice because like me, anybody know me, I’m a smooth guy. I don’t really get into it with people. All the stuff I did in the beef, was helping my brothers or assisting somebody else. I’m a smooth person. I don’t have problems with people. I go anywhere I’m freely. I’m a cool person, but I’m not going to let nobody do nothing to nobody that I love and I’m loyal to. So I was putting myself in bad predicaments doing stuff for people that things that they wouldn’t do for me. And it was a blind loyalty from the culture I was brought up to be loyal to my block, be loyal to my brother. And you feel like if you turn your block on this, you turn your back on them. But really I’m hurting them. But as I got older, I learned by me changing and doing the other way, I was being more loyal to them because I’m showing them a better way now and they following my lead to something positive and better. So now I’m leading them in the right way.

 

Jarvis funches (21:49)

There you go. There you go.

 

Steve (21:57)

Wow.

 

Bully (22:03)

Instead of like, so when they call me now and say, when they call me now and say, man, I just got into a woo woo. I mean, why? What happened? I’m like, woo woo woo. I be like, do you feel like that’s being worth being away from your kids? Do you feel like, do people still call me for gun and stuff? Like this girl, I know she called me. Say her son, got something, you give him a gun? I said, can’t give him a gun, but I can move y’all from over there. I can help y’all and remove the situation, but I’m not gonna give him no guns. Then what he gonna gun? He gonna go kill him. He coming down, gonna be in jail the rest of his life. I try to get people to think now instead of being blind to law to a certain way and trying to live up to a name. So back then when somebody would come to me like, man, bullies, I’d be like, who did what? Where they at? We gone, we sliding. Now I sit and talk to him and I make sure it’s worth it. Cause a lot of things don’t be worth it.

 

Jarvis funches (22:36)

Hey, bro.

 

Bully (22:47)

When you sitting in jail with 60 years, can somebody inbox your girlfriend, was that worth it? No. If somebody slapped your daughter, slapped my daughter, I might be okay with doing 40 years. If somebody slapped my grandma, I might be okay with doing 40 years. You gotta pick up if it’s worth it. And you gotta think. So now, my loyalty to them is to guide them the right way instead of teaching them the wrong way. And loyalty got me in so many situations, because every time I went to jail, it was for some shit some other body, somebody else had going on. It ain’t had nothing to do with me. I was just lured to my hood and my set and I feel like if you mess with one in the man, I got to do what I got to do. But now, when they come to me with the issue, I look at it a whole nother way. I try to resolve the issue and let them know it’s not even really that serious. It’s not even really that worth it. You ain’t dead, you ain’t bleeding, ain’t nobody touch. I feel like if any those shots was fired, if you ain’t been touched, anything can be resolved. We can all be the bigger person to walk away where we both make it home to our family.

 

Jarvis funches (23:21)

No, that’s- you know what’s crazy? And they just gonna spend right back to the quote G. It’s crazy. Cause at this point, it hit me thinking like this, if you ever pay attention to it, let’s go back to MLK, Malcolm X in them days. Let’s go back, right? Let’s go back to being a follower. It’s not a bad thing, right? Just hit me out. If we got community leaders, like you said, they form bondage and all this, right? But if we got community leaders, that’s actually strong enough to withhold like MLK or Malcolm X did, shorty, and they pushing that, they pushing the education, they pushing the peace, they pushing the young entrepreneurship, they pushing the black Wall Street again, they pushing all the positivity, G. I feel like that’s what we missing now. We don’t have no superhero. And what I mean by that is that we don’t have no black icon that’s literally standing up in the field like Martin Luther King and them did or Rosa Park or Malcolm X. Nobody standing up like that again. So now it’s the blind following the blind. So now it’s like, whatever you do and I think it’s cool, I’ma follow you. That’s the point. We don’t have nothing really to look up to but each other. And it’s like, that’s the blind leading the blind. And that’s why it seem like ain’t nothing working. Cause we ain’t got nothing really to look forward Only thing we got to look forward to is basketball icons. Basketball icons, football icons or community activists. We don’t have no black person that’s pushing like, like, we ain’t got none of them people no more. We don’t have none of people. now all we looking up to is who? Entertainment people, movie stars, basketball stars, neighborhood heroes, ⁓ local community activists. You don’t have that no more. And that’s why they knew if we take them people out, they gonna be. Scattering like roaches. Let me say because this is that what we doing. We scouting like roaches blindly in the blind We just following people that think they know the way don’t know the way and got no knowledge of the way and you’re just running around chicken sight head cuts out like that’s thing

 

Steve (25:41)

I think you’re you you got a you you just diagnosed something. I want to hear from Bully on that one because Bully when you’re not I heard about the things that you’re involved in You both are doing things for the community Okay is what I’m hearing and I know that you have to every day get up see a bunch of negativity You probably have to fight this little battle every day in the way that you’re approaching it. So I want to hear about how you approach that Bully.

 

Bully (26:08)

Yes. It’s like, I put it first, because as an outreach broker at the Institute of Non-Violence, we have to respond to shooters. We often on the scene before the police. So we try to get there and just try to be there for the family. We at the hospital, we support them, give them stuff we need, because we know what’s happening after somebody gets shot is going to be a retaliation. So we try to make sure the family say, make sure that they got the support they need to try to prevent it as much as we can. We can’t stop it. We can give a turn, but we can try to talk to somebody and calm them down and come off the ledge.

 

Steve (26:46)

That’s big. That’s like, reminded me of the Black Panthers, who used to show up before anything else.

 

Bully (26:47)

So did. Yes. Yeah, we be on the scenes at the hospital seeing what’s going on, checking on the family. I know they not alone. They try to get ahead of this thing and try to talk to people before I go left. Cause you know after one shoot it’s going to be another one. I’m not saying we going to stop. You can’t tell nobody started, but you can try to like get in their ear. Maybe we’ll take them to get something to eat and just let them know they got some help with them. You know what saying?

 

Steve (27:08)

Yeah. Okay, so that’s a definite, like we’ll call it a ⁓ first responder role. And that’s a positive role, that’s needed.

 

Bully (27:18)

Yeah.

 

Jarvis funches (27:21)

That’s the thing G. Look, that’s why I was talking like it ain’t it’s not us as a people G I’m just saying like Anybody get that big like Fred Hampton. He he wasn’t doing none of people. He just started a breakfast club They got him out the way why cuz they say he was a community organized game cheap Why Fred Hampton was he was creating independency for the black people? Anyway, did you get a superhero? It don’t matter if you black you you white anything G once you get those type of figures

 

Steve (27:23)

Interesting.

 

Bully (27:45)

They took all the leadership. Larry Hoover was a great man. Jeff Ford was a great man. They took them off the streets. They took the leadership off the streets because they had too much power when they was teaching the people right.

 

Jarvis funches (27:50)

You see what I’m saying? You know why? Because them was our kings.

 

Bully (28:00)

It’s like they took the leadership. Once they took the leadership off the streets, it just went everybody was aiming for the leadership and everybody’s got to ex’ing each other out. It made it cutthroat where it was like the voices that had the power that people would listen to, they took them off the streets and locked them up. So there’s no power authority over here and everybody just doing them and they took the structure away.

 

Steve (27:59)

That’s crazy.

 

Jarvis funches (28:18)

You see, and that’s why I say the only thing we got to look up to once again is our community activists, movie stars, basketball players, and icons. And let me tell you, our community activists, they be outside every day. But the sad thing about our generation, these people gotta get hurt first. That’s the scary part. What happened to the people that can learn from… That’s what I’m saying. What happened to the kids that learn from other people’s mistakes?

 

Bully (28:37)

It’s like everybody got to see for their own. You can even look at Lil Durk. When Lil

Durk was beefing with the GDs and he was GDK and then off of 63rd and him and Von there was beefing. was getting money. They was at the height of his career. He blew up. When he turned to Islam, he started pushing peace and started talking to Maroonis because he had a face. He had a voice. thought, you see how many people Muslims now because of him and they was having a Karooni. They locked him up for murder for hire from three, four years ago. They could have been locked him up. But they ain’t lock him up long as he was promoting violence and pushing it. But once he started changing the narrative, he started giving out to the community and pushing peace. And he was a person that could really help the agenda because he had a voice and a following because a lot of the young looked up to him, they locked him up. If you could look to do the details on their case, that case happened like two, three years ago. They could have been locked him up. They waited until he started doing the right thing to come get him.

 

Jarvis funches (29:06)

Yeah.

 

Steve (29:27)

Who’s behind this? Who? Like…

 

Bully (29:31)

It’s system. It’s all about the money, It’s all about money, man. It’s money. The penitentiaries is the biggest business. The penitentiary is the biggest business in America. The penitentiary, some of these towns, all they got is they penitentiary. Penitentiary frees whole towns. You go to these towns like East Moline, Danville, these small towns and stuff. The penitentiaries is Vandalia. All them centrails, all them penitentiaries, the biggest business, all about money and politics, the business is designed to lock people up because if people ain’t going to jail, it ain’t no business. Incarceration is the biggest business in America. It’s all about the bottom line at the end of the day. They got to them penitentiaries up.

 

Jarvis funches (30:09)

I just really feel like it’s once again, it goes right back to Albert Einstein. If we can keep these people following the blind, then let’s keep it that. If we’ve been doing good controlling this like this, let’s keep the narrative like this. Why they did Lil Durk like that is because once you get big enough and you change the narrative and you got people listening to you, you effing up the program. Now this is where we gotta do something about it. So now we gonna put stuff on and we gonna get you out the way. So now guess what? Dirt gone, all that peace, motivation, all that’s dying down, and here come the violence back up. You see what I’m saying? It’s all about the politics. politics, man. Politics. Policy.

 

Bully (30:51)

And conservation is a billion dollar business. Medicine conservation is a billion dollar business. They have to fill them penitentiaries up. Them penitentiaries feed whole towns and whole cities of Atlanta.

 

Jarvis funches (31:01)

Just to wrap this up, how batteries work. You need a positive and you need a negative.

 

Bully (31:07)

and a negative. I ain’t never look at her like that little bro. That’s cold.

 

Steve (31:19)

That’s really good. And we’ve all heard the phrase divide and conquer is a strategy for anyone who understands how to maintain power. Cause if you’re dividing, if you’re dividing people, they’re fighting each other. You’re just like in the cut and you can get whatever you need, sit there and laugh with your friends. So let me do this. I’m gonna wrap us up here because this has been really, really good. We started out with this quote from Einstein. We talked a lot about authority and following authority, how that’s a no-no. If you want to be a critical thinker and not make mistakes in what you do, how important that is. We threw in loyalty as another, I don’t know, it’s almost, I don’t want to call it a vice but loyalty can get you in the same type of trouble. You false hope, false hope. Yeah, there you go. Sometimes that’s the killer when you believe in something and you just get squashed and you can’t do that too much, right, in your life. But then we just got into the things behind the dynamics of why the community does not have leaders right now that we can look up to that can be an authority and be positive, but that they’re being brought down by this other kind of system.

 

Bully (32:51)

That’s why they made a Rico. That’s why they made a Rico where you ain’t got to commit the crime, but you got locked up for being a leader.

 

Steve (32:56)

There you see, there you go. There’s dynamics in play that are making this hard. But here, I’ll throw out a hope and I don’t care if it gets squashed. Like there has got to be a way to do this. I mean, it’s gonna be a different way than what we’re used to, but I’m gonna believe there is a way to get through this somehow. And I’m hoping it actually is conversations like this. Because if we can get people realizing that that by discussing this stuff, these minds that we can bring together, there’s gonna be nothing that can stop it ⁓ if we do it the right way, is my hope. That’s my hope, right? But I wanted to thank everybody for being here. I don’t know if anyone has any lingering questions as we wrap up here, ⁓ but this has been really, really, ⁓ really a good experience. Anybody? Okay. Good, man. Thank you.

 

Bully (33:56)

It’s all good, great talk.