Happy Sunday! I hope you’re putting your wellbeing first.
I’m here to tell you about this message I’ve been receiving a lot lately, about being all over the place. It has come from many sources, often including myself, and can be jarring for me and get me in my feelings. But it’s also a great opportunity to access increased clarity on why I’m here, why NOIR Labs exists and why it’s an incredible blessing to lead this cultural movement.
Some of you may see NOIR Labs as a fledgling all-over-the-place startup. I used to as well. But I realized recently that NOIR Labs is more like a virtual country. A small and emerging virtual country built by a framework of ideas. Sam Adeyemi, globally renowned Pastor and Spiritual leader had this advice for the leaders of Nigeria’s EndSARS movement. The most critical line I took from it is this:
You need a strong ideology to lay the foundation for a new nation. Nations are built on ideologies.
Sam Adeyemi
I felt SO SEEN when I read this. And I continue to go back to it every time I need to teach about ideology and nation-building.
Our Ideology
The all-over-the-placeness that you’ve seen has helped us to develop an ideological framework for NOIR Labs that addresses all the areas impacting Black lives most powerfully, so that we can weave that ideology into all our systems, processes and offerings. True Liberation is not just about economic or political parity. It’s about wholistic transformation from within: spiritual/mental health, physical health, self-actualization, relationship building, financial alchemy and so much more.
Our new ideology says Black Liberation is inevitable and that the truest Liberation is happening through radical alchemy (catalyzing social change through personal transformation). Only this can be sustainable.
This means that as members of this institution, we will Liberate ourselves from within in community with others aspiring to eternal and internal Liberation. We will inevitably then see that the people around us will become Liberated, their communities will be Liberated, and then in time the two billion Black people globally will become Liberated from within. We will follow Divine guidance, while using deep tech and gorgeous aesthetics to accelerate these processes.
We wouldn’t have been able to develop our ideology this comprehensively if I’d had to focus on profit first. I wouldn’t have been able to listen to God if I had to scramble for money. Which is why I know it was Divine order that brought me to Yale and Cambridge to give me the time, space and resources to intentionally accelerate the process of Liberating myself from within, and to fully develop an ideological infrastructure that can be used not only by NOIR Labs, but by individuals, institutions and governments everywhere. So we’ll use it, share it and develop it with our community, and the profits will come from that process.
What I’m called to do next, is to share the ideology in smaller, bite-sized pieces. That is my task for this week, look out for it.
I leave you with this:
In the beginning, there was melanin. And the melanin was the Light.
Inspired by Jewel Pookrum
As always, feel free to reply with your thoughts.
A few referenced resources
Sonya Renee Taylor on Radical Alchemy
Jewel Pookrum on Melanin as biological Light
