Icarus and patriarchy

Patriarchal psycho-dynamics divide the human psyche into half so that all its godly attributes seem to belong to men and all of its contemptible attributes seem to belong to women. Although males hope to win by this sleight of hand, they actual lose, for they become divided in half. There are still some areas in battle, where women are sometimes viewed as having mystical, sacred powers due to their sexuality, but generally intellect, knowledge, will and courage are deemed to be "male". Women are deemed to have precisely the opposite qualities.

When anyone is in the grip of patriarchal ideology, they feel like it's the boost they need to reach the sun, if not the stars. You simply cannot tell a person, who is intoxicated in this way, that the result will be that they are shattered. For, nobody can efficiently go through life and face unpredictable challenges whilst they remain committed to being, effectively, only half a person.

Patriarchy makes society undeveloped

Patriarchy perpetuates itself by undermining the logic of those who are oppressed -- women. It says, "Surely you are imagining it that men are actually oppressing you? You must be insane! We care for you, deeply."

The result of this kind of brainwashing is that women underestimate the accuracy of their own perceptions and start to believe that they are incapable of logic.

It is easy to see why patriarchal societies are less developed, because the ideology of patriarchy is based on infantile projection. That is, if I am male and I do not like anything about myself, I can feel justified and encouraged by the system as it is to project these nefarious aspects onto women close by. Patriarchal societies keep their members in a state of infancy by encouraging this sort of behaviour as a way to excuse oneself. Rather than embracing patriarchy, people should be taught to observe their actions and introspect and analyse why they do the things they do. That would allow them to behave in a more mature fashion.

I perceive that infantile projection is absolutely essential for giving the impression that there are "natural" hierarchies, whereby men dominate women because men are intrinsically more noble than women happen to be. Louis Althusser recognises a difference between forms of repressive state apparatus and ideological state apparatus.In terms of sheer power, we could recognise that men dominate in various institutions of power. Why they dominate and how they manage to get into a position of domination are other questions.

We have the media, the church and to some degree various educational institutions perpetuating the idea that there is something noble, logical and "transcendent of emotional states" in the quality of being male. Men learn through social conditioning that they can easily project their unwanted emotional states onto women so as to conform to the masculine ideal.

identity categories

People expect you to play a role that is defined how they see your identity to be. So, for instance, when I migrated from Zimbabwe to Australia, I was expected to self-consciously "distance" myself from white, colonial racism. I didn't do that, because I didn't know that this was how "the game" had to be played. I genuinely had no idea about the necessity to play any game.

Similarly, one is expected to maintain an internal consistency of behaviour in relation to how others happen to judge you (i.e. what category they have subconsciously put you into). If you appear to be a particular category of person, but then do not act according to the principles that would define that category of existence, many people become upset. They believe you have "deceived" them -- when really they have simply made a mistake about who you are, and then changed their minds, and then blamed you for the discrepancy between their two perceptions.

Obama, identity politics and why that didn't work out

Identity politics goes well with a consumerist approach to life, since one can rather passively "choose" one's product (often in a way that is seen to enhance one's self-image or 'lifestyle choices). Then one sits back and expects the 'product' to perform. It's all quite superficial. The idea that Obama must necessarily perform acts in solidarity with oppressed people because of his skin color is false. People need to get over the idea that 'identity' is a transparent and obvious signal of motivation. It isn't.

This discomfort one experiences must be substantial, otherwise humans have a tendency to be conservative and to try to "adapt" to the circumstances they are in, rather than try to change them. This approach seems to be ingrained in us at something like a biological level. Part of the problem seems to be in the way our biological hardware enables us to adapt to our cultural and environmental circumstances at an early age. So, if we grow up in a system of capitalism, we will find that capitalism also comes to define our emotional determinants. We learn a capitalist subjectivity, which can be so hard to change that it seems to us like "human nature".

It may have something to do with this neurological mechanism:

I will suggest that in addition to being a neural repository for innate forms of behavior, the striatal complex constitutes part of a storage mechanism for parroting learned forms of emotional and intellective behavior acquired through the participation of limbic and neocortical systems."
CEREBRAL EVOLUTION AND EMOTIONAL PROCESSES:NEW FINDINGS ON THE STRIATAL COMPLEXPaul D. MacLeanLaboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior

Clearly people have been on the wrong path with their forms of moral leftisms and identity politics. Identity politics dominates the left when what is needed is a more considered and critical approach.

The need for a more substantial basis for action other than identity is made palpable by the fact that identity has become a repository for ideas of moral goodness and evil. Because of this, we do not see the human being and his or her capacity for thought and for action. Instead, we see an "identity" with a powerful code attached suggesting either "good" or "evil".

Although there is a historical basis for seeing certain groups of people as oppressed or as oppressors, contemporary ways of treating identity go way beyond this recognition to the point that psychological forces within society as a whole are directed towards assuring that identities remain fixed on the basis of our inner needs to have a sense of moral certainty about our worlds. We learn to project our sense of "good" into certain types of identity, and the parts of ourselves that we would disown as "evil" into other identities. This seems to be the case with both the left and the right.

Thus, "identities", although originally historically created and developed, become psychological fictions to amuse ourselves by. These have next to nothing to do with serious politics, but disguise actual political processes.

"Projecting" -- and how this applies to gender

It strikes me that many people do not know what "projection" is, or how that psychological dynamic is used in the construction of gender. Generally, "projection" is viewed as something anomalous, eccentric, and the product of rare individuals who express themselves in pathological ways.

In actual fact, projection is the means by which societies maintain inequalities between people. It is indispensable for creating hierarchies of class and gender. Without projection, we would not be persuaded to the belief that people have certain unchanging and essential qualities that mark them, independently from the social context, as being either "inferior" or "superior".

Projection, however, facilitates this sense we often have that society is structured by people expressing their "essential natures" as it were. If more women than men find themselves at the bottom of their societies, with few economic resources, this is because of their essential natures. Likewise, a male has power because he is essentially powerful. A change of social context, therefore, ought not to change the degree of power he has over others. He retains that power, independent of his context, just because he is "a man".

Clearly, this way of reasoning is fallacious -- a fact that men's rights groups expose whenever they point out that "men, too, are discriminated against." Suddenly, a social basis for organisation comes to light when men feel that they are being made into victims. Otherwise, such organisation remains deliberately obscured and unnoticed. Such is the ubiquitous and self-serving view that society is generally just made up of individuals (except when women are behaving nefariously and in a "socialistic" fashion, by making males feel that "social forces" actually exist).

Projection, however, continues to reinforce social hierarchies, whilst rendering them invisible. The way in which projection "works" is through the culturally engendered trope of "reading between the lines". This way of handling others from a different class or different gender from one's own places an impermeable membrane between you to prevent communication.

How much do you "read between the lines"? (The answer to this question may answer : 'How much do you "project"?')

If I tell you that society has been harmful to me because of patriarchal practices, do you read me as saying something completely different; something I hadn't thought to say, at all?

Perhaps, (you think), what I am really saying is that I feel I am one of the weaker members of society. Perhaps you think I out to conquer the world by "making excuses" for all sorts of things. (With what motivation? To what end? Why now?)

It has never ceased to astonish me how mentally secure most patriarchal men become, as they set to work to undermine my speech with all sorts of bizarre interpretations of their own. They become busy securing their positions in society as superior to me, but their projections are outlandish; their ears tone deaf. They have absolutely no idea what I am actually saying.

I see this, don't you?

What I see is that any form of contemporary capitalism can appear to be largely justified by means of deflection of guilt away from present day capitalists to the 'colonials' of yore. It is THEY who are deemed to be truly evil, with values and motivations that are 300 percent reprehensible. By contrast, capitalism markets itself as belonging to a 'West' whose values have been completely regenerated, though condemning and distancing itself from 'colonialism'. Capitalist raping and plundering is now morally pure, according to this understanding. That is because all of the evil belongs to the past, when people didn't know any better and were 'colonials'.

individualism

WHAT WOMEN WANT

It has become clear to me,through my philosophical research, that the reason why males simply cannot know what women want is because "masculinity" involves transcendence of what it generally understood to be "femininity". That is, a male become a man by negating the aspects within him that relate to empathy, reflectiveness, and intellectual flexibility. These aspects become relegated to the realm of the "feminine" in the man who has successfully transcended them, in order to become "masculine".

Henceforth, when a woman speaks, a "masculine" man is unable to process what she is saying. He has, to all effects and purposes, "transcended" her language and its meanings, and now what a woman says has no meaning for him.

Despite the fact that women are fully capable of communicating what "they want", the man is no longer in a position to hear them, insofar as he is "a man". So, "what women want" is necessarily mysterious to him.

I think that there are certain sociocultural pressures (by which, I generally mean, broadly "economic pressures") that prevent people from taking what ought to be a simple step, and affirming the humanity of others. Industrialism, for instance, gives us categorically different identities, which allows us to be readily utilised in different ways as part of the division of labour. It sets us against each other, since we come to see ourselves as beings with ontological distinct characteristics, such as gender or "race". The sense that we are actually all human beings become de-emphasised by means of these economic processes.

In my view, postmodernisms are often struggling with the way in which we have accepted identification with these historically bestowed economic roles. We end up thinking within these terms, on the basis of the categories that have been bestowed on us. We feel stuck, because we cannot resist history and the work that it has done on our minds.

Objectivity and subjectivity, perception and politics

When I speak about "objectivity" and "subjectivity" I am really speaking about human attitudes. "Objectivity" is the state of mind that removes emotion as far as possible from the equation. So, the lens of "objectivity" is fairly unemotional, but still not METAPHYSICALLY (that is, in terms of last truths) objective. A surgeon or airline pilot needs to be "objective" in this sense.

By contrast: "subjectivity" allows emotions to become part of the lens by which reality is observed. This is, I think describes natural human tendencies, in relation to the central core of human emotionality.

What is artificial is repressing subjectivity to get objectivity -- that is to say, the patriarchal formula for making headway. Repression cannot lead to a viewpoint devoid of emotion, but rather to a state where emotions are no longer integrated with the important human search for meaning.   Additionally, this lack of integration of the emotions with the rest of the psyche leads to emotional distortions of reality. Paradoxically, one must have a certain amount of emotional integration to be able to stand apart from the emotions, with emotional equilibrium.  For this purpose, a strong ego can help objective detachment better than a weak ego, but the strong ego has to be self-assured enough not to fend off reality, but to dissolve itself into reality at times, without losing its potential to regain its strength.

As for subjective states, they can be useful in many ways, especially in determining unconscious boundaries of identity, whether these happen to be related to nation, religion or gender.  We can be very scientific and critique our own subjectitivies with the aid of other subjectivities. That is when the fun begins but also when we start to develop our capacity and knowledge for political affairs.   At the its most active end knowledge and self-mastery, the capacity for politics is the self-conscious commitment to develop lenses through which others come to see the world. 

Entertainment between cultures

I don't find African culture to be less intelligent than Western culture. Comparing both, at the level of popular culture, we find that they are just on about something different.

In the case of Western culture, tragedy in soap operas serves the purpose of getting the viewer to respond by feeling anything at all. In the popular Australian soapie, Neighbours, one tragedy strikes after another, all in the effort to get the viewers to feel something.

In the case of the Nigerian soap operas I've watched, the tragic events that happen are obviously staged. Their purpose is to get the audience to laugh about the trials and tribulations of life.

I think that the differences in philosophies behind these two approaches reveals something significant. Human nature is not the same everywhere you go.