Transcription
Engineering Minds. What we're going to talk about today in this video is how the European colonizers were able to use the tool of religion as one of their primary means in order to socially construct Africans, the way that they think and move, right? And you may ask, what would be the benefit of engineering somebody's mind? And that's what we're going to go over in this video, and hopefully, you'll find the answer out, um, in this video.
So, what we're going to start with is this book here, West Africa: An Introduction to Its History, Civilization, and Contemporary Situation by Dr. Eugene Mendoza. In the 1800s, Christian missionaries began to have success converting coastal peoples who had, to some extent, been dislodged from their traditional beliefs by the presence of the Europeans. So, this is in the 1800s. This is fairly recent, and it's a period of colonial rule over there in Africa. And what we want to pay attention to is we want to pay attention to words because the words convey meanings, and the meanings have different levels of power depending on how you interpret the meanings. So, when it says they begin to have success converting coastal peoples, that's that already is signaling changing something. We're changing what it tells you from the traditional way of looking at the world and their traditional beliefs over into a European way of thinking. They had aulter to Western ways and look to Europe for moral guidance. So, they had a culturated. That means you have been immersed in somebody else's culture, which there's nothing wrong with that. The only problem that comes in is if you're immersing in a culture that is has detrimental effects on your own behalf, right? Because everyone borrows from all cultures, but when you borrow something and you take on a worldview from other cultures that put you in the negative spotlight and make you look at yourself in a certain way, that's when it becomes a problem. That's when it's a tool of destruction. These ulated coals became a West African vanguard in helping Europeans to gain a colonial foothold. Acculturated coastal became. Listen to the word "became." That means it was not something before it went into it. It became, just like you become a doctor or you become a lawyer. They became West African vanguards. These are pushers of new ideas for who? The Europeans. In order to do what? To gain a foothold into where? Into the land of Africa. So, the the colonizers understand how this works already, to use the people and to use them in order to gain access to certain people, regions, and resources. They were agents in the process of drawing Europe into closer involvement in West Africa. These people were agents. Who? The people that got converted. Converted with what? The Christian missionaries converted them. So, they're converting them into looking at the world through their lens. Whose lens? The European colonizer. In order to do what? Gain a foothold into the continent and into the areas where they otherwise would have had more difficulty. They probably still could have come in there, but via strategy and let's do it a more efficient way. Converting people, hijacking the minds, and making agents. This is someone who is modifying someone's perception and the way that they see reality, and basically con— um, constructing it in a way that they are now basically the same European colonizer, but just in a different form. You just look a little bit different. This is hijacking minds and controlling and engineering minds.
Philip Quaque, a native of the Gold Coast, was sent to England at the age of 13. He was educated there by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Eventually, he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church. In 1766, the Reverend Philip Quaque returned to the Gold Coast as a missionary to his own people. He's coming back as a wife, as an agent. An agent to do what? To spread the gospel, Christianity, to get people to start thinking in the ways that the colonizers are familiar with. If because they didn't understand the African, um, tribalism and the traditional beliefs of that, that's very complex, especially Eugene, he talks about it in his book. It's a very complex system. You really have to be in there to be to really understand understand the workings of it. It's very complex. He talks about the Europeans didn't understand that. Let's replace that with something that we are familiar with and we understand. This is all part of just ruling and strategy, okay?
It is not surprising that some West Africans were coming to view colonialism as a way forward. A culation to European habits and ideas had been in progress for centuries among the coastal peoples throughout West Africa. It was becoming common for southerners to see themselves as modern and those of the northern hinderland as backward, even savage. Here we go. Now we can see it's starting to happen. The hijacking has begun. Now we're starting to use colonizing terminology: us as modern, them as savage. This is the hijacking taking place, you understand? Modern humans all have the ability to adapt their way of thinking, and this is what's important for everyone to understand. You can modify your ideas whichever way you want, uh, to do. The difference is most humans don't know that. They don't really know that. So, you have certain sets of people who understand that, who know how to use certain tactics in order to get that done. In this case, they went in, the Christian missionaries, and they were able to set up and modify other people's perception of reality, the way that the lens that's covered over your eyes from the the the way that you see the outside world, right? Everyone doesn't see it the same. So, they understand the way of getting in there and modifying that to do what? To work on their behalf of going in here and imposing their colonial rule. And it's—it works. This is a situation that still exists today in Ghana and Togo, to name only two examples.
From the 18th century onwards, Christian missionaries had promoted European ideas of civilization, the so-called civilizing mission of the West. Who's promoting it? It's the Christian missionaries, right? The tool, and it's an especially a very effective tool for the Africans because Africans had their entire lives centered around religion and many much superstition. So, this is going to be an effective tool. Now, this tool here may not work for someone who is maybe, um, has a society that's not built around religion. You may not be able to use this tool for that case, but for the Africans, are super susceptible to this. In the 19th century, many more missionaries flooded into West Africa, coupling education with their message of faith. Missions also became more organized. The Christian Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionaries, and the White Fathers established operations in West Africa that still remain today. The acculturation of coastal elites was fostered by the development of a Creole community in Sierra Leone, many of whom had been exposed to Christianity as part of their captivity. They also received better education in mission schools. Creoles from Sierra Leone became successful traders, clerks, artisans, teachers, priests, doctors, lawyers, and administrators. They fanned out along the post, becoming models for other West Africans with new aspirations. And now they serve as a model. They want to be like that. Okay, so that's inspiring them to do what they do. Well, what do you guys do? Oh, we're Christians. We do this, we do this. Okay, maybe we want to be like that too.
The activity of the Europeans on the coast created two kinds of West Africans. It created two types. It created a division there. Listen to the words. It created. Man is here to create. Man has a creating power. You can create within your own life, and if other people don't know, you can create within theirs too. It created from the European exposure, it created two different types of West Africans. What are the two types? Acculturated coastal elites, elites that took on the view, the religion, and the perception of the European colonizers, and the people of the hinterlands. And the people of the hinterland who, those same people looked at, in many cases, to be savages. The urbanized elites of the coast did not completely understand the peoples of the back country. Some took on the European idea that such societies were uncivilized and backward. Uh-oh, here we go. This is colonizer talk. Backward and uncivilized. People living from the in the same area, but one of them seeing themselves as superior and the other one inferior. Our way is better than yours. This is colonizer talk. This is why I say these characteristics can get on anybody. All humans can display and express the same types of characteristics given a certain circumstance and environment. It's the colonizing, um, um, the colonizing action is just not limited to Europeans. People from all different backgrounds colonized and given the chance. These people here that we're reading about, they're part of the colonizing right now, right? And they have a different skin color. We have to understand these as characteristics of humans, not characteristics of someone's color.
Now, from here, all the people in Africa were not susceptible to being caught and being socially engineered. Some of the people ended up catching on, right? This is important to understand. Everybody's not falling victim. Some people, they eventually find out the game plan, and it's like, hold on, they see what's happening. So, let's go. Some of those examples, um, in this book, and, um, see some people who tried to resist. Far from the European stereotypes of childlike docility or barbaric savagery, Africans came to comprehend the nature of the colonial project in social engineering and acted in ways to control it as best they could. It says that they came to comprehend, right? After looking at the missionaries, the military, looking at the things being established, seeing all these people getting converted into other religions, we're okay, hold on. We got to sit back. I can see what you're doing. I can see it. I can see the social engineering taking place. People falling by the wayside left and right. Agents popping up everywhere. I can see it. This is only a few of them. And what happened? They did the best that they could. Now, let's find an example of of someone doing the best that they could. Let's go to this book here. It's called The Destruction of Black Civilization by Dr. Chancellor Williams, and let's go to page 212 and, um, and let's get some understanding for. Unlike so many other African societies, the migrating Masai had learned something from the history of the blacks and their relations with Arab and Berber peoples. No foreigners could settle in Masai territory. Masai learns something from history, right? Because they say history repeats itself, and it does. Humans running the same cycles over and over. It's over and over running in the same cycles, different circumstances, just at different times in history. So, if you can learn something from history, you know that it's going to repeat itself if you don't find a way to make it stop. The religion of Islam was rejected. Conversion to both teaching and religion forbidden. In short, the Masai saw Islam and Christianity as the white man's vehicles of conquest. They saw that these religions are a tool for for the white elite to come in and socially engineer, that's basically what they understood, to engineer the minds of the people to get them on board to think like Europeans. Therefore, the Europeans could understand how these people function, get you out of that tribal stuff because we don't understand that. We can't rule if we don't understand what you're doing. They understood that. The Masai understood that to be a vehicle, that's just a thing, just like you drive a vehicle to get you to a place. The Christianity and the Islam are the vehicles to get Europeans into rulership. The Masai people understood that.
Now, let's stop here and let's go back to West Africa, and we're going to find out another example of, uh, resistance to that social engineering. As the Oyo hegemony disintegrated, European missionaries and administrators used trade goods and technology to play one faction against another. This led to even more disruption. Yoruba leaders feared that Britain was going to take over their lands. Many saw missionary work as an advance of political domination. This is where leaders come in with clear vision and are able to see, right? And they can direct the people and say, hold on, we see what's happening and try to lead the people in different ways. The Yoruba leaders saw that the the missionaries were coming in and using that as a tool to take land and to engineer minds. For this reason, Abeokuta threw out all European missionaries in 1867. Missionaries out of here, get them all out of here, that's what he said. No time to play these games. We see the game plan. But it's already too late because many of the other people have fallen victim. Many agents have been set up, right? You'll find parallels between here and also in the United States of America. Many parallels have been set up. Agents have been set up knowingly and unknowingly. When the British took over Lagos in 1861, Yoruba sovereigns became increasingly suspicious of European intentions. So, they became increasingly suspicious. Now you're taking land. Now, like you said, you're coming over here for one thing, now you're taking land. Increasingly suspicious. As the wars continued and the French lurked, the British tried to bring about some unity to the area. There were many European missionaries there, as well as the so-called Sarro missionaries, who were ex-slaves from Sierra Leone. Through their influence, the area was experiencing a relatively high degree of acculturation. Through their influence, whose influence? The European missionary and also the African missionary, both of them working together for what? Agents for the European colonial rule. Both of them are are in cahoots. Same thing with the slave trade. Same thing that came over with in America with, um, the blacks and whites. We'll find out later on. In cahoots, both of these here in Africa, the European and also the African missionaries working in cahoots and influencing and getting a lot of people to acculturate from their influence. By the time of the Berlin Conference, missionaries had produced a substantial educated elite with modernizing tendencies. By the time the Berlin Conference came, there was already social engineering that had happened. They've already went through and modified the way that certain people, the elites, think. If the elites are thinking on par with the European colonizers, we're in the game. Strategy, chess at high levels. That's what's being played. Chess at super high levels, right? We got the elites on board. They can control through the elites now. Super hot strategies, man. Super hot strategies. People can get mad at it, or you can just get educated and then you can make sure that this stuff doesn't happen to you, right? That's what it's about, getting educated. We're in the the age of education now. All the sitting around and letting people, um, just come out and just tell you whatever, that's not where we're in. This is the age of enlightenment. Being educated is what's going to put people in positions going forward, right? And somebody's out here getting educated, you just have to make sure that you, your family, and everyone around you, they're the ones that's part of that getting educated, right? You got to understand people who are in those positions of rulership and massive amounts of control, they're not on this all day scrolling, scrolling through Instagram and and wasting all all types of time just scrolling on here and looking at things that aren't progressing them towards the objective that they have. Many of them are spending their time plotting, strategizing. So, if you have someone, if you have the masses of people caught up in regular work, come home, are you sleep? Wake up, eight hours of work, come back scrolling on on on on Instagram and all the stuff in categories and topics that don't have anything to do with, you know, getting you forward to whatever it is you're trying to achieve, and you have other people who are spending all their time, they wake up, this is their work, to plot. They're going to know a lot more than the average person in the masses, right? They're going to be at a substantial advantage. And so, it's important to become educated and to distin— put down some of the, um, the, um, the, the leisure type of activities, the extra entertainment, and begin to get focused on developing yourself, studying, sharpening your intellect, controlling your emotions, and developing yourself and your outlook of the world because you have to understand whatever program you have and the people around you, that's what's going to influence the program that the children that you have grow up to have. It's going to have a major influence on that. And so, you need to upgrade and and and modify yourself in the best way that you can so you can help pass that on to the children, right? And that's what a lot of people have to do. A lot of people have to get into the realm of of of of being educated and and developing themselves, right? Educating and developing themselves because there's people out here who are playing games at high levels, right? That's what I had come to learn. People are playing games at high levels, and they use any, it's by all means necessary, right? By any means necessary, whatever they got to do, religion, politics, whatever they have to do, they're willing to play the game. They're willing to play the game, man. And these people are playing high levels of chess with people, right? Military, all that stuff. Okay.
So, hopefully, this video has helped out. My name is Brooklyn St. Michael, and I make these videos to help increase and raise the level of awareness and help give out keys that you can take for yourself, unlock many doors that get you the freedom and into the Free World where from there, some of the people who make it into the Free World will become part and initiated into the Earth Po Community, right? And we have a lot of things that we're working on, a lot of things that we are going to develop, and we need people that bring something to the table and that can help develop, right? And so, that's the point of giving out, trying to give out as much information so people can see things from different perspectives. And people who it resonates with, that's who I'm talking to, right? It's not a thing to go out, we're not looking for a whole bunch of people, but whoever it resonates with, that's who I'm talking to. And then the other people are more than welcome to watch, right? Anyone you grab, whatever you can grab, develop yourself, and grab what you can grab, right? But that's what, what's the deal? That's what the mission is, right? So, hopefully, you enjoyed this video, and I want to thank you for looking and watching, and I'll see you on the next one.