Happy Halloween! (now, let's view terror as the totem of truth)

Modernity disbelieves in the reality of traditional violence

Down the memory hole: October, 2016

Down the memory hole: October, 2016

Counter-revolutionary trends of academic leftism - YouTube

Counter-revolutionary trends of academic leftism - YouTube

Flicka Looya 45 minutes ago

I laughed at the incongruity of the Comrade driving his Mercedes into the ditch.

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Counter-revolutionary trends of academic leftism

Flicka Looya 14 minutes ago

Identity politics reminds me of those dark fairy tales where a witch/dark entity grants the protagonist the power of bringing a dead loved one back to life but at the cost of the life force of somebody else.

Ironically it is still the educated West who gets to call the shots and triage the various identities to allocate who will get life and who will pay off the debt with theirs.

Colonialism of the West has just inverted on the concept of itself in the social sciences as a coping mechanism of guilt and yet it is just as ruthless as colonialism ever was by ascribing value to identities based on politically motivated tier system of importance.

Even though your history was of great importance ethnographically due to the overthrowing of one extremely foreign to the West regime for another extremely foreign to West regime, your story was triaged to the back of the waiting room because you were not considered to carry the holy incantation of oppression.

Your story is now a hidden history because it has been devalued by gatekeepers of prevailing social politics to the point that not many in the West have any understanding of Zimbabwe at all,
let alone the culture that you came from and the respect to understand your particular place it.

I look forward to hearing more of your story and how you reclaimed the way to make sense of it.

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Jennifer Armstrong 2 seconds ago

The particular Comrade, who was the Health Minister, had the habit of taking his friends around the public hospitals late at night when he was drunk, proclaiming "I own this."

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Counter-revolutionary trends of academic leftism

Counter-revolutionary trends of academic leftism

Logic & dignity in the quest for knowledge

Logic & dignity in the quest for knowledge

What was postmodernism to me, as an outsider?

Do we have "a self"? Buddhism, psychoanalysis Vs. shamanism

Political victimization examples & a gamble in 'shamanizing' - YouTube

Political victimization examples & a gamble in 'shamanizing' - YouTube

Antistar211 22 minutes ago

Why were Nietzsche, Bataille, and Marachera shamanising for? What were they shamanising against? If they were indeed shamanising "against" something.

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Political victimization examples & a gamble in 'shamanizing'

Jennifer Armstrong (Philosophy) 20 minutes ago (edited)

Actually, they were all shamanizing against inauthenticity, which they experienced as a kind of gaslighting.

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Antistar211 15 minutes ago

"Actually, they were all shamanizing against authenticity, which they experienced as a kind of gaslighting." Can you expand a bit on what you mean by that?

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Jennifer Armstrong (Philosophy) 12 minutes ago (edited)

Maybe in another video...but they were rebelling against the way that the prevailing ideology of their time mitigated against their own sense of a broader and more complex reality. Nietzsche thought that religion contradicted his sense of meaning & value, and above all, his intellectual struggle. Bataille thought it was the bourgeois (middle class, capitalist) ideology, and Marechera felt it was colonialism.

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Political victimization examples & a gamble in 'shamanizing'

RIsks of obtaining deep psychological knowledge

I "Donald Trump" you

I "Donald Trump" you

The aesthetics of a schizoidal culture

Schizoidal culture PLUS distress in processing emotion in arrears

Tough-minded shamanism: Marechera's Black Sunlight

Eugenics, medical practitioners and my experience with same

Comments - YouTube

Comments - YouTube

Spinster Aunt 1 hour ago

Thanks for the wiki on this. I have heard the term (used only ever pejoratively,) but have never met someone who identified as such-- so I have felt like I was truly sure who these elusive "SJW" creatures were. Since wiki made clear the "pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction," that makes sense to me, of who and what is being discussed at least in terms of the useage in America. There may be people outside the US who act the way this meaning articulates, but probably (hopefully?) not many! However, as is typical in the USA the meaning of things quickly become diluted and meaningless through improper use/overuse. The term is now being lobbed at anyone who values things like academia, notions of honor and polite behavior, mercy, compassion, teamwork, excellence of speech and demeanor... most of the "old ways" I was taught were proper behaviors, are now considered effete; weak, wrong-headed and simple-minded. It's really to a point where, if a person will stoop to pick up a piece of trash and put it in a wastebin, another sort of person will come along, throw trash down, sneer, and say, "There, get to work you ****ing 'Social Justice Warrior'!" So, even tho' the useage in this video is speaking of something else than what I've just described, (I'm thinking maybe the video is addressing what could also be called typical neoliberal arrogance,) both useages are indicative of some very inefficient behaviors when it comes to the greater dialectic between cultures, races, classes, and so on. It seems to me Americans could use a refresher course on the basic skills of decency and respect for others! Then again, this is the nation that, when the UK spelled it "grey" we had to spell "gray" and if the UK spelled "colour", we had to spell "color". If the UK drives forward on the left side of the road, we must do it on the right. Just to prove we're different. Better. "Not Like You". And yet, to this day, the most-watched television program ever in the US, is likely the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Di. So, we've been imbeciles, narcissists, gaslighters and SJWs (Jennifer/non-US useage!) from the start! Thank you, Jennifer, for another thought-provoking and well-spoken video, even with all the goings on outside!

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Jennifer Armstrong 2 seconds ago

And thank you for your comment. The video I have just uploaded also clarifies more my specific ways of using terminology and my philosophy regarding the way I employ terms. There is a problem, of course, with the American corruption of language away from having any specific meaning to indicating only emotional states. I could go back to giving my videos very bland labels like, "What I thought today" or "This is how it is." That would get around the problem of the American corruption of our English language, but I can't always do that. All I can ask is for those who have an emotional reaction to something I have said to try to restrain themselves and think about what I am saying, which is usually well-thought through. The opposite attitude would be to lecture me about my use of language or topic or ideas without really having taken the time or trouble to understand them. This too is an emotional reaction. I wonder who it was that downvoted my "aristocracy" video, as I thought it was very well-balanced, moreover historically factual, but I think this is another example of being downvoting words and terms because of their emotional reactions to them, rather than taking the time to articulate clearly what they think or feel. I do consider that attitude to have the same effect as a minor act of vandalism.

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Clarification of my use of terms and purpose of this channel

Metaphysics versus historical materialism

A traditional tribal society would also carry you

Aristocratic societies used to carry their injured members

Social Justice Warriors: their relationships are just cheap investments

SJWs attack their victims' sense of TIME CONTINUITY

Religious mindset: always reverses cause and effect

Priestly therapy: insisting you accept the worst scenario

Vlog 308 Healing - YouTube

Vlog 308 Healing - YouTube



Excellent video. In fact, though, I long ago discerned that the current Western society suffers from a loss of the real world. The reason I seem to go on about this so much (in fact my whole video channel is dedicated to this observation) was because when I migrated from Africa to the present situation, the difference was so stark. It really was like having to learn a different language after adopting a totally different world view and cosmology. You could no longer refer to cause and effect, or really anything that you alleged was outside of your own head. Everything had to be referred back to only what was in your head. (True philosophy and true psychology say that it is always both of these in fact, that influence experience -- but what I encountered was totally one-sided.) Contemporary Western society has lost the real world almost entirely. It is a shocking, really shocking thing to come to realize this. Speak to somebody from Japan, and they still have the real world and are able to refer to it in the company of others and make themselves understood. But you simply cannot do that with any guarantee here, anymore. The whole of language has become narcified.

Trees, I hear your voices

Africa is the core of human reality, and of the human psyche - YouTube

Africa is the core of human reality, and of the human psyche - YouTube

Antistar211 2 hours ago

Are women (especially in Africa) more likely to shamanise? Also on your shamanism channel you claim that shamanism is the fundamental religious tradition. However in one of your videos you say that shamanism is anti-religion. Have you re- evaluated your position?

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Africa is the core of human reality, and of the human psyche

Jennifer Armstrong 2 seconds ago

Good questions. Excellent, in fact. Well those who least have a voice in any particular society, because of being disempowered, are likely to shamanize. Having said that, a very stiffly cultured British woman (we were middle-upper class) is more likely to get hysterical and drink a lot, rather than shamanizing. Also a very beaten down, or not that wise woman, black or white, is more likely to get ill and die rather than shamanize. You do need to have something both particularly aware of organic nature, and the wonder of it, and also quite resilient to be able to fully shamanize, as the process does take a toll on your mind and body. As for whether I have re-evaluated my position. No. I have just sharpened it and made it clearer. (Or maybe I am just about to do that in this response to you.) I do think that the state of awe and reverence for a world much bigger than us is at the origin of the most primeval religious sensibility. I will also add here that there is a sense in which my "intellectual shamanism" fully embraces a religious sensibility of the type I have just described. And yet it is still nothing like a religion. It's not dogmatic and has no creed except for the ones to honor oneself, to do one's best and to embrace a spirit capable of fighting for one's interests in terms of this world view. Also it is not glib, like a religion. It is much closer to the scientific spirit of testing and experimenting, and above all learning deeply from one's experiences.

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Teams of moral simpletons, those Western cultural crusaders

Principles of having a deep encounter with reality

Principles of having a deep encounter with reality - YouTube

Principles of having a deep encounter with reality - YouTube

Julia Riber Pitt33 minutes ago

Would you say the experience of the narcissist is a bit of a paradox: they approach life with the willingness to dominate, but when things don't go their way they scurry off or revert to a childish state in order to shield themselves from narcissistic injury?

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Jennifer Armstrong1 second ago

Yes, I would say so. But what I thought was that the motion is not a two-step process in fact, but is entailed in the logic of the whole narcissistic reflex. I suddenly caught sight of it that way, with the recent troll. His once off statement narrowed things for me, because I suddenly noticed that what narcissistic people are reacting to is the fact, or existence, of the struggle. To them a struggle is unsightly and a hugely negative indictment of the self. But why is this? The way a narcissist would describe it to themselves is that you shouldn't have to struggle if you are already close to perfection, so you must be pretty messed up. The truth, however, is very different. The narcissist shields himself from the knowledge that what he is afraid of is an encounter with reality, which necessarily has to be difficult and a bit uncomfortable. His lie is that others struggle because they are not perfect: His fear is that there is a reality outside of his head that has to be contended with. This (second point) terrifies him. His primitive ego-defence against this reality is to attack the person who has had to struggle, by implying that they are far from perfect. But this is really his way of warding off reality per se, and subscribing to a belief that one doesn't have to struggle with it.
Can you see, then, that in the moment he is making the assertion, he is also scurrying away?