Meetup Summary (January, 2017)

Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.

• Pierce Brown, Red Rising

Well, three people turned out for our very first meetup. This low turnout did not by any means make the whole affair dull. In fact, we ended up being politely “kicked out” of the place because the venue closed early(about 7:30-ish). Our conversation was all over the place. Here are some of my highlights:

A Song of Ice and Fire

Well, there had to be that one Game of Thrones Fanatic(not me) in the group. We talked about the upcoming The Winds of Winter and how annoying George R. R. Martin can be when it comes to releasing books. An interesting question that came up was: What would you choose? A rushed novel and a timely release; or a “perfect” story where you have to wait years for the release? That’s something I’ll leave you guys to think about.

While we were talking about “Game of Thrones”, some other cool stuff came up… Like Harry Potter.

Had George R. R. Martin written Harry Potter, how’d stuff turn out?

Well, Hagrid would have been dead in book one(Not an honourable death, some dumb death by some creature in the Forbidden Forest). Harry would have died somewhere along the way, accomplishing nothing. Malfoy and Hermione would have been married for convenience’s sake. By book three, there would be totally new characters to fill the void of the ones who had been killed. We’d still be in book five, cursing George for making us wait for the next book’s release.

Paradigm Shift

We talked about how messed up this world is. How difficult it is to change stuff. Kinda reminded me of the Red Rising Trilogy when we were talking about this stuff. This conversation of power and influence made us talk about anime. A memorable quote from one of the animes(One Piece) went something like this:

Why do you want to be the the King of the Pirates?
Luffy: I want to be the King of the Pirates because the King of the Pirates is the freest man in the whole world

We explored this further. What does being free really mean? Does it mean more wealth, more power, more influence, being happy? How do you achieve this freedom. Perhaps you should change the world to adapt to you. Interesting.

Origins

We talked about our lack of knowledge of who we are as an African people. We kinda have this rich history which we barely know about. Why do we not know our history?. Why is knowing your history important? For one, knowing your history is really empowering. Knowing that you come from a people that travelled to the Americas before Columbus set sail to Africa, or that the Greeks came to your institutions to learn(University of Alexandria) is empowering. We talked about how our current society has warped(in a subtle way) the value of black. Close your eyes and think of a world reknown scientist. Chances are you that you’ve thought of a white or asian guy in a white overall. We think this way because of stuff we consume. Hollywood and other media has made us think of the roles played by black people. Our governments have not helped us change this image. In fact, it can be argued that it has made our image worse.

It’s fascinating that we rarely talk about this stuff. However, there are some artists who’ve gone out there way to talk about this things- key among them is a British Artist, Akala, who by the way had been briefly here in Kenya.

Conclusion

The meet up was fun. I got to get a new perspective on some things- like the role technology and race plays in society.