The hardest cultural problem to solve as a migrant turned out to be rather more of a psychologically based one, rather than being purely cultural, as one might have supposed.
"It's like you have to build up a certain amount of pressure with your mind, in order to ward off the reality around you," he remarked.
The logic of survival in the new environment was different from the logic of survival in the last. In the last environment we had grown up in, one survived by being in unity with the state of Nature, and with the social moods that lent fragrance to the air around you. There might have been a few things wrong with this arrangement, since it did not promote originality of thought in any profound way. The benefits, however, were that one could move around the locality of where one lived, and speak to people easily and naturally, without first having to build up the pressure within you.
To build up the pressure within you in order to fend off the negativity around you -- that is, the hostility of others who must earn a living by competing against you and yours -- may come more easily to those conditioned from an early age to put up walls designed to keep the Other at a safer psychological distance. Freshwater fish go into shock when placed in salt water, as their internal fluids are not viscous enough to maintain against the pressure of the seawater. Due to the nature of this uneven balance between internal and external pressures, fluid flows out of them osmotically, which leads to dehydration, and then to death.
One who has grown up in a society where the environment is not a direct psychological threat feels the same sensations -- something psychologically akin to emotional dehydration, and a sudden and unprecedented threat against survival. The culture which is driven and defended by salty, viscous egos seems alien, bizarre, and threatening all at the same time. The challenge is to build up enough internal, psychological pressure to withstand the feelings of constant assault.
The adaptive development of the internal pressure of ego inflation is created by the habituation to psychical bruising. This bruising must surely occur at the earliest ages of childhood, gradually but assuredly, for those who are given the best start in adapting to a barbarian culture. Those who come from a different sort of society entirely will have too late a start for effective adaptation to constant hostility.
Ego inflation and the inflation of expectations that caused the economic bubble go hand in hand, since both are concerned with warding off negative phenomena -- such magical thinking is designed keep perceptions of actual environmental negativity at bay in order to forestall the effects of psychological harm which comes from dealing with great environmental hostility and overwhelming odds against one. One becomes firm by injecting positive ideas into one's heart and mind to build up one's internal pressure. Effectively, in actual fact, one bleeds inwardly. Psychological bruising by a harsh environment demands inward signs of self-assurety, as compensation.
Ego inflation is a practical psychological defence. One responds to the principle of mechanics by producing an equal and opposite reaction to the negativity one experiences and expects from one's environment: negative put-downs and dehumanisation become, thereby, positive self-affirmation, necessarily independent of actual input from the environment. Thus one insulates and isolates oneself from one's environment, as a rational and self-preserving mode of defence.
"It's like you have to build up a certain amount of pressure with your mind, in order to ward off the reality around you," he remarked.
The logic of survival in the new environment was different from the logic of survival in the last. In the last environment we had grown up in, one survived by being in unity with the state of Nature, and with the social moods that lent fragrance to the air around you. There might have been a few things wrong with this arrangement, since it did not promote originality of thought in any profound way. The benefits, however, were that one could move around the locality of where one lived, and speak to people easily and naturally, without first having to build up the pressure within you.
To build up the pressure within you in order to fend off the negativity around you -- that is, the hostility of others who must earn a living by competing against you and yours -- may come more easily to those conditioned from an early age to put up walls designed to keep the Other at a safer psychological distance. Freshwater fish go into shock when placed in salt water, as their internal fluids are not viscous enough to maintain against the pressure of the seawater. Due to the nature of this uneven balance between internal and external pressures, fluid flows out of them osmotically, which leads to dehydration, and then to death.
One who has grown up in a society where the environment is not a direct psychological threat feels the same sensations -- something psychologically akin to emotional dehydration, and a sudden and unprecedented threat against survival. The culture which is driven and defended by salty, viscous egos seems alien, bizarre, and threatening all at the same time. The challenge is to build up enough internal, psychological pressure to withstand the feelings of constant assault.
The adaptive development of the internal pressure of ego inflation is created by the habituation to psychical bruising. This bruising must surely occur at the earliest ages of childhood, gradually but assuredly, for those who are given the best start in adapting to a barbarian culture. Those who come from a different sort of society entirely will have too late a start for effective adaptation to constant hostility.
Ego inflation and the inflation of expectations that caused the economic bubble go hand in hand, since both are concerned with warding off negative phenomena -- such magical thinking is designed keep perceptions of actual environmental negativity at bay in order to forestall the effects of psychological harm which comes from dealing with great environmental hostility and overwhelming odds against one. One becomes firm by injecting positive ideas into one's heart and mind to build up one's internal pressure. Effectively, in actual fact, one bleeds inwardly. Psychological bruising by a harsh environment demands inward signs of self-assurety, as compensation.
Ego inflation is a practical psychological defence. One responds to the principle of mechanics by producing an equal and opposite reaction to the negativity one experiences and expects from one's environment: negative put-downs and dehumanisation become, thereby, positive self-affirmation, necessarily independent of actual input from the environment. Thus one insulates and isolates oneself from one's environment, as a rational and self-preserving mode of defence.
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