Thursday 30 April 2015
Wednesday 29 April 2015
Repost: the narrative and people being people
Nietzsche states that mien, a person's look or manner, is an aspect of language. We employ an unconsciously inculcated mien. Social background, training and conditioning all come across through our mien. I'm sure mine comes across, too. Bad experiences can also rearrange one's identity, in some parts stronger, weaker here or there.
I had bad experiences with gender. (irony follows, on which the whole text balances) People said it was my mien that attracted those. I had negative energy. Whoops! A bad result.* In fact, my energy was the repression of negative energy -- hence NIL. A negation of negativity at my own hand.
Socially I had a repressed mien as I was preserving other people's psychological integrity that way. To speak was to risk anger as a consequence of evoking the negative. What was negative you ask?
There were a few things, primary among these was our migration. I viewed this neutrally, so my repression of acknowledgement of migration was in service of others. I didn't have a way into their reasons. They were adult prohibitions relating to war. I was child, seen but not heard and cordoned off in my own world --locked into childhood by virtue of not knowing, and took state of being as the burden of my adult responsibility. But you don't know why you are doing what you're doing. That makes you still a child when you try to explain your 'reasons'. My reasons were my parents' reasons but they hadn't seen fit to tell you of their nature. They've locked the box that holds their secrets, as an adult political decision (i.e.not mine).
I must have developed a repressed mien as a consequence of that. I'd never known the joys of adolescent frivolity because I had to bear up under the pressure of not knowing the essential principles that were governing my life. These made no sense from any considered perspective, but I couldn't begin using for the keys that life would later give me without first being given clues as to the questions I should start to ask.
That's how it was for the longest time. I was the child, the naif in knowledge, who had to exist not knowing what was what, with repressed demeanor lest I inadvertently reveal a secret that would cause our family excruciating shame.
Certainly, I was willing to pay the price until the cost was more than I was able to afford. Chronic fatigue syndrome obviously didn't seem like to much of a cost to pay. Not for me or others. I paid it that way for many a year. Then the charges came more relentlessly. People were angry at me for seeming not to know things and said I was putting it all on. I tried to make a life for myself, but somehow even doing this was taking too much back. My father became irate and asserted that I'd overestimated his 'tolerance'.
Then there was the workplace bullying -- and that took all I had remaining. I had nothing left to pay. They kept saying I was a child in an adult's body and my only response to that had been, "I do not know.'
I had been given this tremendous adult responsibility to make the migration adjustment work, not just on behalf of me but for my parents, who knew nothing of how to live this new pattern of life. I was their primary flagship and if I failed, everyone would fail.
But now I'd failed, and it was absolutely too late for me. I'd tried to keep the water out but it had all got in. I'd tried to be the adult, but I hadn't been able to learn the ropes -- not quickly enough. So I began bailing. I threw things out. First was the assumption I could save my parents. I restricted myself to saving only myself.
I didn't know any other method at this point than reverse engineering. If what I had been doing had led me to these troubled waters, I would do the opposite. Bailing, at least, could be fun -- and pleasure was one thing I hadn't had in all of my so-called 'adult' life.
So, I did the opposite. I stopped aiming for perfection and started aiming for chaos and dissolution. I through out all the trappings of adulthood -- all the heavy weights of shouldered responsibility, that had done me absolutely no good at all.
I threw them out merrily and gleefully. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like a child again. Woosh! Here goes a chair. Ka-ploosh! There goes a heavily laden desk.
I tossed everything that I could think of into the waiting ocean. I was no longer compliant.
Not that everyone had to know that straight away. I was slowly reversing the engines, and the pumping station, and everything that I could think of. This was enjoyable.
Lying was fun, too.
I'd told the people what was true for far too long and no-one had believed me. So,I'd start telling them what was untrue. Who knows! That might work! Anything better than this.
I was defending myself for the first time in my adult existence. I had been taught nothing, so was learning it the hard way -- as one might say from a semi-submerged existence.
I experimented with trivial facts. If I didn't like something, I asserted that I liked it -- just to see how that would feel. If I misplaced something and I knew that I had done so, I would say that I had no idea who might have taken it. I was tired of having all the blame of the office deflected onto me. I would give them some of their polluted water, for a change.
They didn't like white people from Zimbabwe, so I would be something else. I would experiment with the fluidity of existence. "Here's some more dirty water for you! Hope it helps to purify your sight!"
So I got the old engines working for the first time and was no longer simply wind driven.
A narcissistic and dysfunctional workplace can inflict such damage that....suddenly one is alert.
I call this my shamanic awakening.
That was the first instance when I had an inkling about unconscious social dynamics and how they influence us. I learned that despite my vacuous illusions that I was completely free, I hadn't even begun the process of taking control of my unconscious mind.
I still had all sorts of ...Rhodesian patriarchy and feminine dutifulness in my psyche, which I had never detected -- at least not until I was almost destroyed and overturned.
At the time I was attacked most heavily, I had been taking on water for over a decade. My immune system was shot and I'd been suffering from debilitating chronic fatigue.
When they nearly destroyed me and I started to fight back, I had succumbed to an chronic digestive disturbance, which meant restrictions on my diet and preferably only mushy food. This -- until now, when these ailments have finally subsided.
Until recently, I thought Western culture as such was narcissistic and have been on the defense against it.
It certainly made me attack myself -- but ultimately this was for the good. I'm no longer a Rhodesian lady in my soul and my belief that I'm responsible for family secrets is weaker than before.
---
*I would say, “people” in the context of this story, is an unreliable narrator. To the extreme. We must not rely on “people”, given the outcome of the story: what has been learned.
I had bad experiences with gender. (irony follows, on which the whole text balances) People said it was my mien that attracted those. I had negative energy. Whoops! A bad result.* In fact, my energy was the repression of negative energy -- hence NIL. A negation of negativity at my own hand.
Socially I had a repressed mien as I was preserving other people's psychological integrity that way. To speak was to risk anger as a consequence of evoking the negative. What was negative you ask?
There were a few things, primary among these was our migration. I viewed this neutrally, so my repression of acknowledgement of migration was in service of others. I didn't have a way into their reasons. They were adult prohibitions relating to war. I was child, seen but not heard and cordoned off in my own world --locked into childhood by virtue of not knowing, and took state of being as the burden of my adult responsibility. But you don't know why you are doing what you're doing. That makes you still a child when you try to explain your 'reasons'. My reasons were my parents' reasons but they hadn't seen fit to tell you of their nature. They've locked the box that holds their secrets, as an adult political decision (i.e.not mine).
I must have developed a repressed mien as a consequence of that. I'd never known the joys of adolescent frivolity because I had to bear up under the pressure of not knowing the essential principles that were governing my life. These made no sense from any considered perspective, but I couldn't begin using for the keys that life would later give me without first being given clues as to the questions I should start to ask.
That's how it was for the longest time. I was the child, the naif in knowledge, who had to exist not knowing what was what, with repressed demeanor lest I inadvertently reveal a secret that would cause our family excruciating shame.
Certainly, I was willing to pay the price until the cost was more than I was able to afford. Chronic fatigue syndrome obviously didn't seem like to much of a cost to pay. Not for me or others. I paid it that way for many a year. Then the charges came more relentlessly. People were angry at me for seeming not to know things and said I was putting it all on. I tried to make a life for myself, but somehow even doing this was taking too much back. My father became irate and asserted that I'd overestimated his 'tolerance'.
Then there was the workplace bullying -- and that took all I had remaining. I had nothing left to pay. They kept saying I was a child in an adult's body and my only response to that had been, "I do not know.'
I had been given this tremendous adult responsibility to make the migration adjustment work, not just on behalf of me but for my parents, who knew nothing of how to live this new pattern of life. I was their primary flagship and if I failed, everyone would fail.
But now I'd failed, and it was absolutely too late for me. I'd tried to keep the water out but it had all got in. I'd tried to be the adult, but I hadn't been able to learn the ropes -- not quickly enough. So I began bailing. I threw things out. First was the assumption I could save my parents. I restricted myself to saving only myself.
I didn't know any other method at this point than reverse engineering. If what I had been doing had led me to these troubled waters, I would do the opposite. Bailing, at least, could be fun -- and pleasure was one thing I hadn't had in all of my so-called 'adult' life.
So, I did the opposite. I stopped aiming for perfection and started aiming for chaos and dissolution. I through out all the trappings of adulthood -- all the heavy weights of shouldered responsibility, that had done me absolutely no good at all.
I threw them out merrily and gleefully. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like a child again. Woosh! Here goes a chair. Ka-ploosh! There goes a heavily laden desk.
I tossed everything that I could think of into the waiting ocean. I was no longer compliant.
Not that everyone had to know that straight away. I was slowly reversing the engines, and the pumping station, and everything that I could think of. This was enjoyable.
Lying was fun, too.
I'd told the people what was true for far too long and no-one had believed me. So,I'd start telling them what was untrue. Who knows! That might work! Anything better than this.
I was defending myself for the first time in my adult existence. I had been taught nothing, so was learning it the hard way -- as one might say from a semi-submerged existence.
I experimented with trivial facts. If I didn't like something, I asserted that I liked it -- just to see how that would feel. If I misplaced something and I knew that I had done so, I would say that I had no idea who might have taken it. I was tired of having all the blame of the office deflected onto me. I would give them some of their polluted water, for a change.
They didn't like white people from Zimbabwe, so I would be something else. I would experiment with the fluidity of existence. "Here's some more dirty water for you! Hope it helps to purify your sight!"
So I got the old engines working for the first time and was no longer simply wind driven.
A narcissistic and dysfunctional workplace can inflict such damage that....suddenly one is alert.
I call this my shamanic awakening.
That was the first instance when I had an inkling about unconscious social dynamics and how they influence us. I learned that despite my vacuous illusions that I was completely free, I hadn't even begun the process of taking control of my unconscious mind.
I still had all sorts of ...Rhodesian patriarchy and feminine dutifulness in my psyche, which I had never detected -- at least not until I was almost destroyed and overturned.
At the time I was attacked most heavily, I had been taking on water for over a decade. My immune system was shot and I'd been suffering from debilitating chronic fatigue.
When they nearly destroyed me and I started to fight back, I had succumbed to an chronic digestive disturbance, which meant restrictions on my diet and preferably only mushy food. This -- until now, when these ailments have finally subsided.
Until recently, I thought Western culture as such was narcissistic and have been on the defense against it.
It certainly made me attack myself -- but ultimately this was for the good. I'm no longer a Rhodesian lady in my soul and my belief that I'm responsible for family secrets is weaker than before.
---
I was the ideal obeisant rule follower, female child of an extreme patriarchy, and it was said by people, meaning those who were insistent on maintaining the status quo, that I had somehow attracted negative life experiences. By following their rules. That was the logical dissection of the matter.
This was one of many experiments I conducted. And certainly I conducted many experiments of this sort.
*I would say, “people” in the context of this story, is an unreliable narrator. To the extreme. We must not rely on “people”, given the outcome of the story: what has been learned.
How to recognize a narcissist online
Realize who you are dealing with. By their fruits you will know them. Narcissists respond to buzz-terms and think in binaries. They are impatient with the complexity in intellectual discourses. They respond in an adrenalized manner to terms they may hear in a video or text, to which they immediately attach their own idiosyncratic meaning. In doing so, they shed the original context (as it is either directly given or implied), and use the opportunity to make hostile accusations. They are trouble-makers, who lack an education but may be unaware of it.
VLOG 666: This is it! ANZAC DAY, Rhodesians - YouTube
Monday 27 April 2015
Traditional Christian perfectionism, modernity and Georges Bataille
The different levels of the human psyche are explained, as well as how recent European intellectuals have invented political strategies to cope with this reality. What we call "narcissism" may have more to do with traditional historical and cultural norms than with any individual aberration or pathology.
Hypothesis: narcissism is negatively correlated with wholeness
To the extent that people do not experience themselves to be whole, and to have thereby have sufficient resources to deal with complexity, they will resort to narcissistic defences. This is only natural, that a simplified and false self will handle the problems for which one is not yet well-equipped. The problem is that society has normalized this state of not being whole, so that educational systems are geared toward those who are fragile and incomplete, rather than being designed to cater to robust personalities or to facilitate the development of whole people. Even the term, "robust", now has the opposite meaning, since it tends to evoke a sense of one who is virulently narcissistic, rather than of one who is whole and reslient. Our very language has been co-opted .by the systematization of abnormality as the new normal.
Sunday 26 April 2015
Nietzschean critique of the Western psychological disconnect
A Nietzschean view on psychological and political health, compared to the prevailing Christian mentality. Historical fact and individual psychology are necessarily one and ought to be understood as interwoven, but current Western culture has developed a bipolar disorder on a broad, political and social scale by attempting to use morality to rise above the historical dirt -- an impossibility.
Saturday 25 April 2015
Friday 24 April 2015
Thursday 23 April 2015
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POWER TRIP OF VILIFYING HISTORY (whole)
There are two ways of denying history. One is from the priests in the past (we continue in their tradition). One simply denies facts and insists on starting from scratch as though no events had actually taken place or as if experiences could be reduced to desires lurking in one's head. The second approach, taken by many left-liberals, is to admit that history is real but to point a finger at those who have participated in it and accuse them of evil. Thus one can make a morality play out of it. In both cases, the vilifiers of history gain power over others by distorting meanings and by moralizing.
TUMBULATION 3
I saw such beauty but by coming near to it I was doing harm. To render it apart seemed my worst violation. I had been determined to decipher what was good about it so as to convey the meaning of it to others, but I'm afraid I only ripped the thing apart like a many winged insect.
I had seen such beauty. I'd severed it apart with my love and desperation. They still couldn't see it. I'd killed it and to them the thing had never been there. My guilt and shame were tremendous. How does one show the world a beautiful thing? I'd torn it apart.
You can't present to others what is only for you. They had allowed to ascend to the second level, at any rate, the spirits that is. I was given an award and a ticket to advance. Here we would learn to fly tiny mosquito-like aircraft. They dipped and hummed above the surface of our existence, but we could ride them too. A woman pilot lifted us above the ground and we didn't come to any harm, although the take-off seemed precarious. We had been perched on craggy mountain reaches. Here the danger was magnified, since the lift off position was not stable.
I broke things still and was clumsy but because I had been elevated to a new level people were more forgiving. The discipline here was strict, with all attending educational events in concert, but part of the imbued strictness was the capacity to be more forgiving. They'd ripped me apart in the previous life, but now they were accepting me whole.
I had seen such beauty. I'd severed it apart with my love and desperation. They still couldn't see it. I'd killed it and to them the thing had never been there. My guilt and shame were tremendous. How does one show the world a beautiful thing? I'd torn it apart.
You can't present to others what is only for you. They had allowed to ascend to the second level, at any rate, the spirits that is. I was given an award and a ticket to advance. Here we would learn to fly tiny mosquito-like aircraft. They dipped and hummed above the surface of our existence, but we could ride them too. A woman pilot lifted us above the ground and we didn't come to any harm, although the take-off seemed precarious. We had been perched on craggy mountain reaches. Here the danger was magnified, since the lift off position was not stable.
I broke things still and was clumsy but because I had been elevated to a new level people were more forgiving. The discipline here was strict, with all attending educational events in concert, but part of the imbued strictness was the capacity to be more forgiving. They'd ripped me apart in the previous life, but now they were accepting me whole.
Wednesday 22 April 2015
Two sides of the reality fence: innocence and experience
Which one forms your lens? Nietzsche was on the side of tradition, pessimism and tragedy, whereas Christianity is on the side of modernity, optimism and crassness.
I make no apologies for being against Americanization here, since the pervasiveness of Christianity puts most on the side of barbarism. I say "most" of Americans come across to me in this way, but this does not mean all do. My husband is ne American who sings the song of experience, not innocence.
Tuesday 21 April 2015
HIDDEN POLITICAL WARFARE
This may be one of the most useful messages that you can take with you into the ideological matrix that asserts that there is no such thing as political warfare going on. We tend to think of war as being conducted in the physical-material realm, but much of effective warfare is psychological.
Sunday 19 April 2015
Repost Shamanism is a form of cognitive dualism
Marechera’s body of work enables us to locate ourselves in the universe on the basis of a shamanistic metaphysics. It is the revelation of this ontology of this shamanistic metaphysics that enables us to understand not only what it means to live a human life, but to make the best use of our lives so as no to waste them. The shaman uses his imagination to travel into other spheres of being, which can be called ‘nonordinary reality”. The exploitation of the contents of the psyche undergoing shifts of consciousness – (shifts that are sometimes but not always facilitated by taking of drugs) – enables one such as Marechera to simply know more than those who do not facilitate shifts in their consciousness for the purpose of investigating what it means to be human and to be alive.
The shaman travels “in spirit” to the past and the to the future, and in psychological terms, this means to travel back to infancy and to the womb, as well as travelling towards the possible future of humanity and towards the inevitability of death. Thus Marechera’s “Cassandra complex” relates to his ability to read political events in a much more subtle mode than most of us are psychologically attuned to. The shaman also travels to the heights and the depths of human experience in order to map these in his texts – he travels to the heights of human ecstasy and to the depths of human despair. Thus he traverses, in varies ways, the four directions of the Axis Mundi, and does so “as spirit” – which is to say, via flights of the imagination, in search of self-knowledge.
Marechera’s writing is shamanistic in all of this. Yet it is also shamanistic in terms of the way traditional shamans attempted to use their knowledge of the “spirit world” or the realms of “nonordinary reality” in order to try to change their societies for the better. A shaman uses his knowledge of human potential – which he has gained by mapping the psyche during his shamanic voyages – in order to set a new agenda for a new kind of society. He also taps into the power of existing political and social trends, in order to turn them towards his own ends, such as to heal, restore and improve existing societies. Utopian and restorative modes of through both coincide and overlap in a shamanistic discourse, depending on the level of consciousness that the writer-shaman has accessed during a particular journey of the imagination. The shaman, however, must always return from his disembodied journeys, to bring back his knowledge for the real world, and thus he is positioned, by this logic that necessitates return to concrete reality and to everyday existence, as someone who is bound to use his knowledge practically in the world.
Shamanism is thus a form of cognitive dualism, which makes use of a conceptual framework of ontological dualism (the idea that we are two things – body and spirit) in order to enhance humanity’s ontological knowledge – that is, its knowledge of itself: where it has come from, where it is going, its possibilities for experiencing highs and lows. In seeking to discover the outer boundaries or limits of possible human experience, shamanism projects humanity beyond the limits of the spheres of human experience and knowledge that have been accumulated to date. It can be viewed theoretically as a mode of speculative thinking (that is, a mode of spirit, unbound by limits of time and space) that, however, ultimately returns to a grounded reality by virtue of the ontologically situated nature of the body in its historical and political context of ordinary, linear time. One might view shamanism, as Nietzsche has done concerning his own writing (which is arguably shamanistic) as a “tragic” discourse, since a shaman always seems to go beyond his time in terms of knowledge and depth of character, and thus he becomes the victim of his time and place, which subsumes him physically without usually understanding the knowledge that he wishes to impart.
As a shaman who could anticipate the future, Marechera was most certainly ahead of his time, and so it is not surprising that he met an early demise as a victim of his times. His work leaves a lasting intellectual legacy of insight into the ontological structures of identity – not just as it is constructed under Colonialism, but in terms of the way in which those dominant and submissive identities are generated under those systems of domination that we encounter as part of our everyday lives. Such is the very broad scope of Marechera’s oeuvre, which makes him more than just a “Zimbabwean writer”. He wrote as much in relation to the human spirit and its capacity for self-knowledge as he wrote concerning Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans and their particular needs during this time and place in history.
The shaman travels “in spirit” to the past and the to the future, and in psychological terms, this means to travel back to infancy and to the womb, as well as travelling towards the possible future of humanity and towards the inevitability of death. Thus Marechera’s “Cassandra complex” relates to his ability to read political events in a much more subtle mode than most of us are psychologically attuned to. The shaman also travels to the heights and the depths of human experience in order to map these in his texts – he travels to the heights of human ecstasy and to the depths of human despair. Thus he traverses, in varies ways, the four directions of the Axis Mundi, and does so “as spirit” – which is to say, via flights of the imagination, in search of self-knowledge.
Marechera’s writing is shamanistic in all of this. Yet it is also shamanistic in terms of the way traditional shamans attempted to use their knowledge of the “spirit world” or the realms of “nonordinary reality” in order to try to change their societies for the better. A shaman uses his knowledge of human potential – which he has gained by mapping the psyche during his shamanic voyages – in order to set a new agenda for a new kind of society. He also taps into the power of existing political and social trends, in order to turn them towards his own ends, such as to heal, restore and improve existing societies. Utopian and restorative modes of through both coincide and overlap in a shamanistic discourse, depending on the level of consciousness that the writer-shaman has accessed during a particular journey of the imagination. The shaman, however, must always return from his disembodied journeys, to bring back his knowledge for the real world, and thus he is positioned, by this logic that necessitates return to concrete reality and to everyday existence, as someone who is bound to use his knowledge practically in the world.
Shamanism is thus a form of cognitive dualism, which makes use of a conceptual framework of ontological dualism (the idea that we are two things – body and spirit) in order to enhance humanity’s ontological knowledge – that is, its knowledge of itself: where it has come from, where it is going, its possibilities for experiencing highs and lows. In seeking to discover the outer boundaries or limits of possible human experience, shamanism projects humanity beyond the limits of the spheres of human experience and knowledge that have been accumulated to date. It can be viewed theoretically as a mode of speculative thinking (that is, a mode of spirit, unbound by limits of time and space) that, however, ultimately returns to a grounded reality by virtue of the ontologically situated nature of the body in its historical and political context of ordinary, linear time. One might view shamanism, as Nietzsche has done concerning his own writing (which is arguably shamanistic) as a “tragic” discourse, since a shaman always seems to go beyond his time in terms of knowledge and depth of character, and thus he becomes the victim of his time and place, which subsumes him physically without usually understanding the knowledge that he wishes to impart.
As a shaman who could anticipate the future, Marechera was most certainly ahead of his time, and so it is not surprising that he met an early demise as a victim of his times. His work leaves a lasting intellectual legacy of insight into the ontological structures of identity – not just as it is constructed under Colonialism, but in terms of the way in which those dominant and submissive identities are generated under those systems of domination that we encounter as part of our everyday lives. Such is the very broad scope of Marechera’s oeuvre, which makes him more than just a “Zimbabwean writer”. He wrote as much in relation to the human spirit and its capacity for self-knowledge as he wrote concerning Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans and their particular needs during this time and place in history.
Friday 17 April 2015
TUMBULATION SECTION 2
In the future, flight was easier, so much easier. At first it seemed like an act of faith, but actually it was technology that enabled us to lift so gracefully from the mountain top, over pointed rock, and hover effectively until we reached the new destination.
I remember when we took a Viscount on our last trip through Rhodesia, and actually it was my first trip in an aeroplane, that is if you do not count the trip there, which was to Kariba. The plane suddenly got very cold, because the two nozzles that filtered in the air above your head and in front of your were suddenly pumping air from about five thousand feet up, and we had to redirect the cold away from us. Also, the aisle in front of you suddenly rose, so steeply you would not have been able to walk along it anymore. Like an eagle in a thermal, we spiralled and spiralled. The shift of the plane's angle was jerky and very definite. Then suddenly the left wing dipped very sharply, so that the passengers seated on the left had a view of the lake, Kariba, as the plane banked in a prolonged fashion, so much so that it seemed as if the left wing had jutted obscenely into the sky, and remained hanging like a breath withholding its intake of a cloud of crystals, which upon being taken in would surely burn the lungs.
Then we were on our way.
I remember when we took a Viscount on our last trip through Rhodesia, and actually it was my first trip in an aeroplane, that is if you do not count the trip there, which was to Kariba. The plane suddenly got very cold, because the two nozzles that filtered in the air above your head and in front of your were suddenly pumping air from about five thousand feet up, and we had to redirect the cold away from us. Also, the aisle in front of you suddenly rose, so steeply you would not have been able to walk along it anymore. Like an eagle in a thermal, we spiralled and spiralled. The shift of the plane's angle was jerky and very definite. Then suddenly the left wing dipped very sharply, so that the passengers seated on the left had a view of the lake, Kariba, as the plane banked in a prolonged fashion, so much so that it seemed as if the left wing had jutted obscenely into the sky, and remained hanging like a breath withholding its intake of a cloud of crystals, which upon being taken in would surely burn the lungs.
Then we were on our way.
Thursday 16 April 2015
Repost: real logic
c SAYS:
For instance:
Now, add to this mix:
So I hope I have now explained to modern people, who still don't get it, why my relationship with my father was so pivotal to developing my new consciousness.
I'm sure that other people haven't had to bring themselves up within a blizzard of extreme animosity, but I had to try to do this, and I finally succeeded after many years.
I don't take kindly to people to misunderstand or minimize my efforts that were substantial.
"- I hate, hate, hate it when people mask psychological issues under the guise of political activism. This goes both for pseudo-feminists who confuse crappy personal lives and daddy issues with feminism and the MRAs who confuse crappy personal lives and mommy issues with fighting for gender equality. I feel extreme contempt for creatures that are so incapable of self-awareness."This is interesting because I have a different take from psychoanalysis in that I hold that many instances of aggression do not take place merely in the mind of the one who has been targeted. In my case my fight toward a more logical level of consciousness and my "daddy issues", as it were, were deeply intertwined and related. But this is to say that they were not precisely issues, at all, but real and part of an ongoing social dynamic. Furthermore, consciously rather than on the basis of some unprocessed suppostion, I had already understood that they were, that my capacity to think for myself was deeply threatened by an internalized sense of my father's profound rage. He was angry at a number of issues and most of them had social origins and meanings in relation to gender.
For instance:
1. He was extremely angry at his mother for marrying a step-father who abused him emotionally. His mother had had no choice but to remarry very quickly after his biological father died in action in WW2.
2. He was extremely angry at losing the war in Rhodesia, and blamed, as it seems, feminine or socialist traits in the world at large for his sense of betrayal.
3. He couldn't make a swift adjustment to the new social environment and start again easily from a lower social status, and was extremely angry about that.
4. His abuse by his stepfather and emotional neglect by his mother at a very early age had given him mood of instability, which became salient whenever he felt under stress.
So, I myself had to grow up under circumstances of extreme hostility, where my father basically replayed the scenario of his own rejection by his step-father and his rage at his mother in relation to me. At times he was the hostile and demeaning step-father (in relation to me) and he was the raging two-year old, tearing strips off his "mother" (who I seemed to represent to him, at times) and hurling abuse about allegedly weaker feminine traits.
Now, add to this mix:
5. That he had been in the army for much of his life, indeed from his teenage years, and that an extremely common tendency in the military is to hurl abuse at others by accusing them of having "soft" or feminine traits in order to toughen them up. Misogyny is psychologically systematized in the military.
So I hope I have now explained to modern people, who still don't get it, why my relationship with my father was so pivotal to developing my new consciousness.
I'm sure that other people haven't had to bring themselves up within a blizzard of extreme animosity, but I had to try to do this, and I finally succeeded after many years.
I don't take kindly to people to misunderstand or minimize my efforts that were substantial.
Wednesday 15 April 2015
Bataille and the disarming experience
[I]t is true that the movement toward
wholeness begins as madness. I cast off good, I cast off reason (sense), I open
beneath my feet the abyss from which action and its consequent judgments have
separated me. At the very least the consciousness of totality begins in despair
and inner crisis. When I abandon the framework of action, my perfect nakedness
is revealed to me. I am without recourse in the world, without support, I
collapse. There is no possible outcome other than an endless incoherence in
which chance is my only guide.
An experience so disarming is obviously to be made only when all others
have been tried and completed, when all possibilities have been exhausted. It is,
consequently, only in extremis that it can become the action of humanity as a
whole. It is, in our time, accessible to only a very isolated individual, through
mental disorder conjoined with unquestionable vigor. He can, if chance is with
him, discern in incoherence an unforeseen balance. Since this divine state of
balance expresses in the bold simplicity of its ceaseless play the discordance, the
imbalance of the dancing equilibrist, I take it to be inaccessible to the "will to
power." In my understanding, the "will to power," considered as a goal, means
a return to the past. In following it, I should be returning to the bondage of
fragmentation, accepting once again duty and the good, be dominated by
power. Divine exuberance, the lightness expressed in Zarathustra's laughter
and his dance, would be lost; in place of the joy in suspension over the abyss, I
should be inseparably bound by gravity, by the servility of strength through joy.
If we set aside the "will to power," the destiny conferred by Nietzsche upon
man places him beyond anguish; no return to the past is possible, and that is
the source of the doctrine's deep inviability. In the notes to The Will to Power,
projected action, the temptation of formulation of goals and politics merely end
in a labyrinth. The last completed text, Ecce Homo, declares the absence of goal,
the author's insubordination to plan of any kind. Nietzsche's work, seen from
the perspective of action, is an abortion- a strongly defensible one; his life is a
failed life, like that which attempts to put his writing into action. [My note:
Marechera's life can be seen similarly as a "failed life", from this perspective.]
Let no one doubt for an instant! One has truly not heard a single word of
Nietzsche's unless one has lived this signal dissolution in totality
[my note: this dissolution is the collapse of will to power upon reaching the limits] ; without it,
this philosophy is a mere labyrinth of contradictions, and worse; the pretext for
lying by omission (if, like the fascists, one isolates passages for purposes which
negate the rest of the work). I wish at this point to be particularly attended to.
The foregoing criticism is the masked form of approval. It is a justification of
that definition of the whole man: "the man whose life is an unmotivated feast";
it celebrates, in every sense of the word, a laughter, a dance, an orgy which
knows no subordination, a sacrifice heedless of purpose, material or moral.
The foregoing introduces the necessity of dissociation. Extreme states of
being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated.
Some of those purposes no longer have meaning (expiation, salvation). The
well-being of communities is no longer sought through means of doubtful effectiveness,
but directly, through action. Under these conditions, extreme states
of being fell into the domain of the arts, and not without a certain disadvantage.
Literature (fiction) took the place of what had formerly been the spiritual life;
poetry (the disorder of words) that of real states of trance. Art constituted a
small free domain, outside action: to gain freedom it had to renounce the real
world. This is a heavy price to pay, and most writers dream of recovering that
lost reality. They must then pay in another sense, by renouncing freedom in the
service of propaganda. The artist who restricts himself to fiction knows that he
is not a whole man, but the same is true of the writer ofpropaganda.
[my bolds]
wholeness begins as madness. I cast off good, I cast off reason (sense), I open
beneath my feet the abyss from which action and its consequent judgments have
separated me. At the very least the consciousness of totality begins in despair
and inner crisis. When I abandon the framework of action, my perfect nakedness
is revealed to me. I am without recourse in the world, without support, I
collapse. There is no possible outcome other than an endless incoherence in
which chance is my only guide.
An experience so disarming is obviously to be made only when all others
have been tried and completed, when all possibilities have been exhausted. It is,
consequently, only in extremis that it can become the action of humanity as a
whole. It is, in our time, accessible to only a very isolated individual, through
mental disorder conjoined with unquestionable vigor. He can, if chance is with
him, discern in incoherence an unforeseen balance. Since this divine state of
balance expresses in the bold simplicity of its ceaseless play the discordance, the
imbalance of the dancing equilibrist, I take it to be inaccessible to the "will to
power." In my understanding, the "will to power," considered as a goal, means
a return to the past. In following it, I should be returning to the bondage of
fragmentation, accepting once again duty and the good, be dominated by
power. Divine exuberance, the lightness expressed in Zarathustra's laughter
and his dance, would be lost; in place of the joy in suspension over the abyss, I
should be inseparably bound by gravity, by the servility of strength through joy.
If we set aside the "will to power," the destiny conferred by Nietzsche upon
man places him beyond anguish; no return to the past is possible, and that is
the source of the doctrine's deep inviability. In the notes to The Will to Power,
projected action, the temptation of formulation of goals and politics merely end
in a labyrinth. The last completed text, Ecce Homo, declares the absence of goal,
the author's insubordination to plan of any kind. Nietzsche's work, seen from
the perspective of action, is an abortion- a strongly defensible one; his life is a
failed life, like that which attempts to put his writing into action. [My note:
Marechera's life can be seen similarly as a "failed life", from this perspective.]
Let no one doubt for an instant! One has truly not heard a single word of
Nietzsche's unless one has lived this signal dissolution in totality
[my note: this dissolution is the collapse of will to power upon reaching the limits] ; without it,
this philosophy is a mere labyrinth of contradictions, and worse; the pretext for
lying by omission (if, like the fascists, one isolates passages for purposes which
negate the rest of the work). I wish at this point to be particularly attended to.
The foregoing criticism is the masked form of approval. It is a justification of
that definition of the whole man: "the man whose life is an unmotivated feast";
it celebrates, in every sense of the word, a laughter, a dance, an orgy which
knows no subordination, a sacrifice heedless of purpose, material or moral.
The foregoing introduces the necessity of dissociation. Extreme states of
being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated.
Some of those purposes no longer have meaning (expiation, salvation). The
well-being of communities is no longer sought through means of doubtful effectiveness,
but directly, through action. Under these conditions, extreme states
of being fell into the domain of the arts, and not without a certain disadvantage.
Literature (fiction) took the place of what had formerly been the spiritual life;
poetry (the disorder of words) that of real states of trance. Art constituted a
small free domain, outside action: to gain freedom it had to renounce the real
world. This is a heavy price to pay, and most writers dream of recovering that
lost reality. They must then pay in another sense, by renouncing freedom in the
service of propaganda. The artist who restricts himself to fiction knows that he
is not a whole man, but the same is true of the writer ofpropaganda.
[my bolds]
Tuesday 14 April 2015
Political domination through attempting trauma bonding (3 parts)
This is a three part mediation on political power tactics and trauma bonding. Unfortunately, when people are emotionally and intellectually immature, this will be their favorite means to resolve their feelings of uncertainty, especially when they feel threatened by foreign attributes in others.
Monday 13 April 2015
Saturday 11 April 2015
Perspectives
I don't accept the conventional moralizing perspective that everybody must keep up awareness about everything that is going on around them, or else they are a narcissist who thinks only of themselves. We are all selective perceivers, but we get the impression that we are universalists when those around us are thinking the same as us. In fact, there are many differentials in upbringing and historical conditions, which may make some people more aware of specific aspects of their environments than others would be.
Indeed, neurologists hold that brain nerve cells create pathways or die off in the first few years of life in response to the environment. Note that this neurological model goes way beyond psychoanalysis, in that human adaptation is seen not just as a response to parenting, but to the components of the larger environment. That is, adaptation is not just brought about due to familial relations, or even in response to social forces. Adaptation would necessarily be inclusive of the geographical, political and economic terrain that a child grows up within.
It seems likely that even in the very early stages of life, the child forms cognitive pathways that recognize and affirm many of the specific local features. To learn to recognize certain environmental features as salient and important for one's well being is to learn to de-emphasize others or let their significance fade into the background.
This explains why people who have spent the most significant, formative years of their life in a particular type of environment may not pick up cues pertinent to another sort of environment. It has nothing to do with the direction in which one focuses one's attention, but has to do with what they are conditioned to see within the environment. What one person sees as significant features may not be evident to another person, who has been brought up in quite different circumstances.
There may be no point in making a song and dance about others not seeing what you see. If the neurological pathways are there from an early age, they will see those things, but otherwise their understanding will differ from yours.
It may be that there are certain forms of cultural logic that are so self-evident to someone brought up within a particular culture that they can't imagine every having to explain them. These seem to be common sense. At the same time, there will still be people who cannot see clearly what to others is simply obvious and automatically comprehensible.
The idea that people may be willfully not seeing what you see, or that there's something necessarily wrong with those who see many things differently, is dogmatic and self-limiting.
It is better to be open to learn from someone else than to gain an temporary buzz of enjoyment by pointing out that someone else perceives aspects of experience wrongly.
Indeed, neurologists hold that brain nerve cells create pathways or die off in the first few years of life in response to the environment. Note that this neurological model goes way beyond psychoanalysis, in that human adaptation is seen not just as a response to parenting, but to the components of the larger environment. That is, adaptation is not just brought about due to familial relations, or even in response to social forces. Adaptation would necessarily be inclusive of the geographical, political and economic terrain that a child grows up within.
It seems likely that even in the very early stages of life, the child forms cognitive pathways that recognize and affirm many of the specific local features. To learn to recognize certain environmental features as salient and important for one's well being is to learn to de-emphasize others or let their significance fade into the background.
This explains why people who have spent the most significant, formative years of their life in a particular type of environment may not pick up cues pertinent to another sort of environment. It has nothing to do with the direction in which one focuses one's attention, but has to do with what they are conditioned to see within the environment. What one person sees as significant features may not be evident to another person, who has been brought up in quite different circumstances.
There may be no point in making a song and dance about others not seeing what you see. If the neurological pathways are there from an early age, they will see those things, but otherwise their understanding will differ from yours.
It may be that there are certain forms of cultural logic that are so self-evident to someone brought up within a particular culture that they can't imagine every having to explain them. These seem to be common sense. At the same time, there will still be people who cannot see clearly what to others is simply obvious and automatically comprehensible.
The idea that people may be willfully not seeing what you see, or that there's something necessarily wrong with those who see many things differently, is dogmatic and self-limiting.
It is better to be open to learn from someone else than to gain an temporary buzz of enjoyment by pointing out that someone else perceives aspects of experience wrongly.
Friday 10 April 2015
8 Surprising Health Benefits of Red Wine | TIME
8 Surprising Health Benefits of Red Wine | TIME
2. Improves memory. Resveratrol also may help improve short-term memory. After just 30 minutes of testing, researchers found that participants taking resveratrol supplements had a significant increase in retention of words and showed faster performance in the hippocampus (the portion of the brain associated with the formation of new memories, learning, and emotions).
2. Improves memory. Resveratrol also may help improve short-term memory. After just 30 minutes of testing, researchers found that participants taking resveratrol supplements had a significant increase in retention of words and showed faster performance in the hippocampus (the portion of the brain associated with the formation of new memories, learning, and emotions).
Thursday 9 April 2015
Repost: self-renewal
In the Preface of Human All Too Human, Nietzsche outlines the project that was also to be mapped out and re-formulated in more detail by Bataille. In more well-known Freudian terms, to get control over one's Superego and to master it, rather than to have it controlling one from above.
More to come later, but the three stages of becoming healthier he describes are:
1. One starts off life as the unquestioning servant of one's Superego.
2. One moves to losing a sense of ego, in the sense of no longer taking anything personally, but transcending "for and against" (thinking about right and wrong in a self-serving manner).
3. Adopting a perspective based on these earlier stages of experience, whereby one understands that what one sees as "injustice" is written into the framework of all things. This insight accompanies a state of being whereby one comes to master Superego and thereby to gain mastery of one's "for and against". One might put this in a different way, by saying one's "for and against" become relativised on the basis of having seen oneself transcendentally -- from a distance. These are then now no longer absolute and rigid, and one is no longer unquestioningly subservient to them. (One is healthier than previously.
Most people have a desperate desire to be one that IS the consumer unit because Superego (the device that makes us conform from within) is going to make us conform to the prevailing paradigm/s. This is why intellectual shamanism counsels that one should depart from everything one thinks one "knows" or feels to be true about oneself and one's world.
By sacrificing one's "self" -- as, in the first instance one mistakenly understands it to be -- one has a much greater chance of finding one's true nature. (This principle is in some ways more Bataille's than it is Nietzsche's.)
More to come later, but the three stages of becoming healthier he describes are:
1. One starts off life as the unquestioning servant of one's Superego.
2. One moves to losing a sense of ego, in the sense of no longer taking anything personally, but transcending "for and against" (thinking about right and wrong in a self-serving manner).
3. Adopting a perspective based on these earlier stages of experience, whereby one understands that what one sees as "injustice" is written into the framework of all things. This insight accompanies a state of being whereby one comes to master Superego and thereby to gain mastery of one's "for and against". One might put this in a different way, by saying one's "for and against" become relativised on the basis of having seen oneself transcendentally -- from a distance. These are then now no longer absolute and rigid, and one is no longer unquestioningly subservient to them. (One is healthier than previously.
Most people have a desperate desire to be one that IS the consumer unit because Superego (the device that makes us conform from within) is going to make us conform to the prevailing paradigm/s. This is why intellectual shamanism counsels that one should depart from everything one thinks one "knows" or feels to be true about oneself and one's world.
By sacrificing one's "self" -- as, in the first instance one mistakenly understands it to be -- one has a much greater chance of finding one's true nature. (This principle is in some ways more Bataille's than it is Nietzsche's.)
Wednesday 8 April 2015
Beloved ancestor, history and my memoir (whole)
PART 1. The historical cause of a basic ontological wound (details discovered yesterday).
PART 2: Fragility in the foundations, caused by historical rupture
Memoir: http://www.lulu.com/au/en/shop/jennifer-armstrong/the-father-daughter-war/hardcover/product-21966350.html
Tuesday 7 April 2015
Repost: that sinking feeling
Here is the key to Marechera’s shamanism: It is to be found in his ability to gain astounding insights whilst cognitively undergo a level of ego deflation (which, of course, emerges from a state of mind moderated by cognitive maturity). This is a useful state of mind employed by artists, that The theroetician of art, Anton Ehrenzwieg terms “dedifferentiation” whereby one thing melts into another, whereby male and female, black and white identities no longer seem to exist. Once all the solid elements of reality have been reduced as part-pieces of a primeval oneness, the hidden relationships between these elements can be explored.
NOTE: Unlike those of the Kleinian schools, Jungians don't use the term, "pre-Oedipal" to imply evil or pathology as such. Jungians see this original, early childhood level of consciousness as being simply different from the rational, adult norm. It's a realm of transformation and mystical consciousness. We all have components of that in us; the ability to see ourselves as part of life's great oneness.
According to Anton Ehrenzweig, a lack of access to states of mind where the ego is de-differentiated signifies schizophrenia. One must be able to dissolve one's stress by temporarily de-differentiating the ego from the field of one's being, to regroup with creative resources, rather than pathologically splitting and projecting.
Facing his environmental and personal relationships in their molten state of cognitive “dedifferentiation”, Marechera is able to see new alignments of the dynamic forces that make up identity, and to reintegrate the elements at will, into his artistic and Utopian political vision. What is shamanistic about this is that he appears to see, as it were, the spiritual counterparts of concrete social and historical identities. One is more than one's formal identity -- so much more.
The shamanistic departure from the adult model of crystalline identities is redemptive for one views those one comes across in terms of their unconditioned potentialities -- in Marechera’s terms, “all the souls that didn’t come out of the womb with you”, and not just in terms of their limits within the historically contingent sphere of actually existing reality. Indeed “probabilities” (as per the waves versus particles idea of physics elucidated by Bohm and Bion), and a deepening awareness of group dynamics See: Bion) are employed very effectively by this writer. Wave theory is unto particle theory as the unconscious is to the conscious mind. Work produced by a cognitively dedifferentiated sense of the world may be grasped by the reader not logically -- that is in terms of cause and effect, or in terms of a subject and his field -- but intuitively and holistically at a subliminal and visceral level.
Marechera’s contemporary shamanism involves first the breaking the ground of reality and next is rearranging the elements of cognition in a new artistic pattern in a manner that Ehrenweig describes as a reassimilation of the features created in the work of art, under the guidance of unconscious processes. This last ability lies behind the conventional
NOTE: Unlike those of the Kleinian schools, Jungians don't use the term, "pre-Oedipal" to imply evil or pathology as such. Jungians see this original, early childhood level of consciousness as being simply different from the rational, adult norm. It's a realm of transformation and mystical consciousness. We all have components of that in us; the ability to see ourselves as part of life's great oneness.
According to Anton Ehrenzweig, a lack of access to states of mind where the ego is de-differentiated signifies schizophrenia. One must be able to dissolve one's stress by temporarily de-differentiating the ego from the field of one's being, to regroup with creative resources, rather than pathologically splitting and projecting.
Facing his environmental and personal relationships in their molten state of cognitive “dedifferentiation”, Marechera is able to see new alignments of the dynamic forces that make up identity, and to reintegrate the elements at will, into his artistic and Utopian political vision. What is shamanistic about this is that he appears to see, as it were, the spiritual counterparts of concrete social and historical identities. One is more than one's formal identity -- so much more.
The shamanistic departure from the adult model of crystalline identities is redemptive for one views those one comes across in terms of their unconditioned potentialities -- in Marechera’s terms, “all the souls that didn’t come out of the womb with you”, and not just in terms of their limits within the historically contingent sphere of actually existing reality. Indeed “probabilities” (as per the waves versus particles idea of physics elucidated by Bohm and Bion), and a deepening awareness of group dynamics See: Bion) are employed very effectively by this writer. Wave theory is unto particle theory as the unconscious is to the conscious mind. Work produced by a cognitively dedifferentiated sense of the world may be grasped by the reader not logically -- that is in terms of cause and effect, or in terms of a subject and his field -- but intuitively and holistically at a subliminal and visceral level.
Marechera’s contemporary shamanism involves first the breaking the ground of reality and next is rearranging the elements of cognition in a new artistic pattern in a manner that Ehrenweig describes as a reassimilation of the features created in the work of art, under the guidance of unconscious processes. This last ability lies behind the conventional
Repost: universalism
Going Back | Clarissa's Blog
I was addressing two issues in the post. In one situation, which I think is not so bad now, I did speak of a very high state of anxiety, and certainly there were a sequence of traumatic events or let-downs that led to my developing that reaction.
But the paragraph you have quoted above is unrelated to this state of intolerable anything. It is actually something desirable to be on one’s toes and experiencing things as they actually happen. If one can do this and wants to do it, one should certainly opt to do so.
*
Honestly: the thing that has built up anxiety over the years has been self-alienation. People imagine that I really just want to live like them, but somehow can't manage to do so. When I start to see myself from this perspective, I lose touch with myself, as well as with what I really want, and that can be extremely confusing and annihilating. I have to do a spring clean and chuck out those ideas once in a while and out they go.
But the bad thing that can happen -- the very worst thing -- is that I will start to misunderstand myself. I'm all for live and let live, but the reason I get cast out of docile communities is that I don't belong there. It's important to realize that. There are different types of people in the world. The people who want to realize a docile life for themselves always, always attack me. If I start to think, "there is something wrong with me because of this," that is when I engage with them in actively traumatising myself, which is pointless.
I suppose it really is possible just to accept that we all want different things, but the ideological framework of universalism makes this hard to grasp.
I was addressing two issues in the post. In one situation, which I think is not so bad now, I did speak of a very high state of anxiety, and certainly there were a sequence of traumatic events or let-downs that led to my developing that reaction.
But the paragraph you have quoted above is unrelated to this state of intolerable anything. It is actually something desirable to be on one’s toes and experiencing things as they actually happen. If one can do this and wants to do it, one should certainly opt to do so.
*
Honestly: the thing that has built up anxiety over the years has been self-alienation. People imagine that I really just want to live like them, but somehow can't manage to do so. When I start to see myself from this perspective, I lose touch with myself, as well as with what I really want, and that can be extremely confusing and annihilating. I have to do a spring clean and chuck out those ideas once in a while and out they go.
But the bad thing that can happen -- the very worst thing -- is that I will start to misunderstand myself. I'm all for live and let live, but the reason I get cast out of docile communities is that I don't belong there. It's important to realize that. There are different types of people in the world. The people who want to realize a docile life for themselves always, always attack me. If I start to think, "there is something wrong with me because of this," that is when I engage with them in actively traumatising myself, which is pointless.
I suppose it really is possible just to accept that we all want different things, but the ideological framework of universalism makes this hard to grasp.
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