Joscha Bach, Ideology and Understanding Black Culture and Consciousness

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

There may be an infinite number of ways to understand Black Culture and Consciousness. I tire of those who can only understand Blackness as Oppression, the sad offspring of structural and systemic racism. Just this afternoon, my son attempted to convince me that structural bias was all that mattered. I am willing to listen to the younger generation. Arguments are good. I have no obligation to believe in slogan words.

Dogma is bad.

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I love awe inspiring intellects like Joscha Bach, an artificial intelligence researcher from Germany. When I listen to Bach, I feel my mental universe is broadened and enhanced. I take in musings from Bach and my vision of the possible is enhanced. More writers and intellectuals should build upon the creative associations between Blackness and the wisdom found every day in the world inhabited by Bach and others.

Building upon the musings of Bach, why is Dogma bad for Black Culture and Consciousness?

Reality becomes warped in a world of dogma. Dogma pushes the mind towards inflexible certainty. One is right and the other is wrong much like my son was right and I must be wrong as I clung to quaint ideas about the individual and internal locus of control. The problem is the classical liberal believes one can disagree without being disagreeable. Dogma means some thoughts like internal locus of control are “unthinkable.”

As Bach frames the intellectual problem, dogma “locks people into a mode of thought.” Otherwise intelligent people are castrated by dogma. The result is an “inability to bring into the world new creative thoughts.” Black Culture and Consciousness needs more creative thoughts, not fewer creative thoughts. “The purpose of life is to create complexity.”

Bach follows the path of dogma to its logical conclusion. People are “cut off from the rest of human thoughts.” Some thoughts like the individual or the internal locus of control become unthinkable. Dogma becomes a blunt club to dismiss the ideas of other people.

Black Culture and Consciousness is doomed, absent some defense against dogma. And these insights from a native of Germany allow us another way of understanding Black Culture and Consciousness in the U.S. The enemy is not structural racism or oppression but Dogma.

Good evening!

See 1:18:30 to 1:23:40