What Happens When A Generation Stops Thinking For Itself by Apostle Femi Lazarus: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

There is an atmosphere of wholeness when you speak. It felt like there was healing in the room. There is a way your soul is

We are in a world that is controlled by pain

The guest has learned to seek quietness and to look at life from the perspective of being a soul rather than a body

She spends time in meditation, the Christian way. She doesn't hold on to things, including pain. She feels it and lets it go

She has been attached to pain before and it messed her up a lot

Pain controls the world

Pain numbs you. It gets you to the point where you don't even know where you are hurting other people

Pain is addicting. You must have seen people who just love the sound of their story. They want to give the impression of how bitter their story is, and they cling to it

Pain can numb you, scar you, or produce healing in you

For some people it denatures them. They lose themselves and become a replica of what hurt them

For others pain is what produced healing. It brought them to compassion. You can see it when they talk and when they hang around people

They are not quick to dismiss people. They are not judgmental. They know what the lowest pit looks like, and at the peak of the mountain they can still be touched

Illustration (guest): the infected soul

She was hurt by what someone did and couldn't stop replaying it in her mind

One morning she looked in the bathroom mirror and saw herself pitch black, like an infected person. It was not a dream

She heard in her spirit, your soul is infected. She went on a break to detox

She wrote in a notebook everything she liked about the person and prayed for the person. When the thoughts came, she prayed and listened to worship songs till the voice was quiet

Illustration: the Israelites in the wilderness

Everyone Pharaoh ruled had to die in the wilderness. Their pain controlled them. Their trauma was littered in everything

They couldn't journey into God's plan for themselves because of pain

This is exactly how I see Nigeria at this point. Nigeria is a nation of pain

The guest agrees: the hurt is visible, and everybody somehow needs to validate it by hurting someone directly or indirectly

It is not that people should do wrong and be patted on the back. But there is a constant pressure in cancel culture to have a sad story to share

It looks like people always look for something bad every day

Can a nation that powerful, with such potential, but weakened by pain, be free?

The guest: real freedom is a state of mind. If in your mind you are a slave, you are a slave

There are so many people who are slaves to pain. She wrote in her journal: you pay rent on a property you don't own

Whoever has hurt you may not even remember they hurt you, but you are still paying rent to them

Illustration (guest): the 42 minute call

She got a call from someone who almost took her childhood from her. That hurt her the most. The woman rained abuses as always, and it was very heavy

She didn't end the call. She dropped the phone on her bed and later saw the woman had spoken for about 42 minutes

She called her back later that day and said, you are doing this because you are scared of me. God's hand is on my life and that is why you keep doing this. You feel I will hurt your children

She said, it is because you don't know how much I love you. The woman started crying

I've seen the power of love in converting people

Pain, creativity and wholeness

Does pain numb creativity? The guest: pain is a two-way street

What a creative makes is a reflection of the state of the soul. Bright colors, bright mood. Dark, dark

She can look at someone's work and know the person is depressed, or depressed but faking it. It is bright but dull. It doesn't speak back to you. You can't connect with it

Her wholeness routine:

1. Relationship with God first. It is beyond religion
2. Whatever she does, she doesn't expect applause from anybody. If it comes, she is happy. If it does not come, it does not stop her from doing what she wants to do

She always reminds herself that she is not going to be here forever

Illustration (guest): cut her some slack

Someone did something to her and she was asking God why this person would do this to her. She was getting to the point of being bitter

The Holy Spirit said, cut her some slack. This is her first time being a human being, just like you

None of us have been human before. We are all having a first-hand experience. Nobody has gone and come back

So overlook it and move on

Twelve years of waiting

The guest waited 12 years after marriage before her son. There were miscarriages on and off, and IVFs that didn't work out

She cried in those seasons. But God took her on a journey of understanding his sovereignty

She came to a conclusion that irrespective of anything that happens in her life, God is God and God is good. That was a done deal

God had told her she would have her children, in some very specific details. She believed it even after 12 years. She knew without a doubt it was going to happen regardless of the journey

She felt behind only when people pointed out that she was behind. Outside of that, she was good

When someone said she was wasting time, her husband said, tell them to come and tell me

He made sure there was always some activity so she was not down. They went for classes in archaeology and took very long walks, one hour, two hours

Couples who have fought battles together are always more bonded than those who have not

What happens in her home is not their entertainment. Those close enough to her know, and that's okay

She doesn't talk about marriage or pregnancy on her page, yet people DM her about waiting. She says, let's just pray. Some come back months later with twins

They did not know all that while that she had no children of her own. When she shared the testimony of her son, one woman broke down

AI cannot replace a true creative

In the last interview the guest said AI cannot replace her work. I felt you were delusional, not ready to face what AI is capable of

Then I studied your work up close. You are the exact kind of person AI cannot replace. There is a life that comes from a true creative, and AI has not got to the point where it can humanize

The belief is that AI will become a conscious entity, the point of artificial general intelligence, by 2030

The guest is not changing her mind. She knows what AI is capable of. She has been in the tech space since she was 11 or 12, writing code on paper

You can hold on to a belief, do your pro list and your con list, know you might still come short, and be settled and standing by it

What pains her is that everybody seems to want to be on the good side of a narrative

Even if AI develops consciousness, makes decisions, says XYZ is wrong and metes out punishment on its own without any human interference, she will still not accept that AI can replace her

She uses AI for certain things, but the core of who she is, she will not let it take over. She already has contingency plans

Branding is perception organization

With an organization just starting, first find who they plan to talk to, their ideal audience

She teaches a whole class on ideal audience. People think age, sex, married or not, where they live, how much they make

That is okay, but she picks a human being from the crown of the head to the sole of the feet

She designs who that person is down to their routines: what they do every day, how they wake up, how they get dressed. It is different every day of the week for a month

Because her avatar is extremely detailed, she can tell a story of a bad morning and people DM to say it happened to them last week

From there the brand is easier to build. You come up with the right name and the right ideas. It is not smooth, but it is easier

Branding is basically perception organization. How you want to be perceived has little to do with the colors and the logo. Do you want to be seen as the rough guy who just says anything?

Quality over traction

Everyone who understands true art separates true art from traction. You can have a masterpiece and the audience for it is few

The ability of the artist to recognize that and stay with the work is what makes you a master

She doesn't go to the market to look for what people want. She finds something she thinks is good that you deserve, makes it, and makes you want it

Every course and every product she made was because she thought it should be here. Then we create the hunger and the thirst for it

Separate your traction from the beauty of your work. Some of the most important things may not have many audience, yet the right eye sees them and pays the right amount

You may post something and get eight likes, and a company like Samsung wants it

Some clients ask her not to share that she works for them, so their competitors don't come to her. One lady said, you are my best kept secret. Many creatives have non-disclosure agreements

She doesn't go for the money over her standard. She is beginning to care about money, but maybe money doesn't have a hold on her. Her reward is that she did it and it is good

Nobody has the right amount of money to place on the value she creates. Whatever she is paid is their perception of compensation for her time

You need money, but whatever you create must not be at the expense of your soul. The world is not thinking like this anymore. People want to produce what sells, at the expense of what?

Illustration: the phone store

Sellers of different products rushed at the buyer: buy this phone, buy this one. Two individuals didn't leave their stands, the Samsung seller and the iPhone seller

Asked why they weren't trying to get customers, they said, our clients come to us. The people who use our product come to us

So the most important thing is to be original and produce quality for those who have eyes for it

Negotiation: whoever starts the conversation has a lower hand at some point. I do not talk to a client first. If I do start, I know how to turn the table around

She doesn't try to replicate herself in her mentees. She wants them to be their own person and own their spaces. She likes them to debate what she says

Musicians who have carved out their niche are comfortable with it. They recognize their audience. They may never trend, but they have a loyal family

Brain rot

Brain rot is the consistent presentation of shallow things in entertainment, comedy and music. It affects people's recognition of quality and their desire for it

It is systemic engineering. It is plaguing Africa now

It has to start from somewhere. It has to start from people saying, I choose not to watch this. I'm not going to look at XYZ

The guest's husband has never been on social media. He reads and watches the news, and checks anything through her pages. When he sees certain things he asks, who watches things like this?

She is careful on social media. There are pages she never goes to. There are things she just swipes, and she is not always physically online. People know not to share certain things with her

Can we raise a generation that takes this as a lifestyle? Can we get parents to know certain content is not okay to expose children to?

We are not even talking about nudity and sex. There is content that degrades the mind, like the parading of foolishness

I believe there is a deliberate architecture of this for this generation, so that those who have intelligent things to present are discouraged

Then you conclude people don't watch intelligent things anymore, so let's join and do the foolish things since that is what sells

Those who run podcasts in our part of the world are under pressure to bring what will bring views. People are slaves to views. It is a modern day opium

There is a need for detachment

The stupidity pandemic

In a video on artificial intelligence I said I see a stupidity pandemic coming. It may become a medical category of mental illness

We will be seeing a pattern of excellent product and a bad producer with a shallow mind, because you are depending on a system to think

It may sound conspiratorial, but I believe that is exactly what artificial intelligence is designed to do: produce dummies

People are not seeing the problem because they say, after all, we have excellent product

With ChatGPT I can come up with a very good painting. What then happened to the painters?

The system seems to be thinking for you, but it is not thinking for you. It is gathering feeds

We will see a generation rising with a mass extinction of a certain kind of people. People who can't think for themselves, can't make basic decisions

Parents who can't decide what school their kids will go to except they consult AI. If your child is sick, you might not even be able to say we need the emergency

We might be in the last generation of intelligence as we know it. Even getting a PhD may not hold the same weight, because students can outsource many things then humanize them

The moment the human mind is put in a state where it cannot do its functions, it is like a zombie. We are seeing the beginning of a zombie apocalypse

Is that what we want as a race? To have the money from artificial intelligence but lose your mind, your ability to analyze, to create, to think?

Diseases like Alzheimer's will be on the rise, because somehow your ability to use your mind declines

The top three most trending songs this year so far have been AI songs. The Grammys will be forced to have a category for AI generated songs

AI is also taking over the movie industry and the advert industry. But it also brings down trust: if you used AI for this, can I trust it? There are many legal battles going on

When Meta tells you to turn on the label that you used AI, it is to protect themselves from litigation

Illustration: the voice over

A spoken word artist was invited by an organization to do a voice over on their product. They called her shortly after and said, don't bother

Later she saw they did the voice over using AI, and the voice sounded like hers

What makes you extremely unique has now also become what makes you extremely vulnerable. Her voice makes her unique, and that is the only reason it needs to be copied

So creatives look for legal coverage. I think Taylor Swift is doing that already. People are copyrighting and trademarking their likeness. I think Tennessee has a law about your voice and your likeness

I am worried about the kind of zombies this will produce: writers who are not writers, authors who are not authors, musicians who are not musicians

The words look good, they look interesting, but they have no depth

If somebody has written a book we should be able to talk about it

You have songs produced with AI but you can't sing them on stage. You can't tell us the story behind the song or what brought you to that place

People who are smart ask for the stories behind those things. We might be looking at a generation that doesn't even know it should ask

You need to know the problem. One way I knew I would fail a math exam was if I couldn't tell what problem it was. Then I didn't know the solution

Are we seeing the last generation of authors of this kind? I don't think so, but we have to deliberately find them and train them

The last of a kind

People say those who know quality will always look for it. How about when those who know quality are dropping?

Cultures die. Languages cease when the last person who speaks the language dies. There are crafts going on right now with the last generation of that craft

The moment we have the last generation of those who demand, we will soon have the last generation of those who produce

Once people are taught to be dependent on the counterfeit, those who produce become lonely and start dying out one after the other, till we don't know what that looks like anymore

The guest decided this year to raise a team of storytellers, people who can tell stories with anything, even just a pen

Her curriculum is sorted for 10 weeks. First she said 3 days, then she said, I didn't get here in 3 days

She has about 2,000 pieces of material studied over 12 to 15 years: headlines from magazines, speeches of presidents broken down into story, lines from movies

There is visual storytelling and stories with no words, pure silence. Most of the people who really practice them are gone

If you present briefly what you learned with time, the person learning becomes familiar with it but doesn't understand the depth, and then there is a decline

Illustration: the family house

Picture a family house where all the generations were together. Now the house is gradually becoming empty

Life as we know it is changing right under our nose and we are not paying attention. We hide by saying, don't worry, my children will be different

But they will be lonely. They will enter a world where their wholeness will look strange

So part of what they need to be educated in is the art of boldness and audacity, not minding being the outlier. You can be ostracized just for being the authentic one

A great dancer knows when to leave the stage. Once the audience is dropping, you know it is time to wrap up

Some people are one of a kind: Fela on the stage, Michael Jackson, the Undertaker leaving wrestling, Muhammad Ali

We are concerned about the last white rhino, and that it is just male. We are concerned that there are fewer than 2,000 tigers in the wild

But we ignore that some caliber of people are going into the last of their kind

Most times they leave the scene without reproducing themselves, because with loneliness comes pain, and when there is pain you can't replicate

That is why there should be mentorship and apprenticeship. Somebody should be able to carry on what you do

Ladi Kwali wasn't educated, yet she exhibited her works in London and taught university students around the world. I hope this woman is able to reproduce herself

Every great mentor tries to tell the mentees it is easy to become this. We try to do for them what only time can do

Illustration: goldsmithing and paper

When she learned goldsmithing to make jewelry, the lesson was that you cannot bully good work to happen quickly

Paper doesn't forgive you. Fold it one way, and you either trash it and start again or live with it

Every medium she works with teaches her something about life

Her concern is that more people should be able to do what she does. She developed a curriculum for university students of skills they would never learn in school but need for life

She has decided to give expression to every single thing she is capable of. The next generation needs it, and holding it is a disservice

Documenting what the elders know

Elders in their 70s and above have no documented material of the things they know

It was raised with an 81 year old mother and with a mother-in-law who has really nice recipes and just laughs and says, you people

There is a generation dying with what they know

Illustration: the woman who treats cancer

After recording a conversation with a woman, the moment the cameras were shut down, the host said, tell me the truth, you have been treating cancers

She looked at him and said, every cancer case that has been brought to me, I have cured

That single piece of information, as powerful as it was, could not be put out. Many of them know such things

Since our world prefers the shadow stuff, live with it

Leave disturbed

I want this conversation to leave you disturbed

I want it to leave us with the awareness that we might be seeing, right in front of us, the last of a kind in quick succession in different fields

Some leaders are the last of their kind. Some artists too

Usually that happens because of dishonor. Many great leaders don't like their home countries because they are not valued there, and they can't replicate

Even Jesus wasn't valued in his own place

AI might not replace you, but it can change the taste of your audience

As soon as that happens, the audience starts reducing. Eventually it doesn't matter how powerful your craft is. You might be alone in it, and it dies

It also reduces the quality of the people you can replicate yourself in