As a young adult, I was as idealistic as everybody else. Perhaps even more so, since a right wing culture (which is what Rhodesia was) tends to engender a "spiritual" rather than materialist perspective on the world around. Thus I assumed that the world was organised on the basis of a moral hierarchy, with venerable authorities at the top. My upbringing had taught me that both men and women were worthy of veneration (something that later I did not encounter in Australian schools, especially with regard to women). You could rely on either male or female teachers to lead the way towards the higher moral ground, and restore order -- specifically, moral order -- when it was disrupted. This was the way that I was trained to experience the world.
There is, however, a paradox involved in the maintaining and preserving of an idealist's perspective on the world. The use of force of any sort tends to break the spell (namely, the idea that the way the world is organised in terms of its hierarchies is "natural"). Put a different way: To manifest force in order to maintain the nature of the social order reveals that the social order isn't natural, but requires material force to maintain it.
This explains in a nutshell how it was that I have tended to believe in the system and its mode of functioning so long as the system -- or elements of it --- were not intent upon attacking me. However, once the attacks start, the invisible mechanisms of force that were once hidden from me start to become more than apparent.
It is at this point that I have always withdrawn my support from whatever was attacking me.
5 comments:
We're all brought up in an ideological bubble. Our educators, mentors, relatives and friends all help with its inflation as they have all been mentored, educated and 'relativised' in their upbringing. As the bubble is pricked within the course of timely actual experience, we can either decide to blow it up again or to blow it up altogether i.e. to explode it and start living life as a human being, using sense and sensuousness to live life.
I chose the latter.
Moral Hierarchy/order is based on Sacred Cosmology. In modern/post modern society, that is anything but natural.
Conform to this order or face the wrath of some God[s]--To go against it, is to commit sin.
In a practical sense, I don't think it is possible to have a public identity as such, unless there is a certain amount of reciprocal reverence for other identities. So conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity pass away as soon as those who deem themselves to be "masculine" start attacking those whom they deem to be "feminine". They reveal that they cannot conceive of identity apart from force, and consequently do not deserve to have an identity that interacts with other publically recognisable identities.
Yes to paragraph one. True too on presumption.
I tend to think people are brighter and more benevolent than they are, and more sensible, and I drop my guard; I also drop my guard sometimes on the theory that this move will be disarming. It rarely is, i.e. it only disarms people who don't need to be disarmed in the first place.
You can't negotiate with character structure, for one. As you seem to realise, one either has a particular one or one doesn't. Those who go around disarmed are either extremely confident and skilful or foolhardy. You can learn a lot from boxing. Some -- like Anthony Mundine -- deliberately lower their guards to taunt their opponents. Most people in the West see themselves as sorts of warriors, without the realisation of the extent to which they have become bland and flabby. In the East, there is a different attitude towards openneness -- which is more normative in very casual settings.
Also, even the most accepting of us seem to have hotbuttons, due to things that have been done to us in the past. Press one of those and we are fighting for our survival -- which makes us ruthless and excessive.
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