Monday 31 October 2011
what does it mean to experience shamanism?
llama :I have to admit I still don’t quite get what a shamanistic strategy is. I have read a fair amount of Jennifer Frances Armstrong writing (and always enjoy it). But don’t yet think I have a complete handle on the idea.
I really do think that you have to hit rock bottom in order to get it. You don't develop shamanistic strategies unless you have no other recourse and unless you are severely marginalised. And shamanistic strategies are the close cousin of pathology although they are arguably not pathological at all in that their intention is to produce redemption -- and in this they often succeed, if not in whole then at least in part.
In effect, shamanism is a strategic kind of madness -- a controlled madness. One allows oneself to go mad. One watches oneself go mad. But the madness is never out of control, but rather strategic, as a way of counteracting powerful political, military and other interests, that exert themselves directly on one's life.
The shamanistic "doubling" introduces a level of complexity into the psyche that makes one's behaviour hard to calculate and therefore one is less manageable and less able to be controlled by draconian authorities. One also gathers unusual perspectives in this way and it can open up the psyche to some very creative and innovative insights.
This article puts shamanism into fairly easy to understand, conventional terms:http://www.jstor.org/pss/3176383
But it is misleading, because shamanism is not a cultural category at all, but something that happens to the psyche, if the psyche is on the ropes and fighting for its life. It's a form of health obtained by the severely oppressed. It's not recognised as such, but that is what it is.
Status and religion in Western cultures
Let us start from the premise that in Western culture, “Emotions” are a hot potato, which everybody wants to get rid of. That’s because to be deemed “emotional” is to be considered to have lowly status and to need others to command you at their will. So everyone wants their emotions “validated” so they can be rid of them. To refuse to “validate” someone’s emotions is seen to indicate that one does not see oneself as being equal to the other person. One won’t take their emotions from them and pass them along to the next person. They’re stuck with these emotions and have no means to get rid of them (mainly because of not having learned any strategies to cope by being with oneself). I think it’s this seeming refusal to play along that upsets people. It’s also why many people seem to resort to projection, in order to get rid of their emotions. That’s a way of forcing you to accept the burden of their emotions whether you want to or not. The situation with the two people today was a case in point. I had a different perspective that was very much divorced from populist ideology, and this seems to have been offensive. Therefore, the two characters behaved as if I must accept the price for my independent views in being left to carry the hot potato of both of their emotions. Specifically, a philosophical position was imputed to me that I did not hold.
As regards US culture in particular, many who consider themselves to be advanced are always in a mode that they want to break free from religion and that this is the most radical thing for them imaginable -- the thing that takes the most courage; the really decisive act.
Unfortunately, their situation dominates their minds and interests so much that they can't even entertain the possibility that somebody like me had already broken free from a religious framework a very long time ago. It's like they're always trying to persuade me that I ought to do it.
I find this behaviour very presumptuous and one-eyed.
As regards US culture in particular, many who consider themselves to be advanced are always in a mode that they want to break free from religion and that this is the most radical thing for them imaginable -- the thing that takes the most courage; the really decisive act.
Unfortunately, their situation dominates their minds and interests so much that they can't even entertain the possibility that somebody like me had already broken free from a religious framework a very long time ago. It's like they're always trying to persuade me that I ought to do it.
I find this behaviour very presumptuous and one-eyed.
Sunday 30 October 2011
The precarious nature of existence
–everyone has a different “rock bottom” and it’s always interesting to find out what one’s is.
– people in the USA don’t know what poverty is, or how it is possible to survive it and be relatively happy, until they’ve visited parts of Africa.
– Zizek is right up to a point–there is a “system” in place that capitalises on anxiety and perpetuates it. If one grows up on television and takes the commercials to heart, one is never pretty/handsome enough, rich enough or poised enough to warrant self-satisfaction.
– many people are terrified because they associate a different meaning to reaching “rock bottom” than they ought to, when they encounter an absence of reified forms of consciousness.
– In Zimbabwe, since the majority of the population has hit “rock bottom”, they all pull together with a feeling of camaraderie and mirth (also a fair dosage of stoicism). But this concerns cultural differences, not just psychological differences between individuals.
– people in the USA don’t know what poverty is, or how it is possible to survive it and be relatively happy, until they’ve visited parts of Africa.
– Zizek is right up to a point–there is a “system” in place that capitalises on anxiety and perpetuates it. If one grows up on television and takes the commercials to heart, one is never pretty/handsome enough, rich enough or poised enough to warrant self-satisfaction.
– many people are terrified because they associate a different meaning to reaching “rock bottom” than they ought to, when they encounter an absence of reified forms of consciousness.
– In Zimbabwe, since the majority of the population has hit “rock bottom”, they all pull together with a feeling of camaraderie and mirth (also a fair dosage of stoicism). But this concerns cultural differences, not just psychological differences between individuals.
Saturday 29 October 2011
Friday 28 October 2011
Thursday 27 October 2011
Wednesday 26 October 2011
On being buried in a purple philanthropist's shirt | STAY SANE AND SAVAGE
On not being buried in a purple philanthropist's shirt
(why this is advisable)
~~~
How might life have ended for me in the colonial world?
Certainly, much of life would have been easier. Certainly I would not have become much of a hybrid: I would have been less of a monster, less of a dragon of the deep. My struggle with my not belonging kept me youthful. I refused the easiest way, the path of least resistance, which is the means to aging.
By that degree to which I resisted I am became Eternal Youth!
It hit me forcibly, that somehow I could have been the person I was supposed to have been – even though I’d been transposed.
It struck me also in a sweet-sick way, the way that I have layers–layers of skins for coping, layers of mental and of physical toughness ... dragon skin I didn't have before.
A woman died, (a woman that I knew), and then I heard she wanted to be buried in her philanthropist’s shirt! She was a nice woman, but it seemed like a flighty and unreal mystics dream, that she would make this gesture, outright, in this way… She confuses me. I could have ended up this way, in Africa.
Surely not, in the Western world, with all of its sophistication and all of its faux sophistication (vulgarity)?
I still have traces of the natural reticence that comes from being brought up well, and female, and in Africa. Forgetting anything that appeared malicious, going to the grave knowing as little as she did to start with, might have been my fate -- maybe more or less.
Could she have been me? What if I had never questioned anything, and what if the confusion of an almost completed maturity being thrown into a cultural disjunction was not mine?
Perhaps my parents may not have been so off the mark in trying to ensure the presentation of a perfect, purple corpse. I am sorry for her, in the purple shirt, I am. She was trying to say something like, “You people hold on there for me, and make the world a happy place – and try not to take any of this too, too seriously.”
I still have traces of the natural reticence that comes from being brought up well, and female, and in Africa. Forgetting anything that appeared malicious, going to the grave knowing as little as she did to start with, might have been my fate -- maybe more or less.
Could she have been me? What if I had never questioned anything, and what if the confusion of an almost completed maturity being thrown into a cultural disjunction was not mine?
Perhaps my parents may not have been so off the mark in trying to ensure the presentation of a perfect, purple corpse. I am sorry for her, in the purple shirt, I am. She was trying to say something like, “You people hold on there for me, and make the world a happy place – and try not to take any of this too, too seriously.”
My first burbling, adult cries: “What does this culture mean? What the fuck does this culture mean?” must have sounded like a death of innocence to them. The arithmetic measure of an adult's cry exceeds the childish cry only by decibels.
The punishments to evoke fear of ‘finding out’, lest the burg'ning female experience a death to innocence. What was never, ever clear, to the aforesaid burg’ning one was that knowledge could be bypassed – possibly by following the path of least resistance. To find an answer in connectedness by forging new relationships: such might have got around the need for knowledge; might have made everything feel right, no matter that the differences between one culture and another are.
From the point of view of feeling, change is less an issue: human beings appear to remain static. Only logic analyses and separates out: making them, and us, into separate entities with separate historical periods, and separate natures. How terrible must be the death of innocence, when things are no longer connected! How wonderful the religious state, which draws us all together, in a condition of amorphous feeling!
But – things never change for the religious mind-set: you can go to the grave as innocent as you were born!
She was amazing! – the purple-shirted woman: She must have had self control. She must have, for she kept on teaching right until just about the point when she died. But what was it that was eating her from within? Only a cancer?
(Or rather more besides?)
Sainthood is amazing. She must have gone all throughout her life, taking only very little for herself, giving out, always. Essentially passive, she put on the bravest of faces: She became a Stoic.
What for?
Females in my culture were necessarily Stoic. As "undeniably emotional" creatures, it was ‘the best they could obtain’. Those who have pain, and do not know how to express it, scream. Those who have a need to understand their lives, but do not know how to express it, relate their feelings incoherently. Without Knowledge, there is either Stoicism or -- uncontrolled emotions.
The men in my culture flattered themselves: As women aged, they were supposed to become more stoical, like "the male".
The fact is neither divided-from-themselves gender knew anything but that was because life was brilliant! For the most part, living off the fat of the land is not a hassle.
My life had been a product of indifference to this knowledge that grew somehow and inexplicably within my parents, into a fear of knowledge.
If only I had used my feeling sense, instead of intellect, I would have understood their “solution”, better. As it was, they expressed their fear of my intellectual growth in a way that was incoherent and un-Stoical:
by fifteen, I was mistress already of many Stoicisms.
~~~~~
~~~~~
Nietzsche's shamanistic doubling
Nietzsche says, in the preceding passages, I am a decadent and also the opposite of a decadent. He then says:
"This dual series of experiences, this access to apparently separate worlds, is repeated in my nature in every respect. I am a Doppelgänger, I have a "second" face in addition to the first. And perhaps also a third."
(Nietzsche, "Why I am so Wise", Ecce Homo, Vintage Books, p 225).
"This dual series of experiences, this access to apparently separate worlds, is repeated in my nature in every respect. I am a Doppelgänger, I have a "second" face in addition to the first. And perhaps also a third."
(Nietzsche, "Why I am so Wise", Ecce Homo, Vintage Books, p 225).
Tuesday 25 October 2011
From Belongingness to Modernity
When people think "What can she miss about Zimbabwe?" They cynically imagine it has to do with my ability to dominate others there, or to do with some kind of financial thing, whatever. The answer does not lie in the big issues. Rather one's sense of belongingness is invoked by the quality and nature of the breezes, by the kinds of greetings you receive, which somehow "makes sense", by smells and tastes which reawaken older experiences, and confirm them. So, we have an unconscious sense of self-continuity which doesn't need to forced or justified by reference to "big issues".
It is true -- I see environment and environmental memory as forming for nature of the self in a way that is generally overlooked. There is a lot of injustice in such overlooking.
Let us start from a simple fact. Whoever, you are, others will not have the same experiences as you. Words on paper do not always invoke similar experiences and memories. In that case, for you (but not necessarily for others), they are dead. One finds in the text only what is already within oneself through direct knowledge. The mundane–wind, smell , taste, an emotional sense of the particularity of a place can be shared through words, but first they must be experienced.
To prove that there is a special dimension to this invocation of the five senses, one would have to prove that industrial modernism and its tropes invoke more objective language when communication is at its most effective. The basis for possessing a self in such a late society then becomes more “metaphysical” , paradoxically enough, since identity comes to be based on an abstract matrix of ideas much more than on the concrete nature of one's experiences.
Trauma, shamanism, recovery
What is psychological trauma?
One who has been mauled by a particular kind of large dog may fear large dogs after the event. The chances are, the greater my trauma, the more my unconscious mind will generalize to include all the canine species as potential biters of my flesh. Perceiving similarities where there are none existing might help to ward off repetition of a trauma: on the other hand, one can also create self-fulfilling prophesies which retraumatize, especially if one reads a hostile intent, when there is originally none.
There are also those who are proactive in the attempts to cure themselves. According to Judith Lewis-Herman, they tend to try to repeat the circumstances which led up to their trauma, as this is an unconscious attempt to create a situation which would allow them to repeat what led up to the particular traumatic event with the hope of producing a different outcome, the next time. Indeed, what the victims of trauma seem to be looking for is to enter a situation which is similar enough to the traumatising situation to allow them to "re-write fate" , seemingly by achieving a positive memory this time, which overwrites the negative one -- the one which had done them so much harm as if it had been a perpetual thorn in the flesh.
Thus it would seem that people do often inadvertently recreate the psychological dynamics which harmed them, and it seems that often this reproduction of harmful events is caused by an unconscious seeking to replicate the situation in which they were first harmed -- a search which usually only produces more harm and retraumatization.
The question that remains about Herman's views concerns this tendency to retraumatize to find healing. Why does this happen? In my view, it is almost a feature of logic that one should attempt an overall psychological healing, by means of regressing into the past to heal what had been broken back then. We feel healthy only when we are whole, but trauma chips away at our capacity to close the circle with others. It prevents us from being able to relate both outwardly (by understanding others) and inwardly (by understanding one's self).
Shamanistic regression and restoration enables one to recover, by going back to the roots of Being, itself. One destroys the previous fabric of the self that had been traumatized and then starts a psychological rebuilding process. This rebuilding takes its time In my case, two years, during which time I needed more sleep than usual. A sense of emotional detachment from the original source trauma was my result.
One who has been mauled by a particular kind of large dog may fear large dogs after the event. The chances are, the greater my trauma, the more my unconscious mind will generalize to include all the canine species as potential biters of my flesh. Perceiving similarities where there are none existing might help to ward off repetition of a trauma: on the other hand, one can also create self-fulfilling prophesies which retraumatize, especially if one reads a hostile intent, when there is originally none.
There are also those who are proactive in the attempts to cure themselves. According to Judith Lewis-Herman, they tend to try to repeat the circumstances which led up to their trauma, as this is an unconscious attempt to create a situation which would allow them to repeat what led up to the particular traumatic event with the hope of producing a different outcome, the next time. Indeed, what the victims of trauma seem to be looking for is to enter a situation which is similar enough to the traumatising situation to allow them to "re-write fate" , seemingly by achieving a positive memory this time, which overwrites the negative one -- the one which had done them so much harm as if it had been a perpetual thorn in the flesh.
Thus it would seem that people do often inadvertently recreate the psychological dynamics which harmed them, and it seems that often this reproduction of harmful events is caused by an unconscious seeking to replicate the situation in which they were first harmed -- a search which usually only produces more harm and retraumatization.
The question that remains about Herman's views concerns this tendency to retraumatize to find healing. Why does this happen? In my view, it is almost a feature of logic that one should attempt an overall psychological healing, by means of regressing into the past to heal what had been broken back then. We feel healthy only when we are whole, but trauma chips away at our capacity to close the circle with others. It prevents us from being able to relate both outwardly (by understanding others) and inwardly (by understanding one's self).
Shamanistic regression and restoration enables one to recover, by going back to the roots of Being, itself. One destroys the previous fabric of the self that had been traumatized and then starts a psychological rebuilding process. This rebuilding takes its time In my case, two years, during which time I needed more sleep than usual. A sense of emotional detachment from the original source trauma was my result.
Nietzsche, Bataille, Marechera -- comparing shamanisms | STAY SANE AND SAVAGE
Comparing shamanisms: Nietzsche, Bataille, Marechera
The immense task of a contemporary shaman is to use all means available to discover how to survive a huge historical crisis that has ended up wounding his or her psyche. A modern shaman is generally one who has lived through sudden historical changes. The wounding of these changes compels deep and thorough investigation into the world as well as into the structure of one's psyche. The urgency and personal nature of this quest ultimately produces its fruit: profound insight into the nature of reality as well as access to means creative means of self-expression that are not available to those who haven't had to look so deeply.
A shaman is a wild person and so a socially marginal one – although not by virtue of his or her original nature, but based on a return to Nature, through shamanistic initiation. He is not civilised, in the narrow sense by which Nature and Civilisation are seen to be at odds. Rather, he uses knowledge of Nature in order to enhance and prolong his own life, and to endure Civilisation. Thus one can compare Nietzsche's and Bataille's shamanism, as imparting very different strategies for shamanistic survival, on the basis of knowledge that has been obtained more or less in shamanistic ways (that is, via an ecstatic experience).
Looking at it in this way, Nietzsche took his shamanism towards patriarchy and towards master race domination, which Bataille's approach managed to correct -- but not in time to save Nietzsche's reputation. Survival of a shaman is based upon the ability to innovate a solution to existential dilemmas as they present themselves. The paradigm that Nietzsche chose -- that of transcendence -- gave him fewer options for creative innovation in solving life's problems as compared to the one opted for by Bataille.
To transcend the body is to risk social and psychological rigidity, as one departs further and further from the source of psychological nurturing. Aiming to enhance one's feeling of power (equated with a sense of intoxication) was an alternative means by which Nietzsche expected to gain a sense of revivification for his mind and body. Yet to descend into the body -- as Bataille did -- was to descend into this base, and to be nurtured by the very source of Being, itself.
Marechera's shamanic solution was to perpetuate his inwards survival in a way very similar to that of Bataille, in opting for immanence rather than for transcendence as a method to draw in vitality. It was a risk, but a calculated one -- since the dregs of society provide more exposure to the raw substance of immediate reality than do those who live aloof, respectable, and above the thronging crowds. His capacity to live homeless, on the streets, was certainly reflective of his capacity for shamanic innovation.
He had the capacity to dissociate, if need be, and the well developed inner self knowledge that would enable him to know best how to distract himself with entertaining stories. Yet to live in such objectively desperate circumstances for too long would deplete even an experienced shaman's inner resources. Thus the practical limits of everyday life represent a realistic limit to the fundamental shamanic principle of trying to influence reality to the point that it bends to one's requirements.
Nietzsche had already gone too far in trying to perpetuate his own survival when he tried to develop a system of gender relations that would have robbed women of their agency. He was not able to perceive that this approach no longer was in line with his original principle of transcendence, but represented a descent towards a pre-Oedipal (very early childhood) type of arrangement of male symbiotic union with women, as in the psychological situation of the mother and child.
To make women into symbiotic "part objects" for the sake of masculine supremacy -- which would have been the consequence of his approach, when generalised socially and politically -- would have compromised the shamanic masculinity, by making of it a kind of childishness and dependency. For the pre-Oedipal structure of relationship, whereby one is nurtured and the other gives the breast, is a quintessential example of extreme immanence.
Far better to aim for immanence and nurturing to begin with, as Marechera and Bataille actually did. At least each of them were shaman enough not to remain at this level, but to utilise their experiences of immanence in order to develop their creativity and schemes of thought.
The immense task of a contemporary shaman is to use all means available to discover how to survive a huge historical crisis that has ended up wounding his or her psyche. A modern shaman is generally one who has lived through sudden historical changes. The wounding of these changes compels deep and thorough investigation into the world as well as into the structure of one's psyche. The urgency and personal nature of this quest ultimately produces its fruit: profound insight into the nature of reality as well as access to means creative means of self-expression that are not available to those who haven't had to look so deeply.
A shaman is a wild person and so a socially marginal one – although not by virtue of his or her original nature, but based on a return to Nature, through shamanistic initiation. He is not civilised, in the narrow sense by which Nature and Civilisation are seen to be at odds. Rather, he uses knowledge of Nature in order to enhance and prolong his own life, and to endure Civilisation. Thus one can compare Nietzsche's and Bataille's shamanism, as imparting very different strategies for shamanistic survival, on the basis of knowledge that has been obtained more or less in shamanistic ways (that is, via an ecstatic experience).
Looking at it in this way, Nietzsche took his shamanism towards patriarchy and towards master race domination, which Bataille's approach managed to correct -- but not in time to save Nietzsche's reputation. Survival of a shaman is based upon the ability to innovate a solution to existential dilemmas as they present themselves. The paradigm that Nietzsche chose -- that of transcendence -- gave him fewer options for creative innovation in solving life's problems as compared to the one opted for by Bataille.
To transcend the body is to risk social and psychological rigidity, as one departs further and further from the source of psychological nurturing. Aiming to enhance one's feeling of power (equated with a sense of intoxication) was an alternative means by which Nietzsche expected to gain a sense of revivification for his mind and body. Yet to descend into the body -- as Bataille did -- was to descend into this base, and to be nurtured by the very source of Being, itself.
Marechera's shamanic solution was to perpetuate his inwards survival in a way very similar to that of Bataille, in opting for immanence rather than for transcendence as a method to draw in vitality. It was a risk, but a calculated one -- since the dregs of society provide more exposure to the raw substance of immediate reality than do those who live aloof, respectable, and above the thronging crowds. His capacity to live homeless, on the streets, was certainly reflective of his capacity for shamanic innovation.
He had the capacity to dissociate, if need be, and the well developed inner self knowledge that would enable him to know best how to distract himself with entertaining stories. Yet to live in such objectively desperate circumstances for too long would deplete even an experienced shaman's inner resources. Thus the practical limits of everyday life represent a realistic limit to the fundamental shamanic principle of trying to influence reality to the point that it bends to one's requirements.
Nietzsche had already gone too far in trying to perpetuate his own survival when he tried to develop a system of gender relations that would have robbed women of their agency. He was not able to perceive that this approach no longer was in line with his original principle of transcendence, but represented a descent towards a pre-Oedipal (very early childhood) type of arrangement of male symbiotic union with women, as in the psychological situation of the mother and child.
To make women into symbiotic "part objects" for the sake of masculine supremacy -- which would have been the consequence of his approach, when generalised socially and politically -- would have compromised the shamanic masculinity, by making of it a kind of childishness and dependency. For the pre-Oedipal structure of relationship, whereby one is nurtured and the other gives the breast, is a quintessential example of extreme immanence.
Far better to aim for immanence and nurturing to begin with, as Marechera and Bataille actually did. At least each of them were shaman enough not to remain at this level, but to utilise their experiences of immanence in order to develop their creativity and schemes of thought.
Sunday 23 October 2011
Social and psychological structures, based on metaphysics
Consider how effectively the one from a competitive egoistic culture subsumes the other in the following dialogue. The one from another culture speaks of something that they do not know, but this is turned into a claim of superiority in the mind of the individualistic thinker:
But, the cultural egoist won't hear of any 'not knowing'.
The cultural egoist instead demands (according to the logic of his matrix) that the cultural outsider should "take responsibility" for what she or he hadn't originally chosen: that is, to take responsibility for his inability to understand the cultural egoist's culture. The cultural outsider is therefore stymied by the complexity and blame-inducing logic of this cultural egoist thought.
The cultural egoist wants the outsider to believe that her actual innocent lack of knowledge is really just a sneaky way for him (the outsider) to stake his claim to be someone superior. So, the outsider learns from this that she or he ought to express their thoughts only after considering what would logically make sense to a cultural egoist. Once this has happened, the outsider has been swallowed whole by the egoist's cultural matrix!
Once she or he has been eaten up entirely, the outsider automatically understands that it is important to reformulate one's thoughts and ideas to comply with narrow cultural egoistic conceptions about himself and others.
"I come from a different culture. I don't know your ways."
"What makes you so special that you choose to stand out from others?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'special'. I don't know your ways."
"You're trying to say you're better than us!"
"How can I be better? What does it even mean?! I don't know your ways."
"You're demonstrating your individualism in a defiant way by choosing not to know things!"
"What things!? I don't know your ways."
"You are an individual who thinks they are superior."
"I didn't say that."
But, the cultural egoist won't hear of any 'not knowing'.
The cultural egoist instead demands (according to the logic of his matrix) that the cultural outsider should "take responsibility" for what she or he hadn't originally chosen: that is, to take responsibility for his inability to understand the cultural egoist's culture. The cultural outsider is therefore stymied by the complexity and blame-inducing logic of this cultural egoist thought.
The cultural egoist wants the outsider to believe that her actual innocent lack of knowledge is really just a sneaky way for him (the outsider) to stake his claim to be someone superior. So, the outsider learns from this that she or he ought to express their thoughts only after considering what would logically make sense to a cultural egoist. Once this has happened, the outsider has been swallowed whole by the egoist's cultural matrix!
Once she or he has been eaten up entirely, the outsider automatically understands that it is important to reformulate one's thoughts and ideas to comply with narrow cultural egoistic conceptions about himself and others.
The shamanistic cure must sometimes wait
Supposing that, like Socrates, I had been "a long time sick" -- it was Western metaphysics alone, that had made me so. The idea that "the individual" is responsible and to blame for anything that happens to them was the cause of my distress. I had internalized too much blame for the political disruption in my life that had led to me having to start all over again, in a different country, at the age of 15. The cure I found for the Western metaphysics that I had inadvertently internalized was shamanism.
To obtain a shamanistic cure, one has to let go of one's need for control over the circumstances of life, even though this is the last thing one wants to do. In fact one may not be able to do so, immediately after a disastrous event, when the power of the event threatens to annihilate one's very sense of self. (The fact that the victim blames himself or herself straight after the event is an attempt at first aid recovery: the victim intrinsically knows that it's more important, at this early traumatized stage, to restore a feeling of control than to be considered right or wrong. Once the ego is much stronger and a sense of control has been restored, a shamanistic cure can be tried.) The curative power of shamanism is in the realization that the world has no moral structure. By gaining experiential (rather than intellectual) knowledge of this, one is released from feeling guilty or ashamed as a result of events that were outside of your control.
While it is noble to take on the responsibility for event not of one's making, this attitude of mind wears one down. It is far better to understand who one is, without this heavy emotional baggage -- which one only accepts as a means to trick oneself that one has full control, when one hasn't.
To obtain a shamanistic cure, one has to let go of one's need for control over the circumstances of life, even though this is the last thing one wants to do. In fact one may not be able to do so, immediately after a disastrous event, when the power of the event threatens to annihilate one's very sense of self. (The fact that the victim blames himself or herself straight after the event is an attempt at first aid recovery: the victim intrinsically knows that it's more important, at this early traumatized stage, to restore a feeling of control than to be considered right or wrong. Once the ego is much stronger and a sense of control has been restored, a shamanistic cure can be tried.) The curative power of shamanism is in the realization that the world has no moral structure. By gaining experiential (rather than intellectual) knowledge of this, one is released from feeling guilty or ashamed as a result of events that were outside of your control.
While it is noble to take on the responsibility for event not of one's making, this attitude of mind wears one down. It is far better to understand who one is, without this heavy emotional baggage -- which one only accepts as a means to trick oneself that one has full control, when one hasn't.
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.
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.
Marechera's philosophy
When I was a child I played childishly; when I became a man I put away the ghost of literary thought that stuffed me with attitudes in my student days. What is it, this vast room we call the sky; these endless miles of reality thickly knit with grit? The waiter must stretch his lips if he wants to get tips. We stand each to each like sides of rock once quarried mercilessly by blind Victorian adventurers who only sought the few gold veins in us. They have extracted the best part of our being and left us like this. I woke up long ago this morning with aches and pains in all the things I took for granted. This desperate tinder becomes youth. Even the death certificate is not quite like me, said Lazarus when he came out of the tomb. Things always happen in the worst possible way, however hard one tries to unbend them. I can never look a rational thought straight in the eyes. Hate me if you wish, but not too offensively. And there I was yesterday hammering the typewriter keys with a worldliness not of this world. Thoughts like claws must be sheathed. Something always happens to show us how blind we really are. This is not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can imagine. We cannot all afford the luxury of self-disgust but someone has to do the dirty work. That means -- me. My hunger has stamina enough. My actions are always my fault though my thought would plead otherwise. Attitudes--attitudes.
Saturday 22 October 2011
Friday 21 October 2011
Marechera's childhood
I think that’s largely true about parenting being more violent or fraught in non-Western countries. Here is an autobiographical segment from a much longer poem by the writer I studied, whose childhood was assaulted by parental death, prostitution and the projection of an evil spirit into the son, who was valued less for being “intellectual”.
He lost his arms, his legs, his trunk
All that remained was from the neck upwards
Grinning sheepishly, apologetically
He was a poem pared down to its essentials
Grinning sheepishly, apologetically, honest!
His father died in primary school
His father rose again to run the factory
Turning on his bicycle the axis of the moon
Turning in his sleep, this endless sweep of stars
Aphrodite sealed between two sides of the coin
Is it your shrieks I hear when my gold jingles?
Sword-bearing arm cleaves day’s placid leg
I cannot bear all thought to food
In the bucket is whitewash enough
To make our world realistic
“But you can’t love your sister that way!”
In every dustbin, in every rubbish heap
A teacher pleading innocence
Pleading ignorance.
He lost his arms, his legs, his trunk
All that remained was from the neck upwards
Grinning sheepishly, apologetically
He was a poem pared down to its essentials
Grinning sheepishly, apologetically, honest!
His father died in primary school
His father rose again to run the factory
Turning on his bicycle the axis of the moon
Turning in his sleep, this endless sweep of stars
Aphrodite sealed between two sides of the coin
Is it your shrieks I hear when my gold jingles?
Sword-bearing arm cleaves day’s placid leg
I cannot bear all thought to food
In the bucket is whitewash enough
To make our world realistic
“But you can’t love your sister that way!”
In every dustbin, in every rubbish heap
A teacher pleading innocence
Pleading ignorance.
On the importance of.
Part of what bullying is would be the perception of bullying. There are various cultural, economic and social factors that can insulate one against the perception of bullying, thus making it seem to have no impact. For instance it seems that according to contemporary values and perceptions, I must have been bullied a lot as a child, but I had no particular perception of that. I was often in a protective bubble of the society of my classmates or else in the sense of being culturally detached and not aware of very much that interested other people. Yet from an American point of view, certainly, I would say, many experiences in my life constituted being bullied.
To reflect over my life, I have only ever been susceptible to actually feeling like I’m being bullied when I have lost any protective bubble and I am intent on being earnest. Earnestness is perhaps American too. I don’t feel that I have any cultural business being earnest.
To reflect over my life, I have only ever been susceptible to actually feeling like I’m being bullied when I have lost any protective bubble and I am intent on being earnest. Earnestness is perhaps American too. I don’t feel that I have any cultural business being earnest.
Lacan's term, "castration": an exploration
Reading Freud and Lacan, it seems as if the exists a magnetic force that compels conformity, within late industrial culture, which takes the form of a the longing for a power from which one has become dissociated. This power may be conceptualized as a sense of wholeness and consequent self-enjoyment. The name given to this dissociation from power is "castration". The name given to the subjective feeling for this elusive quality of power is "the phallus".
This is at least how it looks from a perspective already enmeshed in late industrial (or some would say "post-industrial" culture). How we got there is another matter. That has to do with a long history of repression of one's drives (not just sexual drives) and the way that Judeo-Christian ideology has been instrumental in assisting this development. Lest one think I am impugning any particular group in naming the nature of the problem, Judeo-Christian, Nietzsche makes a point of indicating that the historical development of repression that occurred in the West also occurred in India. The name he gives to this global, historical development and its logic is "the ascetic ideal".
In the West, the ideology of "original sin" has a predominant place in the culture, so that the wish to get rid of aspects of oneself that smack of too much spontaneity or "instinct" permeates most of society. The deadening effect of the "ascetic ideal" is explicitly what Nietzsche opposes, as indeed he opposes anything with a "theological instinct" in it.
The direction in which Freud takes the ascetic ideal is complex. In some ways, his work represents a loosening of asceticism: we may now talk about sex more openly, after Freud. On the other hand, he and Lacan both keep a heavy remainder of the old, theological heritage, in that they keep up various rites of purification, where in general the natural state of childhood is considered to be fraught with "psychosis" so that there is a corresponding need for purification. My view is that the Freudian. and above all Lacanian. attribution of "psychosis" to early childhood states is a scientific reworking of the idea of "original sin" along Judeo-Christian lines. This statement does not discount that alienating the instincts might have been necessary for civilisation as we know it to have come into being. Indeed, all the evidence points to this Alienated instincts served a religious purpose.
This brings me to a rather different point: what one can estimate from this is that in terms of the cultural conditions Freud and Lacan are describing, there is a conventional and normative cultural dissociation from power, which takes place in everybody's lives, under the force of the culturally conditioned norms.
"Dissociation" may be the most apt term to use here, as it conforms with the idea that one is psychologically detached from that which one originally had. Thus one is inducted into "civilisation" as one dissociates from the immediate access to the pleasures of one's youth, into a cultural system of delayed gratification. One dissociates, as it were, from connections to the immediate environment and relationships of mutual pleasure that one used to have as a child. This dissociation is known castration, which is a symbolic (although also deeply psychological -- hence, real) gateway to induction into 'normal' adult life. It denotes conformity and self-abnegation.
However, it also implies an adult ego -- an ego centred approach to life, and not a decentred childish one, which expects the very environment (echoing the same form as the mother's breast) to sustain one, nurturing one with ecstatic visions and nourishing insights.
Not to be "castrated" pertains to the so-called "primitive" man who the colonial ethno-psychiatrists often disparagingly analysed and speculated upon. Contra Lacan, though, the uncastrated man (or woman) does not have a problem with speaking language. (They are not the ones who have been weaned within a Modernist pressure cooker of harsh moral lines by being impressed upon about the last necessity of Order.) The "primitive" seems from an overtly civilized and rationally constrained viewpoint to be all too connected with his natural environment and does not long for anything different. Carothers, one of the ethno-psychiatrists of the 40s thought that "Africans' strong religious sense came from living close to nature." [p 54--McCulloch).
According to Jock McCulloch [in Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind], Carothers also felt that the "African personality [displayed] some notable parallels with that of the schizophrenic. By European standards Africans lived in a world of fantasy. Rather than observing their environment in a detached or scientific way, they projected their own qualities and emotions onto the world about them. For Africans, all matter, both animate and inanimate, had a spirit." [ p 52]
The above sounds quite damning, until you realise that this is the natural state of man (and woman), to be connected with his natural environment, and not to long for a form of power that is non-existent. To project one's own power into the environment is to receive psychic nourishment from that very environment, as a form of cyclical replenishment. One is not castrated by this experience. Yet to deny the sense of one's own power to receive nourishment from the environment is to accept castration. Henceforth that which is natural -- or as it is then felt to be, "merely" natural -- can no longer serve to sustain one in one's mind and soul. Historical movement from primitive (uncastrated) man to cultural (castrated) man is one that denies the subject his replenishment from the very roots -- or base -- of being. Instead, he has come to understand that self replenishment can only come from as it were "above" -- from those who represent power itself, within organised society.
In current late industrial society, one must dissociate to a large degree from one's instincts to fit in. Nonetheless, this leads to all sorts of complications in the mind as well as in the body-politic of society. Accustomed dissociation is directly connected to that which Lukacs terms "reification" -- a state of alienation from power that reverses cause and effect, giving libidinous energy to abstract concepts such as "God" and "societal norms", so that they seem to have a right to command us.
This is at least how it looks from a perspective already enmeshed in late industrial (or some would say "post-industrial" culture). How we got there is another matter. That has to do with a long history of repression of one's drives (not just sexual drives) and the way that Judeo-Christian ideology has been instrumental in assisting this development. Lest one think I am impugning any particular group in naming the nature of the problem, Judeo-Christian, Nietzsche makes a point of indicating that the historical development of repression that occurred in the West also occurred in India. The name he gives to this global, historical development and its logic is "the ascetic ideal".
In the West, the ideology of "original sin" has a predominant place in the culture, so that the wish to get rid of aspects of oneself that smack of too much spontaneity or "instinct" permeates most of society. The deadening effect of the "ascetic ideal" is explicitly what Nietzsche opposes, as indeed he opposes anything with a "theological instinct" in it.
The direction in which Freud takes the ascetic ideal is complex. In some ways, his work represents a loosening of asceticism: we may now talk about sex more openly, after Freud. On the other hand, he and Lacan both keep a heavy remainder of the old, theological heritage, in that they keep up various rites of purification, where in general the natural state of childhood is considered to be fraught with "psychosis" so that there is a corresponding need for purification. My view is that the Freudian. and above all Lacanian. attribution of "psychosis" to early childhood states is a scientific reworking of the idea of "original sin" along Judeo-Christian lines. This statement does not discount that alienating the instincts might have been necessary for civilisation as we know it to have come into being. Indeed, all the evidence points to this Alienated instincts served a religious purpose.
This brings me to a rather different point: what one can estimate from this is that in terms of the cultural conditions Freud and Lacan are describing, there is a conventional and normative cultural dissociation from power, which takes place in everybody's lives, under the force of the culturally conditioned norms.
"Dissociation" may be the most apt term to use here, as it conforms with the idea that one is psychologically detached from that which one originally had. Thus one is inducted into "civilisation" as one dissociates from the immediate access to the pleasures of one's youth, into a cultural system of delayed gratification. One dissociates, as it were, from connections to the immediate environment and relationships of mutual pleasure that one used to have as a child. This dissociation is known castration, which is a symbolic (although also deeply psychological -- hence, real) gateway to induction into 'normal' adult life. It denotes conformity and self-abnegation.
However, it also implies an adult ego -- an ego centred approach to life, and not a decentred childish one, which expects the very environment (echoing the same form as the mother's breast) to sustain one, nurturing one with ecstatic visions and nourishing insights.
Not to be "castrated" pertains to the so-called "primitive" man who the colonial ethno-psychiatrists often disparagingly analysed and speculated upon. Contra Lacan, though, the uncastrated man (or woman) does not have a problem with speaking language. (They are not the ones who have been weaned within a Modernist pressure cooker of harsh moral lines by being impressed upon about the last necessity of Order.) The "primitive" seems from an overtly civilized and rationally constrained viewpoint to be all too connected with his natural environment and does not long for anything different. Carothers, one of the ethno-psychiatrists of the 40s thought that "Africans' strong religious sense came from living close to nature." [p 54--McCulloch).
According to Jock McCulloch [in Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind], Carothers also felt that the "African personality [displayed] some notable parallels with that of the schizophrenic. By European standards Africans lived in a world of fantasy. Rather than observing their environment in a detached or scientific way, they projected their own qualities and emotions onto the world about them. For Africans, all matter, both animate and inanimate, had a spirit." [ p 52]
The above sounds quite damning, until you realise that this is the natural state of man (and woman), to be connected with his natural environment, and not to long for a form of power that is non-existent. To project one's own power into the environment is to receive psychic nourishment from that very environment, as a form of cyclical replenishment. One is not castrated by this experience. Yet to deny the sense of one's own power to receive nourishment from the environment is to accept castration. Henceforth that which is natural -- or as it is then felt to be, "merely" natural -- can no longer serve to sustain one in one's mind and soul. Historical movement from primitive (uncastrated) man to cultural (castrated) man is one that denies the subject his replenishment from the very roots -- or base -- of being. Instead, he has come to understand that self replenishment can only come from as it were "above" -- from those who represent power itself, within organised society.
In current late industrial society, one must dissociate to a large degree from one's instincts to fit in. Nonetheless, this leads to all sorts of complications in the mind as well as in the body-politic of society. Accustomed dissociation is directly connected to that which Lukacs terms "reification" -- a state of alienation from power that reverses cause and effect, giving libidinous energy to abstract concepts such as "God" and "societal norms", so that they seem to have a right to command us.
Thursday 20 October 2011
The religious psychology leading to doom and failure
Paul Tiderman :
@scratchy888: The Christian (and probably Jewish, as well) idea that men are in authority over women goes back to the garden of Eden. Because Eve allowed herself to be deceived by the serpent (Satan), she would experience pain in childbirth, her desire would be toward her husband, and he would rule over her…
Jennifer:I have already made intensive analyses of what this psychodynamic means, my lady. (If my addressing you in this way offends you — ask yourself why. After all, apparently “ladies” are exactly equal to males, under Christ.) The Judeo-Christian ideology simply justifies that men get to project the nasty parts of their psyches onto women, who are deemed to be worthy only of suffering. It also explains why Judeo-Christian men act nothing but surprised when they are rejected for abusive projective identification. (They almost never see that inevitable rejection slip coming!)
And why don’t they? Because they think they’ve worked out a “deal” with the Lord Almighty, whereby they get to treat women according to what patriarchy deems to be “their nature” and women are obliged to love them all the same.
A logical contradiction in terms, my dear lady!
@scratchy888: The Christian (and probably Jewish, as well) idea that men are in authority over women goes back to the garden of Eden. Because Eve allowed herself to be deceived by the serpent (Satan), she would experience pain in childbirth, her desire would be toward her husband, and he would rule over her…
Jennifer:I have already made intensive analyses of what this psychodynamic means, my lady. (If my addressing you in this way offends you — ask yourself why. After all, apparently “ladies” are exactly equal to males, under Christ.) The Judeo-Christian ideology simply justifies that men get to project the nasty parts of their psyches onto women, who are deemed to be worthy only of suffering. It also explains why Judeo-Christian men act nothing but surprised when they are rejected for abusive projective identification. (They almost never see that inevitable rejection slip coming!)
And why don’t they? Because they think they’ve worked out a “deal” with the Lord Almighty, whereby they get to treat women according to what patriarchy deems to be “their nature” and women are obliged to love them all the same.
A logical contradiction in terms, my dear lady!
Wednesday 19 October 2011
Tuesday 18 October 2011
The north eastern wilderness of Zimbabwe
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| From October 19, 2011 |
Should you click over the image, you will see the video.
BREAK FREE SELF DEFENCE COURSES
 |
| From October 19, 2011 |
Should you click over the image, you will see the video.
Identity as a political structure of manipulation
“Where are you from?’ people have asked me.
“Zimbabwe.”
“Oh! South Africa!”
Well, no. That’s a different country. It’s far more industrialized than Zimbabwe and has a rather different history and an altogether different set of ethnic groups in it.
The tendency to assume Zimbabwe is part of a totally different state seems to have had to do with ideological warfare, which also had a psychological warfare component. Since South Africa was more prominent in the world media during the 70s, those who fought the war against colonialism in Zimbabwe also altered their language to make it seem as if this was part of the resistance to apartheid in South Africa. When asked who they were fighting, they said, “the Boers”. Except they weren’t fighting “the Boers” (Afrikaaaners, who live in the more southern State). They were fighting the English colonialists. Nonetheless, it made it almost impossible for those in Australia to differentiate between somewhat different states in Southern Africa. Also, the manipulation of image, so that ‘the Boers” appeared to be the most vicious colonialists, led to people subscribing to a kind of mythology rather than fact. There are, for instance, many very left wing “Boers” who resisted colonialism, but those in Australia who have a rather hackneyed and moralistic view of “identity” are likely to attack on sight — or upon hearing a particular accent.
Attitudes to language that play tricks.
A problem with Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge is that if it is taken to be somehow correct, then it circumscribes the asking of a very necessary question, at times, which is, "What do you mean by that?" I suppose that this question is theoretically made redundant because the answer to the question is supposedly already entailed in the whatever statement is given, which is itself constructed through theoretically objectifiable and theoretically transparent historical forces. Yet the failure to ask "What do you mean by that?" is a failure to recognise how much of our meanings are constructed not by some objectively determining matrix "out there" (but automatically "in here" as well). Rather, it is the similarity or otherwise of our experiences which enable us to understand the nuances of another's meanings, if at all. Many philosophical paradigms, including Lacan's, rely upon the supposition that we all share a homogeneous culture to begin with. Therefore, we all know implicitly what another person means, as does the unconscious mind of person asking the question, even the person seems to lack the relevant knowledge (which is why he is asking the question in the first place).
To illustrate my point. Supposing one is traveling through Indonesia for the first time. He says: "Could you tell me how to get to the bank?" The Indonesian stranger stares through the Western stranger, thinking: "If he really didn't know how to get to a bank, why did he use the term bank, as if it had any meaning?"
Here there is common failure to understand what is being said, but also a lack of recognition of this failure on the part of the Indonesian man. This is exemplified by my recent talks with one significant other, who always fails to ask "What precisely is your meaning? -- Is it this experience you have had, or that?" Instead, he bumbles on, assuming that any experience is somehow universal, at least in terms of its expression. Obviously, he's wrong, for what feminism means to me cannot be what it means to him. He could only come to a practical approximation of its meaning for me if he was willing to use analogies and metaphors which could relate it to something in his own life.
Language is far from objectively determinable -- for it to appear to be so depends upon an underlying similarity of context and experiences, to start with. If people do not understand this, then the role of experiences in forming our expressions is materially underestimated. This leads, in turn, to a grey and pallid existence, wherein everyone is assumed to be speaking the same language, but personal experiences don't matter.
To illustrate my point. Supposing one is traveling through Indonesia for the first time. He says: "Could you tell me how to get to the bank?" The Indonesian stranger stares through the Western stranger, thinking: "If he really didn't know how to get to a bank, why did he use the term bank, as if it had any meaning?"
Here there is common failure to understand what is being said, but also a lack of recognition of this failure on the part of the Indonesian man. This is exemplified by my recent talks with one significant other, who always fails to ask "What precisely is your meaning? -- Is it this experience you have had, or that?" Instead, he bumbles on, assuming that any experience is somehow universal, at least in terms of its expression. Obviously, he's wrong, for what feminism means to me cannot be what it means to him. He could only come to a practical approximation of its meaning for me if he was willing to use analogies and metaphors which could relate it to something in his own life.
Language is far from objectively determinable -- for it to appear to be so depends upon an underlying similarity of context and experiences, to start with. If people do not understand this, then the role of experiences in forming our expressions is materially underestimated. This leads, in turn, to a grey and pallid existence, wherein everyone is assumed to be speaking the same language, but personal experiences don't matter.
Monday 17 October 2011
Ode to the contemporary Ubermensch
Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see
That dominance is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
I try to find a way to make
All our little joys relate
Without that ever-present hate
I realize that it’s too late.
Dominance is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
So this is all I have to say.
Dominance is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I’m beat
And to another give my seat
For that’s the only painless feat.
Dominance is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn’t hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The pain grows stronger
Watch it grin.
Dominance is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
“Is it to be or not to be?”
And I replied, “Oh why ask me?”
Dominance is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
And you can do the same thing if you please.
Nietzsche: market driven libertarian?
Nietzsche considers that modes of exchange -- buying and selling -- preceded any form of community in historical terms.
This functions as an ideological statement, whether or not it was intended as one. The reason is that Nietzsche's philosophy in general views history also in terms of psychologically sedimentary layers. So to say that historically, buying and selling preceded community is to imply that psychologically we tend to place a more primary value on estimating the market worth of something than we would place on belonging to a community.
But I am not of this view, since such a crude organisation of one's priorities, if taken seriously, would surely lead to unhappiness, just because wealth without belonging is not a joyful occurrence.
This functions as an ideological statement, whether or not it was intended as one. The reason is that Nietzsche's philosophy in general views history also in terms of psychologically sedimentary layers. So to say that historically, buying and selling preceded community is to imply that psychologically we tend to place a more primary value on estimating the market worth of something than we would place on belonging to a community.
But I am not of this view, since such a crude organisation of one's priorities, if taken seriously, would surely lead to unhappiness, just because wealth without belonging is not a joyful occurrence.
Sunday 16 October 2011
On lapses of focus and the ADHD/ADD controversy
- October 16, 2011 at 10:22 pm | #27| QuoteI remember first grade in colonial Rhodesia. We had to sit quietly at the end of class at our teacher’s feet, to be read a story. Suddenly, I became obsessed with the idea that my underpants were on inside out. Next, I became preoccupied with the idea that I ought to put them on the right way, which I eventually did, sitting there in front of the teacher. This teacher spoke to my mother about my “difficulty in concentrating”.I seemed to daydream quite a bit in class, especially when it was most important for me to focus. In one case, we had to illustrate the word, “jump”. I drew a picture to illustrate this word and my first grade teacher was unsatisfied with it. She said it didn’t clearly illustrate the word as I would have to draw something for my stick man to jump over. So I went back to my table and drew a log underneath the stick man. Whilst I was queuing up again, I noticed that somehow I had two pictures, adjacent to each other, of stick men jumping over logs. I didn’t know how the second picture came to be, but I hurriedly tore out the replica, hoping my teacher wouldn’t notice and I presented my image to her once I reached the top of the queue.She asked me what had happened to my book and and why there was a page torn out. I lied and said I didn’t know, so she threw my book against the wall at the other end of the classroom and told me not to deface my book.Despite my failure to focus in all sorts of contexts, as a child as well as an adult, I find that I can engage very effectively with all sorts of abstract ideas.
- October 16, 2011 at 10:36 pm | #28| QuoteI suppose I should attach an note by way of a moral of the story. There isn’t really one except that I am very, very happy with my life right now in every possible way. I’m very much in control of my life and I only do whatever makes me happy. I also have a great relationship, of more than ten years’ standing, with someone who was brought up with approximately the same environmental and social experiences as I.
- October 16, 2011 at 10:50 pm | #29| QuoteI also tried to join the military once, but failed due to my inability to pay attention to detail. In a fatigued state, I have almost no visual memory. I can’t remember where things are or the precise order of events. I had enormous difficulty, for instance, ordering my wardrobe. I would make a mental note of where the collection of different items were placed on the shelf and then, in the five meter walk back to organize my locker in that way, I had lost the visual image.
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