Conspiracies are ubiquitous.

An individual online stated: "Acknowledging conspiratorial ideas is pathological." I profoundly disagree. Rather, the opposite is true. People conspire almost automatically and so this tendency to ought to be more closely examined and understood.

In my view, common sorts of conspiracies occur at the most primal level of human consciousness. For instance, tell a male that "feminists" are after his bread and butter and he will immediately side with all other males in the world as males, no matter how much he would actually dislike them in person. What matters to him at the moment is to defend himself via the primeval category of "maleness".

Wherever primal conspiratorial thought occurs, it is not at the level of a conscious decision. The origin of most conspiracies can be found where human unconscious processes defend a notion of "us" versus "them". People of all sorts unconsciously "conspire" when they act in unison with others on the basis of a felt identity, whilst acting defensively against those of an "out-group", which would then be felt to endanger the group's primeval sense of unity.

Contra Wolin

Bataille does not endorse immediate sense certainty. I believe that this is a mistake made by those who imagine that Bataille's agenda must necessarily be a search for "Truth". Such critics retain the old metaphysical category of Truth that Bataille has long dispensed with, when they try to critique Bataille in this way. Bataille's views were very much psychological and his writings show that he understood very much that his approach was historically situated and far from being universal in the sense that Western metaphysics would posit 'universality'. Bataille was a keen student of Hegel and Marx and thus his views were often very much situated in terms of these theoretical postulates, which do not dispense with an understanding of historically contextualised change and transformation. It is actually outrageous even to suggest that Bataille escaped into irrationalism without his understanding, both intellectually and experientially, the nature of bourgeois rationality. If his writings do not indicate that Bataille understood how the system worked, then perhaps Wolin was reading another Bataille, or reading him through the lens of metaphysical binaries, whereby rationality and irrationality are diametrically opposed, rather than being organically linked in every way -- which brings me to my next point. The point in engaging with the negative (which was Bataille's actual project, contrary to Wolin) is that it is a means to understand the nature of bourgeois rationality more thoroughly, given that the irrational and the rational are intricately linked (they are actually both the products of the human mind). They are not to be cordoned off separately as if to embrace rationality was to renounce irrationality, since this would be practically impossible (even if it is theoretically thinkable).

It seems that Wolin mistakes Bataille's project for a metaphysical one, when it was really a psychological one. Thus he condemns Bataille unfairly.

Against drugging

All medications have side effects. The idea that we are just a mix of chemicals anyway, so adding a different sort of chemical will not radically alter us in a negative way, is wrong. The idea that undergoing hardship and pain in life is a sign that one is unworthy or inferior is also very wrong.

Hardship and pain are more often than not growing pains. Even when they are not, one is better off experiencing whatever it is one feels, in order to move on with greater self-understanding. Taking chemicals prevents this growth. One's psychology becomes flattened.

Visiting the extremes

My sex drive is extemely high, as are all of my hormonal levels. Nothing in my life is particularly smooth, as a result of these bombastic hormones. On what may be presumed to be the positive side of things, I don't find sexual engagement to be a problem. Even if I'm not feeling like it at a particular moment, I can adjust very quickly to the mood. It's very natural. When I am feeling on top of things in my life, my libido increases even more. Even at lower levels of interest, I have never been unsatisfied with sexual coupling. On the negative side of having such extreme hormones, my menstrual events have to be regulated by oral hormones, or it is like death. I do not exaggerate when I say it is like having swallowed poison whilst having a knife in the lower belly that I cannot remove. Psychologically speaking, I feel like I have a grenade in my stomach, which can and will explode. As a result of my biological state, I take a lot of interest in how people experience violence as well as various emotional extremes (i.e relating to the endurance of extreme pain).

From Facebook

Upon reflection, I would say that writing the PhD finally brought me to the useful understanding that much of what I had been grappling with before was patriarchy's reversal of cause and effect. Nietzsche, bless his little heart, did not come close to removing this particular vestige of "God", nor even analysing it.

The reversal of cause and effect which forms both "Metaphysics" and "God" is fundamentally patriarchal. This historical act of reversal is founded on the notion that it is necessary for males to be perceived to "give life". All sorts of misunderstandings (like the one I've just experienced that presumes my status update was about "laydees complaining") stem as a result of this primal reversal of cause and effect and the psychological confusion this reversal produces.

The self-defeating nature of patriarchal power

There is a definite need to employ the brain if one is lacking in power.Now, there is much stupidity in viewing women as amorphously defined rather than as individuals. This is the common patriarchal view, as Echidne points out. Patriarchy is very stupid, but it gets away with this stupidity because it uses brute force. Women are viewed as passive and emotional because of patriarchal possession of this stupidity/brute force, which does not require men to engage with more finesse with women, as one individual engages with another.To expect individual women to always conform to the passive/emotional stereotype is very stupid as it makes individual men very psychologically vulnerable to all the individual women in the world who are not this way.In martial arts, a physically weaker opponent can only win by doing what is unexpected. Individual women are already primed, by virtue of patriarchal stupidity, to do what is unexpected of them. (Most of them have an actual capacity for thought that is not accounted for in terms of patriarchal ideology.) When I teach self defence to women, I say that resisting or fighting back in any way at all will not be expected from you. The fact that this is unexpected is itself already an advantage. Surprise always awards a psychological advantage.

 Don't be who you are expected to be -- Be who you really are, in all of your unpredictability or variable human nature! That way, you'll beat 'em every single time.

Nietzsche: psychology in historical context

I have greatly benefited from Nietzsche, but I suspect this was only because I came from a culture much closer to 19th Century Christianity than to anything like 21st Century culture. I had all the symptoms of victimhood to this ideology. I had very repressed individuality, I sought out the "truth" of every situation in order to submit to it (making me as easy object of manipulation). I had turned my own aggression, including creative energies, inwards.

I think Nietzsche speaks effectively to those who are in this sort of state. Basically, to turn things around one must overcome one's narrow Christian conscience, which has trapped you. From a Christian ideological perspective, this means to "do evil". This is the rhetoric Nietzsche employs.

Basically, I see that those who want to take Nietzsche's writings in the other direction, which is to eliminate empathy from their lives, in order to transcend what they would like to view as "mediocrity", but which is in fact normality, end up not richer, but poorer for their efforts.

To eliminate empathy is in fact to live in a narrower corner of the psyche than one has need to do. It's actually to shrink, to retract from the world. This approach also makes other people harder -- not easier -- to understand. If it seems very erroneous, I think that is because it is in fact error.

Breaking the ideological spell

I have long found benefit in the method by means of which paradigms are altered. It takes a certain amount of focus and concentration, however -- states of mind that belong more to a monastic culture than to present day chaotic Capitalist culture. Actually, the reason why I have been able to see through so much patriarchy is because I have permitted it to reveal itself to me -- even enticed it to do so. It used to have such a hold on me before, not because I didn't see through a lot of the bullshit and pretentiousness, but because somehow some peculiar archetype of male heroism had lodged itself in my mind. So, even when I saw the nonsense, I still held out for some kind of manifestation of superior states of being. It was as if I had been bewitched.

It was only through allowing males to act out their actual inner states of mind, in all pomposity and ridiculousness, that I managed to see to it that the spell was broken. The more inappropriate (and, hence, foolish) the attacks against me became, the more I began to find a way around my previous idealism. In the end, the misogynists themselves were responsible for breaking the patriarchal spell.

metaphysics, morality and the reversal of cause and effect

It's alarming how regularly people understand the world in metaphysical/idealist terms, rather than in materialist terms -- and how much of a difference that makes. The reason why cause and effect are reversed so much in class society is because of the notion that those who are higher up in the social strata are closer to moral perfection than those who are lower down in it. So, one is led to conclude that if anyone is going to fuck up, it is not possible that it could be the higher ups. Rather, it is the lowly mug at the bottom, doing all the harm -- the one who is "complaining" that he is being victimised.

The unnatural state of female oppression

Many people in the first world have the impression that misogyny no longer plays a significant part. This, in itself, can be a huge impediment to redressing wrongs. Much misogynistic behaviour falls under the auspices of "natural behaviour" -- seeking either to express it (for example, by punitive male aggression) or to bring it about (for instance, by compelling women to become passive).

Despite the psychological attraction of doing what comes naturally, it has hardly been nature itself that has produced the idea of essential male and female natures. Rather, it has been the philosophers, psychologists and politicians of previous eras who have determined what is "natural". Consider, for instance, that if "natural" female nature is posited as not aggressive, indeed passive and very emotional, then to the degree that a woman departs from this character (which is also inevitable to the degree that she is human and expresses human behaviour in all of its manifest complexity) she can be heavily penalised "for her own good".

Immaturity and the American male

The reason American men are immature is that it is not socially enforced for them to see women as adults. Therefore American men never learn to relate to women in any other way than they would relate to mothers -- either with a hostile resistance to the feeling that women "want" to control them, or with benign conformity to "her" will. They can't see that adult communication doesn't involve a battle of wills where either dominance or submission is as stake.

Psychology: Part I

Psychology: Part I

Psychology: Introduction

Psychology: Introduction

Psychology: Chapter 9

Psychology: Chapter 9

On the pathologising of pain

As regards the "pain" issue and the cultural valorisation thereof, this does seem to be a feature of Western culture per se. I think that many of the psychiatric 'diagnoses' have to do with regulating the way we experience pain. The big 'no-no', apparently, is to make of one's pain some kind of issue; some kind of separating factor. On the other hand, the problem with what may be an attempt to correct an unhelpful association by ignoring it or casting it to one side is that it becomes no longer possible to talk about the full range of human experience anymore. Pains, of various sorts, are part of human experience -- and, indeed, they need not seem so negative after they are spoken about.

The inability to speak of them is what makes them seem greater than they are.

Feminine appeasement

A typical, but inadequate approach to self defence is for a woman to try to appease the one who seeks control over her. This approach is necessitated by her conventionally feminine character structure.

There is good reason to think that character structure, itself, is formed under fear of death. One learns to conform to traditional gender roles out of the primeval fear of being outcast (which, traditionally, meant death). So, women develop this character structure that seeks to appease because they have made their peace with the social system that has conditioned them to believe that they "ought" to be "nice"(a categorical imperative). They have made their peace with the patriarchal system as a way to avoid death. However, the character structure they develop as a resulting of conforming in this way makes them more susceptible to injury and death.

Appeasing a bully doesn't usually work.

They would have to face (their fear of) death again, to break down their existing, traditional character structure and to develop very different reflexive strategies. Sometimes full contact self defence training can achieve this.