My dear son
It was disappointing.
I strained my ears, eavesdropping on a conversation. Young men and
equally young ladies debated about life and their ambitions. It seemed they
were involved in one business venture or the other. “Admirable”, I thought.
However, disappointment strangled my hopes as the conversation descended into
familiar territory. It oscillated between what Daddy was going to do and what
uncle politician could sort out.
My son, I am burdened with being born in a society that is
ridiculous in its fixation with the past. Upon meeting a stranger, the usual
conversation begins with the school one went to and the neighbourhood they grew
up in. This, coupled with one’s surname determines one’s standing in society.
Race, tribe and social standing are seen as the getaways to future success. Or,
if your tribe or race was unfortunate to have been disadvantaged in the past,
then its mistakenly believed affirmative action will be a form of restitution.
My son, I too was unfortunate to belong in one of the above bandwagons.
It soon enough led me to constantly wishing upon a star if only I had been born
in this or that family, or with this or that fortune or advantage. I too was
plagued severely, wondering why so and so were so and what it would take to be
like them. At every corner I began to see all the disadvantages upon my lot.
Surely if my blood had been bluer or if my father had been of a certain creed
then my fortunes would change.
It is the nature of human beings to be wishful and wishing.
I urge you, at a very young age to dissuade yourself of all
these notions. People are successful because they exert themselves in efforts
that bring advantage to themselves. True winners care less about where, how and
what they were born into. All they understand is that they themselves have the
power to determine whom they become.
In life, you will achieve small measures of success, and
equal if not more measures of failure. Such is life. It is not for me to coach
you how nor to provide the five steps to ensure you win all the time. What I
understand of life, and mere observation of nature is that both success and
failure shall be constant visitors in your home, especially at a young age.
What is important is how you deal with both.
Both, the bible instructs are visitors in our lives. None
has found the alchemy or magic to choose one and not the other. When these visitors
rest in your home, be assured they remain just that, visitors. You will lament
in melancholy when success departs, and you will be elated when failure decides
to leave. You have no control over these emotions, in as much as you have no
control over the sunrise or sunset.
What you are in control of is your own person and the
exertions of your abilities. The more you practise and exert your abilities in
the direction of production the more success shall visit your home. The more
you delay gratification and build a tolerance for hardship and pain the more
your home is insulated of coldness of failure.
There is a reason why a lion fights with its claws, a bull
its horns, a crocodile its teeth and a bee its sting. The bee does not ask for
horns or a bull for a sting. Each animal and insect uses its natural potency
and strength. It is folly of the highest for a lion to learn to fly and spend its
days in this pursuit. A lion’s success is directly linked to its natural
abilities. So it is for any human being to succeed. Play to your natural
strengths and exert effort in those activities you have the best capability.
Invariably, as you will learn from the animal kingdom your natural abilities
are aligned to your survival. For humans,
survival is producing in surplus.
It is not to say that he with the best natural ability will
succeed. Far from it. A lazy, slothful crocodile will never survive the jungle.
An intelligent human being without exertion is as dumb as a fish. Muscles not in exercise are as good as
crippled.
But what is production and in what manner does production
have to do with one’s life? Production is at the epicenter of man’s life. Man is a creature bestowed with the worst
affliction, of many wants and not enough resources to meet those wants.
You might be tempted, like most, to answer this riddle of
life, by limiting your wants. I cannot say with certainty if this is achievable.
Since it is the nature of man to want. Then there is the possibility that
without the urge to want, man can easily fall into rudiments similar to a
donkey. But then again I have seen that a donkey never tires of wanting
pasture. Give it hay in the middle of the night and a donkey will still munch.
What does this say about the human being? Upon satisfaction of one want,
another arises.
Listen careful my son, and how you can conquer this.
Production ensures you are at the service of other mankind’s wants. By fishing
more than you need, you fish for the next man not willing to fish or without
the ability to fish. When at the service of other man, that is, in production,
other men are more than willing to trade with you and giving you back what you
want. Thus by fishing in surplus, the builder is willing to build you and your
family shelter in exchange for your surplus fish.
By leaning towards your natural abilities and exerting
pressure in those endeavors you will be in continuous surplus. When one is in surplus
they gain the most important variable in the universe; Choice. By choice, I
mean the ability to choose. This is the most liberating variable for human
kind. There are those that cannot choose. Usually they languish in poverty.
Poverty reduces one’s ability to choose even the most basic of wants like food.
They only eat what they are given. Choice derived from production ensures one
is able to choose what they eat, where they live, and how they conduct leisure
and work. It is not to say that the wants of the man in production are
satiable. Rather, it is to say that a man in production’s wants at least the
rudimentary and those for his basic survival are met. Furthermore, beyond the
rudimentary he has the ability to choose and pick what best will satisfy him.
It is not to say that a man of production is materialistic.
Rather, in his urge to be in production surplus he helps society directly. To
be in surplus, the production man must be innovative. I grew up in an era
without mobile telephony and certain production men exerted pressure and
abilities to eventually come up with mobile telephony. Men wanting this gadget
were plenty and the production men were soon in surplus. Two goals had been
met, the production man and the wants of other men. Society was better off. The
nature of life is that there is always something that society wants and still
wants. Society will never run short of wants. It is the moral duty of
production men to meet those wants.
By doing so they exhibit qualities that make them rise to
the top of society. They are gallant, daring, thinkers, fighters, of valor,
determined, strong willed, long suffering. Indeed every attribute that brings
out the best in individuals. The nature of this meritocracy is that only the
best kind, with the greatest determination succeeds. In front of their peers
they are successful because they have brought society to excess.
While I extoll the virtues of the production man, I must
warn you of his nemesis. The political man, and the war man. These two types
invariably find common cause and are often in one person. In this letter I will not comment more than
this; the political man is never keen on production, at all times he has
neither teeth nor claws to survive. He has not the abilities in production and
relies in forcing other men to comply with his way. Usually they use the law to achieve coercion.
Usually to ban or impede men of production.
Study carefully history and the man that dot history books. Not the men that made noise, but rather the
men that built our civilization. They were almost always men of production.
From Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, British and American
civilizations, it has always been men of production who bring satisfaction to
society. Almost always it is self-made
men. And in those centuries when society was endowed with Self-made men,
civilization was at its greatest.
For every Borgia and
Napoleon, there is Medici and Rothschild. Men of war versus men of production.
Interesting that men of war accumulate their largess by forcefully taking from
others while man of production accumulate surplus through innovation. Man of
war, destroy, and men of production catapult society to a place where most
people can meet their rudimentary wants and begin to have choices in their
lives.
Monarchs and churches created barriers to aristocracy.
Creating a myth of the “chosen individual” to rule over other men. Suddenly man
had blue blood. It was the men of production, from misers, bastards,
housemaids, illiterates, slaves and all of lowly individuals who had nothing
but ambition who brought us our civilization. They gained aristocracy through
toll and production. By being in surplus, they raised the lives of their lot.
I have travelled in great many cities and towns and I have
been imbued with the history of it all. The Majesty of Barcelona, the glamour
of Paris, the Art in Rome, New York, Alexandra, Sydney, Johannesburg, Nairobi,
Lagos, Oslo and many more. What I saw was evidence of a trail that men of
production had been at work. Even more when I studied the artwork, museums,
libraries, universities, medical centers, theatres and the entire sort that habitants
enjoy I realized something. It was all made possible through the endowments of
men of production. Michelangelo and his work was commissioned by the Medici
Family, the largest theatres and museums of New York by JP Morgan, Chicago
University by Rockefeller. All, men of
production. Diseases and ailments that shortened the lives of humans were
exclusively eradicated through funding by endowments of men of production.
Your loving, faithful
Father
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