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allthebest20 · 3 years

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Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

8/10. A joy to read and a great debut novel. I think the author has even better work ahead of her. The characters are complex and unique, and the book explores modernity, pain, and generational spirituality in a very readable style. I couldn’t help but make assumptions about the author as I read the book: definitely Nigerian, definitely a cook, definitely spent time in London and Canada, definitely queer, definitely raised in the Church, but also definitely spiritual. The authenticity with which she writes, especially in regards to being queer in the modern world and the cultures of different places, is what makes this book great. The story dances between the gruesome details of reality in the twenty-first century and romanticized views of youth and love. It raises a lot of questions in me about the international class system, wealth, and privilege.

The only real complaint that I have is around one of the main plot points: the rape of Kehinde when she is 12. While this is a turning point in all their lives, I feel as though it is also simultaneously underappreciated, as if the author choose this event simply because it was one of the worst things she could think of. I think this is a common pit fall for authors. A lot of traumatic things happen to this family: Kambi, the mother, is very mental ill, Banji, the twin’s beloved father, is murdered, Taiye, the queer twin, struggles with her own mental health. Yet, the rape is regarded as the primary Bad Thing and all the other traumatic events are hardly discussed. I appreciate how the author takes some time, maybe 1 chapter, to discuss Kehinde’s relationship to sex and her body. Yet, Kehinde’s life seems to be mostly unaffected by this event, except in the way she punishes her family with her silence. She is in a healthy relationship. She does not abuse alcohol or drugs. She has a successful career. Ultimately, it’s not a book about overcoming childhood sexual abuse. It’s a book about mending a family after years of pain, resentment, distance, and silence. I almost feel as though the book could have been stronger if it focused more on the effects of Banji’s death and Kambi’s violence and depression on the twins. Ultimately, though, sexual abuse is just a thing that happens to a lot of kids, and perhaps it serves a purpose to write a book where it happens, it’s horrible, but it doesn’t need to be put under a magnifying glass. It just reverberates.

This book could have been about a lot of things. When I picked it off the shelf at the library, I barely read the entire description, immediately caught by the spiritual nature of Kambi’s being and the brief mention of “reckless hedonism.” I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Taiye was a lesbian, and I saw a lot of myself in her: the serial string of intense relationships, always slated to go nowhere, the indulgence in food and weed and dancing and occasionally other drugs, the loneliness and missing family but not being able to connect with them, the exploration of religion and spirituality and non-monogamy, seeing and feeling things you don’t know are real. I feel like a lot of modern young adults live like Taiye does, unsure what to look for except comfort. I love how the author mentioned the chaotic draw of dating apps. I love how Taiye is a stoner. I love how Taiye loves organic butter and fair trade chocolate and cooking extravagant meals for anyone who will eat it. I LOVE how the author includes recipes for what Taiye is cooking. Although I probably won’t use those recipes, I did want to cook what Taiye was cooking, and it reads just like my brain reads when I am absorbed in a culinary project. This book could have been more about what it means to be a lesbian, but it only barely describes her formative romantic and sexual experiences. The author details the first time Taiye calls her self gay out loud and has queer sex, but this is long after she has had gay feelings and gay experiences. The author does not explore Taiye’s inner turmoil, and it is unclear if Taiye struggles at all with her sexuality in the long term.

I also like how the book explores mental illness. It doesn’t shy away from both the good and the bad parts. It doesn’t shame medication use. It explores the spiritual powers of those who’s brains work differently. Kambi’s voice explores suicide in an interesting way: both from the frequent pull of the voices, asking Kambi to escape the pain of living, and Kambi’s own knowledge that she wants to remain here with her family. Although I have perhaps 0 hard examples of mental illness being spiritual, I still want to believe that those who hear voices, who see things, who feel things, are connected to the spiritual in a way that those who live entirely in reality are not. This book explores one such case. I also found it interesting how Taiye inherits some of Kambi’s crazy (struggles to speak as a young child, depressed, sleep walks) and some of Kambi’s magic (draws people to her, sees and hears beyond). This make Taiye feel closer to her mom as she ages, while Kehinde remains unsure. This book could have been more about generational mental illness and the pain and distance it causes, but instead the author focuses on the magic of it all. It asks, quietly, if the girls should be mad at their mother, can they be mad at her? From the outside, Kehinde knows that Kambi is respoinsible for the scar on Taiye’s face, but yet we, the audience, know that Kambi had to do this to prevent Taiye from killing the rapist, Uncle Earnest. Does Kehinde know this? How can she understand? In a family, we have no choice but to forgive and let live if we cannot understand, or else remain alienated. This is the underlying message of the book.

The book has a complicated timeline: the main story line follows the events of a six month period in which the three main characters are united again in Lagos, after over a decade apart. Slowly, in tangents, the three characters’ backstory is explained.

The book features a few key locations:

Nigeria (specifically Abeokuta, where Kambirinachi is born, Ife, where she spends her youth, and Lagos, where she raises her family),

London (where the twins were born and where Taiye lived for 9 years during and after university),

and Canada (Kehinde lives in Montreal since attending university there and Taiye lives in Halifax after London).

I’ve never been to Nigeria or London, but I love the way the author writes the dialogue and the characters from each place. I cannot say if they are accurate, but they have a clear and unique voice, not homogeneous but also representative of those place-based qualities that unite an area. The characters give me a glimpse into what it feels like to be Nigerian abroad vs. Nigerian at home. She rarely writes about interpersonal incidents of racism: the characters are mostly well liked, treated nicely by the people in their life, given opportunities. I think that contributes to the feeling of romanticism in the story. Racism is discussed on a more systematic level: they have problems at the airport, Taiye learns about the history of racism in Canada. As someone who has been to Canada, knows about the history of Canada, and lives very close to Canada, I enjoyed hearing about Taiye learning about Canada’s dark side, something that is so rarely discussed by the general public. However, for those of us who are interested, the evidence is everywhere. The history is just waiting to be explored by anyone who is interested in looking just slightly beyond the state-issued textbooks. I thought the way the author wrote about Canada was really authentic, which convinces me that the way she writes about London and Nigeria must also be accurate. What it must be like to be Ekwuyasi, so intimately familiar with places so far apart.

There was one line in the book that really stuck with me: as Taiye is traveling home, she passes through the busy streets of Lagos, crowded with street children, and she is reminded of her privilege in a very visual way, something she doesn’t get in Canada or London. This is the view the West wants us to have of Africa: a whole continent made of dirty huts and begging children on busy urban roads. Yes, poverty looks different in Nigeria than it does in Canada, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in Nigeria is somehow poorer. In fact, this family has a beautiful compound and a trust fund. Despite having a trust fund, Taiye still makes decisions on a strict budget and denies herself luxuries to save money, the way I do. I don’t really know a lot of people with trust funds, so I can’t tell if this is an international thing or if there are American kids who act like this. It kind of annoyed me when Taiye wrote to the culinary program saying she didn’t have enough to pay for the program, when in reality she just didn’t want to dip into her trust fund. I don’t know if there were limited spots/funds available for people who couldn’t afford to pay full price, but I hate when rich people forget what it means to actually not have money. Being cheap and being poor are two different things, often way more opposing than people think. Rich people are often the ones who know how to exploit the system to get what they want for less, while the poor are left with less connections and less time to work it.

Still, I refrain from delivering too harsh judgement on Taiye. I do not know the size of the trust fund. I know their family home was a gift, so perhaps the fund is to be saved for medical emergencies and property taxes. I’m not sure how insurance or taxes work in Nigeria, although I know the government is very unstable. How did they pay for international university? Did that come from the trust fund? The whole plot line has me thinking a lot about wealth and class on an international level. While I grew up comfortably, I often felt like my family was poor because of how rich everyone in our town was. I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a compound and see homeless children often, but also ingest international media that cast your entire country as poor and to know your government is unstable.

All in all, the book touches on many of the central issues of modern life While it only brushes the surfaces of these topics, it had me thinking for days and wanting to know more. Perhaps I will search out an some Nigerian autobiographies / memoirs in the future.

#book #fiction #francesca ekwuyasi #butter honey pig bread #cooking #nigeria #lagos #canada #london #halifax #twins #queer #family #spiritual #religion #wealth #class #mental illness #mental health

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thebeauregardbros · 6 years

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“Do they buy into the "happily ever after" ideal? What's their standard?”

(repost bc tumblr is broken) [WARNING: BACKSTORY SPOILERS]

In the shortest of words; He did, but does not any more.It seems that Alus’ life has been a constant struggle and repetition of finding hope and shortly thereafter loosing it, though his strength in heroism is near-unwavering and incredible in ultimate. Each time the blow of reality comes a bit harder than before, but the first blow still may had been the hardest - enough so that Arc’s hope had died long ago. —————- The first blow being, perhaps predictably, the calamity of the fallen moon. Though many lost their memories of such a time, Alus and Arc still have vivid memories locked close to their hearts of the days of youth in traveling the entirety of Eorzea and hearing heroic tales of so many an adventurer. Some of the fanciest tales came from their own adoptive father - A Gwenneg Beauregard. He told both fiction and reality, and his greatest passion in life was grabbing the attention of his children with such wonders. He was the hope giver; their inspiring bard, a man of leadership in a position of poverty, but ultimately their greatest hero. A man that never made them feel like the world was destined for destruction. Although the calamity was ultimately a victory for Eorzea, many things were still lost and unsaved - and such a life as Gwenneg’s was unfortunately one of them while the brothers stayed safe, far away. The details of such an event are one of the few things they unfortunately struggle to remember proper, however the effect was still immense. After multiple negative instances of skipping from caretaker to caretaker in an age of roughly 15 each, Gwenneg’s remaining acquaintances and friends finally generously offered to put the children in a somesuch of a private school instead, and the brothers objected - no longer wishing for outside help, no longer trusting of those they didn’t deem especially close. In truth they were ultimately just stubborn, feeling betrayed by the thoughts of heroism and truth and perfection they had until then were told to be reality. Due to circumstances I am not in the place to name, Arc eventually left Alus on his own to find his own path in life. Alus thenceforth passively accepted the invitation to schooling, unsure what else to do - completely alone, completely devoid of order from those he trusted, his last resort accepted. The next several years of his life were spent with his heads in the clouds, dreaming of stories old and new like the ones his father used to tell. His heart and mind swelled over time with unrest, and after failing his final quiz - He quit, and left back for Eorzea. Near the docks of Limsa Lominsa did he meet his brother again by chance, now working as a common bartender.Alus now had as much of a motivation to move on as Arc seemingly did back then when he had left him; He would become a hero like in Gwenneg’s tales. He would bring happiness and order back to the world as a knight in shining armor, a heroic paladin or prince charming. He would do everything in his power to once again fight for what he believed in, regaining the trust he had in Gwenneg back then - Carrying on his legacy in creating it as reality’s truth when it had previously proven to him to have fallen from grace for the egg’s cracking.Although Alus may have had the right to be upset at Arc at that time, he had promised himself to spread trust and happiness to the world. He accepted Arc back with open arms, and Arc willfully followed him - despite acting a bit of a inelegant party animal at times instead of a hero. That was the first regaining of hope.Moons passed - Alus and Arc quickly and miraculously climbed the latter to heroic stardom thanks to their incredibly well-synced teamwork and the immense sheer determination in Alus to become what he wished to.Three small words passed by the lips of one of those they helped - “Warrior of Light” was reminded and resounded inside them. “That is it..! I am a Warrior of Light!” Alus exclaimed. Arc shook his head in disbelief, saying again and again that it was only a legend, nothing more. Though Alus - he was not one to give up hope anymore. His heart screamed it to be true, and that was thenceforth what he would believe in himself.More moons passed. Higher and higher profile work was given to them for the good of mankind. They created friends and followers, partners-in-arms believing in their message. Although they were both a bit socially awkward, their childish dreams slowly became more and more true, and continued to do their best to lead a small army. Eventually, however, this inevitably stepped on some toes of power enemies, armies even they could not conquer.A large-scale battle went sour. Alus and Arc were lucky to live through it again, but showed up late due to an outside deception. Dozens of bodies surrounded them. Alus did not understand, it could not be comprehended to his innocent and optimistic mind. He cradled the bodies already going cold, doing his best to cast his measly healing spells - to no avail. Once the bodies were buried, Alus went again to the statue of Thal whence he regularly prayed - and in anger, smashed his hand into it. “Why must they be taken?” he spoke in a shaky voice. “Is this not imbalanced?!”he screamed. Yet again hope felt crushed and illogical to his thoughts. In Alus’ mind it was good vs. evil - and good was always destined to prevail, as long as it worked itself to the bone. He felt he was doing good enough. He felt as though it made no sense for evil to win like this.Days passed. The twins’ superiors asked them to finish the deed, to track down the villains that slaughtered their friends in ambush. Alus, for the first time, did not care. He avoided work. It was like he was in an entranced, passive sadness and rage. Arc finally pulled him to do one more mission. There, they found something unusual. That was when Hydaelyn spoke in a vision. Clear as day, even Arc had seen it; “Go, my Warriors of Light -”and to Alus’ heart, it was a confirmation of a positive truth. Though the deaths of his friends he still found unjust to the morality of the world, he trusted the Goddess’ words - there was an evil to still be vanquished, as there must be a villain for every hero. The unfairness would not stop until he continued to become better and better. Even Arc began to fully believe despite his previous words. Alus trained hard every day. He would never let anything stop him again.More moons passed.The thoughts of their deaths plagued his mind, still - he began the forbidden wonderment if he was the villain at all, himself, for he would too sometimes lose; for he too continued to see the bodies of his combative brethren fall around him; for he too saw the tears in the eyes of the men he befelled with his so-called righteous blade.Adventure after adventure passed. Upon unusual circumstance, they found themselves at the Church of Adama Landama, a place they were once told to have been found as babes. There they worked for a time. Alus spoke with the priests of Thal. He found comfort in their passions as priests and mages to help others.Once they resumed work again as soldiers, Alus’ grip loosened on his blade.In a sunset-dyed sky in Thanalan, wind low and graceful - the heat died down in cold. “Arc…?” he beckoned in a soft, shaking voice.Turning, his blade dropped lazily from his hand, his arms heavy on his sides. His face streamed tear after tear, yet his face remained stoic.“I do not want to hurt anyone anymore.” he whispered.This conflict was frightening. They had a duty to do, and Arc could do nothing but place a reassuring hand on his brother’s shoulder. They both understood it was not an option. And yet, they both seemed to understand that it was an ultimate wish. They knew that Hydaelyn made them her heroes.Alus procrastinated. Arc procrastinated. They’d avoid work someone else could do despite how irresponsible it was. They just did not care to think about it at times at all.In such a time - Alus made the promise to himself to never pick the blade up again. But he could pick up a wand and do the opposite of the sins he committed - he could heal, and that is all he could do. That was all he could do at this point to make himself feel at all better for being a symbolic slave to his country’s war, to a fucked up morality of black-and-white he could no longer knowingly agree with even if it was ultimately aligned to the “greater good”, of which he had to constantly therefore question.Whilst alone in conflict, he began to heal his enemies from the brink of death. He’d bribe them with coin or food, or anything else he could spare they might like. He aligned himself with beastmen, he spoke to pirates and bandits and thieves, he allowed himself at the mercy of the most hated beings of eorzean society’s standards - And you can bet your ass he was constantly on the verge of being branded a heretic and beaten and left in the snow at any time spent in Ishgard.(HW timeline)He did continue to fight and occasionally kill in the line of duty, of which he constantly regretted. It was like he was fighting himself, or that he had two sides of his personality - One that would bully and fight an enemy, and the other that would visit the enemy shortly after the battle to do anything he could to make up for it. He is not very well liked in any form of politics, and he is completely fine with that - Most politics to him are bullshit anyway, as most modern ideas of morality seemed skewed to be.He isn’t the hero he wanted to be at the beginning of his journey, far from it. He’s slowly come to accept that the world is unfair and horrible, and that there is no such thing as a happy ending - The world will continue until something bad inevitably happens, even if you want to close your eyes the second something good happens and let the credits roll. He knows that he will most likely die someday tired, possibly killed by someone he even tried to awkwardly help, if not the government of a friendly yet corrupt country - that or eventually become sort of priest at best.Alus does not believe in happy endings anymore. He doesn’t believe such a romantic thing can exist, or is reasonable to expect to exist. In that he finds some sort of peace in not having such a high standard. He can then find happiness in every little good thing that happens - a life being saved, someone falling in love, the flowers blooming on what was once a battlefield trampled by soldiers, or a kid hearing a tale of hope from their parent.His standard for a happy ending is extremely high. If any, it’s that all war on the planet finally ceases and equality for every race, beastman or human, is achieved. He hopes that the world will one day become a place where no biased hatred exists, where everyone can understand and love eachother regardless of their differences - as long as they aren’t hurting anybody, of course. He wishes for a world where nothing - no religion, no politic, no “side” can part people. And he sure as hell knows that it is most likely none of those things will happen any time soon, lest soon enough for him to live to see it.

#meme #reposting bc i genuinely feel like this is the only post i've ever written actually kind of well #alus beauregard

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danieljbockman · 7 years

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The Unfair Advantage

Strategies of the Modern Entrepreneur and the Self-Made Movement

Preface

~No one is born a winner, no one is born a loser. Everyone is born a chooser!

I don’t know who quoted that saying, but it’s 17 words of pure truth. Not everyone will agree with it but none the less, we all come into this world with equal status and it’s the choices we make afterwards that separates our quality of living. It could be very easy at this point in the book for you to say that I’m full of crap and living a very delusional life myself but it’s the reason I decided to write this book. I want to demonstrate that there is a reason people become so wealthy and when it comes to riches and wealth, there is most certainly a reason it is happening to them. At an early age, most of us realized that some people just have more of an advantage to life than the rest of us. Whether they were born into it or their parents have done well, we were exposed to privilege and advantage that was greater than our own and was out of our reach.

We live in a world of ever expanding complex technologies that hare happening at breakneck speeds and things have never been easier and, things have never been harder all at the same time. Fear seems to be the buzzword of our time because it’s so hard to predict the future and yet so many refuse to let go of the past, they cling to their fears about the new world vs trying to embrace the amazement of it. While some are trying to predict the future, others don’t try to predict the future because they are creating it. Artificial Intelligence and robotics are threatening our jobs, or so we think, and new social behaviors from a generation we don’t quite fully understand but, we know will be running the world someday. What about the ever changing dynamics that we are seeing in the retail word, that many people are moving from the suburbs back to the big cities, even the oldest generations. Large household named retail companies that took many, many years to establish and I knew about even as a child are being chiseled away at incredible speeds by a younger order of consumers that would rather click and purchase while in the comfort of their homes or apartments . Things are changing and the new world is not going to wait on those that can’t keep up. They may feel they are keeping up with technology because they can navigate their phones and computers but are they really mastering it? I would argue that many are being mastered by it!

I have had so many instances that people look at my success in life and business and they never fail to tell me that I had so many advantages over many other people and it’s no wonder I have so much more than most. But my feelings in this is that I don’t feel I have any more advantage than anyone else but I guess it could be said that maybe the one advantage I have, like so many others, is the ability to recognize advantage and opportunity when I see it. I also work! I work so hard to the point of exhaustion somedays and I feel nothing comes easy, it just doesn’t. I was told by a devout socialist friend of mine that I had an “unfair advantage” over most people and that I was born into most of my success and luck, and fortune just decided to shine down on me. I see her point but my argument to her is that I really don’t feel I have an actual “unfair advantage” over people, as much as I do and unfair way of looking at the world and, life in general!

So where are we seeing these unfair situations out there in the world today?

At a restaurant, I overheard and older couple talking with another older couple over lunch about their granddaughter’s new job she just got with a large marketing company.I didn’t know these people but their conversation was hard to ignore. The couple was saying that she liked the new job but there was an aspect of the job that she really hated. What she hated was the founder of the company was a less than stellar student in high school and only went to college for a short time before dropping out. He did not come from money and his family had always struggle but this young man decided to drop out of college and start a marketing company using the technology of the times, not using education. The marketing company was hugely successful and was a desired place to work because they paid very well. The founder hired his other dropout buddies and developed a business model to hire people who did graduate college and have them do most of the work while they, the dropouts, would reap the benefits. The granddaughter was disappointed because she was working in an industry she always wanted to and assumed everyone she would be working for went through the same things she did to get where they are, but that proved to be a false notion. She was being paid very well, so money was not the issue. The issue was that she worked hard to get where she was and the founder was just a punk that didn’t follow the rules of life and got lucky, and was getting rich off the work she was doing!

As I accidently eavesdropped on this conversation while I ate my lunch, I could hear the sentiment of distain in the grandparent’s voice. They were frustrated for their granddaughter but at the same time, happy she was doing what she loved and was making great money. The grandfather said, “She’s just a mule in his empire and he didn’t have to work for it.” The grandmother said, “We helped pay for her college and it feels like the founder of the company is getting rich off our investment into her future.”

This was a fascinating thing for me to listen to because what they were saying without actually saying it, was the whole situation was unfair!

This story and many others just like it and my own experience with success, is what inspired me to write this book. I have talked with many people over the years and about the unfairness of life and for the most part, people accept it. They understand that life is just not fair but when they experience it first hand and that the unfairness was perfectly legal and no laws were broken in the process, they tend to react in a negative way. They know if you break laws and regulations to become successful there will be legal action and consequences and you will pay for what you have done, but what if they break the laws and regulations of what you have always been taught. What if they, the successful, get ahead by not following the social rules of the past and the norms of the times? What if the successful uses strategies that defy what we always thought it took to become successful? We begin to take it a little personal!

I’m not saying that the traditional path to success isn’t still a viable path but what follows in this book is the notion that the success revolution of our time is no longer predicated on what we have learned from our parents, high school teachers, coaches and mentors but rather on the basis of, who wants it the most! Our success revolution is no longer rooted in following the rules and the social antiquated guidelines that traditionally propelled people into higher stations in life. 50 years ago a college dropout’s only choice was to work low level occupations but today, they are creating huge companies and making money on a mass scale. 50 years ago if you were born into poverty or low income, your choices were very limited and you were likely destine to continue on that path, but today, your low income and impoverished experiences gives you an incredible advantage of super financial success. Daymond John (Shark Tank investor) writes in his book, The Power of Broke that in today’s world of entrepreneurism, you are 68% more likely to become rich if you start out poor or were born into a low income family. This information is from the Forbes 400 list and what is striking about it is that in 1982, 68% of those on the list came from rich families. Today, only 32% of the Forbes 400 can make the claim that they came from rich families and were born into their wealth. My friends, THAT IS SIGNIFICANT!!! And well worth writing about! What this is saying is you are now more likely to become wealthy and stay wealthy if you start out with the so-called disadvantaged life of the poor or impoverished.

Things like this inspire me and this is why I write. This book is designed to highlight that you too could be one of these people that hit it big. The middle class is the self-made millionaire breeding grounds and because the middle class is so large, the chances of self-made people coming from the breeding grounds is huge. The significance of this revolution is starting to get noticed. The old order of the colleges, universities and academia are now on notice that we are no longer mindless drones that feel we have to follow their rules and pay their prices to become something great. Our parent and teachers are on notice that technology has made it possible for us to self-publish great and amazing books without going through the antediluvian processes of publishing houses. Technology has allowed us to engineer infrastructures without hiring engineers, code programs to do work for us and build our own websites simply by watching YouTube tutorials. Competition has changed as people are willing to do work for free for no other reason but to just be the first ones to do it!

This revolution is significant and has seemingly caused some concern by many. These people are seeing that anyone can become incredibly successful in this new order of the tech-age. We are now a population of incredibly informed people and we no longer sit idle and just accept life as it comes to us. We challenge and question everything because we know we can. Before, to be super successful, you had to be someone special and born into the advantages that cradled you to the high stations or had to be an advanced student in school. Now, because of technology, anyone can be a star, anyone can be rich and anyone can be the next big thing becaasue its no longer hard and we udder the phrase “why not me” everyday! That is the concern. People are using simple everyday advantages to get ahead in life and become successful in a way that is nontraditional. They are not having to working hard at school because someone else is working hard for them developing advance technologies that are easy to navigate and extremely affordable and give everyday average people the advantage! People are now writing blogs and publishing articles to delegitimatizing the self-doer of the world. Business blogs that traditionally championed success and profits of business are now in a desperate attempt to publish material stating that entrepreneurism is best left up to the experienced and the educated. Publishing houses are vastly branding self-publishers as “Vanity Writers” and saying the self-publishers are irresponsibly creating unchecked work! When you see things like this, take careful notice. There is a reason they want to suppress the self-made movement and if you look close enough, you will see the opportunity they are trying to hide. A blog called Quartz.com is readily publishing material telling you to not quit your job and never take a chance at investing in yourself. Their writers continually publish articles that are designed to re-center you back into your normalcy and constantly champion mediocrity. They encourage you to quit dreaming so big and accept the cards you were dealt as fate. I encourage you to visit Quartz.com and other “victim factories” as a source material of how not to think and what not to do if you are planning success and greatness in your life.

This book is designed to do two things. My target audience is the person who thinks only the people who were born into greatness and wealth are the ones that are going to succeed, that the people who have achieved greatness were just lucky and in the right place at the right time and who think that because they are in a less than favorable financial situation, there is no way out. The first thing the book is designed to do is, show you that the greatest self-made people are just simply outworking you and want it more than you. They have nothing special about them and a divine light from the heavens didn’t just one day shine down on them. They noticed all the things about life that were unfair, and took advantage of them. They also don’t waste time with the victim status no matter their situation! The book is designed to open your mind and your eyes as to what actually make greatness. Its makes you think and challenges your own values that you have been conditioned to think. It’s designed to inspire you!

The second thing the book is designed to do is piss you off! Yes, I know that sounds crazy but I encourage people who completely disagree with me to engage in this work. I want those that think I’m a “poster boy” for the rich (what my high school government and social studies teacher called me) to call me names and rub my name, Daniel J Bockman, into the dirt! I want those who hate me and think this book should be stricken from the world to stand up and say so. Most writers want everyone to love their work and rave on about its greatness but you will soon see that my own success in life and business comes from passion and using The Unfair Advantages in life. Not everything in being successful is pretty and you will get a little dirty while digging for gold. Just as many people hate me as do love me and I have capitalized equally on both sets of feelings. This is what I call, “Win, when you’re winning and win when you’re losing”.

I hope you enjoys this work and I have to tell you that I hope it creates impact in your life. I hope it does more for you than it does for me because I’m a businessman and I want success to grace you as much it has for me!

~Daniel J Bockman

#business #success #wealth #entrepreneur #entrpreneurship #entreprenuerlife #enterprise #money #empire

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whittlebaggett8 · 5 years

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The US vs China: A Clash of Self-Images?

The hole concerning self-notion and truth on the two sides is a essential element driving U.S.-China tensions.

By Plamen Tonchev for The Diplomat

June 20, 2019

Two a long time ago, the BBC World Service commissioned a considered-provoking global nation poll on sights of important global gamers. It questioned respondents to rate 17 international locations, together with the United States and China, and their affect in the earth. A essential acquiring relates to the deteriorating image of the U.S. worldwide, whilst attitudes toward China have also soured, nevertheless considerably less dramatically.

However the most intriguing element of this study basically has to do with the hole amongst “image” and “self-impression.” 71 per cent of the People in america polled believed that their country performed a optimistic role in intercontinental affairs, but the rest of the earth assumed if not – fewer than half that, a mere 34 p.c of respondents in other nations around the world, shared this look at. Chinese citizens surveyed had been persuaded to an even greater extent (88 %) of their country’s favourable impact on the earth. Alas, once once more the earth had a different view – just 41 p.c located China’s function positive.

Can this amazing dissonance explain why these two massive economies, so intricately intertwined for a long time, are at every other’s throats? Could dropping sight of who 1 truly is reveal the powerful standoff involving the two nations around the world locked in the world’s largest game of hen correct now, with the trillion-greenback dilemma on everybody’s lips being: who will blink very first?

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What is in a Self-Graphic?

It is tempting to search at this as a clash of own agendas and leaders’ egos. The U.S. president has no lack of the latter, for sure. Nevertheless, there’s substantially far more to Donald Trump’s brawly temperament: his intention is to sound hard to American voters a 12 months and a fifty percent prior to the climax of the forthcoming election. Trump basically are unable to afford to be comfortable on Beijing, with the general temper in the United States toward China staying far more damaging than at any time in advance of. This sentiment, persistently recorded in American modern society and dependent on scarce consensus on both sides of the aisle, will only intensify in the lead-up to the following presidential race.

What is at stake for Xi Jinping then? The Chinese president has cemented his electric power by acquiring his name and political ideology enshrined in the Communist Party’s structure, and the two-time period limit on the presidency has been lifted. But Xi cannot pay for to be noticed as yielding to strain from Washington, for he has campaigned on a nationalist political agenda, dressed up as the “China Desire.”

Some China watchers argue that U.S. intransigence may perhaps have handed Xi an efficient nationalist card to perform at a time when Beijing is struggling with a slowing financial state. The Chinese media is now complete of appeals to patriotism, even invoking the spirit of the Korean War. In a equivalent vein, Xi not too long ago frequented Jiangxi province and referred to the heroic narrative of the Very long March, a grueling one-12 months journey undertaken by Communist Occasion forces in 1934, only to regroup and take complete regulate of the nation 15 years later on.

Nonetheless, the mobilizing force of these epic legends are not able to conceal the simple fact that China is even now trailing the United States in conditions of for each capita cash flow or specific efficiency — by 6 and eight occasions, respectively. Notwithstanding Xi’s bold Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and that staggering 88 per cent figure in the BBC study, China’s self-graphic appears to be to be to some degree distinct at the societal level. Inspite of Beijing’s dominant narrative about 800 million citizens lifted out of poverty, no question an amazing achievement, nearby interlocutors do not be reluctant to talk about resilient inequalities in the state.

The BRI is approved by several Chinese – notably, in hush-hush discussions – with mixed emotions, as a high priced abroad business although China is still dealing with formidable socioeconomic troubles. Chinese citizens experience a weakening renminbi feeding on into their purchasing electric power and are becoming ever more uneasy, a little something that the country’s authorities are thoroughly mindful of. This may perhaps clarify why, as a substitute of roaring, Beijing’s mouthpieces, these types of as China Each day or World Situations, confine on their own to admonishing Washington to hear to the American persons and occur back to the negotiating desk, right after dropping its condescending frame of mind towards China.

But techniques aside, why really should condescension pop up in this debate? For the reason that it is a main irritant, if not insult, for a nation functioning away from the “century of humiliation,” a impressive narrative 1.4 billion Chinese have been introduced up with. Which may perhaps – partly, at the very least – make clear why Beijing is so sensitive about Huawei. Irrespective of the accusations of espionage leveled versus the top rated telecoms company, it is the crown jewel of China’s world high-tech competitiveness – and a supply of nationwide satisfaction, far too.

Punching Previously mentioned One’s Body weight?

Again in 1989, Francis Fukuyama posted his renowned essay about the “end of history” and the triumph of a U.S.-centered liberal western get. As we all know, that was not intended to be. It is now obvious that Fukuyama’s faculty of imagined overestimated the toughness of the West and his theory was dependent on an overblown U.S. self-graphic.

A few a long time later, the United States is undoubtedly the largest military services electrical power in the earth and will maintain it this way in the foreseeable upcoming, if one will take into account American and Chinese protection expenditure. But the U.S. wants to facial area the simple fact that, quicker or later on, it will cease to be the world’s most important economy – and what a blow to its self-esteem that will be! Down the road, the world will depend much less and a lot less on the U.S. greenback, as central banking institutions all around the world are weaning themselves off the buck, even though the renminbi is even now significantly from turning into a Foreign exchange heavyweight by itself – it only accounted for a meager 1.9 percent of world-wide reserves at the conclusion of 2018.

On the other side of the Pacific, if 9 out of 10 Chinese citizens actually consider in their country’s good impression overseas, they may be in for an uncomfortable shock. The refrain of issues about and escalating intercontinental pushback against “globalization with Chinese attributes,” i.e. the Chinese way of undertaking business enterprise, is a wake-up connect with that ought to not be skipped by Beijing.

The hole among what the two giants consider of on their own and their true abilities is all way too putting to be neglected. When Trump and Xi satisfy at the G-20 leaders’ summit in Japan on June 28-29, they will have to handle extra than a established of complex tariff-connected issues or the broader agenda of their confrontation. They will also have to issue in the clash of the two most important economies’ self-illustrations or photos – and rein them in.

Plamen Tonchev is Head of Asia Unit at the Athens-primarily based Institute of Worldwide Financial Relations (IIER) and a founding member of the European feel-tank Community on China (ETNC).

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