Superego versus ego dominated societies from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
Friday 31 October 2014
Restoring the Virtue of Women
This guy has all sorts of good points, such as that video games are absolute!
Questions about Psychoanalysis, Part I | Clarissa's Blog
Questions about Psychoanalysis, Part I | Clarissa's Blog
In addtion, what really complicates the issue — which was a problem I had with every sort of counsellor type in modernity — is the cultural baggage of modernity. This lens narrows the frame of reference very much, so that it is assumed one says things or does things in order to big note oneself or compete against others, rather than to pursue a quest for knowledge. This obstructive notion about how reality works really gets in the way of finding out the truth about things. To be clear, this distortive lens caused me the greatest amount of difficulty in getting a clear vision of myself.
In addtion, what really complicates the issue — which was a problem I had with every sort of counsellor type in modernity — is the cultural baggage of modernity. This lens narrows the frame of reference very much, so that it is assumed one says things or does things in order to big note oneself or compete against others, rather than to pursue a quest for knowledge. This obstructive notion about how reality works really gets in the way of finding out the truth about things. To be clear, this distortive lens caused me the greatest amount of difficulty in getting a clear vision of myself.
Questions about Psychoanalysis, Part I | Clarissa's Blog
Questions about Psychoanalysis, Part I | Clarissa's Blog
I wonder what sort of reading an analyst would have to do to discover that I was suffering from intergenerational war trauma, passed down through my father’s side of the family, or to really understand the closed system of culture I came from (the media blackout preventing any negative reporting of our war efforts, which all suddenly fell through with a matter of weeks when it was announced that we had suddenly lost the war we may have thought we were winning). And then there was the fact that adults did not speak to children, who were brought up at arms length, so I could not have known any of this unless I pieced it together myself many years after it occurred. I would not have been able to give any indication of what was gnawing at me, because I simply did not know enough of my own history. And if I knew so little myself, an analyst from a different society and culture would certainly have to spend a few intensive years not only reading but putting together the parts of the jigsaw.
I wonder what sort of reading an analyst would have to do to discover that I was suffering from intergenerational war trauma, passed down through my father’s side of the family, or to really understand the closed system of culture I came from (the media blackout preventing any negative reporting of our war efforts, which all suddenly fell through with a matter of weeks when it was announced that we had suddenly lost the war we may have thought we were winning). And then there was the fact that adults did not speak to children, who were brought up at arms length, so I could not have known any of this unless I pieced it together myself many years after it occurred. I would not have been able to give any indication of what was gnawing at me, because I simply did not know enough of my own history. And if I knew so little myself, an analyst from a different society and culture would certainly have to spend a few intensive years not only reading but putting together the parts of the jigsaw.
Roots of Terrorism | Clarissa's Blog
Roots of Terrorism | Clarissa's Blog
Moral arguments are a stupid form of metaphysics replacing careful historical analysis. The historical sense has all but gone now, from what I can tell about the way people go about their analyses. One may as well talk about male and female forces, or the force of the moon on human affairs. But now I am giving people ideas.
Moral arguments are a stupid form of metaphysics replacing careful historical analysis. The historical sense has all but gone now, from what I can tell about the way people go about their analyses. One may as well talk about male and female forces, or the force of the moon on human affairs. But now I am giving people ideas.
Putin’s Appeal to the Masses | Clarissa's Blog
Putin’s Appeal to the Masses | Clarissa's Blog
In fact it may be desirable for ultra-advanced people that there is some tradition and some modernity in the world. One should be able to travel between a wide range of experiences, not having everything one and the same. Russia’s situation has implications for the broader political sphere, which is bad, but in the case of Zimbabwe, one would not like to see it rush headlong into modernity too quickly. The American model of extreme fluidity leads to extremely damaged people, as I keep finding out whenever I visit YouTube. One needs to be able to read one’s environment, which is not possible if it is changing all the time. People need to slow themselves down and read the signs.
In fact it may be desirable for ultra-advanced people that there is some tradition and some modernity in the world. One should be able to travel between a wide range of experiences, not having everything one and the same. Russia’s situation has implications for the broader political sphere, which is bad, but in the case of Zimbabwe, one would not like to see it rush headlong into modernity too quickly. The American model of extreme fluidity leads to extremely damaged people, as I keep finding out whenever I visit YouTube. One needs to be able to read one’s environment, which is not possible if it is changing all the time. People need to slow themselves down and read the signs.
Putin’s Appeal to the Masses | Clarissa's Blog
Putin’s Appeal to the Masses | Clarissa's Blog
There are always going to be scattering forces and conserving forces. I've noticed that many in Zimbabwe prefer the conserving forces, too, even though it means festering under the middle-brow tryanny of a cumbersome identity politics.
There are always going to be scattering forces and conserving forces. I've noticed that many in Zimbabwe prefer the conserving forces, too, even though it means festering under the middle-brow tryanny of a cumbersome identity politics.
Thursday 30 October 2014
Wednesday 29 October 2014
It might be assumed....
That one will have more problems than others if one REQUIRES that life be deep. Because may resist deepening themselves and remain superficial, this demand and requirement will create trouble for you.
Tuesday 28 October 2014
PROPOSITIONS
Something akin to Freud's "superego" keeps us in a conformist mode out of fear of being cast out of the herd and dying -- a primitive fear. This is a kind of hypnosis.
Something akin to Freud's "ego" creates the pressure to compete with others in a narrow, competitively self-interested way. This is a kind of hypnosis, too, since the drive to compete at all costs robs one of one's true self and one's self-enjoyment.
Underneath all this is not the "Id" but the true self, which is the organic unity of one's being. It takes pleasure in participation in life alone, and it does not matter to this self that it will die, so long as it flows in the stream of life.
All forms of neurosis are the protests of this true self against the imbalances of excessive superego or excessive ego. The true self protests that superego and/or ego are throttling it, preventing it from swimming in a natural current. It feels this denial as a form of death or dying.
Shamanism restores the balance that enables one to access one's true self.
Something akin to Freud's "ego" creates the pressure to compete with others in a narrow, competitively self-interested way. This is a kind of hypnosis, too, since the drive to compete at all costs robs one of one's true self and one's self-enjoyment.
Underneath all this is not the "Id" but the true self, which is the organic unity of one's being. It takes pleasure in participation in life alone, and it does not matter to this self that it will die, so long as it flows in the stream of life.
All forms of neurosis are the protests of this true self against the imbalances of excessive superego or excessive ego. The true self protests that superego and/or ego are throttling it, preventing it from swimming in a natural current. It feels this denial as a form of death or dying.
Shamanism restores the balance that enables one to access one's true self.
experiment concluding with an ape
EXPERIMENT WITH HIGH DEFINITION VIDEOING from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
30 frames per second.Girly Thoughts | Clarissa's Blog
Girly Thoughts | Clarissa's Blog
It seems part of the fundamentalist Christian morality, too, as it has impacted on Zimbabwe through American missionaries. You can’t be left alone with your thoughts, lest they take an evil turn, so everything must be divulged to the smiling and concerned faces of those who ask.
It seems part of the fundamentalist Christian morality, too, as it has impacted on Zimbabwe through American missionaries. You can’t be left alone with your thoughts, lest they take an evil turn, so everything must be divulged to the smiling and concerned faces of those who ask.
Madness
My shamanic initiation had no element of mental illness to it, only a waking up and a hyperalert state that lasted many years. My movement was in the form of a military mobilisation. I suddenly had a lot of knowledge about how best to defend myself flooding into my head. I had to be extremely controlled about this and thoroughly patient.
I have never lost control over myself yet.
I have never lost control over myself yet.
Monday 27 October 2014
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog
“– That is EXACTLY what it is like, invisible signals. I know that wherever I go, I will only meet single type of man. Something makes every man on my orbit – and I don’t mean men who are romantically interested in me only, I mean all men – act like my greatgrandfather. People asked me why I wasn’t afraid to get into the truck with two strange men last week. But that was because irrespective of their age I knew they would immediately start channeling my great grandfather at me. Because it’s always like that.”
So what if people channel a sad clown at you? I’m always getting the sad clown in the males around me who want to dominate me (not the ones who don’t). The minute some guy tries to dominate me, he becomes a sad clown and shoots himself in the foot — I mean he starts to overstep the mark I find acceptable and then I have to say a definitive NO to him and then he retreats in a very embarrassed way.
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog: "I don’t know if people are terrified of me or not. IN any case, whilst I have been able to do many personality modifications vis-a-vis myself, I cannot do so in relation to contemporary society. Like i said to someone last night, sooner or later most people become sad clowns in relation to me and shoot themselves in the foot. It’s a strange phenomenon, but I think unnerve very conventional people. But I don’t seem to have that effect on unusual or creative people."
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog
Well undoing childhood conditioning is hard work in a sense and fun in another sense, since transgression itself is always fun, indeed a barrel of laughs. Transgression just means to do what your superego forbids you to do, thus you train and discipline the superego and bring it under control. In any case, since I was never ego-based, I did not seek to replicate any familiar patterns. To be very clear, I was not brought up by my parents so much but by the system, which was regimented on a military model, so I always was pretty much in a mode of experimentation with life,, having no deep impression of familial relationships to base my expectations on.
Well undoing childhood conditioning is hard work in a sense and fun in another sense, since transgression itself is always fun, indeed a barrel of laughs. Transgression just means to do what your superego forbids you to do, thus you train and discipline the superego and bring it under control. In any case, since I was never ego-based, I did not seek to replicate any familiar patterns. To be very clear, I was not brought up by my parents so much but by the system, which was regimented on a military model, so I always was pretty much in a mode of experimentation with life,, having no deep impression of familial relationships to base my expectations on.
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog
Relationships: How to Turn a Nerd into an Ogre | Clarissa's Blog
I’m speculating lately (more than usual on this topic) that perhaps why psychoanalysis does not make any sense to me, most of the time, is because it assumes an ego orientation to life as inevitable and and natural. The ego is inclined to be self-deceived, as traditional Eastern philosophy points out. It thinks it wants something but it doesn’t. It made a mistake. It didn’t aim for what was good for it but ony for what was familiar. Nietzsche said beneath the ego is the “self”, which actually draws correct evaluations about what is going on with oneself. It commands one to pursue life or to die. If the ego is making a lot of wrong decisions, the self has the executive power to pull the plug and command the individual to die.
This is interesting enough and probably true. In any case, it still assumes that the ego is very important, although now it is not at the forefront of the identity.
Actually, what was always at the front of my identity was superego, which means I did everything not out of desire but duty for a large part of my early adult life. This meant a very harsh and driven life, but I don’t believe I was ever self-deceived about anything. In fact there was little room for “self” in this equation.
I’ve overcome that limitation significantly now, through lots of self-training and actually what Georges Bataille calls “transgression”, which is the way to expand and develop a self beyond the original narrow limitations. But I still retain a different weight to my being compared to the average Westerner, which makes me invisible to them or opaque (depending on how you’re looking at it). One can make judgements about me based on an assumption of the normativity of ego-orientation and I will sit back and simply note they are untrue.
I’ve always tracked all my actions like a good computer programmer recording updates to software and fixing bugs, so I know exactly why I had to choose the mode of transgression to make myself free. If people suggest that I really do not know myself after all, I can can point to my own mental recordings of how much I have changed, thus acknowledging to myself that transgression is efficacious.
self-interested versus duty-based character structures
Even in Australia, (which is less ego based than the US), the academic theory and just about everything is focused on ego-based assumptions. That is why so much of a lot of contemporary theory seems so dense to me. it's ego based, whereas I have always been superego (conscience) based. It's been one of the main sources of misunderstanding, because whereas I have always acted out of duty, in one way or another, people have assumed I was acting out of self-interest. Even if you read the same text and read it in terms of self-interest, you will be reading an entirely different text than if you assume that the writer's perspective is duty-based. The conclusions you draw will not be the same.
It seems....
I have permission to go into the outside world again and try my luck with it.
Actually, I'm really, really interested in going on another horse-riding safari, but I would like to go galloping this time, not on a walking safari, at least for sprees.
I'm satisfied that I have overwhelmingly resolved the questions I had about intellectual shamanism. My new "book" is now available for download. There are one or two typos in it, plus a sentence that is repeated, but I left it in on purpose as a kind of gesture to the "spirits" (interpret that in any way you like!) At some point I will turn this into a soft cover offering.
Nietzsche said that when you can finally laugh at your misadventures, you have achieved a quality of liberation few can attain. This is why Zarathustra is the laughing prophet, transcending all mode of earthly seriousness. One has every right to laugh at others if one can do so at oneself.
BOOK AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
Obviously this jesting and humor is not cynical but capacitated by having come to terms with everything one has experienced. It's the seal of achievement of having recovered from life's ills and understood them well enough to make the best of them.
I'd still like to learn to fly a plane and to have a property of my own and take care of horses, but I have no money. Philosophically and psychologically I can laugh at a good deal of things but in other respects I am ground-bound.
Actually, I'm really, really interested in going on another horse-riding safari, but I would like to go galloping this time, not on a walking safari, at least for sprees.
I'm satisfied that I have overwhelmingly resolved the questions I had about intellectual shamanism. My new "book" is now available for download. There are one or two typos in it, plus a sentence that is repeated, but I left it in on purpose as a kind of gesture to the "spirits" (interpret that in any way you like!) At some point I will turn this into a soft cover offering.
Nietzsche said that when you can finally laugh at your misadventures, you have achieved a quality of liberation few can attain. This is why Zarathustra is the laughing prophet, transcending all mode of earthly seriousness. One has every right to laugh at others if one can do so at oneself.
BOOK AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
Obviously this jesting and humor is not cynical but capacitated by having come to terms with everything one has experienced. It's the seal of achievement of having recovered from life's ills and understood them well enough to make the best of them.
I'd still like to learn to fly a plane and to have a property of my own and take care of horses, but I have no money. Philosophically and psychologically I can laugh at a good deal of things but in other respects I am ground-bound.
Has Kurdish fighter Rehana been decapitated? | Perth Now
Has Kurdish fighter Rehana been decapitated? | Perth Now: "She was part of an unusual movement in the Islamic world: A 10,000 strong, fully female and officially sanctioned militia unit dedicated to defending Kurdish territory.
Most female Peshmerga fighters are trained as snipers.
HOLY EUNUCHS: Do Islamic State jihadists face the ‘big snip?’
The unit was formed in April to combat the Islamic State’s extreme version of Islam which would have women locked up in their houses, only able to leave in the presence of their husbands.
It’s an idea foreign to the Kurdish culture."
'via Blog this'
The story is a bit erroneous in parts and sensationalized, but not too many people know about these Kurdish fighters.
Sunday 26 October 2014
The End of Postmodernity | Clarissa's Blog
The End of Postmodernity | Clarissa's Blog: "I had to do all that transitional stuff in a huge hurry. The reason I opposed postmodernism is not that I was dragging my feet, but to the contrary that it was not a swift enough bridging mechanism for me. I needed something more drastic like shamanism.
Here is my free download:
http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/I%20MOON%20YOU.pdf"
'via Blog this'
Here is my free download:
http://home.iprimus.com.au/scratchy888/I%20MOON%20YOU.pdf"
'via Blog this'
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog:
'via Blog this'
Subtelty is a sign of weakness no doubt, but can you detect it if you come across it? It doesn’t matter either way. I could hit you with a sledgehammer and you would no doubt proclaim me definitively strong, but that doesn’t matter either. Things are going on, on a subtle level, even now. The signs are so far above your head that they don’t matter to you.
'via Blog this'
Subtelty is a sign of weakness no doubt, but can you detect it if you come across it? It doesn’t matter either way. I could hit you with a sledgehammer and you would no doubt proclaim me definitively strong, but that doesn’t matter either. Things are going on, on a subtle level, even now. The signs are so far above your head that they don’t matter to you.
Saturday 25 October 2014
Weird thing
Because I mean everything metaphorically, at least mostly, this will sound like a very weird thing, but I did actually hear something in...let us call it for the sake of naming it, "the spirit world", that indicated that I had finally served my time -- exactly twenty years of shamanic initiation, for something, and that now I was free.
And this sensation occurred on a certain date, about three days ago, an indication that I had successfully passed the test and that all would work out well for me now.
And that is interesting because the intensification of my troubles started when I was 26 and now I am 46, and perhaps the war really began around October.
And this sensation occurred on a certain date, about three days ago, an indication that I had successfully passed the test and that all would work out well for me now.
And that is interesting because the intensification of my troubles started when I was 26 and now I am 46, and perhaps the war really began around October.
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog: "I see your point in some respects. I would say that there should be much better self-understanding on the part of Western countries, because the sickness of the sick is perhaps an implicit critique of some imbalances within Western culture that need to be recognised and redressed. At the same time, if I am in a crisis situation, I will use the least amount of energy and achieve my own goals best if I do not obstruct people in pursuit of their destinies, but allow them to follow through on their actions.
This in itself can be a mode of purification and healing because it teaches the sick not to lean on the healthy. From experience I know that such a sense of the right to lean on others can become enshrined as part of a cultural dogma. But in teaching people to be adults we also need to resist their need to lean. That way we end up with an adult society."
'via Blog this'
This in itself can be a mode of purification and healing because it teaches the sick not to lean on the healthy. From experience I know that such a sense of the right to lean on others can become enshrined as part of a cultural dogma. But in teaching people to be adults we also need to resist their need to lean. That way we end up with an adult society."
'via Blog this'
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog
I would also add that not trying to control people, but allowing them to pursue their destiny in terms of their own perceptions, level of intelligence and so on, is the key to shamanic wisdom. Everything then rises or falls to its own level.
I would also add that not trying to control people, but allowing them to pursue their destiny in terms of their own perceptions, level of intelligence and so on, is the key to shamanic wisdom. Everything then rises or falls to its own level.
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog
War Nerd Is Brilliant As Usual | Clarissa's Blog: "This used to be the old “diplomatic” way of handling crises such as terrorism. The Rhodesians were extremely good at this in all sorts of ways. But such a mode of handling the issue belongs to aristocracy because it employs subtelty."
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
Developing a self worthy of survival
If there are still people, today, confused by the Judeo-Christian ideology concerning original sin and how this constructs an ideology of narcissism (see the post below), I think it important to make clear that focusing on the self is not the same as pathological narcissism.
I suddenly have a recollection about how there was a prolonged period in my life when I was significantly deprived of emotional resources to sustain myself. This had to do with being uprooted politically, historically and socially, in mid-adolescence and starting again in a different land under very different circumstances. After years of listlessness and failed attempts to find my way, I eventually alighted upon the method of directing all my available recourses to myself. I felt it necessary to save my own life, as people were becoming increasingly hostile toward me due to my failures and I had to do something as a matter of exteme urgency.
I shut down all other circuits and directed all my energy to getting engine thrust, so I could counteract the forces that were drawing me down toward the ultimate crash. That was deliberate selfishness on my part. But bear in mind that the energies I drew on were my own and that I did not attempt to plug into others to divert their energies into myself. That would have been totally against my ethics and my belief in developing a self worthy of survival.
I suddenly have a recollection about how there was a prolonged period in my life when I was significantly deprived of emotional resources to sustain myself. This had to do with being uprooted politically, historically and socially, in mid-adolescence and starting again in a different land under very different circumstances. After years of listlessness and failed attempts to find my way, I eventually alighted upon the method of directing all my available recourses to myself. I felt it necessary to save my own life, as people were becoming increasingly hostile toward me due to my failures and I had to do something as a matter of exteme urgency.
I shut down all other circuits and directed all my energy to getting engine thrust, so I could counteract the forces that were drawing me down toward the ultimate crash. That was deliberate selfishness on my part. But bear in mind that the energies I drew on were my own and that I did not attempt to plug into others to divert their energies into myself. That would have been totally against my ethics and my belief in developing a self worthy of survival.
Friday 24 October 2014
Thursday 23 October 2014
Why so few people shamanize
Mike and I enjoyed a brilliant conversation, today, on the beach, going for our early morning run.
The issue was the differences in perpectives between people predisposed to a shamanic perspective and those who actively avoid one. It's not just that some passively recoil in fear at some shamanic notions, but rather that a totally different mindset in the first place does not lend itself to some having shamanic notions.
In the end it surely comes down to physics. At least in Nietzsche's sense, it does. Shamanism involves destruction and rebuilding, but if somebody senses that there is not enough within them to facilitate rebuilding, then shamanism has no positive side to offer them, only a grave negative. Destruction without rebuilding is like renovating whilst only completing half the job -- the tearing down of elements. You want to rebuild again, but sorry, there is no money in the bank account.
That is why shamanic books are for the few. You have to be rich enough to afford devastation. Because it's not just devastation you're affording but the opportunity to rebuild.
When stated like this, I think the matter becomes very plain as to why many feel no pull toward intellectual shamanism. They implicitly recognise that they can't afford it.
But there's something else that goes on, too, which is that our value judgements are contorted by the dominant cultural set of values. We may use words that are suited to a set of values that automatically preclude entrance into shamanic experience.
I think both Nietzsche and Bataille would agree that there is enjoyment to be had in terror, specifically that terror relating to the danger of one's self-destruction. This has to do with being able to withstand the terror and expand oneself in the process. Instead of contracting and being destroyed, one allows the frightful experience to enter ones bones so that one starts to grow from it.
But the language we use for people who initially encounter this terror is pejorative. We call them
"sensitive" or overwrought, thus precluding the possibility that they may rise to the occasion of their terror and learn and grow from it.
"sensitive" or overwrought, thus precluding the possibility that they may rise to the occasion of their terror and learn and grow from it.
An example that came to mind, as I attempted to explain to Mike what obstructs our enjoyment of shamanic experience, was, fortuitously, and prosaically, a situation on a soap opera last night.
Here we have a middle-aged woman who contracts a soldier's PTSD just be listening to him. Leaving aside whether this is a realistic scenario, or probably not, she has an episode of terror, involving an image of her husband who opens the fridge and then blows up.
We might leap to defend her psychical structure by remarking on how she needs to withdraw from her weirdness and not be so fragile and imaginative. That would be the normal reaction, as conditioned by the common-sense of the majority of people who do not have sufficient resources in their banks to afford a psychical reconstruction.
But consider it from a shamanic point of view. The boring suburbanite achieved a really dramatic and potentially life-changing experience at little cost to herself. She didn't even need to go to Afghanistan. She only had to sit still for a while and listen. This psychical intrusion gave her a window that could lead to insight into whole dimensions she would not be able to experience. She could know a soldier's life, experience the meaning of death, know mortality, understand the limits of suburbia and of conventional thinking all in the flash of a shamanic lesson.
It would not take longer than the lighning strike of this psychical intrusion to know much more than she had ever previously known.
The problem is the rebuilding. If she has the energy to do so, she would radically advance her knowledge and experience of the world.
Perhaps it would be unlikely, though, that a suburbanite would have those kinds of resources. She'd have to be exceptional among her ilk. But supposing she had the necessary recourses, then psychical tenderness would be the gateway to psychical toughness.
Perhaps it would be unlikely, though, that a suburbanite would have those kinds of resources. She'd have to be exceptional among her ilk. But supposing she had the necessary recourses, then psychical tenderness would be the gateway to psychical toughness.
Wednesday 22 October 2014
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog:
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
Anything new age is going to be a bit cheap and phoney, probably. In fact real regression is fraught with risks, and that is why the shamanic literature describes it mostly as a kind of torture. For instance in THE STRONG EYE OF SHAMANISM, we read that in one Aboriginal culture, the initiate is taken to an isolated place where he regressive to infant form and then the shaman comes and stretches him out into adult form again. In other instances, there is the idea of taking out the organs and boiling them to clean them and replacing them. Or the skeleton of the initiate is dismantled and the initiate must recover all his bones and put them back together, or he will have failed in his initiatiation. The element of violence in all of this seems irreducible.
What may soften the experience is if the shaman sings or beats a drum and thus imparts a mythology. But the regression process itself is going to be affected by many unknown variables. I really don’t think it can be formularized — which is what all new age treatments try to do.
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog:
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
I just came from reading that chapter that the guy recommended to me, by Guattari, where he points out that if you remain within the psychoanalytic paradigm, you will encounter very oppressive familial psychodynamics when you “regress”. The whole chapter points this out, that you can’t remain within the paradigm and hope to benefit by regression.
But looking at the issue from a more shamanic perspective, shamanic initiation is often depicted as a regression to infancy. But what is being sung to you during that time is not a song about famiiliar psychodynamics and how important they are. Maybe other songs are sung, concerning gods or deities. Whatever is sung during that period of regression can be reinforced, and the specificities of what is sung can make things freer and more interesting or more repressive. That is the nut of G’s whole argument, that psychoanalytic regression makes things more repressive. My addendum to this is that it also depends on what is sung. Let us not reinforce an Oedipal triangle during the experience of regression (which G argues typically takes place in psychoanalysis). A talented shaman will surely reinforce something less damaging.
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog
Recently I have been making huge numbers of facetious comments, for instance that maybe all my experiences were “all in my head”. In one section, I even simplify things for modern people — being those who do not have any troubles of their own and therefore think things necessarily are limited to one’s head. I say that modern people will probably understand that my mind dropped out whilst I was crossing the Indian ocean (migrating from African to Australia), but being an old fashioned type myself, I still believe in geographical continents and history and politics and that changing these can make all the difference to how well one copes in life.
Recently I have been making huge numbers of facetious comments, for instance that maybe all my experiences were “all in my head”. In one section, I even simplify things for modern people — being those who do not have any troubles of their own and therefore think things necessarily are limited to one’s head. I say that modern people will probably understand that my mind dropped out whilst I was crossing the Indian ocean (migrating from African to Australia), but being an old fashioned type myself, I still believe in geographical continents and history and politics and that changing these can make all the difference to how well one copes in life.
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog
Psychoanalysis: How I Lost My Fear of Dogs | Clarissa's Blog
The problem is that if “others can see things not obvious to you” is a blanket statement, rather than a very circumscribed one, you can actually cause bad situations to become even worse. For instance, it has become increasingly obvious to me how I was a conduit for my family’s bad vibes. And really, these were more than just “vibes”. It may even be possible for those other than myself to imagine a situation where huge sacrifices, including one’s blood, were made for a certain kind of ideological ideal, and then in a flash, without proper warning from the media, those sacrifices meant less than nothing and one lost absolutely everything that had had meaning in one’s life. Accumulated rage has to go somewhere, and I do believe that my family tacitly agreed that the breadwinner needed to lose his direct awareness of his extreme rage so that he could…earn bread. Therefore I was the nominated victim in the family to succumb to those negative emotions that my family were unable to face (for both practical and cowardly reasons).
Family psychodynamics. And history. And war. These are relevant explanatory systems in my case.
And what would be really unhelpful, not that it has not already occurred, would be for someone to tell me to buck up because they have deeper insight into “my” “problems” than I do. Of course narcissists will come along and propose trite solutions because they genuinely have the illusion that they are omniscient, like “GOD”, and they did not even have to be present or do any of the footwork just to know exactly whatever the problem happened to be.
And believe me, I have met some pretty wacky narcissists, some that use psychoanalysis as their crutch.
Tikoloshe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tikoloshe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Another explanation is that the Tokoloshe resembles a zombie, poltergeist, or gremlin, created by South African shamans who have been offended by someone. The tokoloshe may also wander, causing mischief wherever it goes, particularly to schoolchildren. Other details include its gremlin-like appearance and gouged out eyes.[1]
The Tokoloshe, according to the Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa, has been known to take on many forms. One form is as described above, but others have portrayed the Tokoloshe as being a bear-like humanoid being.[2]
"Some Zulu people (and other southern African tribes) are still superstitious when it comes to things like the supposedly fictional tokoloshe—a hairy creature created by a wizard to harm his enemies (also … known to rape women and bite off sleeping people’s toes)."[3]
According to legend, the only way to keep the Tokoloshe away at night is to put a brick beneath each leg of one's bed. However, this will not protect anything but the person whose bed it is along with the bed itself, as it may instead cause havoc not involving said people. They get their power from a hot poker thrusted into the crown of the body during creation."
'via Blog this'
The Tokoloshe, according to the Zulu shaman Credo Mutwa, has been known to take on many forms. One form is as described above, but others have portrayed the Tokoloshe as being a bear-like humanoid being.[2]
"Some Zulu people (and other southern African tribes) are still superstitious when it comes to things like the supposedly fictional tokoloshe—a hairy creature created by a wizard to harm his enemies (also … known to rape women and bite off sleeping people’s toes)."[3]
According to legend, the only way to keep the Tokoloshe away at night is to put a brick beneath each leg of one's bed. However, this will not protect anything but the person whose bed it is along with the bed itself, as it may instead cause havoc not involving said people. They get their power from a hot poker thrusted into the crown of the body during creation."
'via Blog this'
Tuesday 21 October 2014
CHAPTER 15: blissed out states
Chapter fifteen follows chapter fourteen in a consecutive order. Shamanism will be hard to follow for most people, just as life on the Sun would be, if you hadn't experienced it yet. My reference points are Earthly, therefore I cannot understand why you are talking about the heat and the giant flames. If we had those here we would know about it. Therefore it is all inside your head.
But they can see the Sun, which isn't in my head at all, they just can't get there yet. And anyway it's burning hot so we can understand why.
To be blissed out by a premature character development is most people's lot. They may complain that they are badly shaped by authoritarian parents, but in fact it's their blissed out condition that keeps them how they are, going along like good little boys and girls hoping for a reward in heaven.
That's how I was too, completely overshadowed by a blissed out state. And really why not? Life when you first land on Earth is wonderful. Even the cruelest act of fate does not detract from the enjoyment of being a human being. But we are prematurely heartened and do not go far. We are happy little sunbeams solicited by Jesus for his works.
And so we take a lot of blows and harshness just to preserve the illusion that we're blessed.
In French, blesser means to injure. So we are injured by our erotic embrace of life. Freud thought so too. You can't be in that childlike happy state forever, but many people find it hard to get out of it. And believe me, no reality principle is going to help you here, not in a world of adults acting like children in their blissed out states. That is the principle of adaptation to further childishness.
Adults these days are still children and maybe that has always been true, although I think Hegel had it right when he said facing death was the key to gaining the upper hand, at least in relation to freedom, although it still leaves you with a half-personhood, requiring a reacquaintance with immanence.
But most of us have premature character structures, dwarf formations, because we hope to be rewarded by life in the manner in which we have become intoxicated with it.
I, for instance, never learned to fight until way into adulthood. So I had all of this pent up aggression, but a blissed out state just on the surface of it. I hoped to be rewarded by toeing the line. Anything for another hit -- a prolongation of the blissed out state.
It isn't angry parents that keep us down, it is our vegetative happiness. Those who create trouble and disorder in the world are your friends -- heralds of your awakening. So Nietzsche said live dangerously and wake the hell up.
A child will even unreservedly embrace a vicious parent in order to keep his illusions that he's blessed. This leads to strange events like dissociative personality disorder and a confusion between love and hate. The child is blissed out by love so much that he cannot recognise hate, not if it slaps him on the head.
And Western culture, too, has managed to find itself its own groove in a blissed out state, which is why literature is becoming increasingy childish. And those who read intellectual writing take it in only as a projection of their intellectual dwarfism.
For we are truly blissed.
Freud said the erotic fantasies of the child creates gender. The male child is blissed out by its mother, whilst the female child finds bliss in father figures. Thus a truncated character is created, which embraces only one side of the whole human equation. One becomes a boy or girl because one has been blissed out totally.
In the end you've got to take the raw material of your self and make something of it. And hostile people teach you how to do that. You find yourself fighting yourself and at odds with yourself and that is a fine thing! You lose your susceptibility for settling for a blissed out state. You gain the other side of your whole being back, which is (for women) the masculine dimension and (for men) the feminine arena. You have been blinded all your life by seeking out a state of bliss, but men do have a feminine dimension -- and when they find it, they become irresistable seducers. And for women, too, the masculine dimension sets their minds and genitals on fire, supposing they can fight their blissed out states enough to find this energy within.
You reverse the dwarfism you accepted when you first became blissed. You become whole again, through undoing the error of allowing your susceptibility to bliss to take over your mind. For some this means denying God, for others one revokes an undiscriminating love for authority. In all, the hostile people will help you understand where you've allowed the bliss to settle, and by making it impossible for you to be just as you are, all dwarfed and covered in bliss, they will help you find your true self and be whole.
That is why Bataille's writing is so violent. And why Nietzsche wanted us to build on the slopes of Vesuvius.
And why being violently attacked when you are at the point where you can barely handle it is your key to redemption.
Shamanic awakening can't dispense with the violent elements of life, that will be used to wake you up.
You can't be soft but must take violence into you, to counter your peaceable bliss.
And some people want to create dwarfist societies, where people are blissed out from the earliest age until the day we die. But that means being small and sad and lonely, and just a half human being (male OR female), and doing repetitive chores like clerical work until you die, because it's easier that way, to keep believing in the bliss that comes to you after you die, rather than fighting yourself using violence and horrific measures.
And the only way to counteract the blissed out state is to take the violence in, internally.
A bitter medicine.
But they can see the Sun, which isn't in my head at all, they just can't get there yet. And anyway it's burning hot so we can understand why.
To be blissed out by a premature character development is most people's lot. They may complain that they are badly shaped by authoritarian parents, but in fact it's their blissed out condition that keeps them how they are, going along like good little boys and girls hoping for a reward in heaven.
That's how I was too, completely overshadowed by a blissed out state. And really why not? Life when you first land on Earth is wonderful. Even the cruelest act of fate does not detract from the enjoyment of being a human being. But we are prematurely heartened and do not go far. We are happy little sunbeams solicited by Jesus for his works.
And so we take a lot of blows and harshness just to preserve the illusion that we're blessed.
In French, blesser means to injure. So we are injured by our erotic embrace of life. Freud thought so too. You can't be in that childlike happy state forever, but many people find it hard to get out of it. And believe me, no reality principle is going to help you here, not in a world of adults acting like children in their blissed out states. That is the principle of adaptation to further childishness.
Adults these days are still children and maybe that has always been true, although I think Hegel had it right when he said facing death was the key to gaining the upper hand, at least in relation to freedom, although it still leaves you with a half-personhood, requiring a reacquaintance with immanence.
But most of us have premature character structures, dwarf formations, because we hope to be rewarded by life in the manner in which we have become intoxicated with it.
I, for instance, never learned to fight until way into adulthood. So I had all of this pent up aggression, but a blissed out state just on the surface of it. I hoped to be rewarded by toeing the line. Anything for another hit -- a prolongation of the blissed out state.
It isn't angry parents that keep us down, it is our vegetative happiness. Those who create trouble and disorder in the world are your friends -- heralds of your awakening. So Nietzsche said live dangerously and wake the hell up.
A child will even unreservedly embrace a vicious parent in order to keep his illusions that he's blessed. This leads to strange events like dissociative personality disorder and a confusion between love and hate. The child is blissed out by love so much that he cannot recognise hate, not if it slaps him on the head.
And Western culture, too, has managed to find itself its own groove in a blissed out state, which is why literature is becoming increasingy childish. And those who read intellectual writing take it in only as a projection of their intellectual dwarfism.
For we are truly blissed.
Freud said the erotic fantasies of the child creates gender. The male child is blissed out by its mother, whilst the female child finds bliss in father figures. Thus a truncated character is created, which embraces only one side of the whole human equation. One becomes a boy or girl because one has been blissed out totally.
In the end you've got to take the raw material of your self and make something of it. And hostile people teach you how to do that. You find yourself fighting yourself and at odds with yourself and that is a fine thing! You lose your susceptibility for settling for a blissed out state. You gain the other side of your whole being back, which is (for women) the masculine dimension and (for men) the feminine arena. You have been blinded all your life by seeking out a state of bliss, but men do have a feminine dimension -- and when they find it, they become irresistable seducers. And for women, too, the masculine dimension sets their minds and genitals on fire, supposing they can fight their blissed out states enough to find this energy within.
You reverse the dwarfism you accepted when you first became blissed. You become whole again, through undoing the error of allowing your susceptibility to bliss to take over your mind. For some this means denying God, for others one revokes an undiscriminating love for authority. In all, the hostile people will help you understand where you've allowed the bliss to settle, and by making it impossible for you to be just as you are, all dwarfed and covered in bliss, they will help you find your true self and be whole.
That is why Bataille's writing is so violent. And why Nietzsche wanted us to build on the slopes of Vesuvius.
And why being violently attacked when you are at the point where you can barely handle it is your key to redemption.
Shamanic awakening can't dispense with the violent elements of life, that will be used to wake you up.
You can't be soft but must take violence into you, to counter your peaceable bliss.
And some people want to create dwarfist societies, where people are blissed out from the earliest age until the day we die. But that means being small and sad and lonely, and just a half human being (male OR female), and doing repetitive chores like clerical work until you die, because it's easier that way, to keep believing in the bliss that comes to you after you die, rather than fighting yourself using violence and horrific measures.
And the only way to counteract the blissed out state is to take the violence in, internally.
A bitter medicine.
Monday 20 October 2014
Two Scenarios | Clarissa's Blog
Two Scenarios | Clarissa's Blog: "If you encourage the masses in their anti-authoritarianism, they will just be undereducated and eat a lot of chicken nuggets and thick shakes. One thing I’ve noticed — if you look at my old school photo, nobody is fat and if you encounter the same people on Facebook today, none of them are fat, This was a culture of deprivation rather than indulgence and there are many things to be lamented about authoritarian culture, especially that nealy all my old friends ended up conservative, but somehow none of them are self-indulgent or hostile to authority as such. They are people who could still tolerate education and a nation state. And those who cannot — hopefully they will find a way to thrive on their own. They need to lean heavily (not a pun) on their own resources, and hopefully find a way to prevent themselves from sinking."
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
Repost: shamanic doubling
Recently, I came across some material on narcissism (a personality disorder), which got me thinking. I read that this disorder is the result of the emotional aspect of the self not maturing, whilst the intellectual and social self gains in adult sophistication. It is said that the inner self remains in a form of stasis, not growing at all, yet the outside self appears to have grown and to be fully matured.
The nature of this developmental pathology is deeply problematic, because the stasis of the inner self implies the stasis of the overall self. The adult cannot mature until the 'inner child', as it were, begins to mature. However, the adult self, with its degree of acquired sophistication, formulates strategies and engages in tactics to prevent the childlike self from having to engage with an emotionally complex world.
Although such a situation, as it has been formulated, seems hopeless, there is another way to look at solving problems of emotional trauma. The adult self must take on an authoritative role and go "looking" for the child, using all the wiles and strategies they can muster. Rather than turning one's wiles against the outside world, one puts them to good use in search of that within oneself that may wish to remain hidden.
To employ such a strategy is what I refer to as "shamanistic doubling".
Perhaps this is a hard to manage. I have the impression from many years of studying shamanism that facilitating a conceptual and effective 'doubling' of the self furnishes the basis for shamanistic healing.
The nature of this developmental pathology is deeply problematic, because the stasis of the inner self implies the stasis of the overall self. The adult cannot mature until the 'inner child', as it were, begins to mature. However, the adult self, with its degree of acquired sophistication, formulates strategies and engages in tactics to prevent the childlike self from having to engage with an emotionally complex world.
Although such a situation, as it has been formulated, seems hopeless, there is another way to look at solving problems of emotional trauma. The adult self must take on an authoritative role and go "looking" for the child, using all the wiles and strategies they can muster. Rather than turning one's wiles against the outside world, one puts them to good use in search of that within oneself that may wish to remain hidden.
To employ such a strategy is what I refer to as "shamanistic doubling".
Perhaps this is a hard to manage. I have the impression from many years of studying shamanism that facilitating a conceptual and effective 'doubling' of the self furnishes the basis for shamanistic healing.
Repost: gaining objective self-knowledge
In Western culture, the eye plays an important role of signification. They eye, you see, does not so much see, as it signfies. And what does it signify, you may ask? Well, it signifies objective perception.
I see, I see.
Perceptions are all important in Western culture. "I perceive" means "I nailed you down", "I gottcha!"
In the case of the Oedipus complex, the protagonist does not wish to see the nature of his own actions, so he blinds himself. The key to this self-blinding is that he doesn't want objective vision. But note the redundancy in the expression -- vision, itself, is assumed to be objective. Had looking directly with the eye not had the meaning of objective vision in the first place, Oedipus would not have needed to blind himself. He might have asked himself whether his blind instincts were not actually unreasonable. Objectivity changes everything,if it is assumed that one has achieved something ultimate, which is to say the fundamental clear vision one had been seeking, without any emotional contamination.
Contamination implies being blinded and willing not to see, or being darkened by sinfulness, or lacking the ability to navigate on one's own behalf. To purposefully blind oneself, as Oedipus did, is to will oneself not to see. Others, having vision, may see one's wild flailings, but being trapped within one's own head means one doesn't see oneself at all. Meanwhile, others flash their eyes and perceive. This equation should not be underestimated: they have eyes and therefore they perceive. One flashes open the eyes and that comprises perception.
"I perceive you better BECAUSE you can't perceive yourself." Physiologically this is true. That physiology is taken for philosophy is an error. Socrates' pupil perceives him well enough and yet Socrates perceives him better.
Oedipus, by contrast is naive and literal. His goal is to unsee that which he had regretted seeing, as if by not facing the objective world objectively his misdeeds could be easily undone.
The original story is Greek, but an opposition between emotion and reason -- or, in this case, more subtly, between instinct and reason -- is Judeo-Christian. Christian and Judaic orthodoxy presume a destructive force exists in the emotions or the instincts. The original Greek story probably had more to do with a must softer, cautionary tale about assuming one was able to control everything. In the Greek sense, the impulsive expression of a desire to unsee reality came from a sudden recognition that fate did not necessarily favor you, just because you happened to be you. But that tale is soft -- a cautionary warning against the narcissism inherent in believing in the benevolence of fate.
To take the question of the possibility of seeing objectively further, perhaps the impulsive stabbing of his own eyes was Oedipus' recognition that such objectivity had been deceptive. He had put too much trust in the transparency of vision. Then he paid the price, by having a revolting liaison with his mother. When he realized his mistake, which had come about by putting too much trust in his perceptual powers, he impulsively blinded himself, thus perpetuating his error via continuing to equate his physiological capacity to see with his eyes with objective knowledge.
The joke that fate had played on him was that objective knowledge cannot be obtained through simply looking, any more than it could be denied by simply ceasing to look. You've been thinking about the issue in the wrong way, thus you are Oedipus blinded -- or potentially blinded, as your current self-assurety will make you wish you had been blinded, in the future.
Is there a way out of this mess? People who adhere to Freud's views, due to their cultural upbringing, keep insisting that one must accept an opposition between reason and emotion/instinct, since one can be lead astray by instinct but not by a genuinely transcendent wisdom -- as from a authorities or a God. "God" represents the eye, the perfection, objectivity and factual wisdom.
But with one logical omission -- Oedipus is still blinded. He has renounced seeing for himself. Having made a mortal error, he will accept only the views of the authorities and their definitive pronouncements about what is true.
In the end, the Freudian version of Oedipus is worse off than when he had started, especially if the authorities he hopes to lean upon henceforth (having made mistakes himself) turn out not to be infallible, as is the case for every human. Not seeing at all, they rely on charity -- the ability of others to do their seeing for them. Despite what they think, this is not morality or reformation. Those who can continue to see are like Oedipus who hasn't yet blinded his own vision. They're taken in, too, by all sorts of illusions and imaginary visions. Indeed, they project a self-constructed view of reality from out of their experiences and fantasies about reality. They see, but they do not see. They merely proclaim their instinctive drives as constituting objectivity. In other words, they see only what they want to see.
To have unreformed instincts always amounts to the same thing. Reality is whatever one wants it to be.
So how does one drive a wedge between instinct and reason, so that one might see them for the first time as separate from each other?
I have suggested shamanic doubling: a degree of dissociation from oneself that would allow you to see yourself from a certain distance. Objective vision needs to be sharpened, but instincts are unruly and will lead you into disaster unless they are also trained. To wilfully blind one's vision for a period -- that is, to choose not to see things as they have been misrepresented, by others claiming objective vision -- can be a means to develop instinct. If one simply has to rely on instinct rather than on reason, one's instincts will become more acute and less likely to mislead one. One may learn from experience, for instance, not to be impulsive or to equate outsiders with objectivity.
Real, inner wisdom can be learned this way.
chapter 14
Shamanic initiation is nothing but it is ugly because you are fighting against your head to make your way to something fresh. It's repulsive like boiling organs, putting them back into your body, nice and new. I can see how on the one side you are prone to glorifying something but on the other that very something spells your end. You glorify your boss, or past or parents or the great blue sky, I mean the nation or your work or power or the people or something like that.
It's repulsive to the viewer and revolting to the one being initiated, because humans tend to glorify what limits them. These limitations give us consciousness, as GWF points out, which was before he got his horns and married Helga. When a power system comes along and tells us we are limited, we want to marry it and have its children. That is how that goes.
So all forms of worship lead to atrophying. You and me and all our children. That is how that goes.
Destroy the reverential consciousness and you release the soul. But lots of people do not realize it.
They want to revere and love and hope and break themselves on their unrealized dreams. It's noble but it isn't Neechy and it isn't realistic.
Don Juan said face down death and you will release the life force from its grasp. This may be difficult to do because you're breaking your own head, which is why most people don't want to do it, but that's the shamanic way.
It is disgusting.
I didn't want to do it but other people broke me down instead of me, praise Allah. I am here now and that's that. It wasn't pretty but I made it, WTF. I can't believe it isn't butter. I'd write better, but this isn't my day.
I'm not that bright but from what I can tell, the clasp of death is maintained through our seeking of glory or more aptly through our preemptive assumption to recognise it long before it appears. If we worship women we will die because of woman and God has our death sentence in his own good hands as well.
But if we worship nothing we will free the elements of eros from the death that bind us. That will be life-giving.
\
But we are a reverential form of creature. Genuine? said Nietzsche. That would be the person who goes to the desert and breaks his reverential heart. You worship things and they will limit you -- and we all do...blissed out by our childhood experiences.
It's repulsive to the viewer and revolting to the one being initiated, because humans tend to glorify what limits them. These limitations give us consciousness, as GWF points out, which was before he got his horns and married Helga. When a power system comes along and tells us we are limited, we want to marry it and have its children. That is how that goes.
So all forms of worship lead to atrophying. You and me and all our children. That is how that goes.
Destroy the reverential consciousness and you release the soul. But lots of people do not realize it.
They want to revere and love and hope and break themselves on their unrealized dreams. It's noble but it isn't Neechy and it isn't realistic.
Don Juan said face down death and you will release the life force from its grasp. This may be difficult to do because you're breaking your own head, which is why most people don't want to do it, but that's the shamanic way.
It is disgusting.
I didn't want to do it but other people broke me down instead of me, praise Allah. I am here now and that's that. It wasn't pretty but I made it, WTF. I can't believe it isn't butter. I'd write better, but this isn't my day.
I'm not that bright but from what I can tell, the clasp of death is maintained through our seeking of glory or more aptly through our preemptive assumption to recognise it long before it appears. If we worship women we will die because of woman and God has our death sentence in his own good hands as well.
But if we worship nothing we will free the elements of eros from the death that bind us. That will be life-giving.
\
But we are a reverential form of creature. Genuine? said Nietzsche. That would be the person who goes to the desert and breaks his reverential heart. You worship things and they will limit you -- and we all do...blissed out by our childhood experiences.
Sunday 19 October 2014
Chapter 13
Not following the path set out for me made me the kind of person that I am today (on the waterfront). I can't imagine it -- if I had not discovered shamanic doubling, if I had not sent out my shadow self to rescue my heartsore self - what kind of person would I be today?
I caught sight of it slightly. My father came in one day and he made a statement about me, that he had found some guy at work who was quite lonely and a little sad. He's like to match me up with him, since presumably I was lonely and a little sad. (You will have to bear in mind that you are hearing all of my father's perspective in this, since I have not added my own, so these are his views you are taking in and maybe they could take you in as well, if you're not careful -- each one to his own.)
But anyway, I said, well how old is this guy, and he said, not that old, which meant, I would imagine that he was a little old or seemingly pathetic from a certain view.
And so I said, no that would be okay, because I didn't want to be the handout my father was prepared to give to some guy he had found at work who looked a bit sad and pathetic.
But I also had my own life that was hidden from his view, and I had met a guy, it didn't matter how old he was because I was thinking shamanically now.
But I imagine if I hadn't been and if I had allowed myself to be browbeaten, beaten down, I would have ended up not with this one guy but with someone remarkably similar, a victim of the social order, cut down and sad and getting on in age and all sorts of lonely, victim of my father's philanthropic good will (he and/or I).
Because linear people age so quickly, with their one track notions and their inability to jump the rails and simply be somewhere else at the same time. Mike may be decades older than I but I'm not that much his junior. I found him online.
But I couldn't tell anyone that, no yet, because it would have been subject to dry, clerical corruption. I had to wait and bide my time. Keeping secrets.
People age when they conform to idiocies. I would have been a grey old nurse, tending my flowers, but not so much in the sharklike sense and more demure, accommodating.
Ah yes, if I had not shed my skin. Ah yes.
I would have had the old indentity no longer functional ......outgrown because rhodesia was outgrown but still the same as evah.
So this is your identity and don't change it because. Original sin. (It means no changing of identities half-way; no shamanizing, which we call jumping the tracks.)
I guess that kind of linear life is good for some folks, very rational, very motionless compared to leaping all around, but not much to it if you trust the system to take care of you.
You end up just a little bit demented -- marrying people because you take pity on them, rather than living your life.
Which was the life my father had planned out for me, because he felt it right to offer drops of charity to others, which included just his fellow man.
Ah yes.
I caught sight of it slightly. My father came in one day and he made a statement about me, that he had found some guy at work who was quite lonely and a little sad. He's like to match me up with him, since presumably I was lonely and a little sad. (You will have to bear in mind that you are hearing all of my father's perspective in this, since I have not added my own, so these are his views you are taking in and maybe they could take you in as well, if you're not careful -- each one to his own.)
But anyway, I said, well how old is this guy, and he said, not that old, which meant, I would imagine that he was a little old or seemingly pathetic from a certain view.
And so I said, no that would be okay, because I didn't want to be the handout my father was prepared to give to some guy he had found at work who looked a bit sad and pathetic.
But I also had my own life that was hidden from his view, and I had met a guy, it didn't matter how old he was because I was thinking shamanically now.
But I imagine if I hadn't been and if I had allowed myself to be browbeaten, beaten down, I would have ended up not with this one guy but with someone remarkably similar, a victim of the social order, cut down and sad and getting on in age and all sorts of lonely, victim of my father's philanthropic good will (he and/or I).
Because linear people age so quickly, with their one track notions and their inability to jump the rails and simply be somewhere else at the same time. Mike may be decades older than I but I'm not that much his junior. I found him online.
But I couldn't tell anyone that, no yet, because it would have been subject to dry, clerical corruption. I had to wait and bide my time. Keeping secrets.
People age when they conform to idiocies. I would have been a grey old nurse, tending my flowers, but not so much in the sharklike sense and more demure, accommodating.
Ah yes, if I had not shed my skin. Ah yes.
I would have had the old indentity no longer functional ......outgrown because rhodesia was outgrown but still the same as evah.
So this is your identity and don't change it because. Original sin. (It means no changing of identities half-way; no shamanizing, which we call jumping the tracks.)
I guess that kind of linear life is good for some folks, very rational, very motionless compared to leaping all around, but not much to it if you trust the system to take care of you.
You end up just a little bit demented -- marrying people because you take pity on them, rather than living your life.
Which was the life my father had planned out for me, because he felt it right to offer drops of charity to others, which included just his fellow man.
Ah yes.
CHAPTER 12
So I sort of felt like I'd done battle with a thousand things, even though I probably hadn't, it was just inside my head. Coz first there were the types that wanted to control my mind including my emotional states and then there were the right wing types who felt I'd hurt them with my grave disgrace and then some other types as well that thought that ladies were just silly, all inside their heads, and other types as well.
I guess a weakened state is what attracts them -- these types. So I got to know these types. I guess they got to know me as well, but not in a deep way and much more opportunistically. So we were on familiar terms and they could report on me if they felt like it.
WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY.
So if you see something suspicious or not quite right you should go round telling other people. Coz that is right.
I tell you though, I couldn't tell Arthur from Martha, I guess I got my gender issues all screwed up, because I thought I'd have a say, a little whiny say, perhaps a squeeky little feminist say after all.
I thought so, too. A democracy.
But I couldn't have my say. I stubbed my toe and now the world NEEDED TO KNOW. I hurt my feeling and it fled from me. I've no idea where it's living now.
MIAOW.
So I was pretty stressed about things, to put it in a mild light. All my body was fucked up and everything.
I had to put myself on an extremely restricted diet -- only bland foods for you from now on -- and still my stomach swelled like a balloon both day and night.
SQUEEK
And that was that.
I'd had a good life. I'd learned a lot. I think my best life was in Africa, not here. But that was then and this is now. I had to bridge myself into reality.
itself
which kept on trying to elude me.
SQUEEK
Because this is now and that was then.
MEW!
(I understand how much this can be irritating.)
So I did the defensive warfare thing from my fox hole. Or my pot hole or whatnot.
That's how I did it for a number of years, Buying time to figure it all out.
Because my father was furious with me. HUGE DISGRACE. My buttock.
He would rage and rage about it, even in my head.
A huge and crying shame.
Learning right from wrong in defensive warfare. This could take some time.
I didn't have a Western psyche and would have to build one.
This would take some time.
Chapter 11
A character that feels itself -- well this is very different from a feeling type of character. I wish to let you know. That's the problem with coming at things from different angles, let us say 180 degrees. Because there are those who feel themselves excessively, one must be led to presume. I mean, I hear it all the time, that there are people like that and I notice it, too, for instance when they claim that service people haven't catered to them quite enough, or whatnot.
So there are those who orient the world around themselves, rather than counter-directionally. So if you do something, they think you're doing it against them personally, or whatnot. When you aren't exactly, because their thoughts and perceptions never entered you mind. I had an office worker come up to me one time. She said don't you know that Eliza is watching you and monitoring you and actually she is making out her daughter is competing with you, because she is jealous of whatever you are doing, for instance your skydiving and your philosophy and she is now boasting that her daughter does this too, for instance, bungee jumping and philosophy, for look she's got a philosophy book sitting on her desk. And true enough she had a William James one, and I was reading Nietzsche around this time for I was going out of my mind. She had this tome and it just sat upon her desk, but all my Neechy books had been into the bath with me, not once but umpteen times, and that is why their pages had spread out like a fan and the spine was starting to disintegrate and some pages came loose. Eliza's book was thick and firm.
So clearly she was watching me and surreptitiously competing, so she must have thought about my thoughts a lot quite probably, although who knows. I think she was a feeling type alright although a type like any other. But these types can try to get inside your head.
She told me she was trying coz she picked on little things about my work, not once but every day, and talked to me as if I were a reckless child, which wasn't true, except in the case of the philosophy books.
It was kind of strange.
But there was a spying racket in that place and things about me kept on being reported. Very strange.
It almost seemed like they were trying to climb into my head. Those feeling types. Or not. But anyway.
My head was full of thickets.
Trying to get my head around the Neechy.
If I didn't then the pressure would keep building. As I pressed it down to stop me feeling. I was not a feeling type, but working on my adaptation.
Two things I noticed.
1. My processes were not linear and methodical but abstract and therefore associative. Bad clerical worker hencely, down dog down.
2. My alleged superiors who probably were for all I knew but I wasn't quite sure then were keen to monitor...not so much my work, but what was in my head and they were very keen to know about that. They really deeply needed more compliance and subservience and not so much cool getting on or cool fucking up or whatever it is I was doing, as I was not cut out to be a clerical worker. I kid you not.
Two things I concluded.
1. I need to come down on myself more heavily to push my mind into a linear, methodological mode, since my mind was not taking to it. Bad dog.
2. I had to let these people into my head. Or they were going to keep attacking me with petty points. They had to have complete control over my head, or else. The whittling and combative moral criticism about what they alleged might be inside my head. Or not. The case may be.
From all angles considered, Western adaptation was not going to be easy. Not a piece of cake not a walk in the park or anything. really.
Quelle fromage.
This whole adaptation business was taking a fair chunk out of me. Wearing me down. And particularly my emotions. Which I couldn't feel yet.
Harsh Christianity had worked its charm like DDT on a minor cockroach species. My head.
So I was trying to do the Western adaptation thingie.
Indications were to follow those two principles, which were abstractive and naturally non-linear.
Naturally -- they came from my head.
And then some things came from my body, such as the pressure to adapt, for I was overheating. all that superego nuclear intensity. From being brought up in Rhodesia and surviving a war. That came from my body, my digestion, oooh, aaah, eeeeh!
I was losing it for sure. My body.
It was shutting down right under me. (Ooh. Aaah.)
Buttocks.
In any case, my emotions were red hot. And suddenly went white. Oooh--hooo. I felt them temporarily before they slid over a cliff. Then I was soaring. Literally. Ooh-Aaah. Well not then, as the case may be. But still I felt it. Something in me was emotionally soaring. I had got emotions under me at last. Oooh-Aaaah.
But still, they'd got into my head by then, did I forget to mention? So it felt a bit like mind-rape in a sense, although I undertand that notion isn't physically realistic. Still, that's what it felt like after all this time. Because I'd cry for absolutely nothing and I'd lost my stoicism by then, ah, and oooh.
I should write a book about it some day.
Anyway, that's when my whole digestion totally collapsed and I could not eat solid food. I guess I had resorted to a baby mind because I felt like it. Ah! and Me!
I guess I made some weird decisions in my life, but I kept on reading Nietzsche. He made sense bit by bit. But by this time my body had evaded me. Its processes were AWOL. I couldn't bring them back no matter what I tried, which was frustrating.
I still had my mind, but it was emptied out and kind of like a gang rape, I'd imagine, even though I'd never noticed or experienced one.
So I had to figure it out but this could take days or weeks or months even years. I'd have to get this from the Neecha, all the answers I'd been craving for two decades of my life.
That's what kept me on reading philosophy, because needed to, to come to the rescue of my body, which had all but totally abandoned me. Right here, right now. A mild irritation, China. Don't mention it, Old Chap.
Talk about a shamanic invasion. By spirits. But not of the most pleasant sort.
So there are those who orient the world around themselves, rather than counter-directionally. So if you do something, they think you're doing it against them personally, or whatnot. When you aren't exactly, because their thoughts and perceptions never entered you mind. I had an office worker come up to me one time. She said don't you know that Eliza is watching you and monitoring you and actually she is making out her daughter is competing with you, because she is jealous of whatever you are doing, for instance your skydiving and your philosophy and she is now boasting that her daughter does this too, for instance, bungee jumping and philosophy, for look she's got a philosophy book sitting on her desk. And true enough she had a William James one, and I was reading Nietzsche around this time for I was going out of my mind. She had this tome and it just sat upon her desk, but all my Neechy books had been into the bath with me, not once but umpteen times, and that is why their pages had spread out like a fan and the spine was starting to disintegrate and some pages came loose. Eliza's book was thick and firm.
So clearly she was watching me and surreptitiously competing, so she must have thought about my thoughts a lot quite probably, although who knows. I think she was a feeling type alright although a type like any other. But these types can try to get inside your head.
She told me she was trying coz she picked on little things about my work, not once but every day, and talked to me as if I were a reckless child, which wasn't true, except in the case of the philosophy books.
It was kind of strange.
But there was a spying racket in that place and things about me kept on being reported. Very strange.
It almost seemed like they were trying to climb into my head. Those feeling types. Or not. But anyway.
My head was full of thickets.
Trying to get my head around the Neechy.
If I didn't then the pressure would keep building. As I pressed it down to stop me feeling. I was not a feeling type, but working on my adaptation.
Two things I noticed.
1. My processes were not linear and methodical but abstract and therefore associative. Bad clerical worker hencely, down dog down.
2. My alleged superiors who probably were for all I knew but I wasn't quite sure then were keen to monitor...not so much my work, but what was in my head and they were very keen to know about that. They really deeply needed more compliance and subservience and not so much cool getting on or cool fucking up or whatever it is I was doing, as I was not cut out to be a clerical worker. I kid you not.
Two things I concluded.
1. I need to come down on myself more heavily to push my mind into a linear, methodological mode, since my mind was not taking to it. Bad dog.
2. I had to let these people into my head. Or they were going to keep attacking me with petty points. They had to have complete control over my head, or else. The whittling and combative moral criticism about what they alleged might be inside my head. Or not. The case may be.
From all angles considered, Western adaptation was not going to be easy. Not a piece of cake not a walk in the park or anything. really.
Quelle fromage.
This whole adaptation business was taking a fair chunk out of me. Wearing me down. And particularly my emotions. Which I couldn't feel yet.
Harsh Christianity had worked its charm like DDT on a minor cockroach species. My head.
So I was trying to do the Western adaptation thingie.
Indications were to follow those two principles, which were abstractive and naturally non-linear.
Naturally -- they came from my head.
And then some things came from my body, such as the pressure to adapt, for I was overheating. all that superego nuclear intensity. From being brought up in Rhodesia and surviving a war. That came from my body, my digestion, oooh, aaah, eeeeh!
I was losing it for sure. My body.
It was shutting down right under me. (Ooh. Aaah.)
Buttocks.
In any case, my emotions were red hot. And suddenly went white. Oooh--hooo. I felt them temporarily before they slid over a cliff. Then I was soaring. Literally. Ooh-Aaah. Well not then, as the case may be. But still I felt it. Something in me was emotionally soaring. I had got emotions under me at last. Oooh-Aaaah.
But still, they'd got into my head by then, did I forget to mention? So it felt a bit like mind-rape in a sense, although I undertand that notion isn't physically realistic. Still, that's what it felt like after all this time. Because I'd cry for absolutely nothing and I'd lost my stoicism by then, ah, and oooh.
I should write a book about it some day.
Anyway, that's when my whole digestion totally collapsed and I could not eat solid food. I guess I had resorted to a baby mind because I felt like it. Ah! and Me!
I guess I made some weird decisions in my life, but I kept on reading Nietzsche. He made sense bit by bit. But by this time my body had evaded me. Its processes were AWOL. I couldn't bring them back no matter what I tried, which was frustrating.
I still had my mind, but it was emptied out and kind of like a gang rape, I'd imagine, even though I'd never noticed or experienced one.
So I had to figure it out but this could take days or weeks or months even years. I'd have to get this from the Neecha, all the answers I'd been craving for two decades of my life.
That's what kept me on reading philosophy, because needed to, to come to the rescue of my body, which had all but totally abandoned me. Right here, right now. A mild irritation, China. Don't mention it, Old Chap.
Talk about a shamanic invasion. By spirits. But not of the most pleasant sort.
projected evil and shamanism
I certainly think a shamanic type is one who has absorbed a great deal of society's evil -- which is to say its negativity and projections. We can see this pattern in Marechera, who was born into what became a very large family in dire poverty. His mother went mad and saw a witchdoctor who said that she could lose her madness if she chose one of her children to send her demon into. Psychologically, this is known as projection or projective identification (if the child takes on that role bestowed by the family and does indeed become mad). Then the shaman initiate has to deal with this demon, or with many societal demons, who are tearing him or her apart. That's the test. And if you can cope with that, you become initiated.
Saturday 18 October 2014
Chapter 10
So I wrote a book although I have no idea of it now. It was supposed to communicate...something...to someone. I had that in mind and I am pretty sure of it.
I had some strange notions about matters in those days for sure, because I thought of society as an organism that was somehow organically united, because that was how I had experienced it until that time. Rightly or wrongly.
God, I had some weird notions in those days. I thought writing was communication and that ideas came across.
I surely hadn't drunk enough wine or I would have realized differently. I guess.
We're all hypnotised in some way or another and we cannot think unless we get the vino veritas in us and then we speak the truth but only for
MY BUTTOCKS
This is a pathetic excuse!
But anyway...
I have yet to do the extreme nosedive thing some day I suppose.
This is called incoherency. It matters.
In Australia, you have no idea about male bonding.
There is no rigidity, you see.
I didn't like it that the aussies interfered in "our" selective provocations to prolong the war, but what are you to do an aussie is an aussie.
I can't make head nor tail of this and nor can you.
That is the great relief that binds my day.
You may see them sooner than you realize.
With the dawning of the new moon!
I had some strange notions about matters in those days for sure, because I thought of society as an organism that was somehow organically united, because that was how I had experienced it until that time. Rightly or wrongly.
God, I had some weird notions in those days. I thought writing was communication and that ideas came across.
I surely hadn't drunk enough wine or I would have realized differently. I guess.
We're all hypnotised in some way or another and we cannot think unless we get the vino veritas in us and then we speak the truth but only for
MY BUTTOCKS
This is a pathetic excuse!
But anyway...
I have yet to do the extreme nosedive thing some day I suppose.
This is called incoherency. It matters.
In Australia, you have no idea about male bonding.
There is no rigidity, you see.
I didn't like it that the aussies interfered in "our" selective provocations to prolong the war, but what are you to do an aussie is an aussie.
I can't make head nor tail of this and nor can you.
That is the great relief that binds my day.
You may see them sooner than you realize.
With the dawning of the new moon!
Destructive people
Paradoxically, destructive people may be really your best friends, but only if you are strong enough. A strong sparring partner can reveal to you the holes in your defence and where you need to improve your game.
Or if you are not so strong, they are your worst enemies. And in some respects, since we are strong and weak, they can demolish our weaker sides so that they can be caused to regenerate in part, although perhaps never entirely. I say this as a non-mystic, who sees that shamanism certainly has a structure -- as I have noticed in the writings of Nietzsche, Bataille and Marechera -- but who does not believe in individual destinies. It isn't that we were supposed, as such, to be destroyed, because we were supposed, as such, to learn a lesson. Rather, that was what occurred due to any sorts of reasons, for reasons that may have been overdetermined (i.e. there were more than one).
Look at it this way. It's not just that we are pushed into molds by negative authoritarian forces, but that our impression of the sheer awesomeness of certain notions,objects or types of people, also leaves its impression on our minds. Positive control may be more effective and more devastating than negative control, in fact, as it is less obvious.
And destructive people break spells. If you are spellbound by the idea that powerful people are automatically superior people, a destructive powerful person will teach you otherwise. That is, if you are open to the lesson, an important lesson can be learned. There may still be an impediment when people are spellbound severely by a negative authoritarian structure -- that is to say, they are afraid to act, even on what they know. Not everybody learns a lesson when realistic facts are demonstrated but some do.
If in childhood we come under all sorts of spells, adulthood is high time to disabuse ourselves of these. When a narcissist attacks or a troll attacks, we unlearn how to be spellbound by the values they purport to stand for. To the extent the left has attacked me, I have learned to distrust the left and to the extent the right has attacked me, I have learned to distrust it as well.
After a while, destructive people have no other effect on me than revelatory truth. They show me my blind spots, where I am still unconsciously revering something that ought not to have my reverence. I only got this way because as a child I was spellbound.
As Nietzsche says, "The more mistrust, the more philosophy is present."
Or if you are not so strong, they are your worst enemies. And in some respects, since we are strong and weak, they can demolish our weaker sides so that they can be caused to regenerate in part, although perhaps never entirely. I say this as a non-mystic, who sees that shamanism certainly has a structure -- as I have noticed in the writings of Nietzsche, Bataille and Marechera -- but who does not believe in individual destinies. It isn't that we were supposed, as such, to be destroyed, because we were supposed, as such, to learn a lesson. Rather, that was what occurred due to any sorts of reasons, for reasons that may have been overdetermined (i.e. there were more than one).
Look at it this way. It's not just that we are pushed into molds by negative authoritarian forces, but that our impression of the sheer awesomeness of certain notions,objects or types of people, also leaves its impression on our minds. Positive control may be more effective and more devastating than negative control, in fact, as it is less obvious.
And destructive people break spells. If you are spellbound by the idea that powerful people are automatically superior people, a destructive powerful person will teach you otherwise. That is, if you are open to the lesson, an important lesson can be learned. There may still be an impediment when people are spellbound severely by a negative authoritarian structure -- that is to say, they are afraid to act, even on what they know. Not everybody learns a lesson when realistic facts are demonstrated but some do.
If in childhood we come under all sorts of spells, adulthood is high time to disabuse ourselves of these. When a narcissist attacks or a troll attacks, we unlearn how to be spellbound by the values they purport to stand for. To the extent the left has attacked me, I have learned to distrust the left and to the extent the right has attacked me, I have learned to distrust it as well.
After a while, destructive people have no other effect on me than revelatory truth. They show me my blind spots, where I am still unconsciously revering something that ought not to have my reverence. I only got this way because as a child I was spellbound.
As Nietzsche says, "The more mistrust, the more philosophy is present."
The Gift Of The Narcissist…Should You Choose To Accept it — Concrete Shamanism — Medium
The Gift Of The Narcissist…Should You Choose To Accept it — Concrete Shamanism — Medium: "Narcissists do not know themselves and here’s where the ultimate gift of the narcissist comes in. An experience with a narcissist gets you to your core issues fast. After being wounded or taken down to the point that nothing else exists but you, it’s up to you to find the path to healing. If the narcissist has done their job, they will have caused so much drama that your friends and family will want nothing to do with you. You’re on your own and with most people not knowing how dangerous and cold-blooded narcissists are they will view your tales with suspicion. Normal people wouldn’t treat people that way but narcissists are not normal people with normal human emotions. You have to accept you’ve been mauled by a monster."
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
repost
There’s only one principle that binds together Nietzsche, Bataille and Marechera — it is that violence is the precondition for thought and that one is not able, through thinking, to analyse the violence that has been wrought to give one the current state of being. That awareness has to come from outside of one’s thinking processes. Bataille views initiatory experience as consequent on a mode of violence that puts us “beside ourselves”.
The principle that violence limits consciousness, simultaneously as it creates the capacity for consciousness at all, is the paradox of knowledge that Nietzsche and Marechera’s thought also brings to the fore.
Now, obviously, it has taken me a long time to articulate this, but all the same that is part of the problem with working within the mode of consciousness — and, indeed, within my own personal consciousness which has been particularly limited by violence.
The consciousness restricting and consciousness permitting nature of violence is the key focus that has to be maintained to read these authors deeply and effectively. Unless one allows them to work their own brand of violence on you, one only derives from them what one already knows. The violence simply has to come from the outside.
But that is hard to articulate in any polite way. The reader has to be receptive and open himself up. Otherwise, one is left with academia, or mere philosophy and the like.
The principle that violence limits consciousness, simultaneously as it creates the capacity for consciousness at all, is the paradox of knowledge that Nietzsche and Marechera’s thought also brings to the fore.
Now, obviously, it has taken me a long time to articulate this, but all the same that is part of the problem with working within the mode of consciousness — and, indeed, within my own personal consciousness which has been particularly limited by violence.
The consciousness restricting and consciousness permitting nature of violence is the key focus that has to be maintained to read these authors deeply and effectively. Unless one allows them to work their own brand of violence on you, one only derives from them what one already knows. The violence simply has to come from the outside.
But that is hard to articulate in any polite way. The reader has to be receptive and open himself up. Otherwise, one is left with academia, or mere philosophy and the like.
Magazine Digest: The New Yorker | Clarissa's Blog
Magazine Digest: The New Yorker | Clarissa's Blog
Well I get the impression that people may be able to break from the old paradigms a bit and think in terms of some of the newer ideas I have been discussing. I know the old guard were very much against my very serious ideas that combat the narrowing of the character structure (which takes place through authoritarian training), but now some people are starting to express an interest.
Well I get the impression that people may be able to break from the old paradigms a bit and think in terms of some of the newer ideas I have been discussing. I know the old guard were very much against my very serious ideas that combat the narrowing of the character structure (which takes place through authoritarian training), but now some people are starting to express an interest.
Why Experts Reject Creativity - The Atlantic
Why Experts Reject Creativity - The Atlantic
The researchers found that new ideas—those that remixed information in surprising ways—got worse scores from everyone, but they were particularly punished by experts. "Everyone dislikes novelty,” Lakhami explained to me, but “experts tend to be over-critical of proposals in their own domain." Knowledge doesn’t just turn us into critical thinkers. It maybe turns us into over-critical thinkers. (In the real world, everybody has encountered a variety of this: A real or self-proclaimed expert who's impatient with new ideas, because they challenge his ego, piercing the armor of his expertise.)
The researchers found that new ideas—those that remixed information in surprising ways—got worse scores from everyone, but they were particularly punished by experts. "Everyone dislikes novelty,” Lakhami explained to me, but “experts tend to be over-critical of proposals in their own domain." Knowledge doesn’t just turn us into critical thinkers. It maybe turns us into over-critical thinkers. (In the real world, everybody has encountered a variety of this: A real or self-proclaimed expert who's impatient with new ideas, because they challenge his ego, piercing the armor of his expertise.)
Magazine Digest: The New Yorker | Clarissa's Blog
Magazine Digest: The New Yorker | Clarissa's Blog
I feel that we collectively may be pulling out of the fluffiness of inoffensive writing and idiocy. I sense something new in the air. I think we had a period of time of pulling down the old authoritative matrix and then there was fluffiness, but now it is time for something new.
I feel that we collectively may be pulling out of the fluffiness of inoffensive writing and idiocy. I sense something new in the air. I think we had a period of time of pulling down the old authoritative matrix and then there was fluffiness, but now it is time for something new.
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