Monday 31 January 2011
Bataille's Marxist/Freudian/Hegelian project
Jennifer, as Nick Land wrote, "In truth, Bataille seems to me far less an intellectual predicament than a sexual and
religious one, transecting the lethargic suicide upon which we are all embarked. To accept his writings is an impossibility, to resist them an irrelevance. One is excited
abnormally, appalled, but without refuge. Nausea perhaps? Such melodrama comes rapidly to amuse (although we still vomit, just as we die)."
Ain't that a hoot?
9 minutes ago · Like
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Jennifer Armstrong We are all embarked upon a lethargic suicide because we are all in the grips of Superego, which makes us will the wills of the powers over us, rather than willing our own wills. All of Bataille's writings can be considered as an attempt to break this spell, to set us free from the hypnotic hold of Superego.
6 minutes ago · Like
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Superego has a suffocating grip on us because we are afraid to die. It's part of Hegel's Lordship and Bondage dialectic. It is also the meaning behind Freud's concept of "castration". We accept others having power over us so that we can continue to live. In the case of Freud, one accepts a patriarchal restriction of one's innate powers so that one can maintain a form of going on living. (ie. to live in the civilised world, one accepts 'castration').
Bataille's violent imagery is designed to get us to face our worst fears -- the fear of death (Hegel) and castration (Freud). It is only by facing these things that we can transcend them properly (Nietzsche). Of course, the whole project is extremely Marxist and revolutionary.
A few seconds ago · Like
Sunday 30 January 2011
The male impetus (projection?)
· Jennifer Armstrong http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2011/01/dominating-behaviour-is-losers-game.html
11 hours ago · Like
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Psych studies, [...], do show men have somewhat truncated emotions.Testosterone is a killer of many things, and is adrenalin fed.
This of course supposes there is some compulsion to ACT upon a feeling, which there is blatantly NOT.
If a projection is derived from the past experience of a male with females, then it is literally "shadow boxing". Perhaps the fuel for certain major emotional experiences can be quantified from biochemistry, but the decision is psychological, the expression , - social.
So many male / female encounters are actually not only a play out of atavistic neurochemistry, their expression psychologically is an odd mixture of a mosaic of previous experiences, projected from the male to the female, and the female back.
This is sadly inheriting both the cultural weight, and the biochemical parameters of the species, and it take a hyperawareness to see the impetus, and the projection.
about an hour ago · Like
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Jennifer Armstrong Very well expressed, Karen. You have an answer the biological argument, there. Well done.
As an aside, I wonder whether the shamanistic injunction to "do nothing" but learn to be at one with one's own subjectivity is, in fact, the means to overcome this impasse of projection and counterprojection.
Saturday 29 January 2011
Dominating behaviour is a losers' game
I can never stop being dismayed that people don't realise what they intend as "dominating" behaviour can often come across as expressing insecurities.
Dominating behavior is concerned with emotional responses and so a person intent upon dominating another usually doesn't register much of the intellectual content of what anyone is saying. He actually hears less and understands less about the other person when he is intent upon dominating them, than if he were to see the other as an equal.
I suspect that this approach works enough of the time, at a simple, reflexive level, for it to seem to pay off. After all, some people are, indeed, duped by emotional posturing, which tries to do away with intellect.
But this bluff spoils any further discourse in due course. Even the instigators are bound to register to this emotionally at some point. If they happen to score hits by getting others (mostly women) to temporarily defer to them, they still have to endure an anxious feeling that others could always see through their disguise. Those subjugated would then see very clearly that having genuine ability did not play a significant part in the dominator's understanding of his identity.
It would become transparently apparent that investing in the emotional reactions of others is always a loser's game.
Wednesday 26 January 2011
Secular reasoning is not like faith based reasoning!
Eddy Hallheiyqckzxs Ilunga Jr.:“Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18) “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)Does it mean women and slaves have no right in front of God? somebody explain to me, please!
Jennifer Armstrong: It seems to imply that we are to rely upon the benevolence of our local patriarchs. If they are not benevolent, then we are in trouble.
Stan Sykes: Your local patriarch would likely be Mike and he looks very affable. Or maybe our local 'patriarch' is Colin Barnett?
Jennifer Armstrong: I was using abstract thought, Stan.
Stan Sykes: I know Jennifer and I agree with your copmment.
It's just that people (in general) can look at patriarchal societies and for some reason come up with the notion that they were somewhow unjust, overbearing and demeaning in structure and application.
I just used MIke to humanize it.
The realationship of Patriarchs with their wives were as husbands, lovers (if one wishes to use the term), quite often friends and partners in running their household. Sure, you can get nasty blokes and their families would pay the price. I don't know what studies are currently available on the percentage of abusive fathers in families, but I tend to fear that it might be rising.
Jennifer Armstrong: The difference between a religious view of society and a secular one is that the secular one is rational. It takes care of contingencies (such as an oppressive patriarch) by saying, "women do not need to subject themselves to males". The religious view says, "Men are generally good people, except for a few bad apples, so women should subject themselves to males." See the difference? The first principle embodies an ethical stance. The second is a principle of faith.
By the way, Mike is a socialist and is therefore in no way patriarchal.
Tuesday 25 January 2011
The shamanistic cure
Supposing that, like Socrates, I had been "a long time sick" -- it was Western metaphysics alone, that had made me so. The idea that "the individual" is responsible and to blame for anything that happens to them was the cause of my distress. I had internalized too much blame for the political disruption in my life that had led to me having to start all over again, in a different country, at the age of 15. The cure I found for the Western metaphysics that I had inadvertently internalized was shamanism.
To obtain a shamanistic cure, one has to let go of one's need for control over the circumstances of life, even though this is the last thing one wants to do. In fact one may not be able to do so, immediately after a disastrous event, when the power of the event threatens to annihilate one's very sense of self. (The fact that the victim blames himself or herself straight after the event is an attempt at first aid recovery: the victim intrinsically knows that it's more important, at this early traumatized stage, to restore a feeling of control than to be considered right or wrong. Once the ego is much stronger and a sense of control has been restored, a shamanistic cure can be tried.) The curative power of shamanism is in the realization that the world has no moral structure. By gaining experiential (rather than intellectual) knowledge of this, one is released from feeling guilty or ashamed as a result of events that were outside of your control.
While it is noble to take on the responsibility for event not of one's making, this attitude of mind wears one down. It is far better to understand who one is, without this heavy emotional baggage -- which one only accepts as a means to trick oneself that one has full control, when one hasn't.
---------------
For more on how I inadvertently internalized Western metaphysics, see: http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2011/01/deep-structures.html
To obtain a shamanistic cure, one has to let go of one's need for control over the circumstances of life, even though this is the last thing one wants to do. In fact one may not be able to do so, immediately after a disastrous event, when the power of the event threatens to annihilate one's very sense of self. (The fact that the victim blames himself or herself straight after the event is an attempt at first aid recovery: the victim intrinsically knows that it's more important, at this early traumatized stage, to restore a feeling of control than to be considered right or wrong. Once the ego is much stronger and a sense of control has been restored, a shamanistic cure can be tried.) The curative power of shamanism is in the realization that the world has no moral structure. By gaining experiential (rather than intellectual) knowledge of this, one is released from feeling guilty or ashamed as a result of events that were outside of your control.
While it is noble to take on the responsibility for event not of one's making, this attitude of mind wears one down. It is far better to understand who one is, without this heavy emotional baggage -- which one only accepts as a means to trick oneself that one has full control, when one hasn't.
---------------
For more on how I inadvertently internalized Western metaphysics, see: http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2011/01/deep-structures.html
Monday 24 January 2011
Social and psychological structures, based on metaphysics
Consider how effectively the one from a competitive egoistic culture subsumes the other in the following dialogue. The one from another culture speaks of something that they do not know, but this is turned into a claim of superiority in the mind of the individualistic thinker:
But, the cultural egoist won't hear of any 'not knowing'.
The cultural egoist instead demands (according to the logic of his matrix) that the cultural outsider should "take responsibility" for what she or he hadn't originally chosen: that is, to take responsibility for his inability to understand the cultural egoist's culture. The cultural outsider is therefore stymied by the complexity and blame-inducing logic of this cultural egoist thought.
The cultural egoist wants the outsider to believe that her actual innocent lack of knowledge is really just a sneaky way for him (the outsider) to stake his claim to be someone superior. So, the outsider learns from this that she or he ought to express their thoughts only after considering what would logically make sense to a cultural egoist. Once this has happened, the outsider has been swallowed whole by the egoist's cultural matrix!
Once she or he has been eaten up entirely, the outsider automatically understands that it is important to reformulate one's thoughts and ideas to comply with narrow cultural egoistic conceptions about himself and others.
"I come from a different culture. I don't know your ways."
"What makes you so special that you choose to stand out from others?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'special'. I don't know your ways."
"You're trying to say you're better than us!"
"How can I be better? What does it even mean?! I don't know your ways."
"You're demonstrating your individualism in a defiant way by choosing not to know things!"
"What things!? I don't know your ways."
"You are an individual who thinks they are superior."
"I didn't say that."
But, the cultural egoist won't hear of any 'not knowing'.
The cultural egoist instead demands (according to the logic of his matrix) that the cultural outsider should "take responsibility" for what she or he hadn't originally chosen: that is, to take responsibility for his inability to understand the cultural egoist's culture. The cultural outsider is therefore stymied by the complexity and blame-inducing logic of this cultural egoist thought.
The cultural egoist wants the outsider to believe that her actual innocent lack of knowledge is really just a sneaky way for him (the outsider) to stake his claim to be someone superior. So, the outsider learns from this that she or he ought to express their thoughts only after considering what would logically make sense to a cultural egoist. Once this has happened, the outsider has been swallowed whole by the egoist's cultural matrix!
Once she or he has been eaten up entirely, the outsider automatically understands that it is important to reformulate one's thoughts and ideas to comply with narrow cultural egoistic conceptions about himself and others.
How I am surviving
I'm not sure where to begin, but my dreams give me some indication that my life has a pleasant landscape around now, although it's surely the case that I am surviving in an odd way. I was in fact on very rocky terrain on the north-eastern part of Japan. I had to raise my head a little to get a picture of the map itself, but when I did, I noticed I was not just near the coast, but literally right on it. Young children were playing on these rocks and families had built their houses placidly alongside the silver, grey, clairvoyant waves. (Previously playful waves suddenly leaped with greater energy and malice, as my anxiety causes them to display a fiercer animation.)
I'm "on the edge" and "off Japan". That's how I am surviving now. The sense of place is magical, if a little dangerous. A rising tsunami might sweep all of us away.
In another part of the dream, I made a synchronized jog the surf with a kind of guru or fitness instructor with my army boots on. I grew not tired. I wondered why afterwards I chose to cut my boots and socks off with a pen-knife, starting at the sole. I'd already removed the fight boot that way, but I reconsidered having to do the same with the left. It suddenly dawned on me that it would be more natural to undo the shoe-laces, so I removed the remaining shoe in a more straightforward fashion. (I think I've cut a lot of right-wing people out of my life, but I plan not to do that with the left.)
In the final scene, I am racing through the Melbourne, up drainpipes and on trams, having stolen goods and finery. I have to disguise myself in clothes other than those I've stolen, in order to get through customs. I'm enjoying the game of searching for something to pass through in, since I am reasonably rich all of a sudden, which means I can explore some colorful disguises. (The 'stolen goods' are the knowledge I've gleaned, from previous ages.)
So, I encountered the three aspects of my life: my work, my leisure and my PhD.
I'm "on the edge" and "off Japan". That's how I am surviving now. The sense of place is magical, if a little dangerous. A rising tsunami might sweep all of us away.
In another part of the dream, I made a synchronized jog the surf with a kind of guru or fitness instructor with my army boots on. I grew not tired. I wondered why afterwards I chose to cut my boots and socks off with a pen-knife, starting at the sole. I'd already removed the fight boot that way, but I reconsidered having to do the same with the left. It suddenly dawned on me that it would be more natural to undo the shoe-laces, so I removed the remaining shoe in a more straightforward fashion. (I think I've cut a lot of right-wing people out of my life, but I plan not to do that with the left.)
In the final scene, I am racing through the Melbourne, up drainpipes and on trams, having stolen goods and finery. I have to disguise myself in clothes other than those I've stolen, in order to get through customs. I'm enjoying the game of searching for something to pass through in, since I am reasonably rich all of a sudden, which means I can explore some colorful disguises. (The 'stolen goods' are the knowledge I've gleaned, from previous ages.)
So, I encountered the three aspects of my life: my work, my leisure and my PhD.
Sunday 23 January 2011
Epistemology revisited
Post-PhD, I am much older and a little wiser. I used to imagine that the use of a common language pretty much assured that ideas would travel along a solid channel from my mind to the minds of my readers. Nowadays, I realize that almost the opposite it the case: the fact of having a common language means nothing when your environment and formative influences are not the same. In the these cases, language can have the opposite to the desired effect, giving false reassurance that effective communication is transpiring. This seems to be the case due to one's sheer familiarity with the words themselves. Yet, just because one is familiar with the way that words were used during one's childhood and in one's environment whilst one was growing up, does not necessarily imply that one has a full, rather than partial understanding of the content of another's person's words, as they intend to convey their meanings.
It's not precisely that we are locked into a solipsist's mental space. The willingness to avoid such a conclusion had sent me running towards metaphysics as a means to mediate a realm of social meaning that could otherwise have been made to feel as if it were purely subjective. Western metaphysics tends to function by means of polarizing ideas and values into opposite camps. So, what is masculine cannot be feminine, what is 'good' in some way cannot have anything 'bad' in it, what is progressive cannot in any sense be regressive -- and so on. To create divisions, in the world, in such a way seemed like a way to get away from the theorized pure subjectivity that would not guarantee I would be speaking to anyone other than myself.
Yet, this metaphysical approach also proved problematic in that Western metaphysics provides us with the form of 'objectivity' that is based on social consensus, rather than something that retains its truth even when social consensus is missing. To rely upon Western metaphysics as a means to stabilize the universe is not an effective solution to the philosophical problem of solipsism, since it works more in the fashion of a mold -- pushing the world into conformity with its prior existing shape, rather than as a mode of hermeneutics. Western metaphysics does not, despite what it seems to do, give us access to meanings that existed prior to an interpretation of the world based on Western metaphysics.
As a method of interpretation, it is only able to find what is already part of it: its basic dualisms. The computer science term for this phenomenon: garbage in; garbage out. There is an additional problem with seeking to build our recognition of truth on something as precarious as social consensus: It establishes mob mentality as a primary means for establishing new "truths" (which are, in turn, built upon a re-establishment of archaic truisms: women are like this; men are like that.) Epistemologically, nothing new is actually discovered using this approach. Ethically, human integrity is undermined, as the dominant side of the polarity -- "men" -- get to condemn and punish those at the wrong end of the archaic dualism -- "women".
Such a way out of solipsism is unacceptable. I have learned that it has less than no use. It fails on the level of enabling knowledge of how people actually experience their lives and it fails on the level of ethics, by using social consensus (mob ethics) as a means to establish facts. Those who don't want to work too hard at thinking, yet still want to feel 'in touch' will be the ones who continue to prefer this method, despite all its failures.
For those who have the time and will to go a whole lot further with their thinking, dialectics proves to be an answer. This approach involves figuring out the way the cultural landscape lies, by using language a bit like radar. One sounds things out. One gets 'responses' of various sorts. These responses should not be taken to indicate anything about the rightness or wrongness of one's ideas, at least not in the immediate sense. Rather, they are a sign of how others are positioned to respond to your ideas by means of their social conditioning and experiences. If a majority respond in a similar way, we can put this down to a certain part of the environment having certain objective 'geographical features'.
It's not precisely that we are locked into a solipsist's mental space. The willingness to avoid such a conclusion had sent me running towards metaphysics as a means to mediate a realm of social meaning that could otherwise have been made to feel as if it were purely subjective. Western metaphysics tends to function by means of polarizing ideas and values into opposite camps. So, what is masculine cannot be feminine, what is 'good' in some way cannot have anything 'bad' in it, what is progressive cannot in any sense be regressive -- and so on. To create divisions, in the world, in such a way seemed like a way to get away from the theorized pure subjectivity that would not guarantee I would be speaking to anyone other than myself.
Yet, this metaphysical approach also proved problematic in that Western metaphysics provides us with the form of 'objectivity' that is based on social consensus, rather than something that retains its truth even when social consensus is missing. To rely upon Western metaphysics as a means to stabilize the universe is not an effective solution to the philosophical problem of solipsism, since it works more in the fashion of a mold -- pushing the world into conformity with its prior existing shape, rather than as a mode of hermeneutics. Western metaphysics does not, despite what it seems to do, give us access to meanings that existed prior to an interpretation of the world based on Western metaphysics.
As a method of interpretation, it is only able to find what is already part of it: its basic dualisms. The computer science term for this phenomenon: garbage in; garbage out. There is an additional problem with seeking to build our recognition of truth on something as precarious as social consensus: It establishes mob mentality as a primary means for establishing new "truths" (which are, in turn, built upon a re-establishment of archaic truisms: women are like this; men are like that.) Epistemologically, nothing new is actually discovered using this approach. Ethically, human integrity is undermined, as the dominant side of the polarity -- "men" -- get to condemn and punish those at the wrong end of the archaic dualism -- "women".
Such a way out of solipsism is unacceptable. I have learned that it has less than no use. It fails on the level of enabling knowledge of how people actually experience their lives and it fails on the level of ethics, by using social consensus (mob ethics) as a means to establish facts. Those who don't want to work too hard at thinking, yet still want to feel 'in touch' will be the ones who continue to prefer this method, despite all its failures.
For those who have the time and will to go a whole lot further with their thinking, dialectics proves to be an answer. This approach involves figuring out the way the cultural landscape lies, by using language a bit like radar. One sounds things out. One gets 'responses' of various sorts. These responses should not be taken to indicate anything about the rightness or wrongness of one's ideas, at least not in the immediate sense. Rather, they are a sign of how others are positioned to respond to your ideas by means of their social conditioning and experiences. If a majority respond in a similar way, we can put this down to a certain part of the environment having certain objective 'geographical features'.
On Satire and some of its limits
Kudakwashe Rukanda satire and mockery are the food of friendship and good company in Zim. If you are pissed of by these references and your friends know, they will try to piss u off while taking comfort in the mistaken belief that you will not really be pissed!
Jennifer F Armstrong It's funny --I use a lot of satire and mockery myself. My memoir is really a kind of satire concerning myself -- which has caused some Westerners, whom I ought to have been able to rely upon, to think I am "down" on myself or that I have a mental illness.
At the same time, if you were to actually read my memoir, you would see that there were tremendous pressures on me not to grow up at all. That is why I deeply resent it when people use childlike terms to address me. After all the strength of mind I've had to employ just to get beyond patriarchal mores, I cannot stand being treated like a small child as if my efforts had paid no gains.
Let us suppose those referring to me as a "girl" are mocking from a position of black comedy, whilst allowing me to have a bit of fun with the term, "kaffir", or black servitude. Is it now okay, again, to refer to grown Shona men as "boys" and grown Shona women as "girls"? This kind of to and fro could be exhilirating, but somehow I suspect that if I laughed and called you a silly old kaffir at this point, you would pissed Kuda.
Saturday 22 January 2011
NIPPING INTO THE WILDERNESS: MAVURADONHA, Zimbabwe trip (June 2010)
My Zimbabwe trip got off to a bad start.
The first roadblock: I was intent on developing my horse-riding muscles by squeezing a beach ball between my knees -- a piece of advice I'd found on the Internet. After several days of doing this for hours at a time, my right knee suddenly felt the strain of an old ligament injury. I stopped squeezing the ball for several weeks after that, but the sense of there being a knot in my knee persisted.
The second bump in the road: A few days before I was due to leave, I had gone up to have a farewell drink at the pub with my parents. Heavy bushfire smoke had permeated the area of the Kalamunda hills, just as the sun set. The air was dry and rather caustic. Inside the pub, flames raged in the hearth. I was already tired. I went home that night with what seemed like a mild cold, which turned into one of the worst flus I'd had. Mike then came down with it.
We did not kiss each other good-bye at the airport. Instead, I walked as resolutely as I could manage, away from a miserable situation. Upon arrival in Harare, my ears were permanently blocked and I had trouble making out what the customs guy was saying to me. My cousin finally picked me up from there and for the next few days, I made desperate attempts to find the means to unblock my ears. The 'flu settled in to my neck and shoulders, making them rigid. I was due to start the safari in the next few days.
I didn't recover in time, but resolved not to think about my ears. The safari guide picked me up and were were on our way to the middle of nowhere at a blistering rate of knots in a 4-wheel drive. The wind coming through the window felt like it does when you are about to do a skydive and the pilot shouts "engines off". The door of the plane is open and you're leaning out and cannot hear anything. I wasn't wearing a seat belt in the vehicle because I couldn't get the seat belt fastener to work. This was Africa, where rules didn't matter. I enjoyed the extra adrenaline that went through me, knowing I was on the edge of danger.
We arrived at the preliminary camp and everybody else went for their first ride on the horses, which took several hours. I slept, instead, resolving to get rid of a feeling that was now, most certainly, the 'flu.
The next day, my aches and pains were about the same. We had a late breakfast and mounted our horses. Due to my lack of riding for over 20 years, I was given a very reliable horse, with a Western saddle. Her name was Bonus. So we began our eight day journey into the Mavuradhona wildness and back again. That day, I learned to be comfortable riding again. As I descended my mount, I realised that there was little I wanted more than a few hours' sleep. I handed over my mount, luxuriating in the fact that someone else would take care of her for me. Then, I retreated to my hut to sleep. I missed dinner but that didn't bother me. I was running a temperature and sleeping through the afternoon allowed me to sweat the fever out.
The next day, I began to settle into the rhythm of being on a horse. It's a kind of meditation, where you let your mind move according to the horse's gait and you provide as little resistance to moving along as possible. You become a zombie. You are at your horse's mercy.
By employing the method of zombie consciousness, I was able to make it through another day. Since the fever had broken, my ears began to clear up. The absence of ear ache was replaced by pain in my knees and thighs. The knee pain was caused by going up and down ravines, which required considerable knee pressure to remain balanced on the horse. Fortunately, my yellow beach ball exercises assisted me, along with my martial arts training, which compels us to maintain a bent kneed stance. The other issue was that I was hitting many thorn trees with my knees in passing, not yet having learned to anticipate their presence and push them aside.
That day, we rode for about five hours. I'm not sure. Each day, we rode for that amount of time, approximately. After either one or two days of this, we arrived at a new campsite. Here, I dismounted my horse only to discover that my right foot had swollen up (probably also a victim of collision with thorn trees) and both knees were so overworked that I could not walk up or down a gentle slope. These features of my existence struck my as grotesquely amusing. I am forever in the debt of powerful anti-inflammatory pills, which fixed me up overnight, entirely against the odds. (I could even walk up and down fairly steep slopes without feeling any exaggeratedly sharp pain.)
I had a drink of white wine that night -- my first alcoholic beverage since arriving in the country. It immediately intoxicated me. I had a warm bucket shower behind three-quarter grass walls, temporarily lost my glasses somewhere on the thatched wall and was unable and unwilling to find them. It had begun raining heavily, even as I was taking my shower. I retreated to the tent and report on my loss when the safari guy announce that it was dinner time. He found the glasses for me, whereupon I inadvertently managed to discard my airline pillow in the mud (due to being barely conscious I had been wearing it -- a feature of the white wine entering an empty stomach). My South African companion became thoroughly concerned upon finding this pillow on the way back from her meal, fearing that witches on hyenas might have been up to mischief.
The first roadblock: I was intent on developing my horse-riding muscles by squeezing a beach ball between my knees -- a piece of advice I'd found on the Internet. After several days of doing this for hours at a time, my right knee suddenly felt the strain of an old ligament injury. I stopped squeezing the ball for several weeks after that, but the sense of there being a knot in my knee persisted.
The second bump in the road: A few days before I was due to leave, I had gone up to have a farewell drink at the pub with my parents. Heavy bushfire smoke had permeated the area of the Kalamunda hills, just as the sun set. The air was dry and rather caustic. Inside the pub, flames raged in the hearth. I was already tired. I went home that night with what seemed like a mild cold, which turned into one of the worst flus I'd had. Mike then came down with it.
We did not kiss each other good-bye at the airport. Instead, I walked as resolutely as I could manage, away from a miserable situation. Upon arrival in Harare, my ears were permanently blocked and I had trouble making out what the customs guy was saying to me. My cousin finally picked me up from there and for the next few days, I made desperate attempts to find the means to unblock my ears. The 'flu settled in to my neck and shoulders, making them rigid. I was due to start the safari in the next few days.
I didn't recover in time, but resolved not to think about my ears. The safari guide picked me up and were were on our way to the middle of nowhere at a blistering rate of knots in a 4-wheel drive. The wind coming through the window felt like it does when you are about to do a skydive and the pilot shouts "engines off". The door of the plane is open and you're leaning out and cannot hear anything. I wasn't wearing a seat belt in the vehicle because I couldn't get the seat belt fastener to work. This was Africa, where rules didn't matter. I enjoyed the extra adrenaline that went through me, knowing I was on the edge of danger.
We arrived at the preliminary camp and everybody else went for their first ride on the horses, which took several hours. I slept, instead, resolving to get rid of a feeling that was now, most certainly, the 'flu.
The next day, my aches and pains were about the same. We had a late breakfast and mounted our horses. Due to my lack of riding for over 20 years, I was given a very reliable horse, with a Western saddle. Her name was Bonus. So we began our eight day journey into the Mavuradhona wildness and back again. That day, I learned to be comfortable riding again. As I descended my mount, I realised that there was little I wanted more than a few hours' sleep. I handed over my mount, luxuriating in the fact that someone else would take care of her for me. Then, I retreated to my hut to sleep. I missed dinner but that didn't bother me. I was running a temperature and sleeping through the afternoon allowed me to sweat the fever out.
The next day, I began to settle into the rhythm of being on a horse. It's a kind of meditation, where you let your mind move according to the horse's gait and you provide as little resistance to moving along as possible. You become a zombie. You are at your horse's mercy.
By employing the method of zombie consciousness, I was able to make it through another day. Since the fever had broken, my ears began to clear up. The absence of ear ache was replaced by pain in my knees and thighs. The knee pain was caused by going up and down ravines, which required considerable knee pressure to remain balanced on the horse. Fortunately, my yellow beach ball exercises assisted me, along with my martial arts training, which compels us to maintain a bent kneed stance. The other issue was that I was hitting many thorn trees with my knees in passing, not yet having learned to anticipate their presence and push them aside.
That day, we rode for about five hours. I'm not sure. Each day, we rode for that amount of time, approximately. After either one or two days of this, we arrived at a new campsite. Here, I dismounted my horse only to discover that my right foot had swollen up (probably also a victim of collision with thorn trees) and both knees were so overworked that I could not walk up or down a gentle slope. These features of my existence struck my as grotesquely amusing. I am forever in the debt of powerful anti-inflammatory pills, which fixed me up overnight, entirely against the odds. (I could even walk up and down fairly steep slopes without feeling any exaggeratedly sharp pain.)
I had a drink of white wine that night -- my first alcoholic beverage since arriving in the country. It immediately intoxicated me. I had a warm bucket shower behind three-quarter grass walls, temporarily lost my glasses somewhere on the thatched wall and was unable and unwilling to find them. It had begun raining heavily, even as I was taking my shower. I retreated to the tent and report on my loss when the safari guy announce that it was dinner time. He found the glasses for me, whereupon I inadvertently managed to discard my airline pillow in the mud (due to being barely conscious I had been wearing it -- a feature of the white wine entering an empty stomach). My South African companion became thoroughly concerned upon finding this pillow on the way back from her meal, fearing that witches on hyenas might have been up to mischief.
This kind of chaos was something I was personally accustomed to. My everyday life is not devoid of unpredictability.
So, we went deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. We marched and marched and marched and marched up and down a thousand mile high ravines. These got steeper and steeper and more tiring to navigate. We were on our way to our destination: to sleep under an overhanging rock, overnight. We stopped around mid afternoon at a river with boulders around it. There, I lay on a rock in the middle of the stream with my riding hat over my face. I felt that there were river spirits speaking to me. A baboon threw a stick at one of us, but this I couldn't see as I was half asleep.
The safari guide said we had a few more hours riding ahead of us. That was a lie. We went up a hill and then down the other side and the horses locked their legs in brake position. It was the same as when they'd seen zebras. Only this time, it was the pack pony, neighing out a greeting and waiting patiently for us.
We stayed under the rock that night and we noted all the speckles in the sky -- so many stars that not one space of sky was not covered with a star. We slept on numnahs and hard rock and all the sand we slept upon got into everything. When the tour assistants shook out my companion's sleeping bag, they chuckled that she had been able to spend the night with so many stones.
The day of the return back in the direction from whence we'd come was the hardest for me, since I had not slept so well. I drank coffee to keep me alert, but this enervated me. I knew that if I made an error of judgement in this steep and rocky terrain, many miles away from medical assistance, I would not be happy with the consequences. I did actually fall off my horse, all the same. It happened as I was gaining confidence in Bonus's abilities to perform almost supernatural tricks involving the descent and ascent of many river banks. I had aimed her at a rise a little too steep, even though the guide called out to take her around the other way. I'd already committed to taking the steep rise. She pounced onto the rise on the opposite side, but the ground was muddy and she could not get her footing. She immediately tried again, in fact two or three times -- and I, resolving not to make things worse, delicately slipped off her side onto the muddy red earth on the left.
That was the worst situation, but it was minor. We continued our journey at a knee-breaking speed. It would not be long before we were home.
So, we went deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. We marched and marched and marched and marched up and down a thousand mile high ravines. These got steeper and steeper and more tiring to navigate. We were on our way to our destination: to sleep under an overhanging rock, overnight. We stopped around mid afternoon at a river with boulders around it. There, I lay on a rock in the middle of the stream with my riding hat over my face. I felt that there were river spirits speaking to me. A baboon threw a stick at one of us, but this I couldn't see as I was half asleep.
The safari guide said we had a few more hours riding ahead of us. That was a lie. We went up a hill and then down the other side and the horses locked their legs in brake position. It was the same as when they'd seen zebras. Only this time, it was the pack pony, neighing out a greeting and waiting patiently for us.
We stayed under the rock that night and we noted all the speckles in the sky -- so many stars that not one space of sky was not covered with a star. We slept on numnahs and hard rock and all the sand we slept upon got into everything. When the tour assistants shook out my companion's sleeping bag, they chuckled that she had been able to spend the night with so many stones.
The day of the return back in the direction from whence we'd come was the hardest for me, since I had not slept so well. I drank coffee to keep me alert, but this enervated me. I knew that if I made an error of judgement in this steep and rocky terrain, many miles away from medical assistance, I would not be happy with the consequences. I did actually fall off my horse, all the same. It happened as I was gaining confidence in Bonus's abilities to perform almost supernatural tricks involving the descent and ascent of many river banks. I had aimed her at a rise a little too steep, even though the guide called out to take her around the other way. I'd already committed to taking the steep rise. She pounced onto the rise on the opposite side, but the ground was muddy and she could not get her footing. She immediately tried again, in fact two or three times -- and I, resolving not to make things worse, delicately slipped off her side onto the muddy red earth on the left.
That was the worst situation, but it was minor. We continued our journey at a knee-breaking speed. It would not be long before we were home.
Friday 21 January 2011
NIPPING INTO THE WILDERNESS:More on the Zimbabwe trip (June 2010)
The Zimbabwe trip got off to a bad start.
The first roadblock: I was developing my horse-riding muscles by squeezing a beach ball between my knees -- a piece of advice I'd found on the Internet. After several days of doing this for hours at a time, my right knee suddenly felt the strain of an old ligament injury. I stopped squeezing the ball for several weeks after that, but the sense of there being a knot in my knee persisted.
The second bump in the road: A few days before I was due to leave, I had gone up to have a farewell drink at the pub with my parents. Heavy bushfire smoke had permeated the area of the Kalamunda hills, just as the sun set. The air was dry and rather caustic. Inside the pub, flames raged in the hearth. I was already tired. I went home that night with what seemed like a mild cold, which turned into one of the worst flus I'd had. Mike then came down with it.
We did not kiss each other good-bye at the airport. Instead, I walked as resolutely as I could manage, away from a miserable situation. Upon arrival in Harare, my ears were permanently blocked and I had trouble making out what the customs guy was saying to me. My cousin finally picked me up from there and for the next few days, I made desperate attempts to find the means to unblock my ears. The 'flu settled in to my neck and shoulders, making them rigid. I was due to start the safari in the next few days.
I didn't recover in time, but resolved not to think about my ears. The safari guide picked me up and were were on our way to the middle of nowhere at a blistering rate of knots in a 4-wheel drive. The wind coming through the window felt like it does when you are about to do a skydive and the pilot shouts "engines off". The door of the plane is open and you're leaning out and cannot hear anything. I wasn't wearing a seat belt in the vehicle because I couldn't get the seat belt fastener to work. This was Africa, all the same, where rules didn't matter. I enjoyed the extra adrenaline that went through me, knowing I was on the edge of danger.
We arrived at the preliminary camp and everybody else went for their first ride on the horses, which took several hours. I slept, instead, resolving to get rid of a feeling that was now, most certainly, the 'flu.
The next day, my aches and pains were about the same. We had a late breakfast and mounted our horses. Due to my lack of riding for over 20 years, I was given a very reliable horse, with a Western saddle. Her name was Bonus. So we began our eight day journey into the Mavuradhona wildness and back again. That day, I learned to be comfortable riding again. As I descended my mount, I realised that there was little I wanted more than a few hours' sleep. I handed over my mount, luxuriating in the fact that someone else would take care of her for me. Then, I retreated to my hut to sleep. I missed dinner but that didn't bother me. I was running a temperature and sleeping through the afternoon allowed me to sweat the fever out.
The next day, I began to settle into the rhythm of being on a horse. It's a kind of meditation, where you let your mind move according to the horse's gait and you provide as little resistance to moving along as possible. You become a zombie. You are at your horse's mercy.
By employing the method of zombie consciousness, I was able to make it through another day. Since the fever had broken, my ears began to clear up. The absence of ear ache was replaced by pain in my knees and thighs. The knee pain was caused by going up and down ravines, which required considerable knee pressure to remain balanced on the horse. Fortunately, my yellow beach ball exercises assisted, along with my martial arts training, which compels us to maintain a bent kneed stance. The other issue was that I was hitting many thorn trees with my knees in passing, not yet having learned to anticipate their presence and push them aside.
That day, we rode for about five hours. I'm not sure. Each day, we rode for that amount of time, approximately. After either one or two days of this, we arrived at a new campsite. Here, I dismounted my horse only to discover that my right foot had swollen up (probably also a victim of collision with thorn trees) and both knees were so overworked that I could not walk up or down a gentle slope. These features of my existence struck my as grotesquely amusing. I am forever in the debt of powerful anti-inflammatory pills, which fixed me up overnight, entirely against the odds. (I could even walk up and down fairly steep slopes without feeling any exaggeratedly sharp pain.)
I had a drink of white wine that night -- my first alcoholic beverage since arriving in the country. It immediately intoxicated me. I had a warm bucket shower behind three-quarter grass walls, temporarily lost my glasses somewhere on the thatched wall and was unable and unwilling to find them. It had begun raining heavily, even as I was taking my shower. I retreated to the tent and report on my loss when the safari guy announce that it was dinner time. He found the glasses for me, whereupon I managed to discard my airline pillow in the mud (due to the fact that I was barely conscious I was wearing it -- a feature of the white wine entering an empty stomach). My South African companion became thoroughly concerned, upon finding this pillow on the way back from her meal, that witches on hyenas might have led to this. This kind of chaos was something I was personally accustomed to.
So, we went deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. We marched and marched and marched and marched up and down a thousand mile high ravines. These got steeper and steeper and more tiring to navigate. We were on our way to our destination: to sleep under an overhanging rock, overnight. We stopped around mid afternoon at a river with boulders around it. There, I lay on a rock in the middle of the stream with my riding hat over my face. I felt that there were river spirits speaking to me. A baboon threw a stick at one of us, but this I couldn't see as I was half asleep.
The safari guide said we had a few more hours riding ahead of us. That was a lie. We went up a hill and then down the other side and the horses locked their legs in brake position. It was the same as when they'd seen zebras. Only this time, it was the pack pony, neighing out a greeting and waiting patiently for us.
So, we stayed under the rock that night and we noted all the speckles in the sky -- so many stars that not one space of sky was not covered with a star. We slept on numnahs and hard rock and all the sand we slept upon got into everything. (When a tour assistant shook out my companion's sleeping bag, they let out a laugh that she had been sleeping with some sizable stones.)
The day of the return back in the direction from whence we'd come was the hardest for me, since I had not slept so well. I drank coffee to keep me alert, but this enervated me. I knew that if I made an error of judgement in this steep and rocky terrain, many miles away from medical assistance, I would not be happy with the consequences. I did actually fall off my horse, all the same. It happened as I was gaining confidence in Bonus's abilities to perform almost supernatural tricks involving the descent and ascent of many river banks. I had aimed her at a rise a little too steep, even though the guide called out to take her around the other way. I'd already committed to taking the steep rise. She pounced onto the rise on the opposite side, but the ground was muddy and she could not get her footing. She immediately tried again, two or three times -- and I, resolving not to make things worse, delicately slipped off her side onto the muddy red earth to the right.
That was the worst situation that happened, but it was minor. We continued on our journey at a knee-breaking speed, which was a sprightly walking pace. It would not be too long before we'd made our way home.
The first roadblock: I was developing my horse-riding muscles by squeezing a beach ball between my knees -- a piece of advice I'd found on the Internet. After several days of doing this for hours at a time, my right knee suddenly felt the strain of an old ligament injury. I stopped squeezing the ball for several weeks after that, but the sense of there being a knot in my knee persisted.
The second bump in the road: A few days before I was due to leave, I had gone up to have a farewell drink at the pub with my parents. Heavy bushfire smoke had permeated the area of the Kalamunda hills, just as the sun set. The air was dry and rather caustic. Inside the pub, flames raged in the hearth. I was already tired. I went home that night with what seemed like a mild cold, which turned into one of the worst flus I'd had. Mike then came down with it.
We did not kiss each other good-bye at the airport. Instead, I walked as resolutely as I could manage, away from a miserable situation. Upon arrival in Harare, my ears were permanently blocked and I had trouble making out what the customs guy was saying to me. My cousin finally picked me up from there and for the next few days, I made desperate attempts to find the means to unblock my ears. The 'flu settled in to my neck and shoulders, making them rigid. I was due to start the safari in the next few days.
I didn't recover in time, but resolved not to think about my ears. The safari guide picked me up and were were on our way to the middle of nowhere at a blistering rate of knots in a 4-wheel drive. The wind coming through the window felt like it does when you are about to do a skydive and the pilot shouts "engines off". The door of the plane is open and you're leaning out and cannot hear anything. I wasn't wearing a seat belt in the vehicle because I couldn't get the seat belt fastener to work. This was Africa, all the same, where rules didn't matter. I enjoyed the extra adrenaline that went through me, knowing I was on the edge of danger.
We arrived at the preliminary camp and everybody else went for their first ride on the horses, which took several hours. I slept, instead, resolving to get rid of a feeling that was now, most certainly, the 'flu.
The next day, my aches and pains were about the same. We had a late breakfast and mounted our horses. Due to my lack of riding for over 20 years, I was given a very reliable horse, with a Western saddle. Her name was Bonus. So we began our eight day journey into the Mavuradhona wildness and back again. That day, I learned to be comfortable riding again. As I descended my mount, I realised that there was little I wanted more than a few hours' sleep. I handed over my mount, luxuriating in the fact that someone else would take care of her for me. Then, I retreated to my hut to sleep. I missed dinner but that didn't bother me. I was running a temperature and sleeping through the afternoon allowed me to sweat the fever out.
The next day, I began to settle into the rhythm of being on a horse. It's a kind of meditation, where you let your mind move according to the horse's gait and you provide as little resistance to moving along as possible. You become a zombie. You are at your horse's mercy.
By employing the method of zombie consciousness, I was able to make it through another day. Since the fever had broken, my ears began to clear up. The absence of ear ache was replaced by pain in my knees and thighs. The knee pain was caused by going up and down ravines, which required considerable knee pressure to remain balanced on the horse. Fortunately, my yellow beach ball exercises assisted, along with my martial arts training, which compels us to maintain a bent kneed stance. The other issue was that I was hitting many thorn trees with my knees in passing, not yet having learned to anticipate their presence and push them aside.
That day, we rode for about five hours. I'm not sure. Each day, we rode for that amount of time, approximately. After either one or two days of this, we arrived at a new campsite. Here, I dismounted my horse only to discover that my right foot had swollen up (probably also a victim of collision with thorn trees) and both knees were so overworked that I could not walk up or down a gentle slope. These features of my existence struck my as grotesquely amusing. I am forever in the debt of powerful anti-inflammatory pills, which fixed me up overnight, entirely against the odds. (I could even walk up and down fairly steep slopes without feeling any exaggeratedly sharp pain.)
I had a drink of white wine that night -- my first alcoholic beverage since arriving in the country. It immediately intoxicated me. I had a warm bucket shower behind three-quarter grass walls, temporarily lost my glasses somewhere on the thatched wall and was unable and unwilling to find them. It had begun raining heavily, even as I was taking my shower. I retreated to the tent and report on my loss when the safari guy announce that it was dinner time. He found the glasses for me, whereupon I managed to discard my airline pillow in the mud (due to the fact that I was barely conscious I was wearing it -- a feature of the white wine entering an empty stomach). My South African companion became thoroughly concerned, upon finding this pillow on the way back from her meal, that witches on hyenas might have led to this. This kind of chaos was something I was personally accustomed to.
So, we went deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. We marched and marched and marched and marched up and down a thousand mile high ravines. These got steeper and steeper and more tiring to navigate. We were on our way to our destination: to sleep under an overhanging rock, overnight. We stopped around mid afternoon at a river with boulders around it. There, I lay on a rock in the middle of the stream with my riding hat over my face. I felt that there were river spirits speaking to me. A baboon threw a stick at one of us, but this I couldn't see as I was half asleep.
The safari guide said we had a few more hours riding ahead of us. That was a lie. We went up a hill and then down the other side and the horses locked their legs in brake position. It was the same as when they'd seen zebras. Only this time, it was the pack pony, neighing out a greeting and waiting patiently for us.
So, we stayed under the rock that night and we noted all the speckles in the sky -- so many stars that not one space of sky was not covered with a star. We slept on numnahs and hard rock and all the sand we slept upon got into everything. (When a tour assistant shook out my companion's sleeping bag, they let out a laugh that she had been sleeping with some sizable stones.)
The day of the return back in the direction from whence we'd come was the hardest for me, since I had not slept so well. I drank coffee to keep me alert, but this enervated me. I knew that if I made an error of judgement in this steep and rocky terrain, many miles away from medical assistance, I would not be happy with the consequences. I did actually fall off my horse, all the same. It happened as I was gaining confidence in Bonus's abilities to perform almost supernatural tricks involving the descent and ascent of many river banks. I had aimed her at a rise a little too steep, even though the guide called out to take her around the other way. I'd already committed to taking the steep rise. She pounced onto the rise on the opposite side, but the ground was muddy and she could not get her footing. She immediately tried again, two or three times -- and I, resolving not to make things worse, delicately slipped off her side onto the muddy red earth to the right.
That was the worst situation that happened, but it was minor. We continued on our journey at a knee-breaking speed, which was a sprightly walking pace. It would not be too long before we'd made our way home.
Mencken wrote:
What a man of another and superior stock almost always notices, living among so-called Anglo-Saxons, is (a) their incapacity for prevailing in fair rivalry, either in trade, in the fine arts or in what is called learning--in brief, their general incompetence, and (b) their invariable effort to make up for this incapacity by putting some inequitable burden upon their rivals, usually by force. The Frenchman, I believe, is the worst of chauvinists, but once he admits a foreigner to his country he at least treats that foreigner fairly, and does not try to penalize him absurdly for his mere foreignness. The Anglo-Saxon American is always trying to do it; his history is a history of recurrent outbreaks of blind rage against people who have begun to worst him. Such movements would be inconceivable in an efficient and genuinely self-confident people, wholly assured of their superiority, and they would be equally inconceivable in a truly gallant and courageous people, disdaining unfair advantages and overwhelming odds. Theoretically launched against some imaginary inferiority in the non-Anglo-Saxon man, either as patriot, as democrat or as Christian, they are actually launched at his general superiority, his greater fitness to survive in the national environment. The effort is always to penalize him for winning in fair fight, to handicap him in such a manner that he will sink to the general level of the Anglo-Saxon population, and, if possible, even below it. Such devices, of course, never have the countenance of the Anglo-Saxon minority that is authentically superior, and hence self-confident and tolerant. But that minority is pathetically small, and it tends steadily to grow smaller and feebler. The communal laws and the communal mores are made by the folk, and they offer all the proof that is necessary, not only of its general inferiority, but also of its alarmed awareness of that inferiority. The normal American of the “pure-blooded” majority goes to rest every night with an uneasy feeling that there is a burglar under the bed, and he gets up every morning with a sickening fear that his underwear has been stolen.
Rhetorical politics
The whole attempt to code oneself as masculine by going further to the right is not foolproof. It is actually easier to go further and further to the right if one already has money and power. This kind of 'going right' has rhetorical power, but since it is designed to maintain, rather than challenge the status quo, it is basically passive.
Necessarily, any active force that challenges right wing propositions and which comes from below, from the position of underdog, is automatically going to be more active, more vital (indeed, according to the metaphysical binaries of symbolic coding) and therefore more "masculine" than passive wingnuttiness can ever be.
Necessarily, any active force that challenges right wing propositions and which comes from below, from the position of underdog, is automatically going to be more active, more vital (indeed, according to the metaphysical binaries of symbolic coding) and therefore more "masculine" than passive wingnuttiness can ever be.
Thursday 20 January 2011
My trip to Zimbabwe 2010
Someone has asked me to write something about my recent trip to Zimbabwe, some six months ago. This is not easy to do, as I have acquired a rare condition that I hope to soon recover from. I believe my PhD supervisor described it best when he knighted me with a rolled up oil painting I had brought back for him from Harare. He pronounced me "doctored".
"Doctored ... that really isn't a very nice word at all," he uttered upon reflection. His recent experiences with a health condition no doubt bore testimony to this -- but he had also spoken of a more general truth, namely that writing a doctoral thesis will in fact do something seemingly unalterable to your mind, whilst at the same time assuring that you will not willingly open a book again -- at least for a very long time to come.
(I should hasten to add that I have actually opened several books, since completing my PhD, only my experience with them is quite different from what it had been prior to finishing my thesis. These books no longer have the radiance of revealed truths, but rather represent a limited perspectives and blind spots and arguments with holes in them. I clearly have been "doctored": my critical thinking skills have outgrown my sense of enjoyment of a text. Instead, I immediately see where the author's range of experience fails him, how the parameters of his argument are a form of self-limitation that ultimately makes the pursuit of knowledge itself a restricted enterprise: I have been "doctored".)
But, I should write something about my trip to Zimbabwe. It was, in a way, a descent into blissed-out sensations, for me: A wild and woolly Utopian catastrophe of an experience. I was in Zimbabwe for June and July of last year. The best I can say about Zimbabwean people and their culture was that I encountered the praxis of the left libertarian attitudes I had been preaching on the Internet. I was riding in an overcrowded and musically enhanced minibus, making the four hour journey to Mutare from Harare, when it dawned on me: "These people really get how to live in the most spontaneous and jubilant way, although nobody in particular has imparted this as a philosophy to them." That's when I realised that sometimes people just 'get' what is necessary for life -- and, articulating moral formulations whilst contending for one's piece of turf isn't always necessary, not when people can already 'get it'.
In truth, the worst aspects of my Zimbabwean trip were quite small in comparison to this revelation of people 'getting it'. They had to do with the extreme religiosity of the Zimbabwean populace (about 99.99999% of whom are overtly Christian). American evangelism is the new form of colonization of the Zimbabwean mind. The American Gothic posters, with the overly made-up American ladies promising 'Christian revival' took pride of place along the main streets of suburban Harare. Mini-buses (the main form of transport in Zimbabwe) also offered up their share of ideological clutter, which was often of a religious variety (see below).
In the weeks after I had safely arrived in Mutare (despite the bat out of hell ride on potholed streets at night time), after I had taken to getting taxi rides with a delightful friend of a friend, I discovered, one woeful Sunday morning that this otherwise quite charming man, who even happily shared his sadza and boerewors with me, had an audiotape in his taxi (which he played at quite a level of decibels) of the kind of hellfire and brimstone preaching that would make a grown woman want to completely obliterate all Sundays from this world for a long time to come.
"Doctored ... that really isn't a very nice word at all," he uttered upon reflection. His recent experiences with a health condition no doubt bore testimony to this -- but he had also spoken of a more general truth, namely that writing a doctoral thesis will in fact do something seemingly unalterable to your mind, whilst at the same time assuring that you will not willingly open a book again -- at least for a very long time to come.
(I should hasten to add that I have actually opened several books, since completing my PhD, only my experience with them is quite different from what it had been prior to finishing my thesis. These books no longer have the radiance of revealed truths, but rather represent a limited perspectives and blind spots and arguments with holes in them. I clearly have been "doctored": my critical thinking skills have outgrown my sense of enjoyment of a text. Instead, I immediately see where the author's range of experience fails him, how the parameters of his argument are a form of self-limitation that ultimately makes the pursuit of knowledge itself a restricted enterprise: I have been "doctored".)
But, I should write something about my trip to Zimbabwe. It was, in a way, a descent into blissed-out sensations, for me: A wild and woolly Utopian catastrophe of an experience. I was in Zimbabwe for June and July of last year. The best I can say about Zimbabwean people and their culture was that I encountered the praxis of the left libertarian attitudes I had been preaching on the Internet. I was riding in an overcrowded and musically enhanced minibus, making the four hour journey to Mutare from Harare, when it dawned on me: "These people really get how to live in the most spontaneous and jubilant way, although nobody in particular has imparted this as a philosophy to them." That's when I realised that sometimes people just 'get' what is necessary for life -- and, articulating moral formulations whilst contending for one's piece of turf isn't always necessary, not when people can already 'get it'.
In truth, the worst aspects of my Zimbabwean trip were quite small in comparison to this revelation of people 'getting it'. They had to do with the extreme religiosity of the Zimbabwean populace (about 99.99999% of whom are overtly Christian). American evangelism is the new form of colonization of the Zimbabwean mind. The American Gothic posters, with the overly made-up American ladies promising 'Christian revival' took pride of place along the main streets of suburban Harare. Mini-buses (the main form of transport in Zimbabwe) also offered up their share of ideological clutter, which was often of a religious variety (see below).
Wishful thinking: Matthew 6: 33. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
In the weeks after I had safely arrived in Mutare (despite the bat out of hell ride on potholed streets at night time), after I had taken to getting taxi rides with a delightful friend of a friend, I discovered, one woeful Sunday morning that this otherwise quite charming man, who even happily shared his sadza and boerewors with me, had an audiotape in his taxi (which he played at quite a level of decibels) of the kind of hellfire and brimstone preaching that would make a grown woman want to completely obliterate all Sundays from this world for a long time to come.
Wednesday 19 January 2011
METAPHYSICAL DUALITIES (Posing as 'science')
According to contemporary meta-physicians masquerading as "researchers", one is led to conclude that by withholding their sexuality, women create a greater need for it and so control the monopoly of sexuality in the human sphere. This is the principle by which women can dominate more: viewed in this sense, this principle of sexual withholding represents the principle of matriarchy. No doubt, it only seems like it is the principle of patriarchy to feminists! After all, feminists note that until more recently, women had the whole issue of patriarchal morality and its peculiar reasoning to contend with. Consider, for instance, the issue of female purity versus impurity as patriarchal metaphysical constructs. In fact it was, until recently, (and is still the case in middle eastern countries), these highly artificial constructs that kept sexuality scarce for male and female alike.
It is not popular to consider how cultural mores affect human behaviour, however, so we are encouraged to consider the way things have changed entirely in terms of market forces. That way, we can still maintain the metaphysical category of "naturalness" -- which saves us from the realisation that just about all of human behaviour is artificial and contrived in some ways. That is why it is so interesting that two Texas researchers, as inheritors of the high priestly reasoning of the middle ages and before, can place their seats so as to obtain an accurate and efficient view of human affairs. From such a vantage point, they can start tut-tut-tutting about how there seems to be a metaphysical clash between an essentialised inner female nature as sexual monopoly holder and an effect of contemporary market forces which causes women to devalue and de-monopolise their goods.
For minds high on metaphysics, a situation of female sexual openness leads to the essentialised male principle becoming too empowered. If male and female really do represent different interests (a feature of their having different 'essences' to start with), this could lead to a dire metaphysical imbalance in the realm of gender.
The real issue at stake here is how many overly empowered males can dance on the head of a pin?
I would posit that at least 13 of them can!
It is not popular to consider how cultural mores affect human behaviour, however, so we are encouraged to consider the way things have changed entirely in terms of market forces. That way, we can still maintain the metaphysical category of "naturalness" -- which saves us from the realisation that just about all of human behaviour is artificial and contrived in some ways. That is why it is so interesting that two Texas researchers, as inheritors of the high priestly reasoning of the middle ages and before, can place their seats so as to obtain an accurate and efficient view of human affairs. From such a vantage point, they can start tut-tut-tutting about how there seems to be a metaphysical clash between an essentialised inner female nature as sexual monopoly holder and an effect of contemporary market forces which causes women to devalue and de-monopolise their goods.
For minds high on metaphysics, a situation of female sexual openness leads to the essentialised male principle becoming too empowered. If male and female really do represent different interests (a feature of their having different 'essences' to start with), this could lead to a dire metaphysical imbalance in the realm of gender.
The real issue at stake here is how many overly empowered males can dance on the head of a pin?
I would posit that at least 13 of them can!
Tuesday 18 January 2011
Wednesday 12 January 2011
Ethical dualism, bravado and dire mistakes about gender
***
To me, any worthwhile fight is not about being physically strong as much as it is about being mentally strong enough to be honest. There are difficulties in making one's philosophy accessible on the Internet, because it is the kind of medium where people pass through and make assumptions (i.e. they indulge in projection). I understand that the common assumption in Western culture is a kind of ethical dualism, whereby one is EITHER strong or weak, either honest or dishonest, either worthy or unworthy. There is also an assumption that is one is any of these one should be able to prove it by means of one's polished rhetoric.
In reality, we are all, either simultaneously or off-and-on, both strong and weak, honest and dishonest, worthy and unworthy. Also, I don't think that any of this can be PROVEN by any kind of oratory, whatsoever. It has to be learned by experience (and, often, by a process of unlearning Western metaphysical binaries).
The ethical dualistic system is actually responsible, in itself, for real mental health problems. That is because if we disagree and I believe that I am clearly strong and honest and worthy, then the cause of any disagreement must be because "you" are weak, dishonest and unworthy. The logic goes like this: "If I have truth on my side because I conduct myself in an ethical way, then you must have lies and craziness on your side -- otherwise, how could you disagree with me?"
But this mode of relating invokes all sorts of projective mechanisms: I HAVE TO project negative qualities onto you, to maintain the image of myself as good, in the face of disagreement. Western metaphysics thus proves itself to be embroiled in creating pathological psychodynamics.
A Taoist perspective of intertwining opposites avoids this.
Tuesday 11 January 2011
Detachment
Detachment plays a strange part in relation to the Western psyche. Perhaps this is because it is simply the most unexpected phenomenon in a realm of otherwise unmitigated socially conditioned egotism.
I suspect that when we are egotistically engaged in a social realm of competing egos, we become much more intelligible to those who are also conditioned to respond to others on the basis of their own egotism. Paradoxically, by being egotistic, we also thereby become easier to "read" and thus appear safer to those who operate in the world in mode of egoistic battle against other egos.
The point that we become detached -- the point where we have least interest in using the "other" as a means towards our own ends -- is, nonetheless, the point at which the egoistic mind considers us to be most dangerous. It is as if we had deliberately changed our radio frequency in order to be uncontactable, no doubt so that we can pursue some sort of evil designs.
What happens when we lost interest in him is that he can no longer "read" us according to the psychology that has become typical and conventional. So far as he is concerned, his radar signals have become muffled. Consequently, he feels threatened. The lack of egoistic interest in his affairs does not appear as what it is, but rather appears as a souped up kind of egotism.
I have had people accuse me of all sorts of extremely nefarious intentions when I have in fact been in a state of almost absolute detachment from the rest of the world.
I suspect that when we are egotistically engaged in a social realm of competing egos, we become much more intelligible to those who are also conditioned to respond to others on the basis of their own egotism. Paradoxically, by being egotistic, we also thereby become easier to "read" and thus appear safer to those who operate in the world in mode of egoistic battle against other egos.
The point that we become detached -- the point where we have least interest in using the "other" as a means towards our own ends -- is, nonetheless, the point at which the egoistic mind considers us to be most dangerous. It is as if we had deliberately changed our radio frequency in order to be uncontactable, no doubt so that we can pursue some sort of evil designs.
What happens when we lost interest in him is that he can no longer "read" us according to the psychology that has become typical and conventional. So far as he is concerned, his radar signals have become muffled. Consequently, he feels threatened. The lack of egoistic interest in his affairs does not appear as what it is, but rather appears as a souped up kind of egotism.
I have had people accuse me of all sorts of extremely nefarious intentions when I have in fact been in a state of almost absolute detachment from the rest of the world.
Monday 10 January 2011
New tactics of male supremacy and how these seem to be failing
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/gender_power_and_the_giffords_shooting/
With regard to the question, "how do you know what you know?", it does seem as if males tend to have a harder time figuring out the difference between ideology and reality than females of the same level of intelligence do.
Perhaps the shooter Loughner was engaged in this kind of search for meaning. As this post above suggests, he wanted to be able to differentiate between socially constructed meaning and meaning that has enduring value. (This is to lend some intelligibility to an otherwise unintelligible project. It is the kindest light I could put this in.) He also wanted a way out of a situation where social control and ideological spinning coupled with a reality that seemed too systematized.
I think the inability to distinguish between ideology and a deeper level of reality is part of the nature of the patriarchal construction of reality, which was, from its inception, religious. Males were told that they were better than women for transcendental reasons -- because "God" had ordained it this way. Consequently, males believed it, but this was a form of psychological flattery that, whilst consolidating a male supremacist position in many ways, also robbed males of their ability to pay attention to their own experiences and to learn from them. When ideology had so much to offer and when the pull of ideology was in the opposite direction to personal experience (which surely does not suggest that males are uniformly superior to women in all ways), one succumbed to ideological flattery.
This situation of not knowing how to pay attention to the meanings entailed in one's personal experiences is a debilitating one. Many women "know what they know" because they've often developed a strong capacity to observe their own experiences and learn from them. On the other hand, males very often have shied away from doing this. Furthermore, the patriarchal game of bluff -- achieved by feigning intellectual and knowing superiority in the face of not knowing anything at all -- seems to be failing more and more these days.
I think a lot of males feel that they have been cheated, but they can't quite work out why. They are not prepared to analyse how it is that the ideological system that was designed to give them systematic advantages seems now to be setting them up to fail.
Many males are quite angry because their transcendental "truths" are not accepted by others as truths anymore.
This seems to be related to a desire to return to reductionistic "facts", or failing this, to the ostensible objectivity of mathematics. I noted similarities in Assange's diary and Loughner's YouTube writings. Both express this drive to prove male superiority through posing as being objective in life, using numbers.
With regard to the question, "how do you know what you know?", it does seem as if males tend to have a harder time figuring out the difference between ideology and reality than females of the same level of intelligence do.
Perhaps the shooter Loughner was engaged in this kind of search for meaning. As this post above suggests, he wanted to be able to differentiate between socially constructed meaning and meaning that has enduring value. (This is to lend some intelligibility to an otherwise unintelligible project. It is the kindest light I could put this in.) He also wanted a way out of a situation where social control and ideological spinning coupled with a reality that seemed too systematized.
I think the inability to distinguish between ideology and a deeper level of reality is part of the nature of the patriarchal construction of reality, which was, from its inception, religious. Males were told that they were better than women for transcendental reasons -- because "God" had ordained it this way. Consequently, males believed it, but this was a form of psychological flattery that, whilst consolidating a male supremacist position in many ways, also robbed males of their ability to pay attention to their own experiences and to learn from them. When ideology had so much to offer and when the pull of ideology was in the opposite direction to personal experience (which surely does not suggest that males are uniformly superior to women in all ways), one succumbed to ideological flattery.
This situation of not knowing how to pay attention to the meanings entailed in one's personal experiences is a debilitating one. Many women "know what they know" because they've often developed a strong capacity to observe their own experiences and learn from them. On the other hand, males very often have shied away from doing this. Furthermore, the patriarchal game of bluff -- achieved by feigning intellectual and knowing superiority in the face of not knowing anything at all -- seems to be failing more and more these days.
I think a lot of males feel that they have been cheated, but they can't quite work out why. They are not prepared to analyse how it is that the ideological system that was designed to give them systematic advantages seems now to be setting them up to fail.
Many males are quite angry because their transcendental "truths" are not accepted by others as truths anymore.
This seems to be related to a desire to return to reductionistic "facts", or failing this, to the ostensible objectivity of mathematics. I noted similarities in Assange's diary and Loughner's YouTube writings. Both express this drive to prove male superiority through posing as being objective in life, using numbers.
Sunday 9 January 2011
violence and social permission
Jennifer F Armstrong: A general societal top-down logic in terms of who is permitted to be violent is also replicated in terms of gender. Male violence is either normalised or, when in excess, is seen as "a tragedy": for instance, as a crime of passion. Female violence is considered to be "against nature" and invites a tremendous amount of social censure, even if the 'violence' is relatively trivial and symbolic.
Cedric Beidatsch: Yes, that is true, very true. I am of the view that patriarchy is the oldest and deepst of the oppressions, and in fact provides the pattern for subsequent exploitation of nature, classes, ethnes and so on. So to be pedantic it is the gender logic that is replicated in the top down logic of violence. have I phrased that clearly?
Jennifer F Armstrong: Yes.The gender logic does appear to be, in most respects, the archaic form of logic that is replicated in the top-down sense. You can analyse this in the sense that those at the bottom of society are deemed to have symbolically "womanish" qualities. (NOTE: these qualities are attributed on the basis of a metaphysical construct and tend to have little to do with how people actually behave, if we were to appraise the behaviour from a phenomenological perspective alone. Rather, by virtue of hermeneutics, specifically by 'framing' interpretations, those who lack power are deemed to be 'women'.)
This is why complaining from a position of structural (concrete) powerlessness will generally not work. The 'womanish' qualities, according to Western metaphysics, are those of fickleness, deception, exaggerated emotionality and incoherence. (Actually, these are the qualities that Western men project onto the Western women.)
It doesn't seem to matter whether or not OBJECTIVELY you happen to embody any, or none, of these qualities. If you are relatively powerless in society and are deemed to be rocking the boat, these are always the qualities that are attributed to you.
Cedric Beidatsch: Yes, that is true, very true. I am of the view that patriarchy is the oldest and deepst of the oppressions, and in fact provides the pattern for subsequent exploitation of nature, classes, ethnes and so on. So to be pedantic it is the gender logic that is replicated in the top down logic of violence. have I phrased that clearly?
Jennifer F Armstrong: Yes.The gender logic does appear to be, in most respects, the archaic form of logic that is replicated in the top-down sense. You can analyse this in the sense that those at the bottom of society are deemed to have symbolically "womanish" qualities. (NOTE: these qualities are attributed on the basis of a metaphysical construct and tend to have little to do with how people actually behave, if we were to appraise the behaviour from a phenomenological perspective alone. Rather, by virtue of hermeneutics, specifically by 'framing' interpretations, those who lack power are deemed to be 'women'.)
This is why complaining from a position of structural (concrete) powerlessness will generally not work. The 'womanish' qualities, according to Western metaphysics, are those of fickleness, deception, exaggerated emotionality and incoherence. (Actually, these are the qualities that Western men project onto the Western women.)
It doesn't seem to matter whether or not OBJECTIVELY you happen to embody any, or none, of these qualities. If you are relatively powerless in society and are deemed to be rocking the boat, these are always the qualities that are attributed to you.
New Year's Re(v)olutions
1. I resolve to get sections of my thesis published and to turn the thesis into a book.
2. I resolve to utilise my aggressive energies to the best effect by working out in the gym and improving my sparring techniques. Ideally, I should work towards a grading.
3. I shall continue my gender activism with an emphasis on teaching Zimbabwean women self defence.
4. I shall obtain more work of an interesting and satisfying nature to me. I'm particularly interested in complex problem solving within systems.
5. I shall aim to acquire a few bucks. If possible, quite a few.
2. I resolve to utilise my aggressive energies to the best effect by working out in the gym and improving my sparring techniques. Ideally, I should work towards a grading.
3. I shall continue my gender activism with an emphasis on teaching Zimbabwean women self defence.
4. I shall obtain more work of an interesting and satisfying nature to me. I'm particularly interested in complex problem solving within systems.
5. I shall aim to acquire a few bucks. If possible, quite a few.
Tuesday 4 January 2011
Left wing flattening
Jennifer Armstrong: Any leveling at an economic or class level will not automatically do anything for gender. In fact, if we look at what would tend to happen automatically, women would lose a lot of the ground they have gained. I realise this when I consider my experiences in both Zimbabwe and Australia and when I read some of Simone de Beauvoir's commentary about her life as an intellectual woman. It seems that the reason she could afford to write THE SECOND SEX in peace is precisely because she was able to insulate herself from some of the worst abuses by the patriarchy through invoking her class status. This sense of insulation was not something I had whilst doing my writing. It indicates that some of the left wing agenda to flatten society is very bad for women.
Likewise, I noticed that female teachers in Rhodesia had more status than female teachers have in Australia. The difference, once again, is the capacity to invoke class status. Without this mode of differentiating oneself, we are reduced to only the pre-existing modes of recognising crude, primeval gender differences. This would tend to emphasise the meaning and importance of gender differences, rather than devaluing them, as they ought to be devalued. Women in contemporary Western schools are treated as 'mothers', expected to make sacrifices of their intellects in order to appease 'the boys', who are deemed to be their natural superiors,anyway. Already it is implicitly understood that 'boys' can assert themselves because it is 'in their nature', whereas female teachers who assert themselves are deemed to be going against their nurturing (motherly) instincts.
So, what we have here is a reduction of women to something akin to slaves.
***
Jasmina Brankovich: @Jen: that bit about de Beauvoir reminds me of Virgina Woolf's premise behind A Room of One's Own: ie, what a woman needs to become a successful writer (assuming she has the talent and capability of course) is a 'room of one's own' and independent yearly income :) This was written at the time when women were not in the paid slavery wage system, of course, so the only income that they could have access to was inheritance.
But I do think difference should not be eliminated. Have you read much of Luce Irigaray? Later French feminisms (Irigaray was Belgian, but drew of the heritage of French theory) championed female difference, arguing that dismissing difference was another patriarchal ploy aimed at devaluing the feminine. Instead women needed to reclaim the feminine, particularly the feminine language that would allow women to express themselves outside of the phallocentric discourse. The theory of difference recognises that society's two gender categories, man and woman, are in fact just one (man, of course) and the language of equality, where equality equals sameness works to reinforce patriarchy.
****
Jennifer Armstrong: Of course I've read Irigaray. I'm not sure why you think I am saying that difference ought to be eliminated. How would that be possible? I'm not sure if you have understood my original points. Perhaps I conveyed them poorly.
What I meant to say is that traditionally males were granted social authority and women were denied it. It seems to me that unless there is something specifically culturally prohibitive that acts as a barrier against treating particular women badly, all women will be treated directly as patriarchal subjects, pure and simple. This means that they will some solely under the umbrella of patriarchal valuations and patriarchy will treat them as it will.
Now, I wasn't saying that motherhood in itself is bad for women. I think such an interpretation would really miss my point in a very radical way. I was suggesting, rather, that women should also be able to have the type of authority in the world that does not stem from an identity as a mother. The natural tendency, if culture does not intervene, is for society to collapse back onto "instinct" -- and this is basically fascism, although women can even have power in fascist society, so long as they invoke their status as mothers. Apart from this, they cannot stand up as individuals.
Likewise, I noticed that female teachers in Rhodesia had more status than female teachers have in Australia. The difference, once again, is the capacity to invoke class status. Without this mode of differentiating oneself, we are reduced to only the pre-existing modes of recognising crude, primeval gender differences. This would tend to emphasise the meaning and importance of gender differences, rather than devaluing them, as they ought to be devalued. Women in contemporary Western schools are treated as 'mothers', expected to make sacrifices of their intellects in order to appease 'the boys', who are deemed to be their natural superiors,anyway. Already it is implicitly understood that 'boys' can assert themselves because it is 'in their nature', whereas female teachers who assert themselves are deemed to be going against their nurturing (motherly) instincts.
So, what we have here is a reduction of women to something akin to slaves.
***
Jasmina Brankovich: @Jen: that bit about de Beauvoir reminds me of Virgina Woolf's premise behind A Room of One's Own: ie, what a woman needs to become a successful writer (assuming she has the talent and capability of course) is a 'room of one's own' and independent yearly income :) This was written at the time when women were not in the paid slavery wage system, of course, so the only income that they could have access to was inheritance.
But I do think difference should not be eliminated. Have you read much of Luce Irigaray? Later French feminisms (Irigaray was Belgian, but drew of the heritage of French theory) championed female difference, arguing that dismissing difference was another patriarchal ploy aimed at devaluing the feminine. Instead women needed to reclaim the feminine, particularly the feminine language that would allow women to express themselves outside of the phallocentric discourse. The theory of difference recognises that society's two gender categories, man and woman, are in fact just one (man, of course) and the language of equality, where equality equals sameness works to reinforce patriarchy.
****
Jennifer Armstrong: Of course I've read Irigaray. I'm not sure why you think I am saying that difference ought to be eliminated. How would that be possible? I'm not sure if you have understood my original points. Perhaps I conveyed them poorly.
What I meant to say is that traditionally males were granted social authority and women were denied it. It seems to me that unless there is something specifically culturally prohibitive that acts as a barrier against treating particular women badly, all women will be treated directly as patriarchal subjects, pure and simple. This means that they will some solely under the umbrella of patriarchal valuations and patriarchy will treat them as it will.
Now, I wasn't saying that motherhood in itself is bad for women. I think such an interpretation would really miss my point in a very radical way. I was suggesting, rather, that women should also be able to have the type of authority in the world that does not stem from an identity as a mother. The natural tendency, if culture does not intervene, is for society to collapse back onto "instinct" -- and this is basically fascism, although women can even have power in fascist society, so long as they invoke their status as mothers. Apart from this, they cannot stand up as individuals.
Monday 3 January 2011
Critique: the limits of Nietzsche and Bataille
It sounds odd to say that a thinker like Nietzsche, who disbelieved in the existence of God, could be taken to task for essentialism, but that is precisely what I am prepared to say.
I have studied Nietzsche and Bataille very extensively (all their books!) and over more than a decade. I understand that there are elements of sophistry in both of these writers philosophical approaches. The veiled element in both is that they are trying to disrupt and disturb existing social hierarchies in order to usher in a new order. The means for doing this is the same, or fundamentally similar, in both Nietzsche and Bataille. In general, they want to make things very, very difficult -- antagonistic. Their emphasis on the importance of having psychological strength, rather than having power due to inheriting it, is abundantly clear in the methodology they have chose to revolutionise their societies. They want to create a situation in which nothing is taken for granted and in which each of us is forced to 'sink or swim'. Should we 'sink', then in Nietzsche's terms we are among those unworthy to survive and ought to perish. (This pertains to Nietzsche's appropriation of Darwinism). In the case of Bataille, he thought we should also 'face death' in order to learn the psychological lessons that would enable one to become capable of the kinds of violence that would permit a violent revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois order. He wanted to use this same, Nietzschean paradigm of making psychological warfare necessary, in order to produce those who were capable of acting in a revolutionary manner.
The limitations of Nietzsche, from my 21st Century perspective, is that his approach tends to be more Idealistic than Materialistic. . Psychology is as much a product of our material circumstances as it is of our biological structure or anything innate. So, a very violent historical period may not so much test any innate qualities, as Nietzsche had hoped, but rather, could test the ability to buffer oneself by various means, such as material wealth -- and thereby not to have to face the 'test' of violence, after all. There is no real Darwinism if the weak and the vulnerable within society's presently existing social order are 'tested' more than the self-satisfied wealthy. So, Nietzsche's attempt to use Darwinism in order to put in place a new social order that is governed on the basis of internal strength as an independently standing value in itself appears to be fundamentally flawed. From a 21st Century perspective, his idea that the identity has a consistent ('essential') quality that is not radically altered along with radically altering material circumstances seems wrong and unfounded.
I have studied Nietzsche and Bataille very extensively (all their books!) and over more than a decade. I understand that there are elements of sophistry in both of these writers philosophical approaches. The veiled element in both is that they are trying to disrupt and disturb existing social hierarchies in order to usher in a new order. The means for doing this is the same, or fundamentally similar, in both Nietzsche and Bataille. In general, they want to make things very, very difficult -- antagonistic. Their emphasis on the importance of having psychological strength, rather than having power due to inheriting it, is abundantly clear in the methodology they have chose to revolutionise their societies. They want to create a situation in which nothing is taken for granted and in which each of us is forced to 'sink or swim'. Should we 'sink', then in Nietzsche's terms we are among those unworthy to survive and ought to perish. (This pertains to Nietzsche's appropriation of Darwinism). In the case of Bataille, he thought we should also 'face death' in order to learn the psychological lessons that would enable one to become capable of the kinds of violence that would permit a violent revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois order. He wanted to use this same, Nietzschean paradigm of making psychological warfare necessary, in order to produce those who were capable of acting in a revolutionary manner.
The limitations of Nietzsche, from my 21st Century perspective, is that his approach tends to be more Idealistic than Materialistic. . Psychology is as much a product of our material circumstances as it is of our biological structure or anything innate. So, a very violent historical period may not so much test any innate qualities, as Nietzsche had hoped, but rather, could test the ability to buffer oneself by various means, such as material wealth -- and thereby not to have to face the 'test' of violence, after all. There is no real Darwinism if the weak and the vulnerable within society's presently existing social order are 'tested' more than the self-satisfied wealthy. So, Nietzsche's attempt to use Darwinism in order to put in place a new social order that is governed on the basis of internal strength as an independently standing value in itself appears to be fundamentally flawed. From a 21st Century perspective, his idea that the identity has a consistent ('essential') quality that is not radically altered along with radically altering material circumstances seems wrong and unfounded.
Letter to a misogynist
Yes! I see what you mean by the difficulty of constructing a feminine narrative. Freud and his latter day progeny, Jacques Lacan, explain the problem -- albeit indirectly and without a full (that is, politically contextualised) understanding of their own ideas. They tend to psychologise effects that are actually political in their origins. Thus, they see as "innate" what was actually caused and deny the existence of causality.
Bataille, Freud, Nietzsche, Marx
Bataille's trope of seeking after annihilation -- in Freud, the "death instinct" -- is used in a specifically political way, in Bataille, at least much of the time. This is Bataille's link to Freud and Marx, not just Nietzsche.
In fact, the point of embracing annihilation in Bataille is because it is NOT a one way street. Rather, the pattern is dialectical: whatever does not kill me, makes me stronger. Why? Because one comes to grips with Superego and makes it comply with values that come out of a left wing sensibility, rather than remaining in conformity to conventional conservative values. The new society emerges out of the womb of the old.
Bataille and Nietzsche's agendas both have political auras, even if the core of their writing is philosophical and literary. Nietzsche's agenda can be judged to be somewhat rightward (but not, by any means, to the degree that most of his contemporary followers would imagine). Bataille's agenda is radically leftward.
Both want to use what Freudians term "primary process" thinking in order to lend vitality to their political projects.
In fact, the point of embracing annihilation in Bataille is because it is NOT a one way street. Rather, the pattern is dialectical: whatever does not kill me, makes me stronger. Why? Because one comes to grips with Superego and makes it comply with values that come out of a left wing sensibility, rather than remaining in conformity to conventional conservative values. The new society emerges out of the womb of the old.
Bataille and Nietzsche's agendas both have political auras, even if the core of their writing is philosophical and literary. Nietzsche's agenda can be judged to be somewhat rightward (but not, by any means, to the degree that most of his contemporary followers would imagine). Bataille's agenda is radically leftward.
Both want to use what Freudians term "primary process" thinking in order to lend vitality to their political projects.
Saturday 1 January 2011
Brain composition and how this affects communication
People give away their true positions to me, these days, with the smallest of indications. I can tell if someone's of the mind that they would consider robust enquiry to be a precursor to destruction. The ability to quickly recognise this tendency assists me, as it makes a change from having to endure the miscommunications of the past. In the old days, I struggled to learn a different language, at least as it seemed to me. Contemporary neuropsychology suggests that having a different brain structure may have had something to do with it:
I'm not a conservative, but many of my interlocutors were. The above set of differences in the brains of conservatives meant that our conversations were doomed from the start.
In retrospect, it is much easier for me to understand how the profound levels of miscommunication could have come about. If one's way of thinking is prone towards generating anxiety and uncomfortable emotions, one avoids exploring ideas that could have a negative component. There is mortal danger in wallowing too much in negativity when one cannot depend on the anterior cingulate to pull one out of trouble with a positive perspective. These structural differences may be behind a totally different way of conceptualising the self than the one that I habitually use.
To me, the negative components of life do not represent a threat, as they may well do to my erstwhile conservative pals. The outcome is that my neurological structure has not taught me not to dwell only on positivity and self-affirmation as a means to assure my mental health. Contrarily, I have found that I am able to interrogate the negative aspects of existence and even tarry with them for a while, without being mentally damaged in the long term.
The difference seems to have been that when I have stated something negative about myself, I have never believed that I was stuck with it for good. The "area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life" always embroils me in its intrinsic dialectic. Sometimes I have stated the negative because I was so sure (far from being in a state of doubt) of the lurking presence of the positive -- that if I stated the negative clearly enough to my own mind, my force of courage would come to the fore in a realistic assessment of what was possible.
Dialectical thinking undergirds an attitude that almost any situation is life is intrinsically interesting and has redemptive qualities. To make a public declaration that an aspect of life seems very bad indeed is not a public declaration that all is lost. To the contrary. It's an admission that I've come to terms with something negative. It's unfortunate that a conservative who reads my notw would have a very different idea as to its meaning. This is no doubt because his personal experiences (influenced by brain structure) cause him to feel that if the world at any time comes to appear in a negative light, that world is now irredeemably lost. Lacking capacity of courage and an ability to look on the bright side, he sees no way of restoring what had existed before things had turned out badly: so, he experiences another's acknowledgement of the negative dimensions of existence as if this were a public declaration of defeat.
The conservative's life-saving remedy, to maintain a narrow focus on the positive, no matter how dire things actually become, is something I have not implicitly, that is to say experientially, understood. The imperative to maintain only one attitude, the attitude of positive affirmation, is why I do not like the corporate world -- I find this overall approach to be mentally repressive rather than life-saving. This is because my inner life is not so easily threatened that I need this level of psychological self-discipline to keep me on the straight and narrow. I'd rather roam, within the realms of possibility, as widely as humanly possible.
I now accept that I can seem, to certain types, as if I'm dwelling happily within a space of negativity. To such people, I no doubt must seem to have been inviting my imminent destruction in the way I have managed to live my life. That is not true.
As an interesting aside:
[I]n male brains it seems that the reaction to stress is more severe than female brains. [..T]here seems to be an inbuilt resilience that comes with oestrogen.
Scientists have found that people with conservative views have brains with larger amygdalas, almond shaped areas in the centre of the brain often associated with anxiety and emotions.
On the otherhand, they have a smaller anterior cingulate, an area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life.
I'm not a conservative, but many of my interlocutors were. The above set of differences in the brains of conservatives meant that our conversations were doomed from the start.
In retrospect, it is much easier for me to understand how the profound levels of miscommunication could have come about. If one's way of thinking is prone towards generating anxiety and uncomfortable emotions, one avoids exploring ideas that could have a negative component. There is mortal danger in wallowing too much in negativity when one cannot depend on the anterior cingulate to pull one out of trouble with a positive perspective. These structural differences may be behind a totally different way of conceptualising the self than the one that I habitually use.
To me, the negative components of life do not represent a threat, as they may well do to my erstwhile conservative pals. The outcome is that my neurological structure has not taught me not to dwell only on positivity and self-affirmation as a means to assure my mental health. Contrarily, I have found that I am able to interrogate the negative aspects of existence and even tarry with them for a while, without being mentally damaged in the long term.
The difference seems to have been that when I have stated something negative about myself, I have never believed that I was stuck with it for good. The "area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life" always embroils me in its intrinsic dialectic. Sometimes I have stated the negative because I was so sure (far from being in a state of doubt) of the lurking presence of the positive -- that if I stated the negative clearly enough to my own mind, my force of courage would come to the fore in a realistic assessment of what was possible.
Dialectical thinking undergirds an attitude that almost any situation is life is intrinsically interesting and has redemptive qualities. To make a public declaration that an aspect of life seems very bad indeed is not a public declaration that all is lost. To the contrary. It's an admission that I've come to terms with something negative. It's unfortunate that a conservative who reads my notw would have a very different idea as to its meaning. This is no doubt because his personal experiences (influenced by brain structure) cause him to feel that if the world at any time comes to appear in a negative light, that world is now irredeemably lost. Lacking capacity of courage and an ability to look on the bright side, he sees no way of restoring what had existed before things had turned out badly: so, he experiences another's acknowledgement of the negative dimensions of existence as if this were a public declaration of defeat.
The conservative's life-saving remedy, to maintain a narrow focus on the positive, no matter how dire things actually become, is something I have not implicitly, that is to say experientially, understood. The imperative to maintain only one attitude, the attitude of positive affirmation, is why I do not like the corporate world -- I find this overall approach to be mentally repressive rather than life-saving. This is because my inner life is not so easily threatened that I need this level of psychological self-discipline to keep me on the straight and narrow. I'd rather roam, within the realms of possibility, as widely as humanly possible.
I now accept that I can seem, to certain types, as if I'm dwelling happily within a space of negativity. To such people, I no doubt must seem to have been inviting my imminent destruction in the way I have managed to live my life. That is not true.
As an interesting aside:
[I]n male brains it seems that the reaction to stress is more severe than female brains. [..T]here seems to be an inbuilt resilience that comes with oestrogen.
Oops, you did it again.
Men's Rights Activist types look at how women seem to be under patriarchy and then ascribe their ways of behaving to "female nature". They have no conception that both men and women could behave extremely differently if only the patriarchal culture were changed. Of course women who have submitted to patriarchal values as the norm are going to feel resentful at various points. That's when custody battles start and that kind of thing. It's the way that women who think according to traditional patriarchal mores fight back against a feeling of oppression. This has very little to do with feminism, which proposes that a totally different set of relationships is possible.
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