Sunday 30 November 2014

The Western stance

Interesting Link | Clarissa's Blog



Maybe unrelated, but here is THE quintessential Western perspective, especially from someone who may have had a bit of education.
“Objectivity, outside of brute matter, has no place in the dictionary of my life. It’s a nonsense word; a false substitute for subjectivity. It takes massive courage to accept that our universe is most likely without inherent meaning. Honour is a subjective word; it can mean virtually anything in the mouth of someone else. I don’t relate to, or buy the whole racial/cultural-pride/sentimentality thing, which, I believe, can translate or morph into simple racism with the drop of a hat. I’m a citizen of the world – planet earth – and not fully blinded by the numerous assumptions and prejudices of the culture I was born into, though I’m the first to stress that western culture has as many good things to offer as any other. The individual is all that really exists; the rest is bullshit. If that’s childish idealism, or coldheartedness, so be it. But I would disagree. Nor would I agree that this position is exclusively western.”
Key points: 
The denial that their postmodernist perspective is “Western” and insistence that it could be anything at all, presumably.
The fear that sentimentality (acknowledging one’s roots) leads to racism. Perhaps it leads to Auschwitz? Naughty Westerner! Disavow.
The insistence that only individuality has any meaning.
IMPLICITLY: the derision of any viewpoint apart from this, Western one: “the rest is bullshit”
Also the delusion that one is capable of being tough-minded in one’s stance when one is only disappearing up one’s own butt-hole: “If that’s childish idealism, or coldheartedness, so be it.”

Politics, literature and your art

winning

winningOne of the sparring techniques that I'd always been aware of --but somehow never quite practiced-- is that of crowding in on the other person, your opponent. It was reinforced to me a few weeks ago in the private lessons. It is your task and duty to do precisely that, to dominate the centre of the ring, whilst pushing the other person to its peripheries, "against the ropes".


I'd known about this, but for some reason never practiced it, most likely because I felt that I still had a lot to learn about technique and so on without resorting to "mind games" (which could have been an easy forte). 

Yet, 'mind games' have to take primacy when you are physically weaker, or when self-preservation is preferred to an outlay of maximum effort along with maximum risk. (My enjoyment of risk for its own sake means that I often don't see what should be palpably self-evident.)

The feeling of being crowded is something special in boxing. It feels like being overwhelmed to the point that you cannot think or intuit clearly how to respond. It feels like becoming that mythical gendered beast, the female hysteric. The point is to try to make the other person feel that way, whilst taking steps -- literal steps -- to evade the corners or the edges of the ring, where one can be made to feel this sensation.

It's a lot easier to evade the corners when one has a mind to do so --that is, when one sets this goal as a top priority. Evading the corners with great speed also means that one is moving quickly, which will enable one to find the interesting angles on the opponent -- the open jaw line coming in from the right, the exposed rib cage, the belly when crossing in with a roundhouse from the left.

In political battles, the stakes are about the same, and the feelings of either dominating or of losing one's mind are also to be encountered here. To stay cool when one is in the corner, "against the ropes" and the subject of mental crowding is what we train for. To be able to still the mind to look for an opening when the whole world is raining down upon one's head is the name of the game.

Those who take more blows than they hand out are often deemed "hysterics" in the world of politics and life -- however there is rarely consideration given as to whether those who dominate and those defending are actually going pound for pound. The "hysterics" of the world can have more courage per mass than the clear winners do.  Weight in on the side of one, whilst mental strength is on the side of the other.

Shamanism and Buddhism

Shamanism and BuddhismShamanism has an affinity with Buddhism, due to the fact that both aim to achieve a state of tolerance of life without metaphysics (at least, for moments at a time). In the case of Buddhism, one transcends the ego. In the case of shamanism, one trains to tolerate the ambiguities inherent in immanence (nature, animality, chaos, states involving various forms of destruction).


The point is not to become animal or destructive principle permanently, but to learn something from these states. Obviously, there is nothing transcendentally positive about tolerating immanence, or indeed, about various manifestations of immanence.

Precisely what one may learn from shamanistic immersion is that morality is in fact needed under certain circumstances. The point here is that one learns one's lessons for oneself. Indeed, one initiates one's own lessons for self-teaching. From an intellectual shamanistic point of view, this is better than simply adapting to the demands of authorities and trusting them implicitly. There's more honor to be had when one thinks this way -- and possibly more rigor.

eternal recurrence and the shaman

eternal recurrence and the shamanThere are a few different levels of interpretation of an esoteric text like Nietzsche's.  The karmic is one level of interpretation, but the shamanistic/affirmative idea is a deeper level.   You can lose your complexes through shamanistic regression, so there is no longer any error to be corrected. You and your unconscious are one.


Not many people can gain a genuine recapitulation through "facing death". Those who can say it are shamans. But paradoxically, they have had to pay for their freedom with their wounding. I am speaking in a neuro-psychological sense. This is far from mysticism. Those who have some psychological wounding (a radical change in one's society might do it to you, or certain forms of oppression/bullying) can often learn very quickly about the ways their unconscious mind functions. Their unconscious mind and their conscious mind are one. This is hardly true for most, and the lower one's spiritual status is, the less one will have access to the deeper parts of one's own mind. One can imagine the lowest on the ladder of the spiritual hierarchy having no idea what their unconscious is actually doing or what it wants -- hence back-biting and self-delusion, along with a general lack of courage in facing things directly. One simply cannot face that which one does not have the courage to know.

What they sometimes get through their suffering is actually shamanistic knowledge. The shamanistic formula is "facing death". Those who can face their own annihilation (represented as shamanic regression, leading to re-learning via temporary "ego death") will be healed. But one only seeks this kind of healing when life itself has put one under extreme duress. One would rather not do it. But if one has received an extreme psychological wound, one will often be able to regress to a very early level, and thus get to the origins of one's own identity in such a way that one can heal oneself.  For one to have the courage to go to this level is really rare, very rare.

So that is the most esoteric interpretation of the eternal recurrence. But the karmic interpretation will be true of many people. Perhaps we can see a spiritual hierarchy forming on the basis of how one interprets this puzzle of the eternal recurrence? Those who have healed themselves are truly free, but they are the few. The rest, who fear to go to such extremes of facing death (and it is an anti-intuitive thing to do under most circumstances) will have a karmic interpretation of eternal recurrence. Others still will see it as a sign of misery and condemnation:  unavoidable servitude or sameness due to the eternal recurrence of the same.

This other interpretation of eternal recurrence being eternal misery is most likely one to be made by people who are unable to experience shamanic regeneration. Eternal return then suggests no escape. That would be the logical conclusion if you cannot access your internal resources to create yourself anew.

The Stupidest Link of the Month | Clarissa's Blog

The Stupidest Link of the Month | Clarissa's Blog





“– Yes. There is a lot of apologetic self-flagellation going on. AND I HATE THAT. Feminism, individualism, individual rights, the rights of child, gay rights, democracy, progress, technology, humanistic scholarship, the collapse of patriarchal mentality – these are only some of the amazing achievements of our Western Civilization. This is a lot to be proud of. This is a legacy worth preserving.”
The weakness of the current Western stance is its almost-worship of subjectivism. So someone like me who is deemed to be or have been right wing (because of my original cultural status, no matter that I am extremely libertarian) is subjectively squelshed. At the same time exotic identities, like Islamic ones, are made room for …..up to a point. You can’t preserve any legacy is you allow people to act on their inner prejudices including their inverted prejudices about foreigners. The worship of the exotic foreigner and demand that one becomes more and more sensitised to their needs is not right. Those foreigners are most of the time right wing and I am always libertarian, but because of subjectivist training (for instance postmodernist theorising and new left theorising in the universities) the so-called intellectual leaders act really nuts.

Facing the truth about IDENTITY

Saturday 29 November 2014

Bataille, fascism, intellectuals....

Adventures with the Canadian State Apparatus | Clarissa's Blog

Adventures with the Canadian State Apparatus | Clarissa's Blog



So, it’s not the ideological state apparatus, anyway. When I first migrated, I was horrified at how little was available to the average citizen. You couldn’t camp anywhere you wanted to, you had to wear seatbelts and have headrests installed in your car, you had to allow strangers to cross your lawn, you were not expected to defend your private space (or have it respected) in a park… The most telling sign was that when people travelled by car through the wilderness areas, they put their radios on full blast — commercial radio drowning out any natural vibes.
That is why I say I am not averse to men being militarized — or even large sectors of the population, male and female. It would free up the mind and make people stop thinking in such narrow terms.

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog



Affirming and normalizing your broken state is actually the easiest thing to do. It is extremely hard to get beyond oneself enough to see things from the outside. So feminists say, “Why do anything hard? Doing something hard is ‘patriarchy’.”
In a sense they are right in that they do need to be able to reclaim the repressed masculine dimensions of themselves in order to succeed. But mushy modern minds can’t seem to fathom how much this is necessary.
I notice these days if you mention that anything is hard, immediately people show they disapprove of the method. It’s considered old-fashioned and “patriarchy”. But reclaiming your more robust side is reclaiming yourself FROM patriarchy. Sometimes this requires an actual war against patriarchy inside your head. If you are too feminine to fight a war, then all you end up with is an ideological system that affirms dysfunction as all that can be achieved or even as a kind of good.

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog





“\\ Mothers may dominate their little girls and expect them to share their troubles, but domination has been found to be far less damaging to the child’s psyche than abandonment and routine distancing.
Give me distancing from the parent folk any day. The fact that I had earlier had this distancing was the only reason I was able to pull myself out of a nose dive.
You just have to be really careful of pseudo-feminism, which makes out that materal overparenting may be a good thing. Even relatively. Feminist is off the rails because of this stupid mode of superiority thinking, that tries to reassure the collapsed ego of the battered and bruised that they are still good people who have something to say. It’s not so. You need to look at everything from an engineering perspective and see the structure for what it is, without emotional evaluation or judgements about individual identities and their capacity for good or evil. First just simply see things as they are, in a structual sense. Otherwise you are running around trying to affirm yourself and affirm your experiences when this precludes seeing things as they are.

harshness against migrants


may be expanded

How To Make It Through A Spiritual Awakening Without Losing Your Mind





I see the ego as an structure of the mind, rather than as a negative moral entity.  In fact, the ego needs to be pretty strong in the middle stage of development in order to jettison the space capsule of your real self out into space.  If it is weak or flaky at all, you will stay just where you are.  So a strong ego comes first -- and then, shamanism.

Wrong

From what I recall, the Western panacea for what ails you is more and more sensitivity.

That is entirely wrong in my view.

The real solution is character structure and being with those who are like thou.

The final stage: adjusting to reality as it really is

Friday 28 November 2014

Shamanism embraces peripheral vision and "non-knowledge"

psychological fundamentals

What has helped me tremendously is to understand what some call the psychology of fascism.  I can try to explain it this way, that people who have made a deal with the devil to get material goods or honors at the expense of actually living their real lives, as very real people, are very, very hostile to innocence and exuberance.  Seriously, you need to read up on this stuff, perhaps even read some Erich Fromm, on Escape from Freedom.  But there is some other even better stuff, too, that I have since forgotten where to find.  If you read some stuff about the real fascists, say in Germany, you can sometimes find talk about the inner drive to crush childlike innocence, because it seems offensive to those who have to live their lives in misery.  But this is not just fascism.  It's really common in people, actually.  You need to be able to set up some guards against it.  Specifically it is childlike innocence that is attacked.  Just so you know.

The Power Of Being Formless







Well this is brilliant.  I've had exactly the same experience, above all with my memoir, which I wrote in a way to expore whether I had a nefarious inner identity.  Of course, people had already proclaimed I had a negative outer one, because of my historical origins.  But I needed to find if my inner one -- my actual self-- was at all negative.  What I did find was nothing pretty much, because people hadn't given me the leg-room to act; they were too much on my case about the negative external identity.  

The strangest by-product of my writing, though, was that I got to know all about people in ways I couldn't even have imagined.  People expressed absolutely astonishing levels of insecurity toward me, always in the form of a projection.  I couldn't have been all of those negative things as they were all rather specific and in some cases represented the precise opposite character structure to the kind of person I am -- I AM very, very emotionally dry, which is why I took to writing -- to try to get more emotional flow happening:  But by golly, people projected their emotional wetness onto me, and what I saw reflected back was not me at all (which is what I had been hoping), but a reflection of the contemporary Western personality in its different manifestations.  And when I reflected deeply about what people had said, I did conclude that those people had revealed to me what was deeply personal about themselves.

Tricks to get rid of "people"


Thursday 27 November 2014

Repost: the fear of a little bit of temporary unreason in the historical process

Nietzsche, Bataille, Wolin



Re:  The Seduction of Unreason The Intellectual Romance With Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism by Richard Wolin 

Jennifer Armstrong: 
It's really not an "intellectual romance with fascism" that either Nietzsche or Bataille had. There are fundamental aspects to both of their philosophical approaches that are in profound opposition to the ideology and practice of fascism. Most significantly, Nietzsche and Bataille are anti-authoritarian. They are trying to develop the individual, through encouraging exploration, self-invention and confrontation with challenges. This aspect of their philosophical approaches is about as anti-fascist as you can get. After all, a fascist is someone who has a fundamental desire for authority and want to find his or her particular place within a hierarchy of power. 

WOLIN: 


"One of the crucial elements underlying this problematic rightleft synthesis is a strange chapter in the history of ideas whereby latter-day anti-philosophes such as Nietzsche and Heidegger became the intellectual idols of post–World War II France—above all, for poststructuralists like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles
Deleuze. Paradoxically, a thoroughgoing cynicism about reason and democracy, once the hallmark of reactionary thought, became the stock-in-trade of the postmodern left.7 As observers of the French intellectual scene have frequently noted, although Germany lost on the battlefield, it triumphed in the seminar rooms, bookstores, and
cafés of the Latin Quarter. During the 1960s Spenglerian indictments of “Western civilization,” once cultivated by leading representatives of the German intellectual right, migrated across the Rhine where they gained a new currency. Ironically, Counter-Enlightenment doctrines that had been taboo in Germany because of their unambiguous association with fascism—after all, Nietzsche had been canonized as the Nazi regime’s official philosopher, and for
a time Heidegger was its most outspoken philosophical advocate— seemed to best capture the mood of Kulturpessimismus that predominated among French intellectuals during the postwar period. Adding insult to injury, the new assault against philosophie came from the homeland of the Enlightenment itself.

One of the linchpins of the Counter-Enlightenment program
was an attack against the presuppositions of humanism. By challenging the divine basis of absolute monarchy, the unbelieving philosophes had tampered with the Great Chain of Being, thereby undermining morality and inviting social chaos. For the anti-philosophes, there existed a line of continuity between Renaissancehumanism, Protestant heresy, and Enlightenment atheism. In Considerations
on France (1797) Maistre sought to defend the particularity
of historical traditions against the universalizing claims of
Enlightenment humanism, which had culminated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of August 20, 1789. In a spirit of radical nominalism, the French royalist observed that he had encountered Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and even Persians (if only in the writings of Montesquieu). But “humanity” or “man in general,” he claimed, was a figment of a feverish and overheated
philosophe imagination. “Man” as such did not exist.8

An assault on humanism was also one of French structuralism’s hallmarks, an orientation that in many respects set the tone for the more radical, poststructuralist doctrines that followed. As one critic
has aptly remarked, “Structuralism was . . . a movement that in large measure reversed the eighteenth-century celebration of Reason, the credo of the Lumières.”9 In this spirit, one of the movement’s founders, Claude Lévi-Strauss, sought to make anthropology useful for the ends of cultural criticism. Lévi-Strauss famously laid responsibility for the twentieth century’s horrors—total war, genocide, colonialism, threat of nuclear annihilation—at the doorstep of Western humanism. As he remarked in a 1979 interview, “All the tragedies we have lived through, first with colonialism, then with fascism, finally the concentration camps, all this has taken shape not in opposition to or in contradiction with so-called humanism . . .but I would say almost as its natural continuation.”10 Anticipating the poststructuralist credo, Lévi-Strauss went on to proclaim that the goal of the human sciences “was not to constitute, but to dissolve
man.”11 From here it is but a short step to Foucault’s celebrated, neo-Nietzschean adage concerning the “death of man” in The Order of Things.12"
The supposed opposition between "humanism" and Bataille/Nietzsche/Foucault/Deleuze type "irrationalism" is conceptually mistaken. Of course, this is how it has played out in history -- as two distinct streams of thought, whereby one has effectively cannibalized the other, or at least it seems that way. As an aside, I went back to Zimbabwe recently and revelled in the humanistic mindset of most people there. Post-modernist post-humanism has not caught up with them, although they are very much enmired in Christianity, also. In general, it is a situational time warp that reminds one of the value of one's fellow human being. One can love humans, again, within that context, where humanism largely prevails. 

In the deeper sense of Bataille, Nietzsche and Deleuze, they are implicitly interested in undergoing a stage of madness, in order to come out the other end in a better and stronger condition. The implicit goal is to get rid of blind authoritarianism (although not necessarily recognition of authority), especially that which is linked to an idea of a god above, which maintains order. In terms of this, the means to the end is "madness", but the goal is a superior kind of sanity to what we experience as normal and necessary, today. The whole emphasis of all three of these writers is a circular movement from everyday normality (a form of insanity in many respects), into true insanity, into a state of superior sanity. It's a large scale historical programme which is supposed to bring "the individual" into being in a true sense, for the first time in history. The irrationality that these writers seek to expand upon is not the end goal for humanity, but merely a stage in the process of humanity's self-transformation. 

What we have today, under the rule of capitalism, is quite substantially already the "death of man". The individual doesn't matter. What she produces and the length of time in which she produces it (and then, ultimately, its value on the market), is all that retains meaning in this day and age. 

In all, it seems to me that Bataille, Nietzsche and Deleuze were largely just messengers foretelling this 'death of man' and warning against the error of losing reverence for ourselves in a post-Christian era, rather than those who brought this situation into existence. That is to say, Wolin is keen on shooting the messenger.

The "is" versus the engine and how it works

I suspect that one of the biggest reasons that people can fail to see the paradigm of shamanism -- or, indeed, can fail to see how it appears in some of the works of the biggest intellectuals -- is because they read a book or respond to an idea with the expectation that the writing tells them how things "are".  To read Nietzsche in this way is to get a totally different impression of the writer than if one read him to understand how things "work".

For instance, young readers respond to Nietzsche's aphorisms on women by taking away the message, "That is how things really are."   It would be better if they understood, "This is how my mind (or others' minds) WORK."

In exactly the same way, people may hear me discussing how to avoid "conformity" and then misunderstand the whole message because they think there is a fixed state of being -- perhaps one that can be socially or sociologically defined -- that corresponds to the term "conformity".  In fact,  my sense of the term,  conformity, has to do with the way things WORK, and is thus a concept of relativity, not a fixed state (just as the concepts of heat and cold do not describe fixed states, but express temperature gradations),

So, the best outcome would come about, it seems to me, if one could read and respond as an engineer addressing a structural concern  rather than as someone asking for directions in a strange place.  This is the key to understanding my way of writing, too, and my videos.  They describe how things are structured.  They do not give you directions.  

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog: "We can see that nations still do want to be able to hold a bit of water — that is regulate their own systems. This is what I have learned regarding the TPP. However, certain socio-economic masses and sectors of the economy that are not so important for military-strategic purposes may be sacrificed."



'via Blog this'

Part 1: on Georges Bataille and transgression

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog





Of course we need to look at the way the intellect functions and the kinds of environments it best prefers. The more we can move toward ACTUAL universalism, as opposed to POSITED universalism (which is an error and pretty much the opposite of actual universalism, as it creates traps), the happier those of intellectual disposition are. That’s why they oppose structures that demand a limited range of meaning, such as nation states. At the same time, the opposite principle seems to apply, more or less, economically. Look at it this way. The bath is full of water but there are countries where the bath has no water. The sides of the bath are the laws pertaining to the nation state. Remove the walls and share your bath water with those countries where the water keeps running away, because they can’t afford to erect walls. That is what you get when you have a totally globalised economy. It may seem rational to remove the walls of your bath tub and let the water level settle where it may, but it is actually incautious and rather crazy.

Finally, They Notice | Clarissa's Blog

Finally, They Notice | Clarissa's Blog





“And the “natives: were far from the enlightened feminist peoples she is describing. I blame Howard Zinn for this ridiculous idea of “feminist Aztecs” that I now have to battle in every other student essay.”
Yup. This is where the modern types show–I mean actively demonstrate–that they are unfit to rule and should not be trusted even as casual companions. If they have this childish black and white thinking about good and evil, they need to grow the fuck uip.

Marechera's history lessons


Marechera spoke of "what is the available reality?"  It means that for some people the available reality is very small, but that it is the job of people like him to make it bigger.  This is a related idea to that of parallel universes.  Now, I can't remember how I suddenly thought he was expressing himself in parallel universes.  I think part of it might have been that the academics couldn't see what I could see in his work, but surely there was more to it than this.  In one way it is quite obvious, though, for instance, he wrote a book, Black Sunlight, which has a protagonist, Chris, a photographer who somehow becomes "Christian" of Pilgrim's Progress.  This outcome is because "Christian" took "Chris's psychiatric drugs" and went to Devil's End.  It's a very confused universe, but it makes sense in shamanic terms, because in shamanic terms one has to get to the bottom of what is really wrong with oneself and society and not take corporate drugs to fix oneself.  Marechera himself was told to go under psychiatric care or lose his position at Oxford University.  But his illness was mostly political and would not have been cured by taking corporate drugs.  It seems that Marechera explores the ramifications of cooperating and the black joke he makes is that this will wreak havoc on the society that condemns him as mad.  He will become even more radicalised and leftwing -- but only so long as he is made mad by blinded demands for conformity.  The better path is that he cures himself shamanically and gives us all historical lessons.  But not if we are not listening.

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog



I liked the article on the case against early cancer detection. I think the body often reabsorbs a lot of the malformations it makes. You just have to be fit and healthy and it fights back. A very similar issue is early psychiatric testing for children. Let’s just not do that. You are looking for trouble and will probably find it. It’s interesting how often we find what we look for.

Mike


The aetheticisation/deification of a notion of pre-existing harmony

Wednesday 26 November 2014

Which Philosopher Are You? | Clarissa's Blog

Which Philosopher Are You? | Clarissa's Blog





As I recall they make Nietzsche out to be Dionysian, when he is the ultimate rationalist in the sense of investigating whether humans might incorporate a much stronger understanding of our emotional needs and unconscious urges into our overall, much more conscious philosophical perspectives. He was far from going, “ra, ra, ra, let’s all be orgiastic!” He was saying, “Let’s realize what already exists and then lets see if we can incorporate this into our knowledge as part of what we consider to be true.”

transgression and superego shamanism

in the first section of this paragraph, Nietzsche addresses the psychology of transgression and its broader meaning in terms of pushing the wheels of history forward.  In the second part, he merges more into what I have come to term "superego shamanism" -- detailing the cost of this knowledge that one obtains through transgression.  The gold finally attained -- let us say by a successful shamanic crossing -- is the knowledge that one creates the world, but first one must pass through some difficult processes, where reality seems to be made up of invisible laws.  Indeed, that view and that process are not wrong at all as there are such laws  which command the majority: for instance, the subconcious need of most of humanity to suffer for any freedoms.

ROUSSEAU

Which Philosopher Are You? | Clarissa's Blog



It’s interesting how even the extreme right are somehow pyschologically purer, more consistent, above all drier and more tolerable than this mushy mess of the contemporary left. You just don’t end up in good places when people act “according to their natures”.
And it is true that they are against respresentative democracy. You only have to get a relatively more leftwing government in power, or a woman, and these “radical leftist” will start whining about “ego” and the impurity of action, and so on. It seems what they really want is a hardline rightwing government to keep them in place “according to nature” and to give them the sensation of being romantic martyrs.

Which Philosopher Are You? | Clarissa's Blog

Which Philosopher Are You? | Clarissa's Blog





Well the Rousseauist thinks she can draw endless resources from innocence and her nature (not Nature itself, in the literary romantic’s sense, but her own nature). Contemporary feminism seems to be going down this particular track of reasoning, too, in supposing that all one reasonably has to do in life is lean back and rely on one’s feminine nature. There’s no desire to build solidarity or trust or anything like that. And then you get such people reviewing your books and they say, “Jennifer is a hysteric because she had to deal with as situation that is not part of my tiny, tiny little world and never will be.”
I mean to say, one has to read between the lines to understand what they are trying to get at, but it’s very limited.

Which Philosopher Are You? | Clarissa's Blog

Which Philosopher Are You? | Clarissa's Blog: "I believe the Roussean mentality has been the most responsible for messing up my life. That is, to the extent it has been messed up, and I do mean my professional life. Marx– not so much. In fact, Marx hardly at all, because when I was attacked by the unionists, in what may have been construed as a primiitive, Marxist fashion, it just made me stronger. But Rousseau whittles and undermines. It’s very hard to deal with it. Once should give up one’s authority and become like children, but not in pure innocence, not in a way that could be truly romantic, like the literary British romantics, who were actually rather scary. One has to be childishly attentive to things in a sado-masochist way. It’s like being cut off at the knees every time. What to make of it?

At the same time, some people tend to thrive best in this kind of a psychological environment, at least temporarily. I find it odd.

For instance one woman — she called herself a revolutionary anarchist — sought my help about bullying in the workplace and I even passed some work onto her and paid her quite a lot with what little money I had. Then suddenly she blocked me and defriended me on Facebook because I didn’t support her stance on Palestine.

You have to marvel at such insanity."



'via Blog this'

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Historical structures of ethical behavior, subjective and objective

Pitta Dosha | Life in Balance

Pitta Dosha | Life in Balance



Apparently eating sweet food might be alright for me.



I'm only reading this stuff because my martial arts progress is at a dead end because of overheating -- and it is true that the intensity of the sun and the heat of my food all contribute to this state where I'm lying awake at night experiencing a dire state of dread, as if something that will mortify me is just around the corner.



When I get into high intensity training, I am much more susceptible to this sensation, but much more so if the food I have been eating is hot or the weather temperatures have been high.  Or the air is dry.

And there I am again

Ayurveda - Pitta- Characteristics of Pitta People, Dosha, tridosha, mind-body constitution in ayurveda: "Physical Features

These people are of medium height, are slender and body frame may be delicate. Their chests are not as flat as those of vata people and they show a medium prominence of veins and muscle tendons. The bones are not as prominent as in the vata individual. Muscle development is moderate.

The pitta complexion may be coppery, yellowish, reddish or fair. The skin is soft, warm and less wrinkled than vata skin. The hair is thin, silky, red or brownish and there is a tendency toward premature graying of hair and hair loss. The eyes may be gray, green or cooper-brown and sharp: the eyeballs will be of medium prominence. The nails are soft. The shape of the nose is sharp and the tip tends to be reddish.

Physiologically, these people have a strong metabolism, good digestion and resulting strong appetites. The person of pitta constitution usually takes large quantities of food and liquid. Pitta types have a natural craving for sweet, bitter and astringent tastes and enjoy cold drinks. Their sleep is of medium duration but uninterrupted. They produce a large volume of urine and the feces are yellowish, liquid, soft and plentiful. There is a tendency toward excessive perspiring. The body temperature may run slightly high and hands and feet will tend to be warm. Pitta people do not tolerate sunlight, heat or hard work well.

Psychologically, pitta people have a good power of comprehension; they are very intelligent and sharp and tend to be good orators. They have emotional tendencies toward hate, anger and jealousy.

They are ambitious people who generally like to be leaders. Pitta people appreciate material prosperity and they tend to be moderately well-off financially. They enjoy exhibiting their wealth and luxurious possessions."



'via Blog this'



---seriously I am learning quite a bit from some of this kind of writing about what to eat and what not to.  The physiological condition applies to me.

Ps.  Probably ignore the stuff and shitting and about being moderately well-to-do.

Balancing Pitta Dosha Through Yoga and Ayurveda





I'll keep this one as I am sensing already that I need to ease up on key aspects of my training, especiallyin the heat.

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog



We could have a very long talk about it some day which would touch on the topic of whether there is such a thing as “society”, whether the majority of problems are all in one’s head, the insistence of the contemporary modern person that we are all basically the same and function the same and that society now is pretty much as it has always been, and so on.
Point is, if someone implies I am overreacting to something, I let them go on believing it, because it is, after all a belief and that is all.

I'm a pizza


and apparently they want to flatter me even more if I go to their site, for there is the question, "Are you really the sad, helpless person that life seems to be trying to make out of you?"

Too much flattery in one day!

Different societies, different historical states

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog



Well, I think the society I was in did not favor narcissists simply because we were at war. This took all of the primal energy in a human being and directed it toward war. There was very iittle left over for direct preening. What I conclude from this is that human beings, especially the men, are supposed to be at war. Otherwise they are unhappy and start to compete in an unhealthy manner against their womenfolk.
Also, I do think current Western society is narcissistic. I think we ought to avoid at all costs the notion that what we encounter here is “human nature” and this is how it has always been. As a society moves away from feudal social relations towards validating the consumer, it becomes more and more narcissistic. I am speaking psychologically here, by the way, not directly economically, because I want you and others to grasp that enshrining the most passive role in society as the dominant one will produce a society of infants. It cannot help but do so. When the consumer is given priority over the producer or service-giver, you will end up with the enshrinement of bad behavior as next to godliness.
Lasty, whereas I don’t think all people are necessarily narcissists, I think my origins and cold.British demeanor has caused people to feel their narcissistic injuries. Don’t ask me how I did it, but people react to a reminder of the past. In a way they envy it and in a way they are afraid of it. And I do come from a situation of very, very strong feudal relations.

The Worship of Incompetence | Clarissa's Blog

The Worship of Incompetence | Clarissa's Blog



An antidote:
Sorry I can’t comment directly on the issue.
Mike was telling me yesterday that a three-star general had been speaking in the manner of a normal guy, with a normal portion of common sense, saying that the US entry into Afghanistan and Iraq was doomed by the fact that Americans could not speak these Middle-Eastern languages. Mike noted that even though bin Laden was only a business manager, he was able to play the US state like a charm by drawing them in, so that they would have to deal with a situation they could not understand, which would lead to the creation of many more jihadis.
It’s nice when a three-star general can speak, many years afterwards, in the manner of an oridinary guy imbued with common-sense.
Add a bit of political and/or strategic thinking to this mix and I swear you are onto a winner!

Scapegoatology: The Science of Scapegoating — Medium

Scapegoatology: The Science of Scapegoating — Medium



The role of the scapegoat is a very important one and comes with a lot of responsibility. The scapegoat knows when he is being scapegoated and he knows when he is powerless to defend himself from those accusations. We scapegoats work in secret solving problems that aren’t even ours. Some may view the scapegoat as weak, but in reality we are very, very strong. We get to learn from the mistakes of others. Part of learning is doing and we are rich with experiences.


Story of my life.  And I am really strong through having taken in other people's evil.  They have shown me their structural flaws by passing on the blame to me.  Sometimes these flaws are personal and sometimes societal.



The shaman takes in the evil of society and does alchemy with it.  The more evil you give me, the more I have to work with.  I can turn it into gold.



Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog





“The worship of infantilism has to go, because it’s fucking dangerous. Criminals use it successfully as a defense strategy.”
I was on a migrant transitional journey for a long time, where people simply would not believe a word I said about anything. I really felt I had to learn a new language. It was really impossible to fathom. For instance, if I had a problem with public transport and I was late for work one day, I could not simply say, “Sorry I am late because the bus was delayed today.” That was considered “an excuse”, whereas I had assumed it was a “reason”. I had to keep trying to figure it out.
My mistake was in believing it was possible to find a way out. Gradually it has become clear that one cannot calibrate oneself in any way that will satisfy narcissists. If you speak plainly, they say you are cold and unconvincing, while if you try to inject more emotion into your voice, they say, “Look at you! We all know that familiar language. You are just trying to get attention!”
A society that does not face its deep, structural problems, leads to individuals who try to get an emotional hit to feel temporarily better. There’s no adaptation to this. It can’t occur.

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog: "It fits in with the religious narrative that life was meant to be perfect but sin and corruption entered the picture and this contaminated everything permanently.

Certainly the religious view is not a robust view of life, since “sin” can attack us from any side at any time, and as we are mere humans we are powerless to help."



'via Blog this'

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog





In fact, it is assumed that a child cannot lie, so if one evinces childish emotions then necessarily one is NOT acting, whereas adults are considered to habituatlly lie or act for their advantage. This is the assumption of a culture that has no psychology — that has totally lost its psychological bearings. I think, though, it is also religious. The older you get the more sin and self-deception you are considered to harbor. To speak smoothly and in an in-control manner is to reveal your adulhood, which is bad, but to speak in jerky, reflexive manner, is considered to be getting to the real, underlying truth.
Once again, this is why I said yesterday that it can be hard to figure out how to speak to people in a convincing manner in a crisis.

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog

Baby Darren | Clarissa's Blog





This is precisely what I meant when I said in the previous post that I didn’t know which emotions to evince to get Westerners to take some of my problems seriously — childlike ones obviously.
I apologise for not addressing the topic of the baby darren directly, but we do not get that news, at least not in the same way in Australia.

Monday 24 November 2014

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog


“Recently I met a woman who asked me why I moved to the country. I opened my mouth and tried to reply, but she didn’t even wait for it, but began to explain to me my own reasons for immigration (which were obviously the supposed poverty and the lack of job opportunities). She also assumed I would want to stay in her country forever, and I wanted to grow old here. Neither of these were true to say the least, but I didn’t want to waste my time on her, so just politely left. Before that I also had the luck to get to know that Hungary, Poland and Romania are “almost the same”. Yes, of course. It’s exactly like saying France and Germany are almost the same.”
Yes, whenever I said I came from Zimbabwe, people corrected me and said, “You mean South Africa”. Well the first was a very far left regime, which I had been inhabiting for three years (on fifth of my life at that point) and South Africa much much more industrialized, more modern and was still under a system of apartheid.
So, not the same thing. But if people want to have their stereotypes, nothing would please me more than to indulge them to the full. I even donned nazi psychological armor once, which was a riot.
Here’s a small e-book about migration, Christianity and psychopathology.

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog





““Yeah, I migrated after the regime change, when we went from far right to far left and
Was that in the early 80s? Sorry, my knowledge on African history is close to zero :-(. You must have been a kid then.”
I was 15 — in 1984. Anyway not quite a kid. But I tell you there were a lot of differences and people had become quite petty in the new (old?) world, which was something I have never adjusted to. Also it was very hard to move from an objective basis for ethics to a subjective one. If I encapsulate it, I can say this was the core problem relating to all of my cultural and social difficulties. Because you can’t just point something out and say, “This is obviously a problem, so how about fixing it?” You have to emote really heavily, but not just in any way but in the expected way, or in a calculated way, so that others come to your rescue. I never could do this. it was never quite right. I didn’t have those ready-made culturally appropriate emotions to bring up to the surface at the right time. The verdicts kept going against me in every instance — and I do mean in single one. And now I’ve just given up. I can’t “do” Western culture with its requisite right balance of emotion to get things done. I can speak directly, like “This, A, B or C is a problem.” But I can’t make it SEEM a problem through my correct apportionment of emotion.

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog





@musteryou
That was an intriguing video……Just to be sure: you talk about your migrating from Zimbabwe to Australia, right?
Yeah, I migrated after the regime change, when we went from far right to far left and my father’s income started to dwindle significantly.
Because I’ve seen so much, it’s very difficult for me to take small criticisms of my personality seriously, but apparently that is how it is nowadays. Everything is handled in small change and if you do not check your bank balance, everything will have been withdrawn before you know and you will have no social credibility. Or to put is differently, you have to perpetually swat the gnits that want to suck your blood and not ignore them by any means, because they are training each other to suck on your blood.
As for British people, my Colonial British playing card trumps theirs. They can be as aloof and full of it as they like, but I still trump them in stoicism, resolve, sheer capacity for ongoing warfare etc. Something I have discovered is that I have an eternal capacity for ongoing warfare. I can swallow my pride at any time, but I don’t forget. This alone gives me superiority because most people can and do forget their dominance ploys. I don’t forget them.

The objective culture that your bubble of consciousness won't let you see

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog



I always find any of this enjoyment in apocalyptic speculation so hard to understand because my own culture was so fucking different — I mean looking back I guess it must have been tough or more sinewy or more roughage was in it or something. I am revisiting the site where these old timers talk and they scare the life out of me, for reasons I can’t quite describe, but I said to Mike last night, engaging there is like handling a bright colored snake — very, very pretty, but watch out for its venom. Those things know how to bite!
But on the softer side of things, I have noticed that Nietzsche noticed a similar thing, that people seemed to feel obliged to multiply their pains in the eyes of others as if it were impolite not to have a lot of pain and suffering. Nietzsche said that frankly he didn’t believe any of it, that there were more than enough psychological palliatives that people didn’t have to express themselves in that way. He said a lot of young people wanted to be attacked from the outside so that they could experience misery through some contrived circumstances, when the more honorable route would be to take on a very difficult project and construct one’s own misery.

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog





People used to run around physically a lot more, which would help them to iron out their difficulties. A wild rabbit is different from a caged rabbit and in the second case, you need to compensate more for the lack of natural conditions by upping the vitamins and special care regime. Same with contemporary humans.

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog



Mike says he was allowed to run around as a kid and explore the environment freely. It was a rural environment, so he had two near scrapes with death, but seems to have made it out ok (unless the lump in my bed this morning is an illusion). When he was lonely his mother used to say, “Well just go out by yourself then.” My upbringing was pretty similar, but in this regard Rhodesia was still thirty years behind the rest of the Western world, hence the age gap between Mike and I.

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog





“Expect those extremely patriarchal families to become more and more common should the economy get really bad.”
Yeah, I’ve heard this too. There are some men with low self-esteem who think that women will not marry them because they have a stand in partner in the form of the welfare state. They are hoping that with the demise of this, they will find women with equally poor self esteem who will settle for them. As the Bible says, the arrogant woman was “humbled” — meaning she was raped a few times to teach her to get over herself.

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog





Of course Mike regretted his decision as it really was unpleasant, boring and hard. But the kind of guy he is today, with so much toughness and resilience, can be put down to that earlier choice AND perhaps the tendency he had to make that sort of choice. He takes risks and has the most resilient character. I am not dissimilar, due to my responses to my hardships.
And I am sure you will continue to beneft from what was in your character to begin with and how the troubles you experienced multiplied these original qualities.

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog





People don’t want to hear anything even slightly bad about life or anything and if they start to have a sensation of any sort they freak. That’s an impression that has gorwn tremendously more convincing to me. In fact in the 90s that wasn’t so, but lots of males were bleating then that life was too hard and that compared to women they had it easy. The old system was on its way out, hence the bewailing of one’s lost place in the hierarchy, but now we have everything being treated as a product, and passive consumer hostility to anything a little bit sad, a little bit trying, a little bit intellectually difficult to grasp.
Therefore, having said “I divorce thee” three times, I am done with this society. I am no longer governed by any of its social considerations and will do as I please.

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog

The Profound Unfairness of Going Viral | Clarissa's Blog: "I’ve noticed people these days don’t like any message that says, “This will be extremely hard for you, but…” or, “This was a profoundly difficult experience for me…” Actually things were different in the past. For instance, Mike (my husband) joined what he took to be the most difficult section of the armed forces, just because it had that reputation for being so. Attitudes have shifted This also means that difficult texts (anything theoretical or academic) are disliked and treated with a passive hostility. Sweet is liked but sour is disliked. Fluffy is thrilling but scaly is awkward."



'via Blog this'
I'm on the isle of Lesbos and the echos of the voices of my comrades in arms are still with me.  Much as I despise them for what they are, denizens of violence, their tones are still honey to my ears and the only voices I still love and respect.   All the same I am shipwrecked and it is not quite true that there are only women here.  There are men as well.  But we do not speak the same language, above all in what we mean by anything when we speak.  As much as the words may be the same, the ideas and concepts are different.   I must go back to my home but that only means a way back to war and I shall surely die there, likely in the next battle, for I am very much weakened.

Violence has been a way of life.  I would be glad to be free of it if only the tones of those around me matched the childhood tones I am more used to.   That doesn't happen and they do not.  Consequently I must return home.  It sounds a stupid reason for anything but that is the only reason I've got.  When the sun rises, I will attempt to make my way back.  May the gods be so kind as to assist.

I can't imagine why there would be a good reason for anything.  The food is not ideal back home.  The life is not ideal.  It's still the only life I know.


Saturday 22 November 2014

trajectory

I had to figure everything out about shamanism for myself.  I think a huge key of it is that in my original culture I did not have the cultural conditioning to have an ego.  When people are ego-centred, they are a bit dead, and in an ego-centred culture, most people are not as spiritually well or spiritually alive as they would like to be.  So I was fresh meat for these kinds of vampires all my adult life.  I even tried to adjust to their ego-centred culture, but I coudln't quite believe in it, so went back to my original roots, only more deeply.

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog: "There are always counter-forces. Never just the one force. For the force of globalisation and economic liberalism, countervailing forces will rise up.

In the mean time, those who are currently whining that they do not have any holidays have themselves to blame, since there were many productive years for organising."



'via Blog this'

A Shaman Never Panics

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog





There are always counter-forces. Never just the one force. For the force of globalisation and economic liberalism, countervailing forces will rise up.
In the mean time, those who are currently whining that they do not have any holidays have themselves to blame, since there were many productive years for organising.

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog

The Death of Welfare | Clarissa's Blog: "Will they eat themselves to death? I wonder…

By the way, what I meant by fascism is a mental state — a lower, middle-class, small change counting mentality. If people are complaining resentfully about not having a holiday they need to organise by joining their unions, so that they can obtain holidays for themselves. If they don’t do this, they will fall into a mode of passivity that leads to psychological fascism – the blinded hostility toward those who have more or think differently.

QUESTION: "How Do You Become A Shaman?"

A mathematic proposition regarding guilt and pain

Nietzsche's writing on this can and ought to be taken as a mathematical proposition or more precisely one related to physics.  What I am saying is he is making a dry statement and forces and counter-forces.  He is not even being all that flamboyant in the direct sense, although his use of language gives another impression.  (That secondary level of meaning is like his mask, his skin.) At the primary level, however, it is a simply mathematical equation.  The more you go against the line of conformity -- which is a psychological line set in your head -- the more you will invite a sensation of guilt and pain.  It's no more complicated or more simple than this.  Have a look at my video on superego shamanism.  Both Nietzsche and Bataille were into this.  We don't have to use Freudian terms, as they can be misleading, but most people are more familiar with Freud than with mathematical dynamic Nietzsche is outlining -- so we can refere to "superego shamanism" Superego guards against one's breaking from conformity.  But conformity is mindless.  That is the nature of it.  When one infringes against superego by doing something that is not in accordance with mindless conformity (i.e when one invokes the counter-force against it), the automatic reaction is to experience guilt and pain.  When one infringes against internalised social and cultural expectations, one can expect a loading of guilt and pain -- especially in the early stages of breaking free from them, since one is not yet used to thinking and being for oneself, not on behalf of the herd.

Cultural barriers to objectivity