WHY I WRITE BOOKS

Sharing why I write novels – 4 I grew to dislike public school at about the time I completed the primary grades. I turned off school but not learning. The WHY of things was and still is very much alive in me – I never stopped wanting to know; I never stopped talking to others and turning the pages of books to find an answer. A great deal of what I learned during my formative years was from INTERACTING WITH OTHERS and READING BOOKS: it did not come from what I got in classrooms. Reading and interacting with others is a habit I’ll keep to death. There is one thing about life I find extremely fascinating – STORIES. Stories record the comings and goings, the ups and downs, the tears and laughter, the failures and triumphs of people. Stories not only record what people say but what they do. Stories enable us to better understand another person another people – stories enables us to better understand ourselves. www.adolphusward.net

NEARSIGHTEDNESS OF BEHAVIOR

SHARING WHY I WRITE BOOKS - 3 Myopia, I’m told, is a condition of the eye. A person with the condition sees things that are closer to them quite clearly but have trouble seeing things that are not – this eye-state is called Nearsighted. I recently read an article that reported an increase in nearsightedness among certain age groups. My writer-brain fired up and I began to wonder if the physical manifestations of nearsightedness also had a psychological twin in the behavior of people. Are some people capable of seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, and hearing only those things they like; do they knowingly avoid anything they don’t like? Can people so condition themselves that it becomes impossible to accept any truth outside the shortsightedness of their own senses? I think we, you – the reader and I, can accept the fact that there is no complete agreement between any two individuals – let alone two groups of individuals. A person or group of persons will often define themselves by exclusion – that is, there’s Me or Us, and Them. The Them is not only thought of as different but also quite possibly bad: maybe emphatically bad. Some individuals and groups go so far as to demonize other individuals and groups who are different. www.adolphusward.net

APARTHEID - by FORCE

APARTHEID – OPPRESSION by FORCE Israeli Apartheid is not new – it inherited the structural blueprints from the United States and South Africa’s forms of Apartheid. What is new about the Israeli’s form is that it has the advantage of state-of-the-art construction materials, military weaponry, and the skills to use them effectively. What the US and SA’s experiences are reluctant to pass on to Israel is that the only way to completed control a people is to kill them all – both the US and SA have had their attempts at that. Oppressors throughout history have given the same excuse for their action – the oppressed will rise and consume us if we allow them to prosper. In today’s idiom, Israelis in fact say, ‘we need apartheid to defeat the terrorist.’ This mindset ignores what is historically obvious – oppression creates terrorist. www.adolphusward.net

WHY I WRITE BOOKS - 2

SHARING MY THOUGHTS why I write books – 2 For as long as I can remember I’ve been curious as to why I do what I do – why others do what they do. The simple answer is because I want to do it, or feel I have to. I think the same is true for others; but my questions didn’t stop there. I’ve come to the conclusion that conflict pushes us toward the choice we make. Conflict doesn’t make the choice for us – it manipulates that choice. I know that some of my behavior has created conflict in my life and the lives of others. I am certain that the action of others has brought conflict into my life. Not all behavior grows out of conflict but it is present in much of what we do. Jim Crow Laws of the south – and the more subtle forms of those laws in the north – were designed to limit the rights of Black People by controlling their behavior. Black People couldn’t hold jobs paying more money or be more important than jobs held by White People, couldn’t vote, couldn’t share public spaces with White People, couldn’t use the courts to defend their rights, couldn’t live in white communities, or couldn’t receive an education along with Whites. These laws brought conflict into the lives of Black People – the consequences of those laws are still with us. www.adolphusward.net