Sunday 31 July 2011

Psychological binds (and how to break them)

As I have said before, shamanism is all about breaking any hidden psychological binds by facing down the ultimate source of fear: death.

    • Jennifer Armstrong All the psychological binds we are in have their origins in primeval fear. Face down your fears and you will see what knots you'd tied yourself in.
      5 minutes ago ·
    • Jennifer Armstrong Anxious masculinity, wage slavery, keeping up with the Joneses: all psychological binds.
      4 minutes ago ·

Bataille's Nietzsche

NIETZSCHE: Let us not believe too quickly that now we have rid ourselves completely of such a logic of feeling. Let the most heroic souls question themselves about this. Every smallest step on the field of free thought and the individually formed life has always been fought for with spiritual and physical torments: not only moving forward, no, above all moving, motion, change http://www.yuga.com/Cgi/Pag.dl​l?Pag=125
www.yuga.com
Nietzsche - The Dawn Or Daybreak - Full


    • Jennifer Armstrong(CONTINUED)
      ‎....have required innumerable martyrs, all through the long path-seeking and basic millennia of which, to be sure, people don't think when they talk, as usual, about "world history," that ridiculously small segment of human existence. Andeven in this so-called world history, which is at bottom much ado about the latest news, there is no really more important theme than the primordial tragedy of the martyrs who wanted to move the swamps.
      56 minutes ago · · 1 person
    • Jennifer Armstrong In other words, if you are an advocate for real change, this is likely to affect you at the level of mental stability. Historical power shifts are relatively minor issues, by comparison.
      49 minutes ago ·
    • Jennifer Armstrong ‎...and this is basically what Bataille made much of in Nietzsche, with his notion of "transgression" as a form of sacrifice.
      11 minutes ago ·

Monday 25 July 2011

Disgruntled consumers

A problem, as I see it, is the pretty general consumer mentality. It enshrines extreme passivity (the role of the consumer or "taker" in society) as if it were the role that offered the most power.

So, whenever anybody wants to position themselves in a powerful way or draw attention to themselves, they play the role of a disgruntled consumer, which is really the role of a clown, when you look at it for a second.

This also explains the phenomenon of Internet trolls.

The anti-ideological nature of initiatory experience

Those who hold that social hierarchy has a purely rational basis operate on the basis of a  Just World Hypothesis.
I was also brought up to see the world in these terms.  They are quintessentially colonial terms by which one views reality.  That is where shamanism comes in.  It's teaches the opposite to this mode of valuation and hence imparts health giving insights.  One must overcome the neurosis of the Just World Hypothesis and stop reverencing the powerful and blaming the weak (and doing this in relation to oneself as well, so far as one considers oneself powerful or weak.)
Initiatory experience provides an entirely different basis for valuing oneself and for self esteem.  It confirm you as a valuable and fearless member of society on the basis of having looked the intimidation in the eye.
By contrast, those who do not understand the inner change that shamanistic initiation produces will continue to assert that if you've had to face your fears, there must be something wrong with you for having had them.  As we all have fears of some sort, this ideology shows itself to be inhuman and anti-human.

Sunday 24 July 2011

Rebecca Watson, Dawkins and metaphysics

I think atheists and those claiming to be skeptics will start to understand each other a lot better once they get their metaphysics out of their systems. I'm sure everybody thinks they are being quite 'rational' when they cast aspersions on women for their putative "emotionality", with assertions that follow along the pattern:
"You're getting things out of proportion!" [You, as a woman, are too emotional to understand reality as it actually is.]
"You are relying on a 'feminist faith'. "[You, as a woman, are too emotional to understand reality as it actually is.]
"You don't acknowledge and accept human sexuality!" [You, as a woman, are too emotional to understand reality as it actually is.]
"You need to grow up." [You, as a woman, are too emotional to understand reality as it actually is.]
"You need psychological treatment!" [You, as a woman, are too emotional to understand reality as it actually is.]

And so on.
Let me make it very plain: the idea that women have an essence that is defined by "emotion" is fundamentally a religious idea.

The idea that men have an essence that is defined by cool-headed reason and the lack of emotional bias is also a religious idea.

Western metaphysics is too crude to come to terms with complex sociological and scientific facts. Nonetheless, if you take an average human being and do the analysis on their general biological and specific neurological structures, you will find that all human beings, be they male or female, are both rational and emotional in ways that facilitate their survival in the world. If you want to learn about 'emotions' or 'feelings', study the work of Antonio Damasio, a neurologist who has a theoretical interest in this matter.

When atheists retain the old religious dogmas that human beings have particular essences, they do run into trouble and they do seem incredibly irrational. Not only that, but they fail to listen to each other. It's easier to take the old metaphysical pathway and dismiss anything we don't understand as being "emotional" (implying, "irrational".) It is very likely that the issues that came to a head with Dawkins' careless remarks directed at Watson were a result of his tacit reliance of metaphysics -- causing him to dismiss ideas he could not immediately grasp, as being "emotional", rather than taking the time to understand where someone was coming from.

After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave - a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. -And we- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
The Gay Science, s.108
-- Nietzsche


On the issue of Crazee.

From a discussion on Facebook:


I think there are those who are, in fact, biologically disposed to craziness. They used to be considered the medicine men and women of primeval cultures and they had an important role in the community as those who were thought to be in touch with the sacred. On the other hand, I think our current models of 'human nature' don't look at cause and effect of mental states well enough.


Much of the reason for this is because of the way that metaphysics affects our ability to understand the societies we live in. Let us say that we live within a hierarchy of power of some sort. Metaphysics states that "the good" is located above us, in the higher levels of the hierarchy, whereas those with nefarious character structures are those who are relatively disempowered at the lower levels of the hierarchy.


Once one has absorbed this implicit idea, it becomes nearly impossible to "see", much less imagine, how the behaviour or actions of those located higher up in the power system can cause damage or distress to those lower in the system. After all, "the good" (those with power) are surely only capable of causing "good" results, whereas those who are "bad" are more likely to cause their own problems in life. So, it becomes very confusing.


We don't understand cause and effect well enough yet, mostly because we don't want to.


UPDATED(expansion on the nature of cause and effect):


Those who have power in society (i.e. are not located in the lower levels of the social hierarchy) have a greater capacity for both good and harm than those who are lower down.

A capacity to achieve ongoing results will be systematized by one's place relative to the social hierarchy. Those who have power are thus those who have the greater capacity as causal agents of either good or harm. In a society where oppression is systematized -- for instance, where gender or race have implicit meanings concerning inferiority or superiority -- those who reinforce these social values are likely to be agents for harm.



As a general rule, those who are more likely to be damaged by power relations are at the lower levels of society, whereas those who are more likely to cause the damage are at the higher levels of society.



Despite this, the role of metaphysics in thinking is to confuse the direction of cause and effect, so that all "evil" seems to come from those who have long ago been disempowered, whereas all the potential for "good" is deemed to lie with those who already have substantial social power, but who do not however use it in the metaphysical ways --i.e "for good" -- as we like to imagine.

Nietzsche, Bataille, Zarathustra


Seeing Nietzsche through Bataille's eyes -- especially Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- you can see the sacrificial aspect to his thinking very clearly. Nietzsche believes that "fate", not human foibles, should determine every individual's destiny. But how does one develop enough personality to entice "fate" to take an interest in you?
3 minutes ago · Privacy: · ·
    • Jennifer Armstrong That is the problem Nietzsche sets himself in writing the book.
      3 minutes ago ·
    • Jennifer Armstrong ‎....and, ultimately, when "fate" does turn at last to take an interest, the results are inevitably tragic. This is what attracted Nietzsche.
      2 minutes ago ·
    • Jennifer Armstrong ‎"Fate" takes the place of the Christian deity and its interest in you is always negative (in the sense of using you as part of a negative dialectic against the trend of the whole). Thus, the motif of "sacrifice" in both Nietzsche and Bataille.
      2 seconds ago ·

Saturday 23 July 2011

Bataille as "Nietzsche"


I just found the part in Zarathustra where Nietzsche speaks of 'sin' as his great consolation. I had not quite realised how literal and precise Bataille's reading of Nietzsche could be.
3 hours ago · Privacy: · ·
    • Jennifer Armstrong He was always on about how to find one's way to oneself; how to become "what one is".
      3 minutes ago ·
    • Jennifer Armstrong In the case, of Nietzsche, the "doubling" of the self was in transcending shame. In the case of Bataille, it was in destroying one's bourgeois character structure in order to find a more genuine mode of experience in the immediacy. The difference is that Nietzsche believed in aristocracy, whereas Bataille knew he was oppressed by the bourgeoisie. Also, different historical eras.
      about a minute ago ·

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Nietzsche, Marechera and the herd

Someone wrote: "People who are Abused often become Perpetual Targets especially when they Speak Up. Even the Social Institutions react abusively. Something is wrong here Something Stinks."

To my mind, this points to the way that social organisations form an organic whole. More specifically, it is as if every person is no more than an cellular molecule within the organism of society as a whole. So, when something or someone is signified as "pathological", the whole immune system of society goes into attack mode, to remove that apparent foreign object. The thing is that this seems to be how society's systems of morality work. That which does not fit in is defined as pathological and expelled. Yet the definition of "pathological" is not independent of the way the system functions, but rather very much in relation to the social system works as a whole and, above all, the sorts of values and viewpoints that a particular system should promulgate in order to keep functioning in the same ways that it always does. In other words, systems (as a rule) are inherently conservative and will automatically move to defend themselves against devastating critique.

The subject of my thesis was labelled as schizophrenic, but whether that was a right or wrong label, I do see it as leading to a dismissal of much of his audacity and insights that were critical of various systems. It makes it easier to say: "Well, he was mad -- so his astute critiques were really ravings of a madman: we'll disregard his views so that we can carry on as normal."

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Winners don't win every time but they do win in the end

1. The world has always been tipping itself into shit (that is the way of the world, politically speaking) and we are at the brink with global warming. Look at how Japan has been clobbered and continues to be clobbered -- the 2nd most proficient industrialised nation on Earth. Nonetheless, there remain all sorts of natural liabilities that accrue for believing in lies, as well as liabilities for being a fighter against bullshit. In the end, the liars must succumb, as has been the case (in general, although not in every specific instance) throughout history.

2. The sense of "win" is in the sense of the contradictions within particular ideologies becoming self evident, more or less through a process of attrition over time. For instance, one cannot maintain a position of male superiority whilst being afraid of "emotion". That contradiction will weaken you and eventually, over a long period of time, grind you down.

3. On Western dichotomies:  Achieving greater emotional integration with the mind and body will tend to make one much more efficient without having to strive so much to get where one is going. It will simply happen by instinct.

The negative side of being an abuser of women

Many men who mouth "truisms" about women -- those that happen to have a political sting due to them -- are far from aware that these are weapons that have been tried out and tested against women for a couple of centuries.

Those men who do this obviously don't actually need to know the ins and outs of the philosophical arguments behind their rhetoric, nor do they even need to know HOW their rhetoric "works" to achieve its effect of silencing the voices that appear different from the norm. The deployment of such weapons is instinctive.

The fact that the majority of these men DO NOT understand how their barbs and arrows work is evident in the fact that they don't seem to realise the disadvantages involved in their chosen weapons. They understand (from watching other men) the advantages, well enough. But what is hidden from public view and what takes a longer time to have a result are the personal disadvantages of using anti-woman tactics. As I have investigated, these involve a reduced ability on the part of these men to deal with their own emotions, increasing paranoia, alienation and suspicion of women, whose actual motives (not those imputed to them by anti-woman ideologues) become harder and harder to understand, social and psychological dysfunction and general unhappiness in life. That's the down side (in the long term) of using oppression to make oneself feel good.

Monday 18 July 2011

Liberal men who claim to understand or embrace feminism

The problem with liberals who claim to be pro-feminist but actually are not is that they do not understand that what feminists are fighting against is a prejudicial SYSTEM. Many males who consider themselves pro-feminist are heavily imbued with gender essentialism. They have the attitude: "I will support her as a woman so long as she lives up to my standards and does not have the attributes of an hysterical lady. But if others bring on the heat, I will condemn her entirely, because, after all males are rational and women are emotional and she ought to be making more effort to embrace my standards."

Rebecca Watson's THE PRIVILEGE DELUSION

Check out the way that the notion of male rationality involves an ideology that lacks rational method.

>Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 08:51:49 +1000
>From: "Dooby"
>Hi MC,

>>
>>
>You ask for comments about Rebecca Watson's "
>DELUSION" post, so here are mine. I believe that my opinion is not
>motivated
>by any minority group bias, so I looked at this post with an open mind.
>>


Could your opinion be motivated by a majority group (rather than a
minority group) bias? Actually, there is no neutral position in this
world. Minds are only ever partly open, because it simply isn't possible
to operate within an ideological vacuum. At the very least, you bring
with you certain biases based upon your life's experiences (particularly
in terms of what are common or uncommon experiences for you). Education
or the lack of it and numerous other factors all work to give us "bias".
A completely open mind would be like a Zen state of nothingness -- good
for meditation, but not likely to produce any grist for your mill,
particularly in terms of stating strong opinions one way or another.


>>
>Firstly, I should add that I identified very strongly with the early
>feminist movement until it was infiltrated and over-run by the lunatic
>fringe - the fanatical misandrists. (This observation was shared by
>numerous
>female acquaintances of mine at the time).
>>
>

We'll take your word for it that there are women who busy themselves with
fanatical hatred of men. Your statement, of course, begs the question as
to what would motivate them. The hobby of hating men seems odd enough on
the surface of it.


>
>
>
>>
>Secondly, the entire post seems to be devoted to blatant male hatred and
>aimed at her radical feminist supporters. I didn't read ALL the posts,
>but
>there seems to be a clear lack of contrary or balanced views.
>>
>

I wonder if stating that many women feel uncomfortable with men is the
same a "blatant male hatred". I guess it might be, in some instances,
but those are not the instances Rebecca Watson mentioned in her article.
Rather, she speaks of how she has received: "More and more threats of
rape from those who don't agree with me, even from those who consider
themselves skeptics and atheists."
Okay -- so it seems that the threats of rape were not made by Rebecca
Watson herself (which would indicate "blatant male hatred" on her part),
but rather on the part of males against Rebecca Watson.

>
>>
>This recent post "I thought I detected the stench of the MRM in your
>posts.
>Good to know my nose for jerks is still infallible - nullifidian" is
>quite
>typical.
>
>


Men's Right's Movement? Men's Rights Magazine?


>
>
Another describes all the locations where she considers that it is
>not acceptable for males to approach a woman - "That includes places
>like:
>work, home, parking garages, elevators, shopping malls, gas stations,
>etc".
>This reminds me of an occasion, where a woman told me that I don't have
>the
>right to pat her cat which was rubbing its nose against my leg in a
>public
>park. These people are clearly control freaks in need of professional
>help.
>
>


The use of ad hoc psychiatric insinuations to put women down has a history
in the systematic discriminatory practices against women, through
patriarchal ideologies and institutions. It is as old (and unoriginal)
as can be: Cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria


>
>
>>
>Ms Watson claims to be a skeptic and that she was pushed into feminism -
>"I
>am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one". It seems to me
>that she has real issues with taking responsibility. "Skeptic" and
>"feminist" in the same sentence? Surely that's an oxymoron.
>>
>>
>

The idea that women have difficulty "taking responsibility" is directly
linked to the traditional hysteria accusation made against women who did
not conform to patriarchal mores of quietitude and subservience to males.
Indeed, they were thought to be incapable of "taking responsibility" for
their emotions -- thus, inviting the harshest of punitive discipline from
the patriarchal authorities.



http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/menalhealthandillness/womanandpsychiatry.aspx
>
>
>>
>She also describes how she went from someone who could "freely make rape
>jokes without fear of hurting someone who had been raped" and who "didn't
>mind getting hit on" to feeling offended that she was "being sexually
>objectified" by an invitation from a man in a lift at 4am in the morning.
>
>


She gives an example of how she is capable of learning from experience.
This might be termed, in other words, "taking responsibility" for one's
self development.

>
>
I
>can't help wondering how she would have reacted if the same invitation
>had
>been made by a woman. She seems to have real issues with her own
>sexuality.
>>
>


Pure fantasy. What about if the same invitation has been made by a unicorn? What would
she have "problems" with in that instance?


>
>
>>
>Well, I'll stop there. I have read enough of this rubbish. I believe that
>Richard Dawkins got it right. The invitation was made. She said no. End
>of
>story. Move on.
>>
>
:)
>
>
>
>>
>I acknowledge that it is crucial that we treat each other with dignity
>and
>respect, but that is a two-way street. To Ms Watson and her fanatical
>feminist flock, I say this. "Hello. like all successful life forms on
>this
>planet, humans are sexual beings. Get used to it"
>>
>


I'm sure with your careful tutelage and with the "help" of those like you,
she will, at last "get used to it". After all, what other choice could
she have?



>
>>
>Regards to all,
>>
>Dooby

Thursday 14 July 2011

MARECHERA AND HIS 'TWIN' BROTHER?:The Psychedelic Experience

The video about DNA and shamanism has been removed, but here is a quote from its blurb.


quote: "DNA is a single molecule with a double helix structure; it is two complementary versions of the same "text" wrapped around each other; this allows it to unwind and make copies of itself: twins! This twinning mechanism is at the heart of life since it began. Without it, one cell could not become two, and life would not exist. And, from one generation to the next, the DNA text can also be modified, so it allows both constancy and transformation. This means that beings can be the same and not the same. One of the mysteries is what drives the changes in the DNA text in evolution. DNA has apparently been around for billions of years in its current form in virtually all forms of life. The old theory—random accumulation of errors combined with natural selection—does not fully explain the data currently generated by genome sequencing. The question is wide open.

The structure of DNA as we know it is made up of letters and thus has a specific text and language. You could say our bodies are made up of language, yet we assume that speech arises from the mind. How do we access this hidden language?

By studying it. There are several roads to knowledge, including science and shamanism.

The symbol of the Cosmic Serpent, the snake, is a central theme in my story, and in your research you discover that the snake forms a major part of the symbology across most of the world's traditions and religions. Why is there such a consistent system of natural symbols in the world? Is the world inherently symbolic?"

Monday 11 July 2011

Identity truncated: a contemporary phenomenon

Even those who remain largely 'sincere' and earnest about their intellectual work often seem to have internalised bourgeois values to the extent that they seem genuinely incapable of grasping and processing a perspective that does not affirm the status quo (with the slightest deviation from it, only, being permissable). It's like the way that Samuel Beckett is most commonly understood, according to bourgeois values and expectations: the assumption is that we are "all" universally disintegrative and unable to fulfil our highest aspirations -- and that this is 'human nature'. In fact, Beckett was making fun of philosophical idealists and the way that substantive reality seems, like sand sifting through the fingers, to escape their grasp.

Alternatively, you have the faux radicalism of postmodernism -- a version of Christianity's 'name it and claim it': I THINK I am a radical revolutionary and therefore I am one.

Nobody is more hurt than a postmodernist if you deny their claim their identity ... due to adoption of a fragile philosophical position.

Saturday 9 July 2011

How anti-feminist males implicitly understand what women are saying (even better than the women themselves)but will not admit it.

What is significant about accusing a woman of "whining" is that it is a tacit admission of patriarchal guilt. I have learned from experience that women's voices, to the degree that they depart from announcing observations in line with convention, are nearly always considered to be "whining". It's an odd way to categorise a view that departs from the conventional, patriarchal perspectives. Whining is a particularly shrill form of "complaining". Yet, one does not complain in a vacuum. It must be supposed that there is something in place, let us say a system or organisation of power, that one must necessarily be "complaining" about. Only in the absence of such a a system or organisation would an observation be considered merely an observation, rather than a complaint.



Those who accuse women of "whining" are tacitly admitting that there is something there for them to "whine" about. That thing is patriarchal power. What an interesting confession.

Thursday 7 July 2011

A simple lesson in gender

What are generally understood to be "feminine" characteristics are those resulting from submission to paternalism (the nice face of patriarchy) and the need to knuckle down under harsh patriarchy

Take away the force of patriarchal repression and "feminine" characteristics will also not appear in the same light. Women will no longer be mild, deferential and resigned.

Liberalism is not radicalism and never will be

http://www.lexido.com/EBOOK_TEXTS/THUS_SPOKE_ZARATHUSTRA_.aspx?S=57

I think this relates to lizard brain thinking. This aspect of the mind defines belongingness versus outsiderness in terms of social norms and rituals. That mean that when one feels that one 'belongs'--i.e. when one feel justified -- one is probably employing mental mechanisms that project a state of being culpable onto outsiders (those who do not conform to the mores that make one feel justified and holy). Liberals are as guilty of this as anyone else, just in different ways. That's why I don't see liberalism as particularly useful or "radical". Rather, they are involved in what Nietzsche calls "moving the swamps" -- transferring their concept of evil from one place to another. That's about it in many cases.

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Freudianism versus intellectual shamanism

Shamanism is concerned with personal analysis of the world, to obtain intellectual knowledge (often this is based on understanding deep structures of being, gained through personal experience). Freudianism assumes that we are all the same and that any departure from normal behaviour (which would include not accepting the status quo as good and proper) is pathological.

Freudianism is the Leninism of the psychological depths. It is extremely authoritarian in terms of how it sets about dividing putative 'truth' from putative 'error'. It assumes that individuals cannot make their own way through any journey of discovery without the means of an authoritarian analyst who is presumed to have a ready-made matrix for interpreting what is true or what isn't. There is no room for genuinely open exploration.

As Nietzsche said, the herd thinks we already know what is good and evil. Woe to him who searches.

  • O my brothers! With whom lies the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just? - - As those who say and feel in their hearts: "We already know what is good and just, we possess it also; woe to those who still seek thereafter! And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the good is the harmful harm! And whatever harm the world maligners may do, the harm of the good is the harmful harm! O my brothers, into the hearts of the good and just looked someone once on a time, who said: "They are the Pharisees”. But people did not understand him. The good and just themselves were not free to understand him; their spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably wise. It is the truth, however, that the good must be Pharisees - they have no choice! The good must crucify him who devises his own virtue! That is the truth! The second one, however, who discovered their country - the country, heart and soil of the good and just - it was he who asked: "Whom do they hate most”? The creator, hate they most, him who breaks the tables and old values, the breaker - him they call the law breaker. For the good - they cannot create; they are always the beginning of the end: - They crucify him who writes new values on new tables, they sacrifice to themselves the future - they crucify the whole human future! The good - they have always been the beginning of the end. -
    2 seconds ago ·

Cultural barriers to objectivity